So…it is a smoke and mirrors thing, or what?

Sissy and I want to go into business for ourselves and we have been thinking about it for, oh…let’s see…uh, forever now. And we are making ourselves sick about it. We have so many great ideas: making jewelry, making cards, cooking goodies, opening a lunch-box style café, buying stuff wholesale and reselling it on eBay, sewing nifty stuff-n-things, etc. ad nauseum.


How the hell do you get it started?

We get so incredibly frustrated reading these magazine articles, or hearing a story on TV, or NPR, about a person/couple/family that decides to “start their own business”. WHAM! Business is open and successful. But what they always seem to leave out is the HTH – how the hell? How the hell did they do it? It always sounds so simple; one day they were a middle-class 8-5 Monday-Friday working couple, the next thing you know they’ve chucked it all and *POOF* opened a successful business.

A few questions:

• Did you quit your job? What did you live on? Did you have a nice 401(k) that you cashed in and lived off of for six months while you got your business up and running?

• Did you have a well-off relative that conveniently decided to take a dirt nap around that time and leave you a heap of cash?

• Were you sitting on a bus one day, eyes full of tears, and the eccentric billionaire sitting next to you handed you a check and told you to go live your dream?

• Did you rob a bank? Mortgage your house to the hilt and wind up living in your car?

• Do you have the stellar credit rating now required to borrow more than $20 from your local lending institution?

• Who helped you figure out what licenses you needed and what forms to fill out and where to get them? Did you hire someone or get the info off the internet? Did you get the info from Wikipedia or from a reliable source?

• How did you get the health department to allow you to make cakes in your kitchen when it’s the same kitchen you feed your family and 5 cats and 4 dogs out of? Complete with all the hair that goes along with all of them?

• If you were still working full-time, or working part time and going to night school while raising four kids under the age of 2, where did you find the time to manufacture/procure/make your stuff that you sold?

• HOW THE HELL DID YOU DO IT? TELL ME! TELL ME DAMMIT!!!!


Erm…I mean, please would you give me some pointers on how to get my own puny enterprise off the ground without going to jail or owing the IRS my first born child?

Cheers, thanks a lot.

Do they not tell you this stuff because they don’t want you to know that they started the ball rolling on this business back in 1982 and it’s not until now that these people can talk about it without throwing up or passing blood? Is it because they don’t want you to copy them and perhaps harsh on their buzz of success? Or do they just think it’s too boring to talk about and that if you are really serious you will go out and figure it out for yourself because the information is out there and fairly easy to find as long as you don’t have the attention span and corresponding brain size of a fruit fly? Hmmm.

The phrase, “It takes money to make money” keeps rolling around in my and Sissy’s brains. And it’s true. We don’t have a cent to our name that doesn’t actually belong to someone else right now; my credit wishes it was good enough to be called “shredded and thrown to the four winds of the universe”. And with gas currently, as of the writing of this blog entry, $4.30 a gallon out here for the octane level that my Rodeo requires or it will sit on the side of the freeway with its axles folded, a petulant look on its grill, sticking its oil dipstick out a me and saying, “Nyet” (apparently my Japanese import has a masters in Russian – who knew?), life sucks. We desperately need to do something to bring in more money, but we don’t have the money to get anything off the ground. It’s that stupid loop that makes the world go freaking nuts and makes holding up a Starbucks seem like a great idea (it isn’t – so don’t).

And so I lay awake nights, great ideas for businesses swirling through my head while the knowledge that I lack the tools to get any of them off the ground eats through my stomach lining.

Sigggghhhhhh.

Spot me a tenner, will ya? I’m off to go buy lottery tickets.

I Have Returned...

Well, here I am again.  So sorry to have left you for so long, but I just haven't been able to get back into the blog swing of things again.  I think that I am ready to get back to it now though; I have missed it so and have found myself narrating blogs in my head.  I figured I should start getting them in writing again.

Not much has changed, yet everything has changed.  Does that make sense?  I left Montana 15 months ago; it seems like yesterday.  It seems like forever ago.  I will always miss Montana, but I don't regret coming back to my family out here.

Here is a basic rundown of the haps:

• Looking for work
• Feeding seven (7) animals every day, twice a day.  Five kitties (Ethel, Barnes, Teddy, Muffin, and Gus-Gus), and two dogs (Luka and Bruiser).  Yes, we have a cat named after a mouse.  We don't think he gets the irony.
• Looking for work
• Looking for work
• Did mention walking Bruiser (Luka takes care of herself) and scooping five (5) kitty litter boxes everyday?  Well, consider it mentioned.
• Still looking for work.
• Visiting Mom.
• Mom has surgery to repair a second hernia in her abdomen in November.
• I babysat my 4-year-old great-niece for 10 days last December.  I went from living like a hermit for 10 years to babysitting a precocious, yet precious, and did I mention very active 4-year-old.  It was exhausting.  It was awesome.
• STILL looking for work
• Had a kidney stone in June.  So far it was the easiest one I've had, but it still left me with a $1500 emergency room bill.  And that was after the $500 discount they gave me for not having any medical insurance.  Woot!
• Did have a temp job for a couple of weeks doing data entry from 4pm to 3am down in Portland.  It paid pretty well but I just could not deal with the hours and the working conditions.  Plus, I had to stay at Mom's from Tuesday after work until Saturday Noon; then I could run home here to the house for Saturday evening til Monday Noon when I had to drive back down to start again.  It was literally killing me, and the family staged an intervention to get me to quit.  I was grateful, but back to being broke.  Sigh...
• Back to looking for work
• Mom had surgery in August to remove all the mesh in her abdomen that was put in from her two hernia surgeries.  She never really recovered from the one in November; her incision just would not heal and it kept abscessing.  She was extremely uncomfortable and had zero quality of life.  She recovered quickly from this surgery and is doing just great now.  She is completely back to her old self again.  
• Still looking for BLOODY WORK.
• In September, the reason why I moved back here raised it's head.  My brother-in-law, Les, was on the road in the middle of TX when he became ill.  He has been having a lot of trouble with his urinary system over the last year - lots of bladder infections, etc.  We convinced him to go to the ER out there at the nearest hospital.  To make the long story short, they found he has bladder cancer.  He was in the right place at the right time, as the hospital he wound up at actually is the leading expert on bladder cancer in that area.  They went in and debulked the tumor and my sister drove out and brought him home.  He has since had two more surgeries up at the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) in Portland, and tomorrow goes back in to have his bladder and prostate removed.  His prognosis is really good considering he has a very aggressive type of cancer; he will have to pee into a  bag for the rest of his life, but the important thing is that he will have a rest of his life.  He has not been working since he got ill in September, and we are doing the best we can getting by on Sis's part-time (yet well paying) job and Mom's VISA card.
• The animal count went UP one in October when we adopted a handi-pawed (awwww) Doxie named Monty.  He was unceremoniously dumped at a vet in Idaho when his owners allowed him to severely injure his back.  When they discovered the extent of his injuries, they discovered they didn't want him back.  Sis found him online and he now has a very happy home here with us.  I started a new blog about him, and you can read about him here.
• Last month I found a great staffing service out in Longview, WA and signed up with them.  I got a job two weeks ago with Longview Fibre and have an 85 mile round trip commute that uses a full quarter tank of gas every day.  But I like the people I work with and hope to get hired on there as a LF employee.  Oh please, oh please, oh PLEASE!  I am gone from 6:30am to 6:30pm and right now I.  Am. Tired.  All. The.  Time.  But, I will get used to it, and I have to climb a flight of stairs at least four times a day, so I am hoping to have smaller hips at some point as well.

Well, that is pretty much the last 15 months in a nutshell.  I promise to get better about the blogging, but it might be a little spotty right now.  I will also, at some point, get around to updating the stuff on the side of my blog (rubbish about the books I am reading and the movies I've seen, etc.).  Thanks to my followers that haven't given up on me!

TTFN.

PS - I am thinking of renaming the blog since I no longer live on the prairie nor live in a duplex.  Any ideas?  Or should I just leave it the same?

I'm Back! Intros please...

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back on here, but rest assured that I have arrived safe and sound in Onalaska, Washington. It was interesting getting the move together; the moving company was AWESOME - they delivered all my crap intact and on time. The moving truck arrived on Sept. 17th bright and early. There were only two guys, and I thought it would take them forever to get the truck loaded with just two of them, but they were fab-u-lous and had everything loaded and ready to go by 1:30pm. I spent the night at a hotel and then went back the next morning to clean and pack up my truck. Unfortunately, I managed to leave one box behind in the garage; it had stuff that was near and dear to me in it (including my ergonomic keyboard that you can't find anymore) like my tax returns for the last several years, and a really nice collage picture frame with pictures of all my great-nieces and great-nephews in it. I realized that I had left it behind sometime around Bozeman; too far to go back and get it, and no bars on the cell phone to call the landlord. Oh well, thought I; I will call him when I get to Sissy's. Surely he will call me if he has any questions about what to do with it; after all, he is an intelligent human being and I left him my new address and my cell phone number on the kitchen counter with the AC remote and the garage door opener.

In my glee of starting my new chapter in life, I forgot that my landlord is a twat and a knob-end. I reached him a few days later and he told me that he had "gotten rid of" the box of stuff. I cried for two days. He doesn't know it, but his ass has a future appointment with my sister's foot.

Anyhoosier, my trip went smoothly. Until...

As I was going over the pass between Montana and Idaho, I felt what I thought was a rock being kicked up by my Rodeo's front passenger side tire. No big deal, but it sounded like an awfully soft rock. Hmm. Fast forward to climbing the hill on I-90 going through Couer d'Alene, ID. Another soft sounding rock being kicked up. Now it feels like there is a bit of a wobble in that tire. Hmmm...am I losing lug nuts? Since I was *this close* to peeing my pants anyway, I stopped at a rest area just outside of Post Falls. Went pee, looked at lug nuts. Nope - all accounted for. Hmmmmmm... Continued on to Spokane, and now the wobble-type-feeling is alarming. I can barely keep the steering wheel in my hands. Time to get gas, will inspect tire at gas station. I pulled up to the pump, looked at the tire, and nearly pooped my pants. There was a large (5" at least) section of the tire MISSING. Metal wires were sticking out. It's a miracle I didn't blow the tire! I ran into the gas station asking if there was a full service station or a tire store nearby. There was; I gingerly drove as fast as possible to it, pulled into the parking lot just in time to see the guy locking the door. PANIC!! I begged him to change my tire, and he was more than happy to put my spare on for me, check my other tires, and put a little air in them - free of charge. Bless his little pea pickin' heart!!

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful, but I didn't get to Sissy's until almost 1am. I. Was. TIRED. But happy. And tired.

Did I mention that I was tired? Yes. OK, just checking.

So now I would like to introduce you to some of my new house mates. Please to enjoy.

This is Bruiser, or as I call him: Bruiser Buckman, Uber Pooper with the Wild Willy. You may remember from one of my last posts that Bruiser had seriously injured his spine. The vet said that he would never stand or walk again, and Sissy was heartbroken - to say the least. Well, the Flying Black Weenie Dog of Death was not to be dismissed so easily as that. Not only does he indeed stand, but he walks and runs too! Well, his front legs work normally, but he puts his back legs together and hops with them. He can out run me, so... Sissy bought him a little stroller (think baby buggy as opposed to an umbrella stroller) so that we can wheel him around the house with us when he wants to be with us, but we don't want him ON us. We take him into stores with us (the top zips shut with a mesh so that he can see out, but people are not able to touch him) and we take him to the park in it, etc. Even though he wants to run around and jump up and down, his spine is still extremely fragile and still healing, so we try really hard to not let him get too active. It's amazing how quickly I fell in love with him, and he with me. Sissy is still first in his heart, but I come in a real close second, and that feels wonderful.

Sissy, Bruiser and I took a drive one day out to the Washington coast - just long enough to say, "Look! There's the water!", then we turned around and drove back home (pics of that day will follow). We drove through the local Dairy Queen, and Bruiser got his own cone. HE IS SO CUTE!! (shut up)

Bruiser tells those pesky seagulls to poop on the car at their own risk boy howdy.

This beautiful smiling gal is Luka.

We aren't sure what kind of dog she is; it appears that she has Blue Heeler, Pit Bull, and perhaps Akita in her. She is super duper smart and very protective; she has chased bears and god knows what else off the property. She just appeared at Sissy's house one day and never left. She is Awesome.

This lovely lady is the youngest and newest member of the family, Miss Muffin.

She is about a year old and we think that she is a calico/Rag Doll mix. Although she appears dainty, her tag line is: Hi! I'm Miss Muffin. Let's wrastle!

This is Miss Muffin's nemesis, Teddy.

He is a pure bred Rag Doll, and he thinks that he is a dog. Seriously. I am so not kidding. After dinner, when the dogs get their little dessert treat, we have to give him one too. He does not purr like a normal cat either. I actually got him to purr the other day, and Sissy was amazed as she had never heard him do it. You can't tell from this picture, but he has the most gorgeous china blue eyes. Oh, yes, and he is a total Pill.

This is the old man of the family, Barnes.

He is at least 20 years old and is beloved by all the cats - even the dogs love him! He has a super industrial sized purr - you can actually hear him from across the room.

This is Gus Gus (yes, after the mouse in Cinderella - my brother-in-law named him).

We actually think he is gay (not that there is anything wrong with that) because he acts like a total queen. Barnes is the only animal in the family that will tolerate his presence (except for Ethel), but the other cats hate him and Bruiser would love to bite his big fat butt if he could ever get the chance. We don't really understand this, he seems nice enough.

Ethel makes up the complete animal family here, but she has some serious heath issues and lives solely in my sister's bedroom and is very, very shy. She is a great round black kitty with huge yellow eyes; she suffers from chronic (as in daily) kidney stones and is not usually in the best of tempers. I will try to get a decent picture of her to post soon.

So, that's all of us; I'll share more later. Right now, my hands are tired since I cannot type on my fabulous ergonomic keyboard anymore because some TWAT that shall remain nameless threw it out...but I don't want to talk about that. I will fill you in later on the job hunt, etc.

Thanks for all the nice emails - thanks for not giving up on me!

TTFN.

I Made It!! Whew!!

Hi all - just wanted to throw a quick post at you to let you know that I finally made it to my new home in Washington. I'll be putting up a proper post in a few days, complete with a few pictures, but for now I just wanted to let you know that I'm still here (but HERE and not THERE). Once I get used to the miracle of television again - you know, since I haven't been able to watch any for about two months - I'll be able to tear myself away from the remote and get back to writing.

TTFN!

Stop Haunting My Dreams

I dreamed about him last night. I hate it when I do. I don’t do it very often, and when it happens it takes me by surprise. It’s usually just some small, passing part of my dream and very rarely is he the main focus. Last night I dreamt I was limping along a mountain path and suddenly he was beside me, his arm wrapped around me and was almost lifting me off the ground (I am always the “thin me of my youth” in my dreams so the lifting was definitely doable for him). I kept telling him that I was OK, that he didn’t need to squeeze me that tight; he was afraid of someone seeing him holding me like that but he said that he just didn’t want to let go. It was a few dream minutes of that; then it was over.

When I awoke this morning I could still feel his arms around me, holding me tight, making me feel safe. Then I realized it was just the blanket. It made me cry; it’s making me cry right now. I’m not crying for the loss of him, specifically; it’s the loss of that feeling – that feeling of safe, of love, of affection, of protection. I always felt those things in his arms, and that is what I miss now. It makes me nuts because it always lingers with me throughout the day, sneaking up on me when I least expect it and it makes my eyes smart with tears. Pisses me off. Especially because I am not very attractive when I cry; my face gets blotchy, my nose turns bright red, and my eyes turn red, swell, and look small and beady. I look like a piglet that’s been rooting in the onion bin. Yuck. Sigh. Sniff.

He seems to turn up in my dreams most often when I am stressed or feeling anxious. This move has got me flying in the dangerous red zone of an almost constant panic attack. I am at about Defcon 2 at this stage; not a full blown melt down, but my ears are ringing all the time and I can’t seem to catch my breath. Mom is coming on the 21st (that is probably part of the problem; like 7/8th’s of it I’d say) to help me get packed up. I hope I won’t suffocate her in her sleep before she flies back on the 28th, god love her. I don’t know what I would do without her.

I have decided to go with a moving company instead of the U-Haul route; it’s just going to be so much simpler on everyone. I have one estimate from Allied ($3900) and will be getting one from Mayflower on Monday. It will take almost all of my money, but I think it will be worth it in the long run. The guy from Allied that came to my hideously unkempt house on Tuesday was awesome. He gave me all kinds of tips on the cheapest places to get boxes, getting boxes out of the dumpster from behind the bike shop on Broadwater and 19th because they are awesome for packing my framed art pictures in, etc. I wanted to adopt him.

My company has just this week started to interview potential replacements for me; we received over 150 resumes in response to the job posting. I couldn’t believe it. We started turning some of the work over to our customer service departments; the sales reps are having a really hard time letting them take over. I keep trying to convince them that if they don’t start now, it will be so much harder for everyone after I leave. It’s a learning curve for everyone.

Well, that is it for now. I’ll keep you informed and let you know if I survive my Mom’s visit.

TTFN.

Wow – I had not realized how long it has been since I last posted. Sorry about that! My life is in kind of a holding pattern right now, and unfortunately that makes everything lock up; my brain, my body – everything.

The move is still on; mom is coming the week of 8/23 to help me pack. It’s kind of sad and humiliating when you are 43 and you need your 74 year old mother to fly out and help you pack, but let me tell ya: she is a packing machine. That woman can have me and my 2-bedroom duplex packed and move ready in about three days. Seriously. I will want to suffocate her in her sleep by the time she leaves, but it will be totally worth it. And this way she knows that all of her china and crystal stemware that she gave to me will be properly packed and she won’t have to worry about it. Because, trust me; she will.

Bruiser, my sister’s Flying Cocktail Weenie Dog of Death, has severely injured his back. He accidentally fell off of my mom’s bed when they were visiting earlier this week, then Wednesday he injured himself pretty badly when jumping on or off the couch. Sis took him to the vet immediately and they didn’t think he had done any real damage; they gave him some pain meds and Sis took him home. She tried to keep him moving around a little so that he didn’t get stiff but kept him on the floor and didn’t let him up onto the furniture. Yesterday he was curled up in his little bed on the floor next to her computer; she realized he’d been in there for several hours and decided to wake him up so that he didn’t get stiff and sore. When he crawled out of the bed, his little body was curled up almost like a U, with his hind end trying to be next to his head, and he was dragging his back feet. She called the vet immediately and ran down to the office to get a powerful muscle relaxant for him. Later she took him back to the vet and they took some x-rays; he has damaged three vertebrae in his spine. They said he has a “good 50/50 chance” of recovery, but Sis is just devastated. She has been crying for two days straight; the vet said that this is much harder on her than it is on Bruiser! She is already thinking of getting him a little doggie wheelchair/cart thingy, and the vet said that surgery could help him but it would be $3-5k and she would have to save up for it. I am trying to be encouraging and trying to help her see that this could just be temporary and Bruiser could be in good shape again once all the swelling in his spine goes down. When I was a freshman in high school, our weenie dog Alexander actually broke his back jumping off the back porch (do you see the pattern here?). I was in the middle of band class, out in the middle of the football field in the middle of a formation when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and it was my mother in hysterics. We had to drive about an hour into the Bay Area to get to the specialist vet that would save our Alexander from death and being permanently paralyzed. Mom spared no expense on his surgery and treatment, and he eventually completely recovered. So there is hope for our little Flying Cocktail Weenie Dog of Death, but since he won’t be flying anymore, I guess I will have to come up with another nickname for him. Poor Bruiser; poor Sissy!!

Speaking of close medical calls, I still cannot believe what happened to the kids’ cousin. His sister sent out an email to the family on Tuesday to give us the whole story:

My younger brother Justin (29 yrs old), went into the hospital very suddenly last week, and we almost lost him. He was very fortunate to have an amazing medical team, wife and his young age on his side! It started a couple of weeks ago when he popped his neck (like I do 10 times a day w/o even a thought!) and when he did, he felt instantly sick at his stomach and dizzy. He had a lot of neck pain, and a terrible headache for the next 2 weeks. The beginning of last week, he started having headaches so severe that he would immediately vomit if he stood up, turned his head, or any movement at all. Then on Wednesday night, he was feeling really sick, and he stood up to go to the other room and he just collapsed to the floor. His wife helped him up and to the restroom, then got him into bed to help him feel better. The next morning, he was still really sick but went to work anyway. He got so ill while there that he waved down a coworker who could see something was very wrong, and they took him to the urgent care nearby. When the urgent care Dr read his chart and why he was there, and then walked in the room to see him, he knew something was wrong, and told him it was "out of his league" and he needed to go to the hospital asap. They taped his head to a stretcher and called for the ambulance. They were fast and awesome, got him transported, checked in to the ER and had dr's working on him right away. After 2 cat scans and most of a day of testing while trying to get him comfortable, they discovered he had torn one of his main arteries in his neck. They admitted him to the hospital and started him on blood thinners and pain medicine right away. That night they moved him up to the neuroscience unit and had a watch on him overnight until the specialist could come the next day. When the specialist arrived, he ordered an MRI to confirm his suspicions of strokes, and he was right. There were 2 strokes, one smaller one, that occurred the night he popped his neck, and the second one was much larger and occurred the night he collapsed. They said if he hadn't come into the hospital when he did it would have been almost certainly deadly.

After 5 days at the hospital, a ton of pain medication (not only for the torn artery but also for the neck pain he had to start with and the injuries he got to his neck when he collapsed as well) and pill form + shot injections of blood thinners, tons of tests and dr visits and daily physical therapy, they let him go home last night. The main reason being, there is nothing they can do for him there that he can't do at home. He will still need to attend the physical therapy regularly to relearn his balance and regain his ability to walk ok. He also has to have blood tests every 3 days to monitor the blood thinners in his system, regular dr appts to monitor everything else, and he will need to use his cane and wear his neck brace for a while until they say otherwise. He was soooo fortunate. The doc told us that most people who have the kind of stroke he had come out of it being paralyzed from the eyes down! He has no paralyzation or loss of speech at all so far. The biggest impact has been on his balance, which although sounds somewhat minor... causes him to not be able to stand well, walk well, and also causes constant dizziness and nausea. But, they said the first 18 months is when you relearn your abilities the best so he will be working hard to do so with therapy. Fortunately he is young, and he had a wise dr who recognized something was seriously wrong immediately, and those combined with the fantastic unit in the hospital at Salmon Creek Legacy in WA, he's doing much better. He's off work for now until further notice, and he's mostly in bed from all the meds and from the dizziness. But he's with us! And he's home now! And he will be able to recover over time. The torn artery will heal itself, and in the meantime they will keep watch on the 2 blood clots they found and make sure his blood thinners continue to work. It will be quite a long journey, but he should have a full recovery.

So, thanks for reading my novel! I decided it was much easier to send one long email to everyone than to type it out a whole bunch of times individually. I am doing much better now that I know he's not in as much of a danger zone as he was before. We really thought we were going to lose him last week by the way the dr's were talking to us. One dr said that every morning when he woke up and got ready to start his shift, he wondered if Justin would still be there. That one scared us! My family is soooo happy and grateful that he's ok, and that he's back home with his wife and his kids will be home shortly. A couple of days with their grandparents will entertain them while dad gets settled in at home. His wife, Star, is amazing. She had to be trained by the nurses to give him the shots a few times a day in his stomach for the blood thinners, and she never left his side thru the whole hospital stay. She's a great little care taker and she's home caring for him until he goes back to work or as long as they can both be home.

Unbelievable! So, so, very, very lucky. He has been doing well while he’s been home, and we are so very grateful and glad.

I am currently without cable at home, so that means no TV and no Internet access. The no TV is weird but I’m getting used to it; hopefully I will use the down time that I usually spent on the couch watching TV and eating crap to do something constructive instead – like pack or clean the house before Mom arrives. But so far I have just been reading books, going to bed early, and watching my DVD collection. Currently I am hooked on my BBC version of The Office.

My last day at work will be 8/31, so I won’t be able to post anything to my blogs after that until I get to my new home in Washington, but I’ll try to keep you up to date until then.

TTFN.

If Procrastination Were A Fortune 500 Company, I’d be The CEO

Well, I am still here in Billings. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. My boss came to me and asked me if I would consider helping them out by staying through the end of August, and I agreed. So, instead of being knee deep in the middle of packing, cleaning, and panicking, I’m just sitting and panicking. I still haven’t had a single garage sale.

O ye great moving gods, I pray that you give me the strength to get up off of my fat ass and get my collective shit together. Please grant me wisdom while my sorting my stuff that has got to go into the garage sale; help me to reason that if I don’t sell it, I have to pack it, and if I pack it I have to transport it. Please give me the gift of restraint while my mother is here helping me; she is 74 and shouldn’t have to do this crap for me anymore but she is, and please help me to be grateful for her “suggestions” and “instructions” because otherwise one of us will be dead and the other will be in jail and at this point I don’t know who will be which. Amen.

Sis was understandably disappointed in having to wait a couple more months – so was I – but she has been a good sport about it. Frankly, we both needed just a little more time to get stuff done. We have decided on a game plan if my company asks me to extend my time again; this time it’s all about me. I have worked for this company for 15 years with very little to show for it (other than the panicked look on faces when I announce I will be gone on vacation, and the agonized screams of “You never get to go on vacation again!” when I return); I haven’t had a raise in years and I am the company pack mule for getting the work done. So, if they want me to stay past August 31st they will have to pay for a moving company to move me. No more U-Haul and my family having to come all the way out here to help. After September, the weather starts to get unpredictable and with five mountain passes to go over I am not going to ask my family to help me with that. Also, I am going to ask the company to lay me off. This way, I can collect my 15 years worth of severance pay since they are not going to keep my job position the way it is after I leave, and any arrangements for employment I may have made will go right out the window. If they don’t want to do these things, then they are SOL after 8/31. And that’s the truth, pfffft.

Other than that, things are still pretty much the same, dang it. I was really proud of myself for mowing the front yard the other day; I didn’t think I would physically survive it but I did and there was much patting of my back, clapping of hands and telling myself, “YOU DID IT!! YAY YOU!”

The sun went behind the one little grey cloud that was in the sky, and about 16 drops of rain fell. The sun came out again and all was lovely.

Approximately 9.2537 minutes later, the grass grew back to the same height it was before I mowed it.

Stupid lawn.

TTFN.