Devil woman

That's what I'm calling the husband's insane wild eyed employee. She threw such a hissy fit today that the husband told her to go home which meant that I was in the office from 10am till 9pm and am exhausted.
Devil woman is starting to scare me. I mean really. The look she threw us as she stormed out today left no doubt in my mind that she would be going straight home to fashion voodoo dolls out of melted candles and cackling something about 'slamming doors'.
So what set her off this time? Damned if I know. First of all she came in at noon. Now she's been doing this for some time. She comes in at noon and EATS HER LUNCH!!! Now how many jobs are there out there in the big wide world where you come into work and have a meal. Isn't that usually reserved for middle of the shift kind of thing? So the husband told her that now she has to eat at home and then come into work at 1pm instead of noon. So she trots in at noon and does who knows what in the kitchen for half an hour.
ANd then it went to hell in a handbasket. Somehow she got all wound up and spewed... that she doesn't have TIME for lunch before she comes into work at 1. This is her only job so what else is she doing? Then she didn't look for a job because she didn't have money for a newpaper.... conveniently forgetting that all the local papers classifieds are on line. Then she couldn't look for a job because she didn't have her resume in order and was looking through her boxes to find whatever it was she wanted.
According to the husband she must have 100 boxes of must haves, including clothes that she wore in the 80's, 10 year old hawaiian phone books and probably every pair of shoes she ever owned. Since she had a four day weekend over the holiday I wonder how many boxes there really are. No wonder she coudln't sleep in her bedroom in the last apartment. It was probably filled with boxes.
After the looking for the references part she then went off on all kinds of ridiculousness that tied my guts in a knot so hard my eyes bulged and I shook like a willow in a high wind.
I cannot wait until she's out of there for sure.

And then, to cap the day, that mortgage refi we've been waiting for is being held up because come credit reporting company attached some stranger, whose been dead for years to the husband's credit and has screwed it up royally. NOt only that but not one of the credit agencys had out address right and we've live dhere for 23 years. I don't have money for food, let alone Christmas and now this... no wonder my head hurts.

But, then we come home, to discover little dog Ollie had gotten out of the yard so he had to be scolded and then idiot dog Rocco jumped up while I was bending down and we clunked heads. Rocco's head feels as if it is made out of iron and yes, you really can see stars.

I stagger into the house, mail clutched in my fist and there is a letter for me from a favorite friend and a big block of rubber (as in unmounted stamps, not in exciting sex games kind of way)sent to me because... I needed it. This block of rubber was a prize someone won online and had it sent ot me instead. It made me feel all warm and happy and I"ve promised myself that when finances work themselves out I will have to do something nice for them both. Maybe even something that ISN'T handmade for a change.

I just hope tomorrow is better. I don't want to even think about what it would be like if it was worse.

Danger WIll Robinson

A one time supposed friend popped up again on one of the lists I'm on. I want to scream at the others to beware, to keep space between them and her and don't fall for her "I'm your friend' crap. But I'm trying to be a better person, something I think that I fail at, miserably. A conundrum. If I don't warn people and they are sucked into her false friendship and get hurt, does that make me the bad person. However, if I do warn them and smear her, does that make me a bad person. Can I just warn them to go slowly? Can I simply drop a word of advice in their ear. Can I tell them, strongly, that you don't lend money to this person because you will never see it again? Or do I let them make their own mistakes. It's hard to know what to do. Fussing over it has done nothing but give me a headache so I shall put it aside for now and turn my thoughts to funny stuff.

My fibro tend to affect my hearing at time. A TV commercial was touting an "Outie" sale. The only outie I know is a bellybutton but how do you buy a bell button? How would they even display such a thing and if they are having a sale on Outies will there soon be a sale on innies.

Of course I now realise it was Audis they were selling and not Outies at all. However, a sale on bellybuttons is far funnier than a car sale.

What's even funnier is the misphears that aren't mishears at all. Someone on tv just said something about locking up the key and throwing the convict away. Huh? I'm sitting here thinking I misheard when the husband pipes up with a 'what the hell are the talking about' and I realise I haven't misheard at all.

Sheesh.

Office chaos

I was ready to jump out a window today at the husband's office. He has his own business. I work mornings for free. Youngest son does data entry for $$ when there is $$ and then there is the husband's full time employee. I'll call her A.
A doesn't like me. The husband thinks it's because she has desires for him. Little does she know that he would never be interested in her. Not that I think I'm such a hunk of hot whatever that he'd never LOOK at another woman much less her. It's more of the fact that she is dumb as dirt and the husband could never abide a dumb woman. For instance he has to tell her to pay her bills. Not the office bills but her own personal bills. He also ends up picking out her lunch for her when they go out to lunch because she can never make up her mind and when she does she then asks why she chose it.
So there she is lusting after the husband, who by the way looks like Jerry Garcia wearing a swimming tube around his middle. I do mean Jerry Garcia when he was alive and not what he would look like now after being dead for so many years. So she lusts after him and wishes I was dead and gone, or even better that I had never existed. As for me, I tried to make nice and take her out shopping once only to have her tear me down throughout the whole day. NOTHING I did suited her, from not making my sons go to college (just how do you MAKE an 18 year old do anything I wonder), to I must take my dogs to a groomer to my house wasn't clean enough when I had invited her for Thanksgiving dinner. I still try to make nice because the husband has enough stress on him as it is with the business going downhill and all.
Since no one actually wants to hire me, I'll go work for him and he has told A that she needs to find another job. He hasn't given her a deadline only that she must move on. This is really for her own good because she hasn't been paid in weeks and should have some health insurance.... that includes mental health because THAT is what she needs.
YOu see, everyone is always talking about her. If she sees a group of people standing together and laughing, they are laughing at her. Neighbors slam their apartment doors just to aggrivate her. Now if she slept in the bedroom like a normal person and not on her couch in the living room, she wouldn't hear doors slam. And when the neighbors' doors slam, why she has to get up and slam her door two or three times just to show them. Only recently we've discovered that she was threatened with eviction from her next to the last apartment and the last apartment, the same thing happened, so she move dout into a two room suite in someone's house where she has to share the kitchen. The door slammers have followed her. Not only that but in the office, which is basicly a room on the thrid floor of an old building turned into offices, the people in the office next door are always slamming doors. Oddly the husband and I have never yet heard a door slam. Sure they close but all doors close. She showed them yesterday, slamming doors to teach them, throwing things around the kitchen (on the same floor) and asking like an ass. The husband grabbed her and chewed her out but she didn't learn her lesson. She got into it with the guy in the next office today screaming like a maniac, swearing and who knows what else. It got so loud that I couldn't hear the old guy who was on the phone with me at that time. She has gotten so out of hand that the guy next door wants to breakhis lease and get the hell out of there. I want her the hell out of there and, today the husband is supposed to tell her that he will be cutting her back to four days. We're hoping she gets the idea and actually looks for a job.
I cannot work like this. That atmosphere gets to me and knots my stomach.
ANyone want to hire a paranoid?
ARRRRGGGHHHHHH!!!! There I feel better.

Turkey in the bag

For some reason there was a time when my mother and sister went through a phase when they believed that the only way to roast a turkey was in a brown paper bag. Of course, turkey and bag went into a roasting pan but that was it. Turkey, bag, pan.
It needed to be a new bag, they always hastened to remind me and not one that you carried home full of groceries. Now I don't know about anyone else but that still didn't seem quite... sanitary enough. And for me to say that, me who, if my house was ever ransacked it would take me days to discover that, is saying a lot.
Now my mother and sister were two who when they gave you a suggestion, it wasn't a suggestion, rather an order. Heaven forfend if you should not take their 'suggestion' then my mother gave me that chicken neck look of hers and my sister would nag at me until I was ready to scream. They were more than welcom to cook their turkeys in a bag but I preferred my tried and true method...in a roasting pan sealed in aluminum foil until it was ready to brown. Still, no matter how perfect my turkey was, I had to hear about that damned brown bag.
Until that one Thanksgiving.
We were having it at my sister's house. I was to bring the bread and a green salad. I should have also brought my sister a mind because whenever she had to cook for someone, she regularly lost her mind. That year was no different. As dinner approached the kitchen resembled mission control dealing with a runaway rocket threatening to blow up the world. Only mission control would have had less stress. There was my sister, spatula in hand running back and forth babbling. There was my mother making REAL mashed potatoes, the kind with lumps that stick in your throat while I was given the important job of putting ice in the glasses. I was more than up to that task. Anyhow, as it drew closer to dinner it grew wilder in the kitchen. My sons disappeared somewhere, running for their lives, the husbands hid out in the living room and even her dogs had left us, they were later found hiding under a bed.
Finally the food was on the table, the turkey in its place of honor square in the middle. MY mother announced that it had been cooked in a paper bag and look how nice and brown it was.
Brown that gushed an ominous pink juice when it was cut into. The only thing pinker than the juice was the meat.
I suggested, gently, for my sister was still armed with that spatula that somehow had never touched any food during countdown, that maybe we should put the meat into the microwave for a bit.
"It's perfect' she snapped at me.
"it's pink, " I noted.
"The skin is brown," My sister insisted through clenched teeth. "When the skin turns brown the turkey is done."
"the meat is pink" Just the thought of it made me want to gag.
"It's done, " my mother chimed in. She who once made meatballs and noodles and poured the grease from the meatballs over the noodles instead of bothering to make gravy, "It was cooked in a bag after all."
I suggested that I nuke only the meat my family and I were going to eat. My sister raised the spatula. "It's done' she said in that high, don't you cross me voice she was so good at, "It's brown and when it's brown it's done."
I had no doubt that she would beat me over the head with the spatula, or shove me face down into the gravy where I would drown amid unstirred lumps of who knew what, or be pelted with lumps of mashed potatoes. So I backed down. But I wasn't beaten. I hissed at the kid on my right, "Don't eat the meat.' I hissed the same to the kid on my left and gave my husband a look that needed no words. We each took a piece of weeping pink meat, careful not it let its 'tears' touch the rest of our food and filled up with the salad I had brought because, as the kids said later, they knew it was safe.
That was the last thanksgiving at my sister's and since she refused to come to my house the next year, that was the last thanksgiving as an extended family. Which is fine with us. My older son and I get the meal done with no meltdown, our turkey is not only brown but white inside and there isn't a paper bag in sight. We've added ham to our spread and that, also, ISN'T cooked in a brown paper bag.

Gifted

I'm always astounded and a little baffled when I receive a card or a gift just for hte heck of it. I belong to a rubberstamp list whose heart is as big as its membership and it's a BIG membership. Stampers RAK each other. RAK - Random Acts of Kindness. I always wonder why I'm getting gifted, followed by a certainty that I don't deserve it. Left over, from childhood, perhaps and a mother who let me know how insignificant I am. Notice I said am and not was. Oh the damage a parent can do to you.
I tried not to do that with the sons. I tried to always have them feel good about themselves. I never told them that there was something they could not do and so now they attempt things that I wouldn't know how to begin, and they succeed.
I wonder who I would have been had I been given some self-esteem. What could I have done? Perhaps I would have made a mark on the world. Perhaps I really would have been someone other than just me. But I have to stop this pity party that is far too easy for me to throw. Instead, I need to look around me with fresh, open eyes and see what I... that wretched useless daughter of Helen... has accomplished.
I have two great sons. I raised them well and they remain close to me as when they were little. I'm their 'little mommy'. They are actually proud of me. Were proud of me even when they were in High School. Younger son once told me that the kids in his school thought I was weird but it was a good weird. Wow. If I can't be famous, weird is the next best thing.
I'm intelligent and organised. That's good. The organised part I mean. The intelligent part tends to drive me crazy with the stupidity in the world. I get frustrated but never feel superior and that I think is another plus.
I have a sense of humor. Without it I would be curled into a tight ball, sobbing in a corner.
I'm loyal.
When I make a promise I keep it.
I'm good at keeping secrets, too.
I have a way with animals. I'm the alpha at home but other animals seem to know that as well. Animals are always drawn to me, whether dog, pig or dragonfly. Heck, there's a woodchuck in the yard that will come out into the open when I'm moving around the yard. How cool is that?
I discovered that I am brave. At least when faced by a rampaging 500 pound mother sow out to protect her babies, yet I still turn to jelly when faced with the possibility of losing my home.
Now if I were to write a list of the things I'm not good at, that would roll on and on and on. I won't do that. I'm trying to appreciate what I have and what little good I can do. I don't get much of a chance to RAK, though I try. But if I try does that take the randomness out of it. Hmm. Maybe I should call them DAKs Deliberate Acts of Kindness

Speaking of kindness.... a story from my farm days.
It was the last day of the petting farm and we had a busload of special needs kids. I was with the boar, a big lazy guy who, when he wasn't chasing me around the pen trying to convince me to be his girl, just slept. A group clustered around the pen when this little boy and his aide came to the pen. The little boy was one of those special kids. He had the spindliest little legs that were twisted in a way that made walking on his own difficult so he had this wheelie walker that he was using. That in itself had to be difficult over the grass but he persisted.
He wanted to pet the boar but waited till the group at the pen moved off. Just as he headed for his chance another group came shouting up, clustering around all available pig surface, hand through the pen slats marveling over how bristly he was. The little boy looked like he was about to cry, though no tears came. I went up to that group, put my hand on two of their shoulder and asked them if they would mind stepping back just for a moment to let the little guy in. As one, the entire class stepped back and the little boy hauled himself along the pen slowly but surely and got his chance to touch the boar. The class waited, no complaints, no whining, no pushing. The little boy finished went back to his walker and the class surged forward again.
I went up to the class' teacher to her what they had done. Immediately the teacher had that 'what did they do now' look on her face and when I told her how good they had been, how kind she got tears in her eyes. I told the class that what they had done was wonderful. I even applauded them.
Kindness is out there. YOu just have to look for it.

Lottery fever

Stopping at the 7eleven this morning for my mega shot of caffeine, I have to detour around a clump of men as excited as kids on Christmas morning. I figured they were talking football or wrestling or whatever it is that gets grown men excited. As I walked passed I realised what they were talking about was this mega whatever lottery that is some obscene amount like $340 million and what they would do with the money if they won.
Now I've daydreamed about what I would do with an amount like this and it's run the gamut from buying my own island, building my own humongous house, so large that once one room got messy I could simply close the door and move into another one, to sending away for every rubber stamp catalog advertised in Rubberstampmadness. Of course, that was after the huge party I would throw for everyone I know and the gift checks I'd be handing out to every one. Once, when the sons were younger I had even contemplated buying out the house next to me and the one behind me, to knock the houses down and build a 'lazy river' like you see at those amusement parks that have water rides etc and just float around the property all day long.
These poor guys though, had absolutely no imagination. A new car, a boat and a big screen TV though the big screen guy did say that he would build a house around the big screen.
Are men just more grounded than women and so they can't let their imaginations fly? Or is my imagination simply unruly and runs away from me as I scamper after it with a large butterfly net trying to capture it and make it behave.
I've never yet managed to control my inagination. It's a slippery little bugger that allows me to believe that I might just be able to fly, like I can in my dreams. I've even tried to fly in my waking life. Douglas Adams once said that flying is easy . You only need to throw yourself on the ground and miss. My dreamtime flying is a bit more complicated than that. There is a special way to hold my feet and a special way to stretch my body as if pulling myself upwards into the sky. For a brief moment there I was almost convinced that my feet would actually leave the earth and I could fly around the house like a giddy fly. But no... in my house gravity works only too well and I remain stuck to the earth. Maybe I'll come back in my next life as a butterfly.

Turkey Rasslin'

Got my Thanksgiving turkey today. A 19 pounder frozen solid. Ever notice just how freakin' heavy a frozen turkey is? The big turkeys always migrate to the bottom of the pile which necessitates me leaning over the freezer chest, butt in the air, shoving aside smaller birds while trying to find one large enough to feed the men. Since turkeys don't come in ostrich size, we'll have to make do with a 19 pound one. Which is good because I could hardly haul that one out of the freezer.
There I was, hand gripping the handle of the net bag that enclosed it, leaning backward at an unseemly angle hoping to drag the turkey out. As the angle narrowed I had visions of the turkey suddenly flying up and out of the chest, over my head, and onto the floor, sliding down the aisle with me being dragged along behind it, scattering little old ladies as I went.
There are a lot of little old ladies in this grocery store. Little old ladies who stand in the middle of an aisle, gaping at the shelves, not moving. Are they thinking, had they forgotten what they were looking for, or had they died and just hadn't fallen over yet? So knocking them over like bowling pins would have been likely if the turkey had gotten away from me. It didn't, get away from me I mean, and I won. The turkey now resides in my freezer downstairs.

What is it with funerals?

Funerals are sad solemn events. Funerals are what we'd like to avoid even though we know that we are destined for one. I know I would do anything to get out of attending one, but I am a good girl and go and pay my respects. And yet, as I sit there, trying to not look at the dead, I notice there is life in all its varied forms swirling on around me.
I met my husband at a funeral. After you say that aloud, what else is there to say?
I was once in a car accident on the way from funeral home to graveside. An accident that had me in an ambulance and racing toward the hospital. I had only complained that my back was stiff and before I could blink I was strapped onto a board and carted off. Of course, the accident happened right in front of the firehouse and I guess it was a boring day. I did get to ride in an ambulance and witnessed an emergency room from a prone position. It's amazing how nurses can get you undressed without moving you. Magick, Perhaps? Then the wait till the doctor sees you and proclaims you have wiplash, gives you instructions and is gone in a flapping of curtain. I dressed, had a question, searched the doctor down and posed my question to him. He looked blank till I introduced myself and he blurted "Oh! I didn't recognise you with your clothes on!' Talk about heads turning.
This same accident brought its own flavor of humor. My husband and I, my sister and parents were all in the same car (my father was driving) and after we were broadsided, my sister flies out of the car and attacks the other car with her purse. The driver wisely rolled up her windows and locked the door.
Which brings me to my next dramtic sister funeral story.
My mother died and my sister handled everything, not bothering to tell me a thing till two days after my mother died. She did call all the other relatives though and told them, warning each and everyone NOT to tell me. There's more to this story but I'll save that for another time.
There we are at the viewing, my sister commanding center stage beside my mother's coffin. I swear it looked like the Price is Right. You know how those women stand beside the prizes and do that all encompassing hand gesture, palm up as their arm sweeps the length of the prize. There stood my sister using that same gesture as if the coffin was a chest freezer that could be yours should you guess the correct price.
The relatives (by this time furious at my sister for my sake) did their visit with the dead bit, nodded to my sister and then retreated to the far end of the room. There was a lull and suddenly sister shrieks "Johnny! Johnny! (her husband whom I NEVER heard her call Johnny) Mommy doesn't have her earrings on! She'll never get into heaven without her EARRINGS!" (trust me when I say it was going to take more than earrings to get my mother into heaven) Johnny springs into action. stumpfs off (big guy) and in no time, there is a flurry as the corpse dresser woman runs back in with a pair of earrings, assuring my mother's enterance into heaven. I have LOTS of earrings!!! So many I can probably get into heaven and have earrings left over to take a dozen people with me.
Why am I thinking about funerals. I lost a cousin last week and her service was friday. Same relatives but in a new uproar about my sister. An Aunt called to tell me about the cousin and while we were talking she mentioned the three other relatives who died. Seems my sister was supposed to let me know but didn't. Now they are really angry. One uncle ripped my sister a new one, most cousins were polite but restrained, one cousin told me she had a 'dirty little secret' which only turned out that she couldn't look at my sister. An Aunt said that everyone was on my side and I can't seem to get them to understand that I don't care. I don't care how my sister acted and I don't want them getting all upset about it.
So my sister shows up, comes nowhere near the relatives but sits at our table at the restaurant afterwards, turns her back to me and emotes to her end of the table. Oh the looks that she didn't see. So much eye rolling they reminded me of bingo balls bouncing around their wire cage. However since it was a favorite aunt who lost her daughter we were all polite. No sense stressing the Aunt.
So what does all of this have to do with anything?
It has shown me just how loved I am. I have spent a great deal of my time feeling unwanted, unloved, just tolerated and now I find out that I was wrong. Whatta ya know about that? People actually do like me and aren't just putting on a polite face.
Will wonders ever cease?

About me

Now that I've started this, I should write. Only life has been more than a bit boring of late, now that I've left the farm. Or is it that the farm left me?
I think I'm getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I should explain the farm.
Last October and this past October, I had a very part time job at a local petting farm. Being an absolute animal nut, I can't begin to describe my feelings about it. Sure we had to shift pumpkins every day. Thousands of pumpkins that had to go from great mound o'pumpkins into nice little piles so that the kids didn't climb the great pile and break a leg or something. Now, of course if the chaperones were doing their job we wouldn't have to flatten the pile but chaperones and parents prefer to be chatting with each other or on their blasted cell phone. Who goes on a field trip with their kid and spends the whole time on the phon. And speaking of cell phones... with them so popular how will you ever know if that nut ahead of you talking to himself and waving his arms, is talking to himself or on the phone? WHich brings up another peeve of mine. Why do people on cell phones think that they are suddenly in a bubble and no one can hear what they are saying while, in truth, the whole world hears about that growth removed from their whoopsie daisy or the green discharge from region best left unexplored.
Maybe it's not them. Maybe it's just me and my curmudgeonishness is beginning to show.

The beginning

People have told me that I should write a book. Where would I start? What would I write about. Do I really have something to say that people would want to read? Finally I decided 'Why Not?". If people don't like what I write, they don't have to read. If they do like my writing and come back for more, perhaps I can make them laugh every once in awhile. This is a great leap of faith for me but leap I shall. Gangway.... here I come!