Bad News and Good News

I learned that my high school choir director passed away this morning.  I'm not sure why it bothers me so much, but it does.  By all I've learned, TK enjoyed a happy life with a loving family and a thirty-plus-year career doing exactly what he loved to do. 

Several months back, TK was depressed and actually believed that he'd been forgotten and hadn't made a difference in his students' lives.  His daughter organized a reunion of sorts with former students in the nursing home courtyard, and it really made his day.  It seemed kind of corny to go, but a friend and I went anyway.  I'm glad we did.  We made TK happy and happened to reconnect with some old friends too. 

My sister would have turned 50 this month.  Wow. 

Next month marks our 20th anniversary in this house. 

The kids are good. V makes her confirmation in April.  She's in her 6th year of dance classes.  B is still playing baseball and is gearing up for the spring season.  C is in preschool and takes dance classes too. 

Dakota (our 3rd Shedder) is gray around the muzzle and somewhere around ten years of age.  Thankfullly she's still healthy and strong.  She's such a good girl.

I'm still working midnight shift.  There doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day for everyday tasks, let alone Blogging.  If all goes well (cross your fingers!) I'll join day work this summer.  Hooray for normalcy!

Random Pictures

In no particular order, because I hate shuffling pictures around in Blogger. The majority of photos were taken in December during the Santa special train ride

Doing the Fig Newton ("Here's the tricky part!" Remember that commercial?)

Summertime, Knoebel's Amusement Park.

B's First Communion in May. Not sure whether I posted about this or not. Handsome kid, isn't he? He insisted on wearing a tuxedo, and he was clearly the best-dressed kid there. I hated giving it all back, but I ordered the tie and pocket square from Beau Ties, Ltd. in Vermont so he'd have something to keep. You can't see it, but the pattern is vintage fighter planes on a gold background. V is in the background, The Oracle is in the shirtsleeves, and the kids' godfather is in the suit.

Back to the Santa train. C with Frosty.

C wants attention, and she knows how to get it. At this moment, she's standing behind the computer and yanking at the wires. She'll be three in February. B and V turned 8 and 10 in August.

Where does the time go?

Five Months?

Ummm... yeah.

I can't believe it's been five months since I've made an entry here. I never meant to send my blog to the scrap heap, but the need for sleep outweighed the need to write things here. I wanted to post, but it seemed like I didn't have the time.

Anyway, most notable in the last five months is the addition of a new Shedder to our household. I found her through the same rescue that gave us Duchess, and I picked her up at the end of April.

Dakota is the biggest Shedder we've ever owned. She can eat off the table without stretching and hovers around 100 pounds. She's one BIG dog. She's seven years old and very affectionate, but she isn't the perpetual puppy that Duchess was. All Duchess ever wanted to do was play.

V and B passed their grades and moved up. V's dance recital in June was excellent, and B's spring baseball was a lot of fun.

My in-laws are doing well. MIL is gradually slowing down more and more and her memory switches off as much as it's on. Well, it's probably more off than on, but we're lucky that her physical health is good, she's mostly compliant with my FIL's care, and she's shown no desire to wander (one of the things I fear most). In fact, her lack of ambition is stunning. My FIL is most persistent in getting her to perform basic exercise, but she'd prefer sitting on the couch (the polar opposite of her pre-stroke self).

The Oracle's contract hassles finally culminated in a new company being awarded the contract once and for all, but we were fortunate that they hired him on. In several respects they've proven to be a fair employer, and I'm most thankful for that.

Me? I'm still working midnights. Most of the time I cashier, but they still put me on the deli once or twice a week. I dislike the deli more with every shift I work.

We had some huge electrical storms pass through the area, and one that took place directly over our house blew out our oven. Last year, I guess it was, we had to replace the oven's electrical panel to the tune of over $400. I'm torn when it comes to replacing the panel again or buying a new oven. Part of me doesn't want the hassle of oven shopping, but the oven is 15+ years old. Ugh.

We also had to replace our washer. I was mightily pissed at the appliance dealer who told me my purchase was not made in China only to discover "Made in China" stamped all over the box when it was delivered. I admit I was tempted to send it back, but I was afraid of losing the baby in the mountain of laundry.

So, in short, I'm busy with everyday stuff. Now that school is back in session, I might have an opportunity here and there to post something interesting, provided something interesting happens. I mean, who wants to read about the kind of junk you endure every day yourself?

Oh! Another dance season has started, and V is in three classes this year. Tap, Jazz, and she also returned to Hip Hop. C is also supposed to start a mommy & me class this year, but they're short on registrations. Hopefully they'll sign up a few more kids in the next couple weeks.

The Big Plan

This is PD's and B's first day off for Easter Break. The are already nitpicking at each other like it's the middle of summer.

V has a guitar she doesn't know how to play. Nibs found the guitar pick and was playing with it. B had the audacity to take the pick away from Nibs. Well, PD caught B with the pick and threw a conniption, charging at him like a bull with her hands like claws. I'm not sure what happened to whom after that, but she got a time out.

So, a couple hours later -- just to add a little spice to his life -- B sneaks up on PD and shouts, "Boo!" to scare her.

This, of course, takes place immediately after I put Nibs down for a nap.

PD immediately freaks at B, shoving him around and screaming in his face at the top of her lungs. During her tirade she says, "You make me want to run away!"

Being no help to her at all, I had to ask a bunch of practical questions like where she'd run to, what she'd eat or drink, and how long she thought she could survive on her own. Based on the answers she gave, her plan is surprisingly simple: She'd live in the back yard, eat nothing, and last about a week.

Oh, my. She's only nine. What will life with her be when she's 13?

Together Again

We said goodbye to our Chessie on Saturday morning.

Catching up

Hi. Remember me? Neither do I. Author's note: Blogger isn't putting in my paragraphs despite repeated attempts at editing them back in. Sorry for they eyeball pain! ---- I'm still working midnight shift at the convenience store. Work has gotten much easier since one of the cashiers on my shift left and they hired a new person in the deli. I get to spend a fair amount of time on register now. I am just as busy, but the tasks themselves are easier. I also like switching between deli and register. ----- Her Nibs walks and talks and is so stinkin' cute I can't stand it. I've forgotten how much fun toddlers can be, and we're all drinking up every bit of it. She loves her puppy and her blanket and doesn't go anywhere without them. She loves to color and loves books. She says "please," "thank you," and "you're welcome" on a consistent basis (way more than her siblings do), and she uses them appropriately. She loves to dance. The minute she hears music, she's bouncing to the rhythm. She still tries to use the potty. She lost interest for a little bit, but she seems to be turning back to it. She loves frozen peas, chicken thighs, pizza, meatballs, apple slices, grapes, Peppermint Patties, and Dots. Orange juice is her #1 beverage choice, with chocolate milk holding the #2 spot by only a few points. If I let her, she'd drink those two things all day long and skip food completely. ----- Mighty B's Cub Scout troop organized a weekend trip to Washington D.C. I was really excited to go, since my few visits there were short and I didn't get to see much. The Oracle and I have learned that we still can't travel long distances with our kids and stay in hotels because they are still uncivilized banshees. Nibs was the only one who behaved herself, but sleeping in a strange place stressed her out, and, despite utter exhaustion, she had trouble sleeping. ----- Mighty B. started drum lessons in January. In spite of the fact that we have to stand over him with a whip to get him to practice, he seems to be really good at it. His latest obsession is Mario Kart on the Wii. If I let him, he'd play video games all day long. ----- Precious Daughter's latest obsession -- although she won't admit it -- is a boy in her class. She's already feeling the pressure of the jealous girls trying to interfere with that, too. From the evidence brought home, the boy likes her as well. Fortunately, he's a nice kid. While I'm not excited over the fact that my nine-year-old daughter wants to have a "boyfriend," I am comforted by knowing that having a boyfriend in fourth grade simply means you chase each other at recess, and once in a while Mom needs to pack an extra sweet to share with him at lunch. ----- Another dance recital is coming in June as well, and after homework is done I get to hear PD's tap shoes pounding away in the kitchen. I found a pair of tap shoes in Nibs' size at the consignment shop for five bucks so she can properly interfere with PD's practice. Heh-heh-heh... ----- I am passively looking for a dog. It's not an all-out search, just some poking around on Petfinder to see who's available. The Oracle is warming up to the idea. He doesn't want another German Shedder (yet), so I may have to stop being so narrow minded on the subject. He wants an English Bulldog. Well, he'd also like a dachshund or a corgi, but my size requirement is not negotiable. If it's below my shins, I'm going to trip over it. At least if I trip over a bulldog, I won't kill it. ----- Really, though, the Shedder is the perfect dog. They're smart, playful idiots with big teeth and enough of a bad reputation to make strangers think twice about approaching our house. ----- My MIL turns 88 today. Her physical health is amazing. Her mind is slipping some more. She remembers me and the kids with little problem, unless my FIL is giving her a refresher before we arrive. Last night, she was confusing The Oracle with her brother. In her defense, she has always claimed that they looked alike. Anyway, she told The Oracle that he had a nephew that looked just like him, but she couldn't think of the nephew's name. That made me really sad. ----- And now, I must sign off. Her Nibs must be in the midst of a growth spurt. She's been sleeping for 11 hours now, and if I don't wake her up she'll soak out the diaper and wreck her bed.

Time Flies...

Wow. I haven't posted since December 9? I'm sorry! Here's a quick recap of notable events over the last month and a half. They're in no particular order because I have a craptastic memory and little concept of time. Asking me to put it all in order would be cruel, and my post would never make it up to the blog if I tried.

Most recent and most sad is the passing of my great uncle, the last and youngest of my grandmother's 12 siblings. (Most tragic to note is that of 12 children, only seven made it to adulthood, and one of those seven was killed during WWII. Seeing how awful it was for my mother to lose one child, I can't imagine what toll those statistics took on my great grandmother.) Uncle John hit the lifelong lottery. At the amazing age of 94, he maintained a sound mind and good health up until this latest illness.

Mighty B. has been a mighty challenge. This year, Santa gave him his presents but also gave him a stocking filled with coal instead of goodies. B. wasn't the least bit upset by it, at least on the outside. Santa has been waiting for a day of outstanding behavior to give B. his stocking stuffers, but there hasn't been any. *sigh*

Precious Daughter confessed that she has a crush on a boy in her classroom. I haven't mentioned this tidbit to The Oracle, mostly because I forgot to tell him. He was working late when she told me, and I tend to nap when he's around because I can. Midnight shift can really suck sometimes.
Her Nibs is going to be two in just a few weeks. I can't believe it! She is trying potty training on for size. For the last couple months, she has intermittently peed in the potty. It's not consistent by any means, but she knows what it's for and isn't afraid of it, so I anticipate it will be easier than it was with the first two. Mighty B. was (surprise!) just stubborn about it, and Precious Daughter was afraid of the flush. (Wanna send an almost potty-trained three-year-old into an absolute panic? Take her to an echoey department-store bathroom with auto-flush toilets at lunch time. To this day, she hates auto-flush.)

It's snowing today. We've had snow just about every week since Christmas, and I'm loving every inch of it. Yeah, shoveling sucks, but snow just makes the winter world look so much brighter. I guess it's easy for me to love it when I'm sitting in my living room and looking out the window. I can honestly say that even when I had to fishtail my way (in my '72 Duster) along the seventeen-mile trek to work, I still loved it.

Hey, does anyone have a '72 Duster for sale, one that hasn't been modified for racing?

I just learned that my kids are getting out early today, so maybe I won't have to shovel! Haha!!!!

If People, Like Cats, Had Nine Lives...

..I just saw someone torch four of them in less than twenty seconds.

The glare of the morning sun is quite vicious today.

I drop The Oracle off at the train station and make my left turn to head homeward. Just as I start accelerating, a puny Honda Prius makes a left turn directly into my path. I wasn't even coming out of the glare; I was heading into it. She should have seen me. I had to mash the brake into the floorboard to avoid slamming into her (Life #1). It's a miracle that I wasn't rear-ended.

Then the Prius runs its passenger-side wheels over the fog line and into the grass, narrowly missing a telephone pole (Life #2). She swerves to avoid the pole and misses a car parked at the nursing home by inches (Life #3).

Prius oversteers again when she swerves back onto the two-lane roadway directly into opposing traffic, forcing two cars off the road into the gravel and someone's driveway (Life #4).

So, in addition to four of her own lives, she also took one from at least three other drivers, myself included. I was just about to call her license plate in to the police when she hit the shade and miraculously straightened herself out. Until then I sincerely thought she was drunk.

Add in the road-rage factor, and she may have burned five.

Yup. I'm Here

My badly-neglected blog is probably going to run away from home and join the circus. All is well in PB and Bacon land. I've just been really busy and haven't had the time. Well, I did have the time a couple weeks ago, spending the better part of an hour on a Halloween post, but Blogger misbehaved and I lost half of the post. I signed off in a snit and haven't been back.

I'll try to get something together by Christmas, okay?

Memory from Court Reporting School

I spent seven l-o-n-g years in court-reporting school. I had classes three nights a week. To graduate, you have to reach speeds between 180 and 225 words per minute depending on the type of writing you're doing.

Now, I didn't want this to become a lesson in court-reporting how-tos, but to briefly break it down, a court reporter is tested for five minutes in three different aspects of writing. Testimony, or Q&A, has to reach 225 words per minute in order to graduate. Jury Charge (instructions to a jury by the judge) must reach 200 words per minute, and Literary, which is simply text from any source (speeches, essays, magazine articles) must reach 180. The killer is that you have to pass your tests with 95% accuracy. It's the only school in the world where a 94% is a failing grade. (If you know a court reporting student, don't DARE to ask when they're going to graduate, not unless you want a black eye.)

Once we were writing at roughly 100 words per minute, every speed class had an "opportunity" at the end. We weren't allowed to call them tests. They were called "opportunities" because it was an opportunity to move on to the next speed level if you passed. I guess some wanna-be psychologist at the school decided it would be less stressful on the students if you didn't call a test a test.

"A rose by any other name" can still make you sneeze.

One of the most unrealistic aspects of court-reporting school was the pin-drop quietness of it all. If there was any greater lie perpetuated by court reporting school (other than, "you'll graduate in a little over three years"), it was the insistence on absolute quiet during perfectly-metered, annunciated, and grammatically-correct dictation by our instructors. Noise of any kind during a test was frowned upon and cause for much whining and complaint by a student who felt they didn't pass a test because so-and-so's steno paper didn't fold properly and riffled out of the tray and onto the floor or somebody sneezed or there was laughter in the hallway.

Once a court reporter hits the real world, they learn a very different thing. Not only do some people speak so dreadfully it sounds like a foreign language, attorneys chew ice or crunch on biscotti during depositions. If words aren't misprounounce or misused, they're sometimes made up on the spot. Add to that the shuffling of papers, coughing, nose-blowing, clattering briefcase hasps, scribbling pencils, cell phones, squeaky chairs, and the birthday party in the room next door, and you'll discover that there's a world of distraction and noise to affect a court reporter's ability to focus on the task at hand.

Well, anyway, during one particular "opportunity," the instructors are reading the test, and the room is silent except for the dictation and the hum of flourescent lighting. As soon as the instructor stops speaking, I am jolted into the "real world" by the entire classroom of 15 women erupting into screams, including the instructors.

LJ and I look at one another. For a split second, she is as bewildered as I am until one of the shriekers yelps the phrase I manage to understand: "IT'S CRAWLING TOWARD HER STENO BAG!"

Well, now, I didn't know for sure what "IT" was, but on the seventh floor of a city building, that crawling thing was either a rat or a roach, and neither was going to hitchhike a ride home with me.

Chairs and steno machine tripods are scraping across the floor as some students scurry out of the room and some of the students take refuge by standing on chairs. LJ and I hop out of our chairs too, but we're the only two that don't lose our heads. I see a hefty-sized cockroach scuttling under a chair, and she and I go after it. One of us eventually crushed it, but I don't remember which one of us did it.

This is NOT normal behavior for me. If there's someone around that I know will kill it for me, I'm more than happy to be the one standing on the chair. The fact is, I didn't trust anyone in that room to do the killing, and if that bug wasn't positively DEAD before I went home, I wasn't going to sleep that night for fear of having it stow away in my bag or my purse. *gurk!*

(And I'm suddenly reminded of the time I dropped a fat rubber cockroach in my sister's purse a few years ago. Heh-heh-heh. I don't even know why I did it.)

I later learned that LJ and I were the only ones in the room who finished taking the test. One by one, all the other students saw that bug and lost their concentration, and not one of them made a peep during five minutes of testing. If I'd been the one that spotted the bug, I couldn't have remained so still or silent. Nope. No way. I suspect that even if I were in a deposition, I'd have to go off the record and kill it before I could resume writing.

Suddenly, I'm all itchy...

Twenty Gallons of Belly Up

This post on Daddy Scratches brought back vivid memories of our first fish tank.

After spending a few petless months in our newlywed apartment, I complained to The Oracle that I wanted a pet. He worked days and I worked 3-11, and I wanted some sort of company during the day while he wasn't home. I'd grown up with all sorts of pets, and being without was lonely. The problem was our lease wouldn't permit anything with fur or feathers.

With the intention of coming home with a Dorothy-in-a-bowl setup, we exited the aquarium store an hour or so later with a couple hundred bucks' worth of stuff including a twenty-gallon tank, filters, stone, plastic plants, aerators and I forget what else.

So we set all the stuff up and waited a couple days as instructed before returning to the store for the thing I really wanted - the fish.

The same clerk who sold us the stuff led us to the freshwater fish. After lots of looking and indecision, I decided on a pair of blue dwarf gouramis, two little orange fish with spiky black tails, and a pair of something that looked like goldfish but weren't. I don't remember what they were except one was a red and black and the other was pink.

Anyway, we brought our little fishies home and put them in the tank. In less than two days, the gouramis went belly up. I called the fish store and complained. That same clerk THEN informed me that gouramis are somewhat sensitive and need a well-established tank in which to surive. Ours was only two days old and didn't have enough of the bacteria and whatnot in the water. I was furious! That jerk of a clerk had no problem selling us everything under the sun two days before; the least he could have done was tell us what wouldn't survive in a new tank.

Shortly after the gouramis died, the red and white fish started fighting. I'm not kidding. They were chasing each other around the tank and attacking one another. Mostly the red one was attacking the pink. It was frenzied and hyper, and not at all what you'd want in a fish tank. (And no, I don't believe it was some sort of romantic ritual, because it NEVER stopped.) I felt sorry for the pink fish, and finally swapped them at Petco for a few fancy-tailed guppies.

The guppies did something I didn't expect. They multiplied. I came home from work one day to a bunch of teeny-tiny fish swimming about the tank, trying desperately to avoid being devoured by the bigger fish. Off to Petco I go, and I buy a cutesy little netted box to isolate the baby fish.

BIG mistake.

Because those little baby fish grew up and made more baby fish.

(Several months later...)

With a cycling population of guppies, The Oracle and I were moving into our house. We rented a U-Haul and stuffed our belongings inside. Due to a last-minute flurry of paperwork from the bank, our moving date wasn't set until shortly before settlement. I didn't have a whole lot of time to consider the logistics of moving a tankful of fish.

On moving day, the last item out of the apartment was the fish tank. I ended up catching as many fish as I could and stowing them in a mayonnaise jar. I siphoned as much water as possible out of the tank and into two clean buckets, leaving four inches of water or so in the tank so we could move the tank onto the truck.

I'd originally considered dumping the water, but I didn't have clean water waiting for me at the new place, and four inches of water isn't enough to run the filters until clean water was ready. Instead, I put the two buckets of water on the passenger-side floor of the truck at my feet.

The ride to our new house, thankfully, is a very short one. The Oracle gently pulls out of the apartment complex and pulls up to a traffic light. When he makes a left turn, a hefty amount of 84-degree water sloshes out of the buckets and slops all over my shoes. Ewwww. At every stop the same thing happens, and by the time we arrive at the house the U-Haul smells and my feet are squishing inside my shoes.

We set the tank up in the corner of the living room, gently replaced the water still in the buckets, and returned the guppies and two orange fish to the tank. The guppies maintained a steady population of a dozen or so fish in the tank. The orange fish eventually died.

And, eventually, I got sick of the tank. Cleaning it was a pain, filter-changing was a pain, and it always smelled no matter how clean it was. When the detectives I worked with decided to set up a tank in their shared office, I offered my guppies to the new tank, and they accepted. When the tank was ready and their new fish were moving in, I bagged up the guppies and brought them in too.

Within a half hour, my guppies vanished. I didn't see that coming. At least it was quick.

I cleaned the fish tank and its paraphernalia and relegated the whole mess to the basement. A few years later we sold our couple-hundred-dollar investment for twenty bucks at a yard sale.

When Mighty B. recently voiced his desires for a fish as a pet, it was all I could do not to bellow the word, "NO!" in response.

"D" is for "Drat!" "Darn!" and "Dagnabbit!"

A few weeks back, Her Nibs got her mitts on my computer and irreparably popped the letter X off my keyboard. Fortunately, X isn't all that commonly used (fourth from the bottom behind Z, J, and Q). It's annoying, but I can adapt.

Yesterday, the little cherub picked off the letter D. Depending on which list you use, the letter D is either the 10th or 12th most-commonly-used letter in English vocabulary. I am not a happy woman. First, it's annoying to have my finger striking the springy plastic normally hiding beneath the key. Second, my keystroke isn't always noticed by the computer, so I have to keep going back to fix errors.

I guess I should be happy that she only popped the keys off; she didn't eat them.

Inconvenienced

Our 15-year-old oven has been malfunctioning for quite a few months now. When you start it up, the element doesn't always switch on. For a while, we could get it to reset and work for a while. Eventually, though, it turned into a situation where you have to bake fast because it might not cycle on again to maintain temperature.

Well, during the height of summer, not having an oven wasn't so bad. It was too hot for hours-long oven usage.

I finally broke down and called a repairman.

After arriving two hours later than his promised time slot, he gave me the bad news: $440.00 plus tax. Ouch. It's going to take several days for the part to arrive. Yep, I said "part." ONE PART for $440.

The first thing I'm baking when it's up and running is a batch of chocolate chip cookies. That might take the sting away.

Hair - Left High and Dry

I called to set up a hair cut this morning and was greeted with the last bit of news I wanted to hear. My favorite hairdresser has retired.

I can't find the post, but I know I've written before about how Mae is the only person in this world who cuts my hair in a way that looks good despite my wash-and-wear hair attitude. My hair is thick and wavy. Someone who knows how to work hair would love to have hair like mine. I don't know how to work hair. I never have, so I've tussled with it all my life.

She owned her own shop for years, and when her hairdresser daughter entered another line of work, she sold the shop and went into retirement. I spent months wandering from shop to shop, limiting each haidresser to only trimming my bangs as a trial run before allowing their shears to touch the rest of my hair. In all those months, I couldn't find one person worthy of cutting beyond my bangs.

When Mae came out of retirement to work three days a week for a well-established shop, my follicles rejoiced, and I've been content with my hair for the last decade or so.

We know that all good things eventually come to an end. Mae has once again retired. My selfish heart hopes that it's a brief hiatus, but the information they gave me on the phone leads me to believe otherwise.

I'm very thankful that Mae was available for Her Nibs' first haircut last month. I've been meaning to post these pictures for quite a while.

No, she didn't have much to trim, but Mae says a baby's hair grows in better when it's evenly trimmed. None of my kids had much hair to start with, but the older two have really nice hair now.

Her Nibs was so good. She wasn't scared or the least bit fussy. She's such a good baby!

And this is the post-haircut lollipop. She is the first of my three kids to not chew through the stick before finishing the candy.

Hatin' on Verizon

I am forgetful. I think I may have mentioned that before..

Last month, I forgot to pay the Verizon bill. Yeah, I got letters and a phone call, and I put it off and forgot about it. They got nasty and restricted my services for the past-due payment.

With two kids living the tail end of summer vacation, I admit that I use the electronic baby-sitter a little too often when I hear whiny complaints of boredom. "Mom, I'm bored," was once effectively answered with, "Go clean your room," but they tired of that trick and so did I.

Aaaaaaaaanyway, I forgot to pay the bill, and on August 10, Verizon slapped me around for it by making sure I was trapped at home with whiny kids on a rainy day. In desperation, I paid the ransom.

Oh, hey... if you ever run into this situation, you need to pay the bill to the penny. There's no rounding of digits. If the bill is $179.48, rounding it up to $179.50 will make them put the money somewhere else and not restore your services. I still don't understand this flawed logic, but sometimes Verizon really sucks.

I rounded the pennies and got rewarded with an extra four hours of waiting for my services to come back.

And, now, the reason for this post.

I turn on the TV and nothing happens. The clock on the cable box isn't working, either. It turns out that I had another bill come due and they restricted me again. COME ON!! I just paid you boneheads a fat chunk of money two weeks ago! The woman on the phone gave me some highly-inaccurate song and dance about the bill spanning three months (bunch of snot, I tell you) and that I had to pay the full amount due.

Yeah, I paid them. But I'm really pissed about it. They're not my only utility!

A Wake-Up Call

The last few days have been a little bit challenging. My FIL is going through some medical stuff that slammed home the issue of "what do we do with mom?" Fortunately, FIL's issues aren't life threatening, just very painful and require a fair amount of wait and see. It also meant spending a decent amount of time at my in-laws' house keeping grandma company.

Clearly, we need to have a backup plan when this kind of stuff comes about.

Yeah, I'm here.

I just haven't had much of a desire to blog. I haven't had much time, either.

I miss my dog.

The convenience-store job is good. It's hard work, though, and timing is everything. I've never been much good with time management and that makes things difficult for me. Certain things need to be done at certain times. I think I'm going along just fine, but when something goes awry I'm scrambling.

As the third-shift food-service person, I not only make sandwiches, slice cold cuts, and fill hot-food orders on request, I have to check every scrap of food in my section to make sure it's within its codes for timely consumption. If something hot is going to expire or run out, I need to anticipate the need and get more going so I don't run out. The hot food comes premade and frozen, so it needs an hour in the rethermalizer to come to temperature before I can put it out. I suck at anticipating what I'm going to need. Customers use touch screens to place their orders, and I have to keep those menus current as well.

I rotate out all the stale rolls and put up fresh ones, not only in the loose-roll cases for customers, but in all the sandwich stations. Ditto for the doughnut case. I also have the absurd task of prepacking cookies and pretzels for impulse sale at the register. (I never get this done quickly. I start as soon as it's delivered, but I keep getting pulled away from it to fill customer orders or do other things on schedule. I hate those things!)

Coffee has to be made and kept fresh 'round the clock. We don't have every pot running; we keep roughly half of them going through the night. It doesn't take long, but it's a time suck all the same.

From the minute I walk in the door, I'm making food. I never knew how many people ate late at night. The after-hours cleaning service closes shop at midnight, and all those guys come in hungry. The bars close at 2:00, and there's a stampede of hungry drunks for the next thirty to forty minutes. Spattered throughout is a steady flow of emergency-services folks grabbing what they can when time allows.

By 3:15 a.m., all of the hot food for the start of the morning rush has to be in the rethermalizers and put up on the steam table an hour later.

By 4:30 a.m., every coffee pot has to be filled and ready to go.

By 5:00 a.m., breakfast sandwiches have to be cooked and boxed and in the cases. I have to keep that stuff replenished until the person who mans that station comes in at 6:00 a.m.

From 6:00 to the time I leave, I must not only keep doing all the stuff I listed above, I still need to sweep the floor, wash all my dishes, and clean the deli slicer.

Oh, and then there's spoilage. Everything I discard during my shift has to be logged and entered into their computer system. You can't just chuck a panful of chili. You have to count each measure you discard. Every roll, bagel, and croissant is counted and tallied.

I haven't clocked out on time yet. The Oracle hasn't been on time for work since I started.

And I thought staying awake all night would be difficult. Ha! The difficult thing is finding a minute to use the restroom.

Farewell, Duchess.

My poor Shedder. My poor, poor Shedder.

You're getting the Reader's Digest version simply because I can't dwell on the subject for too long. It just hurts too much.

Despite the anti-inflammatory the vet gave her last week for the arthritis in her knees, the denervation to her legs was rapidly progressing. We figured we'd be lucky if she made it to autumn.

Well, anyway, on Friday night she seemed to be in a fair amount of distress. She hadn't eaten breakfast and her symptoms were similar to what she suffered when she ate stupid stuff like pine cones and Barbie clothes, so I wrongly assumed that she'd eaten something inedible and simply needed time for her stomach to work itself out by sunrise.

The thing is, her stomach distress was so bad she couldn't walk at all. She normally had difficulty moving during these episodes, but it was never this bad. I had to support her hind end to help her negotiate the yard to pee, an unsuccessful folly, but I tried. I called the vet's office before leaving for work and left a message requesting a first-thing appointment for Saturday morning.

The mind is a strange thing. I left work at 7:15 a.m., and as I turned onto our street and into the drive, I thought, "I'm coming home to a dead dog." When there was no "woof" as I put the key in the lock, I knew I wouldn't find her on the sofa where she shouldn't be. The house was too quiet. I found her in the kitchen instead.

When I talked with E. yesterday afternoon, she said it sounded like Bloat, and the symptoms she'd had a number of times over the last four or five years were probably the same thing, just not at a fatal level, perhaps a partial fold or turn of the stomach instead of a full twist. Aaagh. If it's possible to feel worse, I do. My brain is swirling with could've-should'ves.

God, this really hurts. I miss her big brown eyes and her soft fuzzy ears.

Hooray for Independence Day!

We went to E's house yesterday for a maaaahhhvelous picnic. I worked midnight shift at the convenience store, stopped for Sunday mass, and arrived home at 8:30 a.m.

Before crawling into bed (leaving strict instructions for The Oracle to wake me no later than 11:00), I assembled the cole slaw I was taking along.

I vaguely remember The Oracle coming into the bedroom to wake me. I was sooooooo tired, because my planned nap before work was destroyed by my neighbor's premature fireworks display. Normally I don't mind fireworks. I'm not the poopy-headed neighbor who's going to call the cops when someone has a backyard display. What made last night's display annoying was that it was not only a day early, but the kids flat-out refused to go to bed. The Oracle and I spent the better part of an hour trying to get their butts to bed, and I lost an hour of precious sleep.

I lost the remainder of it because I was simply too aggravated to drift off. I hate that. I simply waited there with my eyes shut and my back to the clock until The Oracle told me it was time to get up. Drat.

So, anyway, I was sleepy. And, once again, with all of our running around to get ready for E's, we were -- once again -- over an hour late. And since we were an hour late, the food we were supposed to supply was also an hour late.

And as I voiced my regrets over going to mass and falling asleep, E simply said, "you took care of your spirit and took care of your body."

And that's why I'd never swap her friendship for anything in this world.

New Tricks for an Older Dog

Today was my first hands-on day at my new convenience-store job. I had a two-hour orientation last Thursday which amounted to a detailed tour of the facility.

Of the five hours I worked today, three were spent in front of the computer viewing several training videos. I was relieved to see that the videos were actually well made and not the torturous swill that I'd viewed in many training sessions with 9-1-1 or EMT class on a variety of subjects.

The room in which the computer was located was rather frigid. As one who is first to overheat and perspire, I'm okay with that. Today, however, after three hours and no feeling left in my butt, I was reduced to shivers and chattering teeth. I was grateful for hot soup on a 95-degree day.

Immediately after, I took my quiz on store safety. The only question I missed was the location of the designated employee smoking areas, something -- as a nonsmoker -- I admit I ignored during orientation.

Today's hands-on training surrounded the store's knife-handling and deli-slicer certifications. It's weird having to re-learn something after doing it your way for twenty years.

When it came to the slicer, I gained a whole new respect for those folks behind the counter at the supermarket. I had a horrid time trying to make my left hand keep pace with the stuff coming off the blade. My product didn't come out in neat little stacks as I thought it should. It was haphazard and crooked, and the manager quickly "prettied up" the customer's purchases before weighing, bagging, and tagging them.

All in all, it was a fun day despite feeling like I'll never remember it all.

When I go in Thursday, I'll be making coffee!