I had a major meltdown yesterday. A started-crying-and-couldn't-stop meltdown. This is very unlike me! I mean, I do cry, it's not that, but this one kind of snuck up on me. It was about 6PM and I was still at work although, mercifully, no one else was. I was waiting till it was time to leave for a 7PM meeting somewhere else, so I was just noodling around on the web.
I miss my dad, so many things about him, and especially at Christmas. He was one of the linch pins in our family's Christmases because he just got into it so much. Since his death in November 2005, Christmas hasn't been the same. It's good again now, but different. That's life, things do change, I know that. I also know it's permissible to get quietly emotional at least once during the holidays, just remembering. But I had no idea the tears were as close to the surface as they were last night until I read something online about children who couldn't be with their parents, and I was off.
First I got a little choked up. Then my eyes started to leak just a little bit. Then, before I knew it, I was face-down in a handful of kleenex, with great wracking sobs, crying so hard I wasn't even making any noise.
It was weird because, while that was going on, a part of me was detached and thinking, "What the hell...? Get a grip on yourself!" but the rest of me, the parts that were dissolving into puddles, had the wheel. It went on for like 10-15 minutes! When I finally ran out of steam, I was exhausted.
Thinking about Dad at Christmas definitely triggered it, and then the general holiday stress contributed to it, but there's the extra and considerable stress this year of having just bought a house a few weeks ago and then doing the big move, etc. I don't know when the last time was that I bawled my eyes out, but apparently I was overdue. Better alone in the office one evening than to lose it at the Christmas dinner table!
Dad seldom smiled in photos. For whatever reason, he preferred to present a more serious face when his picture was being taken and usually couldn't be cajoled out of it. If all you saw were those photos, you might think he was a stern dry humorless character, and nothing could be further from the truth. He was animated, charismatic, and loved to laugh. But because of the way he was about not smiling for the camera, the photos there are of him with his natural grin are highly prized in our family. Here are three:
The first one is from about 1975 or so. He was sitting with his mother and sister and all three of them are laughing at something no one can remember now, but that doesn't matter -- it's the laugh that matters. The second one is from about 1988 at home. The third is from 1993 when he and Mom were on a cruise that stopped for half a day in the town I was living in at the time, so I met them at the dock, and we all had so much fun. (I have a few others, but these are the ones I could get my hands on real quick.)
When my sister and I were little, every Christmas Eve, Dad would do "The Night Before Christmas" with the first letters of the words swapped out (I think that's called spoonerizing, but am not sure), so it started, "'Twas the chright before Nistmas and hall through the ouse, crot a neature was stirring, mot even a nouse." He could rattle off the whole thing without thinking and my sister and I would be on the floor laughing so hard.
So Chrerry Mistmas, Dad, and Yappy Hew Near! ;)
My last post was all about how I get these out-of-nowhere and almost always completely groundless anxiety things. If nothing's obviously wrong, I find something. Yesterday I fixated it on Piper who had acted just the tiniest bit out of routine.
Well, as you can see, Piper's fine. She was fine yesterday too -- it was ME who was off the rails.
Tonight when I came home, she met me at the door. The level in the water dish is normal. Her appetite is fine. She even spent quite a bit of time playing like a kitten. Then she decided she wanted some lap time. I was working on a project and tried to dissuade her, but she was persistent and I relented.
The fact that I was working didn't get in her way at all. As you can see, she curled up into a purr-ball... across my forearm. I kept working, although my typing did suffer for it for the 20 minutes or so I had this 14-pound accessory draped over me. That's okay. ~8)
This proves to me, once again, that whenever the anxiety train runs me down, things are almost always still fine in the clean world. It''s still such a PITA when this happens but I am grateful for the fact that it doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to and that I'm better at recognizing what's going on instead of just caving into an emotional flail-fest!!
Every once in a while, too often to suit me, I find myself dealing with free-floating anxiety. Something's wrong or about to be wrong, and I won't be able to stop it. It's made worse when something really does seem to be maybe going wrong.
Take tonight. I came home from work and was not greeted at the door by Piper, my older cat. When I say "older", that's relative to Lydia who's about 2 -- Piper's about 6 or 7 now as far as we can guess. Anyway, she usually greets me at the door, often enough that it was pretty obvious when she didn't yesterday and then didn't again today. She was on the bed in "her spot". I sat down in the living room and watched some TV and she came up for a little lap time, which was nice, then went right back to the bed. Then she had to be coaxed to eat her dinner. She did eat all of it, but again went right back to the bed. Then I realized that one or the other of them (both?) had been drinking a lot of water today, going by the level in the water dish from when it was changed last night.
So now the anxiety is starting to churn that maybe she's getting sick. Then I remind myself that she doesn't meet me at the door EVERY night, and that there have been times in the past when she's had to be coaxed to finish her meals, and that just a few weeks ago she was at the vet for her annual exam, shots, etc., and they ran bloodwork and everything was fine. And it's been cloudy and rainy and yucky looking and maybe that affects cats like it does us. (That may be a stretch, I don't know.)
And the house is very dry inside -- even with all the rain and damp today the indoor humidity is only 31%. That could explain the water-drinking, IF it was her and not Lydia (who, by the way, seems to be her usual 2-year-old incorrigible self), except that the house is always dry inside, which is why I run a humidifier in the bedroom, so maybe that's why she's liking it in there. But usually at least once in the evening, she'll come out to socialize for a bit and maybe even play briefly with Lydia. Not tonight or last night.
See?? My mind conspires to drive me NUTS. There was a time in my life when this was happening much more often and with a lot less to go on. Realizing it was "all in my head" helped a little but didn't make it go away completely. So now I guess all I can do is see how she does tonight and tomorrow and if she seems no worse, maybe I'm imagining it and just looking for something to hang this worry on. Good lord. How warped AM I?
Something of note is that this is the first time this has happened to me since The Move. I guess, up till now, I've been too preoccupied to look, even subconsciously, for problems I can't stop or fix. That's proof of something or other, right?
At least I have that. I'm clean.
Ah, the joys of living in a new-to-you place. I stepped into the shower tonight, adjusted the hot and cold water the way I've found gives me what I want, turned on the shower, and stepped in. I got my hair washed and then realized the water wasn't as warm as it should be and, come to think of it, the water pressure wasn't what it should be, so I cranked up the hot water, figuring I still didn't have the mixture down pat yet.
Then I realized I didn't have the "thing" that diverts the water from the faucet to the shower all the way up. When I fixed that, that fixed the water pressure, big time, but by the time I finished washing my ample self it was obvious that I was running out of hot water. After I dried off, I checked other faucets and got tepid water at best. I checked the setting on the water heater and it was where it should be and where it has been since I moved in.
A brief backstory: I had been pounding away on a database for work, something the boss told me on Thursday had to be ready tomorrow (Monday). I had reached an impasse, a situation where I knew I know how to do this particular thing but it kept not working, so I had decided a nice hot shower would help things line up in general . . . or at least I'd be still confused but nice and clean.
So anyway. I hastily finished up and completely blew off the hair conditioning phase of the event, and got out before I found myself showering in ice cubes. For the next few days, I shall be incognito as Frizz Woman.
The story has what I hope is a happy ending. I remembered a plumber telling me once that the water comes out in much greater quantities from the faucet than it does from the shower. I don't remember the ratio, just the factoid. I waited a while and checked those other faucets and got nice steaming ouch-inducing water. What I'm fervently hoping is that most of the hot water was coming out of the faucet before I adjusted the diverter.
Lest you think me an alarmist, I've already had to have plumbers out here twice in the short time I've been here, and it looks like there's a third time coming soon. I can't say I'm shocked -- I knew when I bought the place that it had sat empty for over a year and I was pretty sure the selling agent hadn't been real johnny-on-the-spot about keeping the plumbing going, turning on faucets, flushing toilets, etc., from time to time, so I was expecting the plumbing to have sufffered some from that. Hopefully I'm getting close to the end of those problems.
And just as I was finishing up this post, I caught "Inside the Actors' Studio" and it's the cast of "Family Guy" and now I am so totally going to be up till 2:00 AM! I'll be sleepy all day tomorrow but I'll still be laughing all day tomorrow too.
There are two kinds of people who will have read the above title. One kind of person now has a question mark floating over his/her head and is wondering what in the world I've been drinking. The other kind is laughing out loud, having recognized the line.
Long ago, there was a great comic strip calle "Pogo". Its characters were animals who lived in the Okeefenokee Swamp. It was one of the first strips to be directed more at adults than at children; sometimes it was outright political. Mostly, though, it was funny.
Being animals, and swamp dwellers at that, they could be forgiven if their spoken English was a little... different. It was one of the funniest parts of the strip. At Christmas they sang their own version of "Deck the Halls" which became the stuff of lore.
My family always sang the Pogo version of "Deck the Halls" at least once every year, and even now I can't help but hear it that way in my head. And so, I give you "Deck Us All". It is to be sung with great gusto -- being enthusiastic is more important than staying on key!
Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla-walla, Wash, and Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezing on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower, alley-garoo!Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby lilla boy, Louisville Lou?
Trolley Molley don't love Harold;
Boola booa, Pensacoola, alley-garoo!
There's more -- you can see the rest of the verses here. Leavn it, and then, the next time you hear "Deck the Halls" on the Muzak, break into song with this version and see who might join in. You might be surprised! Or you might just be embarrassed. What the hey, it's Christmas!
I'm a trivia nut. Love it, all of it, but with a soft spot for pop culture trivia. No telling what wonderful things might fill my head if that space weren't already occupied by knowledge of things like how Winona Ryder was named for the town where she was born in Minnesota, or how the wedding of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore that was performed by Little Richard was actually the second ceremony, for family and friends, since their "official wedding" was a small one in Las Vegas.
I realized earlier this morning that I had not refreshed my 2009 Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture calendar since July (!!). In doing so, I found a few questions I thought I'd post here. The answers are right after the questions BUT they're in white so you'll have to highlight them to see them (for those who may want to ponder a given question before seeing the answer).
- What actor's many death scenes include ones in Platoon, The Last Temptation of Christ, Shadow of the Vampire, and Spiderman? Willem Dafoe
- Who declined the lead in a John Hughes Brat Pack movie to play three scenes as a blind girl in Mask? Laura Dern
- What 14-year-old from Napanee, Ontario, got to belt out a duet withi Shania Twain after winning a radio contest? Avril Lavigne
- What NBC newswoman wrote of her battle with bipolar disorder in Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue? (Extra credit: What cartoonist is she married to?) Jane Pauley (Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury)
- What was the very first letter Vanna White ever turned on a Wheel of Fortune puzzle? T
- Before he landed the role of Otter in Animal House, what cartoon character did Tim Matheson voice? Johnny Quest
- What appliance did the government of Kenya give each of its 2004 Olympic bronze medalists? A washing machine
- What Fortune 500 company was named for a Herman Melville character? (Extra credit: When that book was made into a movie, who played the antagonist?) Starbuck's (Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab)
- What sport's groupies are known as "Buckle Bunnies"? Rodeo
There were, obviously, a lot more, but you're busy and so am I and this was just for fun. Maybe I'll do some more later.
Happy Wednesday to one and all!
Do you love the scent of a live Christmas tree but don't have the money/space/time/inclination to go the lot (woods), buy it (chop it down), shlep it home, put it up, decorate it, keep the dogs/cats/kids out of it, get up in the middle of the night to make sure it hasn't caught fire, admire it, enjoy one memory-making beautiful morning around it, and then have to dispose of it? I have the answer!
Yankee Candle's "Mistletoe" scent. Oh my god, you guys, it smells soooo good. Don't pay any attention to the name -- it doesn't smell like mistletoe (does mistletoe even have a smell? if it does, it's not this), but maybe all the tree names were already taken when they hit on this scent which completely nails the smell of Christmas, to me anyway.
Yes, I'm the same person who posted a shrieking diatribe against Yankee Candle a couple of years ago, but that was because of their god-awful customer service and totally inept shipping on something that was only available online. This stuff, this Mistletoe scent, you can just about anywhere that sells Yankee Candle stuff. I got mine at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.
I've used the Mistletoe wax "tarts" and they're sublime. Then I decided to try the plug-in diffuser and it's every bit as good.
If your Christmas memories include the smell of the tree, you really owe it to yourself to try this stuff. I have one plugged in in my office and all day long people have been wandering in with smiles on their faces and just breathing it in. "It smells so good in here!"
I will, however, warn you to avoid the Yankee Candle holiday scent called Siberian Winter or Siberian White -- Siberian Something. It smells like PineSol. Stick with the Mistletoe and you can't go wrong.
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Mere moments after initially posting this: {{sigh...}} Well, that didn't last long. Someone just came into my office and immediately started coughing and complaining of the "perfume" smell in the room. It's weird because I used it last year and it didn't bother her but oh well. They're big on "no 'offensive' smells" around here and it only takes one person to decree something "offensive". So the nice smell is gone and my lower lip is out. (I'm so mature.)
So today is my first day back to work after being off for two weeks to move. I could have totally loved a longer time away but not because of anything negative about work. I'm fortunate to HAVE a job and, bonus, it's one I like and, another bonus, for the most part the people are good and, yet another bonus, it's the holiday season which historically means things will be fairly quiet, barring emergencies.
So why am I feeling bummed? Am I sad to be back at work? If so, where did I find the cojones to feel that when there are people, including quite a few people I know, who are trying to find work? Am I picking up on some negative vibe around here that may or may not have anything to do with me? Maybe -- it's happened before.
Or -- and I'm leaning this direction -- am I just mentally kicking cans because I'm back at work without having finished unpacking and setting up the house? I mean, not at all, not by a long shot, not even close.
This glum mood is not helped at all by the fact that the weather today is drek. Foggy and drizzly -- or froggy and dizzly, if you prefer.
BUT! I saw this and it made me laugh out loud, and that felt good -- the Muppets doing "Bohemian Rhapsody". As I started it up, I wondered if they'd do the part about, "Mama, just killed a man" etc., and they managed that nicely. It would've been funny to see that but I'm sure they knew kids would find this video too, so they worked around it.
Enjoy! If you're having a less-than-stellar day, maybe this will help you -- it did me!
There's a saying that goes, "If it ain't ticks, it's chiggers." For those not familiar with the south, think, "If it's not one thing, it's another." That's how this first week in the new place has gone.
I took off this week because I planned to get alllll unpacked. Great plan! Totally didn't happen, but... great plan! It's turned out it's just as well I took the time off anyway to take care of the various things that have cropped up, but the down side is that there are still way way WAY too many unpacked boxes in here.
Knowing myself, I have a legitimate fear of getting used to these boxes and finding myself more or less living out of them instead of unpacking them. ACK!
Anyway, the issue du jour seems to be plumbing. Nothing apparently major so far, but inconvenient and a matter of serious concern. First, the toilet in the master bathroom, which worked fine for the month between closing and moving in, suddenly because sluggish and then got to the point where it wouldn't quit running. Had to do the old handle-jiggle thing. Finally, even that wouldn't stop it, so I took the tank lid off and reached in to adjust the flapper, thinking to myself, "Gotta get this fixed" but with no timetable in mind.
I ended up calling a plumber after I got drenched when the line that feeds fresh water into the tank slipped off its mounting (or whatever that's called) and SOAKED me from neck to knees, and I couldn't get the water shutoff to work. Luckily I was able to get that feeder line back into place, and the plumber replaced the whole fluidmaster. Since I suddenly didn't trust any toilet anywhere anymore, I had him check the one in the guest bathroom too but it was much newer and seems fine.
Then, the first time I got ready to shower, the master bathroom tub backed up. It did drain eventually but not quickly enough for me to finish showering and shampooing, so I ended up doing that at my sister's place since I was going up there anyway. I bought some Roto Rooter drain cleaner stuff but am leery of using it. What if all it does is boil up a bunch of drek into the tub and still doesn't clear whatever's clogging it and I end up with a tub full of caustic poisonous sludge? So I'm calling the plumber back on Monday.
As for the challenge of getting a cable TV jack installed in the living room, that turned out to be just a question of finding the right man for the job. He fished the wire down the wall, not one bit fazed by the insulation, and the jack now looks like it's been there forever, with no outside wiring. The cable company is supposed to deliver the on-demand box for that TV tomorrow morning.
I've found some flaws in the paint job inside. Three of the doors were closed before the paint was fully dry which meant that, when I opened them the first time the night of move-in day a week ago, paint pulled away from the door and frame in each place. There had also been curtain mounting hardware on some of the windows, and they were supposed to remove/discard that, but I've found two windows where they just painted over them. NOT COOL. I've called the job foreman and he's apologized and assures me they'll fix it. This being a holiday week, I haven't bugged him about it but will call him again next week.
Happy things that are happening here:
- The cats are really settling in, acting like themselves, starting to eat more normally again, and beginning to play more. Although I'm wanting to get the boxes unpacked, they're enjoying the whole maze effect.
- I managed to find what I needed to make our family recipe stuffing for Thanksgiving, and that made the whole place smell soooo good.
- People in the neighborhood have started putting up holiday decorations.
- AT&T finally fixed the screw-ups on the service transfer for my landline.
- I've been invited to a neighborhood poker game!
That's how I'm going to recap my experience of moving this weekend. I shall try to avoid wallowing in lurid self-indulgence, speaking unnecessarily harshly of others, and outright weeping in frustration. Because... it's over, it's done, it's through, it's finished!!
Let's start on this past Tuesday when I called the moving company to express concern that I would not be anywhere close to having finished packing by Friday when they were due to arrive. I actually had some leeway in time, and asked about pushing the date forward into Thanksgiving week. Mr. Mover said they could do that BUT they could also DO THE PACKING FOR ME for the same hourly rate. We left the date as it was.
Thursday I called again to tell them I definitely would need their packing assistance because stuff was accumulating in my home, apparently seeping in through the walls and floorboards when I turned my head, faster than I could pack it. I stayed up almost all night Thursday in a yeoman-like attempt to get ahead of it but when Friday broke, I knew I was defeated, trounced, pwnd.
I was teetering on the verge of a full-on meltdown when the movers arrived, armed with the information that I was "not finished packing". I warned them on the porch that it was worse than that. They came in, surveyed the scene, and said, "We've got this." I asked what I should do to help -- hand them the packing tape? fetch boxes? mop their brows? Their answer was, "Just sit down, relax. We've got it from here." I came sooo close to bursting into tears of relief.
Now picture the face of a clock with the hands spinning (or numbers flashing, if you're a digital kind of person). By about noon, I had retreated to the car as the only reliable place to sit where I could be out of their way, because these guys were doing some very serious packing of boxes and putting of boxes and furniture into their megatruck. I felt mildly guilty as I watched them truly hustle while I basked in the autumn sun and posted tweets about the goings-on and occasionally actually dozed, but then I remembered that hourly charge and the guilt would recede.
By about 4:00 they acknowledged that holy crap, lady, you have more junk than Fred Sanford! OK, they didn't say that. They said something like, "We underestimated how much time it would take to pack the contents of your home." THEY were apologizing to ME. Me, who was feeling mortified and frustrated and grateful all at once.
They assured me that unloading wouldn't take nearly as long. Well, duh, since they weren't going to UNpack the boxes for me... were they? No, they were not. So after they left me and all my shit contents in my new house, pretty much all I did was find the critical few boxes to get started (at the outset I had still had presence of mind to use boxes of particular colors for that), and make up the bed, and CRASH.
Saturday, the Comcast guy showed up at 8:30 to set up the TV and internet stuff. As you can tell, the internet set-up went swimmingly. The TV part, not quite so. It seems that I am asking for rather a lot in that I wish to have cable in my living room. The way the place is built, three of the living room's four walls are exterior walls and Comcast doesn't install cable on exterior walls. No, seriously, they don't, nor do they provide names of contractors who will, but when I find one and pay HIM to do it, THEN they'll come out and hook it up.
On the other hand, they'd be happy to install the cable on the room's one interior wall, because THAT they'll do. (It has to do with them not wanting to have to deal with insulation in the walls or something.) The problem with that solution is that the one interior wall is at the end of the room which is the de facto dining room and -- someone call Jeff Foxworthy because I've got one for him -- "If your biggest TV is on your glass dining room table under a chandelier, you might be a redneck."
So that has to be dealt with. But at least I do now have TV in the bedroom and the den (which is right now Box Central). I'm told I also have it in the office/guest bedroom but I haven't yet unearthed the small TV that goes in here. It's the only thing that's MIA from the move so far. I've called the movers and one of them remembers putting it in a box (I did say it was small - 9" screen, perfect size for this desk), so I just have to keep digging. Or I could go to a thrift store and buy another one for about $20.
Also on Saturday, I discovered that AT&T had screwed up my very simple and straightforward service transfer. I only moved about 5 miles so would keep my phone numbers. I said it as plainly as I could when I called it in: "I don't want any changes to my service. Got that? Even if you think I'd like it. Even if you're giving away free service for a year. NO CHANGES. Right?" And the lady sweetly said she understood.
So naturally they added AT&T voicemail to my account AND killed one of my phone numbers which may or may not be retrievable -- we won't know till Tuesday. Never mind that the automated repair update line assures me my service transfer is completed. Sadly, as I recount this story to others, I'm hearing similar AT&T horror tales from them too. Someone needs to tell AT&T the story of how Ma Bell became all those Baby Bells years ago, and why.
Sunday I had a guy lined up to go to the old place to clean out all the debris and detritus resulting from the move. He'd done the same thing for someone I know and came recommended. We'd spoken several times and had agreed on the appointment and he had the address. When I'd offered directions, he'd said he'd get them from me closer to the date. Well, I started trying to call him Saturday morning and kept getting his voicemail. I left no fewer than 6 messages all the way up to 10 minutes before he was due. I went to the old house, waited in the driveway awhile in case he showed up, scrawled a note and taped it to the door, and left.
Hearing nothing from him, I hit Craigslist at about 3:00 and found a guy whose ad said he works weekends and is frequently available the same day. Sounds good to me, right? I call him, we set it up, and people, I am here to tell you that LESS THAN TWO HOURS after my phone call, he had taken care of business and left. He charged me considerably more than the first guy quoted, but then again, to be fair, he offered one thing the first guy didn't -- he SHOWED UP.
Tomorrow the cleaning people are supposed to come to make the place deposit-return-ready. I've confirmed with them that we're on and they have the address AND directions. When they're done, that'll be it for the old place, except for notifying the utilities to turn everything off and getting with the landlord to return the keys.
I would like to say that, in the midst of all this, I have unpacked all the boxes, put everything away, and taken the deconstructed cardboard to a compactor for recycling, but that would be three lies. Whoppers. It'll all happen, though. It may take eons, but it'll happen. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Surprisingly, as I was locking up at the old place Sunday evening, I felt a little wistful. It has good vibes and I lived there through some significant times, happy and sad, in my life. Hopefully the next occupants will enjoy it as much as I did.
I guess this story wasn't "quick like taking off a bandaid" after all. Sorry. It really is a streamlined version of the events, though. Honest.
