A new job and no pics

so i have a new job that a poorly trained monkey can do but that is ok b/c a job is a job, right? i found it interesting how many people in my training class are in my same situation - educated, management experience, good pay - and simply could not find a job. as one man said, misery loves company - especially considering how little we are paid. but they do pay tuition reimbursement and offer medical insurance so that's good. i am selling my car because it is either that or live in it and i really don't know where i would plug in the catgenie and ain't none of us livin' without it!

and i caved. dinomeaner asked me to teach her how to knit socks so she came over to my abode and i got her started and then became nosey (shocking, i know) and was looking in her knitting bag and saw Twilight and thought, hmmm, wonder if this book is anything near the hysteria it has inspired? so i picked it up and started reading... 64 pages later dinomeaner had to rip it out of my hands and run out the door hitting me over the head with her knitting bag to keep me from snatching it back! how rude of her!

since friday, i have finished my own copy of Twilight and New Moon and have started Eclipse. these books are definitely addictive. are they Harry Potter? no. nor are they Faulkner on a bad day, half drunk, and dictating to a monkey - but Faulkner is the platinum standard so when Meyers reads this post, as you know she will, i hope she is not offended. most of the time, i do not like to have to digest a book's poetry. i, like most lazy humans, do not like to think when reading - i like to escape. and that's what this series does and does very, very well - allows you to escape and enjoy an adventure that is interesting and well written without requiring you to have a dictionary next to you or wikipedia pulled up on your laptop. while i think that The Road may be one of the best books i have ever read, i can only read so many of that nature. life is too much most days so i don't need my fiction to be what pushes me over the edge - i want my fiction to distract me and make the edge less attractive and life more interesting. this series has definitely kept me interested!

oh, and i also blog slapped dinomeaner about not posting in like 2 weeks so i had to make myself sit down and write something before she could! ha - i win!!

WOW!

Tina Fey does not have to leave the planet and I don't have to move to Canada because Obama won. I think I am still in shock. And I must say that if I am experiencing this level of shock and hope, I truly cannot conceive the level of hope and optimism the African American community must be feeling. I can only image and try to internalize the words of friends like Essie as they express what this victory means to black people specifically and Americans in general. Just wow.

and I would be posting a picture of my cat but I have a new phone and cannot figure out how to send my pics from my phone to my email. I think I might have to cave and read the book tomorrow. Sucks.

But congratulations America - we finally voted out GW and his potential replacement, Palin. Because you might not be willing to say it, but we all know that there was not way McCain was going to live through his entire term. Sorry - but it needed to be said.

how to label your boxes

my friend j told me today it is not that i am handling my current situation (lack of employment and how it came about) well - it just hasn't hit me yet. and damn if the bitch wasn't right because i am no longer handling it well.

i take 2 medications daily (and then some if needed) and had a 3 month supply called in to wal-mart for pick up today because today is my last day with medical insurance (technically, i could COBRA but as i have yet to hit the lottery, i cannot afford to COBRA). turns out, i am not due for refills until 10/3 and 10/11 and my BCBS plan does not offer an early pick up option. so, as all of my well laid plans always end, this one too ended in failure.

and that's when it hit me. i am sitting at the stop light leaving wal-mart and tears are rolling down my face.

when my neighbor/friend/former coworker brought me the box of stuff that was cleaned out of my desk for me (and termed "just some shit" by my former ___ ) i set the box on the floor next to a box containing things from my store. i laughed and said out loud to myself, "look, another box of failure! i think i'll start numbering them!"

at the light at wal-mart, it ceased to be funny. the reality is that i am unemployed in one of the worst job markets in the last 20 years; my 1 remaining 401k is so in the crapper i would not be surprised to receive notice that it has actually rolled back to $0.00; my medical insurance lapses at 12:01 am; no one has called me for an interview; and it will be another week before there is even a possibility of my being notified of whether or not my unemployment was approved (if approved, the state max for me is $275/week before withholding. i know, envy my windfall).

i think the icing on the mental breakdown cake was seeing all of the red & blue school flags on the cars and realizing that this is homecoming weekend and also my 15 year high school reunion weekend. nothing says i have arrived like being unemployed & unable to afford health insurance. i can actually say i have no self esteem left.

i thought the whole point of going to a good high school, getting a college degree, and working hard was so at 34 i would not find myself in this fucking situation? Seriously! remind me again why i am still paying back student loans? again i succeeded in making an investment in nothing - and that was over 10 yrs ago and cannot be blamed on the current economic shit storm. you know you've hit a new low when you're excited about making $70/night waiting tables at the olive garden. that's not even good waitressing money!

tried working hard. was laid off. tried following my dream. declared bankruptcy. tried working hard again. no idea what happened this time. no explanation. nothing.

at least i now know how to subtitle my boxes: Failure #1 - where your dreams died. Failure #2 - just some shit.

Hell Has Frozen Over and I Have The Sweater To Prove It

Blinky tested and approved.



Thank you, Knitting Goddess, for granting me strength to finish this project by making wool a natural fire retardant.

This sweater will be mailed to the Northeast the first of next week and pics of the beloved nephew wearing it, sans face, will be posted asap. As much as I now hate this project, I have to say that I am really proud of the finished product. He'll look great wearing it once for the pic because by now it is too freakin' small! But he has a little sister who hasn't started reading Harry Potter yet so she will get some wear out of it - if he'll share.

I am a Failure as a wife

0 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

I found this link on another blog and thought, what the hell and took the test. The results speak for themselves. Now, I am not married so I answered the questions as honestly as I could. But still - a FAILURE? A little harsh. Take the test and see how you do - especially you married women out there and let me know how it goes!

And Dine-o-meaner, I would not hit you were you actually to show up for Saturday knitting - I would just pull your needles out of your knitting. Knitting violence takes many forms...

Sofa vs. Boxes Full of Books

Just wondering who will win - the couch or the boxes of books?



Tinkerbell votes that her mom is an idiot.

I've been Blog-Bitch Slapped!!

Oh, it is on, Dine-o-meter!! The sound of crickets?? Am I the one skipping out on Saturday Knitting? Noooo, that would be you. Except, I missed 2 weeks ago and may miss this week... But that's not the point!

What is the point, you ask? I have been called out for my spotty (at best) blogging. How rude of you to point out the obvious! I am a busy single mother of 4 who works all day and comes home very tired and in need of toast! Did it ever occur to you that I have nothing interesting in my life to blog about? Well, thank you for pointing out my extremely boring existence to your readers.

I mean, look at these faces:



Roxanne needs lots of love and reassurance!



Blinky needs supervision - she has started stealing my cigarettes again!



Tinkerbell obviously needs to be fed!



And Izzy - it's just interesting to watch her watch the world, and bugs, go by.

So there! I killed all the freakin' crickets over here, Dine-o-meaner!!

I LOVE this man!

I was not planning on writing anything tonight but in making my nightly rounds of my favorite blogs, I stopped by www.jezebel.com and read this article titled, "10 Things Karl Lagerfeld Could Do Without."

Read and enjoy! I love that he is completely honest - hates kids and meat and fat girls and skinny girls and the 90's and prints and... As one person commented, he is like your favorite batshit crazy uncle. But those weird gloves. So demode. And of course he only wants to talk about the fat girls - everyone knows they are the most fabulous and interesting women in the world! But I don't think that was his reason for wanting to talk about them...

Enjoy!

Oh, and here is Roxanne's toy, Bear (don't you love my creativity in naming her toys?). Bear is not longer with us as he lost his arms then legs then head. At that point, he went to his Glad grave. Sad day for Roxanne...

Cat Pee vs. Wooden Knitting Needles

An epic battle that has been raging for ages - but which will finally triumph? Thanks to Blinky, we may finally have an answer. Looks sweet and innocent, doesn't she? Docile, lovable, cute and posed? She is just this side of evil.

You see, Blinky is one of the four kittens I found in a drainage ditch and bottle fed and loved and cared for until the other three were old enough to go to new homes. As you can imagine, Blinky has a bit of a princess complex. When I moved to my new apartment, she did not adjust well. I did not realize how not well she was doing until I started smelling cat pee and started sniffing around. I discovered that random boxes containing books, bins with random contents, and a box with knitting patterns & needles were drenched in cat pee. Not misted, not a slight puddling but a concerted effort at soaking every single item in each box.

Horror! Disgust! A strong desire to pass out from the smell! I dragged boxes outside and tossed most things in the dumpster. There is no saving a book from cat pee. The cd's could be cleaned, the patterns were done, and the throw knit from hand painted yarn could be saved by the dry cleaner. The knitting needles - they were an unknown. Could they be saved?

I asked A for her expert opinion. I proposed wiping them all down with Clorox wipes but would that take off the varnish and ruin them? A responded that being covered with cat pee had also ruined them so what did I have to lose? Her logic is undeniable. I was either going to ruin a few hundred dollars worth of needles or have a few hundred dollars of ruined needles.

The great experiment began. All needles were wiped down well with the wipes and then wiped again with a damp paper towel then subjected to a sniff test. Test results were inconclusive - they still smelled like lemon from the wipes. So now I am pausing in the typing to go and check for the final results:

A random sampling indicates that wooden needles do indeed defeat cat pee! One or two may have to go but that is a small price to pay for overall success. Blinky's evil plan was only minimally effective. Now I must go love on my evil genius and her associates. They can pee on my needles, eat my socks, and sharpen their claws on my sofa but like a teenager overwhelmed with hormones and in thrall to her first boyfriend, I ignore all of the negative and pretend they love me as much as I love them. And as they cannot talk, I'll never know differently.

A Very Sad Passing

Last Monday I came home from work and found Bailey curled up in the batting of my box spring mattress dead. An abrupt assessment? Well, it was an abrupt moment - just ask my poor mother who received a phone call that was completely incomprehensible due to my sobbing and sniffing and hysterics. I really don't think she understood anything I was attempting say for the first 15 - 20 seconds of the conversation. Then she had to walk me through the preparing of the body for refrigeration (I'll come back to that) and the opening of the first beer of many.

I ended the phone call and her misery and then realized I would be incapable of concentrating on work the next day and so thinking I could hold it together, I called my boss to tell him I would not be in Tuesday. Well, needless to say, he also could not understand the first 15 - 20 seconds of our phone call but was very sweet. I then remembered that I had a dentist appointment on Tuesday and called their office and left a completely incoherent message on their machine. It was a trifecta of incomprehensible messages.

So the fridge. I wanted her cremated and so I had to keep her chilled until I could get her to the vet in the morning. So I wrapped her in a towel, put her in a garbage bag, and put her in the fridge. Morbid, yes. Effective, yes.

Tuesday morning I work my way step by step toward the vet. First getting the bag from the fridge to the door; door to car; car to vet; bag from car to front door; front door to front desk. And crying the whole time. I drop off Bailey with the very kind staff and cry my way back to the car. I am sitting in the car sobbing (no delicate, gentle tears here - snot and sobs only) and I notice this elderly man looking at me. I give him the "I acknowledge you as a fellow human only because my mother taught me that this is what I should do" smile and he mouths the words, "I'm sorry" and I mouth back, "Thank you." More sobbing until I realize that the man is back outside my window. Addled with grief, I crack the window and the man proceeds to tell me how he once a wonderful dog that he loved very much (it helps if your inner voice assumes a Scandinavian accent while reading his story). His dog was deaf and every time he got in his truck the dog would stand there and then move out of the way. Well, she was deaf. So one day, he started the truck and ran over the dog. Because the dog was deaf, it didn't move out of the and he ran over it. He loved that dog very much and he understands how I feel. End of the story. What do you say to that??? I said, "Thanks," started the car, and left.

How do these people find me? Am I cosmically listed? At least it made me laugh - so hard I had to pull over and blow my nose and wipe my eyes. Bailey would have enjoyed every moment of my misery but have been the first to let me rub my face in her fur while she purred in my ear. I miss her every morning when she's not demanding to be fed and at night when she's not beating up the other cats and the dog. She was mean, she peed on me in bed more than once, and I loved her so much. She cannot be replaced.

End of the month - Just a little stressed...

It almost sounds like I'm waiting for the stick to change colors! I'm just waiting for the month to end so the craziness will end for a day or so before we start panicking about next month. Ah, the circle of life.

So I moved from my crack house (with the great Victoria porch) to this nicer and much larger apartment in November '07. I have not unpacked anything. My clothes came in garbage bags so emptying those into the dresser or on to the closet rack doesn't really count. I bought new dishes and glasses so those, while existing, did not actually "move" any farther than from Wal Mart to my kitchen. How sad is that?

You can actually see the boxes and storage bins of yarn behind Bailey. If I had any shame, I would be feeling it at this point - and nothing. Which is a good thing, really, as drastic changes in personality is one of the signs that my meds aren't working. So all is well.

Oh, and the pic? That is the "get your ass off the couch and feed me now" look that Bailey has perfected over the years. She held that look without blinking through 3 flash pictures. That cat has staying power.

Back in saddle, so to speak

My friend, B, is a regular blogger and reading her post tonight inspired my to get back at it and set some time aside during the week to post. So here I go...

I looked at my last post and was shocked to realize how old it was - April 2007! So much has happened I can't reasonably cover it all here. The highlights:

1. I moved from a crack house to a nice quiet apartment with so much more room for the crazy cats and the new addition, Roxanne the rat terrier.

2. I bought a dog. This statement sounds misleading - like I bought her from a breeder. I actually bought her from my crack addicted neighbor who was strung out and needing money for another hit. While you always have choices, I felt that in this situation, I did not have a choice as not buying Roxanne would have haunted me endlessly because he was going to sell her to someone and who knew how that person would treat her. So for $60, I acquired a spastic rat terrier who needs love and patience. She has settled in so well - she plays with the cats, chews up her toys, and sleeps under the covers with me every night. She is the best $60 I have ever spent.

3. I am still employed by the same company; still enjoying having medical insurance; and really loving my "new to me" convertible VW Beetle.

4. I am leading a Saturday morning knitting group of wonderful women who are constantly supportive, smart, funny, and creative. What more could you ask of your friends?

I would add some pictures at this point but we are having a terrible thunder storm and my camera is in my car so above is a pic that B took while walking Roxanne.

More pics and stories to follow and in a more timely fashion!