Blown Fuse

People still say that?

I shit you not, I just heard some woman in the hallway say "It's quittin' time."

For me, the luxury of not having to drive that hellacious commute that I had at my last job is all the motivation I need to keep my ass in this [donated] chair until I finish what I need to for the day.

Squeaky Clean

Okay, I've been making phone calls all day and it wasn't until around 2 o'clock that I noticed that there was ear crud on the phone. Being that I've been here less than 8 hours of my life, it ain't mine.

Fortunately, the Wet Ones I bought to travel with last week were still in my backback. Now my entire immediate work area is sanitary.

Am I supposed to be excited?

So, I unofficially start my new position today. Unofficially, as technically my start date was Saturday. You see, I'm technically on-call 24 hours/day and 7 days/week, however the only site supervisors who enforce that are masochists.

It weird for me to be up this early on a work day and not be at work yet. My supervisor doesn't get in until around 9:20, so I have to sit around in the meanwhile and twiddle my thumbs. I've had a semi-nutritious breakfast, I smell squeaky clean, and the cats have been fed. Now I just have to wait half an hour to leave...I don't want to be sitting in the hallway in front of a locked office...because time that noone witnesses is basically time you're not there.

I guess I could finally unpack my suitcase from last week's trip, but I'm not feeling like doing anything "above and beyond" right now. I think I'll go eat a candy bar. Maybe I'll go spend my last $5 in cash on a frappuchino so that I can put on that facade of peppiness that some people like to do on their first days.

Or maybe I can make a bet with myself of how many times I'll have to pee today. I'm thinking 10.

Can't they make this easy?

Two days in a row I've come back to my hotel room before dinner to find myself locked out. This confused me greatly yesterday, and I stood at the door swiping my keycard for five minutes trying to get it to work. I had been upstairs after lunch and my key had worked fine then.

I haven't been in my room since after breakfast this morning, but I had this nagging suspicion that I'd be locked out again. You see, the hotel is overbooked because of the Braves games going on.

Let me tell you, I walked up six floors of stairs after this evening's last session to not have to wait with 300 people to get on an elevator. I felt like my lungs were going to explode, but I made it. Imagine my pisstivity when I got upstairs and the fucking key didn't work again.

The desk clerk asked if it had come into contact with any credit cards or anything that could have demagnetized it. Hell no. Then she asked to see my ID. IT WAS IN THE FUCKING ROOM WITH THE REST OF MY LUGGAGE.

Tiffany cranky.

Why I'm not a pundit.

I tend to avoid discussion about the Middle East conflict(s) because there are too many variables and I can't argue ANY of them intelligently, but can someone explain to me how this statement makes sense?:

Al Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al Zawahri warned his group would not stand by and watch Israel bombard Lebanon and the Palestinians, calling on Muslims in a video aired on Thursday to fight attacks on their countries...

..."How can we remain silent while watching bombs raining on our people," he asked. "Oh Muslims everywhere, I call on you to fight and become martyrs in the war against the Zionists and the Crusaders," Zawahri said in the statement which was entitled "The Zionist-crusader war on Lebanon and the Palestinians."

Okay, so...if I'm judging the context of the entire article correctly, he should suggest that people living outside the Middle East should throw things into a clusterfuck in their otherwise peaceful countries to pressure their governments to become involved and create a fucking world war? THAT SOUNDS SO FUCKING SMART. Yes, we Americans are touchy about body count and if some outside group comes and and tries to wreak havoc on our peace, we're going to drop some bombs...but not on ourselves or the Israelis, so I don't see how their tactics are very bright.

Besides that, do disperate Muslim groups even like each other enough to be raising up in arms against people? My limited understanding is that Sunnis and Shi'ites, at least those in Iraq, aren't even chummy-chummy enough to stay off of the evening news for a couple of days.

I'm sick of this shit. When you're young and preoccupied with yourself and your ego prevents you from being concerned with what's going on in the larger world, these things stay off your radar. Then you reach a certain age where you feel "Shit, is the world coming to an end or something?" and the more you think about it, the same level of idiocy has been going on forfuckingever, just in different locations.

Drained

One of the things that I hated about college and being in academic settings in general is how when some people are drawn into group discussion, they're unable to see the forest for the trees.

I'm just not the kind of person who'll try to dominate a roundtable discussion - if my point has already been made by someone else and I have nothing else of value to add, I keep my mouth shut. Even if I could have stated the point more eloquently or required less follow-up than the person making my p.o.v., I'm not going to jump in and beat the dead horse.

In case you didn't know, the focus of the program I'll be participating in the next year, (Americorps*VISTA) is in eradicating poverty: specifically by addressing what communities have expressed local causes of poverty to be. So, if people in my Durham community believe that folks are being brought down by dropping out of school and by gang activity, we work on those facets. It's not a program where the government tries to fix a problem by giving people subsidies.

Anyhow, we were having a group discussion about a) what poverty is and b) what causes it. People in the room were getting so heated over what they felt the causes to be (shy of causing real arguments, though), and I couldn't help but to think that the idea of poverty is such a subjective concept. The government can set guidelines for income to assess what poverty is, but when it comes down to it, isn't poverty a subjective thing?

I would be hesitant to call someone impoverished unless I heard them refer to themselves as being that way. Two families with identical income and identical resources may think of poverty two different ways. One may think that being impoverished is not having a television/car/name brand wardrobe. Another may think that it means they lack basic necessities such as food, water, and shelter.

In my opinion, the only way to eradicate poverty is to strive for 100% education of resources in a community - that is to say that every single household knows of what is available in their geographic constraints that can either help them better themselves, or at least be comfortable at the level they are. That doesn't mean that everyone is going to be rich (or even middle class, for that matter) - just that they'll have the same opportunity to access what they need. If they know resources are available and choose not to use them, then they're not impoverished - they're just poor.

I want to help people help themselves. The only way I can make my service worthwhile is if the community takes ownership of these programs after we help set them up.

Bend me, shape me, any way you want me.

So...here I am in a hotel room with no Internet connectionafter a shuttle ride to the local Target, here I am in a hotel room with a wireless Internet connection. I wrongly assumed that if I brought my laptop that I'd be able to plug into the high-speed connection. Unfortunately, the hotel only provides a wireless connection. My circa 1999 prehistoric laptop doesn't have a wireless card; there are See 'n Say's more technologically innovative than this thing. I bought an wireless adapter identical to the one I have on my computer at home and bing bada boom here we are.

The hotel check-in was a nightmare. I had specifically requested a single room several weeks ago and was told I'd have to pay something like $78.01/night (instead of the $0 that double-room occupants pay). I swallowed hard and said "Fine." I really didn't want to have to deal with the anxiety of sharing a room with a stranger. I called the person at the corporation state office to confirm and she told me that I was all set.

Lies! Not only did they book me into a double room with the roommate accessory, but they had no record that I had requested it at all. Gee, THANKS lady. I'm glad I know now to ask at least two separate people for confirmation. Anyway, after much ado, here I am in a double room occupied only by myself. The bright side is that I only had to pay for half the room cost. Originally I was told that if I wanted my own room I'd have to pay for it out of pocket (which didn't make 100% good sense to me), but I was going to suck it up. Now that I'm here, I know that the corporation is supposed to stay for my stay and I pay for the empty bed in the room with me. Either way, the hotel makes more money because they have one person in a double room.

I can see cliques starting to form already. So many of these people are KIDS! Like, just graduated from college and think that the world is they're oyster types. Here I am all stoic and reserved and old feeling, and they're all talking in exclamation points: "Yay! That's so cool! So are you from here? Awesome!" I feel like these people need to sit in room filled with Ritalin gas.

I did find myself drawn into a group of real grown-ups, one of which had to pause during our Target excursion to thank God for the fact that she could have adult conversation for a change instead of with her kids.

So far we've had one group session where we went around the room doing those embarrasing exercises that require you to find five people born in your birth month, etc. - forced mingling. Usually I'd be perfectly content to be a wallflower, but I'm completely comfortable with the fact that I don't know a damn person here, so if I embarrass myself, it's not like I have to see them on Monday.

More from the front tomorrow.

True Blue

I was thinking that, in order to be as offensive as possible to my fellow Southern AmeriCorps trainees in the coming week, that I'd show my ACC pride and get a new Carolina shirt. this one takes the cake. To this point I've just been wearing small t-shirts in mens' sizes. The added length in the trunk is sufficient for a growing belly, and I don't really need the frilly girly tiny-tee sleeves that come on women's shirts. It's too hard to wash the plastered-on deodorant out of form-fitting tees.

I had no idea they made maternity Carolina crap.

*scratch scratch* GET OUT!

You know, until last night I hadn't had a decent night of sleep since we got back from vacation. It seems that if you kick the fucking cats out of the room, and therefore your bed, that you can actually sleep in positions that allow for blood circulation.

Now they're hovering and waiting for food. Good. I'm in control again.

Boiling mad.

I've been contemplating a lot on depressing things lately. I think it's the impending parenthood thing that promotes it, but all the same I wish I could just think "happy thoughts." Rainbows and bunny rabbits and shit like that.

I haven't spoken with my father in...nigh on ten, twelve years. I was visiting my mom in New York and my sister had called and asked him to come by. He took us for a ride in this van of his that had a side door that kept sliding open whenever he hit the brakes. He bought us Slim-Jims. It's been so long that I can't even remember how old I was at the time.

Normally, I don't really give my father much consideration, because, quite frankly, he doesn't deserve it. If he and my mother had stayed married and I'd had to live with [either of] them I'd probably be institutionalized right now. He always wants what he can't have and she's a bit of a ballbuster.

Regardless...sitting here thinking about him is giving me acid reflux, and I mean to the extent that I can taste what I ate two days ago. What kind of person do you have to be to not be the slightest bit curious as to what your grown children look like or whether your grandchildren resemble you? There's no excuse. Well, sometimes I think that my mom may have inadvertantly explained it when my sister had her first kid. "Don't let Jadah call me 'grandma.'" I think she was 39 at the time. She told people during her [second] wedding that my sister and I were her sisters, and they believed it.

I'm going to chalk it up to immaturity. That's what it has to be. He's immature, and his parents (my paternal grandparents whom I haven't seen in at least 20 years) are inexcusable. Creeping towards AARP eligibility has got to be tough for him, the poor thing. All that womanizing and still no son to bear his name.

Folks, don't let your sons grow up spreading seed and not make him feel the burden of the consequences. I hate how society thinks it's okay for men to be promiscuous (supposedly so that at least one person will be experienced during the honeymoon) but women have to be chaste. HELLO, IF WE WERE ALL CHASTE WHO ARE THE DICKWADS GOING TO BE PROMISCUOUS WITH?

Sorry. The hormones are running away with my sanity.

The sad thing is, I really could care less that I didn't have my father in my life after my toddler years. I'm sure that I could have used a positive male influence somewhere or other, but I've already crossed that bridge. I'm pissed because I'm a caring person and want to know if he's okay.

I read the Jennifer Weiner book Good in Bed over the weekend. The main character is quite hung up on her father's absenteeism and when she finally confronts him as an adult, he basically states that he didn't care. I don't want to set myself up for that. I'd rather have unknowing silence than painful noise.

I got some news through the family grapevine last year, I guess, that he's somewhere in Ohio with yet another wife and yet another baby daughter (what's that, Pop, 5? 6?) I did a whitepages search for his name and found a bunch of listings in various parts of the state. I have no real way of paring those down (he doesn't have a middle name and even went as far as to make up an initial to put on my birth certificate), but even if I did, what would I do if I found him? I told myself for a while that I would write him a letter telling him about everything he's missed and send pictures; that seems like a very forgiving thing to do. I don't know if I'm that forgiving.

He never gave me a chance to express that I didn't need or want anything from him but a five minute conversation once per month. If I found him, I don't know if I would want to open him up to my life just to be disappointed again with how much of a flake he is. I don't know if I need my son to know both grandpas.

I'm still thinking about whether I really want to find him.

Braving a heart attack to board a plane.

I think that what my life up to this point has been missing has been travel. When I was a kid, I was perfectly aware that there were people living near me that had never even left the county. Given the small size of the county, I found that unbelieveable, but assumed that everyone had their reasons - lack of transportation being one of them.

By the time I was six or seven we had taken all the standard family trips - to New York (where all the relatives lived) and back, to Connecticut (to a funeral), to Detroit (to a wack family reunion), to New York some more, to Florida (to meet Mickey Mouse with the church) - you get the drift. We never really went anywhere that required a great deal of planning.

(OH SHIT, I SHOULD GO GET A PEDICURE BEFORE THE SPA GETS CROWDED! Fuck it, I'll go tomorow.)

I'm not a girl with insatiable wanderlust - on any given day, I'd rather be home in mismatched pajamas sipping tea and working on some craft project it'll take me a year to finish. I guess now that I'm at an age where there's so many complications preventing me from travelling (work, young'un on the way), I just have more of a desire to do it. I never even went on one of those cheap spring break trips during college; I always had to work.

As much as I hate airplanes and what they do to my ears (left ear still haven't fully uncorked from Tampa trip), I want to fly to Vegas and walk the strip eating from a different buffet every meal. I want to walk around dusty old castles in England. I want to put my toes in the sand of a foreign beach.

I think that as soon as the sprout is old enough to sleep through the night, and I have at least a week's vacation accrued at the job after this job - a year and a half from now - I'm hopping on the first plane out of this country that I can get a cheap fare on. The older you get, the more it seems like the world is such a small place, and I just haven't seen any of it.

Scott, will you pay for my passport????

And not a speck of sunburn in sight.

We are, obviously, back from our Florida vacation. Other than it being hot as horse shit on pavement down there, I think we had a good time.

The only way it could have been better was for there to have been fewer people in the theme parks...because pregnant women don't like tourist groups bumping into them nonstop. More in the extended entry.

The flights into Tampa were pretty uneventful, other than the fact that my left ear never uncorked itself during the quick descent on the Miami - Tampa route. We stayed at the Radisson in Clearwater, where surprisingly the rooms have those Sleep Number beds. I'm a 35. Scott is a 55. The room was decent-sized and clean...that is after I got them to trade us out of the smoking room they booked us into.

We went to Busch Gardens in Tampa on Friday. There were lots of people with strollers and the animals were all either listless or asleep because of the heat. We rode two of the water rides which were safe enough for a pregnant woman because they didn't require belts or harnesses....and they didn't turn your ass upside down.

On Saturday we went to St. Petersburg to the Salvador Dali museum (which would have been a lot more enjoyable if not for all those fuckers standing way too close to me - SHIT, FUCKING MOVE! The art's on the wall, not on my back!) There were some works there by other famous Spanish artists (Picasso, Gris, etc.) which I enjoyed seeing. When I go to art museums, I like to move slowly around the gallery looking at everything in detail and reading the placards. The museum had back-to-back tour groups going through which made any kind of contemplation impossible, but I still think it was worth the price of admission.

I would have liked to have spent more time exploring St. Petersburg, but we only had three days there, so we crammed in what we could. We had a late lunch at Too Jay's where I had half of a pretty darn good vegetable lasagne (half because eating for two doesn't mean two giants).

We went to Clearwater Beach to watch the sunset in the evening which was quite relaxing...other than trying to find parking.

I think Sunday had to have been the hottest day we were there. Scott, who used to work at Disney (heh heh, foodservice), wanted to go to Animal Kingdom. I thought I was going to die at one point from heat exhaustion. I love how Disney parks are so family-friendly and they make it easy for kids and adults to ride the same attractions. I hated feeling like I was in a stroller roller-derby, though. I just knew at one point one of those things was going to go right into my shins.

To be frank, heat exhaustion or not, Animal Kingdom has the edge over Busch Gardens Tampa. It's a much more expensive experience, but everything in the park seemed so thoughtful. Standing in line for certain rides was like being in a little microcosm of some Himalayan villiage or safari office - the props were outstanding.

So, we're home now. I definately want to visit a few more Disney parks in the near future, but hot damn it'll have to be in the fall or spring when it's not sweltering.

You can see all the vacation pictures in my flickr account.

Oh, Fark you.

This listing on yesterday's Fark.com archive annoyed the shit out of me last night: "Tropical depression forms off N.C. coast. Not nearly as depressing as actually living in N.C." It links to this Yahoo! News article.

I find it incredibly bothersome that some narrowminded person who has spent 15 minutes of his/her life in the state, probably driving through a military town or sitting in the airport, can create such a facetious statement for a bunch of people to get offended by.

Mind you, I realize that Fark.com is a link brothel and not a real news source, but at the same time you have to question why the fuck someone would green-light a statement that would create so much hostility on the forums. Oh yeah - they're trying to drive traffic back to the site. Duh.

My suspicion is that some asshat heard from a friend who heard from a friend that Fayetteville sucks because there's a stripper joint on every corner or that there's nothing to do outside the Triangle but tip cows.

I'm not going to post a public defense of North Carolina. If I had been living in Pittsburgh or Gary, IN I'd be equally offended if someone had tried to put my state on blast. Shit happens. Communities become depressed; I'm living in one that's trying to pull itself up by the bootstraps.

Some people choose to move somewhere because they don't like where they are. Others are where they are because they're born there and choose not to leave. I find it disgusting that people can't respect that.

Hoping the cats don't eat the house.

I guess we'll leave here at around 11:30 for our 2:33 flight. I'm still sitting here in pajamas, balancing my checkbook and opening all of the untoched bills on my desk so that when I return it's not to a pile of debt.

I can't help but to feel like every time we pack up to go somewhere for a few days I feel like I forgot something that would have made the trip much, much more comfortable. The iPods are charged up, I've got various painkillers and anti-nausea aids in my bag, and *pauses to brush teeth* I've transferred all of my crap into my jumbo purse - perfect for hoarding tourist coupons and brochures.

I've always wanted to go to the Busch Gardens in Tampa, but it looks like they're calling for scattered thunderstorms for the next four days. When I read that my eyes went as wide as saucers. Thunderstorms every day for four days? Wait, now I've just checked another source which says it'll be clear tomorrow. >:(. Make up your frickin' mind!

Anybody who knows anything about Florida weather, please feel free to chime in and tell me that these will be 5-minute storms that'll go away quickly.

I don't know what my internet access will be like over the next few day. I know most hotels worth their salt have "business centers" with at least one computer in them, but I don't see that listed on this particular location's amenity list. I'll post via flickr if I can.

Will incur my pregnant rage

Since I woke up this morning, I've been waiting until 24 hours before our flight time to log into American Airlines and check into our flights for tomorrow. Fucking website is pissing me off. You're supposed to be allowed to check in 24 hours in advance, but when I went to view the available seats on the seating charts, the only ones open were first class. We, unfortunately, are in "economy" seating. Whenever I select myself and click "check-in" it says that: "In order to proceed with online check-in, all passengers must have an assigned seat(s)..."

I'm a little bit pissed. For one thing, I'm pregnant and don't want to be sitting in the middle of three seats. I don't want some strange person falling asleep and leaning on me. I really don't want TWO strange people, one on either side, trying to strike up unnecessary conversation. The other thing is that Scott is going to bitch and moan the entire flight if he's not in the front row because of his long legs. I found this information on the AA website to justify all the seats being blocked out:

Q: What if I have confirmed my flights, but am unable to pre-assign (or reserve) my seats?

A: American Airlines usually withholds a percentage of seats until the day of departure. This allows our airport personnel to accommodate passenger needs on the day of departure. If you are unable to pre-assign your seat at the time of your booking, you may obtain your assignment upon check-in for your flight. Also, cancellations often occur closer to the day of departure. Visit AA.com frequently to check the current available seating for your flight.

So, you've withheld 99% of the seats? Does this sound like an overbooking to anyone else?

I taste salty.

Because I'm not beneath offering my body to science, I've been participating in a few pregnancy studies through UNC Hospitals. Since there's no real harm to me in being a part of them, it's basically free money.

One study involves tracking what I eat. You put in all your meals in snacks into the website they provide you with and at the end of the day it tells you how close or far off of typical dietary requirements you were.

Almost every day I see that I'm getting half of the number of calories I'm supposed to get and almost 70% more sodium than I'm supposed to get for a full day....so basically, if I were getting 100% of the calories they claim I need, I'd be a salt lick.

When I asked one of the study coordinators about this, she said it was pretty common because of the amount of processed foods Americans eat. I've noticed that in the meals I cook myself, I can easily control how much or how little salt goes into them other than what exists in certain foods naturally. A sprinkle of salt here and a sprinkle there over the course of dinner does not add up to the 1046 mg overage I've been getting. It's got to be in the ready-to-eat stuff. There's enough salt in me that you can fill me with water and my kid would float to the top.

If you pick up a can of soup - seriously, look at the back of one of those Campbell's Soup at Hand things. That one little half-meal contains like 76% of your day's recommended sodium intake.

I think that's kind of disconcerting. In the past it had been suggested that too much salt is a cause of a variety of health problems, but nothing at this point conclusively shows that it really causes hypertension and stroke. It still freaks me out a little bit.

What freaks me out even more is how much I love a hot Burger King french fry.

Fireside activities and farm-girl tasks.

I'm a hobby whore...that's not to say that I spend my free time leasing my goodies for spare change. I tend to take on new interests without formally dismissing the previous ones.

Take gardening for instance - during the period immediately following moving into this house, I spent a lot of my free time poking around in the yard. Two years of squirrels eating my bulbs and being swarmed upon by the mosquitoes that thrive in the marshy strip behind myself sort of killed the passion. Insect repellant is a sick, sick joke. Back east, I could stick anything in a ground and ignore it. Chances are, if the kids next door didn't trample it, it'd grow. Four months later, you could go out into the garden, wade through the weeds and find yourself a fucking watermelon the size of your car tire.

The clay here is so heavily compacted that the idea of spending a day amending it makes me want to cry. I still want a yard with flowers everywhere, but I don't want to die making them grow. Maybe our next yard will be a bit less of a labor of love.

I think it's part of the Scorpio personality to take on a bunch of new projects because we thrive in making lists and planning things. Hell, that's my favorite part of any project. The idea of jumping into something new means that we have to put pen to paper to create a concrete plan of the abstract idea in our heads. We go full-force on projects for a while, and then the challenge sort of goes away. After that, things become tedious - like work, almost.

The hobbies that have stuck with me the longest are the ones that get harder over time - like music. I know that the more I work at perfecting some Liszt piano rhapsody, the closer I am to realizing how woefully unskilled I am at the next one.

Now for the sake of posterity I'm getting into scrapbooking. So far I've noticed one problem with this hobby: if you think too hard, your page looks like shit.

I may dust a little, yet.

I've been waking up with a stuffy head the past few mornings. It ususally clears up on its own within a couple of hours after waking up. It's so hard to tell whether it's the cat hair piling up and matting to my comforter and sheets that are prompting me to need to wash them earlier than necessesary or if the air filter needs to be changed again.

I'll just open a few window.

It was my plan to do a top-to-bottom house cleaning before we leave for Tampa, so that when we come back the house smells nice (hopefully there will be no kitty "piles" on the floor), and we don't feel like we're coming home to a sty. That's hard to think about. I'd rather think about snacking and television.

Ew.

I'm a big fan of Burger King's Tendercrisp Chicken Sandwich. That thing is nothing less than delicious - crunchy fried skin, a little mayo - I get all mouth-watery just thinking about it. If I'm at home and am going to get my lazy ass up to go back out to get fast food, you better damn well believe it's an exceptional occasion.

Yesterday, after my 6-hour nap, having skipped lunch I wanted to chow down on something reliably tasty, so I pulled on some sweatpants and went to my trusty Burger King drive-through. The line was super short and my fries were so hot that they burned my mouth.

I got home and popped a DVD in to watch with dinner, and what should I discover? That they gave me the wrong sandwich. I was hungry and would have eaten anything at that point, but what they substituted was just fucking nasty.

It was an Angus Steak Burger. I know that's supposed to be a premium sandwich and all, but it was fucking nasty. The onions were dark and coarse, the sauce was overly-applied and tasted heavily of bad mesquite, and it just smelled bad.

Okay, now - the smart drive-through connoisseur checks their bag before driving away. I didn't, and I wasn't going to get back in my car to go all the way back down there - it costs me a sandwich just to start my car. My receipt doesn't even say which combo I ordered - it's just a credit card draft...I can't even verify what I ordered. Fuck.

The Sweet Taste of Freedom

You know that song "Born Free" that they're always playing on commercials to demonstrate that a long personal battle has finally been won? I'm playing that song in my head right now. I would be doing leaps and pirouettes around the house if it weren't for my recent change in balance. Instead, I just keep pumping my fists in glee (see this illustrated on the right).

As soon as I left the office yesterday afternoon I realized that I didn't turn in my key. I thought to myself "Shit." I wasn't going to turn around to take it back (because that'd be conspicuous), so I plotted to just bring it in early this morning. I was actually considering mailing it in, but that'd be a pretty punk-bitch thing to do.

I was in the office for about an hour and a half switiching out computer parts and writing missives for a couple of people. As soon as the one guy who doesn't have a key pulled up, I was out the side door faster than you can say "Fuck yeah!" I passed by one coworker on the main road on the way in...I don't think she saw me. I just totally bypassed several hours of, "So, what is it you'll be doing?" I rock.

There's something liberating about being at home at 9 a.m. on a work day. It's like, "Aaaaaahhhh." Now I just have to figure out what I'll do for the next couple of weeks (if in town, that is). Certainly nothing productive.

giddy with anticipation

So, today will effectually be my last day here at work. It was supposed to be tomorrow, but given certain peoples' predictable natures, I'm not going to stick around for the barrage of questions about what I'll be doing and such (my planned answer would have been "I'm going to be the new Jasmine at Disneyland). I don't want to be taken out to lunch. I don't want people to gather around an ice cream cake purchased for me that I won't even eat (who the hell likes the idea of their company celebrating their departure?).

As soon as I can reprogram a couple of computers and shuffle some papers off my desk and onto someone else's, I'm out. I'll be spending the next six days at home in front of the television in a vegetative state and fielding phone calls from frantic people who can't figure out how to XYZ. Next Thursday we leave for Tampa, and when we get back, I have a few more days at home to sweep cat hair. Then I'm off to Atlanta to be reprogrammed on how to be a good person non-corporate service.

Don't hate.

UPDATED: 12:44 pm

Still at work. As predicted, a couple of last-minute projects have been sprung on me. *mad*

Just call me "George."

You know, there's a reason I don't mill around the yard and in the driveway. Namely, the neighbors. They like to talk - and not even the kind of talking where they talk about you, but the kind where they talk to you.

I saw something bright and orange by the mailbox. Figuring it was trash, I went to pick it up. Normally, I don't give a shit about trash - that's Scott's thing. He can pick up all the damn trash he wants to. I don't know what propelled me over there, but as I went to pick it up, my across-the-street neighbor drives by, points at my belly, and squeals.

She squealed. I pinned on my "hee hee hee" grin. To make a long story short, she said that because I'm so "cute and little" she just had the overwhelming urge to pick me up and squeeze me.

Fuck, I'm turning into a stuffed animal.

Scott, you'd better come get YOUR cat.

I'm really getting to the end of my rope with this cat. Puffy, I mean.

If you recall, I was having some problems with her going outside the box a couple of weeks ago. I took her to the vet who asked that we gather a urine sample for her.

The next morning when I fed them, I sequestered Puffy in the empty bedroom (the one designated for my child who will neatly pee and poop in a diaper) with a clean litter box sprinkled with the special litter bits the vet game me. She immediately piddled, and I woke Scott up to collect them. At that point, the very thought of cat urine made me barf.

Scott dropped the piddle off at the vet's office on his way to work, and she called me a couple hours later. Obviously, there were some crystals in her pee that are associated with either a metabolism problem that cat's may get at anytime in life or possibly a kidney problem. She prescribed a chewable pill and had us take another sample collection cup so that she could see if the meds made a difference after a few days.

When we took the new pee sample back in - lo and behold - the crystals were gone. I had been shoving Puffy through the kitty door into the laundry room to make sure she pissed and crapped where she was supposed to JUST IN CASE. She'd already shit (shat? shut? shitted?) in a sickly palm plant I've had since college and in the recycling bin.

The vet told us to finish out the last few pills, which lasted until Monday, I think, and watch her for the rest of the week. She'd been doing great - other than sneezing the hugest snot wad all over herself and our bed last night prompting me to wash the comforther AGAIN - she's been on her p's and q's.

This morning I woke up thinking about some Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, and fed the cats before going out to get the paper. I thought to myself as I poured the kibble, "Why does it smell so sour in here? We had pizza last night...it's not like there's any raw chicken parts in the trash."

So, I fed the furry heathens, washed my hands, and was about to move my favorite tote bag, my jumbo WUNC radio one that'll cost me $500 in pledge support by the end of the year. I love that fucking bag. Loved rather.

It had been the bag I take to work to tote my purse, lunch, paperwork, knitting, trashy magazines, etc. I had it hanging on the back of one of the kitchen chairs.

Well, last night, a certain cat - most likely the one that does NOT weigh 20 pounds because that would have knocked the whole damn contraption (chair + cat +piss bag) to the floor - climbed into it and took a piss of monumental volume.

I was so so mad that I was seething. It's in the washing machine right now. The bag, not the cat. Hopefully, after 2 or 3 washes I'll still love enough to use it and the canvas won't be bleached out on the bottom.

You know, at first, I felt sorry for her. "Poor kitty, it must hurt so bad for you to pee." Now I'm pissed at her AND the fucking vet who knew that taking her off the pills would cause the problem, WHICH SHE SAID THE CAT WOULD PROBABLY HAVE TO BE MEDICATED FOR FOREVER, to return shortly. "Watch her," she said, as she thought of the $30 we'd have to pay to come in for a SECOND follow-up.

I'M SO PISSED THAT I'M CONTEMPLATING PUTTING THE CAT OUT IN THE GARAGE. I may be ragey and hormonal from being pregnant, but for the love or God - I can't even touch my feet anymore. Like hell if I'm going to follow this cat around the house in search of bathroom indiscretions.