Wow! It has been quite awhile since I’ve been here, all the pingbacks to the year in review meme from 2007 sort of drew me in. I’m considering doing that meme again, but so many things have changed, I’m not sure it would make much sense.
I still have my house, due to cutbacks @ my work we’ve gone from mandatory overtime to them asking us to come in late, leave early & take long lunches. Financially this is not a good thing at all. Which is why I say still have my house, it’s been touch & go the last 2-3 years, which is one of the reasons I haven’t written much, since I believe in the “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” style of blogging.

My oldest, Lois, now that she’s a) over 18 & b) doesn’t live with us anymore, is living in her boyfriend’s grandfather’s home, (the grandfather died 18 months ago & wanted his grandson & Lois to have the house, it took over a year to get the BF’s family to all agree they could live there. They moved in this November & received a kitten from me & a puppy from a friend of hers. The house is a beautiful Virginia farmhouse, big cedar trees all around the house & lots of land which is also shared by other members of the BF’s family, their houses are distant from the big house, but at night they can see the other houses lights. After working at the local nursing home & the local grocery store she is now working at my company taking calls from “people who are way too involved with their TVs” as our family doctor calls what I do for a living.

18 months ago the ex asked to have the 2 younger kids come visit him for a month during the summer. I reluctantly agreed, at the end of the month, my middle daughter (now 15) decided she wanted to stay in Oregon with her dad & step mom. I wasn’t ecstatic about this, but at 14 (which is how old she was at the time) she really has the option through the courts to choose who she lives with. So I didn’t feel like I could say no. She’s still there now & seems to enjoy it up there.

My youngest, Mr 12 now, is still with me, basically he has both upstairs rooms & actually hasn’t even moved all of his stuff out of his downstairs bedroom (after nearly 3 months of having Lois’ old bedroom upstairs) I want him to move his stuff out of the downstairs room so I can make it a guest room/craft room, not that I have much of anything to go in the room yet, but I’m hoping to find some stuff for it soon.

I’ve been very frustrated with work, though my job title equates to level 4 advanced technical support & I can’t complain at all about my hourly wage, my group as a whole has the worst schedule options in the building. No options for the whole weekend off (really not that important to me, but I wouldn’t mind having just 1 day of the weekend off) no options any longer to work 4 ten hour days, which is my favorite type of schedule (54 miles a day round trip to go to work & come home, working 4 days can be much cheaper) the people who come in the door knowing nothing get options for schedules which I would kill for! This makes me rather crazy.

Although considering what else has been going on in my life, I’m not too valuable to the company. In November Mr 12 & I both got a cold. He kicked it in 5 or 6 days, I just kept getting sicker & sicker. After 3 weeks, in which I got sicker & sicker, going from walking 100+ yards from the parking lot to my desk at work without thinking about it in the least to being unable to walk more than 5-7 feet without having to stop & get my breath back, I went to the doctors. She decided I had pneumonia & found I was seriously anemic. (Caused by the lengthy & heavy periods I’ve had for the past 3+ years very likely, we had dealt with this issue somewhat back in November when she prescribed birth contol pills as I could not afford the surgical options available to me) so she gave me a b-12 shot, antibiotics, an inhaler with albuterol in it & some free iron pills to help with the anemia.
So all was ok, although I was still too sick to work, for the next 5 days. Then when I went to use the bathroom before bed on Sunday night 12/18, I passed out in the bathroom. I passed out 4 more times just getting back to the living room. I was able to yell loudly enough to wake up Mr 12 & he helped me back to the chair I usually sit in, in the living room. I slept in the chair that night & Mr 12 slept on the couch. The next day I called Lois on her break at work & I told her what was going on, she left work, I called the doctor’s office & told them what had been going on, they insisted I needed to call the rescue squad & have them take me to the hospital. With serious convincing from Lois, I did so & then spent 15 days in the hospital. They admitted me due to the anemia, dehydratio@n, the rapid heart beat & inability to breathe if I tried to walk or, at that point, even stand.
They quickly found that it wasn’t pneumonia, I had blood clots in both my legs & my lungs. This is something which can happen when you take the pill & smoke but I don’t smoke & never have. They put a screen in me to keep more clots from moving up into my lungs, then decided to do auterine oblation, which should put a stop to my heavy periods for awhile, maybe as much as 5 years, which, hopefully will take me to menopause.
When they tried to wake me up after the surgery I was unable to breathe on my own. They put a breathing tube in & airlifted me to the bigger hospital down in Roanoke. I was in the ICU for 6 days, of which, I only remember the last day. 5 days, from the time I went under for the surgery on 12/21 to the day after Christmas I don’t remember a thing.
Weirder still, Lois tells me that I kept trying to pull the breathing tube out & when I did accept it & Lois was there, I was communicating with her through the sign language alphabet. Lois says I was making sense, asking for Mr 12, asking if she was out of work on her own say so or if work let her go as a money saving thing. However, I don’t remember that at all! I spent a little more than a week in the general hospital getting strength back & walking again. Although I was out for awhile, I surprised the nurses & the physical therapy people because although I was a little wobbly at first I didn’t need any actual therapy to walk, I just started with like 2 steps between the bed & chair & built up each day until the last 3 days I was “allowed” to go to the bathroom without someone in the room.

So Christmas was a complete non event for me this year. Mr 12 stayed with Lois & her BF, they had xmas with his family. When they released me from the hospital I stayed at Lois’ house for the first 4 days & then, on Sunday, after we had our own little Christmas (2 weeks late) complete with full turkey dinner we’d purchased the food for 3 days before I went into the hospital. Mr 12 & I came home, after 5 more days of rest & a follow up doctors visit (I actually have to go to the doctor’s every week for now because they put me on coumadin which can cause heavy bleeding) I’m back at work 4 hours a day this week, building up by 2 hours per week back to 8 hours. Financially this has been devastating. Missing all that work & also the hospital bills are already horrendous, I haven’t even received a bill from the Roanoke hospital yet. They did give me a break with their charity plan, the plan I qualified for makes me responsible for 55% of the bills, up to 20% of my annual income. Still lots more money than I have lying around!
I know I came close to dying & I’m lucky to be alive, as many of the nurses & Lois kept telling me. I am glad I can breathe & walk at the same time now, but it’s still an out of the frying pan into the fire situation on the financial side of things!

Horns by Joe Hill
Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman
Witches Daughter by Paula Brackston
Dead In the Family by Charlaine Harris
The Boys are Back in Town by Christopher Golden
The Dome by Stephen King
The Ferryman by Christopher Golden
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
The Seance by Heather Graham
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Steig Larsson
Townie by Andre Dubus II
Under And Alone by William Queen
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
How Perfect is That by Sarah Bird
Wizrd by Steve Zell
Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Mermaids by Patti Dann
Anyplace I Hang My Hat by Susan Isaacs
Utopia by Lincoln Child
Boonville by Robert Mailer Anderson
On Agate Hill by Lee Smith

Thursday morning I was still in bed, most of the way asleep, but as my oldest, Lois  is completely un-self conscious about how much noise she makes, I was at least aware she was taking a shower. A few minutes into her shower I hear a scream & as I’m rousing myself to get out of bed & praying a pipe hasn’t burst or the tub hasn’t fallen through the floor (the thought that crossed my mind was: “Please don’t let whatever this is cost me too much money”) Lois hits my bedroom door at full speed, covered with soap, her hair full of shampoo bubbles screaming “There’s a snake in the shower!” at full voice. Mr 11 was at summer school working on his reading comprehension, so was unavailable to take care of this wildlife incursion, much to my dismay.
So I got out of bed, grabbed my phone & went into the bathroom, Lois had left the shower running as the snake was wrapped around the cold water faucet, so I got that turned off gingerly & went to the bathroom while contemplating the snake & what I was going to do about it!
I took a few pictures to document it to Mr 11 & of course, facebook, & then had Lois get me a metal shish-kebab skewer & the biggest lobster pot we own, I was able to knock the snake into the pot & take it right out the back door

(conveniently located right beside the bathroom door) & dump it in the grass. Lois swears it wasn’t on the faucet when she turned the water on, she’d been in about 4-5 minutes, getting wet & soaping up when she looked down & found it on the faucet! We don’t know if it came up from the basement & came through a hole in the tub caulk, or through the back door (our screen door-which I’m so glad to have, we haven’t had one since 2006 when it fell off in an ice storm. Doesn’t fit very well) or through the faucet or drain (the drain holes are pretty small, so we don’t think that’s the case, but it’s well known around here that they do come up through drains, sinks, toilets etc.

Drums of Autumn, by Diana Gabaldon
The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon
A Breath of Snow & Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon
The Woodsman’s Daughter by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
A Wedding in December by Shreve
The Charlemagne Pursuit by Steve Berry
Blackwood Farm by Anne Rice
Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
Blood Canticle by Anne Rice.
Vagabond by Bernard Cornwell
Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
The 13th Apostle Richard F. Heller, Rachael F. Heller
Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz
The School on Hearts Content Road by Carolyn Chute
The Florence King Reader by Florence King

I know there had to have been more books than this. I forgot to write some down I believe.

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1.03.01

I’m not sure why Facebook is so appealing, I just like going there & seeing what everybody else is doing. It’s much more immediate, public & noncommital, after all, I can just go & read what everyone is saying & not comment in the least if I prefer & I can put in what I want without links, grammar checks & uploading (unless I want to put pictures up- which I usually don’t) Of course, being rather verbose, I find I do run on a little too long & the computer tells me to edit what I said to fit the word limit. Not surprising, but not really a bad thing. There’s also the fact that I’ve friended both my ex & his soon to be new wife so things I might say here can’t be said there, this keeps me on my best behavior but makes me even more boring than I already am. I should probably start writing more here, but who knows.

It’s been one of those days, got up to take miz Lo to work & had an argument with her over her leaving an ancient fan turned on up in her room, then on the way to her work we saw a very large bear, run across the road in front of the car. Much aggravation in town due to Floyd Fest, (too many people from somewhere else roaming around for my tastes- yes, I know it’s good for the economy.) Came home, went back to bed for a few hours & got up, started a wash, had just settled down in the living room with breakfast to finally watch True Blood from Sunday night & heard this excessively loud running water, ran into the kitchen to find that the hose which carries the water to the washing machine had opened up an inch gash & was spewing water all over my kitchen! I’m hoping, if I have to go back & forth between good & bad that the next good thing will be winning the lottery! ;^P

Ms 20 went swimming with her Boyfriend yesterday at a friend’s house, they have this lovely creek right behind their house, after crossing a cow field.

of course they had to walk by this snake climbing out of the rock, which she tells me wasn’t so bad when they were going to the water, but was making threatening gestures when they went to leave after their swimming trip.They also saw a very large snapping turtle, but ms 20 didn’t get a picture of that, knowing her it was probably because she was running in fright.

As soon as mr 10 got home from School yesterday he was hounding me about going swimming. He offered to give me money for gas from next weeks allowance, unfortunately that doesn’t help me get to work between now & when my paycheck posts to my bank account next Thursday so I had to turn that down. Eventually he wore me down to giving him permission to go wade in the creek below our house.  Seen here in pictures from a couple of years ago. He especially wanted to go down he said because a friend at school had brought a few salamanders to school but they were scrawny looking & he wanted to get a few of our “beefier” salamanders.

He was back remarkably quickly, I was surprised & asked what was up & he explained that as he neared the creek he heard something & looked up in time to see a small brown snake about a foot long drop off of a tree branch & into the water. His interest in getting into the water waned after that somehow.

I count my blessings that it did because a year or so ago he’d very likely have gone in with his net (purchased at the dollar store, which he loves for it’s versatility in catching both bugs, butterflies & creek life) to try to capture it.

A few hours later I was watching the news & ms 20, her BF & ms 13 were watching it with me & mr 10 came in with the net full of a snake though. I started screaming & thought I was going to have a heart attack before 10 & 20′s BF started laughing their butts off. It was a set-up, mr 10 had put one of his (many, maybe too many) rubber snakes in the net & come around to try to scare me. He definitely succeeded.

Something’s wrong with my computer’s sound so we have no music. On work nights that doesn’t bother me at all as I normally listen to my mp3 player when online then because I am on at 1, 2, 3 in the morning & everyone is asleep. Today though, I hated it because I felt rather cut off from ms 13 who was the only one around much of the day mr 10 spent the day going between his bedroom, watching tv & outside running around & just getting into stuff as he normally does.

Ms 20 was at work & we had to go out & get her at 3. When she got in the car she said she was in a hurry to get home because she & the BF were expected back at the same friend as yesterday’s house to go swimming again, this caused upset in mr 10 as he was still lobbying to go swimming & I still had not dug up any spare money (hard to do when there is none) for gas.  At first ms 20 said mr 10 couldn’t go but then decided it would be good to have him along as her friend has a 3 year old & so they all have to be on guard for the 3 year old, having mr 10 along would be an extra pair of eyes on the kid (aka around here as  Satan since he clocked mr 10 in the head with a cast iron truck last winter)

Ms 13 was not invited because her grade & the 6th grade below them were invited to sing at the nearby race track, she went last year through the school, it’s part of the school’s say no to drugs campaign, no longer run by the sheriffs dept. Now the national guard is in charge of it. She had a great time last year with her friends & she gets a t-shirt, pencils & a bunch of other stuff in a gift bag at the end so she was adamant that she was going to go.

Which means I’m here at home alone. Which is rare but treasured, yes I admit at 1, 2, 3 in the morning after I get home from work I’m technically alone, but the kids are here, just sleeping. I never have the whole house to myself, of course, there’s not much to do, I’m online obviously right now & I may watch some TV & embroider, which, now that it’s warm enough to not need to keep my hands under a blanket, I’m getting back into again.

Ms 20 has 3 or 4 friends who’ve had kids this year & of course Ann’s daughter had a baby in November so I’ve been trying to think of something to make for each of them, I haven’t actually decided yet, but it may be what I did for my kids, I have these really cute patterns for bunnies with the Alphabet, for instance, this one is for M, 

I didn’t embroider the M because I used it for something else, but that’s where I got it & I did each of my kids’ first names in bunny letters so that may be the best thing to do. I have a whole book of baby name pictures but they’re all very involved & I have 2 which I still haven’t finished & it’s very late (one was for ms 13′s cousin who’s 6 months older than she is, it’s not finished yet, the other was for my Friend Jennie’s son & he was born in 1998- also not finished) I have a very bad track record as you can see so I know it’s a good idea to pick simple projects.

Title stolen shamelessly from a co-worker, who’ll likely never read this anyway. Home sick tonight, trying to rest my voice, it helped a little, home with the kids is not a good way to rest the voice though. There’s just too much yelling around here. What I should have done was gone to my room shut my door & slept or read. What I did was clean house a bit, take everybody for a drive in the country (don’t have to go far around here- we’re surrounded by cow fields on all 4 sides after all) & watch a few tv shows with ms 13 (just getting ahead of the weekend- since we’re going to cook out Saturday night & have company so my tv watching will be somewhat curtailed) I did gargle with salt water right after I called in to work, after we got back from our drive & just now before sitting down here at the computer.

I have a terribly stuffy nose & a sinus headache which is making it hurt to even move my head. I just couldn’t see myself managing another night of croaking away on the phone for folks to press the power button & having them say “what’s that, I can’t hear you, could you speak up sir?” Never mind the embarrassing implications that I sound like a guy when I’m sick. I’m determined not to have my job cost me my voice. My illness (third in 10 weeks, if it weren’t for the sore throat I’d think allergies but everything I’ve read suggests allergies are all sinus related, sore throats are asymptomatic) is going to cost me the option to apply for a job change for at least the next 8 to 12 weeks though, it’s 90 days to get rid of the write up that this is going to put me on, although I have another attendance issue rolling off June 25 so I think I won’t be on a write up after that date.

Ms 20 has work tomorrow so it’s up at 8, back to bed for awhile, have to take the car for yearly inspection & an oil change at 1 & then pick ms 20 back up at 3, then back home to get mr 10 & ms 13 & off we go to Walmart to get groceries for the next 2 weeks. Such fun! Actually it is often pretty fun, mr 10, ms 13 & I have a lot of fun shopping together, now that they’re old enough to not fuss & ask for everything in the store, they get an allowance & it’s amusing to me to listen to the two of them budget their money to get what they want most during our trips.

As for entertaining myself, I’ve been sucked into Facebook recently (yes, that’s a South Park reference, as I keep telling my much younger co-workers, us 41 year olds can enjoy SP too.) I’m also playing a lot of Scrabble Solitaire. Which I have done off & on for a long time, but just lately, my day is not complete until I’ve played 3 or 4 games.  Still annoying the kids (both at home & at work) with references to Mybook & Facespace. Also ruining the younger kids days at least once a week by taking the tv remote controls to work with me so that they have to clean their rooms. Mr 10 has all the makings of one of those people with the stacks of newspaper mazes through their houses & every piece of junk mail they’ve received in the mail for the past 30 years, I’m not kidding, I don’t get how 1 kid can make such huge messes so quickly!

Ms 20 is still working at the nursing home, complaining about minimum wage but not doing a thing about getting her car on the road or even her drivers license which, if she at least had that, she could take my car to work & let me sleep. Ms 13 has disproved her sister’s prediction & has kept her grades up high enough this year that she is not a candidate for summer school this year (first time ever). Mr 10 is not doing as well, he’s smart enough to catch on quick, doesn’t do his homework etc & then aces tests (at least in math) so we’re looking at 1 week of summer school for English, which sucks, but maybe he’ll eventually figure out like his sister did that he’s got to put in the work & that it’s a direct consequence of not studying.  Too bad they don’t test him on lizards, minnows, frogs & crayfish because he’s a definite wealth of knowledge on these thanks to our creek.

It’s pretty much definite that we’re not going to Massachusetts this summer at all. I’m behind on all my bills & have already made a decision about what to pay & what to let go which is not going to make me very popular with credit card companies, nor will it be good for my credit score, but as the credit counselor I talked to before making my decision (a last ditch effort to avoid it) I don’t want to be the person in the homeless shelter with a dozen credit cards after all. So instead of vacation, we may go camping. I’m also hoping someone might deign to come to VA & see us for once (I’m betting it won’t be my mother though.)  Those of you who keep saying someday, this should be the year!

Well, not you specifically, I don’t know who you are as a matter of fact. I’m just in the habit of titling posts on the song I’m currently listening at the time I begin typing. This one fit because I’m exceptionally homesick this week. I want to go to the Flower Show! As a kid, nearly every year we went, I remember walking in (before it was held at the Seaport Trade Center ) one year & on the way in the building we had to walk by a snowman, (there was a lot of snow on the ground that year) with daisies for eyes & nose. I remember years even longer ago than that one where I was very resentful of my younger brother getting to ride in a stroller, losing a balloon which floated to the ceiling before anyone could tie it to my wrist & every year a green-dyed carnation. Because it’s always in March & of course, St. Patricks day is in March, although I do believe in other years it was earlier in the month, before the holiday.

So I really wanted to go but didn’t even think of it until just last week, so there was no way to budget in a 4 day whirlwind trip up to MA (especially not with that hefty $20. per person ticket fee.!) So maybe next year. If I remember in time to save for it & ask for the days off 60 days in advance from work & can talk ms 20 into getting her license so she can share the drive up & back, because I know she’d love it, she did the last time we went, when she was 6.  (maybe she was 5? I can’t remember if I was pregnant or if that was the year before I got pregnant with ms 13.) We have pictures, but I took them all & so don’t know if I was pregnant or not!

I read on the Horticultural Society website that they didn’t have one last year & I’m very relieved that they did one this year, if you’re in the area, go & see it for me because it’s a wonderful, fun breath of spring, I at least have crocuses & daffodil buds already in my yard, you people in driving distance of Boston, you need to see & smell those flowers!

I’m starting to think that it would be a good idea for me to lay off the Sirius Music in my car, I’m way too stuck in the past now, the kids complained this weekend when we were on our way to the grocery store that they didn’t know any of the music I was listening to. Well, I did, that’s all that really matters, they did know the music when I changed to a local radio station or to the more contemporary Sirius channels, but I’m a little stuck on Classic Rewind & Hair nation.

The thing which bothers me about all these older tunes, is that they bring up thoughts of the past. I’ve worked very hard over the last 9 & 1/2 years to look forward, not back. I try not to look at the years of my marriage, partially because I did & said things I’m not proud of, partially because It’s easier to not think of the fun & pleasure of being in a couple. I am not often lonely but looking back makes me lonely, so it’s easier not to look back is all!

I also just recently finished changing out all my picture albums, I had started this project in early 2007 after my grandmother died & I somehow inherited all of her pictures & albums, I pulled most of the relevant pictures of myself & my family from her albums & incorporated them into my already large picture album collection.

I had not done a thing on this project for almost 18 months & then, just the weekend before last, on friday afternoon ms 13 asked me to give her a picture of herself for a school project, she needed one which it wouldn’t matter if it got cut or anything like that & I started looking in the box of pictures I had in chronological order that sucked me in & before I went back to work Sunday night I’d completed the last 5 books in the set & now I’m finished.

Until we finally develop the last 5 or 6 disposable cameras kicking around the house that is. Most of the pictures are pretty old in those things, when we moved to this house I went to a cell phone & have had a digital camera in my cell phones since then, so the majority of the pictures I’ve taken since 2005 (in May it will be 5 years since we moved here – I can not believe it) are on the computer in an online album.

I also won a digital picture frame at work at Christmas time & so view many of my digital pictures there too. Although it’s too bright to leave on all night so I mostly turn it on during my days off so as to enjoy it while I’m at home.  (I’ve also lost sleep watching the pictures change- I admit that was when I first got it & set it up though, I probably wouldn’t do so any longer)

The past though, is too close in those pictures, even the ones from 2 or 3 years ago make me cringe, I see how bad the roof looked before the tree fell on the house & we got it fixed courtesy of the insurance co. Or I see how awful the original paint job in the kitchen was before ms 20 & her old boyfriend painted it for me. I’m sure I’ll look at pictures I take now & shudder at poor ms 13′s curly frizzy hair or how skinny mr 10 was (he takes after his dad- I’ll be surprised if he looks like anything but a stick before he’s 20)

Another day over, 5 hours ’til my next one begins, ‘night all.

‘Scuse the title, I just used the title of the next song which came up when I hit shuffle on my phone’s MP3 player. Not exactly inappropriate to my life these days, not that there’s anything specifically wrong. Just waiting for spring to come & hoping it will help to snap me out of my current funk.

I’ve pulled up a draft screen every night I’ve been at the computer for the past 3 weeks, considered what I might say while checking out fails, lol cats, ok cupid, email, playing 3D mahjong or just generally web surfing & then closed it eventually as I couldn’t think of a thing worth typing out.

I’m still re-reading the Outlander series, I’m back to the most recent book, which I read for the first time back last November, bringing on the need to re-read the whole series. I don’t regret it, I tend to inhale books & often get more out of a re-read than I did on the initial reading.

I’m still working nights. ms 19 20, (It’s been over a month & I still forget she’s had a birthday.)  Is still working at the same job, I’m still driving her back & forth from work to home, which is what requires me to work nights (although I admit I’m better suited to night work, getting up at 6:15 am to make it to work by 8 is not for me)

We’re all pretty sick of snow. There’s still large patches of snow in my yard even though it’s been over 40 for the past 4 or 5 days & even up to 65 today. The parts of the yard which are not snow-covered are very muddy & ms 13 slipped & fell earlier today when she was getting out of the car. A pity too as she had on a cute pink & gray striped dress which looked good on her until the butt became mud covered in the aforementioned incident.

Mr 10 is staying after school Tuesdays & Thursdays these days to help make up for the 3 weeks the kids were out of school due to snow & ice this winter. I forgot he was doing so & embarrassed myself by calling the school this afternoon when he didn’t get off the bus. (I thought it was just for last week, not for multiple weeks).

Work is the same as always, although slower than usual this spring. They’re sending us home almost nightly. For my last paycheck – I was short over 7 hours of time due to being sent home early. I should say accepting the option to leave early, they don’t insist (most of the time) but I’m of weak character & if the option is offered I have trouble saying no. It doesn’t help that if there are 30 people on the phone, waiting 8-10 minutes between calls & they send 10 or 15 of them home, the remaining people start taking calls almost back to back again. That is so not motivation to stay.

After the -7 hours debacle last week, I was determined to stay at work until they made me leave every night that I’m scheduled to be there.
Then yesterday, when I got up in what passes for morning in my life I went to the bathroom & upon coming out stepped on what appears to be a shard of porcelain or ceramic. It was about an inch & a half long & a quarter inch wide, I now have a quarter inch hole in my foot in which this inch & a half shard was buried over half way. I was home alone at the time which is a good thing because if the kids had heard what I was yelling I would be embarrassed. I soaked first the sock I had on the punctured foot & then the one on the other foot, which I took off & used to apply pressure to the gaping wound,  with blood.

I was on my way to give a friend whose truck had broken down a ride & so crammed some clean cloth on the foot, put a clean sock on it, got dressed & went along, with one thing & another I was driving around until 3 when I had to get ms 20 at work & so came home with less than an hour before I had to go to work. Ms 13 cleaned it out for me & bandaged it for the evening’s work. But it throbbed all night (I took Aleve which did not do what it’s name promises) Walking around at work to the break room & the bathroom (not to mention the walk from the car to the building & back again) the cut bled all over yet a third sock & in my sneaker.

To ms 13′s credit though, the band aids she used held on through all the bleeding, the drive home, my nights sleep & into my shower this morning, where I peeled it, cleaned it out (it had healed up enough overnight that it didn’t start bleeding in the shower again- thank goodness) and had ms 13, who was home from school with a ‘stomachache’ today bandage it up again.

The hardest thing about this puncture wound is that it’s in the arch of my foot & so I’m favoring the side of my foot so as  not to put too much pressure on the wound. This is throwing my walk out of balance & making my back ache terribly.

The whole point of this story is that last night & tonight I copped out & took the offer of going home early after sticking it out to 130 A.M. Sunday night only. Verbose & chatty indeed.  Maybe this will be the beginning of more writing here, of course, I’m boring myself with this discourse & I lived it so we’ll see.

So I signed up for Twitter today. Not really my idea, but my work wants us on there & linked with them so they can let us know about overtime “opportunities” (they call it opportunity, I call it forced labor- well, no, I know I’m lucky to have a job, but I’d really prefer to do my 45 hours & be through with it) They’re giving jeans passes for those who sign up this week (yes, I work in a call center & they still make us dress business casual- we don’t have video phones so I don’t really see the point)They’re also stating that they’re going to let us know if there’s open times for extra time off, which I could like very well, of course, I’m not holding my breath, this is our busy time of year (you’ll notice I said 45 hours above, not 40. We’re on mandatory OT for Feb & March for sure. )

I think my worst feeling about Twitter is that it’s making our collective attention span even shorter, back in the mid 1980′s people complained that MTV was making everyone’s attention span about 3 & 1/2 minutes due to the length of videos, a hour long tv program seemed like a commitment to “the youth of today” (that would be 1986 as ‘today’) I didn’t buy it myself, being a reader from way back I have & had a long attention span, however, now I work with college students (working nights I’ve got a lot of younger people around me as opposed to the daytime crowd who’s median age is probably still younger than my own age, but still more in the 25-36 age group where the night time people are more in the 19-30 age range for the most part. So in less than 25 years we’re down from the 3 minute video attention span to 160 characters? Scary to say the least.

The other thing which makes me say Twitter just  might be the devil is that it seems obscenely self involved to post stuff ( I can’t quite bring myself to call it ‘tweeting’) I only follow my middle daughter, my work & a comedian I’m somewhat obsessed with due to the Sirius radio comedy channels (Bob Marley-  he’s from Maine & is wicked funny) I mean who cares what I had for dinner or did on the weekend, I realize blogging isn’t to far off that, but I can always call it a journal & I have never really worked hard to publicize the blog thing, as a matter of fact I’ve taken the links to it off of almost everything (I really don’t want the ex to read this thing, not because it’s all that incriminating or insulting to him (although there have been entries which weren’t exactly flattering) but more because he just doesn’t need to know & he’s already friended me on facebook, I just haven’t approved the request.

There’s also a bit of irony in my signing up for yet another thing I probably won’t keep up with. Somehow working 4 10 hour days seemed to give me a lot more time to myself, maybe it’s how I choose to spend the time I have rather than there being more time but it seems as though there’s never enough time for anything during my work days & the 2 days off I have I don’t spend at the computer any longer.  Yes, I admit most of what I’m doing is watching tv or reading or playing cards or monotony with the kids. The motivation to get online is close to nil right now.

Maybe It will pick up as the winter progresses, we’re supposed to have a storm Friday so perhaps then (at least until the snow knocks the computer out)

My username on Twitter is ReBecky68

Doubt it.

I’m going to try to get on here more often & write again, there just isn’t much to say these days, just work, home, hang out with the kids & get up & do it all over again the next week. Christmas was rough, we had a bigger focus on doing for others rather than what we were all going to get. Which was nice, as far as it went.

On the 23rd one of my co-workers, who works part time asked me if I’d be willing to ‘let’ her work for me on Christmas eve. She was looking to pick up some more hours & my boss had let her know that I hadn’t been eligible to take Christmas eve off & with the ice storm they were calling for on that night sounding very terrible I really didn’t want to come in on the 24th at all for more reasons than family ones.

Of course the actual day conspired to bring us all closer together as the power went out early in the day. We had planned to have roast duck, but ended up having Beef Bourgingnon because I could cook that on the stovetop- since  I have a propane stove top which I bought to take campingbut have used much more often during power outages, it was a little weird opening the gifts without the Christmas tree lights lit, but it wasn’t a bad thing, we spent most of the rest of the day in the dining room where I keep the kerosene heater, playing games & staying warm.

New years eve I worked, which is just as well, it was my wedding anniversary, had our marriage survived, this would have been #16. It’s probably for the best that it didn’t survive though, I know my life is a lot more comfortable & easier on my own with the kids than it was with the ex.  The only unpleasant spot on New Years eve was Drunken Customers, I can not understand what would possess someone to call a business while drunk. People call though & rant, rave, slur & yell a lot on the holidays.

House of Sand & Fog by Andre Dubus
Twilight Stephenie Meyer
New Moon Stephenie Meyer
Eclipse Stephenie Meyer
Breaking Dawn Stephenie Meyer
The Good Guy by Dean Koontz
In The Bedroom by Andre Dubus
Mirror Mirror by Geffery Maguire
The Archer’s Tale by Bernard Cornwell
Merry Men by Carolyn Chute
the Secret of the old Crazy Quilt by Florence Hightower (C)
The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope (C)
Stonehenge by Bernard Cornwell
The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope (C)
The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman
Fat Bald Jeff by Leslie Stella
The Illuminator  by Brenda Rickman Vantrease
How Elizabeth Barret Browning Saved My Life by Mameve Medved
The Vanishing Point by Mary Sharrat
Snow Men by Carolyn Chute
The End of an Error by Mameve Medved
Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
Vampire Interrupted by Lynsay Sands
Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris
Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris
Dead & Gone by Charlaine Harris
The Abyssinian Proof by Jenny White
Candle Night Eric Rickman
The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry
An Echo In the Bone by Diana Gabaldon
Area 7 by Matthew Reilly
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon
Voyager by Diana Gabaldon

At least the weather does. I’m really trying not to write a diatribe right now. There are so many things I feel like railing about, from the prices in the stores to my work to the kids not picking up after themselves, everything is pretty frustrating to me right this minute.  I’m at least back to thinking of things to write while I’m driving back & forth to work, not  worrying over the car’s behavior or, in more recent weeks, marveling at the size of the stupid new car & worrying about how I’m going to pay it’s stupid new loan payment. I’ve settled in to thinking about it tomorrow for the most part now.  Scarlett O’Hara’s plan always has worked for me when I find myself obsessing a little too much.  Things aren’t all bad, I won a digital picture frame at work due to a celebration of our reaching the 14 million customers mark. I stayed up way too late last night tweaking the pictures on a micro SD card to use with it (not included, luckily I have a 512mb spare card) what with watching the pictures scroll on the frame, I didn’t actually fall asleep until sometime after 4, then it was up at 7:10 to be sure mr 10 & ms 13 got off to school on time, back to sleep until 8 when ms 19 called to wake me up to take her to work.  Back home by quarter of 9 & back to sleep until it was embarrasingly late, when I did finally drag myself out of bed, I found our outdoor cat had slipped in the house sometime during all the comings & goings this morning & had torn the trash apart, when I tried to use the computer & check a few things I’d left undone last night the mouse wouldn’t work & then when I went to watch the news while I rebooted the computer I found I have no picture on my tv, I think the cable between the satellite box & the tv is the issue because I can see the error message on the tv when I reboot the receiver, it’s just behind a ton of snow.  Rebooting the computer fixed the mouse issue though so here I sit until it’s time to go pick ms 19 up from work (4 minutes more because I have to stop at the dollar store to try to get a cable for the tv set).  If I don’t get back before the holidays. Hope everyone has a cool Yule or however you celebrate.