Well, well, well. It looks like summer's almost over, and I haven't updated in over a month!

This is what happens when you become a "responsible" adult and try to have an acceptably clean house when your parents come to visit. That, and your parents give you the ultimate gift that keeps on giving: a head start on all those home improvement projects that you now MUST complete because they were only half done when they left! (Sigh.) I think I've come to an acceptable stopping point now, even though there's still a few piles of mulch to be spread about the front yard. At least I no longer have to mow up there, which is a relief, because lugging the lawn mower up those crumbling cinderblock stairs was seriously going to kill me, either by heart attack or grisly freak accident. (Don't worry, I always turned the lawn mover OFF before moving it that way.)

All this improvement has put the damper on my writing, which has lagged to practically nothing. For a while there my weekends were harder work than going to work, so recovery was definitely a bitch. My goal now is to try writing one short story a week, then every six weeks or so, I'll go back and revise. And also, I'd love to do more updating in here, obviously. Maybe I should join a few more groups that have to do with fiction writing.

I've moved (slightly) up on the food chain at work, and will have Thursdays and Fridays off, beginning next week. Woohoo! That means I have a decent chance of getting the holidays off. Too bad A got Sundays and Mondays off next vote. Maybe we'll be better able to coordinate come January. Speaking of A, I'd better go wake him up, he wanted to go get some stuff done before work today.

I'm at home, wasting time, drinking beer, which is much better than what I had originally planned to do: be in bed by 7pm because work is trying to kill me.

They've officially stopped trying to kill me, but they have started trying to confuse me, and possibly get me fired. This week I've been in training on how to drive the mall buses (for the pedestrian 16th Street mall), because they operate from the right side of the cab. Now, it's not as weird as it sounds once you get used to it, but the hours were giving me epileptic fits.

I signed up to be on the night shift because there are no split shifts, but mall bus training is apparently not the night shift, it is some new and sharply pointy version of hell: split shifts starting at 4:50am. For me, a night shift driver, 4:50am is about 3 hours after I go to bed. Hell, it's about 3 hours after my dogs go to bed. Give this kind of shift to me three days running, and it equals a very, very tired and dangerous driver. It doesn't matter how early I forced myself to go to bed, I always ended up staring at the ceiling for hours on end, and then when I finally did get to sleep the dogs or the phone would wake me up, and I'd have to begin the whole process again.

I begged for a day off, and got one.

Here's where the confusing part begins. The training for mall buses was originally 3 days long, but they recently made it into 4. Since I begged a day off, my 4th day was to be tomorrow, and I was given a time card with my shifts written down on it (this is something unique to the training department). I was supposed to be driving that damn 4:50am split shift again, with a trainer. But I got paranoid, and called the division manager tonight at 7pm, as I was going to bed, and asked them what was on the board for me for tomorrow. Instead of reaffirming the information on my time card, they told me something completely different. I asked them to re-confirm this information, and they did, disavowing all knowledge of my supposed training schedule. I get to drive a mall bus by myself, tomorrow. Whatever happened to the fourth day of training? Only the mall bus knows.

Also, empressjolie  has expanded her resume to include her present stint as my personal astrologer. Apparently she has some fancy software that does all the work. Some people have personal trainers, others have stylists. I have an astrologer.

It's just a bit of harmless fun, anyway. It's why I'm such an awful house keeper; apparently it's written in my stars: I don't like doing dishes!

But here's something actually entertaining:

I got a fortune cookie last night that had the following fortune: A handful of patience is worth a bushel of brains.

Does that not scream Canibalistic Nurses Vs. Zombies?! khasael  and I are going to co-write it.

It's raining out right now, but I expect it won't last long. I have all the windows open, so I can hear the drops as they strike the tin roof of my neighbors' porch. I love the sound of rain, it's one of the few things that can wipe all thoughts out of my head. If it weren't guaranteed to be total shite, I'd buy one of those cds of nature sounds as long as every track was rain of some kind. Too bad they are total crap.

I helped A's mom and grandmother move their flower pots and plant their annuals this morning, and I took Jake and Elwood with me. They behaved surprisingly well in the truck: they mostly sat or slept on the front seat, even when Sonny was perched on my shoulder and screaming. And they still behaved fairly well when we were on the porch planting the flowers, though they did help "water" a few. Sonny was mostly a good bird, though there were a few moments when he forgot that my ear was attached, and not a birdy chew toy.

My garden is still doing well, though it's only about a week old. The only casualty was one of my plant markers -- I was using old wooden spoons to label the type of herb at a location. Two little furry theives jumped the short fence and stole one, I think they ate it, because all I found was a splintered spoon handle in the middle of the back yard. I'm betting Elwood was the brains of this operation while Jake did most of the actual spoon destruction.

I got to take home a handful of geranium cuttings from R's, and I'm hoping they'll root in a glass of water. R also got me two books on gardening specifically for the Rocky Mountain area, and they'll help when dad comes out in July to help me tear apart the yard. I also sliced off a few rose bush suckers, and I'm trying to root them, too. I don't know if it will work, but it might if I managed to cut them close enough to the main root. If not, no big loss, they were free.

Yes, the rain has stopped now, and I think I'm done potting flowers for the day. Bath time is next, but since it hit nearly 90 degrees today, I think it'll be lukewarm at most. I haven't had time or house enough to myself in a few weeks, and I just can't shake this crankiness I've had since Sunday. A thinks it's retribution for last week, but I'm not convinced. I think it's just lack of me-time. I think I'll put in a book on tape, then make myself some iced green tea and take it with me to the tub.

So, the most pressing question of the day: Should I listen to a new, exciting book on tape, or an old, familiar story that never gets threadbare?

Choices, choices.

Today I took a break from most things. I got up much too early, took myself out for coffee, and then went shopping for plants to add to my herb garden. It became obvious that A's mood was no better so I let him have his space. I decided that the worst thing I could do was let myself be worn down, so I did what made me happy.

When the retired pastor and his wife used to live in our house, the little patch of dirt between the fence and the kitchen patio was gardened regularly, and one of the left over relics is a good healthy colony of mint plants. I happened to get another variety of mint with fuzzy leaves from a friend of mine last fall, and it, too, seems to have survived the winter. I added tri-color sage, basil, oregano, lavender, lemon balm, purple flowering cat mint, and two strawberry plants.

I know it's a little late in the season, but I also started some seeds in a tray: cherry tomatoes, petunias, pansies, chives, and shasta daisies. These last two, along with the first group of plants I mentioned should all be perennial, so I won't have to plant them next year, they'll come up on their own.

I spent over four hours today getting all that done, and my cheeks feel sun burnt, but I don't think I am. I wore hefty sunblock, a bandanna and a hat and sunglasses. It could just be that I'm tired. Really tired. The plot is only about 3 feet wide and 10 feet long, but I broke the soil by hand and had to uproot all the crabgrass and bindweed. I think I got through about 7 feet of it, and I'll still have space for more plants when I finish weeding the rest of it but I'm going to give it a break until the weekend at least.

And now to bed with me. Thanks everyone, for your messages on the last post. I do appreciate them.

Yes, it's officially time to start mowing my lawn, which I may get around to today, or tomorrow, or Wednesday at the very latest. The dogs are outside, and though they're not as small as last year, they are certainly starting to get lost in the lush green crabgrass that makes up the 'lawn.' But they love being out there are terrorizing the neighborhood, which means barking at the mail lady and ignoring the Schwan's delivery guy. Oh, and chewing the juicy, tender ends off the tall crabgrass, which they do tirelessly, as though they're not dachshunds but tiny cows.

I say I may get around to it today, or maybe Wednesday. We've just begun a new vote at work, meaning the summer term, where we cut back service in all areas that have schools or colleges because all the students have gone home for three months or so. That means that there's less work to be covered on my end, as an extra operator. And the company is still pushing large classes of new operators through training, so every two weeks there are more and more people to do less work. It reminds me of going to work-study at Evansville, in the theatre department. Earnest and I (and sometimes other people) would show up to Chuck's office, only to find it and the workshop locked and abandoned. So, we would sit there in the hallway, waiting for the tech director to show up and let us get to work on set pieces. Since we'd been assigned those hours to work, we got paid whether or not anyone showed up on time, so Earnest called it "Sitting for Dollars." This would last sometimes for 45 minutes. Well, sitting "on report" at work these days is just the grown-up version of that. We all sit around and wait for something to happen, and when something does, there are so many people there waiting that hardly anyone has to do any work. That's what I did yesterday, and they sent me home after five hours because there was nothing to be done. And maybe that's what I'll get to do today, considering that I'm the 13th person on report today.

Now for the creepy: A and I got home at around the same time one night, and A stayed in the kitchen while I let the dogs out into the back yard. I always try to stay with them at night because we have foxes and very possibly coyotes in the area. I doubt a fox would go after them, but coyotes wouldn't have any trouble carrying off one or both of them for a snack. Anyhow, I follow the dogs out the back door and see a shiny, round, black bug crawling across the patio. When I see that it has eight legs, I back way out into the yard and grab both the dogs, and take them around to the kitchen door and kick it until A opens it from the inside.

Why, you ask? Because the spider was a black widow, and though they're generally not lethal to adult humans (although do seek immediate medical attention - bites are painful and can cause tissue loss and difficulty breathing), they probably would be deadly to my little dogs, who think most spiders are tasty snacks. (Mmmm, wiggly!)

Yes, indeed, it was a black widow, as A and I confirmed after killing it and examining the red hourglass on her underside. Ick. It gives me the twitches even now to think of it. So, I have to re-emphasize my bug motto: "Stomp first, ask questions later."

Around the first week of April, I had one last day of mandatory training for my job, even though I have actually been behind the wheel since the middle of February. I'd known it was coming; they call it the 'breakfast meeting,' since they serve breakfast there, but what I wasn't expecting was for it to have a start time of 6:30am. Now, this probably doesn't come as a surprise to other people who have jobs in an office environment,but I don't have an office job. I have a night job that can sometimes go until 3:00am. Fortunately for me, they have DOT regulations that got me home from work by 11:00pm the night before.

DOT does not, however, hold any sway over the functioning of the body. It was right around this point that I realized my two-week-long cold had re-manifested as a sinus infection. Now, that sucks, but it's not nearly as bad as A's realization that he had a vicious case of stomach flu/food poisoning. There was not much sleeping to be had that week, between the violent regurgitation of former solids and the necessary clean up. As a precaution, I threw out anything he ate or prepared that week, then sanitized every surface I could reach, hoping against hope that my immune system would stay strong.

So, I showed up to my meeting, bleary-eyed, with a very stubborn sinus headache, and was greeted with the news that I would not be getting two days off over the weekend to recuperate. No, indeed. No one would be allowed those days off. If you call in sick on a day you've been mandated to work, then you get an abscence occurrence, AND an insubordination memo. Basically, it's two strikes in one.

So finally, the big wigs sat there in front of us trying to make friendly. When it came time to ask any questions or express any concerns about the training process, I waited for everyone to finish and I raised my hand.

You see, new employees go through a period of 'probation' where you're not allowed to screw up, be late, miss work, or get into an accident. Obviously, most of these things do happen anyway. The scary part is this: during probabtion, the company can fire you at any time for any reason. Now, if ONE of the forbidden events happens, they simply extend your probabtionary period -- which means they have a longer period of time in which they can fire you for no reason if they want to. If two or more events take place, well, it's sort of up to their discretion as to what happens. If you make it through the probabtionary period, then you're protected by the union. Now, I'd already cracked a mirror, which in probabtion is considered an accident, but when your mirror overhangs the curb as far as ours do, it's an inevitability. Calling in sick on a day I'd been mandated to work would have given me two more marks on my record.

When I was called on, I politely explained that I could work through having a cold, and a sinus infection, and that I understood having to work through my grandmother's funeral, but I didn't think I could still come to work when I had the stomach flu. Therefore, I thought it would be better if, given the circumstances of probationary employees, they at least made an effort to get me my days off every week.

The lady in employee relations turned slightly purple as she opened her mouth to rip me a new one. The gentleman in charge of dispatch looked ashamed and embarrased on her behalf. She continued to read me the riot act about how all employees are mandated to work at times, and how probationary employees are not excluded from that.

I explained that there were several instances in which probationary employees are not included in the normal rotation of assigned work, and not given the protection of the union's attendance policy, and, though I understood her point, I still believed that I had a valid issue. She harumphed and hollered. The gentleman in dispatch rubbed his brow and said quietly that if there was an emergency, obviously something could be worked out.

I let the issue drop, but when I called in for my assigned work that weekend, I found that I had been given none. I didn't ask a second time, I simply enjoyed my days off.


---

A was so sick he ended up being out of work for a week. I don't ever remember being or seeing anyone so miserable as he was, and he ended up getting a urinary tract infection on top of it, I think because he was so dehydrated. He actually went to the doctor twice. Willingly. Normally I have to threaten and beg to get him to go. So that really says something.

I, fortuately, dodged the stomach flu bullet. I'm still taking meds for the sinus infection, but it should be gone soon. And I got my days off again this weekend! Tomorrow I have to go 'vote' for what work I'll be doing this summer. Seeing as I'm at the bottom of the seniority list, it will probably suck, but I'm just hoping they let me stay working nights.

Just before last weekend my dad's mother passed away. It was rather unexpected; we all thought she was going to outlive my grandfather, who devoted much of his own time and health to her care. She suffered from MS since before I was born, and had many health complications, though she had no accute problem at the time of her passing. She's the first of my grandparents to pass away, and I know how lucky I have been. Aaron's only two years older than me, and he has one grandparent left -- Grandma Mabel, who celebrated her 90th birthday this month.

Since I'm still a 'new' employee, there was no way I could get time off to go to the funeral, which was this past Monday, but I probably couldn't have afforded a last minute flight anyway. I wanted to go; I felt I sort of owed it to my grandfather -- we've never been very close with my dad's parents, and I do feel guilty about that sometimes. My parents did take some time off and drive down there, and my mom said that dad and Grandpoppy "got along as well as they ever did, which was not at all." We're actually much closer with my dad's oldest brother and his family, though we don't see them very often either. Dad gets together with his two brothers at least once a year, ever since his twin sister died, but a big family reunion is very rare. My dad didn't expect me to go to the funeral at all, and he's even said he's doing okay with her death, just "feeling old."

I'm not even all that sad, which I feel odd about. I keep hearing about other people in my life who have had people die, and I feel more sympathy for them than I do for myself. I feel the most sympathy for my great-aunt Louise, Grandmommy's sister. She and Uncle Joe were more like my grandparents as I grew up; we saw them at every holiday, and were included with their children and grandchildren. She made my dad a quilt in honor of Grandmommy. Mom says it's quite beautiful, and that I should write her more often. Louise only has one surviving sister now.

---

I drove the Broadway route two or possibly three times this week, including Thursday, when we got twelve inches of snow. The only complication was that I had to keep knocking ice build-up off the windshield wipers, but then, I had to do something with all that time on my hands. I kept running a little ahead of schedule because no one was out trying to catch the bus in that weather. Buses are easy to drive in the snow: they're heavy in the right places, so all you have to remember to do is brake early. And watch for cross traffic that can't stop for red lights. I had more problems on Friday night, due to it being Spring Break and all. More drunk people and cops than St. Patrick's day and Mardi Gras combined, times ten. Over all, it was a good week -- I only worked 37 hours, but got paid for 40.

I rediscovered my poor, neglected houseplants this week, which is a sign that my brain is compressing and compartmentalizing my job, leaving me more time and energy for other things, which may explain the following:

I got home ahead of Aaron at some point this week, and started randomly cooking steak and chicken at around 1am. It's just something I do (thought it's usually baking, not broiling), and, perhaps surprisingly, it makes me feel connected to my dear
K, H and L, and my cousins W, B and R, who also cook/bake after midnight. We cousins think it might be a genetic condition. As for my friends, I can only say that great minds think alike. Either that, or late-night kitchen adventures have unknown therapeutic effects.

Also, I've come up with a few ideas for some short stories in the horror genre, which is something I've never tried before. Aaron said that a few days of overtime might pay for a cheapo laptop -- all I really need is for it to have a word processor. And maybe wireless internet, if I'm really lucky.

Lastly, I got to hang out with K this week, which I've been planning to do for at least a month now, and it was good, though cut a bit short by Aaron, who wanted me to himself for awhile. K graciously conceded, and Aaron ended up feeling a little guilty about it. I plan to try and make it up to my friend by coming up with new and interesting projects to keep her entertained through August while she's indisposed. I'm thinking of lots of creative projects, in a variety of mediums. I could teach her knitting, but just one epic knitting project could get old pretty quickly. That, and if I keep changing the project, I'm hoping it will fire up my brain to actually complete one of the half-finished masterpieces I have lying around the house.

I finally got back to writing in my paper journal this week, which was a greater relief than I can explain. I've made a resolution to think of myself as a writer who drives bus for a living, and hopefully that will bring the desired response from my rather bruised psyche. (Some more energy and hope would be greatly appreciated. Maybe if I poke it with a stick? Now I'm imagining my disembodied brain lying on the ground as I prod it with a branch from the back yard. It jiggles and lies there, mocking me -- or ignoring me, which amounts to the same.)

Blah. Maybe I'm just down today because I have the day off and made a resolution to clean house. BOO. And all I"ve really done is watch too much TV, and have a fight with the husband, though I'm not really sure what it was about at the moment.

Maybe a bath will solve something. 

Run 2455 is the worst run ever. It's a fruit salad of a couple of different routes that no one likes or wants: poor scheduling, 2 out of 3 endpoints are obscure terminals with almost no bathroom breaks, and an interline between two routes that requires me to traverse 65 blocks in less than 15 minutes during rush hour. I ask/complain to other drivers, and they imediately know which run I've been assigned. I wonder how long the real driver of this route has been out on O.J.I.? It's infamous. It's also impossible, and they keep giving it to me. Le sigh. At least I've got it nearly memorized. And that's a teeny bit good, because despite the gallon of coffee I had today, I'm still exhausted. They assigned me 2455 again tomorrow, so then at least I don't have to do anymore prep work. Hello television oblivion.

P.S. The other night, while driving the Broadway route, I think two working girls tried to offer me a job.  More later, if I'm ever awake again.

So, yeah, I haven't really had a chance, the energy, or the gumption to update in about a month, but here I go.

I passed my CDL test, and now have an official commercial driver's license with passenger and airbrake endorsements, and I'm now in my fifth week of training as a bus operator. I really shouldn't say more than that about my job, except that the hours suck but the pay is good. However, I'm exhausted, and I have a beer and a half in me, and I'm feeling chatty. It's RANDOM THOUGHTS time!

RANDOM THOUGHT #1:
I really do feel grateful that somehow, in this entirely fucked economy, I managed to get a job with benefits, and I'm not hating it. I drove Colfax Avenue today, which is apparently one of the longest (if not THE longest) continuous streets in North America. It's notorious for drug dealers and hookers and the like, but I didn't think it was that bad. Of course, I didn't go the whole length, just a good third of it or so. Probably the middle third. I drove the western third on Tuesday, which I didn't think was that bad either. It's just a matter of what you make of it: if you're scared of it, it will be scary; if you think of it as dinner and a show, it will be entertaining! I had a good time, actually. However, it still baffles me that I am so lucky, and I keep expecting my luck to run out.

RANDOM THOUGHT #2:
I realize I'm utterly crazy when I say this, and that probably everyone else thinks I'm a moron, but it took me 29 years and an ugly polyester uniform to make me realize that I'm pretty and people treat me differently because of it. What about this time and place made me aware of this? I have no fucking idea. However, I'm also just barely sane enough to realize that if I dwell on this people will assume I've gone conceited and stop talking to me. I'm just so weirded out by this realization that I had to mention it.

RANDOM THOUGHT #3:
Split shifts are the curse of the devil. I've been getting up at 3am for more than half the week, and then I leave the house by 4am, and I don't get back to my house  until after 7pm. However, tomorrow I work from 5pm until 1am, which means I have to stay awake for as long as I possibly can so I don't crash out early tomorrow.  I think I'm hitting hallucination stage, but it could be the two beers talking. Seriously, since when did I become a lightweight?

So tired. It's a miracle I'm typing coherently. I am typing coherently, aren't I?
 

Now that I'm done amusing myself and boring everyone else:




Happy Birthday, Aaron!

With the huge variety of people whom I know, love, or read about in Minnesota, I've been hearing a lot about the weather up there. When I instant messaged my brother on Thursday night, apparently the high temperature that day in Minneapolis was -8 degrees F. Yikes.

Now, in my opinion, meteorologically, something like this happens in MN about every ten or fifteen years. I remember in my sophomore or junior year in high school (that would be about 13 or 14 years ago) we had weather that was 70 below, and school was cancelled for three or four days because you can't have kids waiting for the bus in that. In such cold temperatures, exposed skin starts getting frostbitten after 30 seconds, or something. Now, did we ever have actual snow days? Not so much.

Here, in Colorado, things are quite different. For the first three years or so that I lived here, I'd overdress myself every time I looked out the window and saw snow. Seriously, I'd spend my days sweating because I wore wool, and I didn't have enough layers underneath it to be able to just take my sweater off. Nowadays, I dress myself in at least three layers; that way when the sun comes out at noon and starts melting off the snow, I have a sweatshirt I can take off over my long-sleeved shirt, and a t-shirt under that if it gets crazy warm. Plus a coat with a hood, just in case things turn the other way and we get a sneak-attack snow storm.

Now, it's not like we don't ever get really cold weather here, but it's usually not of the same severity or duration. For instance, I remember a few days like this, but that didn't last very long, and mostly I was miserable because I was sick and the power kept going out in that house. The houses here aren't built for cold, I don't really know why. But water pipes freeze here all the time, and I'd never even heard of that until I moved here from Minnesota. Also, I specifically remember showing up to a college class in Boulder one day, only to find that classes had been canceled due to snow. Granted, we did get four inches of snow over night, but it was sixty degrees by 10:00am. All of it melted.

So, why were classes canceled that day? First of all, we don't have the same number of plows here to keep the roads clear. Nor are they organized in the same way as they are in MN. Up there the plows are on call 24 hours a day, and they're out there pretty much as soon as the first few snowflakes hit the ground. Up there, every street gets plowed. EVERY STREET. Here, the plows only show up during peak traffic hours, and usually only after it's stopped snowing, and only on major thoroughfares. Why? Only God and the government know.

So that's why last Monday morning -- when we were in the midst of getting six inches of snow -- all hell had broken loose on the freeways and there was nary a plow in sight. Yes, Monday morning I went to my first real day of training (as opposed to Friday's orientation) in a public service that has a more reliable record than the USPS. It is a job you CANNOT be late to, and yet out of my class of 15 operators, only five of us showed up on time. I was one of the five. I hear this is how I'm going to build seniority real quick.

In Minnesota, six inches of snow is just a fart in the air conditioning. With eighteen inches you might get a few school delays. In Colorado, we get six inches of snow and half the state calls in late or sick.

The following is the first line (or so) from the first journal entry of every month of last year.






Jan: "Well, I had the idea of being very productive during the January weeks of my winter break, but then DOOM happened."

Feb: "Ever wondered what to do if you're stuck in prison in the Philipines, with situationgirl's record collection from 1986?"

Mar:


Apr: "Ack! Out of time to post, just know this: empressjolie rocks, just 'cause."

May: "Sometimes my scent signals get crossed and I mistake coffee for ripe skunk."

Jun: "Here's why I've been gone so long:


Meet Jake and Elwood."

Jul: "First of all, the happy business: Happy (28th) birthday empressjolie! (Wink wink.)"

Aug: "Having something so lovely and archaic as having grapevines growing on our deck makes me want to learn to make grape jelly."

Sep: "I stole this from asarotte. And it was fun."

Oct: "I'm just tired and a little under the weather."

Nov: "Yeah. I didn't shower this morning."

Dec: "I've been extra super coordinated and graceful as of late, and the casualties have been two different dinner plates and my cell phone."




So, what did we learn? We learned that I love punctuation, specifically the colon. And empressjolie, obviously. Also, that I'm a clutz with a defective sense of smell, which is probably why I don't shower.

See, I told you.

Yes, I have all kinds of little voices in my head telling me to get things done, but it's so hard to shake them off when your body is shouting "Sleep more! Clean later!"

But sleep is for the unemployed, and I no longer will be. Yes, those folks who asked me to get a Class B CDL with P2 endorsement have finally called me back. I'm starting training on Friday, January 9, at 7am. I join all the other productive citizens in perpetuating capitalism. Or something.

No, really, I am more excited than I sound, but it's tempered with some serious worries, such as:

1) I have to leave the house at 6:30am for six weeks during training. That means A has to let the dogs out at 9am when they start whining again. There's a decent chance that at some point he'll let them outside and then fall back asleep for several hours, leaving them to perish from hypothermia and exposure. Not that I have to worry about that today because it's almost 70 degrees here, but it's Colorado. It's going to snow tomorrow, according to the weather report. And they're just leetle tiny dogs; they're low to the ground, and they don't stand much chance against the elements. Maybe I should invest in an insulated dog house?

2) My leaving at 6:30am also means A has to get himself out of bed, and very likely make his own lunch. Unless I develop the powers of forethought and make his lunch the night before, and let's face it, I'm lazy, and I may not even do that for myself.

3) Housework. I've never been a model home maker. Hell, I wrote a description of myself somewhere that went, "showers on a regular basis, but does dishes only under duress." If I don't do chores, and I rarely do chores unless company is coming, who will? A's never been known to clean bathrooms. This just means that I'm going to have to force myself to do it when I'm tired and cranky.

4) I hope this job doesn't make me tired and cranky, but the odds are slim. I am, however, still thankful to have any job. I just need to have enough residual energy to go to the gym, and eat things that aren't total crap. That way I don't become a tired, cranky, fat lady bus driver.

5) As much as A has been upset over my lack of employment, I think he thinks this job of mine is going to solve all his problems. I was originally worried that I wasn't going to get this job, and that it would break his heart. Now I'm worried that it's going to break his heart because it'll cause a set of new problems, like the fact that we may end up with completely opposite schedules, and he may not see me for weeks at a time, unless I'm sleeping, and we all remember how well that worked for us when I was still in school. That was a horrible run-on sentence.

6) This one is most selfish, I'm afraid this job will take away all my time to write. I'm afraid I'll never finish my novel. I may be too wiped to try to get published. The best I can hope for is to get assigned to the extra board (the substitutes for people who call in sick) and get a late-starting report with nothing to do but sit in the break room. At least this job might let me afford a laptop. Here's hoping.

Yes, my holiday festivities went well. We drove up to A's mom's house on the 25th anyway, and just watched too much TV and slept on the couch. I felt blessed.

However, I don't know if anyone else's holiday mood was touched, but I did feel real pangs of grief for everyone involved when I heard about this:

The Santa-Suit Killer.

And I couldn't help thinking it was related to this October article:

Arson, Suicide, and Murder Mark the Economic Crisis, and We're Not Hearing About it.

I think if you read the entire first article, you'll find that I'm right. My latest troubling thought is that it took an incredibly violent act on a holiday for the nation to take notice. Where and when do we start caring about the other incidents?

Yes, my friends, the time is near. Or at hand, or maybe even passed. Nevertheless, I offer you my sincere wishes that you have a wonderful whatever it is that you choose to celebrate.

It's sort of a novelty that A's got Christmas Eve and Christmas off this year. We celebrated the holiday with family on Saturday, because A's dad works at the sugar plant on the 25th, so we're pretty much done with presents already. However, we may go up and spend Thursday with his mom and grandmother anyway. Besides, she's got a bunch of TV shows tivo'd for us.

I found it imperative that I share my good fortune this year. It's true, I'm still unemployed and things are tight, but A and I have enough. So, I scrimped a little on groceries this month and bought hooded sweatshirts for four children who needed them. And then I threw in a home-made and lavishly sugarplummed gingerbread house*, just so they could have something fun for the holiday, too. I don't tell you this to congratulate myself, but to remind myself that I feel richer when I share even what little I have. It's important not to lose hope, too.

I'm still working on finishing my novel, but I think I've finally broken past the mental block. My new year's resolution is to write on it every day until it is done, then I'll set it aside for a month or so and work on something else, and then I'll start to edit. March is Scriptfrenzy, I think. I might try it, if I can come up with a good plot.

The dogs were relatively unsupervised yesterday as I was spackling up the aforementioned gingerbread mansion with Royal Frosting, and when I finally turned around I found they had chewed a sizable hole in the carpeting at the base of the stairs. A was not pleased. I was mostly upset with myself, but I got over it. Granted, it's not pretty, but the carpet down there is not good carpet anyway, and I don't think it's anything that a small rug won't hide. I guess it must be time for a new rope bone chew toy -- the one the dogs currently have is more mop-shaped than bone-shaped, and it doesn't hold a candle to the carpeting, apparently.

Sonny (a.k.a. the South American Love Chicken as he's now known by several of my friends) is a good bird, though somewhat odd. He received a Christmas bag of mixed tropical fruit treats from my mother-in-law, but he doesn't like the papaya. Most other parrots I've met think that dried papaya is better than crack, but no, Sonny would rather have a cheerio, or a peanut, or anything made out of white flour. Or anything that comes served to him on a spoon would be fine, too. Unless it's papaya. In other bird news, we got a hint that our local bird shop may be closing its doors come February, so if anyone knows of a reputable place to buy supplies and toys -- someplace that's not Petco or PetSmart, because they don't carry it -- please let me know, otherwise I'll have to start ordering Sonny's food on-line, and that takes forethought and planning. I need someplace I can go at the last minute, when I suddenly realize I'm fresh out of bird food, or have burnt the whole batch to the bottom of the pan.

Besides that, I think we're all well here. Happy Merry Jolly to you all! And a good New Year, too.
_______

* My mom and I used to make these every year, using a Swedish recipe for gingerbread cookies (pepparkakor). She still has an excuse to make them: there are several little children in her neighborhood that adore decorating their very own gingerbread houses that she makes for them. I, however, have no excuse and absolutely no reason to have that much candy around the house.

I've been extra super coordinated and graceful as of late, and the casualties have been two different dinner plates and my cell phone. Yes, I submerged it in a mug full of hot tea, much like a cookie. We skipped buying more plates, but had to replace the phone on Thursday last week; fortunately we got a deal on the new phone, and it only cost us about $25 out of pocket.

I've also been absent-minded. Enough so that when I forgot to call him back, my husband assumed I'd locked myself out of the house, and out of the truck at the same time. The truck was running, too. It was last night, and I was trying to make sure the truck still worked after all the sub-zero weather. It did, and I'm fine, I was not locked out. My keys were with me at the time, and they're still around here, somewhere...

In random news, I passed the permit test for a CDL class B with passengers and air brakes. In celebration, my husband got me a cheap watch - I will need it if I ever get a call back from that prospective employer who offered me a job contingent on my getting a CDL permit. But it's been years since I've owned a watch, and the last several watches I did own were tragically ill-fated. I wear the watch but forget to look at it most of the time, so A has taken to calling me at random hours and asking what time it is -- he knows perfectly well what time it is. I instinctively look at the nearest wall clock and tell him anyway. Then he specifically asks me what time my watch says. Sometimes I tell him, sometimes I laugh.

So, as proof that I'm only a product of genetics, I offer this email that my brother and I received this morning, from my mother:


Well I beat [Situationgirl] as to cell phone tricks. I ran mine through the washing machine. It worked for awhile but I'm not sure it is going to continue to work. If you need to call you should call Dad's number for the next few days. I am trying to dry my phone out and hope it works. You take care.

Love, Mom


So you see, I really can't help it. I'm doomed to this.

Yes, clocking in this morning at over 50,000 words. There is joy.

There's also a slightly-more-than-mild annoyance of my husband's because my story still isn't finished yet; I'm thinking it might take 50 to 100 more pages. Actually khasael and I are having the same problems explaining to our respective spouses that no matter how brilliant a writer may be, they generally don't shit brilliance onto the pages and then sell it for big bucks without any revisions or even a spell checking.

Note to self: Feed husband. He's hungry after a month of fending for himself in the wilds of the refrigerator.

Note to my inner editor: Hold your horses, queen bitch. I still have some story writing to do.

Starting at 15,042 words, after making a push of 3,000 words yesterday.

Distractions: Jake and Elwood

Vicious furribeests of the lower floor boards after a successful kill. Their elusive quarry: the domestic empty tissue box.



That's Jake looking cute and innocent on the blanket, and Elwood down on the left, thirsting for more wood pulp.