Tuesday, May 29, 2007

A Meme from Kimba

I just HAD to check Kimba's blog didn't I?

As with her instructions, if you stumble across this one, consider yourself tagged!!

What were you doing 10 years ago?
Ten years ago I was relatively newly married and living in hell. Ooops!! Sorry, I meant Northwest Indiana. I was soon to be starting one of my favorite jobs working with some of my favorite people, EVER! (Salon manager in a mall.)

What were you doing 1 year ago?
The same thing I'm doing now, just downtown at our office at the hospital. Where I ended up getting 3 hours of overtime a week, and not being compensated for it. I like out here in the country club a helluva lot better!

Five snacks you enjoy
1. The friggin' fried potato in any/all of it's many forms. --More's the pity...
2. Tortilla chips & hot-ass salsa
3. baby cut carrots
4. celery
5. popcorn

Five songs that you know all the lyrics to
1. I do a lot of musical theater, so name something..... If I've done the show, I know the song!
2. I also sing with a local symphony chorale. There's a lot of classical stuff that I know the words to (and much of it is in Latin, German, and French.)
3. I sing in our church choir, so I also know a heck of a lot of hymns.
4. Any Depeche Mode song!
5. If it came out of the early-mid 80's I know it.

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire
1. Pay off ALL of our debt.
2. Put money aside for Pip's college. (Which will start in the fall of 2008. If you're reading this, God, PLEASE let us buy that winning lottery ticket soon!!)
3. Maybe buy a house... I just don't know where...
4. Go to college. (On the "Better Late than Never" Scholarship.)
5. Buy Kimba a car so she and her family can visit us!

Five bad habits
1. Spending vs saving.
2. Not exercising enough
3. Incessant need to check emails & favourite blogs daily
4. Sleeping on my stomach. (I'm desperately trying to stop this, but it's easily the hardest thing I've ever done.)
5. Forgetting my daily antihistamine and B-6 supplements.

Five things you like doing
1. Hanging out with friends
2. Sex
3. Travelling
4. Reading a good book
5. Crocheting (When I said that I was turning into my mother, I meant it!!)

Five things you would never wear again
1. A size 7 in anything but a shoe.
2. Patent leather shoes
3. Daisy Duke's
4. chokers or scarves around my neck
5. blue eyeshadow

Five favorite toys
1. Board games
2. Card games
3. Boys
4. the computer
5. my art set

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Alas, Poor Poo-Cat, I Knew Thee Well...

It saddens me greatly to have to report that our house has suffered a very personal loss.

Our dear, old Poo Cat has passed away.

As near as we can guess, Poo (originally named Patience by someone much more mundane than ourselves) was at least 6 months older than Pip (our Teen Queen who is now nearly 18). Poo's original (mundane) owner was going to live overseas, and asked my husband if he would adopt the shy, caramel-tortoise calico. Being a sucker for such things, R said that he'd be happy to take her in.

While my husband and I were dating, I think that I only saw that cat once or twice. She spent most of her days hiding from pretty much everyone and everything.

In the life that's happened since we got married, Poo eventually warmed up to being with us and was a surrogate mother to our other cats (now nearly 10 and 11 years old). In the past few years, she'd even had occasional bouts of kitten-like play!

Alas it was not to continue forever. Over the course of the past six months or so, it has seemed that it was getting harder for her to get around our apartment (which we call 'Lilliput' --for a reason). Since Easter-time she hadn't been able to climb into the litter box due to rheumatism (I suppose). My guess is that she suffered some kind of stroke late Saturday afternoon and didn't recover. She was still lying on her favorite chair and breathing when I left for work yesterday, but was lifeless when I returned.

There is now a newly seeded patch of dirt out by the garage. --Don't tell the landlord.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Out of Respect, I've Held my Tongue

OK, I've held my mouth shut this long, but I can't hold still any longer.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell died the other day and I keep hearing the Munchkin chorus from the Wizard of Oz singing, "Ding, dong the witch is dead...". To some people, Rev. Falwell was an inspiration, but to many of the rest of us he was a hate-monger hiding behind a pulpit. In my opinion, the world is a much kinder, gentler place without people like him.

Don't get me wrong-- I'm all for spirituality and connecting daily with whatever higher power you believe in. It just ticks me off when one group's religious doctrine feels the need to dominate politics and insert its moral edicts into my daily life.

Things like "do not kill" and "do not steal" are generally considered laws to live by and I'm cool with that.

"You deserve to be treated like a second-class citizen and are going to hell for falling in love with someone of your same sex"- not really legally defensible..... more like an opinion.

And you know what they say about those.....

Part of me is hoping that Rev. Falwell made it to the pearly gates, was let in, and finally found out that the first gay pride float was the little boat that Jesus and the apostles fished out of.

I know that I'm going to Hell, so hold your scathing comments. I have it on good authority that it will be the good side of Hell and I figure that that ain't half bad.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Supreme Irony or Just a Well-Placed Office?

So I've been giving out directions to our office all morning for patients coming in tomorrow morning to see our EP doc.

They go a bit like this:

"Turn right by the Arby's, take a left when you pass McDonald's, our building is just behind Wendy's..."

We're a cardiology office. The irony of the directions I give is not lost on me.

Monday, May 14, 2007

The Jet-Set Life

Another weekend has come and gone. I'd like to say that I wrote the next great American novel, or invented a car that ran on dirty dishes, or somehow made the planet a better place to be, but I didn't.

I had play practice on Friday night. A small community group near where I live is doing "State Fair" and I made it into characterland for that. (I consider the 'chorus' more like the 'character actors' of the play. We're not leads, but without us you're stuck watching classic Greek tragedies.) Anyway, for the one scene, I get to play drunk. --And here my mom thought that I was wasting my time going out to clubs when I was in my late teens/early 20's! No, not me! I was doing 'character research'.

I played sceming wenches in the last two community theater productions I was in. I won't go into how I researched those.....

Saturday was prom for us. This means that I spent the majority of Saturday afternoon playing beauty shop with my stepdaughter. We polished her nails with a nice golden-blush color (very demure!), evened out the self-tanner, and curled and pinned her hair up. Her dress was ivory with gold embroidery on the bodice, so she looked quite bridal. *eeeek* She and her boyfriend had a great time and she made it home by 4:30am on Sunday. (Until next year when she's a senior, she has a curfew. I know, I'm such a kill-joy.)

On Sunday, the hair came down and the nails were re-polished bright blue.

It's no fun being a lady all of the time.

And Sunday -Mother's Day- I went to church, then did dishes and a couple loads of laundry. Why? Because that's how I roll. ...wearing clean underwear...

And I called my mom to wish her Happy Mother's Day. She -of course- was out at the casino having a good old time with Dad.

Again, when the hell did I become the adult?!?

Friday, May 11, 2007

We'll See How this Goes

For the sake of being able to leave comments on my friend's blog, I had to bite the proverbial bullet and start one of my own. In person, I like to think of myself as witty with the occasional bit of clever thrown in, but I guess we'll see how this translates to the blog-world, eh?

As to myself, I've been married for nigh on 12 years and I have an (almost) 18-year-old stepdaughter who lives with us. Things are pretty good in general, it's just that this is NOT where I had pictured myself 15 years ago!

Well, time to comment on Kimba's blog!