Complaint of the Month. Day. Whatever...

My Traveling Red Dress Experience

2012-02-02T20:47:00.000-05:00

The history of the dress

I bought this dress a little over seven years ago.

It’s been worn exactly twice, and languishing in my closet the rest of the time. It was bought for me to wear as a bridesmaid in a Christmas wedding, the wedding of two of my best friends who soon started trying to have a family. After a two and a half year struggle with infertility they were finally able to conceive, and now they have two of the most beautiful twin girls I’ve ever seen (saw them just last week).

When my husband and I started our attempts to have a baby they, along with another close friend who has PCOS like me, were my inspiration. From tests to treatments to disappointments they had been through it all before me, and held my hand (literally and figuratively) through it all. Then four years in I started with a new group of fertility specialists and FINALLY got pregnant.

It was the last week in January 2011 that I wore this dress for a second time. I’ve been deeply involved in music from very early on: sang before I could talk, piano lessons from age 3, music major in college, and through it all I’ve had debilitating stage fright. I try over and over with mixed results to force myself to sing/play/speak in public. That January, the same week I started new treatments for what was wrong inside me, I decided to work on the outside as well. America’s Got Tallent auditions came to Atlanta, so inspired by theblogess and her red dress wearing encouragement I went to the auditions, red dress and all. The good news is, I’m not bad enough to make it on TV. The bad news is, I’m not good enough to make it on TV either. But I made it through, and with that boost of confidence I didn’t embarrass myself to badly.

Only two weeks later I found out I was pregnant for the first time. I was overjoyed, only to have a miscarriage three weeks in. It was devastating. I tried to see the good in all this. I mean, at least this proved that I COULD get pregnant, something I hadn’t managed in four years of trying. But to have our hopes raised and dashed in such short order, only to be followed by month after month of disappointment seemed more than I could take. My self-image went to pot! From January to September I had gained nearly 20 lbs. Nothing seemed to matter, not how much I ate or exercised, I’m sure all the crazy hormones I was on didn’t help, so we decided to take the rest of the year off to focus on getting healthy and then decide how to face the new year.

In October I started having horrible lower back and stomach pain, similar to monthly cramps, but instead of a day or so and then my period they went on for nearly a week with no sign of change. I finally realized that they were in the same location as pains I had had during my first pregnancy. Turns out, I managed to conceive, no timing, no drugs, no idea how this happened after almost five years of trying everything under the sun. I spent the next two months terrified to eat the wrong thing, exercise to hard, expose myself to any chemicals, anything at all. I was so terrified of another miscarriage. Add to that terrified to tell people I was pregnant again only to have it end in disappointment again.

The dress moves on

So when Jenny mentioned having a new red dress photo shoot a few days back, I looked at my body and said, no way am I fitting into that dress. But it got me to wondering, if I can’t wear the dress, who could? I mean, it’s a beautiful dress, and it’s spent the majority of the last seven years crushed in my closet gathering dust. So I offered it out. This was the response I got:

I need this dress. My struggles are with infertility, and weight. I turned 30 back in June, and every day my hopes of becoming a mother just slip further away. My life is consumed by the tremendous booming of my biological clock. We can not get pregnant without IVF, but financially we are fish out of water. Asking us for $15,000.00 is like asking for a million.

I wake up every single day, chocking back the tears and just feeling damn sorry for myself. I can’t seem to shake it. I don’t want to work, or be social, or even cook a meal for my husband. For the life of me, I’m trying to summon the will to do anything-absolutely anything. I haven’t allowed photos of myself to be taken in over 8 years, because I HATE what I see looking back at me. I’ve completely lost my own worth. And I need to find it again. I have to. I have to wear that dress.

I swear only God could have let this person see my little comment way down on theblogess’s website offering the dress. To have this dress offer encouragement to someone else going through the same struggles I’ve been through means so much to me. So as this dress is on its way to its new home in Idaho it goes with all the prayers and blessings and love I can send with it, for the next lady who will wear it, and the next, and the next.

An open letter to US Bank

2012-01-14T11:03:00.000-05:00

Dear US Bank,
When you call and repeatedly get our answering machine but never leave a message, it is our natural assumption that you have nothing good to talk about. When you call and ask for a person and I tell you he is not interested in speaking to you, that is not an indication that you should call at a better time. When someone is not interested in speaking to you and they have caller ID, your calls will not be answered at whatever time you call.

If you have something important to talk about, please leave a message. Otherwise, quit calling 4 times a week! Get a clue!

Thanks,
Someone who was woken up by the phone ringing this morning

amazing

2011-12-22T10:41:00.001-05:00

Well, I was planning a post about how hard it is to find skin care products that can be used during pregnancy in regular stores. Sure, we all know not to use vitamin A derivatives, and to avoid salicylic acid, and BHAs but when you have a history of miscarriage there's SO much more to avoid! You don't want to eat basil, sage, or rosemary because they can cause contractions, so do I really want to run the risk of rubbing them into my skin? I love how folks keep pointing me to the organic lines of skin care products, like there aren't organic forms of vitamin A, and rosemary's a top ingredient in half these products as well. So I was going to rant about how I can't seem to find anything to use on my skin in Kroger anymore, but then I got distracted.

This morning I had a doctor's appointment, really just a test to see if the baby's nerve development appears normal, or if it looks like he/she could be at risk for Downs. Not that we would love a baby with Downs any less, I just figure its good to know so that I can prepare the best I can for whatever we can know. So we started this ultrasound, and I thought things looked kinda twitchy, but then maybe that was the lady moving the want, right? Nope, we have a very jumpy baby in there, not the most cooperative at holding still for the technician. I thought about telling him to hold still so she could get her measurements, but then I figured the technician would think I was talking to her, or she would think I was crazy for talking to a baby that doesn't yet have ears. Anyway, laying there, listening to a heartbeat, watching a twitchy baby who didn't particularly care to be measured, was amazing.

P.S. If you know of any decent grocery store skin care products that are safe let me know. I don't want to have to order from specialty stores and spend an arm and a leg!

Well, I thought I was taking a break (warning, probably contains over-sharing)

2011-11-27T22:03:00.000-05:00

I was just looking through old drafts and realized I never posted one from a month and a half back called "Taking a Break." You know how they say that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans? Well, I'm thinking the folks that say that know what they're talking about!

After years of trying and months of invasive and painful treatments, we decided back in October to stop trying for a baby. Well at least through the end of the year. All the ups and downs were getting to me. The weight gain, the hormones, sex on demand, the uncomfortable and sometimes painful procedures, knowing that THIS month was FINALLY going to be the month only to have something go wrong and have my hopes crushed, again. I just couldn't take the stress.

So instead of another round of treatment starting in October I went on a diet and lost 8 lbs. My husband and I went on a cruise. I drank all the martinis I wanted. Sex was spontaneous instead of planned, and I avoided thinking about anything having to do with anybody's reproductive schedule. When the end of the month rolled around without a sign of my period, well, we all know I'm not likely to ovulate on schedule if at all, so I took a pregnancy test (negative) and started the standard progesterone to reboot the system another month. But after a week, I realized I was feeling kinda weird. My back hurt, not all that unusual for me, but my stomach hurt too, and then I realized that I was hurting in the same places that I hurt back in February with the pregnancy that ended in miscarriage, and I began to wonder. Oh, I didn't feel as bad as I had back then, but then things could be early on. Some stuff I could account to the progesterone. My boobs had hurt in other cycles when I hadn't turned out to be pregnant, but my stomach, that was hard to discount. So when I got home that night I looked, and I had one pregnancy test left. I told myself I was stupid for wasting it.

I put it off until after dinner. And then I took it, and watched it. You know how you're supposed to wait three minutes for the line to develop? Well I didn't even have to wait 30 seconds. I was shaking when I showed it to my husband. My next call was to the doctor's office to confirm.

I spent the next week and a half terrified at every twinge, looking for blood at every trip to the bathroom. When I had my miscarriage in February I had no idea that there was even a possibility that anything was wrong. I hadn't worried that anything would happen until it did. This time I knew just how badly things could go, and it was a rare moment that I wasn't terrified that something was going wrong. Then this:

In case you're wondering, that's a heartbeat there. Now, can anyone tell me how to stop being terrified that something will go wrong at any minute?

Complaints: Now with Real Ingredients!!!

2011-10-30T00:41:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I'm noticing a trend in advertising. This all started a few days ago when my mother-in-law asked me what kind of cake I wanted for my birthday. Well I knew right off that I wanted the most chocolaty thing you can find in a cake mix, and since I've had good luck with Duncan Hines I thought I'd look through the flavors on their website to see what seemed to have chocolate on top of chocolate with a side of chocolate. I ended up here:
http://www.duncanhines.com/products/cakes

At first glance this looks like a simple list of a variety of cake flavors. But then I noticed something. Under the heading "Decadent Mixes" there is the phrase "contains an additional pouch of real ingredients." This got me wondering. What exactly is a cake mix made up of if it's not ingredients? I mean, when I was a kid and I made mud pies, these mud pies had ingredients (mostly mud). When I look on the side of a box of regular cake mix, what exactly would you call the list of things that supposedly go into the box?

But it didn't stop there. Today, I spent most of the day watching football with my husband. Ok, so I don't so much watch football as exist in a room where football is on TV while I pay attention to other things, but occasionally something on the TV catches my attention. This time it was a Tostitos commercial. Now I love Tostitos. They are the corn chip that I am most likely to buy, more because they're often on sale and in the shapes I like than because I think they're particularly nutritious, but I've eaten and enjoyed a variety of Tostitos products. So when I heard them advertising that they're made with "real ingredients" it got me thinking. Why in the world would anyone with a lick of sense advertise that a food is made with real ingredients? Are these real ingredients as opposed to the fake ones? If Tostitos are made with real ingredients does that mean that Fritos are made with paste and paint? (I love Fritos, and would never mean to malign their excellent reputation, and they go really well with chili.) What kind of idiot do the advertising executives think I am? Who would spend millions of dollars to tell me that their food-like substances are made with real ingredients?

This really makes me wonder what other advertising and marketing campaigns are utterly meaningless. Does my toothpaste really keep working for hours, or does it just remove the grubby stuff and it takes time (and eating) for it to come back? Is lite mayonnaise really light, or is it just lighter than say, injecting lard directly into my veins? Are these desiccated grapes or plumper juicier raisins? Will the shoes make me run faster even though I don't like to run. I mean really, I spend more time driving a car or sitting at a desk than anything else in life. Will this added layer of clothing make me look thinner, or will it just add another layer to my already extensive padding? When you say something tastes better, better than what?

Silly, silly advertising executives. You're even stupider than you think I am.

P.S. My actual birthday cake was a Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Dark Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix with the Creamy Home-Style Dark Chocolate Fudge Frosting, and it was VERY good even though my husband complained that it was ugly. I picked a cake because it would TASTE good, not because it would look good (if I'd wanted a pretty cake I'd have let him spread frosting on a hunk of styrofoam), and not because it had REAL INGREDIENTS!

Netflix is making a big mistake

2011-09-19T11:54:00.000-04:00

So... Netflix sent out a letter explaining their recent changes today. I read it. I went to their blog to respond to it, and wrote a response only to have their comment system require that I'm a Facebook member. I'm not. So without further ado, my open letter to Netflix:

That's a bunch of malarkey. Re branding a successful brand is always a mistake. I can see the price increase (though I think it could have been better implemented incrementally), and I can see re-organizing into two different groups. But the re branding is a mistake, and a bad one. Amazon.com made the steps to sell things other than books, and they have been successful because now folks know Amazon.com is their one stop shop. By re-branding you're alienating all the word of mouth marketing you've had through the years. I can see only one reason to re brand a part of the business, and that's if you're planning on selling it off. Sooooo, when are you planning on selling off the DVD by mail business?

P.S. if you're new to the Netflix debate, you can read their blog that I'm responding to here: http://blog.netflix.com/2011/09/explanation-and-some-reflections.html?lnktrk=EMP&g=924FD2284294B084FFA5EF8B00E123120AC0315E&lkid=netflixBlog

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

2011-08-17T18:00:00.005-04:00

And of course, another disappointment. The good news is, I've gone part time at work just to have some time to take better care of myself and to take some of the stress off.

I keep wanting to cry out, begging, screaming, "God PLEASE give me a healthy full term pregnancy." But I keep reminding myself, "Not my will, but Yours be done."

I'm really trying to mean it.

The waiting game

2011-08-15T06:00:00.000-04:00

When I talk to my friends with infertility they often talk about the month after month of disappointment. And while that's horrible, I don't find that to be the worst of it. See, with disappointment at least you know. What we tried didn't work, so it's time to formulate a new plan, there're plans to make, and stuff to do. There's always something different to try, and having something different to do makes it that much better. It gives something to hope for.

No, the worst part of it is the time of the month where you just don't know where you stand. You've done everything you can, and you have no idea whether it worked. Every month you spend a couple weeks talking to your body, saying "Please let it take!" "Everything's ok, you can focus on reproductive stuff now." "Please let everything get together and do the right things this time."

And I'm afraid to do anything that could be the wrong thing. I found myself watching a funny TV show last night, and laughing, wondering whether if I laughed to hard if it would jar anything loose and it wouldn't take. I'm afraid to exercise to strenuously because I might get dehydrated and cause a problem. I'm afraid to do anything that could cause a lot of pain or stress on my body, lest my body decide that maybe now's not so good a time to put the focus on reproduction. I kick myself wondering if the incident with the legs I burned with expired dilatory cream could have triggered some sort of fight or flight stress release that caused my miscarriage. I don't know that I'll ever know.

So here I am; afraid to eat the wrong thing, afraid to get sick, afraid to move the wrong way, afraid to even laugh to hard! Tired, and yet waking up in the middle of the night unable to think of anything but what MIGHT be going on inside me now. Is it any wonder I'm no fun at all?

I'm beginning to itentify with Job

2011-07-23T07:12:00.000-04:00

Ok, so my house hasn't collapsed, it's just the air conditioning gone out in the middle of what I read a few days ago is a "Deadly Heat Wave" gripping half the United States. And my children aren't all dead, it's just that I can't seem to have any in the first place. I haven't broken out in boils and sores, it's just a doozy of a UTI on the tail end of a week of rumbling tummy trouble that ranged from Full Stop to Go, Go, Go! But compound this on top of more than normal stresses at work, more bad news from the fertility clinic, and more frustrations ranging from a breast cancer scare (nope, it's just a cyst, everything's fine) to a guy who can't seem to decide whether he wants to sell us the car that we said we would buy MONTHS ago, and I'm wondering just exactly how much more of this we can take.

Ok, so my husband hasn't told me to "curse God and die" for which I am always thankful, but when it comes to breaking points, well, I'm way past where I thought mine would be. Instead we lie naked in bed (it's to hot for clothes) and thank God for ceiling fans, even if the one in our bedroom has this weird tendency to cut off in the middle of the night. We thank Him for sustaining us thus far, and pray that he will help us through whatever comes next. Oh, and we cry, a lot, and do our best to comfort each other because we both know that God knew what he was doing when he put us together and that there's no way we would make it through this without each other. And then there's the yelling, crying out to the universe.

WHY CAN'T WE GET A BREAK!?

If God's got a bet on with the Devil about what it'll take to break me, then I don't want to let Him down. But I kinda wish he'd go pick someone else to bet on and let me have some time to recover from all this... stuff. Surely work doesn't have to make both me and my husband miserable at the same time. Surely God can heal our bodies or thyroid and hormonal issues and whatever else is making it impossible for us to have children and loose weight. I eat really healthy, a low calorie but balanced diet with lots of leafy greens, and I started working out 3-4 times a week over a month ago. I shouldn't be GAINING weight. But combine PCOS with an under active thyroid (which I was doing a really good job of controlling before all these fertility treatments) and you get twenty more pounds of me since January.

I really didn't start this diet and exercise plan thinking that it would result in me only gaining a pound and a half in the last month, and now I need to go out and buy all new jeans. I mean, I like shopping as much as the next girl, but in general I just want my clothes to fit! And I'd really prefer a new pair of earrings to shopping for a new air conditioning unit.

This too shall pass

2011-06-18T14:23:00.002-04:00

I’ve been comforting myself lately with the idea of change. No matter what happens, this will pass. Change is the only thing I can count on, so no matter what has me down now I know that in a few days or weeks it’ll be something else, or my circumstances will change, and whatever seems insurmountable now won’t be there, or won’t seem so bad, or will have changed into something else. This is something I learned from Mark Lowrey.

All I have to do is wait. If nothing else my ADD will kick in and I'll forget to be upset about whatever's upsetting me. Right?

3 months

2011-06-10T14:42:00.000-04:00

Three months and I'm still not pregnant. Confirmed today. All I want to do is go home and cry.

Well, that and a big FU to all the folks who said "Don't worry, you'll try again next month."

In other news, I think my hair is falling out faster than normal. It's a good thing I have more than average to start with. I can stand to loose a fair bit without looking like a freak... well, no more of a freak than normal anyway.

Terrified, Annoyed - Confessions of wigging out

2011-04-19T21:23:00.003-04:00

Ok, so my one and only pregnancy thus far was an unmitigated disaster. From the Sunday before I knew I was pregnant I started having horrible pain anywhere from 2-4 times a day, and each pain lasted anywhere from 20 minutes to three hours. This lasted for the entire duration of the pregnancy and only stopped well after my miscarriage was in progress. I can count on one hand the number of nights I was able to sleep through during that almost three weeks I was pregnant. Each night I'd wake up with pains shooting across my middle, wrapped around to my back, and sometimes down to my knees. Unable to get comfortable in any position I paced the house, often for hours at a time. Of course if they hit during the day when I was stuck in a meeting I was in worse luck. Sitting made the hurting worse, so I found myself shifting in my seat, unable to concentrate, unable to focus on anything but the pain.

I told one doctor about this and he told me that normal women whose ovaries work right go through this every month. Right. I'm not buying that normal women have PMS three weeks out of the month. If they did there would be a LOT more voluntary hysterectomies. For another thing, I don't think I'm THAT wussy! I know what PMS is, I've had it, and it's nothing to write home about. It's DEFINITELY nothing that would keep me up at night.

And then my world crashed down. Having a miscarriage the same week Grandpa died... I don't even have the words. It's been over a month now and I still don't have the words to express how much the world was against me. I remember one time when I was in middle school, 8th grade I think, and I had the flu on the heels of strep throat. I was in bed much of that time, and the very first time I went outside in over a week I sat down on a cross-tie next to the driveway and as I straightened up from sitting a bird pooped on the back of my head and down the back of my shirt. Having a miscarriage? Worse than that!

So now, a month later, I'm looking at our next steps with more than a little trepidation. I'm terrified, and I feel evil for being terrified. I'm terrified of getting pregnant and losing the baby, and I'm scared of the pain that I had during my first pregnancy that kept me up at night and made it near impossible to think at work. And I'm just all around scared and nervous volunteering for this process again. I came home a few nights back and went straight for the jellybeans and chocolate. I've really noticed this miscarriage has caused huge stress eating. The week of the miscarriage I went through a large bag of dark chocolate peanut M&M's in about two days. And then there were the jellybeans. Add to this that my doctor asked me to cut my thyroid medicine in half for this try, and I've gained 10 lbs since January, most of it since the miscarriage I'm sure. Of course I was to upset to go near a scale so I don't really know when all this started. I'm just now starting to get my focus off the comfort eating and onto trying to be healthy again.

I know I'm just wigging out from nerves. I WANT a baby, I DON'T want to loose another one. This is not the same as thinking I can't handle it. I can handle quite a lot without dying, or throwing myself off a cliff, or staying in bed for the rest of my life, but I know that losing another baby would be very HARD to handle. I'm scared of the pain that went with my last pregnancy coming back. I was seriously miserable and couldn't sleep through the night for something like two weeks. I had people calling me a wuss, telling me to get over it, and telling me to get used to it because this was going to be what motherhood is like. So, I'm still trying, but I've lost all joy in it. And I'm scared.

That's my confession, sorry for pouring it out like that, and I'm sure that really is TMI.

A guide to helping your friend/family member/co-worker/complete stranger through personal tragedy

2011-03-20T17:54:00.001-04:00

1. Say you're sorry to hear about fill in blank here with the applicable trial, tribulation or loss.
Some common options include: the death of a family member, the loss of a pregnancy, a bad haircut, your infected hangnail... the options are endless.

2. Have you said you're sorry for whatever? Good. Stop!

Have you personally gone through what the person you're consoling has gone through?
Are you ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN you know all of their situation, what led up to this and if there are any extenuating circumstances?

If the answer to either of these questions is no, DON'T SAY ANYTHING!

If you haven't had a miscarriage I don't want to hear your suggestions of what I did wrong this time. If you haven't had fertility issues you have no idea what I've been through. If you haven't suffered a great loss then you can't identify with mine. So say you're sorry for me, that you wish things were different, that it was a bloomin' shame and then move on to a completely different topic.

Things folks have said to me in the couple weeks since my miscarriage that made me want to rip their beating heart from their chest and stomp on it:

"I had no problem getting pregnant once I quit my job. You should stay home and you'll have no problem having children."
The response I would have given if I thought well on my feet, "I've been trying to have children for four years. During that time I've worked three different jobs, and I've been unemployed for a while as well. At this point I need the job to pay for the fertility doctors."

"Don't worry. You'll be pregnant again in a month and it'll go better next time."
The response I would have given if I didn't work for you, "This is the first time I've shown any signs of being pregnant in four years of trying. While I certainly hope it won't take another four years, it could easily take months or years for me to get this far again."

"It was just the wrong egg at the wrong time. There's nothing you can do but try again."
The response I gave, "Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity."

"It's normal to have a miscarriage when you first get pregnant after having taken birth control pills."
Ok, I'll give you that this is my first pregnancy after going off birth control pills FOUR YEARS AGO! Sometimes people have a specific medical condition for which birth control pills are the prescribed treatment. There are lots of reasons to take birth control pills, and taking them does not equate to saying "I never want children." Also, studies have shown that taking birth control pills does NOT increase your chance of having a miscarriage, even if you get pregnant while still taking them.

"You just need to get into the best shape of your life, and then you won't have any problems at all."
Fuck off! See this weight? I'd challenge you got not gain weight when you have poly-cystic ovarian syndrome, and under active thyroid, and are taking all the hormones I have to take just to get pregnant. I eat plenty of vegetables, without an excessive amount of sugar or fat. I walk often, ride my bike and am generally active. Would I like to loose 50 lbs? Yes! But I'm happy enough with the 20 lbs I've lost since I was properly dosed and medicated, and don't need you judging me!

Trying to find the bright side of miscarriages

2011-03-13T19:46:00.001-04:00

Hot dogs. They're not allowed when you're pregnant. They go the way of all processed meats, like lunch meat. I think it's because of the nitrates. I've had 23 hot dogs in the last two weeks.

Pain. I'm not in any. At least not physically. Apparently being pregnant through fertility treatments is a very painful process with all the hormones going crazy and stuff. I was in pain up to a level 7-8 (on a scale of 0-10) anywhere from 2-4 times a day with each time lasting anything from 20 minutes to two hours. It woke me up at night, and kept me from working in the day. It hurt to sit, it hurt to lie down, about the only thing that helped was to get up and pace my house. Which I did. For HOURS. That stopped with the miscarriage. The doctors didn't seem to think it was anything serous. Hmmmm.

My husband gets to keep his car a little while longer. Not that he wouldn't gladly trade it in for something with a back seat. We're supposed to be going to the Atlanta auto show in a few weeks to look for a car that will allow him to have the new baby in the back seat. This takes the pressure off.

Basil. It's my favorite herb. It's thought to trigger contractions so pregnant women shouldn't have to much, at least until they're ready to give birth. Course when my sister-in-law was overdue we went out for Italian so that she could get all the basil she wanted to trigger labor. I gave it up while I was pregnant. I missed it. Tonight I'm having lasagna made with home made sauce. The sauce has a cup and a half of basil in the recipe. There's basil in the meatballs too. Mmmm, basil.

Vodka. It helps you forget. It helps you feel good. I'm trying not to drink to much because I have a feeling that I could EASILY fall into a depression if I had to much right now. But a little bit helps a lot.

4 years, 5 doctors, where are we now?

2011-03-03T22:10:00.001-05:00

Four Years.

That's how long it's been since my husband and I decided we were ready to start our family. We actually made the decision earlier, at his cousin's wedding. I remember lying in bed with him in the hotel that night after the reception. Talking. We always lie in bed and talk. It's the place we go to solve the worlds problems and our problems. It's hard to be mad at each other when you're wrapped in the other's arms, faces inches apart. It's intimate, both physically and emotionally. It's hard to fight in this position, and easy to cry. But there was no fight this night, nor any tears. We'd been married a year and a half, and loved our time together, but thought it was time to invite someone else into the family. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't apprehensive. We couldn't agree on much about names, we both vetoed the other's favorite girl names. I didn't know if I would be a good parent, but I knew I would try.

Five Doctors.

I knew heading into this there were problems. One doctor had suspected I had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and had told me that I probably had never ovulated on my own. So when I went to her to tell her we were ready to try I was VERY surprised at her plan of attack. She wanted us to try on our own for a year. This seemed like a total waste of time to a person who'd been told only a year before that she probably didn't ovulate on her own. But we tried. For a year. And nothing happened, just as I suspected. So I went back and we tried fertility drugs. Three months I spent on Clomid, with migraines so bad I would come home and go straight to bed crying. I couldn't stand light, I couldn't stand movement. It's really hard to get pregnant when you can't stand for your husband to touch you.

So I went back, a glutton for punishment. She told me that sometimes women with PCOS need to loose weight before they can get pregnant.

800 Calories.

She suggested I try Weight Watchers or South Beach. I tried both, and gained weight on them. She insisted that weight loss is as simple as calories in & calories burned. I started out at about 1000 calories a day, but when that didn't have the results I wanted, I slowly found ways to cut down. 100 calories for breakfast. 200 calories for lunch. Maybe a 100 calorie snack in the afternoon, and a small dinner. I never got below 192 lbs. I went back to the doctor to tell her my results, and she accused me of lying.

So I found a new OB/GYN. This one was nice, but completely out of his depth. He suggested I try a reproductive endocrinologist, so I started looking for one. Of course our insurance didn't cover any much closer than twenty miles away, so instead I found a local PLAIN endocrinologist. On our first visit I told him my ultimate goal, to have children. He ran a great many tests. It was during this time that I adopted a new weight loss plan called "give the doctors all the blood they want." It was not unusual for me to give 11-12 vials of blood every few weeks, and for a few months I saw this doctor quite often. After a while I began to feel that tests were being run with little or no definitive results. So I sat down and specifically asked this endocrinologist if we were getting any closer to anything that would result in me being able to have children. His answer surprised me. He said, "I suspect you have PCOS, but if you want to know for sure then you should probably see a reproductive endocrinologist." I looked at him like he had two heads. He had told me pretty much what I knew when I started seeing him.

I felt like I'd just lost 5 months of my life, and we were no closer to having children than we were when my doctor accused me of lying to her. Then, upset, I went to see my chiropractor. Not for fertility issues, but she's given me good advice in the past, fixed my TMJ and we'd discussed in passing that I was trying to have children. We discussed how I was getting nowhere fast and she said that she knew two doctors, not specialists, but they focused on hormonal balance. I decided I was faced with two paths. I could drive twenty miles to a fertility specialist and use the brute force method of getting pregnant. Or I could go a more natural and hopefully gentler, closer, but also more expensive (not covered by insurance) way.

I spent a year and a half on the bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. I won't call it wasted time. We found that I had an underactive thyroid (no wonder I couldn't loose weight) and now I'm free to not obsess about food and I've lost twenty pounds. I'm healthier than I've ever been, but after a year and a half and still no sign of a baby (and a job change that resulted in better insurance) we agreed it was time to try the brute force method.

27 days

That's how long it took the fertility specialists to tell me I was pregnant. Of course it wasn't that simple. I'd been hurting for five days, and knew something different was going on. Horrible pains in my abdomen and lower back that would wake me up at night, or keep me from being able to sit at my desk during the day. When they came on there was no rest, no sitting, no lying, and no bending or stooping; just slow pacing in circuits around the house, sometimes for an hour or more at a stretch. On the few occasions I was stuck in meetings when an attack came on I would be completely unable to concentrate. I left meetings shaking and barely holding back tears for the pain. So when I went in for the blood test and mentioned it to the phlebotomist, and she said, "Well that's good, sounds like something's going on, you wanna talk to the doctor?" I said sure. I can handle pain. I don't exaggerate (I had someone at work ask) and I can work through almost anything and still be productive. I wasn't expecting a pity party or anything, but I did expect to be taken seriously. So when the doctor (it's a group, and I haven't seen this guy before) studied my chart and came in and told me that this was probably just PMS cramps and I haven't had them for 5 days before because my ovaries hadn't been working in the past, but normal women whose ovaries work go through this every month; I was a bit skeptical. Because I swear if normal women went through this every month we'd have a LOT more voluntary complete hysterectomies! I promise!

Still, I was reasonably prepared for them to come in and say the test was negative. They said they would call me with the results, but I wanted to stick around and find out, and they said it would only be an hour or so, and I'm not normally at work until 10:00 anyway. So I waited. She walked by and said the results are coming in now, and then I waited a while longer and wondered what was keeping her. She was in with the doctor, who was as surprised as I was when he heard I was pregnant, after just assuring me that I almost certainly wasn't.

3 weeks

That's how long I was pregnant before I miscarried our child. Our first child, the one I've been struggling to have for over four years. I keep telling myself we've made such progress. This is the first time there's been any evidence that I could conceive. I should be jumping for joy at the potential, shouldn't I? But I can’t find that in me. I’m raw, torn; I feel like my emotions have been tied to the back of a pickup and dragged down a gravel road. I find myself staring into space with an expression on my face, horrified, like I’ve just witnessed a gory murder. Well, I’m partially right.

1 miscarriage and I'm devastated.

Take this job and... You can't pay me to do it anymore

2011-02-28T19:51:00.000-05:00

I don't update my blog very often, or very well for that matter. I've been busy and I thought it was about time I caught you up with why.

About a year ago the tiny little computer company I worked for was partially acquired by a huge computer company. I was one of the acquisitions. Unfortunately the new company looked at me and pretty much said, "We don't know what to do with you. Why don't you train our people to do your job and then if you're lucky we'll give you a real job." So I've spent most of the last year training myself out of a job.

This is a very interesting position to be in. On one hand, you have a job to do and if you do it well they might give you another job, but if you do it well that also means you're making yourself redundant, and they might not need you after all. I've been asked by several folks how to handle this awkward situation. The only answer I've come up with, and the think I work for is to handle it "With Grace."

I don't know that I've always managed the grace. With this kind of situation comes a lot of bitterness. It's demeaning to be told, "These three jobs you've been doing for the past several years, you're not qualified to do them for us, but you are qualified to train our folks to do them. Forget that no one else in the world knows your products as well as you do. Forget that you're going to be training 30 or so people to do what you, one person, do. You just don't fit into our corporate structure and we're unable to bother ourselves enough to find or create a place where you fit. It's nothing personal!"

No one person ever spoke these words to me, but this attitude is what I have been working with since last February. All the folks I worked with directly loved me, thought I was fantastic, and if I had been willing to relocate they probably could have found me a job. Not that they ever actually offered, but they often expressed their regret for the situation as they found it. Forget that I've just bought a house and that my husband who works for the same company is told he has to be in the office and that relocating is not an option. Forget that I'm perfectly willing to travel, that this company prides itself on being a global company, has offices worldwide as well as s huge number that work from home. Forget that I'm willing to work all sorts of weird hours, and have done ever since I started working with customers. Forget that my customers love me, have sent me cheese for Christmas, and many have my personal IM or cell number, just in case something happens when I'm not in the office. I've been point of contact for every single support issue for so long that most customers don't even bother with their account manager when they know I can answer their questions with a few minutes on the phone. So by getting rid of me and not allowing me to assist with a smooth transition of customers, you're alienating those customers. That's OK, it shows how much you care.

Sorry for letting this turn into a rant, I didn't mean to. I should probably go back and clean some of this up so I don't sound TO bitter. After all, my husband works for the same company, and I don't want them to be biased against him. He's great, and does a good job, and I'm sure he puts up with a lot of BS from them as well.

So I wanted to update you on where I've been. I was traveling half of October, busy doing an excellent job of training myself out of a job. While I was spending time in airports my brother-in-law was spending time in the hospital. He almost died, but that's his story to tell. I'll just say he's doing fantastically well, much better than I think any of us expected after multiple surgeries, and was back to work as soon as the doctors let him. He got out of the hospital and I got back from work travel just in time to move into my new house November 1st.

On a side note, my FANTASTIC mom stayed with us two days after we moved and organized our kitchen so we could make dinner the rest of the week. It made me realize not only what a wonderful mom she is, but that you should never let anyone organize your kitchen without you there. I spent the next month calling her asking where such and such was in the kitchen. She answered me every time.

We managed to get the upstairs of the house organized before Thanksgiving, bought and rearranged furniture with the help of good friends, and had both our families over for Thanksgiving dinners. I won't talk about the basement. It's still not done, but at least we're making progress. The TV is set up, and the treadmill, both of which have done a lovely job gathering dust since the move.

I had a bit of a break in December, except that I was sick. I got the flu the day after Thanksgiving, and then had a cold for three weeks. I went to the doctor and got antibiotics for a brief respite. Then my mother-in-law and Grandpa went into different hospitals at almost the same time for pneumonia, the week before Christmas and stayed through Christmas. I think they were racing to see who could get out of the hospital first. My mother-in-law won, but then my Grandpa's 95 so I wouldn't want him to rush it anyway.

It snowed Christmas day. I don't know that it's ever done that before in Georgia. Someone told me the last time it did was in the 1800's. It's only the second time in my memory that we've had snow that stuck before New Years. My sister was in town for Christmas. She used to live in Illinois but recently moved to Texas and confessed about a month before that she missed the snow. I told her we brought it in just for her. I discovered that even though she's older I still can't keep up with her. We were on the go a LOT, and I drank entirely to much coffee (which I gave up several years back, but that's another story) so I didn't sleep well either.

After my sister and her husband (we like him) left on vacation we were able to get together with my in-laws for Christmas. It was low key, and my mother-in-law apologized for ruining Christmas (she really didn't), but it was a nice get-together.

I thought things might calm down a bit, just in time to get my cold back. Oh well, at least I had a respite from Christmas Eve to the day after New Years. My contract at work was up at the end of the year, but no one seemed to be able to tell me how to complete it, or when I would have an exit interview. So I went in Monday, dealt with a new support case, made sure I was organized for my last day, had a list of things to do, and then my e-mail access was cut off. It would have been nice to have a bit of warning and to make sure someone was monitoring it in case any customers e-mailed, but I'm sure it was on some one's list of things to do. I guess that's one way to tell me I don't work for you anymore.

Dear Bath and Body Works,

2011-01-31T11:48:00.000-05:00

This new lipgloss is crap. I know it was on sale for like a dollar, and I said at that at that price I just couldn't pass it up, and I collect lipgloss like... well, like a person who has a LOT of lipgloss. Possibly cause I use it like pretty lip balm, and I have constantly chapped lips, so I use a lot of lip balmy type things. But neither lip balm nor gloss should be so goopy that I have to have a mirror to put it on. I use this and am afraid of all the stuff it could rub off on, like my husband. I won't use it around my husband, and I spent an INORDINATE amount of time with my husband. And still like him. So not using your lip balm around him kinda means I might find time to use it once a month. Maybe. I urge you to rethink your formula for Mentha Lip Tint, less goopy please!

Thanks,
An obsessive lip balm user

Following the First Profession (no, it's not what you think)

2010-12-18T01:09:00.000-05:00

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” Genesis 1:26 (NIV)

I recently watched a video in which many people in places of leadership in many Christian organizations spoke out against what they called a great evil. In this short three minute and eight second video "Radical Environmentalism" is credited as being the greatest spiritual battle we face today. I sat in shock surprise and revulsion as I watched presidents and pastors and directors from organizations I normally respect. These leaders, one from a denomination of which I am a member, spewed derogatory and judgemental names for people who's greatest crime is trying to take care of this earth that God has given us. These associations, whose publications I read regularly and whose radio shows I listen to, used names like:
"tree hugger"
cult
"radical environmental agenda"
"own morbid, pessimistic fears"
"exaggeration, myths and outright lies"
"so-called global warming science"

They accused environmentalists of promoting humanism, and then went on to contradict their own statement by saying that environmentalists are "consigning the poorest people around the world to grinding poverty, to disease, to premature death." Yet it is the humanist movement that works to raise the level of human condition. Not only are these so-called Christians sitting in condemnation of some stereotypical environmental group, but they're contradicting themselves while they do it.

But my visceral reaction to this video didn't start when I read the article this morning. This is something that I have spent the last several years studying and trying to understand. How can so many Christians seem to have a complete and utter lack of compassion, and more personally what does God want me to do with my life.

I have spent much time in my life wandering, looking for direction. While my sister seemed to know exactly what she wanted to do from early high school, straight through he PhD, I took the eight year plan flitting through four majors before finally eking out a BS. And even then I hadn't found my direction in life. It was more a matter of wanting something to show for all the years I'd spent in college. I often say I have the best liberal arts education you can receive from a technical school because that's just how convoluted my journey in life has been. So I continue searching, and what better way to find the will of God than by reading the word he has given us.

I'm holding it open right now, to the very beginning, day 6, the one where we're first mentioned. Man, and the charge God first gave to us. God said of man to "...let him rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” I've gone back to the very begging. I can't find anything that takes precedence over this charge, to take care of the earth that got has made and it's animals. Does God charge us to take care of the poor and diseased people on the earth? NO! Possibly because they did not exist yet. After all, this predates the fall of man. We didn't know that we were poor and naked yet, and I assume no one had caught the common cold.

God goes on to reinforce the idea that we should care for his creation only two verses later. "'Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.'

Then God said, 'I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.'" Genesis 1:28-29 (NIV) Here we're told to take care of not just the animals and the fish, but we're supposed to value the plants as well. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that this is a direct order to go around hugging trees, I also thinks this is a strong indication that we are charged to take care of ALL of God's creation.

I want you do notice here that we're still on the sixth day. This wasn't on the seventh day where God was resting. No, this is the job that God has laid on mankind. The first 9-5 task that God has ever given to people. I take this to heart. I accept the charge that God has laid on me and I still think that this is the most important job that we can do. To care for God's creation is to show our reverence for God.

This is reinforced in the second chapter of Genesis, "The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." Genesis 2:15. Here we have the first name given to the first profession. We are to be gardeners, not yet farmers, there's a difference. Farmers toil in the soil and eat what they grow. Gardeners tend the living plants. This makes it clear to me that it is my job not to re-shape the earth to fit whatever idea I have of it, but to tend it the way God has given it to me. I am to preserve it, not to strip-log it and build condominiums.

The Bible continues to honor those people who take car of Gods creation rather than resorting to violence. The people of the bible understood farming. Cain and Able learned it from their parents, and Jesus knew that it still applied to the people he was talking to when he told the parables of the Sower (Matthew 13:3-8) and the Tares Matthew (13:24-30).

The all important job of caring for God's creation, of being God's constant gardener if you will, resonated with the people of the Bible. They understood that we are so closely tied with nature, and that if we hurt it we are ultimately hurting ourselves. Why does this seem to be so lost on people today? Is it because we are so insulated from nature? Most of us in a post-industrial society spend all of our time indoors, or on pavement moving from one roof to another. We go days without actually touching a plant other than our house plants. We're more likely to kill an animal as we run over it with our vehicle than to take into account the source of all that nicely pre-packaged meat in the grocery store. Most new neighborhoods that are built start with clear cutting the trees and leveling the earth to the point where it becomes unrecognizable.

We are very disconnected from our environment, but I don't think this is the actual cause of our misunderstanding of God's greatest calling. I think our disassociation stems from something much more insidious, something more evil than the love of money (though one may cause the other and vice verse).

Lack of compassion.

I believe that lack of compassion in many of the most influential and out spoken Christians is the biggest stumbling blocks to people today. Compassion is what makes us realize that when we over exploit the earth we're destroying it for those who come after us. Compassion is what makes us aware of needless destruction. And those of us that have compassion notice these things and hurt. I hurt when I see a squirrel dead in the middle of the road. I hurt when I drive by a sign for new development, and stretching behind it a bare scar of red Georgia clay. I hurt when I hear one more self entitled prig's needlessly inflammatory remarks. They lump together a diverse group of people and play the blame game. What makes it worse? They accuse the others, whoever the others are at the moment, of fear mongering, yet that's exactly what I hear when I listen to them.

Is this one of the cases where it takes one to know one? I'm a Christian, a devout one, but one with diverse beliefs. I don't fit the stereotypical conservative, and I'm not really liberal. I find that what I abhor most of all is extremism in either direction. Extremism doesn't lead to understanding. It leads to opposing sides screaming at the top of their lungs loud enough to make anyone undecided deaf. It doesn't lead people to see wisdom, it blinds them to the true need. I won't say I'm all that in touch with nature, and I definitely don't want spiders in my house. But I also want children, I want them to see the gifts that God has given us, to value them; and to see that the first profession, the most worthy profession, is the one that God gave us on the sixth day.

I am not the best at this profession, but like any career path I get better at it as I gain practice and knowledge. Sometimes I think the extreme right is afraid of knowledge, they see it as humanism. But I would remind you that God gave you that brain, and he expects you to use it. Use it to think of ways to internalize compassion, and use it to find ways to care for the plants, animals, and world that God has given us.

More wonderful things...

2010-10-26T19:59:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I started this a month+ ago and I'm just getting around to finishing it.

I am a bad blogger.

BAD, BAD BLOGGER!

i'm sorry.
i'll try to do better next time.

So lately I've tried a variety of new products/beauty tips. Some have been fantastically successful, others not so much. Tip: Avocado in your hair does nothing but leave a green ring around the tub.

So let's get started. I went blond this summer. Not a fantastic blond, more of a do-it-yourself-from-the-grocery-store-discount-cart blond. It was...interesting. It also left my hair dry, brittle, and moderately fried. I read somewhere about mashed up avocado in your hair, but that didn't seem to make any difference at all. I tried a variety of conditioner and repair products without seeing any difference at all, then I wandered into Sally Beauty Supply.

Now I've had mixed-bag results with Sally Beauty supply in the past. There was the time where three customers and the clerk inside the store decided to close early and stared at me as I tried to open the locked door. There was the time when the purple hair dye turned my hair temporarily hot pink. But this time, I don't know what it was. Maybe the sales clerk looked particularly empathetic, maybe it was the purple in her own hair, maybe it was the fact that she followed me around the store like she thought I was going to steal something. I don't know what it was, but I unexpectedly turned and asked:

"I tried a blond and it kinda fried my hair a little, do you have anything you'd recommend to help?"

She got this surprised look on her face like she didn't often get to be very helpful, led me to the next isle over, pulled a bottle off the shelf and handed it to me.

ion
Repair Solutions

"This works?"
"yes"
"Is this the shampoo?" I asked, pointing.
"yes"
"Should I get the shampoo too?"
"Up to you."

I got the shampoo. It wasn't shampoo. It was an even deeper conditioning treatment. I went back the next day and got the shampoo. I've been using them about a month now, but I noticed a difference after the first shampoo and condition. My hair doesn't make near the crinkling sound that it used to. Crinkling hair = NOT GOOD! I would strongly recommend this to anyone who had dry crinkly hair no matter the cause.

Ah, almost done you thought. Nope, not even close. I'm also very cheap. I'm so cheap that instead of buying new mascara to replace the old one every quarter, I buy sample sizes in bulk. OK, maybe not in bulk, but I do buy it in batches. For the last few years I've been working my way through a box I got from Sephora, one something like this. I started a new one recently, Cargo Lash Activator. It's fantastic!

So let me explain how I wear mascara. I generally don't except for special occasions. I have long eyelashes anyway, so all I really need is something to darken them. If it promises to make them longer and thicker looking I'll look like I'm wearing fake lashes. I work in the tech industry. Most guys (if they notice) will think you're a flighty bimbo if you wear to much makeup, so I rarely bother unless I'm trying to impress someone with my flighty bimbo-ness or I'm doing something outside of work.

Generally I'm looking for something that'll just make my eyelashes dark and even looking, and something that won't smudge. That's right, I don't know what it is about me but it's pretty common for me to come home after a day of wearing mascara and look in the mirror to find it looks like I have two black eyes. Mascara runs down my face without me having to shed a tear, but this mascara is the exception. I gave it a try one morning and was surprised, that's right, I looked in the mirror when I got home and was surprised at what I saw. There was NO mascara under my eyes. I wore it again, and again. I had to wash my face or go swimming to get this mascara to budge. There was next to no flaking, even after hot sweaty yard work. I was so impressed that I googled it to find out what this stuff I was and found out it's supposed to be good for you! Works great, good for you, I'm sold.

Lest you think I'm turning into a commercial I want to tell you about the latest beauty concoction I came up with in my own kitchen from stuff I already had. I'd been noticing my nose was turning red from all of those pore strips that I use, and other parts of my face were dry and flaky. I was trying to come up with a mask of some sort that would help to calm the redness and even things out, and if it did a bit of exfoliating all the better. So I made a fantastic mask that works wonders for my skin.
Here's what to do (all measurements are approximate):

Put one quarter cup of oatmeal in a coffee grinder (pulls oil out of your skin and exfoliates)
Add one tablespoon of dried rosemary (has astringent properties)
Grind until fine
Combine in a small pot on the stove with one one half cup of water and cook on medium low until the oatmeal is cooked. (I just followed the directions on the oatmeal packet here)
Add one tablespoon of oil (I've done this once with grape seed oil and another time with vitamin E oil. Just pick something you like that's a good moisturizer for your skin.)
And One Tablespoon of honey (for calming)
Stir, mixing thoroughly, and slowly add up to a quarter cup of water. Stop when you have an even, sticky but spreadable consistency
Test it to see if it's to hot for your skin (I did this like checking the temperature of baby milk on the inside of the wrist.) It may need to cool before applying it to your face.
Apply an thin, even layer over face, neck, whatever areas are your problems (I did my elbows too) and let dry.

I'm sure every skin is different, but this worked fantastically for me. The oatmeal exfoliated, honey calmed, and the oil moisturized so my skin was softer than it's been since elementary school. I kept leftovers in the fridge for later use, but be careful about keeping it to long. I went on vacation and came back to find it sprouting a good batch of mold, so you'll probably want to use it pretty quickly.

This is not a post, it's really just me bragging.

2010-09-08T23:23:00.000-04:00

I really can't get away with calling this a post. It's really more a commercial for things I like, so if you don't like that sort of thing you probably shouldn't read very far. What makes matters worse, some of the things I'm going to wax poetic about, you can't have. That's right, you can't have my husband, but maybe you can train yours.

My husband has been raising the bar quite high of late. In fact, I don't think I've ever loved him so much as I did Monday evening, but it took him the whole day to get there. Monday was Labor Day, so what better way to start it than by laboring in the yard. There was a lot to do, too. Not only did we have mulch that's been sitting in the garage since Christmas, but we had bushes growing up over the windows, and weeds... OH the weeds. There were vines growing up the side of the house, briers (there was bleeding), and I swear some of them were starter trees.

One was a maple, so I got out the shovel and tried to dig it up thinking I could transplant it to the back to hide the compost pile. Of course the root was thicker than the tree, so I couldn't get through it with the shovel. Not even when I stood on the shovel; and jumped!

So lots of yard work was being done, and about half way through I realized I was really thirsty and a bit light headed so I went in for a drink, and sat down for a couple minutes then went back out to help. About three minutes later I was back in and on the couch with more ice water feeling light headed. And when my fabulous husband was weeding three feet from me on the other side of the window did he look at all put out that I was being a lazy bum? No! In fact when I came back out he was mulching away. And when I apologized for being a lazy bum he was completely understanding and said he'd felt that way before when we were doing yard work too.

I guess that just goes to show we're both wimpy computer nerds who make our living sitting down in air conditioning. We were not made for yard work in Georgia in summer. It's HOT.

So after we finished mulching (five bags left for touch ups) and showering (separately, I like cool showers after yard work) we were discussing appliances. We need them. We're getting a new house (well, new to us) and it doesn't come with appliances. The lady who's selling it is taking her refrigerator and washer with her, and I don't blame her one whit, she has a NICE fridge. And since our fridge occasionally sounds like a gray whale has taken up residence in our kitchen (Oooh! I have a story I should tell about that sometime) we decided we'd be nice and offer it to whoever buys/rents our house (if you want a freshly mulched house in Woodstock, GA talk to me). So we decided to go to Lowe's to look at refrigerators and washers and the like.

Appliances are nice, I like appliances. I do not like pushy sales-ladies who insert themselves into your conversation and start throwing numbers around. There were model numbers, pricing numbers, capacity numbers, efficiency numbers, and all sorts of discount numbers. She kept following us around, and it's not like the store wasn't busy. It was LABOR DAY! We first met her in the laundry section where she tried to sell us the washer and dryer on the end. I know 20% off is a great deal, but I know a little about store placement. The truly great deals are NEVER on the end cap. It's true about grocery stores, and it's true about Lowe's.

We thought we'd escaped when we told her we weren't planning on buying for at least a month. We don't have the house yet, so we have no where to put them. She said sure, they could store them until we need them (which is actually a nice service) and we went off to look at refrigerators. We slipped in between rows of stainless steel and had no more than commented that one didn't have an ice maker in the door when she snuck up behind us and said that what we were looking for was the next isle over. Again, the next isle over was on the main isle, where the most expensive refrigerators were on display. I'm not saying they weren't pretty, I'm not saying we may not eventually buy a refrigerator from that row (though I don't think they we will, they were all french door styles with very limited freezer space) but she popped up to show us something we hadn't asked about. Only when we wandered over to the really cheap old style refrigerators (freezer on top like my parents have) did she leave us alone.

And this is where the second great thing my husband did came in to play. We were hiding in the refrigerators and he said, "So what do you want to do about the washer and dryer?"

No, that wasn't the great thing. The great thing is what came next. I asked him if he thought we should get them from pushy lady (we were still hiding in the refrigerators) and he said, "Um, yeah. She really tried to help."

I looked at him incredulously, but was struck by his compassion. He wanted to help out this annoying woman who'd followed us around for nearly 30 minutes, despite the fact that she'd reminded us that she works on commission (something I could have figured out from how desperate she was acting). I would not have been so charitable. She was not the first person to offer to help us, just the most persistent. But my wonderful husband recognized that persistence should be rewarded (even when it is annoying) and that everyone's time is worth something, even when it's not the best way to spend it.

Long story short, we ended up not getting the washer and dryer because she couldn't find the right model number for the gas dryer, and then she started trying to up-sale us to the model number she had. And then we went home and found a similar dryer that was a Maytag instead of a Whirlpool that got better reviews and wasn't even displayed in the store (if you have to special order it, that's always a good sign). So we went across the street to Khols and this is where my husband became super human.

Now, first you must understand that he needed nothing from Khols. He was only there for me, and I was trying to ACCESSORISE a dress I got not to long ago from Land's End on a really good sale. So once we're in the store I make a beeline for the accessories. It took me maybe three minutes into the store to pick out a scarf. I want you to note that the scarf was the ONLY thing I bought Monday. I picked up the scarf and browsed through the rest of accessories weaving in and out of handbags, commenting on this one or that one, occasionally picking one up to look at, then putting it down.

After I was fairly sure I had seen every available handbag I moved on to the shoe department, which for some unknown reason Khols hides over in the middle of menswear, nowhere near the handbags. Khols is the only department store I know, aside from maybe WalMart, that doesn't keep their handbags near their shoes. In fact, there is a wall between the handbag and the shoe departments, and much weaving around racks of clothing was required to get there. My fantastic husband kept up. As I was agilely traversing the obstacle course of clothing racks I was reminded of our teenage hood.

To tell this story I'll have to give a bit of background. My husband and I met at Chick-fil-A where we both worked when we were in high school (different schools) and long before we ever thought of dating we would often go to this nearby church playground with friends. It was after dark, and we would go just to swing on the swings. I don't know if we ever saw anyone else there, if we ever did I don't remember it, and I don't recall any sign posted that said this particular church playground was off limits to no good teenagers looking for a place to hang out after dark.

We usually just swung on the swings and talked, but occasionally one of us would get adventurous and start exploring this large, sprawling, ill-lit playground. Eventually it became a game where the person in the front would navigate a convoluted path as quickly as possible, trying to shake those following behind. Well, walking through Khols, occasionally checking to see if my husband was keeping up, I realized it felt like I was playing follow-the-leader as a teenager with my husband following. He was always there. I never had to pause to let him catch up.

So after Khols I looked to see if there was another shoe department available, and on to Famous Footwear. Then on to PayLess. My husband followed me through accessories and shoes at three different stores in less than an hour. Commenting on the shoes I pointed out, never complaining, never getting left behind. This feat of superhuman agility and patience has, I'm quite certain, never before been accomplished by man!

Well, nothing could surprise me after such a display of super human perseverance, yet when we got home he continued to surprise. He grilled; hot dogs, bratwurst, and ribs; and all were cooked to perfection. In fact, I don't believe his ribs have ever been so fall-off-the-bone perfect. At this point I'm beginning to wonder whether he's been replaced by a robot, but he left the turkey out yesterday so I know he's still human.

I was going to write some more about other things I've found recently that are fantastic, but I've already written much more than I had planned. I'll have to save my commercial for non-husband things for some other post.

So in summation:
Husband = Good Shopper = Grill Master --> Very Happy Me!

Yes Dad, I know this isn't a good equation, but it gets the point across.

You'll notice in this post that I tried to make the paragraphs a bit shorter. You have Allie over at Hyperbole and a Half to thank for that. You can add her to my list of good things. I'm in the process of reading through all of her archives, and she had a post on what makes a good blog. Apparently massive piles of text are bad and should be broken up into smaller paragraphs. I'm not good at that, but I'm trying. And hey, if I like big piles of text I should be free to have them! It's MY blog!

When you're a goat...

2010-08-18T23:21:00.000-04:00

Two and a half weeks ago I finally agreed with my husband that it was time to stop waiting on other people to tell us what to do with our lives and start looking for our next house. Tackling a large purchase such as this I expected to run into problems. I base this expectation on my experience apartment shopping. For instance...

I lived for a few years with three friends. There being four of us, we looked for a four bedroom apartment. Four bedroom apartments are extremely scarce in the northern suburbs of Atlanta, I'm quite certain we visited all three apartment complexes that advertised four bedrooms in one apartment.

The first apartment complex we visited seemed lovely. It was nicely wooded and situated by a lake. I was imagining all the lake fun we could have until we actually saw the apartment, the first problem being... we couldn't. While the landlord swore up and down that he would have a four bedroom apartment available when we needed it, he couldn't show us one. He couldn't even show us a drawing of one. He could show us a three bedroom apartment.

As we walked through he pointed out how there would be an opening here, another hall here, the room down there, and as I looked about the example apartment he showed us I realized something. He was going to construct a four bedroom apartment out of one or more smaller apartments. He was going to punch holes in the walls. And the apartment that I was in showed the signs of his workmanship, uneven walls, crooked electrical outlets, rattlely doors. I'm looking at this apartment thinking, "If I sneeze the temporary wall between me and the next bathroom over is going to come crashing down, and I'm going to see more of my neighbors than I ever wanted do."

NO THANK YOU!

We extracated ourselves from that apartment complex as gracefully as we could without signing any paperwork.

Another complex advertized brand new four bedroom townhomes. "A townhome," we thought, "wouldn't the cats have such a wonderful time tearing up and down the steps of a townhome!" So excitedly we set off to visit this lovely four bedroom townhome. The complex was immaculate, the buildings brand new. With great anticipation we wandered around the place we hoped would be our new home. The top floor held three bedrooms and two baths. Beautiful! The second floor encompased the living dining and kitchen areas with a half bath for guests. Fantastic! The bottom floor included the garage, laundry area, and the fourth bedroom.

"Where's the bathroom?" we asked. That's right. The poor fool who inhabited this bedroom would have to climb two flights of stairs to take a shower. I liken this 'marketing only' bedroom to the 'insurance only' backseat of many moderately priced sports cars. It looks good on paperwork but in practice it might be a good place to store your packages, but it's certainly not somewhere to sleep (or sit).

This led me to form a new definition of bedroom. A room can only be defined as a bedroom if it has a) a closet and b) a place to bathe on the same level.

So when my husband and I set out to look for our new (to us) home I expected a few chalenges. I expected I would need to keep an eye out for shoddy workmanship. I expected that in a search for 4 bedrooms and 3 baths I might come upon questionable definitions of 'bedroom'. But I expected I could handle these chalenges and that there would be few surprises as we set out to look at houses the first day.

BOY WAS I WRONG!!!

It took only one house to open my eyes to the world of real estate, and what we had in store. The very first house we saw was a departure from anything we could have expected. I should have known something was wrong just from the pictures in the listing. Oh, there was nothing wrong with the pictures, they were lovely, it's just that there were only two of them. We saw a nice style in front and a large yard in back, and from the description we thought it could be just what we were looking for.

Arriving at the front it looked just like the picture, stately placed in a natural yard beautifully flanked by trees. But as we walked up the driveway we noticed the broken pane in the garage door window.

"A pane," I thought, "That's easily fixed. No problem here." And I kept walking when I should have turned around.

The first thing we saw in the foyer was the dated white tile. "They must have dropped a few bowling balls in here," appologized our agent as he pointed out the broken places.

"That's alright, it's dated and would need to be replaced anyway," but then my eyes slid up the stained carpet on the stairs, and my husband commented on the hardwoods in the adjoining room, and we realized all the floors in the house would need replacing. As we wandered through there were stacks of magazines on every table. We tripped over a vacume cleaner left in the middle of a doorway. The dated tile, broken in many places, extended through to the kitchen. Bits of breakfast in the kitchen with a half full glass of... something. I wondered what this family was thinking.

Let me clarify a bit first. It's not like our visit was unexpected. We had not randomly stopped at a house just to knock on the door and see if we could walk through. No, we had an appointment scheduled several days in advance. If they had wanted to tidy up even a bit you would think they would have put away the vacume, put the breakfast dishes in the sink, or put the panties in the hamper. It was obvious that this family either didn't want to sell the house, or hadn't a clue how to go about it.

My tolerance was high for the decor of this house, the beaded curtain in one of the doorways, the pink tile backsplash in the kitchen which tied in with the pink marble surround on the fireplace; for when we went down the stairs the the basement I commented with sarcasm the lovely teal shade of the capet. I chalked it up as one more flooring to be replaced in this house of horrid floors. We looked into an obviously un-air conditioned long, large room that could be used as... a playroom? Home theatre maybe? Another small room could be an office, and a half bath for convenience.

And finally the last room of the house. An unfinished work-shop/storage room with large double doors leading outside. I stepped in, heard a sound, and could not figure out it's source. A couple more steps and I was fairly certain it was comming from the other side of those large doors leading outside. My orriginal intention which had been to open the doors and see the yard was replaced with an uncomfortable nerviousness about what could be causing these strange scraping sounds. I stopped still, and turning to my husband my eyes passes over something in the middle of the floor that I couldn't at first process. Turning back and pointing I finally realized.

"They have a goat."

The thing I had failed at first to notice was a large bag standing up in the middle of the floor, clearly labled Goat Food. I didn't even know goat food came great bags just like the largest bag of dog food I've ever seen in a warehouse wholesale club.

I hear it now. Just like that lean in Fellowship of the Ring where Boromir looks at the horde of goblins and nasties decending on his little group and calmly observes, "They have a cave troll." I felt as he must, overwhelmed by the situation to the point of numbness.

Well that eradicated my desire to see that lovely, large back yard. Climbing back up the stairs to the main level I felt two things. The first was an overwhelming desire to wash my hands which I'd been feeling within minutes of entering the house. The second was a confused feeling. Perhaps I was dreaming that I had entered a bizare Orwellian world where people live in up-scale suburban comunities, and yet they choose to live with farm animals.

But I haven't read Animal Farm lately. sigh Perhaps I've been watching to much Whose Line.

Or perhaps real life is crazier than anything I could ever dream.

I think my smoke detectors are posessed, or sentient

2010-06-30T23:35:00.000-04:00

It's taken me a few days to get around to posting this. To be honest, I kinda wanted to make sure the adventure was over before telling the story, but it's been a couple of days and the cats don't appear to be traumatized so I guess it's time to share.

Sunday afternoon Steve and I were having a wonderfully relaxing time playing the wii together. He received two new games for his birthday, the day before, so we wanted to give them a try. So we're relaxing on the floor having a good'ol time, and suddenly there's a horrendous noise. The cats scatter and I turned to Steve and said (yelled maybe, it was hard to be heard), "What's on fire?" Out in the hallway there was no sign of smoke, and my first instinct was to check the stove. But it wasn't on and there was no sign of smoke in the air and by the time I was upstairs again Steve (It's wonderful to be married to a tall man) had the batteries out of one of the detectors and the shriek had been tamed to a soft chirp.

After checking the other smoke detectors (we have four) and seeing no sign of what set them off, my wonderfully tall husband replaced the batteries, we calmed the cats as best we could, and got on with our afternoon.

So we have time to settle down again, this time in separate rooms. Steve playing tennis (on the wii) and I'm in the process of re-watching Babylon 5. I'd coaxed a nervous cat to sit beside me, and less than an hour after the last alarm we startled by another three LOUD beeps. So I meet Steve on the stairs and we check all the smoke detectors again. They all have green lights and after the three beeps are silent, so after some discussion we think maybe we should change the batteries. Of course no one actually keeps 9 volts in the house, so out we go to buy batteries at Publix. What a lovely Sunday afternoon escape. After debating the relative merits of Energizer vs. Duracell (Energizer won for being twenty cents cheaper) we return and swap out all the batteries in all four smoke detectors and settle back down again.

Less than two hours after the previous beeping we have yet another three loud beeps, followed by a thorough checking that all batteries are thoroughly connected and none have the polarity backwards. Then we get the model numbers and I start a search for a user manual online. Wonder of wonders, I actually found one. It explains with detailed diagrams where to place smoke detectors, where NOT to place smoke detectors (apparently putting them in the kitchen like I do with my Sims is a bad idea), warn against electrocution, installation, maintenance, EVERYTHING you need to know to make them go off, nothing about how to shut them up.

After a couple of hours of silence we thought the worst was over and grew complacent. I even commented that they hadn't gone off in a while and Steve cautioned, "Don't jinx it." And of course he was right. Shortly after 5:00 again we have the three long beeps, which sets off a flurry of checking batteries and to see if any lights were blinking. We start discussing contingency plans like, what would happen if we took all the batteries out? Can we disable just one to shut the others up? And, well, I think that's all we discussed, but I was wondering what local hotels accept pets, and if an animal that sleeps 20 hours a day can't recover from occasional interruption without having to go to a hotel with us.

But once more time passed. We grew complacent and the smoke detectors knew it. Five ours later they jolted us again and we responded with defeated resignation and went to bed. This time it was actually a bit entertaining. With one cat near the top of the stairs and the other at the bottom the blaring startled them so they ran in opposite directions, PAST each other in order to escape.

This next part I know only from Steve's description, but he explains that shortly after 1:00 AM the alarm went off! Not the three loud beeps as before, but several seconds of blaring siren followed by beeps and cat footsteps, then silence. AND I SLEPT THROUGH IT!

This gets me wondering, both Steve and I travel for business occasionally, and what happens if the house catches fire when he's away and I'm asleep? And if I can sleep through that then there's NO alarm clock that could ever do it's job effectively. I need something to attach to the bed to shake me awake, or better yet a Wallace and Grommet type setup that will unceremoniously dump me into cloths and out on the lawn to safety from the fire (Or for regular mornings maybe it can dump me in the shower). Somehow I don't think I can depend on the cats, who spent a significant portion of Sunday night and Monday hiding under the bed. They can really only be depended on to tell me when it's time to feed them. It goes something like this.

Me: Mrmph, Get Off!
Cat: I am really surprisingly heavy as I stand on you. I have ninja powers to focus all my weight on the tips of my paws and dig them into your ribs.
Me: Steve, did you feed the cats?
Steve: (no response)
Cat: (Cold nose in a sensitive area, if no obviously sensitive area present itself just keep trying any bits of exposed skin)
Me: ALRIGHT! I'll feed you! (stumbles into the bathroom, gets out the food and the scoop and tries to focus eyes to aim the food in the bowl) hey! You have plenty of food!
Cat: Mrrrmp?
Me: It's right there! I don't care if you ate a hole down to the center of the dish, it's got plenty of food in it! Didn't your mom ever teach you to clean your plate?

They never seem to understand that there are starving kitties in Africa that don't get low-cal indoor kitty food.

Now what was I talking about? Oh right, sentient smoke detectors. So the next morning Steve, wonderful lovely Steve, who's GLAD I slept through the freakin' alarm because he knows that if I'm woken up in the middle of the night I have a terrible time trying to get back to sleep (did I mention how wonderful he is?), tells me of his adventures at one in the morning and how he didn't get back to sleep until after two, which I can totally sympathize with, so I decided then and there that this has to stop! I will not allow my husband to suffer sleepless nights on less than four hours of sleep because of faulty electronics. I will take a sledge hammer to them a'la Phoebe Buffay (friends) before I allow him to suffer, and I don't care if they are clearly labeled with "Do Not Tamper."

It's my house and I'll make it unsafe by disabling the smoke detectors if I like!

If only I knew how to disable the smoke detectors. I don't want to be left like Phoebe was with an incessantly beeping thing. So I called the manufacturer, and apparently they're not in the office until normal hours like 9:00 so I left a message about how completely imperative it was that they call me back as soon as possible and tell me how to stop the beeping. And amazingly, they called back! If you're ever looking for a smoke alarm company that calls back with real people when you have a problem, call USI (http://www.usielectric.com/ they didn't pay me for this plug), but they don't do it on weekends.

So this nice lady explains how to disable the smoke alarms and silence them, and how to diagnose which one is faulty (by process of elimination) and so I settle down to wait for them to make horrendous noises again. And Nuthin'! All day I waited and didn't hear a peep out of them, and this is where their sentience comes in. I think they heard me talking on the phone with the manufacturer and figured out we were discussing how to kill smoke detectors, and I scared the beep out of them!

Steve stayed home yesterday and they didn't make a sound, and the cats don't seem traumatized today, so I assume they weren't going off all day today either.

So the moral of this story is, if your electronics are bothering you, call the manufacturer. Be sure you're in the same room with the offending device and discuss loudly all ways to completely disable it's power source.

Don't coddle it. Buying it batteries will only make it think it can demand more of you. You want to make sure it knows who's boss. If you keep buying it batteries it will demand more and bigger batteries, and pretty soon you'll be trying to figure out how to hang a car battery from the ceiling.

Also, sledge hammers are not the answer, but really I learned this from Phoebe.

Why Having ADD makes me Fantastic Support at a High Energy Software Company

2010-06-24T22:25:00.000-04:00

ADD affects my life in so many ways, mostly negative, like when I go grocery shopping with my husband and completely zone out starring at the magazines in the check out line. My husband is ofter flabbergasted at how gnat like my attention can be. It's rare, very rare, EXTREMELY rare for ADD to affect my life in any positive way. But lately I've found that in the software industry, and especially in the world of support, it can be an asset.

My life is a series of interruptions, one after the other, and most of support is one person asking how to do this, followed by a problem with that, with someone in sales asking for a demo of something else. So as the job jumps from one thing to the next my attention is easily moved on to the next thing. You jump and I'm already there.

That's the good part, but I suppose there's a down side to flitting from crisis to crisis. There's rarely enough buffer between interruptions. I'll get off the phone and start writing up a support case when the phone rings again, and while I'm explaining to that customer how to do whatever they're asking about I'll have three other e-mails come in that need a response or few so I trade e-mails for a while, and by the time that's done I've forgotten what I was doing with that window looking at that support case or more often it's hidden behind those e-mail windows and I don't find it again until I'm cleaning up my desktop at the end of the day. Each day is one run on sentence after another. By the end of the day I can forget about reporting on what I've done, I've probably forgotten more than half of what I've done that day, so I'm looking at my e-mail log just so I can figure out what I was doing six hours ago.

And then there are those dreaded slow days. They happen, usually in pieces, an afternoon here, a couple hours there. I get caught up, having told everybody what they need to know to do what they want to do for the time being, written up any support issues, waiting on logs or responses or whatever, and I'm supposed to be doing REAL work, probably writing documentation which really means I'm trying to take some bit of documentation and developing training documentation, usually a PowerPoint presentation. This is where my ADD really hurts me, when I'm starring at a sentence on the screen and wondering how I can make this visual, really how can I keep folks from falling asleep starring at this slide.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE PowerPoint. I love visual learning, and I love diagrams and tables and charts that get the point across. But sometimes you don't want to show something. Sometimes information can't broken down into pretty pictures, or graphs, or lists. Sometimes you want to SAY something and PowerPoint doesn't lend itself to paragraphs or explanations. So I find myself lost in thought as I stare at a paragraph wondering how I can break this down into something interesting.

And now I'm already distracted from writing this post cause I'm watching Babylon 5 and want to go read the biography of Melissa Gilbert on IMDB. Hey! You're reading a blog about how ADD I am! What did you expect, a conclusion?

How Crystal Bowersox lost American Idol

2010-05-27T21:05:00.000-04:00

My husband is surprised by the outcome of American Idol last night. I am not. Let's break is down in an analysis of their final performances so that we might understand where things went wrong.

Tuesday they each sang three songs, two bad and one good. Each of their first two songs were awful and then they saved the best song for last so at first appearance it looks pretty even. But when we look closer we find the fatal flaw in Cristal Bowersox's plan. While Lee's first two songs were downright boring, Crystal actually accrues negative points with the song Black Velvet.

Her failure with this song is two fold, including errors in both wardrobe and song choice. We're talking about an attractive woman here, with curves, and she comes out in this figure forming black dress that hugs every curve right down to her thighs where it explodes into ruffles that chop her off just below the knees. And as if that isn't enough the ruffles are higher in the front than in the back where they curve down below her behind. So as the camera pans behind her all I could think was "Butt Frame!" In this dress even the thinnest of waifs would look hippy. I don't know who designed that dress, but whoever it was didn't understand a woman's tukus AT ALL!.

And then we get to the song. There's no doubt about it, Crystal Bowersox has a fantastic voice. But why does she have to sing a song that is designed to be career stopping. This one hit wonder from the '80's is one of the most over-wailed songs on the planet, and most of the wailers aren't that good at it. I can't hear the song without being reminded of the countless times it's been murdered, in American Idol auditions and karaoke alike. This song even stopped the career of the original singer, Alannah Myles, who unbeknownst to most actually sings other stuff, and I bet you've never heard any of it before. She recently came out with another album called... Wait for it... That's right, "Black Velvet," you can't make an entire career out of one song.

So maybe Lee won the cute guy vote, or maybe the Crystal fans just got complacent, but I think Crystal could have been much, MUCH better and hopefully her first album will be more current.

Coke and Korea

2010-05-26T20:48:00.000-04:00

So let's be honest. The most annoying occurrence of my day was whatever idiot left a coke in the freezer at work overnight so it exploded all over the York Peppermint Patties. Yes, I keep Yorks in the freezer. That's the way they should be eaten. But they're very hard to get to when they're frozen to the bottom of the freezer by a sticky brown mess. And while inhibition of my snacking habits is obviously the greatest annoyance of my day, let's face it. I've pretty much covered that topic in less than a paragraph and that makes for a really lame blog posting so in an effort to be more globally interesting let's move on to something of more... um... global interest.

Korea. No not the war that was way back in the 50's though I did love watching MASH reruns with my college roommates, especially Alan Alda, but I digress. I mentioned Korea to one of my friends today and he said, "What are you, some old fart? Talk about something freakin' relevant!" or something along those lines. And while I would like to thank him for his wonderful support, I would also like to point out that Korea is new and relevant and stuff is happening there, and I learned new things about Korea just yesterday.

For instance, just yesterday North Korea announced they were cutting all ties with South Korea and no longer considered them their Korean brothers. Okay, lets get this straight. For the last sixty years you've been acting... brotherly? With the barbed wire and the guys with the guns? I don't know how your parents raised you, but mine sure didn't raise me to treat my brother like that!

So anyway, yesterday I was reading about the whole North Korea getting mad at South Korea because South Korea actually believed the international committee that studied the... No wait. This is not going in the right order. Okay, this may be a little stream of conscious, but we're going to have to go in the order I read it.

North Korea is cutting off contact with the south because South Korea set up loud speakers along the border blaring whatever kind of pro-South Korea messages they wanted to blare. They blared these messages because this international committee found that a ship that was sunk a couple of months ago was sunk by a torpedo from a North Korean submarine. And where did South Korea get the idea of setting up these speakers blaring propaganda? Why from the North Koreans of course.

In the 1950's North Korea built the "village" of Kijŏng-dong in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. They set up loud speakers in this "village" that blared pro-North Korean messages loud enough to be heard in South Korea. They blared these messages up to 20 hours a day until 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kijong-dong, and you can believe everything you read on the Wiki). That's right, noise pollution intentionally generated for YEARS. Now whats worse about this village? It is ostensibly a nice little farming village with an unusually prosperous educational system, hospital, and an exceptionally high number if electrically wired buildings for a small rural town in North Korea. There's only one problem here. There are no farmers. There's no glass in the windows of the buildings, and there are no interior rooms. In fact this whole town was built just to show the prosperity of the north and to entice South Koreans to defect to the north. Um, yeah, I see that happening.

So let me get this straight. In a country that is industrially depressed and the difference is visible at night (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Korean_peninsula_at_night.jpg) here is a government that is willing to waste resources building a shell of a village, wiring it, putting up loud speakers, but they're not going to actually let people live there. Believe what you will about Democracy vs. Communism, but I hate waste.

If you're going to build a town to impress your neighbors, at least make it a working town, let people live there. If it's such a nice town that it's supposed to show how advanced you are, don't you think the folks one town over with their telephoto lenses are going to notice that there are no people in your town, that they can see through your buildings out the other side, that in a town of 200 farmers you're going to see people out and about working not just a skeleton crew that comes out and sweeps the streets. You're missing shops, and animals, and families with children.

And think about it, if you really care one whit about your citizens are you going to build a bunch of crap to show off in turn robbing your people of the good those same resources could have been put to use building roads and schools and bringing power to people who could actually use it? Of course not! A good government, especially a good communist government (if you believe such a thing exists) is going to work to improve efficiency, eliminate waste, and bring resources to the people who need them. North Korea in it's desire to show progressiveness, displays the exact opposite. And they're putting their idiocy on display exactly where it is most easily observed by the south, in the DMZ.

My resources are random articles I've read on MSN and the Wikipedia, so you should probably take everything I say with a grain of salt, cause my facts could be off. Still it seem to me it would be really hard to be people ruled by such idiots.

Oh, and if that was your Coke in the freezer it better be cleaned up before I get back to work tomorrow. If it's not, well, I'll probably end up cleaning it up anyway. But you better watch out, cause I'll be bitchy about it.

Hit and Run

2010-05-25T22:21:00.000-04:00

Those of you who read the ORIGINAL Complaint of the Month know something about how I feel about foul language. To summarize, I think that people cuss because they are ignorant and don't know how to use the English language. That's not to say I NEVER use curse words, but it's very rare, and when I do use them it's a conscious choice. Suffice it to say that using curse words in excess is not the way to get on my good side.

This was really brought home to me Friday as I was headed back to work after lunch. I was stopped at a stop light in my nearly ten year old Honda Accord and this woman (I won't call her lady) in a white SUV barely tapped me in the rear bumper. That's a long light, and it had turned red just in front of me so I had plenty of time, and got out to take a quick look, just to see if there was any damage. I made it maybe a step and a half out of the care and she started yelling that she didn't hit my F'ing car, and to get back in my F'ing car and F this and F that. I tried to calm here, by saying I was just checking, and she continued screaming. I have never had anyone scream at me like that in my life.

She was so close to my car that I couldn't tell if there was damage and so I said I'd just let the police handle it and got back in my car. I pulled out my cell phone and tried to dial but my hands were shaking so badly that I mis-dialed 911. When the light changed I didn't move and and she decided to go around me backing up and tapped me 2-3 more times in the process because there wasn't room for her to back up. Instead she leaned on the horn until other cars (there were two lanes plus turn lanes) cleared out on either side and she had room to back up. So, as she drove around me, I had the cell phone in my hand dialing the police, and I snapped a couple of pictures with my cell in the hopes that something would come out clearly.

So I went on to work, and met the police in the parking lot at work. There was white paint on my bumper, it really didn't do any damage but to the paint, plastic bumpers and all. And the picture? It couldn't have been better; it had her license plate front and center clear as day.

What gets me is this. If she'd been nice and gotten out to look with me and said, "Hmm that doesn't look like much but here's my number in case you find something," I would have let it go. But if you have a foul mouth and curse me up one side and down the other I will prosecute yo' back side!

Why you so Whiny?

2010-05-25T21:44:00.000-04:00

Those of you who knew me when I lived in Baltimore are familiar with the newsletter that started out "The Complaint of the Month" and became "The Complaint of... Whenever." For those of you NOT familiar with my "Complaints" they were a forum through which I could express my satisfaction, or more often dissatisfaction, with life, the universe and everything.

That being said, a blog is not a place to post monthly, heck if I do that y'all will wander off and never return. Don't worry, with age comes a whole new level of corochityness. I may not post daily, but I'm sure I'll post plenty often enough. So I guess I better get on with it.