Gonzaga v. UW, 11-16-08

What to do, what to do...

If you couldn't tell by my lack of posting the last week or so, I have been working a lot lately. I'm actually getting jobs done BEFORE the due date, which is more or less unheard of, but it's happening. I am staying on top of stuff like never before, partly because it's so nice to have a steady stream of work, and partly because I don't want to have to take a bunch of work to Montana for Christmas.

Right now I'm taking a break from a transcript that is due tomorrow, one that I will have out today. I've worked in bankruptcy court for 16 years now, so I feel like a pretty good judge of most of my regular attorneys. I can think of only a handful that I really don't like. I mean, I even like the one who wrote a nasty 5-page letter to the judges saying he shouldn't have to pay the $700 bill to us because his client can't pay him and that we shouldn't be allowed to require COD from him on future orders and that he was going to do everything in his power to get us removed from the job the next time the contract came up for rebid. That was probably ten years ago, and for some strange reason, I still kind of like him. I don't want to, but I know what kind of attorney he is and I do respect him.

The attorney I'm working for now is one who I did a transcript for last year, a particularly tricky job involving a Hawaiian bankruptcy and a debtor who owned multiple properties there, which were all referenced over and over, which I took the time to log on to the Hawaiian bankruptcy site and look up how to spell all of the attorneys from Hawaii and the addresses. She actually emailed me and told me I had done a beautiful job and that she had never seen such a nice 341 hearing transcript. So needless to say, she is at the top of my list as far as wanting to do a GREAT job for her.

My problem is this. She says in one part of the transcript that some declarations were signed by the people involved saying "unexplicitively and unequivocably" that they didn't knowingly withhold any emails. Now, I think most people not even involved in proof-reading (maybe I'm wrong) would know or at least think that "unexplicitively" is not a word. Not even close. Although unexplicitly is closer to a real word, and technically I could probably get away with leaving it that way, it's clearly not what she was meaning. I totally do not want to make this attorney feel dumb or anything, but in this new age of CD's and parties being able to order CD's and, if they so choose, compare the audio CD to my transcript and, also, if they so choose, make a stink about it to someone if I leave something out, we have to really be careful. But how ridiculous is that to think that someone, either someone representing someone who is close to losing everything or someone who is losing everything, would honestly take the time to order a CD for $26 and sit and compare it to my transcript? And even if they did, nothing hinges on that word anyway. It doesn't change a thing in the case. But we are supposed to transcribe VERBATIM, so it's really hard to let it go.

But thank you for letting me talk it through. I am waiting for a call from my "Ms. Lillian's" expert, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to just leave that word out. I do beautiful transcripts, after all!

UPDATE: I just spell-checked unequivocably, and that's not a word either. I decided to leave out unexplicitively and change unequivocably to unequivocally. Case closed.

What Samantha's been up to lately

A Really Cute Pirate Chick

I actually had these pictures printed up on photo paper and everything, since I was also printing one of Eric in Macbeth. I was looking through them and I thought, Why, she's just the cutest little pirate chick, why haven't I posted that on my blog? She still has Halloween candy left, by the way, which she taunts her dad with mercilessly.

This One's for Jana --

You THOUGHT you were the queen!

Text Messaging - Big Bang style

Now that the Big Bang Theory and 30 Rock are back with a vengeance, my phone is filling up with quotes every week.

FROM JANA:

There is mayonnaise on this grilled cheese - What?!? (30 Rock)

Live every day like it's Shark Week. (30 Rock)

I want to learn to text in my pocket. (After watching an especially impressive Burn Notice)

Michael Weston can do anything. So much cooler than MacGyver. (Same idea)

Shirtless adorable Brit alert! No pic. Sorry. (British soccer coaches who are housed with my sister, beware... this post, plus the one about stalking, should creep you out but good)

It's like the start of a joke: a Welshman, an Englishman and a Scotsman were playing poker... (which actually did happen at Jana's house last summer when she housed a Scottish soccer coach)

More cowbell!! (self-explanatory)

Kids suck. (This from a former kindergarten teacher, now a child's librarian.)

I just stalk people until they give in and become my friend. (Jana, explaining her friendship technique, which she actually is employing RIGHT THIS MINUTE to one lucky soccer mom in Kalispell, Montana -- not to scare anyone...)

What a newb. (Big Bang Theory)

We have monkey. (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia)

FROM ALEX:

Tracy Jordan dress for success: Dress every day like you're going to be murdered in those clothes. (30 Rock)

Carter, you have to learn to do things yourself... Carter, you have to learn to do things yourself... Carter, you have to learn to do things yourself... (Max Warnell, before his auntie yelled at him that she felt Carter either got the point or wasn't listening anyway)

I'm going to need the energy if I'm going to start blowing crap up. It's what the Founding Fathers would have wanted. (Jim Gaffigan - Beyond the Pale)

Fashion show! Fashion show! Fashion show at lunch! (The Office)

I did not become a Lackawana County volunteer sheriff's deputy to make friends -- and I haven't. (The Office)

Haha. My favorite food at Thanksgiving is fun dip. (Again, a nugget of profoundness from Max Warnell.)

Haha. My charming smile is not creepy. It's warm and inviting. (Reba)

FROM ERIC:

Margaritas. (This pertains to the time last summer when Jana drank four margaritas in about a 45-minute time span and then puked on the lawn in front of her kids and my kids and our parents, all before, like 7:00 p.m.)

After reading over these texts, not many are from the Big Bang Theory. But I post older texts first, to clear off my phone. So my next texting post should be chock-full of BBT goodness.

Update

Well, it's been awhile since I've posted anything, I know. So let's get to it.

Eric, as you may have heard, has gone all thespian lately. He volunteered to star in MacBeth as Caithness, or as he'd be named in a more contemporary play, Soldier 3. He gets to yell, "Scotland, Scotland" and then die on stage in a sword fight. He absolutely loves it. I don't think this means he's going to be quitting his job to concentrate on his "craft", but he may volunteer again soon --

Alex made the varsity basketball team at her school. Her team is full of, basically, school-season basketball players, which doesn't bode well when you play, for instance, Enumclaw Middle School, which team has at least two players who play year-round with a team from Fircrest. (For those of you unfamiliar with this area, the high school in Fircrest is called Foss. For those of you unfamiliar with Foss, there is a large African-American population there. When Eric heard me telling someone these girls play year-round with a bunch of black girls, Eric called me a racist, but in terms of basketball, I think it totally makes a difference when you qualify it that way. Anyway, I'm from Montana and while I don't consider myself a racist, I am less politically correct than other people.) Although they didn't lose by 40 like Eric predicted, they did lose by 36. I don't think we have a lot to look forward to, i.e., the future of White River girls basketball. It's seems like every year around this time (her first basketball game) I start thinking to myself, "How in the hell did we end up playing year-round soccer?" Eric and I took Alex to EVERY SINGLE Federal Way Eagles girls basketball game from the time she was born. She was the ball girl for two or three years and took her job very seriously. I mean, neither of us had any interest in soccer before Alex. The whole reason she even started playing was because Eric approached this basketball coach in Federal Way and asked him if he wanted to help start up an AAU girls basketball team. Pete said that would be great, but right now they needed some more soccer players. And here we are.

Samantha is taking a jazz dance class on Wednesdays. They have two practices left. She loves it, but I would like to see a class with more dancing and maybe technique emphasis. This class is only eight weeks long and it's basically geared all towards the recital in December. Not that I have a lot of interest in having her become a dancer, but she still loves Dancing with the Stars, and when she sees those juniors dance, she always says she would love to ballroom dance, just not with boys.

As for me, I have actually had quite a bit of transcription work at home lately. Last week when I finished my last transcript, I started panicking and offering to work for people. I actually had a job set for Thursday, which I had to cancel because Thursday is Samantha's teacher conference. It's like the conferences happen once a year, and it just happens to be the time when I try to go take a job.

I always start November thinking that I'm going to finish up my Christmas shopping by the end of November. It never happens, and I don't think it's my fault. This November hasn't been a banner month for me for getting paid. I'm so broke right now it's ridiculous. Normally I'd be in a HUGE panic, but I have some really big invoices out right now and a lot of medium sized ones. I just need a few people to pay their bills and I should be fine. This is just something I've had to be used to my whole career, seeing as how I work mostly in bankruptcy court. There's a reason those people are there -- they have no money. Then there's always the gift card conundrum. I always start out with good intentions to get gifts and no gift cards this year. A gift as opposed to a card just feels more personal, even though who wouldn't like a gift card? But I'm sure by December 15th I'll be standing in line at Target with a fistful. Ugh, I'm not looking forward to Christmas, except for the going to Montana part!

This year the whole teenager thing has really started to rear its ugly head. Alex has complained quite a few times about not wanting to spend the whole vacation in Montana because "what if it snows here and I don't get to go sledding with my friends?" Um, excuse me. I know the main point of that statement is the friends part, but sledding here is basically a slight incline in the cemetery, whereas we have The Hill of Death at grandma's house, complete with Uncle's four-wheeler to haul your sorry asses back up the hill. Plus it usually snows here in January and February, not December. Anyway, the main point of this anecdote is the fact that our days of going to Montana for the whole break, I'm afraid, are numbered.

30 Rock and The Big Bang Theory

I think two of the coolest shows on T.V. right now are 30 Rock and The Big Bang Theory, in terms of the HILARIOUS quotes. The other day I happened to be watching 30 Rock on my computer, sitting right next to my stenograph machine, and not for the first time, I seriously considered typing it out while I watched it, just so I would have all the quotes already on my computer. I actually sent my sister maybe three texts and then realized that at the rate they were going, I hadn't even watched five total minutes from the show. It would take my forever to watch a 22 minute episode AND text all the hysterical quotes at the same time. Seriously, if you haven't seen them, now is the time to get caught up. And from the way 30 Rock has been going, this looks to be a stellar year. Now if they'd only bring back Dennis Duffy, since he's not been doing much on Terminator 2... I would include some youtube videos of either show, but they're not embeddable, of course, so you just have to be curious to go find them yourself or start watching!

Text Messages

From Jana:

Alcohol? This smells just like hill people milk. I've been drinking this since I was a baby! (30 Rock)

Of all my days of watching girls puke, Daisy may be the hottest. ~ Bret Michaels

Shirtless soccer player - yum. (In reference to the UK soccer coaches who visited Kalispell last summer.)

I am a bit concerned that I am running around smelling like cat pee. (In reference to the time they left the cat in for the weekend and she's an outdoor cat who is not used to a litter box, so she went on my sister's bed instead, ALL WEEKEND.)

Tell me if this is rock-bottom - shopping in the plus size section at WalMart.

BTW, Shirtless Silas - not bad. (In reference to Weeds.)

When I say Subway, you say Hero! (30 Rock)

What we need around here is an anti-whining ordinance. (News Radio)

Suck it, monkeys! I'm going corporate. (30 Rock)

I don't know if Michael meant to punish me by putting Ryan back here with Kelly, but if he did ... Genius. (The Office)

From Me:

Unless you're planning on running a marathon, choosing both stuffing and mashed potatoes is a starch-filled redundancy. (Big Bang Theory)

No sank yew. (To Alex -- she used to say this ALL the time when she was little)

Hmm, Elizabeth Hasselback lost her baby weight without even dieting. I'm so happy for her. That's really, really super great.

Cool story, Jeopardy Contestant.

God, I am glued to my T.V. If Dillon goes to rehab, I will be SHOCKED. (This when I was heavy into that Intervention show on A&E)

Wait, what is it? You're not thinking happy thoughts. I saw my grandmother's vagina. (Weeds)

The 7th grade band just played a warmup scale that made my ears bleed a little bit.

I hate the commercial where the woman eats a five dollar bill.

Live every day like it's Shark Week. (30 Rock)

Cool story, Horrible Bitch. (The Soup)

Next time you're in your car going 50, strip down to your underwear and jump out the door. That's what it's like to crash in professional cycling. (TdF commercial)

Birthday party hangover

Well, the slumber party is maybe two hours from being OVER! Yay Me! It actually went pretty well. One of the main differences from normal play dates, though, is that when she has any of these girls over to play, I usually don't know they're here. Five of them, however is a different story. You just want to beg them, Look, I know you have to scream, but could you do it in a lower register, PLEASE? PLEASE?!? But on the whole, there were almost no hurt feelings due to what-to-play disagreements. That was mostly what I had been worried about.

Around 7:00, two of Alex's friends showed up to hang out. One of them is this huge babysitter, and I think she does it because she LIKES it. She hung out on the floor with the birthday party goers and colored for, like, an hour. It was the quietest the house had been all week. I put the partyers to bed with a movie at 9:00. Choosing a movie, predictably, took about 20 minutes. I used to have a TiVo that I allowed me to burn things to dvd, so Samantha has every single Disney or Nickelodeon movie ever made from a year ago. Then there was also one lone holdout on the sleeping front, again, just as I predicted. However, I got the culprit wrong. After Samantha came to my office tearfully at 9:48 to complain that they all wanted to sleep but Jace wouldn't stop talking, I told her I'd be up to turn the T.V. off at 10:00. All in all, it was a successful party.

When the party started getting set up for bed, Alex and her friends went to her room and hung out watching T.V. Pretty soon there's a knock at the front door, the guy down the block. I let him in but told Alex they couldn't be hanging out in her bedroom anymore. So he came in and the four of them hung out in the family room downstairs, basically texting other people. I know they had fun, because they did get pretty loud once or twice. And just when I was starting to worry about kicking them out at 11:30 so we could GO TO BED, they all left around 11:00. Buckley is a pretty small town, which is allowing Alex a lot of freedom already in the 8th grade. The kids can walk across town to another kid's house, and they can stay up late and still walk down the block home. It's pretty cool. While I know it drives Eric crazy that we get a lot of kids hanging out here, I've had to have the "relax" talk already once, pointing out that if she weren't hanging out here, they'd be doing it somewhere else. At least here we know what they're up to. At one point I even heard her friend telling someone else on her phone that she were here with her friends and her friend's mom.

Anyway, we are now one hour closer to the end of the party! I can't believe I made it...

Birthday Party !!

There are these commercials on T.V. right now -- I think they're AT&T -- where someone comes on and talks about how, if his phone had any bars, he'd get the call that his friends want him to come to Paris, but since he doesn't, he has to stay in the hostel with the Techno Twins, these two other guys who are into alternative dancing -- or the one where the girl is a "Phelps Phan" and won't be getting the call that he's right down the street signing autographs, since she has no bars. The one that totally gets me is the one where the mom didn't get the call about how the big purple dinosaur she ordered for her daughter's birthday party won't be coming but they'll be sending the terrifying T-Rex instead. Then she goes "Yay Me!" in this really shaky voice.

Last Sunday, Samantha came running down the stairs, crying, to tell me that we "forgot" to have her birthday party this year! Yay Me! I'm not sure what would be worse, to have 11 or 12 6-year-old girls over for two hours and get it over with or to have 3 or 4 over to spend the night. We opted for the spend the night plan. We have, I think, 5 coming over right after school, with at least 2 spending the night. The plan WAS to have them jump on the trampoline, go to the grade school down the block and play on the playground, make our own pizza, and GO TO BED. Since the weather is TOTALLY not cooperating, we'll probably hang out indoors and fight over how no one can agree on what to play and so-and-so is being mean. I thought about taking them swimming, but one little girl broke her wrist and still has a cast on and wouldn't be able to go. Yay Me!

On a different topic, yesterday I remember leaving my sister a voice mail about how proud I was with myself because, even though we may be pretty broke this month, I've got our tax debt almost paid off. Then Eric's Check Engine light went on on his way home and the car SHUT OFF three times in about a two-mile distance. Yay Me!

Our @#$%& -ing land line

When we moved to Buckley two years ago, this may sound weird, but there was no voice mail option here for our phone. We did get a hand-me-down answering machine from my cousin, which, of course, either never worked right or was never checked -- I can't remember which. I was tempted to not even get a land line, but decided to go ahead and get one so that people locally could call us without long distance charges (which is pretty much moot anyway, since everyone has a cell phone). Plus, I needed the land line for TiVo, which I would rather not EVER AGAIN live without. Also, Samantha is 7 and won't be getting her own cell phone for a few more years. She does stay by herself now and then, an hour here or there when I run to the grocery store or when Alex and I want to watch the baseball game at her school and it's cold and Sam would rather stay home. So I even have the home phone listed on my cell phone caller ID as Samantha.

We have one working land line phone in the kitchen and one hands free phone in the bonus room which may or may not be charged on any given day. I don't have a phone in my office since I use my cell phone for everything. When we first moved here, the only people who EVER used the land line were my mom and my aunt. I've finally got them both out of this habit, but there is the occasional kid from Sam's school that will use it, also. The point is that when that phone rings, I know that it's NEVER going to be someone I want to talk to, so I RARELY jump up to answer it. But the thing can ring for as much as nine or ten rings, given that there isn't an answering machine or voice mail. The computer-generated calls don't know the difference and will LET IT RING. So ultimately I do end up answering.

My question is this. What makes companies, people, WHOEVER, think that I would be more likely to go ahead and get DirectTV or vote for Darcy Burner, or ANYONE for that matter, or finally get that credit card coverage for when I am disabled, if they CALL ME AT HOME VIA A COMPUTER-GENERATED CALL? I pick up the phone and there's always a pause, then it's "Hello, this is Lisa with DirectTV" -- CLICK. That's the most recent bane of my existence. That and the election stuff. Okay, at least Obama has live people right there, which is actually better than the computer call, I think. Except that I can hang right up on the computer call. I've actually considered waiting the DirectTV one out so that I can get a live person and tell them NEVER TO CALL ME EVER AGAIN.

The other night I got a live person, the Obama people again, this time asking for Eric, who happened to be sitting right there. Normally I run interference, but this time I asked him if he wanted to take the call. HE DID. MY HUSBAND VOLUNTARILY SPOKE ON THE PHONE, even knowing it wasn't one of his friends calling to whine about the Seahawks or invite him to a football game or a new fantasy league, whatever. The Obama people, by the way, are pretty good, not taking up too much time, just short and sweet, which I so appreciate. But watching Eric take that call made me think maybe I'm just being bitchy by hating the land line calls so much. But seeing as how I'm the only one that even usually answers the phone, maybe not.

The computer-generated calls remind me of those emails I used to get maybe two years ago that would say one thing in the subject line, and when you opened the email, it would change quickly to an ad for viagra. It used to actually drive me to the line of mental instability. Who was the genius who thought that if they could get me, SOMEHOW, to GLANCE at an ad for viagra, that I would magically all of a sudden realize I needed some? I mean, I even responded to more than one of those emails, knowing I probably wouldn't get an answer, but asking anyway if this "trickery" actually ever boosted sales.

I do have a TiVo and thus am able to fast-forward through most of the commercials. But I find that if I need something new, I'll figure it out eventually. I don't need to be tricked or CALLED over and over again. And FYI, if it's a live person that's calling me, I am much more likely to stay on the line and listen to their spiel instead of just hanging up, just to be polite.

Halloween watercolor

by Samantha Van Gogh

WAHOO!!! - via text messaging

This is Jana's view of events yesterday, when the Flathead Girls' soccer team (coached by my brother-in-law) beat the enemy from the north end of town for the THIRD time this season. Here is how I got it, via text message:

Jana: Starting to feel like vomiting.

Me: Go home.

Jana: I mean about the game.

Me: &*#$. I've been oblivious. Way to remind me. When does it start?

Jana: 16 minutes.

Me: I just watched the rise of the witnesses ep.

Me: Trying to distract you. Are they playing at home?

Jana: Yes, Flathead is hosting.

Me: Flathead rules.

Me: What's the score?

Jana: Hasn't started yet.

Jana: Half time, FHS 1 - GHS 0

Me: Yee-ha!

Jana: It is only half time.

Me: Sorry... But I have faith.

Jana: You are the best.

Me: I am the best.

Jana: Yes, you are.

Me: I know. That's what I said.

Me: Update?

Jana: Overtime.

Jana: Second overtime.

Jana: A bunch of the Braves football team is here. I want to ask Brock to go rip down the Wolfpack sign if we win.

Jana: F@#K!!!!!

(At this point, driving in my car with Alex, Samantha and Alex's friend Mackenzie, I gasped, causing Alex to ask, What? Did they score? To which I responded, I think so. To which she asked me, Well, what did she say? Not wanting to read it aloud in front of her friend, I handed her the phone. She read aloud, Overtime, Second overtime, F-word. Hm, it does sound like they scored.)

Me: What?

Jana: Shootout.

Me: We hate shootouts.

Me: So did no one score or both score in OT?

Jana: WE WON!!

I know maybe it's lame, especially since I haven't been to high school in more than 20 years, but when the new high school opened up across town, IN THE LAND OF GATED COMMUNITIES, WITH ITS AWARD-WINNING ARCHITECTURE AND ITS ORIGINAL, COMPOSED-ESPECIALLY-FOR-THEM SCHOOL SONG, we all barfed a little. There has been A LOT of drama associated with last year, the first year of dueling high schools, all of which I've heard of extensively first-hand from my sister. This win meant that Flathead goes to State, Glacier does not. So for one more year, Flathead may now be the ghetto inner-town school, but we are going to State and they're not. Ha ha.

Autumn portrait

My sister manages to get some really cute fall photos every year of her kids, so I decided I better give it a go here. Montana hardly gets any really red leaves, but we've got some amazing spots just locally that are vibrant red. And while Jana's kids are very adept at posing, I was lucky to get just the one good shot. Plus she isn't dealing with a teenager who has prior social engagements to get to!

Bones Paranoia

Along with catching up on Supernatural, I also decided to start at the beginning and catch up on the series Bones, which is about a forensic anthropologist and her team of "squints" (science geeks). This show was every bit as addicting as Supernatural, just not as scary. Brennan is the main scientist who looks at a set of bones from a crime scene and can tell you almost everything there is to know about the victim. She also has a team that works with her and one of them is this particulate guy, Hodgins. He will pick off the tiniest piece of lint and tell you exactly where this person was killed or exactly what this person did for a living and where, stuff like that. I'm sure if I knew more about this stuff, I may not think it's so amazing, but I know nothing, so to me it's almost magic.

This week I took two deps in a case I had worked on earlier here. It was all about the boxed lunches. This time I was the reporter in the big conference room, which aside from the fact that I didn't have a window to watch all the telephone workers from, turned out to be a huge bonus otherwise. This company that we were working at, which was the company being sued, brought in Starbucks coffee every morning and scones. Then they had their boxed lunches, which I got to eat both days, which were GREAT. I was taking the dep of the CEO of the company, who was totally cute. He and I were chatting the first day in the middle of the afternoon break. I was giving him a hard time because they didn't bring in afternoon snacks for us, when he told me they did have a masseuse on staff if I wanted a massage the next day during lunch. I sort of giggled. The next day before lunch, he asked me if I still wanted a massage, so I went ahead and got one. I mean, if this guy asked me if I wanted to work there, I'd probably be hard-pressed to find a reason not to. It was that impressive.

Anyway, the first day I was eating my boxed lunch, a pear and blue cheese salad. Seeing as how I still have my cold and my nose was, you guessed it, almost all the way plugged up, and seeing as how I was alone anyway, I was eating with my mouth wide open, simply oinking down my salad. I can't breath if my mouth is shut, and there was no one there to watch, so what the hell. Plus I had an errand to run, so I felt like I was in a huge hurry. I'm not really sure how it happened, but at one point I heard a snap and I looked down and saw that I had snipped the tip of my plastic fork. I felt around in my mouth, but couldn't find it. I'm not kidding you, the first thought in my mind was to ponder what the crew on Bones would say about that little plastic tip, should they be trying to figure out, from my remains, how I died. I'm sure they would ascribe a much greater significance to that plastic fork tip than that I was eating with my mouth open because of my cold and bit through the fork.

Supernatural Life Lessons

Last summer while I was in Montana, I made up my mind to use my T.V. "down time" to do something productive. Jana happens to own Seasons 1 and 2 of one of her favorite shows, Supernatural. I decided to start at the beginning and catch up in time to watch it in realtime this fall. While, granted, this picture aptly illustrates the main reason, I feel confident in saying, that most people watch the show, it is a truly creepy show. I am a few short hours away from being all caught up. But it has been a bumpy ride. The Season 2 dvds, for some reason, had little to no sound when played on my computer, so I basically had to watch the whole season while laying on my bed. Drag. But I feel I have gleaned some important life lessons, which I will share with you all here:

If you are ever alone in your car and your radio starts flickering in and out, either just pull over and cry or pull out the silver knife you have started carrying since watching Supernatural. You will be needing it.

If it's 1:00 in the morning and you are leaving the garage and your table power saw keeps turning on by itself, DO NOT GO INVESTIGATE. Leave that sucker running and get the hell out of there.

Every now and then I think it might have been cool to live alone, you know, get a good job and a cool apartment (before marriage and kids). Then I watch an episode of Supernatural where a woman jogs alone at night, sees a pirate ship, then is murdered in her shower. Living with my family in Buckley is not so bad. Except jogging, NO, especially at night by myself. And no more showers...

And just because it was so funny, I will forever dream of the day I can use the line Dean used while he was playing poker in prison (and winning some serious cigarettes), that it was "like picking low-hanging fruit." That Dean!

Supernatural seriously rules.

Me, minus the athletic part

You know how when you're watching a basketball game, there's always that guy at the end of the bench whose mouth is hanging open wide, catching flies? That's me, minus the athletic tank-top-wearing part. Just the mouth breathing because my nose is so plugged up part. Due to my unfortunate history of nose drops abuse (you all thought that episode of The King of Queens where Arthur is having a nose drop addiction problem was a joke - ha) I simply REFUSE to take them during the day. No sense adding more pain to the nose drop withdrawal I'm going to have to go through already when this cold is over, from using them just at night. Whenever I get a cold like this, I can't help myself, but one of my first worries is ALWAYS "What if I were to be kidnapped and the kidnappers tried to put tape over my mouth? I would DIE because I can't breath through my nose. Do they even think of these things? Why aren't they ever addressed in those procedural crime dramas on T.V.? It would be helpful and ease my mind a little if I had SOME clue as to what to do in that situation. Not that I get all my worldly "how to survive this situation" advice from T.V., mind you. Oh, and not that I'm seriously worried that I could be in any imminent kidnapping danger. You just never know.

The Week of Snot

So this week STARTED out okay. Monday, nothing too big. Tuesday, I got up EXTRA early, as I had to drive to Port Orchard, which is about 50 miles away, only to discover that "that calendar had been canceled a while ago." Uh, thanks for updating ME. Then I had an afternoon in Tacoma at 2:00, so I moseyed around and basically wasted time until then.

Wednesday I went to my new dentist to have a filling redone. That went okay. As my cheek was becoming less and less numb, I realized I was definitely coming down with something. It was kind of hard to tell because I lost my voice three weeks ago and it hasn't been all the way back since then. But by maybe 6:00, I felt like crap. Luckily, my Thursday all-day job in Port Orchard canceled. I say luckily because of the sickness, because I could really use the money...

Thursday I discovered that one of my soccer players had broken her wrist and wouldn't be playing on Saturday. I have another player who I think isn't going to be there either. That means I'll be left with four little girls, one of which will run over to me on the sidelines to tell me she is cold or her finger hurts and can she come out, and one of which is my daughter who will simply burst into tears. Seeing as how, maybe 80 percent of the time, when she cries she will also VOMIT, this is extremely inconvenient. If it rains, consider me screwed ALL THE WAY AROUND. Suck balls. (There is a funny story about "Suck balls", but suffice it to say, I'd get in trouble if I posted it.)

So today I felt even sicker than yesterday. I'm trying to get the transcript that was due on Wednesday done when Alex texts me that one of her brackets on her braces is loose. I spent the next half hour researching what we should do, this being our first experience with all things braces, only to discover we should do nothing, suck it up, and call them next week.

I manage to make it back to my transcript, whereupon Samantha, who has today off, comes down to get new batteries in the remote for the big-screen T.V. Now, anyone who has a big-screen can probably sympathize with me here. There are three remotes, and if I want to do something besides watch basic television, I have to ask my daughter to help. When we first got it, I'm sure it was six months before I ever even tried to turn it on if I was home alone. We recently discovered that you can use the Comcast remote to do the jobs one of the other remotes was doing, which has only confused certain members of this household MORE, not less. I put Sam on the track that I thought would help and went back to work.

Soon she comes back down crying, The T.V. won't do anything now! I just get this sick feeling. That T.V. is less than three years old. I cannot fathom dragging it out of the house to a shop to get it repaired, or paying someone to come here to fix it. I drag my sorry sniveling ass upstairs and start to push random buttons and random remotes, which all do nothing. Finally I call Comcast. The lady, who was very nice, had me go right up to the cable box and press the power button. VOILA! I would have cried were it not for the donkey-sounding laughter I was busy with since my voice is still ragged and unable to emit my normally twinkling musical laughter. She assured me it was all right and that I wasn't the first to make that mistake. Thanks, but I think I'm going back to bed.

It's just ALL too much today. Now if only my new comforter would come in the mail, I'd stay there all weekend, except for the soccer games and the three birthday celebrations I have to attend to this weekend. HELP. I actually have to mention my new comforter. I'm so excited. It was a lighter color than I wanted, but we are in a king-sized bed using a queen-sized comforter, which barely stretches to the edges of the bed. Since I'm the cheap one who doesn't want to spend the money on a new comforter, I usually let him have most of the one we have. I've been on The Company Store website over and over and over all summer and fall, waiting for the best deal. Finally I found one on eBay, from TCS, only $114 less than I would have paid from TCS. It wasn't the right color, but I was laying up in bed one night debating when it hit me, I'd be paying $55 for a $169 comforter. Screw the color. I jumped out of bed and raced down to my computer and purchased said comforter. Think how great it would have been to have gotten it the first day I was sick. Oh, well.

Hopefully next week won't suck balls.

7

Well, today my baby turned 7. She's been SO excited, for like a week now. It's got to be weird to be that excited for your birthday. I even pointed out that it's not like she gets to vote or see R-rated movies or drink. It's just 7. We don't have a party planned -- sort of like last year, I think we'll end up doing a Halloween party right before Halloween. She doesn't really like cake, so we made shortbread cookies that she took to school. I did make mini-cupcakes (yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting - the only kind either of my girls like) that I had planned that she would take to pick up Alex from soccer so she could give them to the soccer girls. But I thought soccer was over at 7:30, and Alex called me at 7:15 to find out where I was. Soccer was over at 7:00, so the team was already gone when I got there. Plus, after Samantha opened her Guitar Hero Aerosmith, she really didn't want to go pick up her sister from soccer. So we took the cupcakes over to the neighbors because the last thing this family needs is to be saddled with, like, 80 mini cupcakes...