Embarrassing Half Hour

I left the office for lunch at 11:30, a few minutes later than I usually would, but not too bad. My coworker who usually goes with me was on the phone, so I was on my own, walking down to the other end of campus to meet my friend Jamie for lunch. No problem. It's overcast and kind of gray out, but it's semi-warm (40 degrees), so it's a nice day for a walk. Except for one problem - I have to go to the bathroom. Not number one - number two. Okay, I can hold it back until I get back from lunch, it's okay.

I walk down through campus, seeing that there are a LOT of students out today. For some reason, 11:30 on Wednesdays is a busy student time at lunch, and they were all out and streaming towards the dining locations.

Oh yeah, I do have to go to the bathroom. Commence butt clenching. I'll still be fine.

I get to the lunch place where I meet Jamie, and I join him at the table, taking out my sandwich and my yogurt container. Oh, the abdominal cramps are bad, now. I'm eating and clenching, kind of sort of in pain. But then the urgency passes, and all is well.

We finish our lunch, and walk out. He turns left to stand outside of the building where he works, smoking his cigaratte until he goes back in, and I go to the right to walk up the stairs and back to my end of campus. There are still a lot of students streaming across campus, and since only one set of stairs is open right now (they close two sets for winter, and haven't opened them back up yet), I have to find my way through the crowd to go up. I'm on the left side of the staircase, so I go past one guy and rush over to the right side to avoid most of the students coming down.

As I'm walking up and sideways, my right shoe slips off, I trip, and I fall on the stairs. You know how you fall going up stairs - my left leg was laying across two lower stairs, and my right hand was on one a little higher up. A nice girl asked me if I was all right, and I said I was, thanks, mumbling something about my shoe falling off. I didn't look at her - I was all about getting away from the scene of the accident.

And then an obnoxious student behind me begins guffawing loudly to his friends. I use the word guffawing to get across to you just how loud he was laughing. I walked a little faster, embarrassed as hell and hoping he would just shut up. He didn't. I walked halfway across campus with him laughing behind me before I got away from him (all the while thinking about how my orange and blue jacket makes me stick out, turning me into even more of a target).

On the way back, I was going to stop at the convenience store and spend the lunch money work gives us, but I couldn't do it with him laughing behind me, so I kept walking back towards my office building. I finally lost him, and I walked on, shame faced and hoping to just make it back to my office so that I could hide.

Remember the first problem I had, when I went to lunch? About having to go to the bathroom so bad? Yeah, well, it chose this time to come back in full force. I had to run into the bathroom as soon as I got to the building, and I barely made it in time.

My Wednesday afternoon is going fine so far, how about yours? Sigh.

Gracie Update Part 2

Sigh. I called the vet this morning, but she was out of the office, so I left a message. She just called me back.

The good news: the radiologist agreed with her that Gracie's elbow is healing well. Woo!

The bad news: she is being more conservative than my vet, and wants to make sure the bones are healed fully before the cast comes off, since it was in kind of an awkward place. She wants the cast to stay on for 3-4 more weeks. Sigh.

We're still close to having it off and Gracie being free to run around the house, though. I guess. I was just really hoping it would come off next week.

Gracie update

I took Gracie to the vet this morning for another check of her broken leg. I was OVERJOYED to find out that her leg is healing very well, and she could be out of the cast as early as next week! Woo! Go Gracie! The vet was going to have the radiologist look at the x-ray this afternoon, and I have to call tomorrow to find out what she said, and when I need to bring her back in to have her leg freed from the cast.

I'll update tomorrow to let you all know.

Easter Surprise

Happy Easter!

I've had a pretty good Easter so far. The Easter Bunny (J) got me a basket full of goodies, including a solid chocolate Dove bunny. Yum. J had to work this morning,(by which I mean from 12:30 at night until about Noon), so he's sleeping right now. I'm playing the Sims and watching some Friday Night Lights, season one, on Netflix (you can watch online as part of the membership fee). It's fun. And we have boiled dinner (ham, cabbage, potatoes and carrots) in the crock pot, and the house is filling up with that great scent. Boiled dinner is my favorite. Even though it seems weird to J to use ham instead of corned beef. :)

So, I just let Rosebud and Bernie outside a few minutes ago. They were wandering around, so I went out to see what they were doing, and saw that they had found a surprise in our front yard.


For those who might not be familiar, this is an opossum. They're generally nocturnal, so why it's in the yard in the middle of the day, I have no idea (and now that I think about it, that's weird behavior, so I'm glad the dogs left it alone as soon as I called their names).

Anyway, I came back inside and was sitting here holding Gracie, and decided I wanted to take a picture and post it to my long-neglected blog, so here it is. :)

Speaking of this blog being neglected, I think I'm going to sign up to blog every day in April, so there will be a post every day that month (if I don't change my mind). Exciting!

Also, speaking of Gracie, she has a vet appointment tomorrow to get her leg checked, so cross your fingers for me that she's healed, or at least almost. I would REALLY like to get her out of that crate for good soon.

Okay, I'm going to go get Gracie back out (since I put her back in to get the opossum picture). I hope you all are having great Easter Sundays.

Cats and Nightmares (but not nightmares about cats)

Gracie and I are both so ready for her to get out of the crate! She is yowling a lot because she wants out, and whenever I go in there to scoop her litter or check her dishes, she tries to escape on me. This morning when I was scooping her litter, she got out and went wandering around the mudroom. She somehow jumped to the top of the shoe dresser/organizer that J made for me. Then she jumped down and went running out to the dining room and hid under the table. I don't know if her elbow is healed or not - her next vet appointment is on the 24th - but she is sure acting like she's ready to be free.

She's not the only one who's ready.

Anyway, we'll see what the vet says when I take her in, but I'm definitely hoping that the x-ray shows a healed elbow bone. Too many more weeks of this and we're both going to lose our minds.

So. I had a nightmare about my brother this morning. I won't bore you with details, I'll only say that I hate that I have a brother who has scarred me enough emotionally that I have nightmares about him from time to time. Although I did hear something about him that may explain a lot - last night J and I had dinner at my sister's house. My sister is 10 years older than me, so she knows a lot of stuff about our family that I don't know. Anyway, she said that when our parents were building the house that we lived in when we were all kids, our brother, who was probably less than a year old, was in a walker. Someone left the door to the basement open, and there weren't any stairs going down to it yet. He walked his walker over to the open doorway, and fell down onto the concrete basement floor on his HEAD. That explains so much for me. :D Just kidding.

Anyway. I'm tired this morning, and I want it to be 4:30 so that I can go home. But it's only 10:12 in the morning. Sigh. I really need to start playing the lottery, so that I can win and J and I can both retire early. Like, right after I win. :)

And that's all I have for now. Later!

Weekend Talk

Why do the weekends go so fast? We need to work on finding a way to slow down time from Friday afternoon until Monday morning, to make them last longer.

So, I had a good weekend. J had to go into work on Friday night because of a storm that was forecasted to come through. He spent the night there, and then he had to work his shift on Saturday, which ended up going long, so he left Friday at about 10:30 at night, and didn't get home until about Midnight on Saturday night. I missed him a lot. It's amazing how used I've gotten to having him there, it really is. A hole is left in the house when he's gone. Stupid work.

Anyway, while he was gone, I did some laundry and I played some Sims and I watched some General Hospital and some back episodes of Medium. I also found out the hard way that you can't wash a shower curtain in the washing machine - at least not in one that you can't remove the agitator from, and not on the regular cycle. It came out looking much cleaner on the inside, but it was also shredded. Oops! So I had to take an unscheduled trip into town to buy a new shower curtain at Family Dollar. Hee. Lesson learned - next time I'll just throw the thing away and buy new without trying to clean it first.

I also started working on the new baby blanket. I like it. The colors aren't typical baby colors, but they go well together, and it's very soft and best of all, it's going to work up much quicker than the last one I made! (That's the difference between a pattern that calls for mostly double crochet, instead of all single crochet like the last one.) I hope you like it when it's done, Michelle. :) I found a mauve colored yarn at Walmart that was what you had originally asked for, so I bought that, and a soft pink and a light tan and a darker tan. It sounds weird, but they're all colors that were in what you picked out online, or that you had asked for, and they really do work well together.

Anyway. Yesterday J was actually home, yay! So we hung out and watched TV and went to Jrecks Subs for lunch and ate too many peanuts (that last one was just me) and watched the NASCAR race (that was mostly him) and played the Sims (that was all me). And bemoaned the fact that our weekend was one hour shorter, because of the time change. It makes Sunday feel so short! Sigh. And getting up this morning was horribly hard. One hour makes a huge difference, it really does. Oh well. At least now we have sunshine until after 7:00 - when the sun deigns to come out, that is.

And now I'm done rambling. So, bye!

Griping first, music stuff second

Gah! People are such idiots. I just went to the convenience store on campus, and I really should just know better than to go there for anything. First, they're ridiculously overpriced - $1 for a regular sized candy bar, $1.35 for a pack of Orbit gum - is it just me, or is that way overpriced? I mean, I know anything sold on campus is going to be marked up, but still. There's marking up, and there's gouging. And then they have students working the registers, and either they don't train them properly or they're just brain dead and don't care, because they always screw things up. I have $2.25 left on my employee meal allowance for the day. Instead of running the $2.25 through on that and asking for $.75 cash, WHICH I HAD TO GIVE HER, she ran the whole $3 through on my faculty/staff charge. Which is like a credit card account we have through work, and which I do NOT want to charge anything to. It's not a huge deal - I can straighten it out in the office when the stream of students going through the office ends. Still. It's just annoying. And I needed to vent, so thanks for listening. :)

And now, so that this whole entry won't be just me complaining about stupid crap, here is an entry copy and pasted from my Sims 2 livejournal. I got tagged there for a music meme, and thought you guys who don't care about the Sims 2 stuff might like to see what I was listening to yesterday when I wrote this. Enjoy!

Here is the explanation: "List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're any good, they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your Live Journal (and blogger!) along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to."

I got tagged for this last week, but hadn't done it yet, because while I love music, and listen to it in the car and at work all day, I didn't really have any songs that I was listening to on repeat. Well, today I started a new station on Pandora, and the artist I put in to start the station with was Bonnie Raitt. The station is giving me some really great, bluesy sounding stuff, mostly by women, and I'm really loving the sound of it. So I'm going to keep this window open as I listen, and mark down the ones that I particularly love.

First, two that have already played:
"Whatever Gets You Through the Night," by Etta James.
"My Favorite Mistake (live)," by Sheryl Crow.

One that was on while I was typing that:
"There Must be a Better World Somewhere," by B.B. King.

And look at that, the very next song is another good one:
"Dr. Feelgood (Love is a Serious Business)," by Aretha Franklin.

A couple of songs later, the second song I've gotten on this station by this artist. I like her a lot, so far:
"Wait for Me," by Susan Tedeschi. I hope they play more of her stuff - I'm kind of thinking I want to buy it.

Another couple songs later:
"And it Stoned Me," by Van Morrison.

And okay, I was going to wait for a song that really knocked me over to finish this list, but my Pandora just broke, because my work computer is old and slow, so I'll end it with this:
"Fast Car," by Tracy Chapman.

All good songs that got me through a chunk of my boring work afternoon. I have four stations created on Pandora right now, and I think this one is my favorite by far.

Oh, also - I'm not tagging anyone, but if you haven't done it already, I'd love to see what songs you pick if you decide to do it. :)

Good sleep equals energy - who knew?

I got a good 8 1/2 hours of uninterrupted sleep last night, and I feel GREAT this morning. It's amazing what a decent amount of sleep will do for you, you know?

I think I had written about the headaches I had been having - you'll be happy to know that they've gone away, finally. Woo! I think I was fighting off some sort of illness - most likely a sinus infection or the flu that was being passed around my office - and now I've fought it off and feel great. Here's to a good immune system!

I'm also still loving my yogurt. Yum. I have one every day now, and would seriously almost consider eating it in place of chocolate. Almost. :)

I found out what colors Michelle wants for her baby's blanket (she's growing my great-niece, you know), so I picked out a pattern yesterday. Now all I have to do is buy the yarn, and I can get it started! I'm kind of eager to get it going. I'm running out of time.

I'm sorry I haven't updated in here much lately. Once I gave up on the blog 365 thing, I kind of fell apart, didn't I? Sigh. I'll sign up to write every day for a month soon - maybe in April, and if not, then in May. Part of the reason I haven't updated here is because I've been completely obsessed with my Sims again. I try not to write about that here (I save it for my livejournal), hence the silence. Oops. :)

So. I spent my whole life sleeping alone on a nightly basis, until J moved in with me last year. And now, in a space of just six or seven months of having him there, I've completely lost the ability to sleep when he's not home. It's sad, isn't it? The other night he was working a little late. I went to bed at 9:30, because I was so tired, and then I lay there. And lay there. Awake the whole while. At first I was too cold to be comfortable (I love the kerosene heater, because it keeps the living room area nice and warm, but it doesn't do anything for the bedroom, so it gets kind of cold in there), and then when I got warm, I still couldn't sleep. Until J got home just after 11:00. Once he climbed into bed, I was out like a light. What the heck? Sigh. I don't mind - I'm glad that he's become so important to me that I can't sleep if he's not home. It just amazes me. :) Also it kind of frightens me, because he has a work trip coming up. If I can't sleep without him, those four days alone are going to be ROUGH.

Okay, well. I've rambled enough, I guess. I'll try not to go a whole week between updates next time, okay? ;-)

Yogurt and Other Fun Stuff

You may or may not know that I am lactose intolerant. This doesn't mean I can't eat any dairy at all, in my case - it just means I have to stay away from certain things. I can eat ice cream and cheese, but I can't drink regular milk. I have to get the lactose free kind. And I have to use that kind in anything I make with milk, such as mashed potatoes. It's been about seven years since lactose has been bothering me, and once I figured out that was my problem, I've also avoided something I love - yogurt. Well, I recently tried it again, just to see if it would bother me, and it didn't! So I am now enjoying some Yoplait strawberries 'n bananas yogurt. Yum. Eating it makes me happy.

I do not, however, like chunks of fruit in my yogurt. I need to make sure the next kind I buy doesn't have those.

***

So, last night J got called back into work when he had only been home for an hour or so. Sigh. Poor J. While he was gone, I sat and held Gracie, my broken legged kitty, and watched The Jane Austen Bookclub. And it was so good! I really enjoyed it. I'm going to add it to my Amazon wishlist. It made me want to read Jane Austen again, too. :) I have four of her books, so I may be re-reading some of them when I'm done with my current book.

***

Speaking of Amazon (which I mentioned up there), I preordered my Freetime Sims 2 expansion pack a couple of months ago, and it came out yesterday. Have they shipped it to me yet? No. Sigh. I'm very sad now.

***

I've been getting headaches almost every day for the last couple of weeks. I've been getting lots of sleep, so it's not that. I'm eating, so it's not a lack of food. The headaches are mostly in my forehead, which makes me think it's sinuses. Stupid sinuses.

***

And now my computer needs to be updated more. Sigh. So, bye!

Finally Finished

Yesterday, after months of working on it, I finally finished the baby blanket I was making for my great-niece Emma, who was born like three months ago. I'm sure speedy, aren't I? :) Now would be a great time to show you a picture of the blanket, but - I didn't think to take one. So. Yup. But I'm happy that it's done, anyway.

Now I have to go buy some more baby yarn for Michelle's baby girl, due in May. I'll have like two and a half months or something (I'm not sure what her due date is) to get it done before my newest great-niece is born. Will I have it done? I'll shoot for yes, but I'm not even holding my own breath on that one. I know myself too well. There is a new expansion pack coming out for the Sims today, which I'll have tomorrow or the day after, so you know where my free time is going for a while.

Well, that is, the free time that I don't share with J, of course. Spending time with him is still my favorite way to spend my free time, even over the Sims! :)

Also, in case you didn't notice, the 365 blog link that used to be on this page is gone. I thought I'd be able to make at least 5 or 6 updates a week, between this page and my Sims 2 livejournal, but I just wasn't making it, and I'm not going to force myself to try anymore. However, Nanoblogmo or whatever it's official name is can now be done in any month, instead of just November, so maybe I'll sign up for that every two or three months. Maybe. If the mood hits me.

President's Day

It's President's Day (Presidents' Day?) here in the U.S. - a government holiday. And yet I'm at work. What's wrong with this picture? Sigh. I'd much rather be home with J, who has today off. Oh well. Memorial Day is only three months away, right? Groan!

Great Weekend

I had the best weekend. J had to work for about half of it - from 7-3:30 on Saturday, and then from 6:30-11:00 last night - but the amount of time we had together was just perfect. We watched DVDs while laying in bed with puppies (one of my very favorite things to do), we went to a diner for dinner on Saturday, and we just enjoyed each other, you know? If you're lucky enough to be in love with your best friend, you do know what I mean. I consider myself a very lucky woman. And then today was Monday, and I had to get up to go to work, but J had the day off, and he's going to make me some truly yummy sounding pork chops for dinner. How can I not be in love with this man? :)

And the time I had alone wasn't bad, either. Not as fun, obviously, but I played my Sims and had a blast doing it. If I could play instead of working, I would be a truly happy camper. And I let Gracie out of her crate for small amounts of time, holding her and listening to her purr until she started wiggling around trying to get down, and then she'd go back in her crate. Her leg will heal, if I can make it so. Despite her desire to run around and damage it even more.

I also fixed the vacuum cleaner, making me feel all womanly and strong. Hee. It didn't have any suction, despite having a brand new bag, so I removed the hose and tried sticking a broom handle down it - it got stuck just past the handle, and I couldn't shove the blockage very far, so I had to cut the hose, only to pull out an animal toy. Oh the fun of small stuffed toys laying on the floor, for unsuspecting vacuum cleaners to suck up. I taped the hose back up with electrical tape, put it back on the vacuum, and voila! It works again. Excellent.

So, fantastic weekend. A good time by myself when J was at work, and a fabulous time when we were together. Other than him being home the whole time and one of us winning the lottery, I can't imagine anything better.

Cadbury-yum

Easter is coming. I was just reminded of that when I was in the little convenience store at work, and saw these on the bottom of the candy shelf:



YUM! I didn't have any cash with me, and I didn't have enough lunch money left (we get $6 a day for lunch courtesy of work), so I couldn't buy any. I'm going to tomorrow, though. Easter rocks! (Also, I might have to check for these at the grocery store, in bigger bags. Yum!)

I am Twilight

Copied from Cathy.

This actually describes me pretty well!

Bowl Sunday

Yesterday was bowl Sunday - and not just Super Bowl Sunday, either - it was also Puppy Bowl Sunday! If you have Animal Planet, I hope you watched, because it was super cute. Our favorites were Jackson, who was just the cutest, most hyper little West Highland White Terrier ever, and of course Colt, who was a Bernese Mountain Dog puppy. He didn't do as much as Jackson, but he was adorable, and I wanted him to be mine. Only not really, because four dogs is enough. But you know what I mean.

But we didn't only watch the Puppy Bowl, of course - we watched the Super Bowl, too. Would it shock you to know that it was the first Super Bowl I've ever in my life watched? Because it was. I've never watched football before I met J. It was fun to watch, though. As for the ads that everyone is always eager to see - eh. Alice Cooper was in one for Bridgestone tires, which we had to watch for because J is a huge fan of his, but he wasn't in it long. Otherwise, the only one I really loved was the Coke commercial with the Stewie Griffin and Underdog balloons fighting over the Coke balloon, only to lose it to Charlie Brown. Excellent! Charlie deserves to win something for a change. Kudos to the people who came up with that one.

My other favorite part of Bowl Sunday? The snacks! Extra sharp cheddar cheese and crackers (and pepperoni and mustard, if you're J), Tostitos, Diet Pepsi - good stuff.

I might just look forward to watching it again next year. :)

Gracie and Her Cast

Gracie had a vet appointment yesterday, to do a recheck on her leg. The cast looked fine, so the vet didn't change it, but she did do an x-ray to find out that her leg was starting to knit back together, but it was going slowly, so she's going to be in the cast for a while. No problem - she wants out of the crate pretty badly, but she's doing well in there. And then this morning I went in to check her food and water, and noticed that the cast had fallen off. D'oh! Damn it! So I had to head back to the vet with her today to have a new one put on, and I only hope she didn't undo the little bit of healing it had started to do. We'll see.

So she's at the vet's office today, getting re-casted, so to speak, and my bill is going higher and higher. Sigh. The x-ray they took yesterday added $77 to the bill. Will they have to do another x-ray today? I have no idea, but guaranteed the bill will be going up again, because even if they don't do another x-ray, they will need to sedate her to put a new cast on. Sigh. I hate bills.

I just hope that the outcome of all of this will be that she heals perfectly and is back to normal at some point - probably in March or April. We'll see.

Happy Birthday, Mom, and J Spoils Me

Today is my Mom's birthday. She would be 70 years old, if she were still here. I love you, Mom, I miss you and think of you always.

*********

I have been so incredibly spoiled this week. J is on vacation this week, and instead of laying around relaxing and watching TV all week, he has been cleaning like mad - the house looks so great I can't even tell you - AND he has been cooking me dinner every night. Talk about spoiled! We had salmon last night, and we've had stuffed chicken and cheesy pasta and corned beef - it has been so luxurious. I can't remember the last time that I have had someone cook for me this much. No, wait - I can remember, and it was my Mother, before I moved out of her house when I was 19. So there you go.

And we've spent the evenings together, when I've gotten home from work. We've watched TV and watched an episode of Buffy (which I really missed - it's been months since we've done that) and basically we've just enjoyed being together. It's been a really nice week.

I'm lucky to have him.

What I Want

What I want to do today:

1. Go back home and snuggle into bed with J. Who has probably gotten up by now, but it's still what I want to do.

2. Spend the whole day at home with J, just relaxing and hanging out.

3. Not much else.

It sounds so good to me. I miss you, J. I wish I were home with you.

Basketball and Cold and Gracie, Too

Yesterday J and I went to they Syracuse basketball game with his Mom. The team lost, but it was a really fun day, anyway. I like his Mom - it's fun to be with her. We went to the game, and had a soft pretzel and a soda while we watched, and then we went to a local diner where his parents like to go, and ate a late lunch. It was a very fun day - long, but fun.

Today it is freaking cold outside, and it's going to be just as bad tomorrow. Brrr. The good news is that we're doing fine on fuel. Of course, we're keeping the thermostat down to 57, and the kerosene heater can only make up so much to get it warm. It's not too bad in here, though - we just bundle up and use blankets. And the dogs and cats sitting with us helps, too. :)

Gracie is doing well, too. She doesn't like being in the create much, but when I bring her out she doesn't want to sit still, so since I can't let her run around, she isn't out as much as I would like. But I just can't let her walk around like she wants to, for fear of her damaging her leg more, so if she won't sit still for long, she has to go back to her crate. What else can I do? Still, she's eating and drinking, and she's using her litter pan, and she looks good, so she'll be okay. Once her leg is all healed again, she'll be running around just like she used to.

Also, J is on vacation this coming week, and I wish I could have at least taken tomorrow off to be with him. It's a holiday here - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day - but I didn't have enough paid time off coming, so I have to work. Sigh. Oh well. I guess I'll just go have fun now. :)

Gracie Update

Behold my Gracie Lou, with her leg in a pretty green bandage, decorated with her name and little red hearts. :) My vet's office did the decorating, and I think it's so cute.

I got off work at 4:00 yesterday, stopped at the store to get some litter for her, and then went to the vet's to pick her up. She is doing fine with the bound up leg. It's a little hard for her to get around with it, but she's going to be confined to the crate until it's off anyway, so that is okay. I have to watch her toes for swelling (so far so good), and I have to watch the bandages to make sure they don't start slipping, because she was very swollen when they put the bandages on, and when that swelling goes down, they could loosen right up. But that's no problem, I can do that. I just hope neither of those things happen on the weekend, when the vet office is closed.

So I bundled her up in her crate, and brought her back home where she belongs. I settled her in with the blankets as bedding, filled up her litter box and a couple of dishes with food and water, and let her get comfortable. She seems a little confused at being in a crate with the door locked, but she'll heal better if she isn't trying to run around on that leg, so that's where she'll be for now. I'll bring her out from time to time to give her a change of scenery, holding her in the living room and letting her socialize with the other cats and see a different room for a while.

I'll tell you one thing, though - I can't wait to have her healthy, bandage free, and running around with Sable again. It makes my heart hurt to see her like this. I hope she heals well.