Cysterhood

Betty and I have lots of things in common, being sisters who were born only 15 months apart. Besides the good stuff, we both went on a really low-fat diet in our middle thirties and lost our gallbladders as a result. We both have chronic coughs. This past week we've shared a respiratory virus. And we both have cysts on our heads.

They start out really small, but eventually they grow and become annoying, as well as really unpleasant to look at. Betty's had two removed and one that will soon need to be removed. I had one that grew recently right on one of my cowlicks on top of my head. I decided to have it removed before heading to life in South Florida.

The doctor injected lidocaine and epinephrine (to constrict the blood vessels) and went to work. It took less than half an hour from start to finish, didn't hurt a bit (and a xanax beforehand helped me to relax), and I ended up with an incision that is pretty much invisible. The stitches are the same color as my hair, and it hasn't bled. And it has a bit of an unexpected bonus----

My face feels a bit tighter, especially around the eyes.

I guess mine was in just the right place.

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On the Idjit front, he called again last evening and offered $6000 less than he knows we'll accept. Stoopid.

sNOOOOOOOOw!!!!!!

It's snowing. Again. I hope that this is the very last time that I see snow falling.

It'stoodamncold

There you have it. One word. My reason for not doing a thing.

It'stoodamncold.

It was 8 degrees this morning. Eight. Eight. Unfrickingbelievable.

Yeah, yeah, I know that it was 31 in Miami this morning. It's been in the low 40s at night in the Keys. 31 is almost four times warmer than it is here, and 40 is five times.

I'm considering retiring and moving to the Keys without a job. It's five times warmer there at night. So we won't be able to pay the mortgage. The house in WV is locked in ice anyway. No one, including its owner, can get to it anyway.






I wish I could just leave. I won't because I'm too responsible to bail. But I'll think about it a whole lot.

More attention than I need

I guess I've hit the big time. I'm now attracting spammers. So far it's not a royal pain, but if it continues, I'll have to go to word verification to prevent them.

I have to check to see just what it is that they're googling; I'm kind of afraid to see!

Don't ask what the handwritten sign on the back of my front door says.

I've locked myself out of the house twice this week. It's only Tuesday, so that means I also did it on Monday.

I'm getting tired of forcing my way into the house. So I wrote a little reminder to my 6 a.m. self.

It's not pretty.

In other news........

We knew it was going to happen, so I didn't drive the car if I were by myself, only if Tom was along. There's no cell coverage for half the trip into town, so I didn't attempt it when I was alone.

Tom was called at 6 this morning and asked if he'd sub at the middle school, which is less than a mile from my school. Otherwise I'd have been driving the truck and it would have happened another time.

We were about three miles from school when it started. The knocking got louder and louder and the car labored to make it up the hill. Fortunately we were at the top of the hill when the engine let loose a cloud of smoke and quit. We knew it was gone, so it wouldn't hurt to run it a little farther, would it?

It cut off three more times (once as we turned right on red without stopping) but we were able to coast into the school parking lot and got it into a safe place. It'll stay there until we sell it for parts or have it towed to the junk yard.

At least it happened at the top of a hill near the school. It could have let go on the mountain on one of the blind turns, or as we pulled out of our driveway in the middle of Dead Man's Curve.

$6000 divided by 3 years = $2000 a year. Not too shabby for a Camry that already had about 160,000 miles on it. This is not a good time to buy another car since we refinanced our WV home to pay for our place in the Keys and may be a little overborrowed right now. But we have to have something that'll allow me to go to and from work once Tom moves to Florida (probably after Thanksgiving, although we want to go down there before then for a week).

We've rented a Hyundai overnight so we can get home, get the truck, and drive the rental back in. At least that's only $45. And it's payday. All is well.

It ain't grand, but it's well. We'll survive.

Oh--please think kind thoughts toward my friend Trillian who was unexpectedly laid off this week. Her boss plans to rehire her as soon as possible, but it's a scary time for her.

Auuugggghhhhhh and *sigh*

Okay, teachers are supposed to be role models, right? Or did I just imagine that?

I threw copies into the one good copier all day long, as fast as I could, and just pulled out the piles of copies and stacked them on the counter, leaving them to sort out after the machine was good and full. Late this afternoon, a teacher saw her stuff in the pile and started digging it out, another saw what she was doing, and so on, and so on. In three minutes things were totally f^cked up and I couldn't figure out what finished copies went to whom. They were worse than teenagers in the way they acted.

Really made me mad, but I kept it in, kept smiling (through my teeth; one teacher even asked if I'd had braces because my teeth are "perfect" [HA!]) and kept working. At 3:30 I knew I wasn't going to finish today, so I stacked up everything that HAS to be done Monday morning and left.

(By the way, a part was delivered for Bad Copier--the freaking wrong part. For a few minutes I actually thought I might finish today and not have to go in this weekend. I had to call Xerox again and have them send the right part--Tuesday or Wednesday.)

Tom had come into town this morning to pick up materials for a small deck to be built on the back of the house off the kitchen/dining room; he took one load home and came back for a second, then picked me up. I noticed that he was steering with one hand and was holding the other oddly. He smashed three fingers on his left hand while unloading the first load. Suhmashed. His "bird" finger looks like hamburger, extra rare, and the other two are badly bruised. He wouldn't go to the ER to have them cleaned and bandaged because it was just smashed, nowhere to put stitches. So it hurts like hell and he can't do anything. We have plenty of percocet, but that doesn't do anything for his pain. When we were in Baja California four years ago, he reinjured his back and could not sleep, sit down, or lie down even though he was taking two of them every hour.

He's gone to bed, hoping that he can sleep through the pain.

Some time tomorrow I'll drive back into town and see if I can finish my work by dark. I will not be getting up early. I just hope that Good Copier doesn't let the praise go to its head and quit working before school is allllll ready to open early Monday morning.

Ugh.

P.S. I managed to totally forget my purse this evening when I left school. Shit. I hope it's still there when I go in tomorrow. I was thinking at least I'd have the phone to use as a camera if I needed it (really cool clouds on the way home; looked like a really huge storm), but then I realized that the damned camera is in my damned purse.

*s i g h*

Home again, home again.....

Rather be in Florida, specifically the Keys. Someday.......

I'm trying not to get too sucked into spending hours a day on Facebook and on here. That Crack was a lot of fun in Florida. They have 3G there; we don't in this area. We don't have a signal at all in this area. It was so much fun keeping up with my friends and family from my phone.

We're starting the (hopefully quick) process of selling the house and getting a place in the Keys. That was such a heavenly vacation, and living there for a month helped us decide that we do want to relocate there. So what if it's a two-hour drive to the nearest Costco? I drive 45 minutes to work, and the local Costco is 20 minutes past that.

I haven't been able to keep up with my favorite blogs this summer, and I miss them. I'll be going back to work soon......

Talk to you later--if there's anyone out there still checking in........

Fock Ntelos

Ntelos has a distinct lack of customer service and I will be going with AT&T once I get back home. I've had it with Ntelos.

I took a crapcam photo of the beach here at Ft. Lauderdale and sent it to this blog. Once again, it didn't show up.

So fock Ntelos. They're dead to me. Eight freaking years with them, eight years of fighting with customer "service" to get my address, then my name, changed, and a year of fighting with them to take my niece off my plan once she graduated from college. Eight years of walking into their store and waiting for 30 minutes to an hour each freaking time I needed something.

AT&T's rates aren't as good, but their service HAS to be better.

Anyway, the beach is sunny and lovely, nice breeze, it feels great here. I wish I could show you the view from our room, but Ntelos isn't cooperating. Later I'll post some REAL photos from my wonderful Canon IS something or other camera.

Pay Day

Thank you, President Obama, for my $38 pay increase this month. It's just in time to pay for the increase in the cost of our health insurance. Since those of us who work in public education in this state won't get pay raises, or even step increases, this coming year, that $38 less that we're paying in taxes is going to be a biiiiiig help.

About that movie...

Target is no longer my BFF.

Maybe I misunderstood. I was going to buy Twilight from Amazon; it included a free 24-hour rental of the movie on the 21st. Maybe I thought that's what Target was offering, but a free download rather than the rental.

So Saturday I checked my email, looking for a link to the download. Wasn't there. I called Target's "customer service"; the woman, who spoke broken English, had no idea what I was talking about. I told her twice that the only reason I bought the movie from Target was to get the free download; otherwise I would have gotten it from Walmart for the same price (so they offered one dvd instead of three. Big deal.) She offered to transfer me to "manufacturing", but she discovered that they are only available Monday through Friday.

Oddly, I wasn't upset that I couldn't watch the movie this weekend. That really didn't bother me. What irritates the crap out of me is that 1) "customer service" offers no service whatsoever, and 2) why bother to order the movie, which won't be delivered before the end of the week, in order to get the download if I have to have the movie in hand before I can access the download? I could have just waited and gone into a store today and bought the damn thing outright.

I could have "rented" the movie from iTunes for $2.99, which is probably what they wanted all along. I bet that a lot of drooling lovestruck girls people did just that.

Now I have to take more of my time to call Target again and complain. I hate that. I hate using the telephone to start with.

Target, you're on notice.

Found, one book

I was wrong. Tom was right.

Twilight was never on the bookselves in our bedroom. I read that a couple of months before he moved the bookshelf into the room. I found Twilight while I was searching for....oh yeah, Twilight. I spend about half of my time at home searching for one thing or another because Tom has this...thing...for putting things away, not leaving them in piles as I like to do.

Anyway, it was in a box with other books I'd gotten as part of this Teacher Reads thing at school. I hadn't looked in there before; all I saw in it were some balls of yarn and some books I didn't want right then.

One bonus of this search is that I found the pattern to my coral bamboo Tropical Tee that I started back in the summer. I hadn't worked on it since September, and the pattern was, of course, separated from the part I'd finished and the rest of the yarn. I'm knitting it in the round, and I'd finished from the bottom to the armholes. Over the weekend I knit the back from there and started (and got a good bit done) on the front.

At some point last week, I ran across the remaining yarn for the top. Now, of course, I can't remember where I saw it. I'm down to the last ball and I need it soon.

I guess I need to go back into that room and search some more.

A bit of a cushion

Tom sold his old Porsche yesterday.

This is good because it'll pay the bills and possibly allow a down-payment on a house in Florida.

It's bad because Tom's had the car for about 40 years and was slowly restoring it. He's really been looking forward to driving it again.

I wish he could have driven it.

Now I remember

I hate answering phones.

Really, I hate all phones, but worst of all I hate answering the phones in the main office.

If it were just the phones, it wouldn't be so bad, but the nurse leaves in the morning and I have to answer the phones and hand out medicine. At the same time.

It wasn't so bad a few hours ago. I felt on top of things. I had things in control. Until I had lunch.

Since then six lines ring at once and four kids come in to get meds, pick up their provisional learners permit, and then I have to call a cab for a kid. Because she can't wait the 5 miinutes until the city transit bus stops here or the hour until the school buses show up. Because she's sniffling and holding her cheek and whining.

I told her to watch for the cab. A half hour later (25 minutes AFTER the transit left and 30 minutes until school lets out and the buses arrive, in case you're keeping score), she came back in and asked me to call the cab company again. (I hate making phone calls.) I asked her if she'd been looking out front, which is where the cab would be. She said yes. So I called the damn cab company again, and the woman says the cab has been waiting out front for 15 damn minutes.

I hate working in here.

Hmmmm

Today has been a sloooowwwww day. It didn't help that we had an electricity outage during the night and someone reset the clock. It wasn't until we got to school that we realized that it was still dark, no one was there, and huh, it was only 6. I asked if we could just hang out there and let me sleep till 7, but that didn't work because a teacher came in really early, saw a man sitting in a car (my seat was reclined, and I was out), called the custodians (TWO of them) who then came out and asked what Tom was doing there. I sat up, said hi, and "Oh, hi! Mrs. -- was scared and asked us to come out." So I gave up and went in to work at 6:15. *sigh*

I really really don't do well without enough sleep. I'm not sure I've ever had enough sleep.

Take THAT, SiriusXM!

*flips the bird*

What do you mean it's only Tuesday?

And not even 2:30, at that?

Uh Oh

At 3:45 p.m. yesterday, my subscription to XM Radio expired. With no warning (other than us not renewing it or something like that). Bang, no satellite radio. Which means, basically, no radio, because the local FM station was playing the same songs it played when I last listened 5 years ago.

This leaves us with a dilemma. Do we suck it up and reup, or stick with our guns and stay expired?

To my dismay, I'm finding that I need XM.

Crap.

Stupid lung stuff

For the first time ever, prednisone did me no good.

My lung function test was the worst ever, which is saying a lot. At the same time, it means nothing to me, because I don't feel like it's bad. I'm not short of breath. I can climb stairs without gasping.

But I can't have my allergy shots until it's better.

So it's back on the testing/specialist/more money treadmill.

Googlies

I'm seeing a lot of google searches for things relating to XM/Sirius' new programming, and a lot of it is along the lines of "XM Outlaw Country sucks", and I agree with the sentiment.

Another one that's being searched is Elizabeth's Cook's apron strings show. Her show seems to be only on Friday mornings as I drive to work (yeah, it's all about me), so I hear part of it. She plays decent music most of the time and even talks about the music a bit, but she talks too much. She talks about the weather, what she's doing this weekend, "what are y'all doing this weekend?", and other stuff that I really don't need or want to hear at 6:30 in the morning, thankyouverymuch.

Ms. Cook, if you happen to read this or hear about it, please, less talk and more music. That's why I listen to the radio. If I want talk, there are plenty of talk channels I can switch to. But I want music, just music, and no talk that early in the morning.

Or any time of day, for that matter.

Thank you.

--an XM Cross Country listener who is hoping that "Outlaw" Country will become less "Outlaw" and more music