rants Archives | Page 2 of 2

previous ten entries | 1 2 |

Thursday, January 06, 2005

rant, with asterisks

I just had an entry all typed up and it disappeared when I hit send. I think Diaryland does this periodically just to make my life interesting. Maybe they have a camera set up somewhere to record my reaction so Andrew can laugh. I should learn to be like most people, and type these up in a Notepad file so they don't get lost when that happens. It was an interesting entry too, full of candid emotion, with many asterisks. Because, you see, I don't want to actually swear in here -- I'm not the swearing type in general, really; with the apparent exception of talking in my sleep during dreams about faithless husbands, I almost never actually swear out loud, being more of the "DogGONnit!" type. But when my husband's boss behaves in such a way as to make all the words that usually scroll through my mind turn into variations of The Big One, I have to vent somehow. (Have I ever mentioned in here the fact that when I'm not speaking or listening to speech, I see random words in my head in various fonts and colors, and that when people are talking the words they say show up like subtitles, sometimes scrolling horizontally, sometimes vertically, sometimes showing up like they're being typed? No? Whoops, I think that BANG I just heard was the door slamming as everyone ran away from the crazy woman. I won't hurt you, I swear.)

What the ******* boss has done is that he has decided, thanks to his vast and immeasurable hero complex, that some work on a remote radio-signal repeater, which could just as well be done on Monday because it is not urgent, must instead be done tomorrow. Even though it's a day off work for both him and T. Even though it will be snowing and extremely cold and there's already six or eight feet of snow on the ground where they're going. Even though they need to start from home at 4 a.m. Even though their heated enclosed off-road Snow-Cat thing is in the shop and they'll be going on snowmobiles. Even though the total amount of snowmobile experience between the two of them is one brief ride. So basically, the boss is at least ruining T's day, and also quite possibly endangering his life, because The Mission Comes First. He is a company man through and through, I'll say that for him. I hope his privates freeze off.

I had another of those "anxiety attacks" today. I looked around a bit online and found information on ventricular tachycardia, and I began to think that was what I was having. Then I was talking to one of the other moms at Awana tonight (remind me never to go to Awana when it's been raining for two weeks. Any excuse will suffice. Children are intolerable in large groups after two weeks of being cooped up indoors. My hat is off to classroom teachers in the winter who not only retain their sanity but manage to educate kids at the same time) and she said that she had exactly the same symptoms, triggered in exactly the same way, and that when she went to the doctor it did turn out to be VT and she got treated for it and it went away. My episodes aren't frequent (four in a year or so, although I've had two in the past month) so I am not sure I'll get the little outpatient surgery for it, but I might actually (groan) fork over a copayment and go see a doctor about it. Someday.

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

What the HECK?? (no, this is not about the election)

As aforementioned, we have the TV hooked up to the antenna and we're watching ABC as the election returns come in. I just have to ask, what the heck has happened to TV decency standards since I watched it last?? There was a commercial for some bizarre-looking "Desperate Housewives" show, not even eight o'clock, and they were showing stuff in a commercial that they couldn't show at ten o'clock at night the last time I really paid attention to TV. Which, granted, aside from the occasional foray into cable for the sake of documentaries and Jeopardy, has been around eleven years. We actually literally covered our son's eyes and ears.

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

sizing rant

Any other tallish women get frustrated trying to find lingerie that fits? I'm not extraordinarily tall, so come on, how hard would it be to make a backless bra with an extra two inches of length in it so that it could actually reach from my waist to my breasts (hello googler! nothing interesting here, go away please!)? And yet I guess it must be pretty difficult, since I have just spent 45 minutes searching for one online, after spending considerable time struggling with the two I own, trying to force one to behave properly and failing. They all just size by bra size. How stupid is that, when the stupid thing has to go around your waist as well? I've worn the same bra size through three pregnancies (OK, so not QUITE the same, but the same BAND size anyway), 40 pounds of weight gain, and 25 pounds of weight loss; that's quite a bit of fluctuation in some other measurements which are pretty important when considering anything beyond the most basic lingerie. Obviously these companies must be headed by men, or else by irritating 5'5" size six women (not that all women of this description are irritating, although there are moments... but that's certainly not THEIR fault) who bat their eyelashes in perplexion when presented with the idea that any normal person might be sized differently from themselves.


And I won't even go into the bizarre-but-common method of sizing bras which would make one think that I have negative-sized breasts. They really are convex; I can see them; why then should I be wearing a negative B, if such a thing existed, according to their goofy measurement system?


Speaking of googlers (well, I was): of all the things Andrew intended when he designed the stats section here at Diaryland, I don't imagine he planned that one of them would be to make diarylanders feel more normal. However, seeing probably half a dozen people find my diary in the past few days by searching Yahoo and Google for "sugar makes my stomach hurt" and "anxiety attack tingling" has done just that. Whew, I am not the only one.


Now, that doesn't mean that all Googlers are normal. Nuh-UH. Some of the things I have seen in there make me shudder.

--------

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

shudder

Seen (several times) at Wal-Mart tonight: ATTENTION CUSTOMERS: HOLIDAY ITEMS MAY NOT BE RETURNED AFTER THE HOLIDAY FROM WHICH IT COINCIDES WITH. Ouch. That is all I can say.

--------

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

stinky book

Don't you hate when you get a book from the library and it has that smoker's-house smell? Ick. The kids and I went out walking tonight and remembered while we were out that the library was still open, so we went and got a few books (do I even have to tell you that LT got one book about Legos and one about Star Wars?), and I collected some (oh joy) holds I had waiting for me. It's the copy of What Jane Austen Ate And Charles Dickens Knew, which looks to be exactly the book I was hoping it would be, that stinks. It makes me want to put it outside for the night to air out.

--------

Thursday, October 16, 2003

deliver me from temptation (and Grandma)

I did a bad thing. A very bad thing. While T was gone a couple of weeks ago, I bought chocolate chips, in case the kids and I, in a frenzy of loneliness, felt compelled to drown our sorrows in a batch of homemade goodness. Well, we didn't ever reach that point, so the chocolate chips were still hanging around in the cabinet looking all forlorn and depressed and feeling pretty useless. So yesterday I put them out of their misery. Now, I have to say, there are only a few things I do very, very well, but baking chocolate chip cookies is definitely one of them. So now I have a substantial quantity of chocolatey, chewy, soft, moist goodness sitting on my kitchen counter in a bakery bag whispering, "eat me! come on, just one! it's only 130 calories per cookie! [yes, I do calculate the number of calories in the things I bake; do you have a problem with this?] one more won't hurt you! you can always go for a brisk walk later...." Fortunately my dad was over yesterday and he helped eat a few of them; T took some to work today to share with his boss, also. But still, there are a good three dozen cookies sitting in there beckoning to me. I ate a few yesterday and this morning I caved and had two cookies and a glass of milk for breakfast (with the Special K box looking reproachfully at me the whole time). I am thinking I'll have to take some of them to the neighbors, to lessen the temptation.


I have started a new 9-week challenge for the weight-loss Yahoogroup I'm a part of. My personal goal is to lose a pound a week for the next nine weeks; I didn't want to set myself up for failure by trying for more. This was a great time to have made those cookies, huh. (and don't suggest freezing them; have you ever eaten chocolate chip cookies straight from the freezer? yum!). The weather is supposed to be perfect for walking for the next week. Of course, this doesn't mean I'll actually walk; it just means I'll think I should lose weight just because the weather is so great for walking.


Great, and I just remembered we're eating dinner at my paternal grandmother's house tonight. This means a stringy bland pot roast, boiled potatoes, and vegetables boiled to the point of total limpness and swimming in enough margarine to lubricate a ship's engine. And we won't even go into the whining, or the insistence that SHE will wash the dishes and I am to SIT DOWN, no I may NOT help, followed by her complaints to her county-hired house help and anyone else who will listen tomorrow that "those selfish kids came over for dinner and [insert one: "barely touched the dinner I worked so hard on" or "ate me out of house and home"], and then Rachel wouldn't even help with the dishes afterward, just sat with her kids and watched TV." (item: I hate watching TV). She has been nagging/whining at and about T for weeks, wanting him to come fix some stuff on the RV she never uses, and this was the first time he had available to go over and do it. Great. I had totally forgotten about that until just now. I wonder if I could come down with some debilitating flu in the next eight hours that would get me out of it....

--------

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

irritations and joys

In the "life's little irritations" category for today:

• Paying $43 for checks. Really, it's disgusting that it can cost that much for four boxes of freaking checks. You'd think they were printed on Van Gogh canvases or something. And I am a total sucker for every one of their shifty-eyed merchandising schemes also -- first I fall for the really cheap initial offering, and then I stay with that company rather than go for another cheap initial offering because it is SO much easier, since they have all my information already. And when I get all the way through checkout and on the last page they reveal that their handling cost is $9.00, I balk at first but then cave because I've come so far. And I spend 45 minutes dallying and trying to decide whether to go with the old comfortable patriotic-themed checks or to branch out into something new. sigh.
  
• Going to my favorite restaurant, with my parents and my two children, and waiting an hour and a half for our food. We were the first people in the restaurant when they opened for dinner, and yet half a dozen tables had paid and left by the time we finally got our food. We were so full from appetizers that I asked the waitress to go ahead and package our food to go, since an hour and a half is about the outside limit of a 4-year-old's (*sob*, that's the first time I've had to type that, no more 3-year-old) good-restaurant-behavior anyway.
  
• Being so totally uncomfortable from eating appetizers, salad, and soup that I could hardly sit down. Stepping on the scale and seeing that I had apparently gained seven pounds since getting up this morning. What the heck is up with that, I know I didn't eat that much. It makes me think I can't believe anything that scale says. And trust is a very important element in the relationship between a woman and her bathroom scale. I feel so - so betrayed.
  

To balance that, here are some parts of today that made life bliss.

• Singing "Happy Birthday" about a dozen times.
  
• Realizing that this girl's whole life for the past four days has basically been one long birthday celebration, and that it's not over yet.
  
• Speaking on the phone three times to my absent-but-adored husband, instead of the usual one stolen-time-at-11-pm fire overtime phone call.
  
• Feeling that teenagerish heart-leaping feeling when I hear the voice of the man I've been married to for almost ten years (can you tell I'm trying to make the best of a bad situation here?)
  
• Contemplating all day, and especially around 9:00 at night, what I was doing four years ago at that moment. My daughter's surgical birth was not a happy incident at its face value, but it was a momentous day even if it wasn't a lot of fun. And I never realized until my children began having birthdays, how much a birthday means to the person's mother. Now I always give my mom a special hug on my birthday as well.
  
• That startling moment of satisfaction when I step onto the porch or into the living room and see how clean it is (see, raving optimist that I am, I can even find something to be glad about in my FIL's panic-inducing visit)
  
• C's horse obsession. It is such fun watching my little mini-me enjoy the same things I did at her age.
  

And now it's time for me to carry my sleeping 4-year-old to her bed, and go read a chapter of The Silver Chair to LT (and my dad via audiocassette) before collapsing in sleep. :)

--------

Sunday, September 21, 2003

stupid spam and diet cherry coke

Obviously spammers must expect that any recipient of their glurge who actually takes it seriously and replies will be a little low on gray matter, or at least seriously naïve, and they profit from that without being bothered by it. But exactly how stupid do they think people can be? Here's a spam I got just a few minutes ago (you can click on it to view it larger; it'll open in a new window):

Look, I don't know how to say this without coming across all Ugly-American and everything, but for crying out loud, if you're going to attempt credit-card fraud against people in the U.S. or other English-speaking nations, it might be a good idea to learn freaking English. Otherwise absolutely nobody, not even some really nice naïve elderly person who just gave her social security number, credit card number, and physical address to that nice-sounding young boy on the phone who was entering her in a contest to win a timeshare in Alaska, is going to fall for your idiotic scheme. Cripes.


As an aside, why, I wonder, are the elderly particularly vulnerable to stuff like that? It sounds so awful to say that... and yet they are -- not just to fraud schemes either; they seem particularly gullible about a lot of things. Maybe it's because they are from a more trusting time. I've no idea. In every other way they are pretty reliably intelligent, but even my smart, spunky, feisty grandmother who brought up seven kids on a shoestring and worked every day from the time her youngest flew the nest (and lots before that too) till she had her hip replaced at 75 repeats that stupid ball-pit story like she heard it from God himself. I don't get it.


My almost-4-year-old daughter has discovered the remote control. She is giddy with the glee of putting in Homecoming (that Showtime movie based on the book by Cynthia Voigt; we have it on video) and watching everyone run around in fast-forward and rewind. It sounds goofy until I remember how much giddy enjoyment I (at a considerably later age, considering that pretty much nobody but millionaires owned VCRs when I was 3) got from doing the same thing with music videos recorded off TV, and movies like Top Gun (the sex scene in that one was especially funny on rewind or FF. In fact, now that I think of it, I would probably still think so now).


The boys should be home anytime from their trip to southern CA. I really hope they're bringing me some diet Cherry Coke. For some idiotic reason, the northern CA bottler doesn't manufacture it, but the southern CA one does. T and I didn't even know it existed till this summer. Ever since we got our 2-(24-)pack-a-week Diet Coke habit -- well, even before that, since we liked Diet Coke for a long time before we could afford an addiction -- we have spent considerable time wishing there was such a thing. Then we were in Morro Bay over the summer, and we literally could not believe our eyes at first when we saw THE GRAIL -- Diet Cherry Coke in 12-packs. We bought three 12-packs on the spot, loved it, and rejoiced that the Powers the Be at Coca-Cola had finally gotten the idea and started making it. Then we got home and there was no diet Cherry Coke here. We had been tricked -- teased! After extensive internet research I unearthed the truth: Diet Cherry Coke has actually existed for a long time, it's just that the Communists in northern California have been keeping it from us. I actually called the Northern CA bottler and was further led on by their spokesperson who said (in July) that they were planning to start producing Diet Cherry Coke within the month. She must have just said that to keep me from bombing their facility, because hello, it's September now, and still no diet Cherry Coke in our local stores. But T and LT have just spent 18 hours below the Grapevine, which is even further south than Morro Bay, and hence must be under the direct patronage of the good guys. Please please let them have remembered on time, before they passed back up into the diet cherry wasteland.


On that note, I have sat long enough and should really wash the dishes so that T doesn't take one look at the kitchen and say, "You spent the entire time I was gone chatting with Jenn and hanging out at Diaryland, didn't you." Which would not be entirely true. ahem.


* * * * * * * * ULTRA MEGA IMPORTANT DIET CHERRY COKE UPDATE * * * * * * * *

9:30 PM


I have the best husband in the world. Sorry ladies, you can stop looking, the perfect man is married. I knew that even BEFORE he came home with six 12-packs of diet cherry coke for me (all they had at Ralph's in Bakersfield). But it was just strongly reinforced. He brought me two on a bed of ice, as an homage to the way he used to put Peach Snapple in my car while I was at work, when we were dating. He would buy up every bottle of it they had in our small town -- which in the early 90's wasn't much as Snapple wasn't as big a deal yet then as it is now -- and put them by to leave for me a few at a time.


My regular diet Coke cans are looking at me resentfully. They'll just have to learn to share me for the next seventy-two cans' worth.

--------

rants Archives | Page 2 of 2

previous ten entries | 1 2 |