Pecan Brittle

I was going to make some pecan brittle last night but it took such a long time to get the nuts shelled, washed, and dried that I had to wait until today.

And then I realized I don't have any baking soda, so I can't make it anyway. :(

And I have this uneasy feeling that Quincy is beginning to confuse cuddly with clingy.....

Where'd he go with my pedestals???

For two weeks I've been waiting for the pedestals to my washer / dryer set to arrive at Lowe's. I was getting a little aggravated with them, because they don't stock them, and ordering them takes forever, even in this modern age. I could have paid $40 more and gotten them here in town, but my brother-in-law said he'd install them for me and have my older nephew mow and clean up my yard in exchange for me purchasing a new game console controller for them. Fair trade, I thought.

After calling every other day for two weeks and getting some concerned-sounding people who made me think I'd gotten ripped off for $400, they finally told me on Thursday night that my pedestals were in. The man I talked to went back to the warehouse to "put his hands on them" for certainty.

Because I was at my sister's house (invited for pizza and a movie) my b-i-l told me to tell them that we'd pick them up after noon on Saturday.

Saturday noon comes and I haven't heard a word from him. I was ready to meet him at Lowe's, but nothing... So at almost 2, I called him. He said to meet him there at exactly 2:00 and he'd get them for me. When he got there (at about 2:15 - I had a lot of time to browse the cabinetry and send the guy back to the warehouse and get them out) he said he had to work today and always switches mornings and afternoons with someone on Saturdays. Not sure what that meant.

So at the front of the store as they were loading them into his truck, I told him I was going to run on ahead to the house and get some stuff out of the way. He said okay, and that was the last I saw of him.

He never showed up. I waited all day for him to get here. I guess he meant that he was going to work, but how the hell was I supposed to know he was working that afternoon? He was the one who had offered Saturday at noon, wasn't he? Didn't he forget? So I lost all of Saturday on laundry and anything I might leave the house to do, because I thought he might show up any minute, pissed that I'd started an hour long load of laundry.

Now it's 24 hours later, and still not a word. I know he's not working today, so where the hell is he? My living room is full of all the laundry junk I cleared out to make plenty of room for him to work, and if I put it back, he'll show up. And I still can't leave the house, because as sure as I do, he'll show up.

Pur Flavor Filters

I bought a pitcher and 1 week later, the damn coupon for $5 off showed up. Several weeks early, as a matter of fact. But they had an aluminum water bottle bundled with it, so I went ahead and got it.

My first few tests really disappointed me. The water didn't have a raspberry flavor. It had that funny taste to it that gives you the impression your water is dirty. I tried 3, 5, and 7 squirts of the flavoring in it. Yuck.

So tonight I got thirsty and decided, to heck with it, and put in 10 squirts of the flavoring.

And I got a mildly raspberry flavored glass of water. :) Happy happy joy joy. Half of the glass is gone, and it's so good for me to drink water. :)

Next time, I think I'll try 12 squirts of flavoring, but I'm aware that I'm gonna use up my flavor cartridge pretty fast if I do that. Oh well. I knew they were tiny things anyway. LOL

I don't believe it's really 50 degrees outside

Because I went out with Quincy and I didn't just do a little shiver, I was SHAKING, all the way inside the middle of me. It CAN'T be 50 degrees out - that's way too freaking warm for how it really feels.

Last night I ordered myself some new winter outerwear. It hit me yesterday that the winter coat that I wear is one that I bought when I lived in B'ville, 7 years ago.

It's time I got myself a new coat, so I did. I ordered a parka from Land's End. LOL Rated to something like -20 if you dress right, and 0 degrees if you're wearing light layers. Maybe that's overkill to some, but I never regret being so toasty warm in my coat that I can feel warm air puffing out of it around my face. It cost me almost $100 plus shipping, but if it's a quality coat, I don't really mind that price.

Also got myself some shoes (Oh, I hope they fit) to wear around with my jeans and a down vest for those times when I'm still freaking cold and a parka is a bit much.

I can't stand being cold. I really can't. That probably goes back to my icy-cold north childhood bedroom that had ice forming on the INSIDES of the windows. Blame the stepmother for that, though. She got all industrious and cleaned the windows one summer, and took down the storm windows... But didn't manage to get the ones on my windows back on correctly, so I always had a chilly breeze blowing through my room and ice on the windows. Perpetually sick in the wintertime too. (I think she was trying to kill me.)

By the time I realized exactly what the problem was, I was in my last year or so of high school, and I knew she'd never put those windows right. So I did the only thing that I could think of to do:

I put duct tape over the cracks and sealed them over. To hell with the consequences if they found out. It's amazing how quickly my bedroom warmed up.

As far as I know, the duct tape has never been removed. Dad probably doesn't even know that it's there.

Future scrapbooking pages

Not that I'm vain or anything, but I'd kind of like to create something that expresses the real me. I know lots of people think they really know me, but they only know a little bit about me. For example, I don't think anybody knows how scared I am of cicadas. Just one of those things and not often a concern, but there you have it. Besides, maybe someday when I'm gone my nephews' kids will be interested in knowing a little bit about me. If I leave it to my family, words like "weird", "geek" and "nerd" will be the primary descriptors. *sigh*

So here goes:
I am afraid of cicadas. I'm not paranoid. They really are out to get me. They chase me and attack me, and like to hang out on my storm door right by the handle, so that I can't go in the house. That horrid noise they make scares me. They're gigantic scary bugs!

I'm also terrified of ticks. They make me shake I get so scared. I had to go to the emergency room when I was 2 or 3 to have one removed from way down inside my ear. I remember that a nurse showed me a bloody Q-Tip with a big fat dead grey tick on it and told me, "Look what was inside your ear!" Maybe that's what started my general fear of spiders and other bugs.

I still have nightmares about being in a falling elevator. Not just falling, but turning upside down and tumbling down the shaft.

I am crazy about my puppy, and he knows how to make me laugh. I suspect that he actually likes making me laugh, because when I start laughing, he intensifies his licking assault on my face, which makes me laugh even harder as I scream and try to get away from him. When he sits back to rest, he has that cute little doggy grin on his face.

I love Happy Bunny because he's mean, insulting, and does it all with a smile on his face. He gets away with it all. I don't want to be mean. I already get accused of being mean all the time by people who can't manipulate me.

I worry that I'm going to have to keep teaching until I'm 70 1/2 because I'm single and it's just that much harder for a single woman to live alone than for a married couple sharing the bills. I won't have anybody to take care of me either - I'll be straight off to a nursing home to be forgotten.

I wish for my craftroom to be as attractive, inspiring, and organized as ones I see in all the organization books. They're decorated and so inviting. None of my house is decorated except for the living room where I sponge painted the walls beautifully. (People often think that it's wallpaper. LOL)

I wish that people didn't openly call me weird and other negative names. It still hurts a lot to know that so many people have a low opinion of me, for little or no good reason.

I'd like to do a little scrapbook of my hometown before the town I'm familiar with changes to something completely different.

I want to feel successful as an artist, but for now, I can't even get myself started on any projects. Maybe if I decorated some clipboards, that would be a small enough start to give a feeling of accomplishment.

I'd like to see some of my scrapbook designs actually printed on 12 x 12 paper some day but I don't feel confident enough to even design right now.

Disappointed in my new books

Scrapbooking books, and very nice ones, but....

I bought 2 of the 3 to help me get organized and inspired. Unfortunately, neither has economy in mind. They show these beautiful crafting rooms with modular cube shelving... and every cube costs about $30. They're just cubes. But they seem to be perfect for holding everything, and they have them stacked 3 and 4 high, and 5 across. *sigh* I can't afford that.

I could ask my dad-with-a-new-shop and my brother-the-carpenter/contractor to build me some cubes, but they only work on what they want to work on, when they want to work on it. The remodeling of my kitchen is so far on their back burner that it's in someone else's house.

I don't really believe that they're really going to fix up my kitchen for me. It just seems so unreal. After all, we waited literally 24 years for Dad to finish building his shop once that concrete was poured.

Who's to say that they aren't planning on tearing my kitchen apart and generally making my home uninhabitable for a couple of years, at the rate they work? Took them 2 months to get that support beam put into my living room. And that was with them knowing that I was in a panic over my rapidly sagging ceiling with the ever-widening crack. LOL (And me with a long-term respiratory infection because of all the crap floating through the air. I wouldn't be surprised if there was asbestos in all that, but that would have been beyond their control anyway, and they were exposed to it too. But I'm the only one that got sick.

Anyway, I made Dad promise me a while back that when (if LOL) they started on my kitchen, they wouldn't start tearing anything out until they already had the replacement cabinets built.

Build cabinets first. Destroy youngest child's only refuge second.

Maybe that will cut the months my kitchen / laundry room / puppy pen will be out of commission down to about 6. Tell you what. I'm gonna do my laundry at Dad's house until they put my kitchen back into use. :D Maybe that'll speed them up. hahahaha

But I know what's coming. Dad always wants to "wait until it's cooler" for stuff like rewiring the house (promised when I bought it 6 years ago, and never done). On this one, he's going to want to "wait until it's warmer" so that he can put off my kitchen until May or June.

If only I could be this productive in writing something useful

I get started writing in this blog and hours pass by before I know it. If only I were this possessed by an idea for a book. :D

Yes, at this point, I'd quit teaching and devote my time to writing and other happy pursuits if I suddenly became independently wealthy, such as a successful author would be. I'd love to be absolutely immersed in something that other people besides me thought was worthwhile.

So here it is 12:30 at night, and I'm not yet on my way to bed. I just have things on my mind that I need to say, and having nobody around to bounce thoughts off of, I use this blog as a sort of purging therapy. I don't think I'm going to uncover the meaning of life by writing, but sometimes I just need to sort things out and sometimes I just need to vent.

Current Quincy events

He's slowly starting to get the idea about housebreaking. Still having many accidents. He's learned to ring the bell on the doorknob when he wants out, but he usually runs to ring it right after he's left me a little present on the carpet. *sigh*

Last night he got all excited running to jump on the couch with me (and he had a happy happy look on his tiny little face) and hopped up on a box, only to slam his little head into the corner of my iron coffee table. He literally screamed and then kept on crying. (It reminded me of that inhuman scream I made when I tore my nose open.) I know that was a serious hurt, and he was so surprised by the pain. So I cuddled him in my arms for a long time and talked to him.

Later on I got to missing him, and found that he had crawled into his crate. :( Awwww.... poor baby.... I bet he had a nasty headache. I do think that the blankie I knitted for him the other night was a small enticement in his heading for his bed. I'm glad he likes it, but he sure gave me a hard time while I was trying to make it. Always pulling on the yarn and getting it all slobbery. LOL

He has chewed his way through my nice, expensive computer headset, and also through the ethernet cable. I had a replacement handy for the cable, but doggone it, he's gotta stop chewing on wires! I bought some bitter spray to put on the "don't chew me" stuff, but I guess I can't really spray it on wires. Probably have to rub it on by hand.

Yeah, I know he's teething, because he goes through an entire chewy bone in an hour flat, and his baby teeth are starting to be replaced with his permanent teeth.

He's really looking like a Yorkie, with his hair growing longer and longer. Pretty! Mats SO easily! And I'm still at a loss as to how to trim those nails of his. They're tearing me up, and even with Dad helping me, we couldn't hold the little sucker still enough to trim even one nail.

Earlier this evening, he pulled a $100 bill out of my purse and was beginning to eat it when I caught him. Yikes.

Sat by myself in a coffee shop

... for a whole hour, reading Wicked and drinking a caramel latte. It was awfully coffee-tasting. Still pretty good, but I didn't like it quite as much as the ones I make at home. Mine really taste like caramel.

Sandy told me that doing something like that is hardest the first time, and it won't bother me nearly as much when I do it again.

But I have to admit that my hands were shaking for all but the last 10 minutes I was there.

Yes, he was there but all he did regarding me was ask if I had my punch card with me (I didn't) and hand me back the gift card I was using. Never said another word to me and didn't really come near to where I was sitting when he was straightening tables and chairs.

Hmmmm.... He gave me such a wide berth that one would think I had visible signs of plague. LOL I dunno. I guess it's possible that I seemed so engrossed in my book he was just being polite in not disturbing me for something so mundane as chair shuffling.

Sandy said that eventually he's not gonna be able to stand being pointedly ignored by me, and that being a man, he'll be compelled at some point to at least utter some token phrase to me. LOL Now that would really give me a good laugh. The kind of laugh I don't like to make in public. :D

When I finished my drink, I got up and left without so much as a backward glance. Heck, for all I know he didn't even notice that I was still in the cafe anyway. I know that he was, because he decided to go over to someone sitting about 10 feet to my right and carry on a conversation about running a coffee shop. I only caught a couple of snatches of what they said because I really was engrossed in my book. Turning the page is what distracted me.

But it was pretty nice to sit there with my hot coffee, because it was so cold and gloomy outside today. I don't know if that's a usual afternoon, but though they were busy, not many people actually stayed to drink their drinks. Only about half of those that came in took a seat.

And yes, I was really concerned that there would be a lot of people in there, which would make me nervous in and of itself and I'd do something completely embarrassing, like slip and fall. I don't fall pretty.

Heck, I just broke my big toe a couple of weeks ago flipping my mattress. (Single women living alone are at a woeful disadvantage. But who could I have asked to help me?) My toe bent backwards, trying to fold under my foot. I know that it broke back past the knuckle and probably in my instep. No big deal, it only hurts sometimes when I walk. Not like a doctor could do anything to help me with a cracked toe anyway. In another 5 weeks, I bet it won't hurt anymore.

Back to the coffee shop story.

Unfortunately, I sat where a reading lamp would be over my shoulder and the couches, filled with cursing teenagers (yes, they were trying to impress anyone they could with their talk, they were so loud) just happened to be right behind me. *sigh*

I sat facing the door so that I wouldn't have the childishly stupid impulse to sneak glances at him. Because no matter how irritated I get with how dismissive he was to me, I'd still go out with him if he asked. But I'm not going to ask. I really think I've gotten an accurate idea of how interested he is in being friends with me.

As far as dating goes, I KNOW he's thinking he's way out of my league. I still remember what he put on his match.com profile about who he's interested in finding. I'm not tall enough, not thin enough, not blonde enough, not pretty enough, and definitely not young enough. He said that he was looking for someone 18-39. At the time he posted that, he was 36 himself. It kind of sends up a red flag to me that he'd like a girl half his age. That he'd even be willing to date someone 18 years old at his age.

Possibly it's my own opinions of age coloring my perception. An 18 year old is still a freaking kid if you ask me, and even at 25, we're all still pretty darn immature. *I* wouldn't want to date a 25 year old at this age.

I know somebody in her 40s who is about to marry a fellow who graduated from high school the year after I did. She's well over 10 years older than he is. Of course, she's pretty much a hottie and always will be, so she'll always have her choice of men, and I am still going to be the wallflower in the corner. It isn't like my state of being single is in any way connected to her, but it bugs me that someone so much older than I am has been dating right and left since she and her husband separated, and she really didn't slow down even when he committed suicide not long after that.

I guess I should be happy for her, and going on and on about how wonderfully lucky she is to have found someone she wants to be with, but I'm not. The green-eyed monster is definitely breathing down my neck a little bit.

Not that I want him for myself. It's just that at this point I'd take anybody who was the least bit nice to me and put on a good enough act of caring for me. After all these years of being single and literally dateless (absolutely no interest from any men I've come across), I'm not simply feeling cursed. I feel completely defective as a person.

Ha ha. 4 years ago on a whim, another teacher and I had our fortunes told by tarot readers, while we were at a conference. Do I believe in that stuff? Hard to say. When I used to play with them myself, I always turned up the same end result: I'll never find anyone to love me, and it is completely outside of my control. I was just curious to see if anything had changed since I was an undergrad.

Well, she started laying down cards, and as she put them down, I read them myself. By the time she laid the last card, she started acting nervous and saying it was unclear, and started slapping down more cards. The first time, the cards said I'd never find anyone, and it was out of my hands. By that time I was kind of snickering to myself, because she'd slap down a few cards (and they were negative in meaning) mumble something under her breath, and slap down a few more bad ones. LOL

She finally paused for a minute and fabricated a sweet little future for me that had nothing at all to do with any of those cards. hehehe She said I'd be buying a new house and getting married in 2006 to a very successful businessman. Ha. ha. ha. Obviously that didn't happen. :D

Now I don't believe that because several handfuls of tarot cards told me my life will be loveless that's why things are the way they are for me. I already had a lot of that worry and despair coming out of middle school. That's why I was always so determined to make sure I had a career which would pay well enough for me to take care of myself. I spent all that time alone growing up, so I had no reason to believe it would ever change. I'm not exactly a social butterfly that people flock to.

Oh well. That is my lot in life and I've accepted it. It reminds me of a movie line (I can't quote it verbatim) in which a character states that knowing his destiny and the time of his death, trying to fight it will only cause him extraordinary pain and he'll still die. In other words, don't fight destiny. The pain will be awful and you'll die anyway.

Cool Pencils

I bought some pencils from atlasschoolstore.com a few days ago and they arrived today. I sell pencils to my students because

1. Some of them just can't keep up with their own for long

2. Some can't get to the bookstore and don't have a stash at home

3. I can't afford to just give them pencils, and your average student will take advantage of you if you do. Then they'll play pencil-break with the pencils you spent your grocery money to give them.



If they pay for them, they're marginally more responsible about their pencils.



I remember thinking how much we loved "cool" pencils in elementary school, and how they went nuts a couple of years ago when they got color changer pencils from the cafeteria. So I took a chance and ordered some to sell to them, for the same price as usual, $.25. I didn't order any that were too expensive. I got Halloween pencils, Christmas pencils, Cinnamon scented pencils, and Bubblegum scented pencils.



They went NUTS for the pencils - especially the scented ones!! I was a little shocked, because some kids bought several at once. Now, I'm not here trying to make money off selling pencils to the kids. I just thought that maybe they'd be inclined to hang onto the pencils if they were interesting. If I make a little extra off the pencils, I usually buy classroom stuff and treats with it anyway. :)

They were really REALLY excited about the pencils. LOL (reminds me how I get excited about cool pencils / pens too.) If these sell okay, next order I'll get a different variety to mix in. But right now I've got 4 gross of pencils, coming outta my ears. hehehe

Autumn Memories of my Grandmother

Every time I walk through a grocery store this time of year and see the caramel apple wraps, I think of my paternal grandmother.

When my sister went to Kindergarten, I was left with my grandmother all day while my father was working. I was four and this was during the time when my brother, sister, father, and I were living in my grandmother's 2 bedroom tiny little house while my mother was presumably enjoying herself in our 3 bedroom family home that she'd had our father kicked out of.

Sometimes it makes me wonder if it was just part of a plan on my mother's part to have a nice new house all to herself and at the same time rid herself of the nuisance of husband and children. Other times I suspect her thinking was skewed by her drinking and other influences I've heard about. Is it disrespectful to speculate along these lines, and will I be very truly sorry for thinking this way when she's gone?

I remember a few things about those days with my grandmother, other than the time she chased me into the bathroom and broke her paddle swinging at me, but hitting the toilet instead. I don't remember being a bad kid, but dad's always telling me I was "a little imp." Hmm. Small demon, huh? I hope I wasn't as bad as that sounds. I remember plenty of things about everyone around me, but I can't quite get a sense of myself. It's like I don't exist unless I have something which mirrors my reflection back to me.

I remember a time that she bought a watermelon from Mr. Reddick when he came by with his produce truck. She bought a lot of veggies from him, especially sweet corn. The watermelon incident still hurts me to think about it, becaues i sked her if I could carry the melon in from the truck - up the stairs from the street and up the stairs from the yard to the porch - about 8 all together. At first she wasn't going to let me carry it, because it was heavy and she said I'd drop it. (And let's face it, I was a clumsy kid even then at age 4.) But I begged, and she let me do it.

And I dropped the watermelon right in front of the door, on the porch, after I'd managed my way up all those steps. I remember crying for several reasons. First and foremost, I cried because I was really looking forward to eating the watermelon, which was a rare treat. I also cried because I was embarrassed at having screwed up so royally in front of nice Mr. Reddick. I cried because I knew my grandmother was disappointed with me. And last, I cried because I was afraid I was going to get a spanking for dropping the watermelon.

I remember Grandmomma didn't even seem angry about my accident. Maybe a little impatient because of the mess. I guess I was so torn up about the whole thing that she didn't even think about spanking me.

I think Mr. Reddick gave us a second watermelon to replace it, and things worked out better as the day wore on. I don't remember being sad anymore about the watermelon, but I do remember being surprised that he gave us a second melon.

On one of those autumn days when apples were coming in, I remember that she got some of those sheets of caramel that are put over apples on sticks, then placed in the oven to melt down over the fruit. I recall that I asked Grandmomma why the caramel was in those weird sheets instead of in wrappers that I was used to (Dad would sometimes bring home a bag of Brach's Pick-A-Mix candy with caramels in it). She told me that it was so children could make caramel apples without anybody having to get burned melting the caramel.

And then if I'm not mistaken, she told me to stop trying to sneak bites of the caramel wraps before we'd put them on the apples. LOL :D Even now when I pass them in the store, I'm sorely tempted to buy and eat, what is to me a caramel roll up.

I do remember that after the apples were made and I was happily munching on mine, she wasn't eating one. I asked her if she wasn't going to eat one, and she said she'd have sugar problems if she ate all that candy. She would make desserts for us pretty often, and barely touch them or not eat them at all. Maybe her diabetes was the reason she made her pear salad so often - a dessert which never appealed to us children. It was a pear half on a lettuce leaf, with shredded cheddar cheese and a maraschino cherry on top. All I remember ever wanting to eat was the cherry LOL.

Green organization

Okay, so the last thing I did today was more green than organization, but I think Quincy is happy about it. I've still got a pillow that I bought sometime when I was in college, and hated the thing because it was thick and lumpy. Thick is good, perma-lumpy is baaaaad.

Today while I was creating an avalanche in my closet (and Quincy was climbing... he made it to the top of a chest-high pile and while I was bent over working with the bins, he climbed right over onto my back and scaled up to my shoulder as I slowly stood up) I looked up and saw that pillow and thought that it would probably make a nice bed for the puppy.

If he tears it up, oh well, it's been occupying space pointlessly for what, 16 years or more? But it'll give him a nice cushy place to nap in my office, and I don't have to buy him a bed for every room in the house. He's enjoying it already. :) Settling down for a nice comfy nap right in the middle.

I had already thrown away Terra's bed and all the pillows I'd donated to it, and I had wrapped her in her blanket when Dad buried her for me. Sad as I was to lose her, there wasn't any point in my keeping her old bedding out of sentimentality. I didn't need a reminder that she was gone.

The whole point of going into the closet was to add back some functionality. I have a hanging shoe organizer in there that is barely used, and what unpaired shoes are in there, I don't wear anymore. I wear black and brown shoes to work because I wear black and khaki pants to work. LOL I don't wear anything that would require me to wear painful shoes. True, if I have to go to a wedding, I'm gonna have to shope for shoes and clothes. But that's fine. I don't need all the frou-frou and I sure don't need a shoe collection. I could use that shoe space for something else anyway, I'm sure.

I decided that I should put the huge wire stacking bins that I'd emptied in the craft room back to use in my closet, like I'd done in my last apartment. The ends of the closet then were inaccessible, so I put wire bins in to hold shoes and T-shirts. Hanging all of my T-shirts up on hangers in the closet is silly anyway. I'd planned on folding and stacking the tees and sweats on the existing shelves, but there wasn't enough space and I really need that space for other stuff that is cluttering the bottom of the closet.

So I stacked up 8 large wire bins to the right and I'm putting the shoes at the bottom, sweatshirts in one bin and sweatpants in another, one bin for everyday stained tees that shouldn't leave the house, and another for decent looking tees. And I'm planning to put my sweaters in the two bins on top of that.

I'm kind of tempted to put my shorts, socks, and underwear in some more bins in there and get rid of my old ugly (space hogging and inefficient) chest of drawers. Heck, if nothing else, I could take them to the school and repurpose them in our workroom or even the bathroom. I'll still have a normal closet's width bar to hang stuff on. All I've done is take a little space from the very short side one. But for that idea to work, I'll have to truly clear out the closet so that I can walk into it again. On the plus side, without that pile of old brown behemoth, my tiny bedroom will look bigger and a lot less junky.

I'm one of those people who waits until she has a mountain of laundry, and then does tons of it at one time. But I don't like to put everything into the dryer. In fact, there's very little I like putting into the dryer. (Though my new dryer really is awesome. It has temp sensors and all that which will cut off the heat if it senses that your clothing is already dry. Why keep heating if it's not needed, right? I also love the "medium" heat setting for jeans. They're almost completely dry, but not so bone dry they shrink. Still a tiny bit damp, which means that they will stretch to fit me properly when I put them on in a few minutes. :) (If they're snug, I wind up wetting them down with a spray bottle and wearing them damp-stretch-to-fit anyway)

Anyway, my dryer and my washer are both king-size capacity. Who knows, I might have a family someday to warrant it. Or a young family member who does have prospects for a family of his / her own might inherit them when I die, if they are the wonderful quality that my grandmother's set were for me (died at about age 40, they did. Bravo! Actually, it was just the washer that was messing up, but I didn't want to have a nice new washer and an old harvest gold dryer. LOL I gave the old dryer to my ex-sister-in-law because hers had wires poking thru inside tearing up my nephew's clothing. It also saved me the guilt of throwing away a perfectly good dryer.)

What I'm getting to is that I really want a large capacity clothes drying rack for my backyard so that I can hang up 2 or three loads of laundry to dry outside, at the same time. Turns out I bought the wrong sized PVC fittings last night at Lowe's, so no tinkertoy playing for me on that today. But I did rig up a perfectly serviceable "rod" under my porch roof. I hope it's not too visible from the street - I did try to angle it. I just don't want anybody staring or messing with my clothes. I know the point is to hang them out in the sun, but I'm a little paranoid right now about birds pooping on my clothes, so this minimizes the risk until I can come up with a plan for the drying rack I really want. (Something I can take with me when I sell this house...)

I did manage to use one of the 10 ft pieces I already had out in the yard for my ill-fated sun shelter a few years back on yearbook signing day. Yes, it was hot and we blistered, but I've decided since then that my umbrella and my folding chair are really a much simpler solution. LOL I also used a section that was on the throwaway pile, which used to be for irrigation in a tall pot of mine. And I strung it up with some kind of nylon cording I stole from Dad years ago.

And now I'm looking at that stack of small plastic bins, thinking they need to go out to the curb, where some trash picker will grab them before they actually make it into the trash. LOL

Oh, and I've found another use for allll those Wal-Mart bags I keep getting. I use them as disposable gloves when I'm cleaning up after Quincy. hahaha Hey, they're getting a second use, and I'm not having to buy gloves to clean up his poop.

Results:

1 old pillow - repurposed into a bed for Quincy
8 wire stacking bins - brought unused from the craft room to organize all my foldables in the closet
14 feet PVC pipe - repurposed into a temporary laundry drying rack.
9 small plastic stacking bins - about to become someone else's treasure
14 Wal-Mart bags per week - disposable cleaning gloves.

I realize this is all justification for not throwing stuff away, but it is useful stuff that I'd feel guilty for just tossing in a landfill. This way I'm telling myself that it all gets at least a second use and maybe someone else may throw it away someday.

What if Pepsi really is the answer?

I've had a migraine since last Monday, October 8th. It started on the left side of my head, and by Wednesday (and LOTS of heavy medication which really fouled up my motor skills) it seemed to be fading. By Thursday morning it was back full force on the right side of my head.

I ask you, is that fair? I'd done three days of penance and it seems I was destined to do another three.

By Saturday night I was no longer suspecting I am susceptible to strokes. I was freaking HOPING I'd have a stroke so maybe I wouldn't hurt anymore.

(BTW - if I'm ever on life support longer than a couple of weeks, find a way to unplug me, please. I figure by then they'd know if I can be revived or not, and there's no reason to prolong the inevitable. I don't want to be lying there thinking about how miserable I am and powerless to do anything about it.)

Saturday night after I came home from my night out with Jennifer (most fun I've had in AGES. :) Thanks, Jen!) it started hurting worse and worse. I thought maybe a megadose of caffeine might help a little, so I headed to Wal-Mart and bought some Pepsi. By the time I finished 10 oz of the bottle, the pain was letting up (and no meds at all. Figure that one out). I drank another quarter of the bottle, started reading Wicked, and went to bed.

No headache today. No tenderness or feeling that the pain is about to come back.

Yay.

Wicked

I bought a copy of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West last night. So far, so good. I'm a little bit disappointed that the author skipped from her toddlerhood directly to her first day at college, but that's just one of the author's conventions that a reader has to deal with.

The reviews for the book are fairly black and white - people either love it or they hate it. I'm probably going to really like it. The first scene described, when Elphaba eavesdrops on Dorothy and her pals speculating about her green skin condition, supposedly deformed sexual organs and commentary that she's probably addicted to her medication for her skin, really put me on her side. I began to hate Dorothy. Yes, she's just an ignorant farm girl, but did she have to be so freaking mean about someone she didn't even know?

I guess people are really like that. I've caught them at it myself, and I suppose it's that identification with the underdog that makes me like the poor wretch. I'd be willing to bet that the author sees a lot of himself in her, and probably had a snotty college roommate a lot like Galinda himself.

Maybe he intended to turn things around and show readers that sometimes a person they see as unlikeable may just be one diametrically opposed to their own point of view, and because of that straying from the norm, is viewed as evil.

I imagine that a lot of people who are down on the book aren't taking it as its own affair - they feel that it is damaging to their beloved Baum books and possibly the movie. Oooh, do not mess with the sacrosanct. LOL It amuses me to think of Elphaba's father, the minister, preaching about the evils of idolatry, and the haters of this book may likely be doing just that: idolizing an old series of books and the movies that followed. As if thinking of things a little differently from the usual spoon-fed version is somehow damaging their long-gone childhood, they cry in outrage.

LOL

Now I'm wishing I could see the musical. :D

Cookbook Thief

Okay, so he wasn't trying to steal my cookbooks, but I'm telling you, I could just see it in my brother's eyes yesterday -- he was waiting on me to offer them to him.

Every time my brother / father / nephew come over together, they throw their cigarette butts all over my yard, driveway, and patio. They use my bathroom (sometimes that's the only reason they stop by - use of my toilet, and then they're gone) and leave the seat up. I suppose it never occurred to any man that doing that for their own convenience is pretty damned inconsiderate when you are visiting a house in which there is only a female living. Personally, every time I see a toilet seat up, it disgusts me because I don't want to look at the underside of even a clean toilet seat, and I know they didn't bother flushing. I always put the lid and the seat DOWN in my house. That's fair to everyone. It leaves me a place to sit if I need to. That's why I put a lid cover on the damn thing. And it keeps my puppy, who's too curious about the water in the toilet, safe.

Then my brother helps himself to my cookbook shelves and spends the whole time going through them, instead of actually visiting.

The thing you have to understand about my brother (and don't get me wrong, I love him, flaws and all -- just like I hope I'm loved despite my family's view that I'm weird, not to mention probably more flawed than any of them) is his seeming belief that once he's kept one of your belongings long enough, it becomes his by default. And you can keep asking him for the item back, but there will always be a reason for him to keep holding on to it. Oh, and if you do manage to convince him to relinquish his hold, you have to pick it up. He'll be incredibly pissed off at your nerve for being an indian giver. And that's after you delivered the item for him to borrow in the first place.

Case in point: a cookbook of my stepmother's. Her only cookbook / manual to our microwave, which had many good recipes not found anywhere else. He wanted to borrow it long enough to copy a recipe (years ago before any of us had a computer or easy access to a copy machine) and never brought it back. I kept asking nicely for him to return it for about a year, and finally I got mad and demanded he bring it back.

He got mad and said, "Well, I thought you were giving it to me to keep." As if I'd give him something that wasn't even mine to give???? It was bad enough that I let him borrow it in the first place.

After a few more times of having to forcibly retrieve my stuff from an angry brother, I stopped letting him "borrow" my stuff. He thinks that anything he borrows is his gift.

Well, you know that saying. Don't loan anything out that you really need to have back. (Don't misunderstand... this is only about my brother.) He and Dad were even discussing the cookbooks (something I actually collect) and it sounded like they were trying to work out a way for him to take the cookbooks home. Dad said that he could even scan what he needed and print them all off on my printer. Then both of them seemed mad that my scanner wasn't working. Well, it really isn't. The AC adapter has to be replaced - no juice. I was surprised Dad didn't remember that he was the one who tested the thing and told me it needed replacing.

Being the bitch that both of them have called me at times (think I'll ever forgive that? Not a chance) I didn't offer any help. I didn't even offer a sheet of paper and pen to copy the recipes he wanted off by hand. I did tell him that one of the cookbooks was at WalMart now. LOL Dad asked him how much they were - why, I don't know. Probably so he could buy any of them my brother wanted.

Dad's been supporting my brother ever since he lost his job because he lied about why he was in jail for a weekend. (internet underage dating thing) I'm pretty sure that he got a big chunk of money out of the settlement not too long ago, but at the same time my "poor" brother "you don't know how hard he's had it" probably has never offered to repay our father for all of the house, truck, new tools, and electronics payments he made for him in the meantime. It's not like Dad has any money coming in - he's been retired for years now and is living off his savings.

I guess my brother should be happy. A few years ago he whined that Dad is "spending our inheritance!" when he buys stuff like property at the lake, Sea-Doos, and so forth. The way I see it is that Dad is spending HIS OWN money he worked his ass off all his life for, and let him spend it however he wants to. I don't think that we're entitled to an inheritance, and most especially not if it means that Dad continues to do without to make a bunch of spoiled children happy. Let him make himself happy for a change, huh? But anyway, I digress. I think that my brother should be happy that "his inheritance" is being spent right now, all on him. Whatever might be left when Dad dies will still be divided three ways, and that won't be much, considering all the money he had to fork out to keep my brother from losing his house and vehicle.

For example - my bedroom suite. Dad told me when he bought it for my room that it was mine to take when I moved out. Then it turned into "you can buy it from me for $1000" which was about what it cost new anyway. Now it's "Well, I thought you didn't want it anyway. Why not let your brother have it?" My brother has a nearly new, very expensive bedroom suite in his own house already.

So I guess you could say that I'm a little bitter that I was "given" something for the first time in my life, then told I had to pay for it during a time when I was struggling just to pay rent, then told it had been given to my brother who is too good to take just any old job to pay the bills.

The furniture in my bedroom now is the same rickety junk that was in my room when I was 13. It wasn't new for me either.

I guess when you're the only kid in the family to not ask repeatedly for money even after getting married, you're expected to pull your own weight and everyone else's too. I won't tell them that I have a big chunk of money in the bank (well, it seems big to me), because then I would have to figure out a nice way to tell them, no, I'm not loaning you any money. Not for a week, not for a month.

It was tough getting my sister to stop "borrowing" money from me years ago. The problem was that I felt bad because they were having such a hard time making ends meet, and I would always offer to help. It never occurred to me that they had financial problems because they were spendthrifts. If a new TV or game system came out, they bought it. I went without a TV for about a year because the old one I'd been given played out, and I couldn't afford to buy one.

Yeah, it kinda ticks me off to remember that my father has always made excuses for my siblings, saying "Poor -------, you just don't know how hard they have it." Hell, nobody ever cared to think about how hard I was having it myself. Single woman, paying ALL bills herself, and definitely underpaid. Nobody helped me. Nobody helped me come up with any money to buy this house, either, other than the bank. It came directly from me.

Hell, give them all the money they ask you for if that's what you want. Just don't come to me and plead about how pitiful and downtrodden they are, when they stomped on themselves to begin with. What little I have is mine by my own hard work and sacrifice. I never hear anybody say, "Poor ____. She's never really had anything or even anyone who really cared about her. She's always been alone. It's no wonder she's been depressed for the past 15 years." It's more along the lines of, "It's your own fault you're alone. You're depressed? Well just cheer up then. That'll fix it. (Anybody else hear how utterly STUPID it is to say that?) You've always had a bad attitude. You're weird. You're fat. You're ugly - it's no wonder nobody wants you."