Not exactly what I had in mind
It is Wednesday night. For me that means it is Avon night. This is the night I get my Avon boxes in. So I plan on watching TV while doling out the goodies and then playing with all the new toys I ordered for myself.
Tonight? Not so much, the dogs had other things in mind for me.
Last night we baked some chicken in the oven on a rack on top of a cookie sheet. You know, so all the grease drips onto the cookie sheet and you don’t have to eat it. We left said cookie sheet on the counter this morning because neither of us had time to clean it up. We pushed it far back on the kitchen counter and figured it was out of the big dogs reach and therefore safe.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Yeah, that’s funny.
We got home and the house reeked of old chicken grease and dog piss and poop. The cookie sheet was overturned on the kitchen floor and the floor was all sticky. There were two big piss puddles on the living room carpet along with two piles of poop and two piles of vomit.
Fun!!
Rob picked up the solid waste and I swept and mopped the kitchen floor. The piss puddle by the TV was quite substantial so I told Rob I’d get out our little carpet cleaner and suck it up. Rob said okay and moved the big screen TV so I could have better access.
Well, what do we have here? Apparently Pappy has been having a good old fashion Piss Party every day while we are at work. I mean, we knew he peed in the house and are trying to figure out how to get him to stop, but had no idea the magnitude of the peeing that was taking place.
The corner of the carpet that was revealed when he moved the TV was just dark orange with pee stains and saturated. I’m not sure it ever had a change to dry with the little pisser doing his business there so much.
I hauled out the portable carpet cleaner and sucked up the pee. I was hit with such an overwhelming ammonia smell when I turned on the machine that I almost gagged. I pulled off all the pieces and found Pappy Piss in every single part of the machine. I know he had peed around the machine once or twice but this fucker was FILLED with dog piss.
I rinsed everything out and put it back together. It was so foul, I couldn’t believe it. I’ve just sprayed the area by the TV and scrubbed it. I’m letting it soak in and I will suck it all up after I do my Avon.
Yeah, not my ideal night kids!
Okay, now I’m off to do my Avon and watch TV.
Guess who is staying in his crate tomorrow while we are at work??
RIP Bonnie.
So remember me talking about one of my moms best friends getting sick a while back?
They gave her like three months to live or something ridiculous like that.
She lasted a lot longer. I’ve talked to mom a couple of times this month and she told me that Bonnie was in the hospital. Something about her liver being attacked by this sickness.
I have not really let myself think about this because, well, it hasn’t happened yet. She was sick, but still alive. She had outlasted the time frame they gave her so it was okay.
Mom left me a couple of voicemails yesterday and the day before but I didn’t call her back. I told Rob tonight that mom had called last night and he asked if I was going to call her back. I said no. I said that she was going to tell me Bonnie was dead and I didn’t want to hear it.
A few minutes later I shut off my phone because I left the charger at work and I didn’t want to waste the battery.
Rob and I watched Talk Soup and then he headed downstairs to play his guitar. A few minutes later he came up holding his phone. He had it on mute. He said: “I made the mistake of answering your moms call, and it is about Bonnie and I don’t know what you want me to do.”
I took the call.
Bonnie died tonight in Jeanne’s arms at the hospital.
Mom said that Rob had tried to shield me from the call. Heh. He asked her if it was about Bonnie and she said yes and she said he asked several times if it was a message he could relay and she said no. We cried and talked. She said that she was surprised that I cried. She said she promised Rob she wouldn’t make me cry. I told her that the only constants I had while growing up where mom, Jeanne and Bonnie.
As I type this now I’m kinda numb. I had a good cry after I got off the phone with mom and I still don’t really believe it.
The one thing you have to understand is that Bonnie was such a pure and innocent soul. She was so very naive and only thought the best in people. The only thing I can think of is that God needed such an angel as she was. I have to believe that or I will start to get very bitter as to why someone would strike down such a pure heart.
Goodnight sweet Bonnie. You will be missed by all the hearts you touched in your young life. I love you.
Verrrry Interesting
So everyone that can read this should already know that I hate my father and his wife and haven’t had contact with them for many many years.
Occasionally I will do a google search on my old man to see if he is still breathing or if I find an obituary. Yesterday I did just that. I then did a white pages search under his real name and found nothing. Strange, it used to always come up under his name. So I did a search for the stepmonster and came up with the NH address I last had for them. That was even weirder. It had never been in her name before.
Curious, I did a search by his first two initials which is how our phone was listed when I was a kid and look, there he is, listed in a completely different city in NH as her. Hmmm.
You may think this is coincidence but NH is very small and the likelihood that there is another person in that state that lists themselves like my father does is slim to none. So I am forced to ponder(somewhat giddily, I might add) if they have divorced. Oh happy day that they should both be miserable and alone. Yes I am fully aware how horrible that sounds but do not judge me until you have walked a mile in my childhood/adolescent shoes okay?
I suppose I will never know because it’s not like I can call him up after all this time and say: “So Dad, did you cheat on the old bag like you did mom or did you just get sick of being her whipping boy?”
…but I sure can’t wait to tell my mom my theory!!
Annual Year in Review 2007
January:
The month started with us adopting a new dog, Pappy, and adjusting to all that it meant. Jim got shipped back to Iraq and my mom broke her arm.
February:
My MIL had major back surgery and Renee’, James and I met in Reno for another gambling visit!
March:
We enrolled and started Pappy in some training classes.
April:
I hate to say but I didn’t blog in April so I have no idea what I was up to.
May:
Both Rob and mines birthdays were in May, but more important we flew to Phoenix for Brian and Stephs wedding and then got to catch up with DD and Alan.
June:
Didn’t blog in June and am not sure.
July:
My finger infection acted up again…We went to Monterey Pride for the first time and we saw Die Hard 4 in the theatre, and I had issues about my computer at work. Also I get tendenitis of my ankle.
August:
I wished on the lottery and lost, We go to the Watsonville races and Pappy gets a nasty spider bite near his peepee.
We had a week in Vegas with my Mommy where we didn’t win but Rob and I both got new hair.
September:
We headed up to Sac-town to go to Renee’s going away party, and we also go see a local band Rob is friends with in San Jose.
October:
Pappy dresses up like a Pimp Daddy and gets in the local paper. Also I launch my youtube cooking show.
November:
We head up to San Jose and spend the night at Rudy and Jades. We spend Thanksgiving with my inlaws and Pappy loves it!
December:
Xmas at our house is nothing special but we have a pot luck at work and go to my inlaws at Xmas where Pappy loves it again! 🙂
1st Ever Salinas Valley Pride Parade!
I got fried shrimp and fried chicken because I just wasn’t in the mood for Mexican food but it was good. Rob fell in love with the salsa and the nice waitress gave us a small vat of it to go. On the way back from lunch we saw a sign for an estate sale and stopped. It was pretty cool and I got some silver and gold candles for my altar-in-the-making and a candle snuffer for them. We also got some bowls and I got this speech to text thing that pretty much doesn’t work right but it was only a couple of bucks. Heh.
At that estate sale they told us of another one down the street so we stopped there after. It was a HUGE house but everything was overpriced in my opinion. It was the perfect sale for a collector. They had a lot of vintage and fun stuff like an old coin operated scale and a cash register. Just not for us.
We dropped off the parents and did some shopping at Nob Hill before returning home where I tried for hours to get the speech software to work properly and finally gave up. I had an email from the Salinas Valley Pride organizer to call him so I did. He was calling all the volunteers to let them know that there were going to be protesters and just to remind us that at no time are we to let them instigate us. We are just to ignore them.
After talking to him I called my mom because she left a guilt ridden message on our answering machine while we were at the Poison show that she didn’t have Southwests number and she needed me to call her with it. Heh. Nothing like dialing information right? Anyway, we talked for about a half an hour and then I took a bath.
This morning we woke up and headed into Salinas again. This time for the first ever Salinas Valley Pride Parade. When I got there, I signed in as a volunteer and got a T shirt, read the security information and then waited to be told what to do. Rob had headed off to the grocery store to do the rest of the shopping for Vegas.
I volunteered to head off the south end of the parade where it started along with a couple other people to block it off and allow ppl through as necessary. We were armed with wristbands and fliers to hand out. The wristbands were important because the parade was insured. If you were wearing a wristband and god forbid something happened, you were taken care of financially under the parade insurance. I thought that was a good call. I also thought that it was sad that we had to do such a thing, but it was smart.
So we all stood around after blockading the road and eventually started banding people as they came in. Some people wanted nothing to do with us as they were just passing through but the majority were there for the parade and happy to be there. We were supposed to have police there helping direct traffic but they arrived about an hour late. Luckily there wasn’t much of a problem. People saw the barricades and changed direction.
We did experience the protesters. They came in, most refusing wristbands and they were trying to hand out the these small pieces of paper stating some religious stuff. They were very polite and gathered at the end of the parade with signs. It was a peaceful protest as we were told and they had every right to be there as did anyone else so it was cool.
The parade itself was bigger than I thought it was going to be. Not to mention the people that came to see it. It was larger and I’m glad for it. We got thanked a lot as volunteers by the people coming in to watch. They understood how huge this was for Salinas and I was very happy to be a small part of it. It’s a tinystep but I can see this becoming something big in the years to come. The turn out showed us that there was a definite need for it despite the naysayers.
Last Thursday as we were driving to work we heard an advertisement for the car races in Watsonville. Every now and again I had heard Rob mention them and say it’s something we should do some night but I never put much thought into it. After the commercial was over I asked Rob if that was something he was interested in and he said: “Yeah, only for the last two years.” So it was decided we would head out after work on Friday, which we did.
It wasn’t bad. My only prior experience to attending a racing event was a NASCAR race that a friend of Rob’s had gotten us tickets to for a wedding present. Picture it: I’m over 300 pounds, it’s over 100 degrees out and we have to walk about two miles to get to the speedway. Our seats are pretty high up and I’m afraid of heights. And oh yeah, I’m on my period.
Yeah, not the best day of my life. So when I say it wasn’t bad I mean that it was pretty freaking good in comparison.
It’s all done on a very small scale at the Santa Cruz fairgrounds. Very low key, you show up you get your grub and you climb the metal bleachers to a seat where you won’t get mud flung on you(unless of course that is your thing. In that case–have a ball!) and sit. They kept everything moving along quite well with no delays so that was favorable. Rob was truly loving it and I was loving the corn dog and the out of this world French fries.
My only complaint was that is was a bit long and I didn’t bring a sweatshirt along with my jacket because it got quite cold after eight or so. I got really tired and so we left when there were two races left to run. Overall, a fun night out with the husband doing something he actually wanted to do for a change.
Saturday we were up early to go get the Mustang from the shop. Oh yeah, did I mention we finally took the car in after running it for a year on a Mickey moused hose? Yup–to the tune of $2000.00! Yay for stupidity!
Anyway, I dropped Rob off and once he rescued the car I headed out to Petsmart and got some stuff for Pappy’s sore(it’s doing so much better!) along with some dog food.
Don’t you hate when you go into a store knowing pretty much what you want and then get accosted by the store employees? I mean, I’m all for having people available if you have questions but I was standing there in the dog food aisle trying to determine which bag had the small kibble and the big kibble when this lady who was roughly 108 years old comes up in a petsmart apron and asks if I need help. I smile kindly and tell her I’m just looking for dog food for our two dogs. She immediately says: “You know you have to feed them separately right??”
I nod and smile as dismissively as I can before going back to looking at the food. She asks what kinds of dogs so I tell her and she then launches into this five minute monolog on how I have to get two different kinds of dog foods and blah blah blah. Finally to appease her I hefted the 40 lb bag of food for medium sized dogs(the kind I was going to get anyway) into the cart and put a small bag of food for larger dogs on top. Thanked her and walked away.
I made into the flea and tick aisle where I was about to ditch the smaller bag when she comes up behind me and says: “And on to your next endeavor, what are you looking for now?”
‘Tell her you’re just looking!’ my brain pleaded with me but my mouth didn’t listen. “I need some sort of salve to put on a sore area that my dog won’t stop licking.”
Her eyes lit up. “Where is the sore?”
“On his inner leg.” I didn’t want to say right beside his wiener.
“You need to get a collar.” She runs in front of me and actually grabs the front of my cart to make me follow her.
“Actually, I’m just looking for some cream or something…”
“He’ll just lick it off.” She gleefully replies as she guides my cart with amazing strength for a senior citizen to an endcap full of those horrible cone collars.
That is where I had to draw the line. I may joke about how funny it would be to put my dogs in one of those but I am not putting Pappy in one of those just because he likes to lick his wiener!
“I just need some cream.” I stand firm.
She pauses and then frowns before leading me over to the next aisle where she randomly grabs some cream for itching which is not Pappy’s problem and hands it to me.
“You really should consider getting a collar.” She starts wringing her hands worriedly and I begin to think there is some sort of special commission on selling cone collars.
“Thank you so much for your help, I’m just going to keep looking around now.” I raise my eyebrows and stare her down.
Obviously disappointed she nods her head and turns to walk slowly down the aisle and disappears around the corner.
I quickly locate the cream I need for Pappy and put it in the cart as a gentleman steps up next to me and starts perusing the supplements.
Out of nowhere granny-stalker runs up and starts interrogating him as I hightail it out of the aisle and quietly go ditch the other bag of food before practically running to the checkout for fear of being harassed any more.
She was scary!
After that I headed over to Circuit City and picked up a new set of headphones(thanks Pappy!) and my new Sims Life game before hitting Mickie D’s for some chicken nuggets because I was starving. Yeah, diet’s not going so good.
Eaaarrrrthhhquaaaakkkeeee!!!!!!
So, I’ve been in California almost two years now. When I tell people back home that I live in California they automatically picture Los Angeles or some other such big city. They ask isn’t it hard to live there because of the fast pace? The truth is, it’s been paradise. Perfect temps, Maine-like scenery, laid back atmosphere. Very much what the doctor ordered after the high stress life in Phoenix. Where I live in California is nothing like what they perceive it to be. It’s very small town and I like it that way.
Having said that, this afternoon as we were finishing up our lunch break, I stood up to put something in the garbage and felt something very odd. Almost like a rolling sensation underneath my shoes. I turned to Paula and Jenn and they both looked at each other and casually said: “Oh hey, an earthquake.”
I’m pretty sure at that point I resembled a deer in the headlights. I was frozen in mid rise from the table where I was when the the rumbling started. They looked at me and started to look panicked yet reassuring. Like they wanted to talk me down.
“Kel, it’s okay.”
“Yeah it’s just going to last a second.”
“If it gets any worse we’ll go under the table.”
WHAT????
It lasted less than 30 seconds but that was all it took for me to start to panic and freak out. Jenn saw the panic and tears in my eyes right away started to talk to me like her daughter: “It’s okay Kel, it’s going to be over in just a second, it’s not that bad. You’re okay.”
It wasn’t the earthquake that bothered me really. It was the IDEA of the earthquake. The fact that I lived somewhere that had these things so often that my co-workers treated it like it was old hat. The fact that I lived somewhere that had earthquakes PERIOD!
Once it ended we all went outside for some air and then went back to our desks. I composed myself the best I could since I had to cover the front desk and then called Rob. I asked him if he felt it and he said: “felt what?” Damn.
Looking back, it wasn’t a lot it was just a very weird feeling of the ground moving under my feet, especially when I’m not so steady on my feet in the first place due to my anxiety.
I guess it was a 4.8 on the scale. They said it was pretty big to what they have had recently, but not that big.
I guess why I’m really freaked out is that in my sheltered little life, the only time I’ve heard about earthquakes is when there was some huge disaster or a movie that portrays the worst case scenario. So in my head, earthquake = huge deal. I guess that is not always the case.
It won’t stop me from being a paranoid fool though. It’s what I do.
Reno Trip Report
16 Days
It’s not like me to just pick up and go, but in 16 days, I’ll be moving to California.
The reasons behind the move are simple. Rob hates his job. He had already given his notice before we even decided to move to Cali. Last month when we visited Rob’s parents to attend his 20 year high school reunion he voiced this to his parents. They asked if he would think about relocating, he said sure. They said would you want to rent out G’pa’s cabin and that was all she wrote. We are packing up the PT and hitting the road on August 1st.
We listed our house on Friday and on Monday night we accepted a bid that was 10,000 dollars higher than what we listed at. We will close on the 28th. The movers are coming on the 26th to get all our crap and move it. My last day is the 29th so we are going to camp out in a dog friendly hotel for two days before we head out. Works for me since there is a swimming pool.
Rob’s last day is this Friday. The girls that he works with are being total bitches about it too. Really mature stuff like just ignoring him. You would think that after working together for 12 years his boss would be able to rise above it and be happy for him but no. I can’t wait til he’s done with that place!!
We managed to pack up our whole house over the three day weekend. We gave away our couch and most of our furniture. Our living room has one recliner that we will leave behind, my laptop stand and the big screen TV. That’s it.
The hallway and front room are filled with boxes. It’s very weird being at my house right now.
Here we go again…
So into the meeting we go and the head honchos are in there, very grim faced. I told Rose that it reeked of the situation I was in with my old company, right before they laid everyone off.
To make a long story short, they told us that they were “restructuring” our department. In other words they need to cut our group from 79 billers to 30 or so and we will either post out to be an O/C, a meter associate, stay in billing or if all the positions fill up before we can post out, get laid off.
Here we go again. The good news is that our team won’t transition out until next August. The bad news about being the last team to transition is that those of us that want to stay in billing won’t have much of a chance to post out to anything when they make the cut in billing because they will probably already be filled up.
So, it’s Arch all over again.
I told Rob and he said to dust off the old resume and update it tonight. He had already asked me if I wanted him to check with his contact at ASU to see if there are any office jobs available because he knows I am extremely unhappy here due to the stress factor. I told him to go ahead so he did that today but he hasn’t heard back from her yet.
It doesn’t matter. I’ll roll with whatever comes my way, I always do. Just, once again may I state for the record that I reeeeallly need to be indepentantly wealthy? Okay, thanks.
It’s laughable that they expect us to work today after the announcement. What’s even worse is our boss told us that they were going to announce it to us in a meeting right before our team outing next week to Golfland. He said he convinced them not to. Can you imagine? “Hey guys, we’re facing lay offs. Now go play and have fun!!”
About Me
I am a 40 something married woman living in California.
I enjoy knitting and crocheting, watching crap movies, snuggling with my two adorable dogs and trying to be a good person.
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