Dang Gnat
Why is it that with all of the air space in the free world, gnats have to flit around in the space right in front of my face? I'm sitting here at my desk, repeatedly being buzzed by a wee gnat that insists on getting all up in my face, and yet there is tons of open air in the rest of my office, not involving my personal space. Go away, already! Can't you see the air over there, away from me? You are less likely to get swatted way over there, out of arms reach.

Seriously, gnats have to be one of the more annoying of the bug species, yet they are perfectly harmless. Not innocent, mind you. Just harmless. No one ever dies from a gnat bite, or a swarming gnat attack. Even when walking outside, if you come upon one of those giant swarms of gnats that are always inconveniently right in your path, if you take on the swarm head on, you will suffer nothing more than a head full of gnats.

Well, I guess if enough gnats clogged up all of the air-holes in your head, you could suffocate to death over a really long period of time. But who has time to stand around and wait for that to happen?

Of course, if gnats could annoy someone to death, I guess that would be their lethal personality trait. I mean, what do gnats do, anyway? Do they serve a purpose? Are they useful at all? Not to my knowledge. They just float around, noiseless, annoying the heck out of everyone.

I think the gnat knows I'm writing about him because he just dive-bombed my face. Just now! He won't go away. Dang gnat . . .

The most annoying quality about gnats is that they are hard to swat. You have to have one of those perfect zen moments when you are in tune with the universe and the gravitational pull of the moon to be able to react and land on the gnat at the exact right moment. They are just too quick and unpredictable. They don't have a straight flight pattern, and the air created by the approaching swat more than likely will blow the gnat right out of your way. Then you just look like an idiot swatting at air. No one can see the gnat except you.

Gnats are a serious problem.

Well, this one gnat is for me, anyway.

Dang gnat . . .

C.T.

Nutrition
Do raisins in an oatmeal raisin cookie still count as fruit? It's still a raisin, and raisin is still a fruit. But does putting the raisin in cookie form take away from the fruit-ish value and nutrition of the raisin? Does it make the cookie more healthy, or does it make the raisin less healthy?

I don't like oatmeal raisin cookies anyway. So I guess it doesn't really matter.

Is chocolate chip a fruit?

C.T.

Fear of the Known
Fear is a funny thing. Not funny 'ha-ha'. Funny scary.

Sometimes I'm amazed at the things that scare me. I have some weird personal fears that are not things people are often afraid of. But then, isn't all fear unique and personal?

Today I'm afraid of allergies. Sure, that sounds weird. But it has a history.

During my freshman year of college, I had a chronically stuffy nose. It seemed it was stopped up on the left side almost all of the time. It was annoying, but then I got used to it. And eventually I was very annoyed again.

I have a huge fear of not being able to breathe. This comes from having asthma at a very young age. If you've never known the feeling of suffocating, or not being able to get enough air into your lungs to be comfortable, just know that this is a scary thing. Especially for a four-year old kid who doesn't understand why she can't breathe. I made many trips to the hospital as a youngster, from asthma attacks, to bronchitis, to pneumonia, and sometimes all at once. As cute as I was as a sick kid in a hospital bed, it wasn't so much fun for me.

So I've always had a fear of not being able to breathe. I hate water deep enough to cover my head for this reason. Sometimes I have enough trouble breathing outside of water where people should normally be able to breathe well. The thought of holding my breath underwater where I couldn't get a good breath if I suddenly needed one, well, that's just over-the-top scary.

Along with asthma comes allergies. Actually allergies are usually the trigger for asthma problems. I'm literally allergic to everything in the air, except for cat dander. Too bad I can't stand cats. I'm perfectly okay to be around them.

So during my freshman year of college when I noticed that my nose was perpetually stopped up on one side, I figured it was an allergy thing. Probably something simple which would require some antibiotics, and I'd be cured. Gosh, that would have been nice.

I made it home for the summer and shortly thereafter made a trip to the doctor. He couldn't quite figure out what it was, so he sent me to an ear, nose, and throat specialist. This guy discovered that I actually had a very major infection blocking the airways of my head. Not just a stuffy nose. A nearly completely stopped up head. Something that antibiotics and blowing my nose would not fix.

He recommended surgery to remove the infection and to straighten out my deviated septum, which was blocking the pathway out of my nose, consequently keeping stuff up there that didn't belong there. He estimated it could wait until Christmas vacation. Incidentally, a deviated septum correction is not the same as a nose job, so don't even start with the 'nose job' jokes. . .

A few weeks later, I was scheduled for a follow-up visit to the ENT, but he unfortunately had a major heartattack about that time and was forced to have quadruple bypass surgery. So I was referred to another doctor. And this turned out to be a blessing for me. Sorry, doc.

The new ENT took one look at my x-rays and at me and said I had to have surgery immediately. This could not wait. Although not knowing how long the infection had been there, it had grown so much that it had nearly completely cut off the airflow in my head. It is important for air to flow through the sinus cavity and throughout the head so that we humans can, in fact, breathe. The new ENT felt that if I waited til Christmas, well, to put it simply and bluntly, I would have a merrier Christmas if I was still around to experience it, and breathe.

Hmmm. Let's have some surgery!

After a very painful surgery and recovery for several months, I was then tested for allergies. At that time we learned I'm allergic to everything. On earth.

The next step was allergy injections, or immunotherapy. Simply put, they inject you with everything you are allergic to so that your body builds up an immunity to it and eventually you aren't affected by it anymore. The goal was that at the end of the process, I would be essentially allergy free, and hopefully by curing my allergies, whatever had triggered the infection in my head would not be a factor in causing that to happen again.

While I'm sure multiple injections sounds fun to you, I assure you it wasn't. It was at least a three-year process, starting with a shot in each arm, twice a week for a year. Then once a week for the next two years. I was pretty much a human pin cushion for three straight years.

But, it worked. I've spent the last two years relatively sneeze-free. It's been wonderful! For the first time in my life I can be outside and not tear up from whatever is floating around in the air, but instead from the joy of being outside and enjoying it. Sure, some things still bother me, like dust and smoke. But I'm truly relatively allergy-free, for two years straight. They should give out a chip or pin or something for that.

So why am I afraid today of allergies? Because I've sneezed more than usual the last few weeks. The new house, the new environment, the many hours spent out in the dusty, grassy yard, the fumey, dusty painting I've been doing. I fear it has re-awakened the dormant allergic reactions inside me. Last night was a bad night. Sneezing, running nose, itchy throat. I began to fear I'd have to visit the doctor again. Not that he isn't a very nice man in a series of four-or-so doctors who has helped me a lot. But my last trip to his office was a very happy day for me, and I hoped to never have to see him again.

I used to be able to tell pretty quickly if I was suffering from allergies, or from a cold, or from a sinus infection. I'd suffer from all of these pretty regularly, so I was good at determining the differences between them. Now it's been so long since I've had a sinus infection, or trouble with allergies, I worry when the funny business starts up again. The thought of more allergy injections is very depressing. My arms are finally recovered from that holey process. And the thought of another surgery to remove another infection that may have started again is just simply heart-breaking. I want to be cured for good. The first time.

This morning I awoke feeling absolutely awful. And I was so happy! My throat hurts, my head is stuffed up, and I have a cough. I was thrilled! No, I'm not crazy. But all of these signs point to a cold, and a cold will go away in a few days.

A cold sucks. But it's the lesser of three evils, and the one that scares me the least.

C.T.

Oddities of the Day

Beverage:
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. There is nothing quite as good as the first few sips of Coke at lunch after waiting with great anticipation until noon for this wonderful beverage. Oh man, that's GOOD. So this is why the Diet Pepsi Twist that I'm drinking now because it was the only caffeinated beverage in the cooler today is pretty much the complete opposite of a good thing, and an absolute and total let down.

Restaurant:
Driving in the Jeep on a quick errand during lunch, I noticed an eating establishment I hadn't seen before- Big Mama's Chicken and Waffles. Yes, I'd like the Chicken and Waffle Value Meal, with a Diet Pepsi Twist, please. Could we mega-size that? I want the biggest chicken on the largest waffle you have, washed down with the giant-est oddly-concocted caffeine beverage ever made.

Apparel:
I also spotted the grand opening of a new store that I'm sure will sweep the fashion scene this fall: Lingerie and Wigs. Because every beautiful lingerie ensemble needs a good wig.

C.T.

Another Odd Thing About Home Depot
Has anyone noticed that it's not just Home Depot? It's actually The Home Depot. I think that's odd.

No one ever says, "Hey I'm going to The Home Depot." It's just 'Home Depot.' That 'the' is superfluous.

I mean, do they think they are the only place to get home improvement stuff? That's a little pretentious for a place where every customer in the store is wearing paint clothes or work clothes, as opposed to how one would dress if one was shopping at a clothing store or some other non-home improvement establishment. I usually shower and wear presentable clothes to go shopping, but for Home Depot I can work in the yard all day, discover I need a tool, and head over there to shop amongst the others customers who are there during the middle of a job, and consequently sweaty, dirty, covered in paint, and generally not looking their best. It's an entirely different shopping genre than say, shopping at The Galleria.

You won't find many other stores slipping a 'the' in front of their name, assuming they are the one and only place to find whatever products they sell. Some places do, like The Gap, or The Container Store. But it's just a little uppity to be 'the', if you ask me. It's not The Barnes and Noble, or The Bed, Bath, and Beyond, or The Pottery Barn, or The Mall.

Okay, so it is 'the' mall. But you get my point. Chain stores for the common man shouldn't be 'the'.

There are Home Depot stores everywhere. So which Home Depot is really 'the' Home Depot? It's not like there is only one. Naming it The Home Depot would imply to me that there is only one. Even IKEA is just IKEA, and there are only, like, two of those in the world. IKEA could get away with being The IKEA.

Of course, being The Home Depot does not diminish my love for the Depot. But I swear I am not going there today.

C.T.

Home Depot is the Mother Ship
I've come to the conclusion that Home Depot is the Mother Ship. I'm drawn there at least once a week, and it's very much against my will. Not that I don't enjoy the Home Depot experience. But I am poor. I cannot afford to continue being drawn in by the Depot's vacuous force.

I made a sincere effort not to go there this weekend. I made definite plans not to go to Home Depot. In fact, on Saturday while out doing other errands, I gleefully drove past Home Depot, making a note that I was indeed passing Home Depot, instead of going directly to it. It felt good. It was a personal success.

Then I got involved in the Never-ending Bathrooom Painting Project From Hell, and alas, I inevitably had to go to Home Depot to consult someone who could rescue me from my bathroom. After 14 or so hours of work that was not turning out the way it should look, and incidentally 14 hours more than I ever want to spend in a bathroom without anything constructive going on in there, I had no choice but to report to the Mother Ship for help. Beam me over.

My hall bathroom is/was covered in a festively flowery/tulip-ish wallpaper. At the top edge of the paper, around the entire bathroom, was a different flower patterned border. So to enter this bathroom, it looks like someone came in and vomited flowers everywhere. It's too much.

There is also a nice yellow and white 60's style tile around the tub area, which I like. This is the good part of the bathroom. Very charming and cute. So my thought was to replace the flower over-abundance with a solid blue color to accent the nice yellow, by whatever means was the easiest and best way to accomplish this task. Either removing the wallpaper or painting over it. It looks great in my head. So I consulted Home Depot several weeks ago to get the scoop on what to do.

Home Depot told me it was absolutely the better idea to leave the paper as is, and simply paint over it. No problem. To start to tear down wallpaper, they said, would be an on-going disastrously monstrous task. Better to leave it there, and paint over it.

Home Depot set me up with an oil-based primer, which had to go on first, two coats. Then they hooked me up with a semi-gloss paint that should go on nicely on top of the two coats of primer. Easy enough. It should look as great as it does in my head.

Ha!

First of all, this is not my first painting project. I have already successfully painted several rooms of my house, and did quite a nice job, if I do say so myself. I'm very meticulous, very detailed, and very thorough. I know how to paint. So the problem with this bathroom is not my lack of painting expertise. It's just a hellacious bathroom frought with issues.

I began last week with the primer, since it has to dry thoroughly between each coat. It's not a large bathroom, so I figured it wouldn't take long to get a coat of primer up on the walls. The first thing I did before primer-ing was to trim the edges of the flowery border where it was coming up from the wall. The border does not have a straight edge. It seems to be attempting to look like actual flowers coming down from the ceiling, so it is an un-even edge that was not glued down very well. Once I had removed all of the superfluous edges, I was ready to prime.

This is when I discovered that I hate primer. Have you ever worked with this stuff? It is surely a substance sent directly to mankind from the depths of hell. It's horrid, awful stuff. It's fumey beyond belief, so it's nearly impossible to spend any length of time with it without getting a wee bit woozy, especially in an enclosed space such as my bathroom. I opened a window, turned on the vent, and brought in a fan to ease the aroma. But I actually only succeeded in creating a nice wind tunnel in which to challenge myself to work as well as I could in a non-breezy environment.

I stirred the primer until I thought my arm would fall off, hoping it would thicken up a bit. But it never did. Primer is runny, and that makes it tough to work with. Picture painting a wall with slightly thicker milk. It's hard to get it in the right place without much dripping and running of the foul substance.

I began getting the stuff on the wall, but had to stop after almost every brush stroke to wipe up drips. Even with all the tarps and plastic down on the floor and covering every surface possible, the primer was still managing to find escape routes to my tile floor, along with affixing itself to the tiled part of the wall and everywhere else I absolutely did not want it to be. It took several hours to complete the whole bathroom with just the first coat of primer, after which I realized I get to do it all again the next day for coat number two. Hooray.

I also discovered that primer does not like to come off of, well, me. I was almost as thoroughly primer-ed as the wall. With every stroke of the brush, as much primer that goes where it is supposed to go, the same amount flings off the brush out into the room, some landing on me and some landing all over the place. Even as gently as I moved my wrist in an attempt to gently place the primer on the wall, I still managed to cover myself with a nice layer of primer. After the second coat of primer, both the wall and I were ready for the actual painting to begin.

Now, if you've never painted a wall that doesn't have texture, like most walls of your house, it is a whole new ballgame to paint a wall with no texture. The primer provides some texture, but basically you see every stroke of the brush on the wall when you start with the color. There are no bumps or anything there at all to mask the brush strokes. Plus, you have to coat the paint pretty thickly to get it to cover adequately. But since there is no texture to hold the paint on the wall, anything more than a thin layer of paint will inevitably run or drip, usually after you've smoothed one area and gone on to the next area. I soon began to realize this was a losing battle with the paint. As soon as I would get one area finished, I would notice that I'd missed a drip or the paint was beginning to run. Anything I didn't catch quickly dried into a nice drip. It wasn't looking as good as that picture in my head.

On top of the drippy issue, the edge of the flowery border was still very apparent through the two coats of primer and the one coat of paint. The primer was supposed to have smoothed out the ridge of the edge, making it one smooth flat surface. But no, there it was forcing it's way through as though it just did not want to blend in and be one with the rest of the wall. The whole mess was unfortunately looking like I had painted over wallpaper, and my goal was to make it look less like painting over wallpaper and more like just a painted wall. What to do?

I stopped painting the trim of the room and called my mom. She had been the one to actually go to Home Depot the first time and get the primer, paint, and instructions for the bathroom. I wanted to make sure I had done everything right, not missing some major step or some small thing that was singlehandedly destroying my bathroom. And I also wanted to report that the 14 or so hours I'd spent in there already were not proving to create the world's most beautiful bathroom, as is the picture in my head.

My mom said I'd done everything as she had told me, and she couldn't understand why it wasn't working the way Home Depot said it would. We determined I should pack it up for the night and head to Home Depot in the morning to figure out what to do. At this point I had a partially painted bathroom, in total dissaray, and quite a bit of frustration and disappointment that this project wasn't turning out very well. I couldn't very well leave it as is or change my mind about doing the project at this point, so I had no choice but to be sucked into Home Depot again in the morning.

I got up the next day and dragged myself to Home Depot. Now, I could go nuts in there and buy lots of fun things. I remember when I was younger and my dad made me go to Home Depot with him, it was a tortuous experience. I hated Home Depot. Now, I love the Depot. I'm very into home improvement projects. It's a fun place to to be in tune with my inner tool girl. But on this day I did not want to go back because I've pretty much exhausted my budget for home improvement these days, and I did not want to have to spend more money on stuff to fix this bathroom project. It was an unexpected expense.

I went to the paint department and found a helper and began to explain the problem, telling him everything I'd already done and making sure he knew that what I'd already done is what Home Depot had told me to do in the first place. His first idea was more primer. Wha-huh? I'd already primer-ed twice, and I hated it with all of my being. How much more primed does a wall need to be? I'd banished the can of primer to the garage, swearing it would never return to the house again. Now I had to do more of this hated task? Surely there was another answer.

The helper said I should have used a primer with some tint to it, to help the colored paint grab onto the wall better without showing the white of the white primer through the brush strokes. Okay. Home Depot never told me that before.

Then he took me over to the brush selection and said I needed to use a better brush with finer and more bristles, to hide the stroke better. Okay. No one told me that, either. He also said I needed to use a better roller for the main wall, one that is thicker than the cheap ones. Okay. Sure that makes sense.

I then asked him what to do about the border edge showing through the paint. He said I should use some drywall mud and smooth over the edge. Wha-huh? Okay, now we're getting into, like, construction worker terms. I just want to paint the bathroom! No one said anything about spackling stuff.

He showed me the drywall mud, plus the accessories to go with it. Apparently I needed a mud knife and a mud pan, too. Okay, should I just go ahead and sign over my paycheck to Home Depot now? Goodness, this simple project was getting expensive and tedious.

The drywall mud goes on not once, but twice. One layer to fill in, and the next layer to smooth it out. Of course, you need at least eight hours of drying time in between each layer. And once the final layer is dry, you have to sand it to smooth the edges. Oh, and then you have to primer that to get it ready for the paint.

Curse primer. . .

Okay, so that now that I've added an additional 108 steps to my project, the helper person mentioned that I should also use a heavier paint than the glossy stuff I have. It needs to be a flat paint, which will also function as a primer, in the event I want to come back later and add a glossy finish layer on top.

The helper person showed me how to get the drywall mud on the wall, showed me the best ways to use the paintbrush and the roller for the best strokes, and then went into the history and composite make-up of all the different kinds of paints and why, where and how each should be used. He was choc-full of information.

So after this emergency trip to the Mother Ship Home Depot, I came home with drywall mud, a mud knife, mud pan, new (expensive) paint brush, new (expensive) roller brush, lots of instructions to add to my home improvement portfolio, and a whole new can of paint, incidentally in a slightly different shade of blue. I'd decided during all of this that I didn't love the color I already had. So since I was re-doing most of it anyway, why not change the color? Sheesh.

I've now spackled the drywall mud onto the wall, two coats, and will be sanding that this evening. This simple project has turned into at least a week-long, probably longer, project.

But when it's all over and done with it will surely be the most beautiful bathroom in the world. And I will be moonlighting as a drywall mudder to pay for it.

C.T.

Sometimes I am so bright . . .
I need to wear sunglasses just to deal with my brightness.

We've all done this at some time in our lives. You attend a function which requires you to wear one of those stick-on nametags that proudly displays your name to the entire room. Then you leave and forget to take off the nametag, proceeding to wear it out in public for the rest of the day.

Oh come on, you know you've done it. I did it just today, in fact. So bright, am I.

I went to a seminar thingy this morning. It's one of those educational things you attend for your job, in attempt to look like you are trying to do your job better. I mean . . . to learn more insightful tips on how you can improve your job performance, as you continually strive to perfect your job-related duties through much hardwork and dedication on an on-going basis. That's what I meant. Yep.

When I arrived at the seminar, we had to check in with the ladies who were the keepers of the nametags. I soon learned that my name as I know it was nowhere to be found on any of the nametags. I suspected this would happen, as my name is frequently misspelled. But I did not blame the keeper of the nametags. It seemed the person in my office who had signed me up for this seminar had severely butchered my name. Yes, I've been here a year and a half. She should know how to spell my name by now. I suspect she just doesn't care to attempt to get it right.

At any rate, once I went through every possible name configuration that I could think of, we finally found a nametag that was close enough to a name I might answer to. Whatever. I borrowed the nametag keeper's pen and scratched out as much of the name on the tag as I could, attempting to replace it with my actual, real name. This was a networking gig, as well as a seminar. Might bode well for me if I have my name correctly spelled for all to see.

I attached my nametag to me, and made my way to the table where the food sat waiting for me. I grabbed some grub and found a seat, settling in for a three-hour seminar on fundraising. Blech.

Another person sat down at the table I had chosen, and promptly introduced herself to me. She also promptly called me by the name I had crossed out on my nametag. Hmmm. I guess people can see through lines of pen markings. The nametag needed more work.

I removed the nametag and scribbled furiously over the incorrect name, and then re-traced my actual name several times to make it stand out better. There. That should do it.

Of course, by now my nametag looked as though a first grade child had gotten ahold of it and scribbled it to nearly to death. So much for staying inside the lines. My, how professional of me.

I endured the seminar, all the while enjoying the fact that it was during work hours and technically qualified as work, yet I was not in my office. Hee hee.

As the seminar adjourned, I reached to remove my nametag. But then remembering that I still needed the nametag to talk to people on my way out the door, so that they would clearly see my name and remember it in all it's scratched out glory, I decided to keep the nametag in place for now. I made a mental note to remove the nametag on my way to the car so that I wouldn't accidentally wear it around all day. Because I didn't want to be the loser with the nametag on all day. That would suck.

Then, as with almost all of my mental notes, I promptly forgot the note to remove the tag, approximately ten seconds after I made the mental note. My brain is not designed to remember things. And yet I always forget that.

I eventually wandered out of the building, got in the car, and drove away. Of course, I made no attempt to notice I was still wearing my nametag. I decided to run a quick errand on the way to my office, since the seminar had finished early anyway. Poor, stupid me.

Fortunately I only went to the post office, and there weren't many people in line. But I proudly got out of the car and passed a few people on the way into the building, still sporting my nametag. Then I waited in a short line, fortunately with very few people around, still sporting my nametag. Now that I think about it, the counter helper person gave me an odd look when I approached the counter and told her what I needed. But I didn't really think anything of it because she's a new worker at this post office, so how do I know she doesn't always have that strange look on her face? And of course at this point I still didn't realize I was still wearing the nametag.

I proudly walked out of the building, and not only was I still sporting the nametag, I tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, drawing the attention of several people in the parking lot. I didn't fall, but I did interrupt my carefree stride to the car. It was one of those cracks you don't see, before or after you trip over it. So to everyone else around it looks like you just don't know how to walk.

I proudly walked into my office building, checked my mailbox, passed a few people in the hall, and finally made it to my office. Only then did I notice that my purse strap caught on something attached to my shirt, as I removed the strap from my shoulder to put my purse down. Aaah. I'm still wearing my nametag. Dangit. Way to go, Einstein.

I finally removed the nametag and promptly wadded it up and threw it in the trash, now remembering how I had reminded myself to remove the nametag before getting in the car, to save myself from wearing the tag anywhere other than the seminar.

Oh well. At least anyone who noticed the nametag after I left the seminar would have had a tough time figuring out my name. I'm sure the excessive scribbling didn't attract any additional attention.

Not at all.

C.T.

If fruit was more fun . . .
If fruit was fun, we wouldn't flee from it.

I eat fruit all the time now. But for a long time, especially when I was younger, I never ate fruit. I hated it. I love it now. So why did I hate it then?

Because fruit is 'good for you.'

Today during lunch we had fresh apples. But I didn't take one. I got to the end of the food line and the volunteer serving food asked if I wanted an apple, as she pointed to a bowl full of pretty decent looking apples. I automatically replied no, and added that I already have an apple upstairs. I don't know why I thought she needed to know I had an apple upstairs in my office. I bring fruit everyday for my afternoon snack.

Yes, I'm on a feeding schedule. I have to have my afternoon snack to make it through the day.

Later, I thought about the apple and scolded myself for not taking the apple. I would totally eat it. I love apples. I eat them all the time. And even if I already brought an apple for today, the apple would keep for another day. DOH! Free apple, idiot.

I then thought about why I'd automatically said no to the apple. I hadn't even hesitated or thought about it. I just said no, flat out. I think it was because I was asked if I wanted one, much like when I was a kid and apples were 'bad' because they were 'good'. (but not 'bad' as 'cool' in the spirit of Michael Jackson's Bad) Saying no to fruit is a reflex I developed at a very young age.

In my younger days, given a choice between a cookie and an apple, I would always go for the cookie. Not that I didn't like apples. And actually, I wasn't all that much of a sweets lover as a child. But because my mom would always make a big deal about apples being a snack that is 'good for you', and often with the threat that it was an apple or nothing at all, I think I developed an aversion to apples and most fruit in general.

Only in the past year, or maybe less, have I gotten onto a fruit kick. I buy fresh fruit at least once a week, and I make sure to eat at least a banana or apple everyday. I buy a wide variety of fruit. I also buy fresh vegetables, and I enjoy that, too. I know fruits and vegetables are 'good for me'. But that's a perk these days. I feel better about what I'm eating. I often choose a peach over a cookie, when I have a choice.

However, many years were lost from the benefits of fruit on a growing kid. There's no telling how much taller, more beautiful, and/or all around more fabulous I would be now had I been on a steady fruit diet my entire life. I don't even know why my mom ever bought fruit, because neither my sister nor I ever ate it, that I can remember. I guess my parents ate all that fruit. Wow, that's a lot of fruit.

I think if fruit were more fun for kids, we would be more attracted to it from the time we are but wee ones, til we get too old to force our dentures to bite into an apple. Babies start off loving that mushed up fruit-esque stuff in a jar. But somewhere along the line, they discover what fruit really looks like, and the stigma of 'goodness' deters them from enjoying fruit in the edible form found in nature.

I think if my mom had never used the phrase 'it's good for you', I would have been more inclined to choose fruit for my snacks. Not that it's her fault I balked at the knowledge that fruit was good for me. She was just being a good mom, trying to raise a kid that wasn't made entirely out of sugar and spice. (contrary to what people think about sugar and spice and everything nice, that is NOT what little girls are made of) But I think as is typical with most kids, we don't always want to do what is good for us, or what mom thinks we should do.

Including eating a yummy apple for a snack.

Oh well. Think of all the fruit trees I saved by not consuming fruit for about 20 years. That's something, right?

C.T.

Shark Education
I somehow ended up watching several shark movies, or portions of movies over the past week or so. I blame the Discovery Channel and their Shark Week programming. Even though not all of the movies I caught were on the Discovery Channel, it cannot be purely coincidence that during Shark Week there was a plethora of shark movies elsewhere on the tube. It was a literal shark infestation. Thank you Discovery Channel.

I learned several things from my Shark Week viewings. Incidentally, the most educational pieces of television viewing were not the educational programs on the Discovery Channel. I learned more from the movies. Which are totally, completely, one hundred percent accurate to real life. Naturally.

Here is what I learned:
1. All sharks have the same theme music.
Watching Jaws, Deep Blue Sea, and the TBS original movie Red Water proved this theory without a doubt. Prior to every shark attack in all of these movies, the music gets really soft. You hear the sloshing of the water. Then you hear very low, very quiet strings and piano. dun-Dun. dun-Dun. Slowly at first. Then increasing in volume, pace, and intensity until it erupts into shrieking violins, fervent bass strings, blaring french horns, and human screaming at the pinnacle of the shark attack. By understanding this phenomenon, we can learn to anticipate shark attacks while we are in shark infested water. Listen for the strings and piano. If you hear this, get out of the water. Immediately. When the horns blare, it's already too late.

2. Any type of mutant shark is angry and much smarter than your Average Joe Shark.
We've seen it several times in Jaws. The giant freak of nature shark is mad, and very smart in trapping and eating helpless humans. It also manages to come back from the dead, bigger and badder every time. In Deep Blue Sea, the science experiment sharks are humongous. And mad about it. And mad at the humans for making them so dang big and then stealing their shark brain juice. They turn out to be smarter than the humans, planning a very cunning attack and eating nearly everyone in the movie except LL Cool J and some other guy. The lesson here is to not create mutant sharks, and to run away from sharks that are already mutants. Mutated sharks are just not nice. On a grand scale.

3. Sharks can live in freshwater.
This was the super scary detail which was the focal point of the TBS original movie Red Water. Somehow a shark got into their bayou, and consequently wreaked much havoc. So, for all of you who grew up watching Jaws, calming your fears of sharks afterwards by telling yourself that sharks can't live in bathtubs or toilets, that is completely false. They can, and they probably do. Be very careful in your tub and on your toilet. You could already have a shark in there.

4. To kill a shark, you have to blow it up. Or drill it with a giant oil rig drill.
Since most of us don't have an oil rig drill handy, blowing up a shark is the better way to kill a shark. It must be a massive, water spraying, shark chunk flying explosion. Merely shooting a shark, or stabbing a shark, or any other attempts to kill a shark besides just blowing the thing to smithereens will not phase the shark at all, and will actually only make it madder. And possibly larger and smarter. So if you are needing to kill a shark that is attacking you, don't waste your time trying to kill it in other ways than blowing it sky-high out of the water and into little tiny sharklet pieces. Always swim with dynamite and other volatile explosives.

5. When sharks are around, don't fall into the water a lot.
In these movies, a lot of deaths could have been averted if people hadn't kept accidentally falling into the water. Sharks are attracted to blood, flailing, and splashing. All of these people who accidentally fall into the water inevitably cut themselves on the way in, therefore bleeding profusely. Then they flail about causing much splashing and motion. This will surely attract a shark, which will promptly eat you. If you must fall into the water on accident, don't do anything. Be very still and don't bleed. Hopefully someone will fish you out of the water, and then blow up the shark.

6. If you work near or around sharks, make sure none of your co-workers are evil.
In Jaws it was poachers and shark hunters. In Deep Blue Sea it is a greedy scientist who smokes around the shark and the equipment. In Red Water it is Coolio and a gang of mean divers looking for buried treasure. These evil people ruin the shark-free fun for all of the non-evil people. Sharks can apparently sense evil, and after they chomp on the evil people, non-evil people inevitably get chomped on, too. Beware of evil co-workers. They attract sharks.

7. Rap stars do not get eaten by sharks.
This theory is only accurate in two of the three movie examples, as Jaws films did not have any rap stars portraying shark bait. But in Deep Blue Sea, LL Cool J escapes many shark attacks and is one of only two survivors at the end of the film. In Red Water, Coolio gets blown up and/or shot, but not in or near a shark. So technically he escapes being eaten by a shark, even though he dies. Therefore I am led to believe that the best way to avoid being eaten by a shark is to become a rap star.

8. Sharks that seem to be asleep, aren't.
In Deep Blue Sea, the scientists put the giant mutant shark to sleep so they can jam a large needle into its brain and extract super duper shark brain juice. Inevitably the shark wakes up and promptly bites the arm off of the greedy cigarette smoking scientist guy. This type of behavior isn't evident in Red Water, but I believe it occured at some point in one of the Jaws movies. So be very careful if you come upon a sleeping shark. It is likely not really sleeping, and if you are within arms reach, it will have no problem reaching your arm right off of your body.

I hope you will find these shark facts as helpful as I have.

Thank you Discovery Channel, et all.

C.T.

Least Favorite Day of the Year
Today is my least favorite day of the year. It's the four year anniversary of my sister's death. I hate today.

It's a weird day because to everyone else in the world it's just another day. So just because I feel different and sad and the day has meaning to me, it doesn't affect anyone else. Except for my family. It's a big reminder of the day my life changed completely. Two days before this day four years ago was the last time I saw my sister. It's hard to believe it's been four years since I've seen, hugged, talked to, or heard from her.

Most people don't remember that this day is 'the' day anymore. Some do remember, and that is so wonderfully special to me. It means alot. But most friends and even most of my extended family forget or don't pay attention anymore, which isn't a big deal except that it's nice when people remember. Not because I need them for anything today. I just hate feeling like I'm the only one who remembers. I don't often feel 'alone' until I'm sad for some occassion about my sister, and I realize I have no one to share that with me anymore. Not that anyone ever truly shared it with me, because I don't think that's possible. But grief is definitely lonely. I know I'm not alone, but it is a lonely thing.

My parents usually get lots of cards and flowers and phone calls today. People seem to remember that they lost a daughter. But not many remember that I also lost a sister. My only sister. I don't get cards or phone calls, or even quick emails anymore. I don't necessarily want to get stuff. It's not about stuff, and actually I don't need the lingering reminders around the house all week. It's just nice to know people care, and they haven't forgotten about me and they aren't afraid of me when I hurt. More importantly it's nice to know people remember my sister. I worry sometimes that she's been forgotten by too many people.

People forget why I might be sad or a little 'off' this week, and then I have to explain again, or sometimes for the first time. I don't mind talking about it. In fact, I like talking about it. It's part of who I am that I've had to deal with this loss, and it's made this huge part of me into something I would never have been otherwise, and that's a good thing. But I do hate watching people hear me talk about it. They change as I say the words. They become uncomfortable, like they think I expect them to do something about it, or they just don't know what to do or say. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that not many people I know can relate to losing a sibling at such a young age. My peers haven't had to deal with anything like this, and they don't know what to do with it, or what to do with me dealing with it. Plus, a lot of people don't expect that the funny girl is ever sad or that she can talk about things with depth. And people who have known me as sad over the past four years and who have been there for me at times get this look or sound of fear when I get sad again sometimes, like 'here we go again.' I think I wore them out, which sucks for me, but is understandable for them. I think people wish I was 'over it' by now, but I don't think I'll ever be over it. I hope I'm not. So I usually find it easier on myself not to say anything at all. Just to be sad on my own today.

Even though most everyone else forgets, or at least they don't let me know they remember, I don't get to forget or ignore it. I don't even write anything on my calendar to signify this day because it is forever trapped in my memory. I forget pretty much every other thing, big or small, if I don't write it down. But not today. I actually hate seeing today's date on anything. I don't date checks that I write with today's date on them. Today doesn't need a reminder.

I can't be mad or frustrated with people because they forget, and I'm not mad or frustrated about it. That's not the point of what I'm going through, and I pretty much knew there'd be a time when I'd be mostly alone with it. It's on-going for me, but old for everyone else. It's not significant to them. It's not their thing. And I'm glad for them that it's not theirs to deal with. But it would be a pleasant surprise in my day if friends and family remembered today on my behalf, and didn't shy away from me. It's a long enough day as it is. Feeling like the sad freak that no one wants to talk to doesn't help.

On the other hand, it's much simpler and kind of nice to withdraw from people, to not hear from them this week. That way I only have to deal with me.

Last year I called in sick to work. I didn't feel like dealing with work craziness on top of whatever else I might be feeling for the day. The environment here is not suitable for me to bring in outside emotions. I don't think I really did anything all day. I just chilled. The year before that I didn't have a job, so on that day my joblessness worked out nicely. I didn't have any responsibility to slough off. This year I'm at work, but I probably won't do much except get through the day. Although it feels good to stick to my normal routine. I'm actually feeling pretty good today, and that's a blessing.

Sometimes I wish my parents lived closer, when days like this come up. Anniversaries of things related to my sister's death, holidays when other people are with family but I can't be there, birthdays that we can't celebrate with my sister anymore, etc. They are the only ones who can relate somewhat to what this stuff means to me. But then again, I'm usually glad they aren't closer anymore because I can't stand to see them sad. It's weird to see your parents, normally strong and able to fix anything, now broken and sad. We've grieved together, and we'll talk today. But I think it's healthier for us these days to not encourage more depression by being sad together.

People ask me, or sometimes just assume, that it gets easier as time goes by. Or maybe they wish it would get easier because that would make sense, if grief was something that made sense. But I think to say it gets easier is inaccurate. It never gets easier. It just gets different. It gets easier to handle sometimes because I heal and learn and grow and change with it and how I handle it, but the thing itself never gets easier. I feel differently about missing her this year than I did last year at this time, but I still miss her with all of me, everyday. It still hurts. A lot. That never changes, and doesn't get easier. And actually, I'm glad. At the point in time that it gets easier to be here without my sister, I will know that she is fading away from my thoughts and memories. I don't want that to ever happen.

It will always be hard. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing. She will always be important to me.

I don't cry about it as much as I used to on this day. It doesn't devastate me anymore or put me out of commission for a day. It is more like just a normal day, but with a sad twist. I have a heavy heart. I don't feel like being funny today, necessarily, but almost out of respect. Not because I'm too sad to be funny. I just want to remember, and to make that significant. She deserves as much from me on this day.

I remember everything about that day and the following days four years ago, and I'm glad. Even the horrible stuff, things I saw and heard and went through then, things I've never told anyone about those days, I don't ever want to forget. I'll think about it off and on today, and that's a good thing. Painful, but good.

It's hard to believe my life has gone on without her, the things I've done, the places I've gone, the people I've met, the people I've lost, the things I have, the things I've learned. All things I can never share with her, yet it really still feels like she was here just yesterday. Sometimes it feels like four years has been a really long time, but other times it feels like no time has passed at all. I get frustrated with time because I don't want time to pass. I want to feel better, and I do feel better everyday. But I don't want to get further away from the last time I saw her because I keep changing, even though her picture in my memory always stays the same. I'll be old one day, but she never will. It's bizarre to me, to say the least. Not something I ever expected to be dealing with at this stage in my life.

Today I will finish my work day. On my way home I will stop by the store and buy some flowers. I'm the only family close enough to visit the cemetary, and I'll stop by there today. I've gotten to know the place well over the past four years. I'll clean up her grave marker and put out some fresh, cheerful flowers. And I'll sit for awhile. Alone. Then I'll head home and finish my day.

It sucks that's where I have to go to visit my sister. But I wouldn't miss it today for anything.

C.T.

Yardwork A-go-go
Once you start yardwork, it never ends. This is what I learned over the weekend as I worked in my Wild World of Weeds, Wasps, and Whatnot.

My goal for the weekend was to remedy my problematic Flowerbeds O' Dead Things. I hoped to rifle through the riff-raff of random plants, weeds, and general chaos to determine 1) Which things were plants and which things were weeds, and then B) Leave the living, remove the dead.

I started in the backyard, attempting the biggest problem first. The flowerbed (and I use the term 'flower' loosely, as there are no actual flowers anywhere to be found) along the back fence was in utter dissarray. The fencing people (and by 'fencing' I mean the guys who built my fence last week, not sword-fighting people with metal collanders for face masks), had left me some very thoughtful, but very large mounds of dirt, proudly displayed in the very middle of my 'flower' bed. They had also left a giant trench all along the fence, where much of this dirt initially came from, I'm sure. So the first part of my project was to move the dirt back into the trench and even it out into a nice, flat, flowerbed.

Actually, the first part of my project was to buy a shovel. Off to Home Depot, I went.

Upon returning with proper gardening supplies, I began to move the dirt. Slowly, as it was heavy, rocky, and dry. Eventually the huge mound of dirt fit nicely and neatly into the trench and throughout the 'flower' bed. Next, weeds.

I began to pull the obvious weeds. Upon pulling the obvious weeds, this lead to many more less obvious weeds lying in wait underneath the dirt and clinging to their friends, the obvious weeds. The more I pulled, the more weeds appeared. I began to suspect they were growing and popping up right before my eyes. For every weed I pulled, ten more weeds appeared. They were everywhere. It was much like that arcade game with the foam hammer, where you whack the heads of the gophers as they pop out of the holes. I'd pull a weed, and pretty soon more weeds were springing up left and right, faster than I could attack them. Weeds running amok.

Eventually I had to call it quits on the weed pulling, or else I'm fairly sure I'd still be out there pulling weeds right now. It had to stop. I cleared away some rubble, sprayed some weed killer (fulling believing that this stuff will totally and completely kill all of my weeds. yeah right), and then I began trimming the, well, large bush-type thing.

I have no idea what kind of bush or tree or shrub or plant or alien creature this thing is, but it needed to be trimmed, whatever it is. It was thorny, so it could possibly be a rose bush. I began trimming the dead parts, and the parts hanging over the fence, and the parts poking me in the face. Pretty soon I was left with a few good branches/arms/limbs/sprouts, and unfortunately a much thinner tree-type thing. Oh well. If it is meant to live and be something, it will live and be something. At any rate, even sparse it looked better than before.

There was a smaller version of the same tree-type thing nearby, so I trimmed that, too. They make a lovely couple, whatever they are.

I realized I needed to build a retaining edge to the 'flower' bed, where the fencing people had removed one side of the retaining wall. Otherwise, all of my dirt and weeds will run out the end of the bed, and all over the lawn. Hmmm. What could I use? How about some of those random cement blocks lingering about the yard for no apparent reason? Perfect. I located three blocks and created an edge to the bed. Not the prettiest, but functional for now. Just what I needed.

Then, I mulched. I mulched like I'd never mulched before. Mostly because I'd never had a 'flower' bed to mulch, so mulching would have been a silly thing to do before now. It only makes sense.

After I put down a nice layer of mulch, I stood back to survey my work. One 'flower' bed down, four more to go. Good grief, this was hard work.

I moved to the next 'flower' bed, along the back of my house. Things should go faster from here, as the rest of the beds didn't require as much work as the Mega Bed along the back fence. Now, throughout the yard I've noticed random rocks. Mostly in the 'flower' beds, but also just along the side of the house. I guess for decoration? Who knows.

I moved the rocks in the current bed, to the dirt patch near the fence, where the bed ends, but before the sidewalk begins. Sure, a rock garden would be lovely here! I arranged some rocks there, in hopes to prevent the dirt from running all over the place as it usually does when I water, and to get them out of the 'flower' bed. Once the rocks were removed, then I attacked the weeds.

These weeds were much less in number, and much less ferocious in nature. The weeding didn't take long. Soon I was trimming the bushes. Two of the bushes were most definitely, probably, nearly certainly rose bushes, as they were quite thorny and rose bush-esque. If roses appear on them one day, then I will know these are, in fact, rose bushes.

I also removed the dead things that didn't survive the 'planting'. I use the term 'planting' loosely, as the previous owner's idea of planting was to keep the plants in the plastic containers they come in, set them on top of the 'flower' bed, throw a scoop or two of dirt in the generaly vicinity of the plant, and you're done. A planted plant. Naturally, most of the plants did not survive. Tragic, to say the least.

Once the maintenance was finished, I mulched. Again. Oh how I love the mulch.

What I do not love, however, are wasps. As I worked on this second bed, I noticed increasing wasp activity buzzing dangerously close to my head and body. I happen to be highly allergic to wasp and bee stings, so every time a wasp would come near, I would throw down my tools, leap back, and take a few steps running in one direction or another. I soon noticed I was doing this every few minutes, so I came to the conclusion that there must be a wasp nest somewhere close by. Great. Just what I need.

Remembering that I had an old can of wasp spray, I went to retrieve it. Armed with my trusty spray I began to walk around my house in search of the nest. Nothing. I came back to where the wasps were attacking me, and looked closely. Nothing. As far as I could see, no wasp nest was on my house or trees or bushes. Where the heck were these things coming from?

A wasp buzzed by my head and I watched where it went. And then I saw it. A HUGE nest in the corner of the window of my neighbor's house, right along the side of my house. Perfect.

This meant these wasps weren't mine. But since the wasps do not observe my Wasp No-Fly Zone, I was being periodically attacked by my neighbor's rude, uncooperative wasps. I couldn't very well go over there and spray the nest on a house that isn't mine. Plus, this would only anger the wasps and cause them to attack me. And since I am highly allergic to one wasp, I figured a whole pack of them attacking at once would surely do me in. I did not relish the idea of a wasp attack rendering me helpless on my lawn, alone, where I would surely get a severe sunburn while laying immobile on my lawn until someone discovered me. My neighbor wasn't home, so I couldn't go over to ask her to please remove her wasps from near me. Oh my. What to do?

The next bed I needed to work my magic on just happened to be on the side of the house adjacent to the wasp infestation, but fortunately this bed was in pretty good shape, so it wouldn't require me to spend much time there. I was hesitant to work there. Leaning over the bed would put my back to the nest, giving them prime opportunity to attack, possibly flying up my shirt or into my shorts. This was not a fun thought for me.

I quickly assessed what needed to be done, and quickly jumped into action. I was sure to keep my can of spray close by, in the event of more wasp attacks. I had another large pile of dirt to haul away, so I hurredly shoveled and carried dirt as quickly as I could, all the while keeping a watchful eye on the nest. I could count at least seven wasps hanging around on the outside of the nest. Who knew how many were inside, planning the attack on me.

As I worked, a wasp would buzz by and I would again throw down my tools and do my Anti-Wasp Dance, making sure there were no wasps on me and running in the opposite direction of the wasp for a few steps. If any neighbors were watching me from a distance, I'm sure my Wasp Antics in the yard were quite amusing. Little would they know, my Wasp Dance was a life-saving ritual.

I moved the dirt, I pulled the weeds. I moved more rocks. I trimmed the non-thorny, non-rose bush-esque plants, and then I mulched. Done, and done.

I quickly moved my tools around to the front of the house and began working on the big shrub across the front bed. I hate this shrub. It's one of those Edward Scissorhands bushes that can be trimmed into a shape, but currently it is in the shape of a very uneven box-like shrub, with a good chunk of it being mostly dead. At this point I was sad to not be Edwinna Scissorhands. I could have used to extra blades to speed through the process of trimming this shrub.

First, I cut away the dead stuff, which left a nice big hole in one section on the side. It couldn't be helped. It was either brown ugly branches, or a big hole. At least the hole might eventually fill in.

Then I tried to even out the bush, making it flat across the top and smooth down the sides, like a proper box. This was harder to do than I expected. First of all, the bush was planted too close to the sidewalk, and it had grown over about half of the sidewalk, and also over part of the driveway. While I would have preferred to cut it back further from the sidewalk, I soon discovered just trimming a little bit was a major task. Not to mention, making it even and flat was pretty much a joke.

After trimming for awhile, I had to stop. It wasn't as bad as when I started, but it wasn't as good as Edward Scissorhands would have done. It was more square-like than before, yet with some mildly undulating waves here and there. It was back from the sidewalk a bit, but not a lot. Whatever. I hate this bush. It's good enough for now. We'll consider it 'art'.

I began raking up the leaves and branches I'd trimmed, and clearing out a lot of debris that had collected in and around the branchy bush. As I reached underneath to grab one big pile of debris, I discovered my second biggest enemy of the outdoors, second only to the sting of the wasp and bee: ants.

I stuck my hand right in the middle of a GIANT antbed, cleverly disquised as a pile of leaves and a potato chip bag. Since when to ants eat potato chips? Chips found in nature, no less? Whatever. Luckily I had my gardening gloves on, so I was able to shake of the glove, which was now thoroughly swarmed with ants, before the ants got to my hand. In addition to being highly allergic to bees and wasps, I am also highly allergic to ant bites. This was my lucky day, having stumbled onto both wasps and ants.

I jumped up and did my Anti-Ant Dance to make sure no ants were on me. Then I went in search of my trusty AMDRO, which actually isn't trusty yet, since I've never used it before. A co-worker recommended it, and I'd gotten some at Home Depot earlier in the day, just in case. I proceeded to AMDRO the heck out of that mound. I also sprayed it with some other ant/general bug pesticide. I wanted those ants dead. Now. For-e-ver . . .

Once the ants had been averted, I proceeded to the weed portion of the front 'flower' bed event. I'd noticed a tall, weed-like thing growing for quite some time. It was probably a weed, but had some tree-like features. The weedness came through in the random placement of it, being nowhere in particular in the bed, not related to anything else growing there, but definitely several feet tall. I'd left it alone for awhile, but finally come to the conclusion that it was either a very big weed-esque growth, or a giant marijuana plant. Either way, it had to go. Marijuana on display in the front yard was probably not a good thing. And a giant all-consuming weed was almost as bad.

I pulled the growth and finished that bed with none other than a nice layer of mulch. Aaaaah, the mulch.

I did the same routine to the last remaining 'flower' bed, sparing the life of a living, yet really annoyingly sprawling plant, only because I didn't have the heart to kill one of the few living things left in any of the beds. I will probably regret that, but for now the plant has one more chance to impress me.

At the conclusion of this weekend's Yardwork A-go-go, my 'flower' beds look at least 108 times better, and I can proudly say I did it myself. I've also been rewarded with a lovely sunburn on my neck, back, and shoulders. You may ask why I did not wear sunscreen, and the answer is simple. There was a struggle of chemicals between sunscreen vs. bug spray. The combination of the two chemicals proved to be somewhat toxic for me. In the end, bugspray won, although I still managed to receive more bug bites than I preferred. But the bites are covered in a nice shade of pink sunburn, so it all worked out. Or something.

Thankfully I managed to escape all wasp stings and ant bites. Unfortunately I will put the wasps and ants to the challenge again tonight as I admire my 'flower' bed handiwork, during my tour of the yard.

Tonight, I must mow.

C.T.

SBC, Part Deaux
I've already chronicled this SBC nightmare. It was a much scarier nightmare, I'd guess, than the new Freddy vs. Jason movie will be.

By the way, does anyone else not care who wins Freddy vs. Jason? Even if they die they'll be back again in another movie next year, Freddy's Severed Claw Hand vs. Jason's Headless Hockey Mask. Sheesh. It never ends.

Anyway. Sure enough, the bill I received yesterday from SBC was all, completely, horribly, emphatically, definitely wrong. In so many ways. The main thing being they charged me for another month of DSL service, which was supposed to have been canceled weeks ago. Plus some other phone charges that I think have already been cleared up, but I'm not sure. It's quite a messy bill. Random charges and credits everywhere. They definitely do that on purpose, so that you'll give up trying to figure it out and just send a check for the large amount at the bottom of the page without protesting.

Alas, I doth protest.

They toyed with me over the phone stuff a few weeks ago. But I'd completely forgotten they could still come at me with DSL issues, too. DSL had been strangely quiet and problem-free, so far. They must have been lying in wait. Come to think of it, I still hadn't received the mailing labels they told me they'd send so that I could return my DSL modem to them. Being sure to send it within 15 days, of course, or I would surely be charged for something.

So, today I had to call SBC again. Except it's a different number for the DSL people. Why they need a whole extra crew to mess up DSL customer service, I don't know.

I was sincerely hoping that in the past few weeks SBC had relocated all of their customer service people, both for phone and for DSL, and replaced the entire throng of customer service drones with brain-having, thinking-capable, people actually able to serve customers. But, no. It is not so.

I sat on hold for an exceptionally long time today. When you first call, you have to type in your phone number. I picked one of the phone numbers I've had over the past few weeks, and I'm sure then they knew it was me. They left me on hold for a long time to think about it. Pure torture.

Today's SBC on-hold soundtrack: an uber-cheesy, saxophone-lead Muzac version of "Let's Get it On"

Hmmm. What was SBC trying to tell me??

Finally someone picked up my call, and I was greeted with, "Thank you for calling SBC. How can I make you a very satisfied customer today?"

Hmmm. Let me count the ways. Way #1 being go away and let me come down there and handle this myself.

I began to explain the superfluous charge on my bill for an extra month of DSL service that was supposed to have been canceled on July 25. I then went on to explain that I was told to mail the DSL modem back to SBC within 15 days using the mailing labels SBC was supposed to send me, yet I had not received any such labels. I didn't want to be charged for still having the modem, but I can't send it back without their special labels.

She said she would take care of the billing issue first. She was very perky. It was very annoying.

She then said the billing cycle ended on July 10, so I would have to pay for service from July 10 through July 28, and that was less than the full month of service being charged on my bill. I said no, my service was specified to be cancel on July 25, so I would be glad to pay for July 10-July 25, but only that. If the service went on til July 28, that was their failure to cancel it on the right day. Plus, I didn't have a working phone line until way after July 28, so even if my DSL was still working on the 28th, there is no way I could have used it. She said okay, and credited me $3.00. Score one for me.

Then she asked me what kind of modem I had. I said I didn't know. She said she needed to check to see if it was a super-duper special something or other modem, in which case I would definitely need to send it back. But if it wasn't that kind of modem, I could keep it. She said she wasn't sure why they told me to send it back, unless they just gave me that as an option. I wanted to say it was because SBC is #1 in customer service reps who have no idea what they are telling their customers, sometimes even making stuff up just to perpetuate a problematic situation. But I actually just said no, they said I had to send it back, and they said there would be a charge if it wasn't back in 15 days. She needed to check with a Super Duper Modem Specialist Manager, which she just happened to have with her there in the office. Would I mind holding?

Of course not. Let's Get it On.

She came back after a few minutes and said that yes, I could in fact keep my modem. She was very excited for me. I asked her if she was sure that I wouldn't be charged for it. She said no, it's mine to keep. No charge. Great, now I have a chunk of computer equipment that is completely useless to me. Ain't no way I'm using SBC DSL ever again. Maybe I will hang the modem on the wall and throw darts at it.

She then asked me if there was anything else she could do for me. I said no, I think that's it. She asked if I would like to be transferred to the phone department to talk to someone about the phone charges that are wrong.

I said no, I don't have time for that right now.

I think I will do my own figuring on my phone bill this time. SBC has done enough damage already.

C.T.

Regenerating Paperclips
My desk has a drawer, in which my paperclips are kept. A plastic container within the drawer holds a wide variety of paper clips, from large to small, from square to triangle, from silver to colorful. I have a plethora of paperclips.

The odd thing is, I always have paperclips. I never run out of paperclips. From the first day I started working here, I would turn to the paperclip drawer for my paperclip needs. I have paperclipped many a document in the year and a half I've worked here. Yet, the supply of paperclips never seems to dwindle.

One time I went down to the supply closet to see where we keep extra paperclips, forseeing the day when I would eventually run out of paperclips and I would need to refill my container of paperclips. I made a note of the location of the extra paperclips, and have not been back since then to retrieve them. I just simply haven't run out of paperclips, yet.

For awhile I was paperclipping everything that needed to be fastened in some way, in an attempt to use up my paperclip stash. I even paperclipped things that should have been stapled. If papers needed to be fastened, they received a paperclip. Nothing else. I went through hundreds of paperclips, at a minimum. I became obsessed with the oddity of my paperclip stash. I was determined to get to the bottom of it. Yet, it never diminished.

I still cannot see the bottom of the container. There appears to be no end in sight. It's not a large container, as it's small enough to fit in my drawer, along with many other items in the same drawer. Yet every time I reach into the container for a paperclip, I never have to reach very deep, and I never have to search very long for a paperclip of appropriate stature.

Throughout the course of my scientific experiment regarding paperclips and their functionality, I have reached the conclusion that paperclips must spontaneously regenerate of their own free will.

It's the only thing that makes sense.

C.T.

Jeeves
Someone Asked Jeeves this question: second base with a girl?

And Jeeves led them straight to this story of mine.

Probably not exactly what whoever had in mind.

Hee heee.

C.T.

Rain, Rain, Don't go Away
I've been fascinated with rain lately, which is odd since summers in Texas usually provide very little rain. So why have I been obsessed with rain as of late? Because it's free water for my dry yard.

I've had a yard now for about three weeks. I have sinced turned into a yard freak. If I could spend all of my time out there tooling around my yard, I would. I love it. I think I love it mostly because I'm obsessed with the fact that it doesn't look great, yet has great potential. My weird desire to 'straighten things' now has a new outlet. The yard.

I go through phases of being neat, countered with phases of caring less if I have clothes all over the floor. With the new house, I'm in 'nesting' mode. I'm so tired of looking at boxes and bags and things out of place that I have an intense desire to put everything away, right away. My home needs to feel like home. Now.

However, it takes quite a bit more time to unpack and put things in the proper place, than it did to cram it all in boxes. Sometimes I have to wait until I get 'the feeling' of where something should go before I can open the box and begin distributing the contents to the proper places. Not to mention, now that I have several rooms and an entire house, I often move things around several times before I'm satisfied with the location. When there are options, it makes it more of a challenge to properly unpack. The apartment options were pretty much living room, or closet. Now with more options, nesting takes time.

This 'nesting' routine and my current desire for neatness has spilled over into my yard. I haven't been able to spend as much time out there as I need to, but it's already starting to shape up a bit. I still have many dead things to remove. The former owner's attempt at a green thumb has left me with some very ugly and sadly dead tree and bush hopefuls. Alas, I must lay them to rest.

I'm beginning to think of new things to plant. I'm limited on cash at the moment, but I'm hoping to find some simple things to improve the look of my flower beds, in preparation for spring when I can do more. My new favorite word is xeriscape. This will be the key to my landscaping success. I'm very excited.

I've been worried about watering the yard, hence the thinking with the xeriscape water conserving native plants. My goal at this dry, hot time of year is pretty much to not let the yard die. My dream yard is nice and green and filled in completely, with pretty green landscaping bushes and flowers around the house and near the fence. The yard I have, however, is not quite yellow, somewhat green in a few spots, crunchy to the touch, and with a few odd sparse patches here and there. Bushes and flowers are nill, and/or dead. Not too nice, but not too shabby, either. It's gotten much better since I've been caring for it.

I can't afford to water the yard as much as it needs to be watered. Water is expensive, and it's very painful to watch my money sprayed all over the ground, only to disappear forever. Not to mention, it's an evening consuming project to water each section of the yard. It's not a large yard, but it takes several days to do the whole yard, then I start over at the beginning. I see now why people invest in sprinkler systems. Much more convenient, and dryer for me, I'm sure. I still manage to get shot in the back, or in the head by the sprinkler at least once during my watering routine.

So imagine my excitement to hear thunder clouds last night. This is rare in Texas in August, so at first I wasn't sure I was really hearing what I thought I heard. I'd come home from a dinner thing with the intention of watering my yard. I started in the front and made it through the first section. I moved the sprinkler to the next section, and again heard the glorious sound of thunder. A little closer, but still not with rain potential for my lawn, yet.

Up until a few weeks ago, I hated rain. It makes my Jeep dirty, and when hail comes with the rain, it threatens to damage the Jeep. This is no bueno. Plus, when going from apartment to Jeep in rain, I get wet. Again, no bueno.

Now that the Jeep has a lovely, dry home inside my garage, and I can get from Jeep to house through the garage rain-free, I am a big fan of rain. As the sound of thunder drew closer, and darker clouds began to roll in, I began a one-sided rain conversation of sorts, pleading with the rain to please come and rain on my yard. I was pretty close to doing a rain dance. . . when the lightening attacked.

I noticed the wind picking up and the lightening increasing, so I figured rain couldn't be far behind. I went outside to turn off the sprinkler and move the hose back to its hose spot by the house. Just as I reached the sprinkler, which was at the far side of the yard away from the house, an extremely large lightning bolt decided to flash close by, immediately followed by an enormous clap of thunder. I'm not sure exactly what a 'clap' of thunder is, but all I know is I saw bright light right before a really loud noise, and it scared the crap out of me.

I decided the hose could hang out in the yard for awhile, since it probably wasn't the safest thing for me to be outside holding a wet hose, standing near my house. So I hightailed it back inside where I would be dry and not in danger of lightning. Within a few minutes, I heard the most beautiful sound in the world. Hard rain.

I looked out in the backyard and watched it rain for awhile. It was a blessed sight. Lovely rain falling on my grass, accented by shots of lightening every minute or so. I could almost see my grass turning greener before my eyes.

Well, not actually. But I like to think so.

I'm praying for free water again tonight.

C.T.

If I didn't feel old before, I do now.
I found a sure-fire way to make yourself feel WAY old. Go hang out with a bunch of kids who are about to start their first year of college.

While visiting my parents this past weekend, it happened to be the same weekend as the send-off party for the local kids heading off for their first year of college at my dearly beloved college. My parents like to stay involved with the school, even though they no longer have any kids in college. So they had planned to go to the party again this year. Even though I volunteered to be the one to stay home and keep a watchful eye on our sickly dog, lucky me, I got to tag along as the Token Alumni.

We arrived at the home hosting the party, and at first glance we appeared as two parents and a student. I happen to be young-looking. It's deceiving, but nice at times. Then the introductions started and soon it was clear to all the kids that I was, in fact, old. Upon doing a simple math calculation, which I'm sure I learned during my four years of college, I calculated that I was nine or ten years older than these kids. Even though that's not a huge age difference, the 'young' factor was running rampant amongst these kids. There is quite a bit of difference between 18 and 27.

I was immediately struck by how young they looked. They were so scared and nervous, meeting people for the first time, yet trying to not to appear frightened or nervous about starting school in a week. It's funny how just a few months ago these kids were confident seniors at the top of the highschool foodchain, and now they were young naive newbies headed off to a new school as the low kids on the totem pole. They had lots of questions but were afraid to ask at first. There were several current students mixed among the incoming freshman, and then there was me. Old Alumni Girl.

The people from the university in charge of the event are friends of my family, and as we split the room up into the Parent Group and the Freshman Group, they thought it would be a good idea for me to head outside with the kids. Great, now I was supposed to be Cool Old Alumni Girl with all the answers. I felt a bit out of place, and I wasn't really prepared to be all 'big sister' to a group of college freshman. I had planned to be at home napping nicely at this point in my afternoon.

The current students began talking to the youngsters about general school stuff, the cool places to hang out, how to get involved, etc. It was very much like summer camp, where the counselors try to connect with the kids and make it fun, yet educational. They did a great job, and I figured I wouldn't really be called upon to participate. I could just hang out and eat cookies. But every once in awhile they would turn to me and ask a question, and I would do my best to answer on a relate-able level. But the more I stood out there, the more distant I felt about where we were respectively in our lives, and I knew my two cents worth was not so much helpful or cool, as it was 'Wow, that's weird. We actually have electricity in the dorms now, old lady. But thanks for your tips on good lantern usage.'

I've been in the working world for about five years. I've recently bought a house. I've been through a lifetime of situations in the five or so years I've been out of school, and it became clear to me then just how long ago that seemed, even though five years isn't that long in the grand scheme of things. I loved college, but I did not envy these kids starting the whole college experience. College sucks for the first semester. You're in a new place, with new people, with new freedoms, and new responsibilities, and it is a difficult adjustment for everyone. It gets fun and cool and exciting after awhile, but these kids were in for a tough few weeks and months ahead. SO glad I am past that.

I also realized how much about college has changed in just the short time since I've been there, specifically with my school. The kids kept asking me questions about certain things, yet the majority of these things I'd never heard of. We didn't have a Chili's on campus when I went to school there. We had to drive for five minutes to get there. We actually had to stand in line to register for class, rather than sign-up online. There was no student center with a swimming pool and climbing wall. They built that the summer after I left. I felt like the old lady who 'had to walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways, with a warm potato to keep my hands from freezing.' So many things had changed, I was pretty much obsolete already.

It wasn't a miserable experience. It was fun to see these kids excited about school, and even better, excited about my school. Even at my age, I can still remember being in that place. Ready to get away from parents, but still hesitant to be so far away.

But as many times as I've thought I would have liked to stay in school longer, or that I've wished I could go back to that time, I am now firmly convinced that I am ever-so-glad to not be there anymore.

We grow up and move through life for a reason. If for no other reason, so that others can come along and learn from our experience.

Or at least for them to be thankful that the tuition I paid while I was in school purchased the Starbucks they have now in the new parking garage.

C.T.

'Helpful' Overload
One thing I've noticed since owning a house for the past several weeks is that everyone has advice on owning a house. What to do, what not to do, maintenance, tricks and tips, helpful suggestions, etc. For the most part, it's good, since I've never owned a house before and I pretty much have no idea what I'm doing. But at times, it's a little much. Information overload.

Sometimes I can't even tell a story about a project I've done at the house, or describe something in detail without whoever I'm talking to chiming in with a better or different way to do it. I don't necessarily want everything done for me, or done without a little trial and error on my part. It's part of the home-owning adventure to jump in, head to Home Depot, and figure it out on my own. Plus, it makes for good stories. Experience and expertise is certainly valued and appreciated. But sometimes the overly-helpful, albeit well-intentioned nature of so many people makes me a little crazy.

Now, if you are someone who has given me advice or made a suggestion about house projects or maintenance, don't assume I'm talking about you here. I have really appreciated all the helpful hints I've gotten from people, and for the most part people have been very cool about how they offer advice. Most of the hints have actually proven to be helpful. But sometimes I just like to tell the story of what I did, and how I did it, and the outcome of it, and not have the person I'm talking to come back with an alternative or the way they did it and why it was better. Even if I didn't do it the best way, or the most efficient way, or exactly the way you'd do it, I did it. My way. In my house. I learned from it. And that's okay. It's an accomplishment.

Of course, when my house falls apart because I didn't do it the right way, I'll certainly be coming back to you for more of those helpful hints.

Thank you.

C.T.

My Dog Has at Least Nine Lives
Or she is Animatronic. I haven't quite figured it out, yet.

So, this situation seems to have calmed down a bit for now. My dog, the Wonder Robo-Dog, has returned from the edge of death. She apparently just needed to add a little drama to our lives for some extra attention.

I hopped on a plane and flew out to see my parents and my poor, sickly, cancer-ridden dog over the weekend. The vet had suggested my parents get me out there right away because he feared our dog would not make it through the weekend. We all thought she was a goner after her dramatic turn for the worst last week. She'd stopped eating completely. She'd lost a lot of weight, and among many other highly disgusting ailments that occur to old dogs when their body stops functioning properly, Duchess by all appearances seemed to be on her way to doggie heaven, post haste.

I was upset all week, just absolutely heartbroken that our little family dog had decided to call it quits, without me there. I was worried I wouldn't make it out there in time to say goodbye. The daily reports from my mom told me that she was hanging on and doing a bit better, but we feared we would have to put her down before the weekend was over. I'd even planned to take Monday off from work, just to do whatever we would need to do for Duchess. We just didn't want to prolong her suffering.

I arrived on Friday night, not quite sure what I expected to see when I walked in the door. But, to my surprise, there was my dog, wagging her stumpy little tale and walking over to greet me. Um, last I heard she was an invalid, unable to even get up. She was so thin, and having a hard time with her legs. But, that was actually normal for her. In fact, the only outward appearance of her sudden attack of debilitating cancer was a bright orange bandage on her front leg, there to cover the catheter the vet put in for her I.V.

She seemed fine. A little weak, but fine. I was relieved and very excited to see this, although suddenly feeling a little guilty that my dad had paid to fly me out on short notice. Oops.

The next morning my mom and I took her to the vet for a prognosis report. I held her in the car, and she watched out the window, as the always does. She walked into the building on her leash, like she owned the place. Well, she'd been there enough over the past week, she pretty much does own the place.

The vet and nurses couldn't believe what they saw. Duchess was actually running around the exam room. Well, running as well as an old lady dog with bad legs can run. They removed the catheter from her leg and sent her home with another supply of medicine, since she was apparently going to stick around for awhile to take it. The vet was so sure she wasn't going to be here for much longer, he'd only supplied enough medicine for just a few days.

We took her home and then, well, went shopping. We figured we'd be sitting with the dog all weekend until it was time to take her in to the vet for the last time. But since she seemed to be doing fine, well, there was shopping to do.

Duchess got even better as the weekend went on. We fed her lots of fun stuff, and she was soon following us around demanding more food. She's now eating like a pig that has fasted for a month. This is a good sign. She still has an enormous tumor, and most of her internal organs are out of whack. She technically shouldn't even be able to walk, since two of the discs in her back have long since worn away and her spine has an odd curve to it.

But she apparently doesn't know this, and has decided to stay with us for awhile, in general good health.

We're not even sure what's keeping her running anymore. But we are thankful that she is.

C.T.

When Softball Turns into WWF Smackdown
There are times in life when I'm not so proud of myself. Unfortunately those times are more often than they should be. I don't know where my brain goes, but it leaves me unable to make good decisions. And sometimes unable to just keep my mouth shut.

When two bad softball teams come together for a game, it begs to reason we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously. Especially in the D League of a city league, one bad team versus another should generally just be a time to have fun and enjoy the sport. This did not happen last night, as my team and another bad team in the league played each other. It got ugly.

We'd had trouble with this team before, which ironically is the team for the local office of a global company with the slogan "Quality in everything we do." Last season they arrived with attitude and generally did not treat us well, making fun of us even though they are not very good themselves. That makes the whole thing less fun for us, because we just want to play and have fun. The D League is not the competitive league, and we don't make fun of other teams in the league. But we also have some tempers on our team, and it sometimes doesn't take much for us to return the attitude favor.

The game last night started well. No problems. Hit, catch, run, throw. We made some points. They made some points. Everything seemed okay.

Then, it happened. A runner rounded second base and headed towards third base. Our shortstop threw the ball to third base to cut her off, and as our thirdbase girl reached up to tag the runner, the runner just decided to plow into her and knock her down. Hard. It was ugly.

So, we are sure the runner is out, yet the umpire called the runner safe. Wha-huh? Not only did she flat out plow into my teammate, she really knocked her down hard, taking her off the base. She was not a small woman, and the force of her running full steam at our player succeeded in knocking our player down hard. The only reason she made it to the base was because she forcefully removed our thirdbase girl from the base. Which I guess led the ump to the conclusion that she was safe. She was actually tagged way before she made it to the base.

Well, third base was ticked. As she should be. She rewarded the runner, who was still sprawled out on the ground clinging to the base like she'd earned it, by kicking her with a faceful of dirt. Not once, but twice. That started a near brawl.

Now, we are a church team playing in a non-church league. But admittedly we get lured into some heated battles with idiots who take D League softball way too seriously. I don't condone the dirt kicking, but I can understand where it came from. We are not in this to run people over and cause injury, just to win a stupid softball game. The runner's decision to make this a full contact sport was a bad decision. It was clear the umps call here condoned the practice of charging other players on the field. And incidentally, he'd made a similar call a few weeks earlier.

So after the dirt kicking, the other team came over in full force to defend their player. Our thirdbase girl's husband came running over from the outfield to have a few words with the ump, in reference to this call and the last time he'd made the same bad call. He was ticked that his wife was just bowled over, and we didn't at least get the call in our favor. We may be a church, but we are tired of our players taking the brunt of knockdowns, while the other team gets away with it. Would they knock Jesus down if He was playing thirdbase? I don't think so.

Now, our biggest guy on the team is about a foot shorter and at least a hundred pounds lighter than the biggest guy on their team. So when their big dude came over to get in several of our guys' faces, it would have been funny had it not been such an angry situation. I play second base, and I had run over near the incident to voice my thoughts on the bad call and the runner's bad decision to run over my friend. A few other players from both teams had now congregated, and the ump seemed to not realize that a fight was about to break out. This had all taken place within about five seconds.

It really was one of those slow-motion things for the next few minutes. Some of my team is trying not to get involved and instead calm people down, but others on my team are furious at the injustice of the situation, and at the potential injury causing decision of the runner. Had a guy been playing third base, Miss Offensive Tackle Runner probably would not have dared to run him down. And she definitely would have been tagged out, much like she had been before she took out our thirdbase player. So my team was thoroughly ticked that our thirdbase girl could really have been injured, and the runner was still called safe.

The ump finally woke up and started threatening to throw people out of the game if we didn't get back into position and start playing. Their big dude was still in the face of my friend's husband, and they were arguing about who should or should not 'bring it on' at that moment.

Their team members in the dugout were laying it on with the yelling and shouting of rude sarcastic comments about how much our team sucks, yada yada. The rest of us started wandering back to our places on the field, still shocked and perturbed at this turn of events. Not only was it a bad call, but the other team was being really rude about it and taking it on longer than it needed to go.

Well, they kept on arguing. The ump was arguing with our players and the big dude from the other team. Then the little punk who was standing at second base started mouthing off to no one in particular, just to be a part of his team's big head. I happened to be in that area, since second base is my area, and this is when I became very non-proud of myself.

I decided to mouth off back to him, just because I couldn't stand his attitude. He was saying that if people are in your way, you should just knock them down. So I told him he might be in my way right now. Keep in mind, I am a tall, skinny white girl, and I am really bad at talking smack when I'm angry, yet I still can't help myself sometimes. I talk big, but likely about things I can't back up, and most of what I say during a heated conversation doesn't come out of my mouth making as much sense as it did in my head. So telling this guy that he's in my way right now, like I'm going to walk over and knock him down on the spot, was obviously a dumb thing to say. While I am not to be under-estimated in my strength and abilities, this little punk, easily the smallest person on their team and definitely shorter and skinnier than me, would probably have had no problem beating the crap out of me. He was very 'street' looking. I am not so much 'street', as scared of 'street'. But even though I've never actually been in a fist fight, at this moment I was seriously wanting to start something with this guy just because he was sincerely asking for it, knowing full well that if he decided to beat up on a girl (me) I would be in serious trouble.

Well he turned around and said something stupid, and he said I should watch myself. He called me 'A-train', which I didn't get and made me laugh. I told him to watch himself, because I couldn't think of anything better to say. And I said if we're playing to knock people down then they'd better watch out because it was our turn to return the favor. He said again that it's the game to knock people down, and I just laughed at him. Since when is softball about knocking people down?

I really wanted to keep arguing with him because I really wanted to win something on the field last night, even if just an argument with an idiot. But whatever he was saying quit making sense and was hard to understand, so I didn't know how to respond. And I was really, really mad, so I'm sure whatever I would have said wouldn't have come out making much sense, either. So I just gave him a cold, icy stare and laughed at him, like I had the upper hand. And then I turned my attention back to the game and checking roll around the field, to make sure all of our players were still accounted for and more or less intact.

Obviously the true idiot was me engaging the loser in a losing conversation, but I wasn't ready to admit that, yet.

So, our playing went downhill from there. We finally resumed play, and we were all too distracted by what had just happened to concentrate on winning the game. The other team continued their jokes and laughing and sarcasm and rudeness throughout the rest of the game, getting a big kick out of every single out they made. And it was not a fun experience. Especially when the game was called early because there was no way we would ever catch up. I think we'd decided we were tired of listening to them, and we all kinda gave up so we could get out of there and away from them.

Of course a better way to handle the situation would have been less dirt kicking and smack talking, and more good sportsmanship and closed mouths, even in the midst of their provoking. We know that, and we are not proud of the way we behaved, although we were in much more control and in better taste than the other team.

But still, when softball becomes WWF Smackdown, the rules and good sportsmanship seem to fly out the window. And I can't help but have a few choice words to say about that.

C.T.

A band-aid is better than a bare toe
I'm weird about toes. I actually hate toes. I find them disgusting. I hate my toes. I hate your toes. I hate all toes.

For many years my toes never saw daylight. Even in the summer I would wear socks and shoes. When at home alone, I would still at least wear socks around the house. I had a fabulous sock tan line throughout the summer months, which I somehow found less disgusting than sporting open toes.

I'm not sure where my toe hatred began. I don't know if I had a traumatic toe incident, or if I've just always abhored the sight of toes because they deserve to be hated. I think at one time when I was younger I was fairly friendly with my toes. But somewhere along the line I became grossed out, maybe by my own hand, and ever since I have been strictly anti-toe.

My toes are not unattractive. In fact, as toes go they are quite nice. They are long and skinny, as are my feet. I've always been self-concsious about my Peggy Hill-esque feet. But considering other horrendous feet options, my feet and toes are actually quite desirable, as feet go.

Over the past few years I've gotten much less weird about my toes. I now freely wear sandals and flip-flops throughout the summer. I even shop for cute open-toed shoes, to have a variety. I enjoy the comfort and freedom provided by less shoe and more air.

But one toe related thing I will never budge on is the condition of free-range toes. It is IMPERATIVE to have polished toenails if toes are going to be out and about. And chipped, poorly applied polish will not cut it. A naked toe is an evil toe. A toe with chipped polish is basis for toe removal. Even just the thought of polish-free toenails turns my stomach. Toes belonging to boys are just absolutely off-limits to me, because naturally boys prefer not to wear toe nail polish. Even though boy toes are the most digusting toes of all. How do they get that way??? Blech.

I have a very strong policy about not letting people touch my toes. Well, except for a select few boyfriends over the years. Funny how 'lub' can change a heart on the whole footrub thing. Anyway, the Anti-Toe Touch policy makes the Mandatory Toenail Polish policy a bit tricky at times. I have never had a pedicure. The thought of that makes me all itchy and ancy. I don't even really like to touch my own toes, much less allow a perfect stranger to touch my toes in front of other people at a salon. But, I've learned to accept my toes and the fact that I have to touch them in order to get polish on them. Therefore to maintain constant, chip-free polish on the toes, I have had to resign myself to regular self-pedicures.

Now, being weird about the toe thing and all, a toenail polishing session for me is quite an ordeal. I hate doing this so much that I go all out to do the best, neatest, most durable polish job ever, in hopes that it will be several weeks until I have to endure this again. It's time consuming and tedious, and something I never do in the company of others, but I find it is worth the time and effort. I apply several layers of pre-polish, chip avoiding, all-round anti-chip stuff before I even get to the actual polish. Then it's two coats of polish (more than that gets goopy and messy and infringes on the acceptable appearance of the polish), finishing up with a top coat sealer. At the end of the toenail polishing process, there aren't many things short of a jack hammer that can knick the paint job on my wee little toes.

Unfortunately I decided to unintentionally put that to the test last week while cleaning in my kitchen. Did you know that even when you use the attachments on the vaccuum cleaner, that little whirly brush sucker thing underneath still turns and whirlies like it means business? As I used an attachment on the vaccuum to clean some cobwebs out of the corner of the ceiling, I inadvertently lifted up the vaccuum just a bit from the floor. It then landed haphazardly directly onto my big toe, and proceeded to chew up said toe, polish and all.

Well, I yelped. I probably cursed, too. It was all kind of a blur to get the vaccuum off of my toe before it proceeded to eat my entire foot. I looked down at my toe and was very, very sad. My very pretty toes, which I had just painted with the whole shebang the night before, were not so pretty anymore. Actually, it was just the big toe. The remaining toes on the foot escaped unscathed.

Not only was most of the polish ripped off of the main part of the nail, most of the nail itself was chewed up on the end. And there was bleeding. All over my clean floor.

I hobbled to the bathroom, cleaned the toe a bit, and assessed the damage. It actually wasn't too bad. It wasn't hurting as much now that the initial shock of the attacking whirly thing had passed. The worst part seemed to be that most of the polish, as well as several layers of the nail had been buffed off, and the end of the nail was quite jagged. I was seriously grossed out. Toes are gross enough looking normal. When injured, it takes the gross out factor to a whole new level.

Bandaids. I located my stash of Bandaids and applied two. One to cover the offending bleeding end-of-toe, and another to hold the first Bandaid onto the toe. Back to cleaning.

The next day when I uncovered the toe pre-shower, I discovered that the toe itself seemed fine for the most part. But the polish was in complete disarray. Especially compared to how good the rest of the toes looked. But, I didn't have time to repair the damaged polish. And I couldn't very well sport the toenail polish in that condition while wearing my open toed shoes. So, my solution was to wear more Bandaids. The Bandaids may not look the nicest, but it was definitely better than crazy, chipped polish, jagged claw toe.

I feel so strongly about the toenail polish issue that I went a week hiding the 'injured' toe under Bandaids before I was able to fix the polish damage last night. It's a serious matter, people.

Free-Range Toes Need Polish.

C.T.

Down with a certain local phone company
Reading through parts 1-9 of this, I remembered a recent harrowing, yet admittedly less horrendous tale of my own. We'll call it Why SBC Might Be Satan.

I've recently moved, which meant one of the things I had to do was transfer my home phone and DSL service. Now, the only reason I have a home phone in the first place is because a phone line is required for the DSL service. There was a time in the recent past where I was home phone-free, using only me cell phone as my all-round phone. I had a cable modem. Life was grand. It was a bit scary at first, but I went almost a year without a home phone line. Never had a problem. However, when I moved the last time I had to switch to DSL, and therefore had to cave and get another phone line.

So, with my latest move to my new house, I decided just to keep the phone line and DSL, instead of switching back to the cable modem. Why? Just because it's a hassle to switch, especially with set-up fees and whatnot. I called SBC to arrange everything. This is when the trouble began.

I've been an SBC customer off and on for many years. I've never had a problem. They have thousands of phone customers around town, I'm sure. So it would seem switching service from one address to another is likely a pretty routine, fairly common occurrance. Of course, I've often wondered how this doesn't create a problem more often, and how they manage to keep track of all those numbers and addresses and orders. But they've proven to be very accurate, and after all, they are phone people. That is their business. It would make sense that they would be good at it.

However, I was soon to find out that many years of good SBC customer service was about to come back around and reward me with a week long mess of the worst customer service ever.

Calling to transfer the phone service started out fine enough. In fact, I was really excited at how things were going. They were set to switch my current phone service, as is, not adding any extra features that I don't need, and I would even get to keep my current phone number and area code. The phone helper person checked and verified and called another department and double checked that I could, in fact, truly keep my same phone number. This would make my grandmother very happy, since she has never managed to get my phone number right since I've had it the past year or so. There would be no need to confuse her with yet another phone number change.

So, I got the phone switch set up with the polite helper person, and she then switched me to the DSL department so I could arrange to switch my DSL service. I gave the DSL rep my new address, and this is when things turned sour. The DSL helper person got quiet for a bit. Then after a series of 'Hmmms' and 'Oh dears', she put me on hold saying she needed to check something before she gave me the bad news. Bad news? Does my new house not qualify for DSL? Did my name come up in the SBC hit lottery? I sensed impending doom, and all I could do was sit and listen to the piped on-hold music, and wait.

She came back after a few minutes and said that what she feared was true. First of all, you never want to hear that from a customer service person. If THEY fear it, how is that supposed to make the customer feel?? She said my house was in a special area of service, and she said something about the distance from the house to the phone line, and a bunch of other technical mumbo jumbo. All of which resulted in additional hardware, requiring a spiffy technician to come out to the house and add an alien satellite receiver probe thingy, for the small fee of $200. What?? Um, no. First, I don't want to attract aliens to my home. And second, I'd prefer not to pay $200 for a technician. I'd originally installed the dang DSL myself for free, so I'm not about to pay for a technician to come mess around with anything this late in the game.

I asked if there was any way around it, since I'm a long-time customer. She said no. She also mentioned they have been losing a lot of business lately because of this, and there is nothing she can do if I want to have DSL at my house. So I very politely said I'd be calling Comcast Cable to check on their offers, and I'd likely call back later the same day to cancel my DSL. Ha! Take that, alien receiver lady. She said she understood. But to quit calling her 'alien receiver lady.'

After a conversation with Comcast, in which they rolled out the red carpet for me and offered me a deal I couldn't refuse, I called SBC back to cancel my DSL. So at this point, I was set to have my phone switched over in one week, keeping my same phone number, and canceling the DSL on the same day. Simple, right? Wrong. Oh so very, very wrong.

Nearly a week later, the day before my phone service was to switch, I arrived at my apartment to a series of messages on my machine from SBC saying a bunch of stuff that didn't make sense. They wanted to know if was moving in with someone. Another message asked for my landlord's name, phone number and address. All of these calls were from different customer service reps, and it was all very confusing. I didn't understand why SBC needed to know my roommate situation. Did one of these reps want to move in with me? I determined the calls were to alert me that there was a problem with the phone service switch, so I called the number they left.

Apparently they discovered that the previous owner of my house had never turned off her phone service, which happened to be with Verizon. And this was causing a major problem for SBC. Once I got over being very mad that I hadn't realized the phone was still hooked up in someone else's name, and I hadn't made any long-distance calls to China while I had the opportunity to do it for free, I explained to the SBC rep that I had bought the house, I was not moving in with anyone, there is no landlord, and I just need my phone service hooked up tomorrow. Apparently this was still a problem.

SBC has to get permission from Verizon to release the phone line. This takes time. So the result was that my phone would not be hooked up the next day, and since the day after that was Saturday, it would not be hooked up until Monday. Ok, this was no big deal. I still have the trusty cell phone. I can do without the other phone for a few days. I did, however, find it odd that it took SBC a week to figure out this problem, forcing a delay of my new phone service. But I also realized the problem initiated with the previous owner of the house, who must not be too concerned about having a phone wherever she was going. So very odd. I didn't blame SBC entirely.

Monday came around, and still no phone service at the house. I'm beginning to get annoyed. Fortunately I don't need the phone line for internet access, because Comcast came and set that up the week before, no problem. Well, only a minor problem. They were late, which was okay because it resulted in a free installation fee for me, due to their tardiness. Needless to say, I'm so far a big fan of Comcast.

I called SBC Monday evening to see what was going on with the phone, and they said it was taking longer than expected to work with Verizon on freeing the phone line. Why Verizon would be holding my phone line hostage made no sense to me. It's not like I'm going to pay the previous owner's phone bill to keep that line. But SBC assured me it would be on the next day, and that I was still set to keep my old phone number. Cool.

The rep then tried to sell me additional services on my phone, saying how important it was for me to have call-waiting and long-distance service, yada-yada. I politely explained to her that I was so frustrated with SBC at this point, they were lucky I'm even keeping the basic phone. Since I only had it for internet access in the first place, I was just fine leaving it option-free. We hung up.

Tuesday comes, still no phone service. I know it is not on because I've called my home phone from my office several times throughout the day, and was rewarded each time by receiving the loud series of beeps, followed by the 'This number is no longer in service' message. I call SBC again, and after being passed around to several reps causing me to tell my story several times, I'm finally told that the order has been completed and that their computer shows that my phone is indeed up and running. I explained that I'd just called it, and no go on the phone number being hooked up.

The SBC rep looked through all the orders and notes from all of calls over the past week and mentioned that he was seeing a lot of errors in the orders, and that it looked like they had set me up with a new phone number. I had suspected as much. I said that was wrong, that I was told I could keep my old phone number and that's what I'd ordered and I would very much like for them to switch it back to the right phone number right away. He said he didn't know why they'd changed it, and he put me on hold to check something. By now I'd become very familiar with the SBC on-hold music. They need a new soundtrack.

He came back and said he verified again that I could definitely have the old number, and it was still available, so he would put in a brand new order to have it changed back to the right number, as I'd specified from the beginning. He said it would take place tomorrow. I asked him if he was sure. He said yes. We hung up.

Wednesday arrived, and still no phone service with the correct phone number. Calling the number still resulted in the annoying 'disconnected' message, and I was thoroughly annoyed and frustrated. And longing for my phone number. I missed it.

I called SBC again on my way home from work, and was told that the order to change the phone number back to the original number had been canceled. Yes, apparently someone had just decided to thoughtfully cancel that order for me. She couldn't tell me why. The mystery person who canceled the order had not left good notes about it. She put me on hold, to check something of course, and when she came back she said my phone number was still available and yes, I could still have it at the house. She put in yet another order and said it should be completed with the correct number in about an hour or so, and to call back tonight if it didn't work. I assured her I would.

I arrived at home to a message on my machine from someone else at SBC. This was not a happy message for me. It told me that I actually could NOT keep my old phone number, as the computer is now telling her that the machine can't make that switch for where my house is located, as my house is really in an area with a different area code. I knew the area was generally a different area code, but I also knew that SBC had promised me the old phone number with the old area code would be just fine. The message then gave me my new phone number and said if I wanted to change the number to the old number, there would be a fee. Of course there's a fee!

I was thoroughly confused at this point. The computer had told the reps all week that the number was fine for my house in this area. The Phone Number Verification Department had told the reps it was fine. Did the computer change it's mind? I called SBC again, to clear up this mess. And, I was ticked. At this point I just wanted a working phone number, but I also wanted an good explanation for what the heck was going on. Without a fee.

SBC rep #108 checked her computer and my long list of orders and said it still looked to her like my number was okay for my house. She asked what the message said. I told her it said something about a machine not being able to handle the number for this area. Rep #108 then said, oh yes, that sounds right. Sorry, you can't have that number. Hmmm. If I'd told her the message said I'd just won a million dollars from SBC, and a lifetime of free DSL, would she have agreed with that, too? I kicked myself for not thinking quicker.

I asked her what is up with this 'computer'. Is this like the Great Oz or something? It appears to be a computer, but it's actually a computer facade run by a tiny little angry man who changes his mind about phone numbers as he sees fit? I mentioned to her that the computer had approved my phone number everyday for a week. Plus the Verification Department had been consulted all week, while I was on hold, and they, too had confirmed my phone number. So why, pray tell, did the computer suddenly change it's mind? And why is the computer in charge?

She said the computer is usually wrong, often initally confirming numbers, and they have no way of knowing until they actually make the change. Then what good is the computer, I wondered? The computer has wasted a week of my time.

I asked if there was any way possible that I could keep my old number. She said yes, if you sign up for Preferred Number service. They can manually switch the number, even though it is set up to the new number, so that when people dial my old number it automatically rings at my house. And yes, there is a fee.

Well, I said I didn't want to do that if there is a fee. I guess I'd just keep the new number. She gave me the new number again, and I reluctantly wrote it down. She then mentioned they could add a message to the old phone number directing people to the new phone number. Is there a fee for this, I asked? She said no. Are you sure? She said yes, she is sure there is no fee, and she would even set it up to run for three months, rather than the usual one month. I really didn't need this service, but at this point I definitely wanted SBC to make a better effort to appease me. So accept the free message, I did.

I hung up with SBC, and realized I needed to change the out-going message on my machine to state my new number. I did that with a heavy heart. But, I was glad the ordeal was over. I had a working phone number, for no extra fee. Whatever. Using my Comcast cable modem, I sent out an email to my friends and family, letting them know of my new number, after I'd already proudly proclaimed that I could keep the old one. I hate to admit defeat.

I thought all was well, until I found out the next day that it wasn't. A friend emailed me to let me know she'd called the new number, and it didn't work. WHAT??? You have GOT to be kidding me!

I checked the email I'd sent to make sure I'd sent out the right number. I had. I checked the number I wrote down with the email order confirmation I'd received the day before from SBC. The numbers matched. So far everything on my end was correct. I called the number. The same familiar 'disconnect, no longer in service' message greeted me. I nearly threw the phone across the room. Good thing I didn't. I was at work. It's not my phone.

I called SBC again, and explained the situation. I asked why my phone wasn't working. The rep checked her Computer of Oz and asked me what number I'd called. I told her. She said, 'hmmm.' She mumbled to herself as she read through the order, and then asked me about another number listed in the order. I said I'd never heard it, but that so many numbers had floated around over the past week, it's possible that number could have come in as important somewhere along the way. I explained that I was on at least my third phone number in the past week.

She put me on hold to call the mystery number. When she returned she said this mystery number is the number set up to my house. Wha-huh? That's not the number they gave me last night, when my phone worked with the number of last night. She said they must have changed it since then. Um, why? Why would they randomly change my phone number from one day to the next? I'd already suspected SBC was out to mess with me until they broke me. Now I was convinced.

She said when you place an order, it's based on timing. So if another order is placed slightly ahead of mine, they get that number, meaning the number I had last night. But I mentioned that I already had the number. It was actually mine for a brief time. So, why would SBC take a number they'd just given to one person, to give to another person with an order at the same time? Wouldn't it be simpler just to give them a new number and let me keep the number they already gave me? I didn't understand. It seems if that were the case, no one would ever have a phone number.

I then explained to her that if it's a matter of timing, I was supposed to have had phone service a week ago, using my old phone number. So if her theory was correct, I had long-since won the order timing preferential phone number face-off. She actually sounded shocked and concerned that I had possibly been cheated out of the phone number I'd deserved. She immediately went back over the order, and started the process of confirming my old number. She said it looked like I could have that number, and asked me what happened. I told her the Computer of Oz story, and she said, oh yes, that sounds right. This must be a line they are given at SBC Customer Service. If the 'computer' is used to justify something, just agree with it. I have to wonder if there even is a computer.

I asked for the correct number that was hooked to my phone line at this very moment. She gave it to me. I asked her if this would still be my phone number later today. She said yes. I asked if this was my permanent phone number. She said yes, it would not change again. For sure. Absolutely. I tried not to make any weird noises of disbelief, but I can't say I really trusted her.

I then asked why no one had let me know that my number changed this morning. It's not like I'm normally in the habit of calling my own home phone, and if my friend hadn't checked it, I wouldn't have known it changed. This was sort of a trick question, as I have no idea how they would have gotten ahold of me, since every phone number they've given me is not a number I actually got to keep. She said they'd placed a call this morning to let me know of the change. Yep, had to wonder what number they called and where that message was. I hadn't been called at the office, or my cell phone, and I would later find out there was no message on my home machine. Hmmm.

She then moved on to her chipper customer service rep end-of-call wrap up lines, and asked if there was anything else she could do for me today. I said yes, she could wave the transfer fees I was quoted at the beginning of this mess, as the standard fees for any phone service transfer. Since I'm a very dissatisfied customer, you know. She said she couldn't authorize that, but she put me on hold to check with her supervisor.

To her credit, and one small point to SBC in this whole mess, she came back and said they would wave all the fees associated with transfer. It would show up on my next bill. Really? I hadn't expected that to work, but I definitely deserved it. Thank you, I said. And I hung up.

A week later, I still seem to have the same phone number. And I've alerted all of my friends and family as to my ever-changing phone number extravaganza. SBC seems to be through messing with me for now.

Of course, I wish I could blame them for the fact that the phone hooked to their phone line is really crappy and I can't hear anything on it. But I guess I'll let them off the hook and just go buy a new phone on my way home from work today.

Down with SBC.

C.T.

My Dog, Duchess
One thing I've developed over the past several years is a stronger sense of loyalty and commitment to my family. I've always been loyal to an extent, but after the loss of a few family members, you realize how important and precious family is. Even down to the family dog.

Duchess is our fifteen year old Boston Terrier. She's been a member of our family for all of her fifteen years, currently living with my parents out of state. Over the past few days, she became very ill and we've learned that she has cancer. The vet gave her a few days to a few weeks to still be with us. So, this weekend I am flying to be with my parents and my dog. We'll likely put her down this weekend, to avoid any unnecessary suffering for her.

Now, to those of you who don't understand the bond between a family and a dog, it may seem silly to you that I am hopping on a short-notice flight to rush to be at her side, as though she is an actual human family member on her deathbed. I've never been one of those gushy, over-the-top dog people that treats my pet as a person. But Duchess is without a doubt a major part of our family, and I have always been attached to all of our family dogs. So I'm going to spend some last moments with my dog, and to be there to support my parents.

It's funny the things that happen in our adult life that take us right back to childhood, and the role of being the kid. I've been on the phone with my parents the past few days, seeking updates on Duchess' condition and trying to figure out what I need to do. It's tough sometimes that they live so far away. It's made me feel like a kid again, not wanting to let go of my beloved pet, but having to listen to their advice on what we need to do.

We've had lots of family dogs throughout the years. I can't remember any that we've had to put to sleep, and none that we've had as long as Duchess. Several dogs we've had to give away over the years, because we've moved or the dog just wasn't a good fit for the family. But Duchess has been around so long that it's hard to remember life without her.

I remember when she first arrived. I was twelve years old. We lived in Colorado at the time, and my dad had gone to Louisiana to visit his mom, around the time of his birthday. When my mom, my sister and I went to the airport to pick him up, he was acting very mysteriously. He picked up his checked bags, but mentioned he needed to pick up something special from the Special Packages counter. When he came back, he had a dog carrier. Inside the carrier was a shoe box with the tiniest black and white puppy I'd ever seen. This was Duchess, barely a few weeks old. She was an unexpected birthday present from his family.

I later learned that if he had kept quiet about having the puppy, my dad could have snuck her onto the plane with him. But he had been honest and bought her a ticket and a carrier and set her up to fly with the other animals in cargo. She was so tiny, he was worried she wouldn't make the flight in the dog carrier underneath the plane. But this was our first indication that Duchess was a wonder dog. She made it in perfect health.

We took her home and introduced her to our other dog, Pam, the mutt, affectionately named by me in honor of my mom's best friend. I was a kid, for some reason that name seemed appropriate. Over the next few weeks, my mom had to take special care of Duchess, since she was such a young, tiny puppy. Mom carefully fed Duchess first by letting her lick puppy formula off of her fingers, then graduating to a toy baby doll bottle. Pretty soon she was eating normally, and thoroughly bossing around poor Pam, a much larger, yet kind and gentle dog we'd had for a few years. The two of them got along famously.

Over the years and through many moves, Duchess and Pam came along as part of the family. Eventually we had to give Pam away, due to some health issues she developed. So we were left with Duchess, the faithful family dog. She was the friend we always had, the constant, no matter where we moved or what situations went on around us. People came and went, but the dog was always there. Happy and funny and quirky, oblivious to whatever ups and downs we went through as a family.

Duchess has had a few health scares and bouts of weirdness in her lifetime. I remember one phase where she would just sit and stare at the wall. We called it her Coma. We could never figure it out, and eventually she stopped doing it. But nothing would interfere with her staring. Calling her, touching her, trying to move her. Then she would snap out of it as though it never happened. The vet never figured it out, and it eventually went away. But for awhile, we thought she was a goner.

She also has some back problems. This lead to a series of medications and spine injections, putting her into the category of Robo-Dog. There is such a thing as going too far with medical treatments for pets, but every once in awhile Duchess would just seem to need a bit of a tune-up somewhere. We'd take her in, get her fixed up, and she'd bounce back. Robo-Dog just keeps on ticking.

It's really true that pets cheer you up. And if you don't believe it's therapeutic to pet a dog, then you haven't given it a good try. When my sister died, Duchess didn't have a clue what was really going on. But even when people are afraid to talk to you during a tragedy, or when they don't know what to do, a dog will always treat you with the same affection as before. They don't care if your world has fallen apart, or if you aren't the same as you were before. They love you anyway. I can remember sitting on the floor or couch, crying, and here comes Duchess to check me out. She and I spent many hours together, she just letting me pet her, me not having to talk about anything. It was hugely healing.

When my parents moved out of state again a few months after my sister's death, I was as sad to see Duchess go as I was to see them go. They've been away now for a few years, and I miss the dog as much as I miss my parents sometimes. When they moved, Duchess was first starting to really show signs of age. She started having trouble walking and her eyes were starting to go. But something about the Colorado air must have rejeuvinated her spirit, or maybe she stumbled onto the fountain of doggie youth, because after awhile in her new mountain home, she perked up and acted younger than she had in years. She had a spring in her step again, and seemed not to notice that she couldn't see or get around as well. Her legs and back didn't slow her down. Robo-dog was stronger than ever.

The last time I saw her was this past Christmas. She was in great shape. Every year for the past few years when I've gone to visit, I've left wondering if she'd still be there the next time I made it out for a visit. I wondered that this year, knowing she is now fifteen years old, a ripe old age for a dog. When I left, she was chipper and perky and seemed in as good of health as ever before. I told my friend I'd see her next time.

My parents came to visit a week or so ago, to spend a week or so with me and my new house. They discussed bringing Duchess with them, for a nice long visit. But we decided the travel and the Texas heat might be too much for an old dog, and we didn't want to take any chances, as fun as it would be to have her around. They boarded her at her vet's office, where they just absolutely love her and give her the royal treatment during every stay. She gets a top spot in the 'old lady dog' section of the boarding hall, and the staff there takes very good care of her. My mom reported to me that when they went to pick her up the following week, she ran around the house and played with her toys, hyper and vibrant as ever, glad to be back home with my parents.

About a week later, over this past weekend, it was a surprise that Duchess woke up one morning very, very sick. She'd been fine the night before, but this day was a different story. My parents took her in to the vet hospital, and after a few days of testing and monitoring and hooking her up to an IV, they discovered that she has cancer. She'll be with us maybe a few more days, possibly a week or two.

So, now I wait by the phone for more news, and hope my tentative plans to wait til the weekend to head out there will allow me to see her again, and be there with her when we decide to put her down. When she leaves, another part of my life and my past leaves with her. With Duchess comes memories of my sister and our times together with our dog, as well as remembering Duchess' comfort to me during the loss of my sister. Duchess has been the constant through a lot of change for many years.

I've discovered that I hate letting go of things I love. And I think dogs should last as long as people do.

C.T.

Home Improvement
Well, I hope the things I'm doing to my house are improving it.

I've decided over the weekend that home improvement projects are hard work. Not that I didn't know that before, but now I definitely know for sure. I've also decided that I like it. It's fun in a hands-on, I did it myself kind of way.

The projects for this weekend were Adventures in Yardwork, Painting Galore, and Fun With Caulk.

My Adventure in Yardwork began Saturday morning, in an effort to beat the heat. I awoke and ventured outside to discover it was already 108 degrees outside. But alas, a yard does not mow itself.

This was my first time to tackle the yard. At first glance, it is a nice yard. Mostly well-kept and tidy. But upon closer inspection of the perimeters, it needed some serious work. I began by clearing some clutter left by the previous owner, an old lady who had apparently attempted some failed yard projects, and decided to leave them as souvenirs to me. I discovered a long dead bonzai tree in a front flower bed, still in its plastic container. Isn't that supposed to be an inside tree? It was unclear to me the purpose and placement of this random banzai, but it was perfectly clear that it had not survived its purpose, and therefore needed to go.

I found weeds running amok in many of the flower beds around the house. I pulled the obvious weeds. Yet I refrained from some questionable foliage. I discovered two possible weeds/could be plants in a couple of places. I decided to leave them for now. I don't want to have all the weed pulling fun in one day.

I discovered that I have a rose bush. Not that any roses were blooming, or that it in any way resembled a rose bush. But as I reached behind it to pull some weeds, I was attacked by its thorns and thoroughly scraped up. Aaah, I thought. I have a rose bush. And a feisty one, at that.

Bird and squirrel feeders lay strewn about the edges of the yard, against the fence. Since they obviously weren't feeding any animals in this condition, into the wood storage shed they went. Birds and squirrels will have to eat elsewhere for now.

I made my way around the back corner of the house to the water hose graveyard. Here rested two old water hoses, knotted and left for dead under weeds and overgrown grass. Do they work? The world may never know. I bagged them up and hauled them away.

Once the yard was clear of superfluous debris, I brought out the weed whacker. This is a tool I'd watched my father use on many occassions. My job growing up was to mow. He handled the weed whacking. Hence I'd developed a fear of the weed whacker. Having never been allowed to touch it, it was a fear of the unknown. Now, I own one of my own. It was time to embrace the weed whacker.

I plugged it in, took a weed whacking stance, and pulled the trigger. Nothing. I unplugged and re-plugged. Still nothing. Pausing for a moment to assess the situation, I noticed the plug was interestingly close to the outdoor light. Using all of my brain power, I guessed that perhaps the light needed to be on for the plugs to work? I went inside to flip the switch, and returned to the weed whacker. Much in the tradition of Clark Griswold's Christmas Vacation outdoor lighting extravaganza, the indoor switch was the key to the outdoor electricity problem. The weed whacker lit up, and proceeded to edge the yard like it was meant to be. Thanks, Clark. She's a beaut.

After I completed the tour of the edges of my yard, it was time for the mowing experience. I hated to use my new shiney mower, getting it dirty and dusty, but I knew it had to be done. A mower is not for decoration alone. I fired it up effortlessly and proceeded to motor around the yard. God bless whoever invented self-propel mowers. It's a thing of beauty, speeding up the mowing process considerably from when I was a kid wrestling with the push mower.

Once I mowed the back, I moved to the front and let the process begin again. When I was done, I had a beautifully mowed, edged, and relatively weed and debris free yard. And a nice sunburn, too.

Painting Galore took place in the kitchen. What seemed like a simple project turned into a time-consuming painting extravaganza. The kitchen seemed like a small enough space, and therefore seemingly quick painting project. But the more I painted, the more walls I discovered. Nooks and crannies that needed to be trimmed with a brush before I could attack with a roller appeared from nowhere. About halfway through I had a crisis of questioning the color blue I had chosen. Too blue? Not blue enough? I can't stop now, so whatever blue this is, this blue it will be.

I'm fairly certain the two day process caused me to inhale more paint fumes than is really necessary. I can tell you my brain is not functioning much on a normal, adult, chemical-free scale right now. Everywhere I look, all I see is blue. But I'm fairly certain I am not in my blue kitchen right now.

The last thing my dad told me before my parents headed back home last weekend was that I needed to caulk around the outside of my windows. Caulk? What is this of which you speak? Whatever it is, it means another trip to Home Depot.

I purchased what I'm fairly certain was a caulk-like substance used for sealing around windows, as well as a caulking gun. Why they can't just make caulk useable in and of itself without the gun accessory is simply ridiculous. I just want the caulk. I don't want to have to spend more money on a gadget just so I can use it.

Back at the homestead, I loaded up the caulk into the gun and proceeded to aim it at my windows. More or less, I gooped it around the edges of the window. I also caulked myself a bit, but it's nice to know I'll be sealed up nicely for quite some time. It ain't pretty. But it's up there around the window. I'm sure sealing with all it's sealing power and might.

What I learned from my Home Improvement weekend is that there is tired, and then there is a realm of tired beyond tired, and I am currently so far past that realm that I can't even see that realm. That realm is a dot to me. I am tired beyond the distant realm of tired.

But it is hugely gratifying to drive up to my yard and see it looking so nice and dead bonzai tree free, then to walk inside my kitchen and see the walls painted so nicely and evenly and in such a lovely shade of blue. And to sit in my house and know that my windows are caulked up nicely, keeping particles out of the house.

Next project: bugs be gone.

C.T.

This is why it's a good idea to keep up with keyword searches.
Some time ago I used a phrase in a blog entry to describe myself as the female version of Rainman (not man, but woman - you figure it out). Completely innocent play on words. Or so I thought.

Recently someone did a search for this term and ended up on my blog. Unbeknownst to me, this phrase is apparently porn related in some form. Either a movie title or a gadget of some sort. Clicking on the link of the search page revealed quite a list of sites that have absolutely nothing to do with me, my blog, or anything I ever want to be associated with.

Who knew? I swear I didn't. This is a G rated blog. PG at most.

I myself am G rated. PG at most.

Oops.

Definitely, definitely oops.

C.T.

One of My Favorite Holidays
For those of you who missed it, this weeked was one of my favorite holidays. It is likely not on your calendar, unless you wrote it on there yourself. But it is a wonderfully festive time of year for those of us in the great state of Texas.

The first weekend in August brings about the Tax Free Holiday Weekend. Folks, this is a great, magnificent, exciting event. Stores all over the state participate by removing the state sales tax on purchases of clothes and shoes which cost less than $100 each. Do you see how exciting this is??? If I buy 4 pairs of shoes at $99.99 each, I pay no tax! It's incredible!

I look forward to this day with great anticipation. Not only is there no tax, but most stores smartly run everything on sale, to further entice shoppers to spend tax-free money in their stores. It's a beautiful thing. It all comes together to benefit me, and that's the most important thing. In the world.

I wait for this day to buy one item in particular: my annual pair of New Balance running shoes. These are not cheap shoes, so in order to allow myself to wear this kind of shoe, I have to be discriminatory in how and when I purchase them, so as to get the best value. I make these shoes last a long time, to get my money's worth. This year it had actually been two years since I purchased my last pair, so I had been waiting for this day for several months, holding out for the tax-free and hoping for a sale, to reward myself with a new pair of running shoes.

The trick is to go early. The sale takes place during Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But if you wait til Saturday or Sunday, you run into the parents and kids mega-shopping for school clothes. I want none of that. I know what I want, and I want to get in, find the shoes, make sure they fit, and get out before the mobs ensue.

It was another successful tax-free shopping spree for me this year. I went Friday after work, found the shoes I wanted, and got out without even waiting in a checkout line. The shoes were even on sale, as I'd hoped. I saved a lot of money. It was a truly blessed event.

Praise be to those who invented the Tax-Free Holiday Weekend. Reason enough to justify living in Texas.

C.T.

I Think I've Become My Parents
In the nearly a week that I've been in my house, I fear I've become much like my parents. Something I've always promised myself I wouldn't do before turning at least 50 years old. Things they used to say and do are making much more sense to me now that I'm a homeowner. It's very, very frightening. I can come to grips with being a responsible adult now. But thinking like my parents? I am NOT ready for that.

It's amazing how different apartment life is from house life, and the things that come back to me from when I was a kid living with my parents in our house. There are relatively few things to do to keep an apartment. I had a lot of down time in an apartment. You eat meals, take out trash when it overflows, vacuum occassionally, and iron clothes every couple of weeks. No big deal. Low maintenance, low expense. I don't worry much about things in an apartment because they are relatively problem and hassle free.

In my house, I now find myself constantly retracing my steps around the house, turning off lights and fans in rooms that I am not using at the moment. I watch the thermostat like a hawk, waiting for the temperature in the house to be pleasant enough so I can turn the temperature up on the thermostat to allow it to stop running for awhile. Electricity is expensive, and now I hear my parents' voices in my memory, always reminding me to turn off the light in the kitchen, or the bathroom, or my bedroom when I'm not in there. It's haunting.

I turn off the water in the faucet now while I brush my teeth. Water is expensive, so I'm now very wary of how much water I'm using and when, and I'm very careful to take quicker showers and not water the yard too long. I'm definitely thinking twice about washing the Jeep in the driveway this weekend. Clean Jeep versus green lawn. I think the lawn will win.

I now understand why it makes sense to mow the lawn first thing in the morning, rather than whenever I feel like it, as I tried to do when I was younger. My dad would always have me out in the yard mowing on Saturday mornings before I was allowed to watch TV, or play with my friends, or do whatever I wanted to do. If I do fun stuff first, I'll never get around to the yard. And it's cooler in the mornings than in the afternoon, when I would prefer to mow after sleeping in and watching cartoons.

I have to take the trash out twice a week, and make sure to get all of the trash in the house, not just the kitchen. Trash was my main inside duty when I was under my parents' roof, and I hated it. Going from room to room, picking up all the trash cans from rooms that weren't even mine, and trying to dump them in plastic grocery bags without getting anything on the floor. If stuff hit the floor, that meant I had to touch it and get it off the floor, into the bag. Then I had to carry all the trash outside to the big garbage can and roll it out to the sidewalk by the street. It's a little simpler than that now. But still, I have to remember the night before trash pick-up that it is my job to gather all of the trash in the house and get it out to the alley behind the house for pick-up. Otherwise, I have to live with my trash til the next pick-up day.

I sat in the room designated as my office last night, and paid bills. I remember my dad doing this routinely during the week. Where's Dad? He's in the office, paying bills. That was me last night. Hunched over the computer, writing checks, keeping track of my new realm of bills.

The porch light has become quite a fixation of mine. I didn't have a porch light that I could control at the apartment. It just came on automatically by a timer. Now I have to wait til the right moment to turn on the porch light in the evenings, so as to brighten my front porch and ward off troublemakers. If I turn it on too early, I'm wasting electricity. If I turn it on too late, after it's already dark, that sort of defeats the purpose of turning it on at all. When I leave home for the evening, but it's still light outside, do I turn it on anyway? So that the light is on when I get back home after dark? Or does that send a signal to everyone in the neighborhood that the light is on while it is still light, and I am therefore obviously not going to be at home for a few hours, and please come help yourself to the stuff in my house? And I can't forget to turn it off in the morning, or it will be on all day, again alerting potential troublemakers that I'm obviously not home to turn the light off, and therefore my house is free to be looted.

Making sure the house is locked up completely when I leave or go to bed at night is another fixation. I have quite a few more doors than I had before in the apartment. I'm still unsure of the level of security I should maintain, now living on the ground floor, as opposed to the third floor. It's pretty safe to say that there aren't many thieves or potential troublemakers out there who will enjoy the challenge of climbing three flights of stairs to find out if an apartment door is locked or not. Regardless, I was in the habit of locking the apartment everytime I left, even just to take down the trash, to be overly cautious a bit. The apartment wasn't in the greatest neighhorhood. But now on the ground floor, even in a much better neighborhood, where anyone can wander down the street and into the house without much effort, I find myself taking many a lap around the house, making sure the doors are locked when I'm not going in or out. I usually also find that just as I lock a door and put the key away and wander off, I inevitably forgot something that needs to go back out to the garage, and I have to therefore unlock a series of doors to get out again.

Holy cow. This being an adult thing is hard. No wonder my parents were always stressed out and yelling at us kids to turn off lights and lock the front door and whatnot.

I'm definitely watching cartoons of some sort at some point this weekend. This overnight adult transformation is seriously wigging me out.

C.T.