Sheesh

The weirdness continues.

For two or three years our neighbor, the WWII veteran, has popped over in the summer to discuss the retaining wall between our houses. He is uphill, so I guess the wall "retains" his yard, and yet it is part of our view. We are the ones that have to look at it. The timbers were pretty old and pretty much termite eaten, but it was not at the top of our "to-do" list. So every summer I would tell the neighbor, "We need to get estimates in winter. Landscape work is cheaper in winter because they are not so busy." He didn't seem to believe me, but would go away. Until the next summer. Well this summer, he actually sends his landscape dude over here with an estimate for $7500 and says the neighbor will pay $3000. Did you laugh too?
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Monday morning my doorbell kept ringing and waking me up and irritating the hell out of me. I do not get out of bed to answer the door. If it's someone that knows me they can call and if it's someone that really knows me they can knock on my bedroom window. If my house is on fire whoever is out there can dial 911. In fact, I'm thinking about putting a sign on the wood door that says, "If this door is closed, do not ring the doorbell or I may come out and kill you." When I get up every day I open the wooden door. We have a glass outer door. The wood door stays open until my husband goes to bed. When the wood door is closed, go away.
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I finally got out of bed around 11:00 because I was too irritated to sleep any longer. When I came in here, I opened the side window blinds like I always do and lo and behold the timbers were gone and there were workmen out there. I walked out front and said, "Hey what's going on?" The one who spoke english said, "We're replacing this retaining wall." I said "And he hired you?" while pointing at the neighbor's house. He said yes and I said, "Well, did you know that wall is on my property?" He didn't say anything and I said, "Well if he's paying for it, whatever." And I came back inside. I called my husband who didn't quite know what to make of it and I called my lawyer to see what he had to say. We finally decided it was a good thing.
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This morning I came in here in my nightgown and the computer is in a corner with windows on each wall about 10 inches out of the corner. We keep this side one closed at night but never close the one overlooking the backyard. So I'm checking my e-mail and all of a sudden a guy walks by like 3 feet from me, into my backyard. I jumped up and stood to the side of the window and lowered the blinds. So I had to sit in here in the (relative) dark. I kept peeking out watching them crawl through my bamboo bed to get at the timbers back there and was getting all irritated again, but I checked tonight when I got home and the bamboo is fine.
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Also there was this long phone message from the neighbor about how he decided to go ahead and do it and pay for it himself. That part was good. Also I was worried about the material and if it would clash with the stone on my bamboo bed, but it looks nice and is very similar. It looks like it will be finished by the weekend. We just think it's weird that he did this and we wonder if he knows that wall was on our property. I guess we shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but I hope he is not expecting any money from us. Oh, and I have to remember when I come in here in the morning not to open any windows.

Blech!

I am really not having fun right now. Lately, I have been really appreciating how very easy my life has been until recently. While this year will never rank anywhere close to 1980 in it's bad yearness, it has not been one of my favorites, for sure. I wish I could post about the one very bad thing, but I can not. It's not anything to do with My Sweetie and me, we are great, but it involves someone else in my family and it is very sad. I hope in a few months that I am in my happy place again, because that's who I am and what I am about. Until then, I will muddle through and try to keep my spirits up. I'm glad I have your blogs to read because they usually cheer me up or at least get my mind off of my own troubles. I wish I were back in the beach cottage. Oh well, next year....

Weirdnesday

I had a very long very awful day except for something odd and wonderful that happened. I woke up wrong and left the house 11 minutes late then caught every light between here and the church. I had some new guy on my list that was so not on my beaten path. I also gave him a breakfast and he doesn't get one so I ended up one breakfast short (although that part worked out okay because I had decided to short those two guys that live together, not in that way, and they always bum cigarettes from me and so I gave them a pack of smokes and didn't feel bad about shorting them one breakfast). Then I really had to P so I stopped at a drugstore and my phone rang and MOW said they had gotten some calls and I told them I was running behind so just get over it, except I didn't say any of those words after the word "behind." The whole day was just dragging and early on when I was going 55 in a 40 mph zone, I saw a cop I had just passed turning around. I just happened to be right at my turn so I turned right and barreled down the two blocks to turn left and pulled into my first stop. My heart was racing and I was just waiting for this cop to pull up, but apparently I lost him. I know for a fact that if I had continued straight I would have gotten a speeding ticket. I also kept catching red lights, even ones that I didn't even know existed and whenever I was in a lane that I had to be in to turn somewhere, the person in front of me was ALWAYS going 7 miles below the speed limit. I could do a whole alliteration type sentence about freaks and forty-nine and fifty on the freeway, but it would involve the overuse of another f word.
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When my route was finally completed I couldn't wait to get to my grody bar for a beer, but as I walked up I heard very loud music. I hate very loud music. There's this old man that shows up on some Wednesdays and plays the jukebox and they turn it up really loud for him and he's like almost 60 and plays all this really loud metal rock. It's embarassing really. Anyway, I stood at the door for a minute thinking how loud it sounded right there and I was OUTSIDE, then I stepped in and sure enough that old guy was there and some bartender dude I had never seen before and they both looked at me and smiled and I did a hand gesture (no, not that hand gesture) of pointing to my ear and mouthing TOO LOUD and walked the fuck out of there. That may not sound like much to you but I really really wanted a beer so I was pretty proud of myself. I went to Friday's because I was craving their shrimp and because they have USA Today so I didn't have to stop and buy one and I was already way behind beer time.
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Three different people walked up and asked about my day and I felt bad because I was honest and said, "It really sucks so far, but I hope it gets better." My lunch was great and something interesting happened. Not the interesting thing I mentioned in my very first sentence but something else. After I ate I wanted to just sit and unwind before I went over to the house to get some stuff done. Two old men were playing the NTN trivia game and I thought about moving to the bar to give them some competition. Then I thought, "Nah, I feel too stupid right now." So I decided to do the crossword puzzle in my USA Today. Well I finished the puzzle in about 20 minutes in ink with no errors. When I realized I had set some sort of personal crossword record, I thought, "Hey! Maybe I'm not stupid today!" But I looked up and the two old men were gone.
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I headed over to the house with a belly full of despair because I really thought the house had been broken into. That would take a paragraph longer than the last one to explain, so I'll skip that part. I got there and everything looked normal. I unlocked the deadbolt and then tried to unlock the doorknob and it went all wanky on me and the whole section around the keyhole came out on my key. My heart sank and I was already imagining having to call 911 as I walked around the house to try the back door. I was having trouble with that lock, as well, when I finally got the door opened. So? So nothing. Nothing had been disturbed. Apparently the front doorknob thing was a fluke. There's really only one valuable thing in the house right now and there it was.
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I felt a lot better at this point and decided to focus on some important stuff. I reprogrammed the sprinkler system (with help from stepdad on the phone) because we found it had been unplugged, and called the alarm company and FINALLY got the alarm working, but when I went to wrap up the glassware to pack for charity, I pulled out my bubble wrap and found that was it. I was at the end. Of the bubble wrap I mean. I did pack up some clothes for the homeless shelter and some books but somehow a lot of time had passed. Delbert came over to get the safe instructions (we had given him the safe on Sunday) and he bought the copy machine for his wife and he also got my key out of the lock thing and got the lock back in the doorknob. So except for running out of bubble wrap everything was going okay now and I had made another $11. Woo hoo! (I get 20% of all sales).
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I set the alarm and went to the post office to get my parents' mail. I was whistling some tune in the post office as I sorted and threw out the innocent trash. (By innocent I mean stuff that I don't need to shred). I got back in my truck and felt an overwhelming desire to hear the Otis Redding song "Dock of the Bay." I turned the radio to the oldies station but some annoying car dealership ad was braying from the speakers, so I turned it all the way down. I thought about calling the station to request it but I was pulling out onto the service road and I don't like to "phone and drive" so I decided to just sing it. So I pretty much sang the whole song including trhe whistling part and I felt really good and thought "Okay, now, I'll just listen to the radio." I turned the radio back up and this was just starting



How very weird and wonderful is that?

(Happy Birthday to my brother!)

Stoopid Moosings

There's this place in my garage where the paint or wallboard paper has peeled or flaked off and I always thought it looked like Thomas Jefferson's profile so I got some markers and added some stuff.

Maybe I should glue some cotton balls up there to look like a white wig. No? Too much?

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Why is it when we sit on a very cold spot we think our pants are wet? How are wet and cold confused by our butt molecules?
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My Sweetie is out of town until late Wednesday night and after I showered tonight, I put some velcro curlers in my hair. Why? No one is going to see me.
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Why is it we have so many body parts that we don't even know the names of? I've been fondling my tragus for years but didn't know it had a name.
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I've been watching that summer reality show "Greatest American Dog" and when the judges berated that girl for putting clothes on her dog I think I stood up and clapped.
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Speaking of that show, when they flashed their motto/tagline thing: "In Dog We Trust," My Sweetie said, "All others pay cats." I thought that was hilarious.

A Social Question

When I'm in an emergency situation or in a hurry to get things done, I am quite decisive. Sometimes, however, I find myself in a situation where I question myself and wonder whether or not to say anything. I want to give you an example of something and get your opinion. I was in someone's house and they grabbed dishes from the dishwasher and placed them in the appropriate cabinets and there were water droplets flying around. In other words, the dishes were still wet. I was always told: NEVER put anything wet or damp in a cabinet as it will attract bugs. I wanted to say something, but it was not a relative or close friend and part of me felt like they would have felt insulted. Would you have said anything? It's not a life altering dilemma or anything, I just wonder what others may have done.

I Saw the Sphinx!

Barney had pretty much torn right through his scratch post. I just checked my old posts and I had bought that thing in September 2006 for Rufus. Rufus was not so good with the scratch post but Barney has been wonderful. It's the only thing he uses. We've only had Barney about a year but he had torn the carpet out to the core of the post so it was time for a new one. Every Wednesday, after my Meals on Wheels day out, I pass this little privately owned store called Cats Unlimited. I decided to check it out for a new scratch post. Well, I drove up and this fellow was looking at me through the glass. It kinda freaked me out. His name is Petey. Here I am 47 years old and I had never seen one of these Sphinx cats in person. I mean it wasn't on my "Things to do before I die" list or anything, but it was odd to realize I had never seen one. Petey looks naked but he is not. He has a very fine, very short coat and feels sort of like velour. He was very friendly and playful, but man is he weird looking or what?

Whut?

I cleaned something today and I thought, "Wow, that's clean as a whistle!" Then I thought of what a stupid expression that is. A whistle, unless you just took it out of the package, is something people blow in. And put their mouth on. How can a whistle be clean? I mean yuck. I don't even eat childrens' birthday cakes because they blew on them. So I was wondering where the expression originated and I couldn't find a lot but I found this site. That site thinks it came from the sound of a whistle. But that doesn't make much more sense to me. If we're going to use sounds to describe cleanliness we'd say things like, "My teenager's room is a as clean as an 80's metal cover band guitar riff." And that would just be silly.

The Chronicles of Ordinaria

Today I called my hand doctor, because I had a question about my new thumb problem. I was wondering when I had seen him and realized I could check my blog. That's when I realized that all this stuff that's been going on has gone unchronicled. I thought, "Well, what if I want to look this stuff up a year from now?" I can't imagine I would want to, but you never know. So basically this post is just putting down information for my future curious self (ha ha I typed "elf" like I'm going to have a future curious elf!) so you probably won't want to read it and it's going to be VERY long. I found it all tiresome at the time except for the kitty.

Let's see, okay, we got back from the beach very late on Saturday night, June 21st. I rested for a day and a half. Monday night, My Sweetie went to pick up his Mom so she could spend the night with us (a first!) and go with me to the house to help out on Tuesday. She was very helpful and organized all the jewelry (there was a lot!) in the nice big jewelry box by value per shelf. She also had lots of advice about stuff. Oh and we stopped on the way over there to do the newspaper ad for the estate sale. On Wednesday after MOW I went back to the house and worked for 5 hours organizing and displaying things. Thursday night, My Sweetie and I went back to the house and worked together for several hours. Friday I went to the house early. I stopped to get bubble wrap and a few other things and worked for a while, then My Sweetie came over after work and we worked late into the night putting the price tags on everything. I don't even remember what we did for dinner, but my guess is he ran out for Taco Bueno.

We rode home together (I left my truck at the house) and pretty much went straight to bed. The alarm went off 5 minutes later and I pretty much had just enough time to shower and get ready. The newspaper ad and Craig's List ad said "10 to 6." What part of "10 to 6" do people not understand??!!? Oh yeah, the "10" part. We pulled into the driveway at 9:40 and some man ran up and I said, "The sale starts at TEN." By 9:50, there were about 15 people piled onto the front porch doing that hand over the brow thing looking through the glass door like crazy people. I had a sign-in sheet on a little table in the entryway. The entryway was my post. I could check people coming and going, had a clear view of the jewelry, and we both had our Home Depot aprons on for money. (I had come up with that idea when my brother and I did my Dad's estate sale.) Well we opened that door at 10:00 sharp and an insane man ran in like he was being chased by a bear and refused to sign in. I was pretty pissed off and yelled " 'Sweetie' that man didn't sign in!" Actually, he ran a scribble across the page, but that's the same thing. The other people could see I was mad and they all signed in. Some of them told me they recognized him from other sales and they hated him too. I still hate that guy.

~

The entryway got pretty crowded and crazy with people stacking stuff and coming and going. People were saying, "Can I put my stuff here?" and I don't have good people recognition skills, so my brain was going all "Crazy polka-dot shirt, there. Guy with ugly beard there." And I was also adding stuff up on the calculator and trying to get people in and out. Once a lady leaned over one of the piles and I said, "That's someone's stuff." and she looked at me weird and said, "That's me." or something like that. My brain is wired funny. After what I thought was 3 hours, things slowed down and my in-laws showed up so I asked my MIL to watch the jewelry so I could step out for a smoke. I looked at my watch and only an hour had passed. AN HOUR! I seriously thought 3 hours had passed. After that it went in stages of busy and not so much. We met Delbert and Shirl who have been back many times and keep buying stuff. I just met with them last night again. Delbert reminds me of Danny Glover's character in Grand Canyon. He's even a mechanic. They are awesome people. I also had this really annoying Irish guy with really bad teeth keep coming back. He kept buying weird stuff that was missing stuff. He was tiresome. I was SO GLAD when it was 6:00. We didn't have too much to do to get out of there, but I was exhausted and not only didn't want to drive, but thought it would be a good idea to leave my truck there in case any of the random people thought the house would be empty that night.

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Sunday we went back to gather some things and get my truck and meet with Delbert & Shirl again. And Crazy Irish Guy came back to get something. Oh and speaking of crazy guys, there was this giant dude that was bouncing all over the place on Saturday and he yells out (from my daughter's old room) "I found a girl's diary in this closet!" I said, "Put that back and close that closet door." Then I told My Sweetie to put a sign on that closet saying "nothing in here for sale" because she had left some other stuff too. So on Sunday I went in there to get her journal. And there was no journal. How gross is that? We stayed for quite a while and packed up all the little valuable things to bring home. I was so tired that Monday morning I slep right through a phone call from MOW asking me to train someone on Wednesday. I called them back and said yes.

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I got to the church Wednesday a little later than I had said but there was no one there. Well there was another regular MOW guy but he said he had seen no one. I called MOW and they said they had talked to her that morning. I was getting irritated because I was going to have her pack everything to learn the "hands on" way but decided to start without her. I did some basic stuff and then went back outside to see if maybe they went to the wrong entrance or something. This little car pulls up with TWO blondes in it and one yells out "Are you 'Geewits'? " They're all, "We got lost!" Ha ha ha to that when they told me where they lived. They live like 3 miles from there. WTF? I figured out how we would all fit in the car and had them pack the rest of the stuff up. They were very ditzy and obviously had not paid any attention to their initial training at the MOW office. One of my personality quirks is I respond to the company I am with. These ditzy blondes turned me into a dry Bob Newhart sort of person. They thought I was hilarious. We were going throught this one area and I said, "Was that Staghorn or Shagbark?" referring to the street names. Then I said "I guess they were reading Tolkien when they named these streets." To them that was the funniest thing ever. I don't think it's that funny. I was trying not to roll my eyes (since I was in the backseat - there's a mirror up there). The one that really killed them was when I said, "I met my third husband at work. It's probably good I don't work anymore." I don't get it. They went nuts for that and kept bringing it up. Maybe it was my delivery.

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I was supposed to go back to the house after MOW and I was so burnt out I just decided not to go. Friday night, (4th of July, ya'll!) we decided to do something different and take a walk to see what we might see. We headed out of our neighborhood and were walking down 157 when I noticed that church up there was up on a hill. We walked up there and saw three different sets of fireworks. It was pretty cool. Perspective-wise, the closest one was about like holding a softball at arm's length and the furthest more like a golfball. Saturday was a rare day where I wanted to jump in the shower and go out to lunch. On Sunday my daughter showed up for what I thought was get some mail, but as she's talking 90 miles an hour about a big fight with her boyfriend, her girlfriend comes around the corner with a cat wrapped in a towel. I don't want to go into details but, she didn't think her cat would be safe at the apartment. So I said, "Sure, he's an innocent creature. I will watch him. What's his name?" She didn't even have a name for him. After 3 weeks. Well, I named him Thomas. He was so cute and crazy. He so brought out Barney's inner kitten (Barney's only a year old) and it was fun to watch them play but the size difference was crazy:

She picked him up the next evening and everything had been resolved. (Yay!) I told her Ihad named him Thomas and that he was responding to it, but being the rebel that she is, I imagine she will never call him that. But he will always be Thomas to me.

I'm pretty much caught up now except I didn't mention the Craig's List stuff and that I sold a bunch of stuff last night and more things are moving on Saturday, but this has been long and it was tiring enough when it all happened and reliving it has just made me tired again. I'm not even going to proofread this. At least I get to sleep in tomorrow. And now I have it all down for my future elf.

Happy Fourth!!

I'm taking a holiday break from The House. I did something fun tonight. Jeanette (Jammie J, my blogging mentor) and Tony flew in from L.A. to drive to Oklahoma so I ran over to meet them at the airport just before midnight. We stood around and talked for a bit and took some pictures. I made them a little goody bag of fruit and a hot dog for Tony. It was nice to see them again. Anyway, I'm hoping to have a relaxing long weekend. Here are some fun fireworks for you:

FUN FIREWORKS!

The Week In Pictures

This is the medievel hold (or keep) that I built for my warriors.

Here's a close-up view


This is a view to the left of our cottage.

This is the view to the right.

That's a group shot of family and friends down on the beach.

This is the kitty that ran into our cottage on the

last night and slept on the deck.

I named her TigerBelle.

This is me on the boat that cruises the intracoastal waterway.

And this is the boat: The Belle of Topsail

This is a cool seabird with a nest on a buoy marker. Please refrain fom the obvious numerical jokes as Captain Dave already made all of them.

We saw a bunny at my parents' place.

And that's me on the steps that lead down to the beach.

It was a great week!

Yay!

This is how I hope to feel next week.

I just finished cleaning all the cat dishes. Now I'm going to eat lunch and then go to Target to buy some army men to play with on the beach. I bought a little play set with buckets and shovels last year so it should still be at Mom's house. The weather forecast looks decent enough and it will be about 10 degrees cooler there, so that will be great. Our plane arrives in Wilmington at 3:21 so I should be in my cottage tomorrow between 4:30 and 5:00. I can't wait! Have a great weekend and week everybody!

I Just Want to feel Normal Again

I've talked a lot about my anxiety problem and how it's a hormonal problem and that hormone is adrenaline. I've been taking a pretty good medicine for several years so I was surprised last Thursday when I could feel an anxiety attack coming on. Adrenaline puts you into fight or flight mode, and with me flight does not refer to flee but it usually manifests as "hide in my house." Unfortunately I could not hide in my house as I was not at home, but I had several errands to run also. These were important errands involving beer and toilet paper, which are usually funny to buy together but you can not buy them together in Vancouver. I also had another errand which required an hour wait. Anyway, the worst time for my anxiety is always getting ready to leave the house. As I was getting ready, I did what I call my "funny cough" except it's not funny because I only cough like that when I'm getting close to a panic attack. But I had to go out, so I just bucked up and went out. It wasn't pleasant. I tried to unwind Thursday night and took a little nap and then read a little of Steve Martin's new book before going to bed because I had to get up early to catch my plane.

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The Vancouver airport is nightmare of the living passenger horrible place from hell. After I got my boarding passes, I was told to go through this little entrance and get in line. There were no signs that said, "You will not be able to pee for 2 hours" and there sure should have been. So this line I was supposed to get in was going two ways and I was told I had to go get in the end. Imagine people going 3 ways in a grocery store aisle. It was ridiculous. So I'm squeezing behind columns trying to make my way down and this cute guy just in front of me says, "This is so stupid. How are we supposed to get down there?" I said, "Wait here, I'll bust through and you can get in front of me." So when I came down again I gestured for him to pop in line and he said thank you and I was thinking that he looked a lot like Dane Cook. But I knew he wasn't. We go all the way down the one way, then back the other way and think we're somewhere but we're not. Then they take you right through the middle of a duty free shop!!!!! Did they honestly think anyone in the whole world would get out of the line they have been in for a day and a half? So we get to the end of the shop and then we see it. The sight from hell: queues upon queues ad nauseum.

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After the 50th turn into the maze from hell some young girl looked at the guy in front of me and said, "I just love your work!" So then I had to ask, "Are you Dane Cook?" He told me no but that he gets that a lot. He said he films a TV show in Vancouver so I asked which one figuring it was some Canadian show I had never heard of, but it was "Battlestar Galactica" which I have heard of but never watched for some reason which is weird because I'm a giant SNG fan. So we were just randomly chatting and I told him I was going to fly into Wlmington on Saturday and asked if he had filmed there and he had and knew the area. His name is Michael Trucco and when I looked him up I saw he was on 5 episodes of "One Tree Hill" which is the show that threatened to run my Mom and I out of The George two years ago. But I guess it's true about all the delays in stuff like that because they never started filming anything or said a word before we left. Anyway he was very nice and promised some teenage girl he would take a picture with her after we got out of the lines. Well, when that line ended, I thought I was done, but NO. Then it was onto a new set of queues in another giant room from hell. This was starting to get bad and my adrenaline was not playing nice and when you are in the middle of a giant room in a giant maze of queues you don't have the option of flight.

~

There were two couples traveling together in front of me in this line and my guess is they were Germans. But I don't really have an ear for many languages beyond French, Spanish and Italian so I'm really not sure, but the one guy really looked German. Anyway, about two third through this maze, they pulled over at the turnaround or whatever it's called when you change directions and were talking to people in the first class line and a 5 foot gap opened up and I was feeling all irritated and jumped in front of them. I could hear people murmuring behind my back (literally behind me I mean) but I didn't care at this point and began to think I would die soon if I didn't pee. I seriously came very close several times to asking an airport worker to take me to a bathroom. When I finally got to the point where just one couple was in front of me the lady beeped and I almost went insane and wanted to yell, "It's her giant metal bracelet!!!!!" I walked right through.

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The E gates where right there, or so I thought. There was a quick right and I ASSUMED there would be bathrooms. Oh no. Here I was practically running in my socks and no bathrooms! After two miles I came to an escalator then went down and finally put my shoes back on, then on and on and I was getting madder and madder to a crazy raging point. Then Oh. My. God. The next thing was an escalator back up. At this point I actually wanted to kill people. At the base of the escalator was another duty free shop and I yelled at the poor innocent Chinese lady, "Does this GD airport have ANY F---ing bathrooms!!!???!!!" She said, "At the top." To me at the top means right at the top. I got to the top and still no bathrooms. At this point I was so filled with adrenaline it wasn't even funny. My left hand was doing some weird fluttery thing. I ran past my gate muttering like a maniac. And by muttering I mean cussing. I went into the restroom and sat there for almost 5 minutes trying to do some breathing exercises to calm down. I was not in my happy place. I think I scared some lady because of my weird breathing.

~

I walked back to the gate thinking it was time to board, but there was a flashing sign saying the flight was delayed. I have never been so happy to have a delayed flight in my life. I went into the bar/cafe which was practically in my gate and sat at a little counter in a window and drank 3 beers in a row. I was feeling much calmer and didn't even get too irritated when the asian ladies kept trying to give me a croissant every time I ordered a Coors Light. How does "Coors Light" sound like "croissant?" I started to talking to a nice guy in line to board the flight (he was behind me) and when the lady took my boarding pass and said something like, "I hope you enjoyed your stay." I said, "This is the worst airport in the entire world and I will never come back through here as long as I live." The guy behind me was so shocked, he laughed out loud. I got lucky and my first flight to Portland was just me and my sandwich. Then on my Portland to DFW flight, the flight attendant announced that "we have a full plane so please be considerate about how you place your luggage in the overhead bins." But guess what. She lied. I didn't have a seatmate again. Man it's so much cozier to have two seats (which was the whole row) to yourself.

~

On Saturday I was still agitated and my bladder hurt, but I thought that was because of the Vancouver airport having no bathrooms. On Sunday I realized something was wrong. I called the doctor Monday morning and was able to get in right away. And I got lucky because my doctor was booked, as usual, so I got to see Dr. Smith, a lady I have seen many times because my doctor is always booked. I like her better. So we figured out that I have my 3rd in a row UTI and the first two were strep B (it's not contagious) so I felt like this was another one. Strep B is a a natural flora of the body but it's supposed to stay where it belongs and mine keeps moving around and going places it doesn't belong. Which is very annoying. I told her I was going to the beach on Saturday and did not want a 10 day antibiotic treatment. There was also a guy with us, an intern learning guy and he was taking a billion notes. I begged for a shot and they discussed it and even went to look it up. They came back and said I could get the shot which would clear up the strep B but I had to take a 5 day anitbiotic in case it was something else. I agreed, got the shot and dropped off my prescription.

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My Sweetie picked up my prescription Tuesday evening for sulfamethoxazole. It said twice a day so I had to figure out two times a day that I'm awake and decided on 8:00. My Sweetie always kisses me goodbye before work around 8:00 am and I'm always awake at 8:00 pm. so that seemed like a good time. Then I forgot and we ate spaghetti with Italian sausage and then I remembered at 8:40. That may have saved my life. We were watching the Charlie Chan movies on TCM and about 9:10 I started scartching my legs. I wasn't thinking about it. I was just scratching and watching the movie. Then it got worse and worse. Then I was scratching everywhere. I was almost doing St. Vitus dance. Then it dawned on me that I was having a reaction to the medicine. I ran into better light to see if I had hives, but I couldn't see anything. I felt like 8000 chiggers were biting me all over my body. I decided to guzzle some beers because A) beer is my medicine of choice and B) People always say alcohol reduces the effects of antibiotics. I started to feel better and was relaxing a little bit and then my eye felt funny. I said, "Pause the movie, my eye feels funny." I went to look at it and it was horrible!

Then I had a new crazy itch in a sort of bikini line area and reached down there and there was a big lump. I put some Benadryl cream on the new lump and my eye is starting to close up and I started freaking out and called my doctor's office to get the after hours number. I called and then a doctor called me back. He said to take a Benadryl but I only had Claritin so I took that and he told me to call 911 if I had trouble breathing. I asked, "Could I just use my breathing medication from when I had pneumonia?" He said, "If you have trouble breathing and try to self-medicate, you will probably die. You need to call 911." So I kept watching the movie and my eye kept getting bigger, but I had no breathing troubles. That's when I remembered that I was originally going to take that pill at 8:00. And that would have been on an empty stomach. I imagine it would have been worse. I'm so glad I forgot.

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I slept with an extra pillow to elevate my head hoping my eye would drain (even though the doctor told me it would take about 24 hours). When My Sweetie was leaving for work he said, "Let me see your eye." I sat up and opened my eyes and he said, "Oh, Geeez!" Since I had a sub last week and will have one next week I really wanted to do Meals on Wheels so I just decided to wear shades all day. I don't know how close my body came to shutting down but I felt like I was walking through water or Jello all day. I've never moved so slow in my life. It felt so weird. And they had changed my route so I had to study my Mapsco. Well at first I thought I just had some new people and some old people had canceled for the day, but when I did my normal schpiel I found out differently. I asked a lady, "Is this your first day or did you start last week, because I was out of town last week?" She said, "I've been getting this for years." That's when I knew my route had changed.

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So anyway that's what has been going on with me. I think I'm getting close to feeling normal again. We're going to the beach on Saturday and I hope it's going to be great. My Mom has a laptop at her place so I will try to look in on you peeps when I'm over there. It was nice to vent and thanks for putting up with me.

June Hiatus

I'm going to take a posting break for a while. My brain is full of all the stuff I need to do to get my Mom's house ready for the estate sale and then getting it ready to sell. I doubt I would have anything interesting to say all month. I imagine it would be mostly the same mundane things over and over like:

• It's hot
• I should go over to the house
• I just got back from the house
• this is a lot of work
• it's really hot here
• this house is a lot of work
• how will I ever be ready for the estate sale?
• did I mention how hot it is?
• I'm almost ready for the estate sale

I think a month of that would be terribly tiresome, so I'll probably just post some North Carolina beach pictures after the 21st when I get back from that vacation, and then come back when my life gets back to normal. Probably in July or so. In the meantime, I will visit your blogs and if you want to chat about anything, just e-mail me. My address is on my profile. Have a great June!

Vancouver is COOL

Everything is so beautiful here. I didn't expect such lush greenery in a big city, but there are giant old trees everywhere! And the cool weather is awesome. I expect that when I land back in Texas my head will melt and slide down my back. Josie and I didn't see much of each other yesterday as she had to spend about 4 hours at the dentist and then needed sleep just after dinner. I ran a few errands yesterday, then we had dinner together and I headed down to "my bar" which I keep forgetting the name of but that's fine, because I know where it is. I think's it's called the Regal Beagle but sometimes I call it the Legal Eagle or Regal Eagle or Legal Beagle. I've had fun doing my usual "chatting up strangers" thing. Everyone seems to get a kick out of my accent. I also found a place that can download the pics from my camera onto a disk, so tomorrow we will have a bunch of pictures. And I expect we will take many today. Leslie is going to pick us up and take me on a tour. I hope she realizes that we will need to stop a lot for beer. I hate when I get too much blood in my alcohol!

The Eagle Has Landed

I arrived in Vancouver last night, was given the most delicious homemade stew, and have spent my first night in Josie's treehouse. I love it! We tried to download pictures from my camera to her computer but we couldn't make it work, so we are going to find a way around that to have pictures this week. I will have a real post later when I get more organized and whatnot. And now I need to get ready for my first day out!

Back to Lighter Subjects

~~~Last Wednesday I ordered some Canadian money so I would have some in my pocket when I got there. I paid $109 to get $95. Where did that $14 go?

~~~My Sweetie took today off to spend extra time with me since I am going to Vancouver. Awwwww. Our plans for today are to mail THE BOX, see my daughter's new apartment, and catch the new Indiana Jones movie. After that, who knows? But we will have fun.

~~~My Sweetie has special advanced screening tickets for Kung Fu Panda for Saturday morning (it opens on the 6th) and is taking his niece (the one that spent the night with me) and his older nephew and I think that is very sweet.

~~~In my money planning for my Vancouver trip, I got the $95 I mentioned above and the rest in American Express Travelers checks and then for some reason (yesterday, Thursday) I freaked out and thought "OH NO! I didn't remember money for the airport here (beers and drinks) and on the plane (beers and drinks)! After thinkiing for almost 10 whole minutes, I realized, HEY! DUMMY! You can use a travelers check! Sometimes I amaze myself with my slowness. I mean I'll have some pocket money, but airport drinks and airplane drinks cost about $42 each, right?

~~~The weather here has been horrible! We have broken records for high lows all week and it's unbearably hot and muggy. "Heat Index" has become a common phrase. The temps are in the 90's and the heat index around 100. And did I mention muggy? Although the extended forecast for Vancouver is in the low 60's and upper 50's and lots of rain, I will LOVE it because I am BURNING UP!

~~~I am SO looking forward to my trip and making my first post here from Vancouver! I am thinking about doing a duet post with Josie in a chat style. I think that will be fun.

~~~TGIF everybody!

(~~~I forgot to mention the new picture. I took that Wednesday at the salon. The "grey collar" is a towel and the "black shirt" is that cape you put on to get your hair done. I was bored while Tyler was mixing my color and just held the camera up and took some pics.)

I Am a Very Bad Person

I am just trying to explain what happened. I make no excuses. There is no excuse. Lilly, our very small weird cat is not a people person and mostly keeps to herself. She's 11. Since we brought Maxie home Lilly has really kept to herself more than usual and has been at times impossible to find. As a result, I hadn't really noticed her in a while. Tuesday night she actually came up to me like she wanted to be petted, which is very rare. We were watching part two of the remake of "The Andromeda Strain," so I wasn't paying much attention and reached down to pet her and my hand touched something unpleasant. I asked My Sweetie to pause the show and I picked her up to inspect her and it was BAD. Apparently she has been scratching herself to death. I felt so bad I can't even explain it. I guess the word for it is neglect. And there is no excuse for that. I took her to the vet this morning and I could feel the judgement coming off in waves but I deserved it. If she had been a child in a comparable state, I'm sure C.P.S. would have been called. To make matters worse, I was just dropping her off because I had to go do Meals on Wheels and had two other appointments, so they probably thought I was worse than horrible. Around 3:00 they called me and told me they thought she was allergic to fleas, we discussed what to do regarding the other cats. They had already treated Lilly with Capstar and we decided we needed to give it to the other cats. And try to de-flea the house. So after my bank appointment and hair appointment, I picked up Lilly and just set her in her case in my bedroom. Then we vacuumed the whole house and let the other two cats out of the cat room. Then we stripped the whole cat room of everything cloth or carpet and swept, vacuumed and cleaned it. Then we had to give the other two cats the Capstar pill (and if you've never pilled a cat, you should know, it's quite the adventure). Finally we let Lilly out, gave her some time and then gave her her first prednisone pill. She has to have THREE a day for three days then one a day. Although she's the most skittish, she was the easiest. Maybe some tiny part of her tiny brain knew she needed it. Anyway it was a horrible day and I feel horrible. I will pay more attention to my cats from now on no matter what else I have going on in my life. And if you think I am a terrible person or a terrible pet owner, I don't blame you - but I promise to do better.

The Vexing Box and a Million ?????s

If you've never rented a cottage at the beach in North Carolina, you may not know that it is not like staying in a hotel. You get the cottage, furniture, dishes and appliances, but you do not get any towels, linens or paper products. Even toilet paper. I guess most cottage renters are driving there and can fill up their cars with stuff, but we are flying there and can not. Fortunately, my Mom lives down there so I am going to mail a box of stuff. Part of the deal for this vacation is that we would have most meals "at home" meaning I will be cooking. Yet there is no food or spices or seasoning there. Buying all that stuff would cost as much as eating out, so I have been working on my box for some time. I have some great ideas to make things easy, such as pre-seasoning Bisquick in a large baggie for my "oven fried" drumsticks and a baggie of the shrimp boil seasoning that we love. Then there are extra Ziploc baggies, aluminum foil, towels, beach towels, hand towels, kitchen towels, dish cloths, etc. The thing is, I need to send this box this week. But I know, I just know, that as soon as I seal this box, I will think of something really important to put in it. This box is making me crazy.
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My brain goes like this these days: What other seasonings do I put in the box? What am I going to wear on the plane to Vancouver? How should I price the bedroom set at my parents' house? Oh, wait I can't put the binoculars in the box, because I want to take them to Vancouver! Is $400 too much or too little for Mom's old computer? Will there be hand soap at the beach cottage? Are three pairs of shoes enough for my Vancouver trip? Should I go ahead and put my shampoo in the box? Are there special utensils I should put in the box? Scissors? How does Josie's trash/recycling work and what will we do with all my beer bottles/cans? Will the kid next door (that will be feeding my cats) throw a party in my house while we are at the beach? Why hasn't the realtor e-mailed me with some figures? How should I display the jewelry at the estate sale? Will Josie like my favorite movie? I need to buy some army men to play with on the beach with my nephew.
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My brain is very full. I'm even working on a grocery list for my beach trip. My husband thinks I'm crazy but I keep insisiting that the more I do NOW, the less I have to do THEN. I guess my greatest concern right now is being able to NOT think about The House or the beach trip while I am in Vancouver. That, and leaving something important out of the box.

What Make Us Unique

When most people think about the differences among us, I believe most people immediately think about politics, religion, morals, tastes in music, art, and media, but I think what makes us most unique are our tastes in food. It always fascinates me how everyone has such different tastes and how everyone has their own odd little idiosyncrasies when it comes to food. Russell was talking about apples on his blog and just a simple thing like apples got such varied responses. I didn't leave a comment on that particular post, but I don't like apple pie because I don't like any pie at all. I've never cared for pie of any sort. The closest things to pie that I like are cheescake and quiche. Oh, and Key Lime Pie, which I think is really a form of cheesecake, but I'm not sure. Since bloggers seem to like the wierdnesses of their fellow bloggers, here are some of my food ones:
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I do not like mushrooms. I claim to love Italian food, but if you go to an Italian restaurant, 85% of the dishes on the menu probably have mushrooms in them. So in reality, I should probably say that I love Italian food that does not include mushrooms. I'll eat some things that have mushrooms and just pick around them like beef stroganoff and some schnitzels, but I do not want to have any mushroom in my actual mouth. Ick.
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I'm weird about onions. I cook with onions all the time. I like onion rings, especially the really thin strings and I LOVE carmelized onions, but raw onions? If a tiny, tiny chip of raw onion fell into the lettuce of my sandwich from a sandwich shop, I will totally lose my appetite. I despise raw onions.
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Sushi. Almost everyone I know raves about sushi but I have absolutely no interest in trying it. I don't even like to LOOK AT IT. I find it extremely repulsive. Part of that could be because of the time I inspected the Japanese restaurant when I was selling pest control contracts, but I don't know. I just know I don't want to be around sushi. ick.
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I don't really care for sweets at all. People always seem shocked at the treats I turn down. I can eat a bite or two of cheesecake, but not a whole slice. I don't want a cookie or pie or cake or a candy bar. I do like hard tangy candy like tangerine or lemon sours.
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The most popular American foods like cheeseburgers and pizza? I only like them if I haven't had them for a long time. Like MONTHS. I can't even imagine having a pizza or cheeseburger twice in one week. Ick.
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I've heard of people that eat the same thing every day, like cereal for breakfast, or something like that. I could never eat the same thing every day. Well yeah, sure, if it was that or starve, but having a choice, I could never eat the same thing every day. But I think our food tastes make us more unique than anything. I bet money it would be easier to find someone with my exact political and religious beliefs than it would be to find someone who had my exact tastes in food. What do you think?

Vancouver, Take Cover, Here I Come!

My Vancouver trip is just around the corner (June 1st!) and I am very excited. Although I am meeting the realtor at The House tomorrow (Saturday) I've decided to not think about that too much right now. My brain has been like a big twirly thing for several days. I'm either thinking about the estate sale, simple dinners to cook for my beach trip or what I'm going to wear in Vancouver. I've decided to give the swirly twirly parts of my brain a break and just think about what to pack for Vancouver. We have a pretty loose schedule at this point and I like that. Josie told me about a bar that's just a few blocks away so I can go there and be "weird tourist" and give her a break, as she and I are both quite used to having our alone time. I'm the type that will be a "regular" at that bar after just one visit. They will be both sad and relieved at the end of my visit! We have some Monday night plans that I think will be especially fun. And at some point I'm going to ride on a big boat (a ferry). I bought an outfit just to wear on the boat, because I'm weird like that. I'm also really looking forward to just hanging out in Josie's treehouse listening to music, chatting and watching fun movies.
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My Sweetie is so cute. He not only has Monday off for Memorial Day, but he is taking next Friday off as well to spend an extra day with me before my trip.
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I know most other countries think Americans are loud, rude and obnoxious, but I'm going to make a point of saying I'm from Texas because that's even worse and won't make the rest of America look so bad. And anyway, I prefer the word "exuberant." And I prefer the second definition!