I got nothin'

Good excuse for just posting a cartoon.

Maxine Monday

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Top 10 reasons I can’t get out of the house on time to get to work.

I am not a morning person so my morning routine has to be spot on with no deviations or unexpected happenings.

Starting with number ten ..

10) Had to take the garbage out because my son didn’t do it before HE left for work.

9) The clock in the kitchen was wrong so I thought I had enough time to check my email before leaving.

8) Had to clean up cat puke.

7) I thought the pants I was going to wear, fit. They didn't. I had to start over at the closet.

6) Three blocks away I realized I had forgotten my tea, had to go back and get it.

5) Got up late and my son was already in the bathroom. We have one bathroom, I had to wait my turn.

4) Had to find where the bad smell was coming from.

3) Realized I had not made my lunch the night before. Had to make it.

2) More cat puke to clean up.

And the number one reason I cannot get out of the house on time to get to work ....

1) It takes twice as long to get dressed and it’s next to impossible to put a bra on during a hot flash!

Coping - the pretty way.

Sitting in my little office room at work today, sweating like a rockstar (sounds better than pig, doesn’t it?) while my office room mate was coooooooool as the proverbial cucumber, I grabbed the trusty piece of cardboard I keep on my desk to fan myself. Bing! The light went on!

I ran over to Cynthia’s Willow Rose Studios because I knew she had just what I needed! FANS!!And PRETTY ones at that! I picked a fan and I was having trouble with the shopping cart for some reason and I thought I’d just drop Cynthia an email and let her know. Just a couple of sentences about my menopausal annoyance and her shopping cart.

A little while later I got my answer. From Cynthia’s brother-in-law Joe. LOL!!! Apparently he

does the upkeep on her online shops (her own I.T. guy no less!) and he knew what the problem

was and was able to fix it right away.

Oh – and in a follow-up email Joe said Cynthia is working on a hot flash fan and all I can say is I hope it’s big and has something funny on it so I will laugh instead of cry when I fan away that trickle of lady-like perspiration running down my cleavage. Sigh-h-h .. oh to be a woman of a ‘certain age.’

Maxine Monday

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Dare to know the truth

I don't write about politics on my blog. But to me - this isn't politics. This is my healthcare. This is about somebody telling me that my mom is old enough to accept the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. It is somebody telling me that no, I don't get to choose my doctor or what test I want or how I want to treat my illnesses. We are talking about life and death. This is one issue I am absolutely passionate about and changing our health care system to mirror Canada's or the UK's - scares me to death. Healthcare reform? Yes. National (socialized) medicine? NO!!!!

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Shamelessly stolen from Can You Be A Part Of My Life?

And a bed fit for a king!

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He just seems so fragile these days.






He seemed to know it was for him, and acted accordingly.





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What's that saying . . ?

Build it . . .

. . . and they will come.

Because everything is better in bulk, isn't it?

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Mark it down enough and my son will bring it home.




Sigh-h-h . . .

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Maxine Monday

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Ever have one of those days . . .

Crap day at work. One of those days when you are crazy busy but at the end of it feel like you've been running in place all day and haven't moved forward at all. Toward the end of the day a co-worker came to visit my little cubby/office/room to tell me he had just resigned. Circumstances beyond his control forced his hand, and he is leaving. Forces having nothing to do with work. Suffice it to say he does not want to leave but his personal life requires him to right now.

ANYWAY! Can't I ever use just a couple of words? No. I should be used to my wordiness by now. So he came to tell me he was leaving and it made me very sad. Not only is he leaving, but tomorrow is his last day!

Have you ever had a new person start in your office, who you just knew was not going to fit in? And conversely, someone new who seemed to fill a gap you didn't know you had and just "got you" right from the get-go? Yeah, that's him. The 2nd one. A twinkle in his eye and fancy square toed shoes, a Latin dancer with a heart of gold. I will miss him bunches.

As I was talking to this guy/co-worker/friend - my brother called and left a message on my phone. My brother lives in New Jersey, and my mom lives with him. He is actually ill himself, but my mother wanted to live with "a man in the house" because you know, if the hot water heater goes out, he will know what to do. I didn't say it made sense.

He told me that mom has been falling down on a daily basis and she is starting to hurt herself. It's getting to the point that when he leaves for work he worries about what he will find when he gets home. It is time to discuss our next step. Brother #1 told me that brother #2 is visiting him and Mom right now, and apparently does not want to talk about "the next step. He says "oh but she'll be sad, she'll get depressed . . " and is coming up with all kinds of reasons not to even think about her living anywhere but where she is now. Considering HE lives in the northwest - all the freaking way across the country - it's easy for him to sit in his home thinking (hoping, wishing) that my mom is just fine alone all day when in reality she is probably going bing! bing! BING! And ricocheting around brother #1's house all day like it's a pinball machine. I'm not angry with him, and I'm not saying out of sight out of mind. It's just - if you don't want to face something - it's easier to do long distance.

We would all love to sit back and just imagine our mother is the same woman she always was. Well she's not. Time to grow up for all of us. Believe me, I would love to think my mom was aging gracefully and will be able to take care of herself until the day she dies. But it's not happening that way and we all have to put our big kid panties on and deal with it. It's irresponsible to ignore the fact that she may fall down, hurt herself, and could possibly have to lay in the same spot for hours until my brother gets home from work. Something she fears a lot, something happening and no one being there to help. She has her button - she can push it and get help fairly quickly, but it's simply getting to the point where she needs more than a button. We. Have. To. Address. It. Not a single one of us can stay home all day and take care of her. And not a single one of us is married (anymore) either. Hmmm, can you say dysfunctional?

So - I had to stop and pick up a prescription on my way home, and who can blame me for picking up some donut holes? Um. . . and a BabyRuth. That's it, I swear. But I AM going for a walk tonight. I'm an emotional eater, my weight is doomed.

Praise my diagrams, please!

Most people take the same route to and from work every day. I am no different. The road I drive most of the way is 6 lanes across at the start with lots of stop lights and traffic. At one point the far right lane ends, there are signs from way back that show it merges into the middle lane. It has been that way since I have been driving that road. So you would think other people who drive the same road every day would prepare and merge early so traffic doesn't get bunched up and slowed down. But there is always a bozo or 2 who has to gun the engine and and rush up the lane so they can merge in front of all the cars in the middle lane. What.Ever.




But recently signs went up saying road construction was coming, prepare for delays. The signs said construction would begin on June 16th. June 16th came and went and no construction, I'm sure they put the signs up early so some of the drivers would find alternate routes in the meantime. Regardless, construction came. Probably a week or 10 days after it was supposed to, but it did. Coming home from work not far from the merge from the right into the middle lane - I could see a big lighted and blinking arrow up ahead motioning to the right. Then a sign saying "left lane ends ahead, merge right." Okay, so when you start seeing those signs what do you do? Merge right - now all of us will be in the center lane and hopefully we will play nice.





For the 1st week of construction I was nice. I would get in the center lane from the get-go so I wouldn't have to merge since I knew what was coming ahead. I gave everyone else the benefit of the doubt and did not assume they were aware of the changes ahead. I let people merge.

But come the week after that and there are still morons driving up that left lane because they are too impatient to wait like the rest of us well-behaved kids in the middle lane, and then they expect to merge AHEAD of all of us nice kids when they hit the last possible moment to merge. Um. I DON'T THINK SO. You may even have to hit my car to prove your desire.

See me in this last diagram? It's hard to tell but I am singing and smiling and moving right past that person who can't fool me now and isn't going to get in front of me. I play nice and by all the rules until someone wants to take advantage of me. And then - well - I WON'T LET YOU IN A$$WIPE!!!

Just sayin', and smiling sweetly.

**TODAY on the way home the guy behind me who is probably a real jerk in every other aspect of his life became a hero to me. Although I didn't give him a thumbs up or applause like I wanted to for fear of encouraging behavior that could bring on a serious road rage incident, he was wonderful! He was driving the car directly behind me and I realized he was off to one side. It took me a second to see what he was actually doing - but he was driving right down the middle of the left and center lanes making it basically impossible for anyone to pass him. None of those people who race up to merge at the very last second because somehow they are entitled to be first - could get in front of him. Okay I know it was a move that probably could have garnered him several hand gestures and verbal assaults, but - it made me smile for that half a mile or whatever the distance was. I knew I wasn't alone in resenting those "me first" people who have been making me nuts!

Uninvited guest

Click it to biggit if you dare..

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This guy just showed up in my living room. He lumbered right past me, rather like a clumsy teenager who thinks Mom is asleep. Did the cats spot him? Uh . . NO! Ugh-h-h ... I am itchy. I Googled beetles of Illinois because of course Google knows all and I found some pictures that match my hard backed friend. It's some kind of stag beetle but the only ones I saw are from Russia. Okay, I'm late for bed and did not research for long, it was creeping me out. Now I have to make my lunch for tomorrow and go to bed. I'm afraid to look under my covers! I feel like I should curl up in a ball on top of some high Lucite surface and keen all night. Blech!





** Dani - if you notice the bug is under glass. Against my better judgment - I let him go outside. More because he was too big and would make horrifying crunching sounds if I tried to kill him than anything else. But he was alive when he left this house. And now I have the heebie jeebies!

NO - I couldn't sleep yet. I think this is our guy. E-e-e-w-w-w . . !!!!

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COMMON KENTUCKY STAG BEETLES

COMMON STAG BEETLE GENUS: Psuedolucanus Common Stag Beetles, also called "Pinching Bugs," are the 2nd largest of the stag beetles, after the Elephant Stags. There are four species of pinching bugs in the genus Psuedolucanus, and all are similar in size and appearance. Females of both the common and elephant stag beetles look almost identical, but males can be distinguished by the mandibles, which are considerably smaller in the male common stag beetle. Common stag beetles are reddish brown and grow to be 22-40mm in length. Like most other stag beetles, these beetles eat decaying wood as larvae; the adults eat little or nothing.

Maxine Monday

2nd Monday in a row that my scheduled post did not post. Thank goodness Maxine is always relevant!

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Princess and the pea?

WHOOPS!

Have a wonderful 4th!

Spa Day!!

Dani and I went to a spa today. Uh huh, we did! Not something I have ever done before, no manicures or pedicures in my past, must less a "day spa" experience.

It was a bit like the Beverly Hillbillies walking into a nice restaurant and exclaiming "whar are the vittles???!!" Everyone was very nice and no one made me feel out of place or unwelcome, it was just a new and foreign environment for me. Disclaimer: I am speaking for myself. My daughter may have felt perfectly comfortable and in no way do I assume she felt as much like a cave dweller as I did.

Before we left the house I was counting money on the couch because I needed to make sure we had enough cash on hand (and in the right denominations) to tip the various people we would need to. I didn't know! Dani contacted one of her friends who does this kind of thing and knew the ins and outs but I really think some kind of spa ettiquette booklet would have been helpful.

We had manicures - very nice, pedicures - fabulous, and haircuts - wonderful! The gal who did my nails (hands and feet) had to laugh when I lifted my hand out of the little dish my fingers were soaking in and said "hey! There are rocks in here!" Okay, they were smoooooth stones, but I was surprised. Can you say HICK much?

Dani's fingernails were done before mine so when I joined her in the room where we had our pedicures, she was already luxuriating in the comfy chair with 2 remote controls, one for position and one for heat and massage. Her feet were in the hot bubbly water and she looked quite relaxed and happy. I could see why!

It wasn't nearly as weird as I thought it would be having some stranger holding my foot in her hands, rubbing my feet and legs with lotion and some kind of scrub, and sanding my heels down to nothing! I was surprised at how soothing it was to have somebody scraping crud from under my toenails.

The haircuts were good, much different than the $12.00 specials I'm used to. I liked having someone cut my hair who obviously knew what she was doing without me directing her every move. She had ideas of her own! Amazing!

In the end most of the tips were actually given to the receptionist who took each one and put it in a tiny brown envelope marked with To: and From: on it so they would be distributed to the appropriate people like mini gifts. We were given little goody bags with coupons and samples on our way out. It was nice.

It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon with my daughter for sure. Will I go back? I wouldn't mind, but I don't know if I'll be willing to part with the bucks to do it. Or able. We will see. Thank you Dani for sharing your gift certificate with me, and thank you Dan - for giving her such a sweet and thoughtful gift! Oh, I didn't mention that part, did I? Yeah, Dani came up for a visit so her fiance' found a spa up here and gave her a gift certificate. Nice, huh? Very nice indeed!