My monthly.

I used to call St. Patrick's Day my Christmas. Back in the day I put my whole heart and soul into it - taking the afternoon of and the morning after off when it fell mid-week, getting up extra early and being the first at the door of the local Irish pub when it fell on a weekend. These days I consider it Amateur Night and can't be bothered to even go out sober. Yesterday I just watched it unfold on Facebook, though I WAS invited out by a few people. It was somewhat comforting to sit in my houseclothes and watch the pictures and posts degenerate as the day wore on. I did buy some soda bread, though, since I was far too lazy to make it myself. It was too sweet. And really all I wanted was bread. Merry Christmas - I woke up this morning at 5:15 and made it to the gym with no headache. Things have certainly changed.

So what have I been up to in the last month? Not much, you know, it's winter. But I did have an encounter with a friend from long ago that suddenly turned up from Florida or wherever he last was. Though it was good to see him, it strengthens my belief that in some cases, the past needs to stay in the past. Better to have a good memory than have someone come back with their baggage and bitterness that ultimately tarnishes the good. I kept telling him you can't go back, but he's a thick-headed Englishman and he never listened to me anyway. The good news is he doesn't have my phone number (don't give it to him, Tom) so I won't have to avoid foreign numbers.

Also, it's Armageddon here in the Pacific Northwest, in case any of you were wondering. It's colder than crap and when I left GNG's condo just now I think it was snowing. But it's 82 in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and I'm pretty sure Marita is wearing flip flops, so somebody please just try to convince me that it ISN'T Armageddon. Seriously. Just try.

I should be throwing on real clothes right now and running to work to catch myself up, but I'm not. It's dreary out, I've already accomplished a lot around here in terms of housecleaning (as much as can be expected from me) and frankly I could nap.

(I've just discovered the secret to why I don't blog as much anymore - every time I get on the dang computer and start typing, Seca comes in, climbs up on my one remaining suitcase, and starts howling while she claws the crap out of it. Besides being annoying, it's pissing me off because I don't want to have to buy another suitcase and hide it in the car.)

So, there, Cece and Becky, and anyone else. I blogged. There's no content as usual, and I took a big break after the first paragraph (about an hour ago I was fired up to write and now, meh, not so much), so this is what you get. Maybe when it's actually Spring and it starts to warm up I'll have some adventures that I'll be dying to tell you about, but for now, it could be time to warm up the easy chair. Will you know whether or not I made it in to work today? Probably not. But then again, anticipation is sometimes better than the actual result.

It's supposed to be a time to de-stress.

So it turns out, I'm really popular at work. Everybody wants me in their office. I'm sure it has everything to do with my sharp wit and intellect, but deep down I think it has more to do with the fact that people want to take vacation.

Because that's what I do: someone takes a vacation, I cover their desk. It's certainly not easy, but I never turn down a challenge. Plus it works really well with the commitment issues. And the short attention span.

For some reason this year as the new calendar year loomed, people started getting almost competitive with their vacation days (which I naturally assume means they are all fighting over having ME in their branches). It came down to the branch managers meeting with their manager about coverage and who would get what and when and how would they solve the problem of overlapping vacations. Because if you don't use your vacation after a period of time, you lose it (never happens to me). And there are a LOT of escrow folks out there who are on the brink of losing theirs.

But really, this isn't the important part (or the part that would inspire me to sit down in my small window of "me" time before bedtime on a Thursday night). The important part stems from about seventy five people wanting to take Spring Break off because they have kids in various stages of schooling. Only one person is going to get coverage, so the managers have to figure out how to handle it.

As a single person, I've never taken the "family" type holidays as my vacation time. I'm more of a middle-of-the-winter kind of girl, mostly because I get so sick of being cold that I want to go somewhere warm. I have always deferred the Christmas/Thanksgiving/Spring Break/Mid Summer/Labor Day/Memorial Day/Fourth of July weekend situations to those otherwise encumbered by spouses and/or offspring. Because I'm nice. I was raised with good manners. Plus I don't have to wait for my kid or husband to get time off to do something fun; I was smart enough to keep things simple and therefore do things on MY agenda.

So recently someone mentioned that a coworker with no children wanted to take vacation during a holiday week more commonly suited to families. She was laughed at; well, maybe not LAUGHED at, but poo-poo'd at, like, Oh don't be silly. YOU don't need that time off, YOU don't have any CHILDREN.. and all the hens with overworked uteruses (uteri?) cackled amongst themselves and the request was ignored.

And THAT, my friends, is what pisses me off.

Because I chose NOT to reproduce, I get the sloppy seconds. I'll never have a party where everyone gives you a bunch of free shit because I got knocked up or decided to completely surrender my independence to some guy, and I'll never get to take advantage of maternity leave. Now you want to take away my major holidays? That's right. I have the financial means and complete freedom to spend Christmas skiing in Aspen, or celebrating Independence Day in Washington DC, or Saint Patrick's Day in New York (or Spring Break in Cancun... but yeah, you know I don't want to do that..). But because I have no children, the very reason why I have so much money and freedom, I CAN'T take these holidays. I think that is the most absurd and discriminatory thing ever. I'm mostly serious. I mean, I've been nice for the past thirty years because I have always had the flexibility of taking my vacations whenever I want to; but to have someone poo poo this coworker of mine like she didn't DESERVE a specific week simply because she wasn't stupid enough to have kids?

Wrong. It's wrong, and it pisses me off. And I, for one, can do something about it. I fully intend to request Spring Break week, the week around July 4, Labor Day weekend and a couple of days around it, and the last two full weeks in December as my vacation. For next year. Because this year I'm already booked on everyone else's desks.

Not quite a month

No pressure or anything, but some of you have given me some grief about not having blogged. So I'm blogging. Okay? I'm F'ING blogging. Are you happy now? Just remember when you're finished reading this that it wasn't so much inspiration that is making me do this, but the fact that I feel obligated to entertain in some way at the risk of you never reading again, and we all know what happens when I have nothing to say. Let that be your warning.

So yeah, um, went to Palm Springs in the middle of the month. Not really Palm SPRINGS but rather Palm Desert. It was a weird trip. I mean, I had a good time and everything, but it was weird. I didn't much have to pay for anything besides my airfare and then my entertainment, but Palm Desert is like 789 miles away from the Coffee Bean on Palm Canyon so we only made it over there one morning. Plus it was pretty cold out. We laid out a grand total of two hours and forty-five minutes. I've never been so pale in my whole life.

And you can't say it wasn't an adventure - the flight home was cancelled so quick-thinking TtheD, intent on being home when she SAID she was going to be home, rented a car and booked a flight out of Long Beach for later that day. Mission accomplished. The good news is Alaska Airlines issued $375 in travel vouchers for my trouble. Which pretty much means that with the a refund of half my paid airfare and the travel vouchers, the trip actually cost me $35 when you factor in the additional plane ticket home. THAT's a vacation I can sink my teeth into.

So NOW I can comfortably plan my Wisconsin trip in September - Alaska flies nonstop to Chicago so I'll rent a car and drive to Fond du Lac. I like driving. I like nonstop flights more. Google Wisconsin Dells and then look at events for September - that's where I'm going. I will never remember the name of the festival we are attending, and when I do remember it I don't know how to spell it, but it begins with a "w" and right now that's all anybody needs to know. But, yeah, FdL in September. You didn't think I'd do it again after that last go 'round, did you?*

I guess the next question is, (as Dave would say) now what? I'm looking at Palm Springs again in May. Looking at it. And of course I have to go somewhere Mexican in December. But I can't think of those things right now, since it's February. Right now I just have to get through that part where it gets dark at 5:30 (but 5:30 is a big improvement over 5..). Then I'll be fine.

How am I doing, you ask? Because I'm assuming you did. I'm fine. Bored. Hanging with the neighbor and pretending to be more social. I've been working in Lincoln Tower, and that's good because it's so close, but not-so-good because it's been busier than CRAP. But I can do busy. LT is a good office for me because there are lots of different people to shove my personality on.

What else? I cheated on my bag lady and bought a purse yesterday at the JJill. It's bitchin but we'll see how long it takes me to become disenchanted with it. Since I got home from the JJill yesterday and switched out purses, I haven't actually left the house to use it, so we'll see how well it travels when I venture out (showerless) to the Fred Meyer later today. These are the important things in my life right now. There are others but I won't bore you.

So yeah, I guess this is it for the blog today. I promise to try harder (a promise I find myself constantly making) (and breaking) (well, it's not like I'm not trying, it's just that whole sitting-down-to-type thing) in the future to entertain you with the mundane-ness of my winter life. Which just results in more drivel. Keep in mind, you asked for it.
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*Long time readers will remember a September trip to FdL where the plane almost crashed, the flight got stuck in Madison, and I drank a lot of Jager-Bombs. It was like in 2009 or 2008. Look it up, if you didn't read about it. The archives are right over there. >>>

Foresight

When I was a little kid and it was hot in the summer, Tom, Maura and I used to sometimes sleep on the deck. It was like camping for a family that never camped. Maura invariable woke up with a mosquito bite on either her eyelid or her lip, both swelling to a disfiguring state, but that's a story for another time. My brother Chris, eight years older than me, would sometimes come up and lay down in the middle of the three-across formation and tell ghost stories to help us not sleep in the Bruce Lane dark. One of those stories stuck with me for years, and now it's something to sort of think about.

Chris told us one night that he had a friend in the army, and that the friend told him the army had recently shot down an alien space ship. They questioned the aliens inside, and they told their captors that they would come back in the year 2012 and destroy our planet. The story while told, I'm sure, was probably much more involved and colorful, but I don't remember all the details. I just remember trying to do the math in my head to figure out how old I was going to be when I died.

This was like in 1970 or so, so I think I was thinking I'd be about 42 (which is wrong. I have never been able to do math.). Anyway, I remember that throughout my life, even as I matured into the kind of person that doesn't believe a word Chris says (or said), this thing still stuck with me. Back in 1970 nobody was talking about the end of the Mayan calendar. 2012 wasn't this thing that sat in the near future, taunting believers and nonbelievers alike with the possibility of doom and destruction. It was just a year off in the future where we would be flying hovercrafts to work and dressing like the Jetsons. It was like talking about having a billion dollars - just some random number that was totally unattainable.

But seriously, it stuck in my mind. I can tell you that over the years as my math "improved" from five year old TtheD math to eight year old, twelve year old, fifteen year old TtheD math, I never really landed on the right age. I just knew I'd be in my forties and that was plenty old enough to have lived a long and fulfilling life before being blasted to bits by some pissed off aliens who were holding a grudge.

Now that I'm older, am way less naive, and have the benefit of a ten-key, I realize that this was probably all a bunch of hooey. But isn't it KIND of interesting that he would land on the year 2012 lo those many years ago? And the fact that not one, not two, but THREE psychics have all told me that I was Mayan in a past life? And that I held on to this particular story my whole life when all that has ever come out of Chris's mouth is a constant steady stream of bullshit? Maybe there IS something to this 2012 thing. I mean, you've been to Chichen Itza (or at least seen pictures). Explain the pyramids.. Mayans with really strong calf muscles?

Or aliens..?

Spaz

Suddenly I'm old.

I woke up like Thursday last week feeling like I slept on my shoulder wrong. The pain went away after a while, but returned Friday night and has stuck around every night since. Barbie thinks it's arthritis. Suddenly. Out of nowhere.

Then Saturday morning I woke up completely stiff in my lower back. Pain. Like I could barely dress pain. I had four million things to do and I did them, but I was like Frankenstein all day and I looked like a jackass getting in and out of the car. I took Advil and stooped instead of bent and looked up the possible causes on WebMD and pretty much covered all the I-don't-go-to-the-doctor bases, and Sunday when I woke up it was actually better. It still hurt, but it was better.

Today was a completely different story. Spasms. My whole life I've never had back problems. Now suddenly it's spasming in the shower and in the car and while I set up the office this morning before my 7:30. Good Lord. I could barely feed the cats.

When that Sandi came in I asked her about it - she'd experienced a similar situation recently herself, and luckily I wasn't so self-absorbed that I remembered. She said to ice it - twenty minutes on, maybe thirty to forty off. I did. All day. I took more Advil. I took two Aleve at like 3pm. I've been icing. Still spasming.

I made it home, and here's the problem with being me: did you know that if you don't use the ice in the ice cube trays for a long while they eventually evaporate? I didn't. You know, until tonight, when I needed to make another ice pack. So now I know. At least I have bags of frozen vegetables that clearly aren't being eaten to use while the real ice freezes.

The good thing about being me, however, is that I am industrious. I couldn't stoop down low enough without seizing to get the kibble in the kitty bowls, let alone get the water dish, so I now have a step ladder in the kitchen next to the kitties' food station. I unfold it, I sit down on the step, I lean over for the dish, I stand up and fill it, I sit back down, I lean over and put the dish down. It took me ten minutes to feed the dang kitties.

This is a flipping nightmare to me because I think it's my bed and not the fact that this happens to people as they age. I'm not that old. Seriously, I'm not. Sandi claims the ice packs will help in a day or two, and I'm hoping so, but I've been icing and dosing all flipping day and it still hurts to sit here and type this (but I suffer for all seventeen of you). Plus I'm afraid to go to bed now. Because I'm still convinced it's my bed and nothing else. And I can't even fathom having to buy a new bed. I don't even know where to start, and I certainly don't want to spend the money on something so ridiculous.

But it's probably not my bed.

God damn it.

Swan song

Wednesday night, atop the third floor of El Asador on Avenida Yaxchilan, I proclaimed that I would never again visit Cancun. Was I on JagerBomb number three in that hour? Had I been drinking for the last ten hours and convinced everyone to skip dinner for a spontaneous trip to Centro? Were JagerBombs the least potent of anything I had had as a shot that day? Yes to everything. But it dawned on me even when I landed the Friday before and was being shuttled to Kim and Arturo's house that the odds of me coming back to vacation in Cancun were not good.

It's not that I don't like it anymore. I mean, who doesn't like the beach? But there's just something not there anymore that used to be and I really doubt that it will come back. Kind of a been-there-done-that sort of thing. Plus tourists irritate the crap out of me.

But what a great trip you guys all missed out on! Naked Steve and his wife Sue showed up as a grand surprise for Marita and Dave, Marta and I cohabitated somewhat reasonably well, I didn't spend TOO much money, didn't get hit by a car, only ended up with three bruises and one cut, taught Lumpy the meaning of "no", and got a fairly good tan. Our weather was perfect, we were ridiculously popular, and the staff dug the hell out of us. What more could you ask for?

Maybe that feeling to come back. The one that makes me want to turn the plane around and go back. That feeling of "I'm home". It's just not there anymore. And that's not a bad thing, it's just a "let's do something different next year" thing.

I'll try to get some pictures up but I just thought I'd let you know that I'm back and there isn't any need to ask me if I am moving there again. Because I'm not. Believe me.

Waiting for the bank to open while I think about how much I hate leaving my cats

So Marita described it best: homesick and I haven't even left yet. I'm off work since yesterday, and today there is much more to do - because I dread cleaning the bathrooms. Seriously, one of them is like two feet by two feet if you don't count the shower, but it's a dread I feel anyway. I think it's just a residual throw back from when my job as a kid was to clean the boys' bathroom. Who knows why I still cling to that, I mean it's not like anyone is peeing on the floor here.

I have to go to bed tonight at like 8, so I can get up at 2. Some might question why I would even go to bed to begin with. Becky. But it's not really an option, and I have to get up so early so that I can shower before Gay Neighbor Geoff drives me to the airport at 3:20. That's AM, folks. My flight leaves at 5:30am, and the ticket counter at US Air opens at 3:45. I am certainly not one to NOT abide by the "two hours before your departure" rule, but what can you do when even THEY can't meet that? So abide I will, at the expense of a fabulous neighbor who is also going to watch the kitlets. He doesn't really drink so I'm not sure what I will be bringing him back as a fabulous gift, but I'll think of something. I'm really lucky to have these friends, considering how surly I am.

So I'm meeting my fabulous friends Marita and Dave and their mini-posse, staying with that Marta, which will be fun for her, I'm sure, since I'm an awesome roommate (right, Liz?) and tomorrow night I get the added bonus of staying with that Kim, which is awesome in itself for obvious reasons, the least being that it reminds me of actually living there, but without all the unpleasant details, like wondering what that thing is moving under my shoes, power outages when it rains, not being able to find a taxi on Sunday, and watching America's Next Top Model on a 9 inch TV.

But oh how I hate leaving the tiny kitties. They're on to me right now, you know, even though the suitcase is still in the office. They get suspicious when I clean. I don't really blame them, it's not like it's a weekly event or anything.

Well, I'm pretty sure the BofA's call center is open now, so I'll get to work for the day. If I don't see you tomorrow morning, enjoy your week and think about how ridiculously tan I'll be getting as it progresses.