Trip to Maine Part 1
I planned my trip back home to Maine for this weekend because my cousin Sherry is getting married. What better time to get to see all the cousins I haven’t seen in ages right?
Wednesday we packed up all my stuff in the PT and headed to work. My flight wasn’t until later that night so I had to put in a full day of work first. My decision to pack lightly this year was based on the fact that I’m staying at my moms and she has a washer and drier, plus I know I’m going to end up buying stuff much like last year and since I had a hard time fitting said stuff into my suitcase last time, I would just bring a few things and buy whatever I needed here.
Rob brought me to the airport after work where we had a nice dinner of prawns and twice baked potato with clam chowder and the most delicious bread. My goal was to overstuff myself so I wouldn’t need to buy any expensive food on the plane(it worked by the way.) After that my nerves kicked in and thanks to PMS I had a mini melt down out in the parking lot where were getting my luggage which resulted in some tears and me smoking a cigarette. That helped out and then we were off to check in my bag.
As I learned last year, Monterey will shut down their security screening if there are no upcoming flights within an
hour or two so Rob and I waited in the lobby for a few minutes waiting for them to open.
We took pics and twittered on our phones and eventually the gates opened. Rob made sure I was all set up to go through and then with a kiss and a hug he was gone. Long drawn out goodbyes only cause me to cry so we know we have to make it short and sweet.
By some small miracle my bags weren’t picked for additional screening so I gathered my stuff back up and walked the 20 feet to the gate. Rob was waiting by the glass to see me walk through so when he saw me he gave me a wave and headed off.
The 1st leg of the trip was to San Francisco. It was a prop plane but thankfully the whole flight was only about 20 minutes long. I really wish I had taken my camera out too because there was a really cool shot in the air of when the clouds met the fog right before the ocean. It will forever be burned in my memory but of course I didn’t get to get a picture of it.
At the San Fran airport I booked it to the gate for 2nd leg of the trip. It was to the Dulles airport in DC. Last year there was hardly anyone on this flight and I was able to lay down on all three seats in my row. It was really great because it is a five hour overnight flight. I was kinda hoping for the same thing this trip. I was already sleepy from all the food I had eaten, not to mention it was around ten at night and already past my bedtime.
All hopes were dashed when they announced that the flight was overbooked and they were looking for volunteers to give up their seats. The deal they were offering was pretty sweet actually. They would get you on the next flight in the morning, put you up in a hotel in San Fran with transportation to and from AND you would get a free round trip ticket to anywhere in the US except HI and AK with no black out dates. If I hadn’t had a connecting flight to catch with a ride waiting for me when I got there I would have seriously considered it.
I had a bad experience on this flight last year so I wasn’t looking forward to this flight. I had bought a pillow and sleep
mask at the airport because I knew the first part of the flight wouldn’t be too bad and I had already seen what movie would be showing and I had no desire to watch DragonBall Z.
The flight was surprisingly smooth. There was about a 15 minute period where we ran into some turbulence but other than take off and landing, that was the only time the seat belt light was on. I found a classical music station on the plane radio and was able to get about an hour and a half of sleep in ten minute increments. I just can’t sleep well sitting up.
In DC I stopped a Five Guys again for a breakfast sandwich and then headed to my gate where I read until they announced our flight. Once we boarded they warned us that it was raining and very foggy in Portland and they were prepared to reroute us through Vermont if they had to. Great.
It was another full flight. I sat next to a very nice girl reading an electricians for dummies book. I gave her my standard disclaimer that I was a nervous flier and not to mind me and she was fine with that. Behind me were two chatterboxes that made me remember a pair of earplugs had come with my sleep mask. 🙂
The flight attendants were still milling about when I felt us starting to descend…very quickly. I know that it was probably just the clouds we were going through that made me think it was going far too fast but that is when the panic started to set it. Finally the pilot came on and announced we were making our “rather rapid decent” into the Portland airport and hopefully the turbulence wouldn’t “get any worse”.
Yeah, it was pretty bad. Probably the worst I have ever experienced. And the worst part was everything outside was a haze of grey cotton candy. You could see NOTHING else. I don’t know about you, but when I am flying and the plane starts descending, as soon as I can see the ground I feel better. Just knowing that it is there and we are getting closer and will be on the ground soon is comforting.
Amid the gauzy outside view the plane was rocking and dipping and being tossed side to side. One of the flight attendants almost took a dive as he was walking through getting the garbage. The person sitting next to me is calm as calm can be, but she is on the lookout for the ground for me since she now knows I can’t look out the window for myself without getting more frightened. There is a couple across the aisle from me where the wife has her head in her hands and he is rubbing her back. I suddenly miss Rob very much. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.” I hear the man say. I look over expecting to see him comforting his wife but I find he is looking right at me as he says the words. I realize that I am rocking back and forth trying to breathe. I smile and just say: “I don’t do flying very well.” He nods and smiles and says: “Just think of it as a very big roller coaster.”
I grin and say: “I don’t do those either.” He just laughs and says: “Okay, then just trust me, it will be okay.”
I am grateful people are so nice but embarrassed that I am such an obvious basket case. 🙂
When the treetops are finally visible both my new friends, my seatmate and the guy across look at me and exclaim: “We can see ground!” Thank goodness for small favors.
The touch down was flawless and as we taxi to the gate we see that it is a torrential downpour outside. I could care less about getting wet…in fact I would have gotten down on my knees and kissed the ground but I didn’t want everyone to think I was a bigger freak than I already was. 😀
On the ground I make my way to baggage claim while calling my aunt to let her know they can head out to come pick me up. I text Rob and let him know I landed safe and after a long wait finally get my bag and head out to see my Aunt Lee(auntie tee) and my mom.
After a short drive through the streets of Portland we get to Auntie Tee’s house and move my luggage from that car to mom’s and head into the house where I get to see my cousin Rocky who I haven’t seen in at least ten or thirteen years. She, my brother and I were all the babies of the cousins so of course I tended to be closer to Rocky than any of my other cousins. She was Shawn’s age so she was older and I always looked up to her. She is now living in Virginia, married with two beautiful children that I got to meet that day.
We didn’t stay long as I was running on empty both food and sleepwise and I was in desperate need of a shower. So
mom drove us home and after dropping me off she headed out to Red Barn to get us a fish and chicken basket with fries and onion rings and a chocolate shake for me. The Red Barn is a mom and pop place just down the road from my moms house that we have always loved. How can you go wrong with deep fried everything??
I had planned to go to Walmart to pick up an outfit for Sherry’s wedding and get some essentials that I hadn’t brought with me but as soon as that food hit my belly I was comatose. I changed into PJ’s and somehow managed to wait until the sheets for my bed were out of the drier before collapsing on my bed and falling into an instant slumber around four in the afternoon eastern time.
I awoke around ten thirty to thunder crackling loudly overhead. I opened my eyes to find the accompanying lightening flashing as well. About two minutes later I saw the living room light blink on and new that my mom had woken up as well.
I padded out into the living room and mumbled “gotta pee” before hitting the bathroom and coming back out. Mom announced that she didn’t want me sleeping in my room while the storm was raging because there were two large trees right outside my room that could fall down and crush me in my bed. Yikes, thanks mom!
I grabbed my blanket and sleep mask and dragged them out to the recliner where I laid for about fifteen minutes. I couldn’t really sleep there but thankfully the worst of the storm had passed so after taking full blame for the storm(“I facebooked saying I wanted thundershowers while I was here because we don’t get those back home.”) I headed back to my bed to fall back into my coma until mom woke me this morning at seven or so.
She has to work today so I drove her first to McDonalds for her breakfast and then to work so I could have the car.
My original plan was to make it to walmart while she was working but she has now expressed an interest in going so I will have to wait. However as I was driving back from her work I found myself wishing I had brought my camera with be because there are some great shots of downtown I would like to get. So I think I might just take my camera on a little jaunt to see if I can get some good pics. Plus I have to go to the gym down the street and see if they will sign me up for a weeks worth of membership. I still have to train for my 10 K but I didn’t anticipate all this rain either. Hmph.
So here I sit, on my bed with the laptop and cell phone. I’m blogging, texting Paula and sipping a diet sprite. Who says I can’t multi task??? I need to shower and come up with some sort of plan for the day, but I want to be lazy.
Okay, that is all for now, I’ll blog as more happens.
Birthday Weekend Trip Report Day One
A bit of background: For as long as I have been with Rob we have always gotten these cute little cards every holiday with pictures of a little girl on them. And when I say EVERY holiday I mean it. She sent one out for St. Patty’s Day, Valentines Day, Easter, and so on and so on. They were sent by Rob’s old friend from school Kerry and the little girl featured on the cards was her little girl Bailey. I had never met them but I pretty much got to watch the little girl grow up in pictures.
We have talked often about taking a trip up to Cayucos to see them since it is only about two hours away but we just never seemed to all get together on it at the right time.
Thus my surprise. He was taking me to Cayucos for the weekend and I would finally meet Kerry and her family and basically have a stay at a hotel(which he knows I love) and just relax and chill out for the weekend.
We left work at five and headed out to this little beach town. It’s about 20 mins from San Louis Obisbo and is an easy
drive up the highway. About ten miles away from our hotel our GPS told us to turn off onto a very creepy, very curvy road. One lane with sharp turns and not much in the way of civilization. As we turned onto the road, Rob turned to me and said: “Remember that movie The Hills Have Eyes? We aren’t stopping for ANYTHING!”
We managed to make it off that road without having car trouble and then being mangled to death by maniacs and found our hotel with no problem.
We knew when we booked the room that it was going to be a small little motel. They had a website but the reservations were not available online. But the price was right and they accepted pets and the first choice of hotels was all booked up due to a wedding so we booked over the phone.
When we arrived what we found was a small motel built off of a house and run by a couple that lived in said hous
e. He took our info and gave us our keys…and I do mean keys. He handed us the first set of actual keys to a hotel room that I have seen since I lived in Maine. No key cards, and actual key with the big tacky plastic key ring announcing your room number on it. I suddenly was no longer worried about the movie The Hills Have Eyes and was more worried about the movie Vacancy!
We got to our room and discovered that the pictures of the rooms on the internet were kind 
of deceiving when it came to the size of the room. Yeah, the room was TINY! It had a double bed because…no bigger bed would fit, but the thing that made it 
that much smaller were the two white wicker chairs that were on either side of the room. Without them the room might be okay but as it stands now we are on top of each other and then cramped in the bed. Oh well. We knew we had to live with it.
We unpacked what we could and then headed out in search of what was within walking distance of the hotel and possibly for dinner. What we found was very little but we did find an italian/mexican place that also served burgers. On our way to the food place we had passed a coffee shop that Rob had researched online. They were having an open mic night and he wanted to check it out so while I waited for the food he ran up there.
A few minutes later he called me to tell me that he was going to go get his guitar and then hang out for a while. I told him that was cool and would bring the food back to the motel.
Last night was uneventful. Rob played for awhile at the coffee shop and then came back. We ate and puttered around and went to bed.
Day Two to follow soon
Progress
Yesterday Paula and I did the Heart and Sole 5K walk in Salinas to benefit the Children’s Hospital. Rob had forwarded me a link from his work a few weeks ago and since I am in training for the 10K run in July, I thought this would be a good thing to see how I have progressed as far as walking.
Being able to walk long distances is a huge thing for me. I know that sounds dumb coming from someone who has never had a physical problem with the use of her legs but it really is significant to me.
When I weighed over 300 pounds, to walk longer than about two minutes would make my lower back seize up and put me in extreme pain. Not to mention how out of breath it made me just to walk at a normal pace. Rob and I would take Romie for a walk back in AZ and in just the short distance to the end of the street, there were times I thought of asking him to go get the car and come get pick me up to get me back home.
When I had lost a lot of the weight but was riddled with anxiety to walk in an open space was sheer torture. To walk across the parking lot at work after most of the cars had left would make me want to cry. I had this irrational fear that I was going to fall down. I can’t really explain it but anyone who has ever had acute anxiety may know the feeling. It feels like you get a little dizzy but it’s really just a panic attack starting in. By the time you realize what is happening you are hunched over, lurching forward for your destination as fast as you can. I can’t imagine what people must have thought seeing me walk like that. It was not something I could control. I would have to try and talk myself down and it rarely worked.
Shopping parking lots were alright as long as I had the shopping cart to hold onto. A crowded parking lot was okay because the cars next to me would catch me if I were to suddenly fall over. I know it sounds so incredibly stupid but I lived with this for a good year and a half to two years.
Now that I am somewhat back to being a normal human being in both weight and anxiety levels, being able to go for walks on my own is kinda a big deal to me. Rob and I have done periodic 5K walks here and there since we moved to California. His company encourages fitness and will pay for the fees to do the run/walks around our area. I never really trained for any of them and was always really sore the next couple of days and my time had never really been under an hour. At first it was more about being able to do it without any anxiety than about speed.
I now try to walk at least every other day on my lunch hour at work. My anxiety over the years has lessened by leaps and bounds and I am happy to say that I finally feel normal.
Yesterday Paula and I braved high temps(for where we live) and sunburns and walked the
5K in Salinas. It was mostly flat and was a nice walk around pretty neighborhoods. There was a light breeze and good conversation. We shaved about 13 minutes off our time for the last 5K we both did together in September and finished at 53 minutes. My back never hurt. I never had anything close to a panic attack. And I am not sore today except for one blister on the bottom of my foot. To say I am very proud of this would be a severe understatement. Dare I say, I even had fun?
After the race we rewarded ourselves with a lovely breakfast of biscuits and gravy at the Toro Park Cafe. 
It was a wonderful day but there was one casualty. Paula’s cell phone. Since she had no pockets in her sweatpants, she took a page from our friend Jenn and placed her cell phone in her bra, right between her boobs. Well, I guess the combination of the hot day and the sweat from her skin was a little too much for the phone to handle…And while Verizon replaced the phone, she lost all her pictures and contacts. Lesson learned. 😉
It's almost done!
Last week I made an alarmingly large payment to my dentists office. While I know we will be getting reimbursed for half of it, I am not in the habit of dropping payments in excess of 4500.00, especially on a debit card…but it was planned for and expected.
While watching that money disappear from my bank account didn’t exactly make me want to dance a jig, the reason for it did.
On Friday I will am going in for yet another sedation dental appointment. This visit marks the end of my serious treatments. The end of my dental nightmare that has spanned the length of ten plus years. The end of a seemingly financial black hole that has easily sucked out over 20,000 dollars out of my wallet over the course of all those years.
You can only imagine my excitement to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel on this.
As if all of this wasn’t bad enough, I only have myself to blame for all of this. I would love to blame genetics but despite the fact that my parents didn’t have the best teeth, (my dad had dentures for as long as I could remember and my mom has always had very small, very weak teeth) my brother and I managed to luck out with some pretty strong teeth. Crooked, very much so, but we had some strong, thick teeth.
No, my dental nightmare began when I though it would be a wise idea to stick my finger down my throat and throw up every single morsel that I ate.
I won’t bore you with the details on that whole fiasco but let’s just say after a few years of this, the enamel on my teeth was pretty much non existent. Despite my brushing after every barfing session, my teeth began their downward spiral.
I’m happy to say that I have fully recovered from the bulimia but the rotting of my teeth has haunted me ever since. Couple that with an intense fear of the dentist after a REALLY horrific root canal that ended in an extraction, and it didn’t take my mouth long to turn into a pretty big mess.
When I lived in Phoenix,it was getting to the point where I had some really bad infections. I knew that they couldn’t do any work on my teeth if they were infected so I would make a worry free visit to have them give me an evaluation, knowing they wouldn’t be poking around in there. They would quote me a price, give me some anti-biotics and I would be on my happy way. Once the infection cleared up I wasn’t in *so much* pain so I never made the follow up appointment to get the work done. Once the infection came back I would do the same thing over again…and so on and so forth.
Once we moved out to California I had to do something. I can’t remember if it was a tooth infection or perhaps a crown that had come off but something had forced me to find a dentist out here.
Thankfully the first place I visited, I fell in love with. They claimed to specialize in “scaredy cats” and introduced me to the wonderful thing that is sedation dentistry.
This will be my fifth and hopefully final sedation dentistry. Each visit has cost me thousands of dollars and has totally been worth it!! I basically take a little nap and when I wake up the dental work is done. It’s sore but I don’t remember a thing of the visit! This was the stuff I had needed all along!
I can’t even express the difference in my teeth since I first started seeing this dentist. I went from constantly being in pain, always having swollen glands in my neck due to infections…now nothing! I honestly thought I would have to live in pain for the rest of my life or get my teeth all extracted because I had let the damage go so far.
After I made the payment over the phone, I called my friend Paula and told her the insane amount of money I had just spent in the course of five seconds. She told me that I was very lucky that my husband was supportive of this. She said a lot of guys wouldn’t have been. I agreed but pointed out that he had seen me in so much pain for so long…he had seen me have to use a mouth guard to eat my dinner because my bottom teeth were so rotten that if I didn’t I would be in severe pain. But I am lucky that has been so supportive and willing to use “our” money to get this all taken care of.
So on after Friday, my dental transformation will be completed. I’m over the moon with happiness!
Dog+Advil=Bad
A little background before I tell today’s tale:
I get really bad cramps at that time of the month. I have since I first started. I have also always kept an Advil tablet or two next to my bed since I realized that when I wake up at three in the morning it is easier just to roll over, pop the pill and get back to sleep. If I have to get up and get them from the bottle in the cupboard I am less likely to take one when the cramps start. That leads the the cramps getting so bad that I end up hoarking into the toilet for the rest of the day from the pain.
Having told you that…
This morning at five of eight I was checking my email as I tend to do right before leaving for work. I was just about to scoot into the bathroom to brush my hair when I heard crunch crunch.I whipped around and saw Pappy on the bed by my nightstand swallowing something. I did a quick search of my memory banks and thought there had been a leftover advil tablet on the stand from my last period. I got up and inspected the nightstand…no tablet. It also looked like he had pushed around the towel that I keep on the stand protect the wood.
Now, Rob has a tendency to eat in bed and leave a few crumbs behind so it could have been a cocoa crispy for all I know. However, after a quick search on the Internet for the toxicity of ibuprofen in dogs Rob declared: “We have to get him to the vet!”
Given our dogs penchant for eating anything and everything, I have been known to google certain foods and toxicity in dogs before. There was an incident in Hollywood with some chocolate chip cookies recently and I remembered the websites usually give a ratio between the weight of the dog and how much they can ingest before it is toxic to them. The website that Rob found just said it was bad news all around and had to be dealt with within a half an hour to prevent any long lasting side effects including death.
We rushed down to the vets office(which is thankfully only a mile away…gotta love small towns!) and they immediately took him in the back to induce vomiting. I ran back home because we had forgotten to bring in an example of the pill and by the time I got back they had examined the vomit and said they didn’t find any evidence of a pill. But when I showed the vet tech the pill shape and color he took it and said he would go look again. I’m not sure if he was being extra thorough or it didn’t look like what he thought he should be looking for.
Rob and I sat in the waiting room holding hands. Rob cracking jokes to keep me from having a meltdown. The last time we were in that office together was when we made the hardest decision of our collective lives in choosing to do the humane thing and put Romie to sleep.
Finally the vet came out and she told us that Pappy had thrown up three times and the last time was just mucus so she knew he was completely cleaned out. She said in a few minutes they were going to give him some sort of charcoal treatment that would prevent any remaining chemicals in his system from absorbing or something like that. She said that they didn’t find a pill but if it had been bitten(crunch crunch) that it would have lost it’s shape of course and since it was the same color as the dog food that had come up it would be kind of hard to tell. She said that things looked very positive and that we should come back in an hour.
We got back home and Rob hugged me while I finally had a mini meltdown and then he headed to work. I sat around and waited…finishing a book that I was almost done anyway and then went back to get Pappy.
They said that he would be fine but to just watch him over the next two days since things like kidney problems took a couple of days to show up. Just to monitor his eating and watch for a couple of different signs.
We are home safe now and I am choosing to stay home with him today. Partly to watch over him and partly because of the horrible guilt I feel, having caused him such hardship today. What a horrible mother I am!
Lesson learned? Oh yes. No more shortcuts leaving medicine out for him to munch on.
Poor guy. I think I’m going to go curl up with him right now!
The Library
It has taken me until the age of 34 years old to discover the joys of a little thing called a Library.
Rob has been telling me for several years that I really needed to get a library card. Mostly because I have a tendency to go into a book store and drop an alarming amount of cash. Every time I hit a Borders, he reminds me again that a library card is free.
A couple of weekends ago I had just taken the dog to get his nails trimmed so I was only a block away from the local library here in the village. I decided to drive by and if there were cars in the parking lot, that I would stop in. There were so I did.
The familiar, slightly musty smell reminded me of the local library that we brought the kids to when I was in my teens and worked for a preschool. Back then it was torture to have to hang out there for three hours when I could be home watching TV, but I was getting paid so that made it okay. Now I was seeing this place with the adult eyes of an avid reader and I was instantly in love.
Granted the town I live in is pretty small and the selection was limited but I was able to pick up a good mystery and a CSS instructional book. As I signed up for my card and checked out my books I discovered that libraries have come a LONG way since I was a kid.
The woman handed me some paperwork and explained that there was a website that connected all of the libraries in Monterey County and I could search for whatever book/audio book/DVD that I want and request it. If it was available, they would ship it to my local branch and then call me when it was there so I could come in and pick it up.
Today alone I have saved over 100 bucks when I picked up two audio books and two more mystery novels, and I have season 3 of LOST requested(it is back ordered). ALL FOR FREE!!!!
Now, I am the type to reread books so if I am a HUGE fan of the book I will probably still buy it, but this still saves me mucho bucks on the novels that I just read to fill the time on a rainy day. And Rob and I are really big on listening to audio books on road trips so now I have two cued up in my IPOD right now for our August trip to Vegas.
I can’t believe I have waited so long to discover the wonderfulness that is The Public Library.
The Good Old Days??
I hated high school. I hated any school actually but high school was probably the worst part of school for me(keep in mind that I did not go to college so I can’t put in my two cents for that particular leg of schooling)I never studied and my grades showed it. I lacked any real social skills so if I didn’t enjoy going to school for learning or for socializing there wasn’t a whole lot else to go for was there?
I stayed home a lot. I convinced myself that my mother didn’t seem to mind letting me miss so much school. I remember thinking that at the time but now looking back, she really did try and get me to go. I was just stubborn. I faked sick so many times that I guess she just gave up.
In my high school yearbook, you know the part where they vote for the “biggest flirt” or the “most likely to succeed”? Mine was “Term Paper Illness”. I guess they were lucky I showed up the day they took the pictures.
I never “got” the whole high school socialization thing. I was by no stretch of the imagination popular. I had a small group of friends that I hung out with but I was usually the girl walking down the hall with her head down to avoid eye contact. At the time I thought I would have loved to have been popular but the problem was that I was painfully shy and let’s face it, teenage girls can be some real bitches(hey, I’m guilty of that as well).
I was very self conscious, always second guessing myself and I was constantly wondering if the friends that I did have were mad at me or what I had done wrong if one of my friends didn’t say hi to me in the hall.
I was repeatedly told that these were the best years of my life and I was going to regret it if I didn’t actively get out there and enjoy them. I was an angsty teenager. How could I enjoy the best years of my life when I was miserable all the time? And if these were indeed the best years of my life, does that mean it gets worse??? I was not very hopeful for the future.
So I stayed home “sick” a lot. I would skip classes and the classes I did attend, I would sit in the back of the class and do as little as possible. I had one teacher that literally gave up and let me sit in the back and read a book. I guess she thought as long as I was reading I was getting some sort of educational benefit even though the class she taught was Algebra.
Not surprisingly, I was taken aside by the guidance council at the end of my junior year and told that in order to graduate with my class I would need to take a full years classes, attend the maximum amount of night school classes and on top of that I would have to take four correspondence classes from home.
For a person that hates school, that is pretty much your worst nightmare. School during the day, school at night and then school when you got home.
I did try. For the first quarter of my senior year I did what they told me that I needed to do. I was drowning in school work and I knew it was my own damn fault, but I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I’m sure it comes as no shock to you that I dropped out.
I was only 17 at the time so I needed to get my mothers permission. I sat her down and explained everything. She obviously didn’t want a drop out for a daughter so she did some research. After finding out that there was no difference between a high school diploma from my school and a night school one other than the person that signs the document, she agreed that I could drop out of night school as long as I enrolled straight into the next starting semester of night school classes. Not graduating was not an option. Neither was getting my GED. I was to graduate and that was all there was to it.
At that point I was already taking the night school classes along with my full load of senior classes and those horrible correspondence classes so I jumped at it.
It took me three times as long to graduate but I did eventually get my diploma in 1995.
My social skills finally developed around age 19 or 20, and I know now for sure that my teenage years were FAR from the best years of my life.
Having said that, I always wonder how different my life might be if I could go back and attend high school knowing what I know now. I don’t think I would view the teachers with nearly as much hostility as I once did just because they were “authority figures”. I for damn sure wouldn’t care so much what people thought of me and walk around all day wondering if so and so is mad at me and why. I would definitely try to have more focus and actually pay attention in class. Make an honest effort to try and learn instead of sitting in the back of the class thinking how horrible and it all was.
But then I think that all things happen for a reason. All the things I have gone through in my life have shaped me into the person I am today…and I gotta say, I really like that person.
When dealing with Customer Service…
I am in the customer service industry. Thankfully I am only in the customer service industry over the phone. I’ve done the face to face bit and there is nothing worse. At least I can mute the phone and give out a primal scream if the need should arise.So here is a sort of “what not to do when dealing with customer service” list:
When you are calling a corporation never accuse the person who answers the phone of doing something. Example: “You shipped my order to the wrong location!” “You overcharged me!” No, I can assure you that I did not do that. It’s very likely that I didn’t even take your order in the first place. I just get the pleasure of picking up the phone and getting yelled at for something I didn’t do. The same goes for referring to You People. In fact I would prefer being falsely accused than hearing the phrase You People. My people are from Ireland and I’m pretty sure they had nothing to do with your order either.
Do not use a term of endearment when referring to me. I am not your baby, sweetie, doll, hon or cutie pie. While I may be all of these things to my husband, I am NOT to you. I am a human being and deserve to be shown the same respect you would want someone to show your daughter or your mother.
I realize that you are angry when something has not gone your way. However, you should realize that my desire to help you resolve the situation gets greatly reduced when I am being berated and yelled at. I am fully aware that a trained monkey can do my job, but telling me that does not exactly make me want to bend over backwards to help you…and I don’t think the monkey would either.
In the same vein, swearing is NOT an option. I may cuss like a sailor in my every day life but I do not get paid enough to hear you cursing into my headset. The occasional “damn, I forgot to get my credit card.” aside, I will give you one warning and if you continue to swear at me I will disconnect the call. There is a fine line between being a good customer service representative and taking abuse and since all my calls are recorded, it only makes you look like an ass if you call back and try to get me in trouble.
Do you really think I am interested in hearing your jokes? I’m not. I will listen politely and give you a fake chuckle when you deliver the unfunny punchline but when we hang up I will make fun of you to my co-workers so I can have a real laugh at your expense. Since you fancy yourself a comedian, I don’t figure that you would mind.
Yes, we value our customers, but you are NOT any more important than any other customer. I’m sure in your world, you hold a lot of clout but in mine…not so much. Asking me if I know who I am talking to will result in me reading off your name and address from my computer screen, not make me bow and scrape because you are in fact “kind of a big deal.” If you were that big of a deal with our company, I can assure you that I, a lowly customer service representative would not be taking the phone call.
Do NOT try and engage me in a conversation about religion or politics. I am not being paid to discuss my views on such subjects and chances are, you wouldn’t agree with them anyway, so it’s best we just don’t go down that route. Telling me “God bless you.” if I sneeze is fine but asking me if I have accepted jesus christ as my personal savior is not. Yes, I realize the economy is in the crapper but that has nothing to do with whether you want expedited shipping on your order or not.
We are not friends. My goal is to get you off the phone, hopefully satisfied with the transaction, as fast as possible. I do not need to know, nor do I care that your sister’s friend’s cousin’s hairdresser once visited Monterey and found it to be just lovely. I know what this story is…it is a gateway story and it will lead to harder and more powerful stories. It is best just to not tell any stories at all. If you don’t start, you don’t have to go through the pain of quitting cold turkey.
I realize that you are lonely but there is probably a reason your family stopped talking to you. You are boring. Now if you will excuse me I have to take another call. Have a wonderful day.
It's Christmas!
We got a Christmas tree tonight!!!!! Woohoo!
I know that is exciting for most people, but for me it is super exciting!
I remember as a child sitting in awe on the carpet as my father assembled the giant fake Xmas tree that he put together every year. It was one of those hideous dinosaurs that you had to match color to color each inch of the way. My dad would get frustrated but my brother and I were there to make sure we had all the colors of the branches together to give him as he moved on to the next step. It was one of the few things my brother and I agreed upon.
With the tree assembled, we were not able to decorate it just yet. I remember that clearly. My father had had enough with putting it together and wanted nothing further that night.
Being that we lived next door to our grandparents and the fact that they were semi retired, gave them the job of coming over to our house while my brother and I were still at school and putting the lights on the tree.
That was the official go ahead. Once the lights were on, we were free to decorate to our hearts content.
We were nearly giddy all through the school day, knowing that when we got home there would be fresh strands of blinking lights on our artificial tree…not that we could plug them in…no, that was left for the adults. But the mere fact that they were on the tree meant that my brother and I could pull a full force assault on the tree with our decorations, no matter how horrendous they were.
Tinsel was my favorite. Who could ignore the shiny silver glassiness that adorned the “leaves” of the tree. I loved to pull all the tinsel out and just play in it. This was of course, discouraged.
At the end of the day, after the tree was assembled and lit, my brother and I made haste with the decorations. As if that would hurry Santa down the chimney and deliver our presents faster.
After my father left and it was just my brother and I attending to the tree, the magic wore off. After my fifteenth birthday we didn’t even go on with the charade. There was no point. Christmas wasn’t about the tree or decorations. It wasn’t about much other than family for the few slim years we could afford nothing else.
Now…19 years after I have ever possessed or decorated a Christmas tree, I find myself giddy. I want to document the process on video, though it is a small tree on a table. I want to shout from the rooftops that I have a Christmas tree and I surely can’t wait to string up the lights and put the small green and gold ornaments on it. And I might have gone just a little bit overboard in the star that changes color on the top. It will probably weigh down the whole tree and make it droop, but I don’t care. It is Christmas and I have a tree!
Currently Reading:
No Longer On This Earth, But Forever In Our Hearts
This morning Romie was the same. He had relieved himself on the blanket so Rob washed and dried it.
Romie was now refusing water so Rob called and left the vet a message. Around 7:30 this morning they called us back. They told us to bring him in around 9:45.
Needless to say the minutes passed like hours until it was time. We rolled Romie back on to the now clean blanket and fireman carried him out to the back of the PT. He was a little shaken by the experience and gagged a few times…I thought he might throw up but there wasn’t really anything *to* throw up…after a few seconds he just laid back down and was fine.
As Rob went back to lock up the house I sat on the tailgate of the PT and petted Romie as the tears flowed quite freely.
A few minutes later and we were off to the vet.
When we got there we were both very emotional and the receptionist was very nice. He had seen us out the window prior to coming in the office and told us that the vet was just finishing up and he would be more than happy to come out and get us if we wanted to go back and spend more time with Romie.
Of course, that is what we did. As we were both sitting on the tailgate of the PT petting our beloved dog, a man in a black car drove up blasting the James Blunt song “You’re beautiful” and parked. Not shutting the music off he got out of his car(huge hairy man with no shirt, by the way…) and started shaking out his floor mats.
Rob looked down as his expression broke and said: “He couldn’t be playing Earth, Wind and Fire?” before he burst into tears.
It is a joke of ours that no one can be sad while listening to Earth, Wind and Fire or Dance Hall Crashers.
The guy let the song play in it’s entirety before he finally shut the car off and put a shirt on, disappearing into a building. I don’t think I will ever be able to hear that song again without tearing up…
Finally the receptionist called us in and we waited in the examining room until the vet showed up. He came in and we explained the situation. He told us that in his experience with larger dogs when they lose mobility and the ability to walk away from their refuse, they are no longer happy. When he heard that he was also not eating or drinking anymore he was even more sure that euthanasia was the answer.
He came out to the car and did a brief exam on the dog. He said the heart and lungs still sounded healthy but that obviously with the loss of the back end and the not eating or drinking…at sixteen the most humane thing to do would be to put him down.
They were all very nice and accommodating there. They let us take care of the financial part first at our request. We knew we would be in no shape to want to do it after. They even brought what they needed out to the car so that Romie didn’t have to be moved or otherwise inconvenienced any more than he already had been.
I thought I was ready for it but when he came out with the syringe I lost it. Rob wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to where I couldn’t see what they were doing. With my face buried in his chest I sobbed long and hard, beginning to shake.
Rob just kept whispering into my hair, reminding me to breathe. Telling me that Romie has had a long and happy life.
And just like that it was over. I heard Rob thanking the vet and I looked up long enough to mumble some sort of thanks. He patted me on the back, gave his condolences and they were gone.
I sobbed some more into Rob’s chest. I felt one arm leave me and I heard the back door of the PT swing shut.
I had originally told Rob that I didn’t want to go with him to the burial. That was what I said on Wednesday night when I was in full on denial that my dog could be dying. When Rob said he was going to drop me off at home and head straight for Salinas I realized I needed to be there for that. I wasn’t sure if it was because I didn’t want to be alone or that I wanted the closure, but I knew I had to go.
We stopped at the house very briefly and I stayed in the car.
Not that long ago my friend LaShundia and her children had made Rob and I a gift. They were white dog bone picture frames and the kids had written in pink puffy paint the names of each of the dogs on the frames and put pictures of each inside them. Rob had said at the time that if we ever got the dogs cremated when they passed it would make a cute frame to put with their ashes. Well, it turned out they make a good headstone as well. That is why we stopped at home. Rob also brought Pappy out to me.
Pappy got to ride in the front seat with me for once as we made our way to Rob’s parents house.
Rob had called before we left the vet so Pa Mackadoo had already started digging when we got there. Rob helped him finish and then while Pa went to find a suitable post for our new makeshift headstone, Rob covered Romie with a sheet and we fireman carried him over to his final resting spot.
Once he was covered and the headstone in place, we stood for a few minutes, saying our silent goodbyes and then left.
Now we are here at home and I keep shifting from crying to numb. I think that the decision making was the worst part. I can easily say that to decide to put Romie down was the hardest decision of my life. I mean, I knew what had to be done. I knew that it was for the best…but how can you say that you want to put your dog to sleep when that dog is staring up at your with his sweet brown eyes…not understanding what is going on himself?
But I know it was painless…he just went to sleep. He is in a much better place now and he is not in any pain.
So, to those of you that have known Romie as part of the Mackadoo household, say a prayer, raise a glass…do whatever it is that you do, but do it in honor of Romie. For he truly was one of the best dogs I have ever met, and I am honored just to have had him in my life for the last nine years.
I love you Romie and I will never forget you.
About Me
I am a 50 something married woman living in California.
I enjoy music and traveling, watching crap movies, snuggling with my two adorable dogs and trying to be a good person.
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