p.s.

i was going to treat you to a typically verbose recap of the last week or 2 but in the last few minutes pearl has fallen asleep in my arms, and one-handed typing is getting laborious and typo-prone. for now:

* please send my dad, mom and min some healing health vibes.

* found out last night that min's mom has congestive heart failure, has 1-6 months left. still in hospital ICU. anyway, the whole clan can use prayers and good vibery.

* please send me positive vibes (and if so inclined, a*vice) for handling some relationship/communication issues @ home

thanks all
love
bubblicious

i talk too much

since i can't sleep and i still hate my ovulatin' ways, i just spent the last few hours rereading the saga that was Heather Muses, 2005.

when that idea first came to me (as i tried to sleep), i thought, maybe all that reading'll put me to sleep! i yammered a lot this year. as i began mentally reviewing the year, my first ideas for a followup year-summary post went something along the lines of 2005. STHU!

no seriously. this has been a Long Ass Year.

but i will not regale you with how much i think 2005 sucked or was suckless. most of you were here for that journey - certainly i was for most of it - and i really don't feel a need to relive it more than i just did via re-reading my own words.

and damn can i blather on with the best of them. but wittily so. sometimes i think that is the only real benefit to knowing me.

i guess i will just say: to those of you still paying attention, thanks for sticking around. i'm not sure that my erratic but enchanting (hellow!) posts are worth it, but i'm glad you think so. i love all of you and am grateful to know you. and here's sincerely hoping that 2006 is a helluva lot better than its predecessor.

oh and so as to not end on quite so melancholy a note, i remind you of the following goodies i have shared with you:

* nietzschaurus
* words of wisdom
* that trophy is mine
* fire!
* oceanopanorama
* some sweetness

i tell you what

ain't nuthin better than waking up at 4am and spending an hour realizing you're not going back to sleep.

no siree.

so much to say

and i don't want to overwhelm you all with its wondrousness. so for now i will say:

what a helluva week it's been.

kisses,
the recuperating-from-a-cold bubbles

sometimes

there's so much beauty in the world, i feel like i can't take it.

but then i get a dog ornament that in a more flattering universe, kinda looks like this (actual pic posted soon). and then, really, i kinda move past the whole beauty thing.

ps. my parents arrived just fine. they are going for the gold in the olympian event of sleeping. woo!

update: here's the real deal. thanks liz!

heather needs a break from tree-trimming

as expected, i didn't get to actual trimming of said tree until this weekend. lights, garland and tree topper? so last weekend.

anyway, i forgot what an all-day affair tree-trimming is when you have a ginormous tree and you're doing it by yourself. after 4 hours (relatively straight thru except for laundry), i think i'm at the 75% mark and my back and feet need a break!

so the habitat for humanity thing made for an interesting, tiring but rewarding friday. there was a lot of hammering, holding down things, taking nails out, trying to hear people give instructions over hammering and sawing, and lots of pointing and shrugging.

i missed the initial group formation and 830am training (which held me back in no way), however, because en route to ze habitat - in the words of liz and andrea - pearl decided we needed to discuss a fecal matter right now. and discuss it quite fervently and extensively. since we were literally 2 blocks from our regular vet, in we went.

she had a mild fever, which was very different from the Other Times, so we suspected she was ill rather than having eaten something inappropriate. later in the day we found out some of her liver levels were off, and she wasn't well enough by closing time. so we made our first trip up to adobe. and i must say we really liked them a lot. very kind and thorough. and overall, about the same or mildly cheaper than our usual vet. about 20 miles away instead of 2, but i can see that at times, it'll be worth it to go there instead.

anyway pearl stayed overnight and we picked her up midday saturday, along with some takehome meds, which naturally she is loooving having to ingest. also ran some errands, sorted through presents (who's this for? what's this?) and wrapped a good mess of 'em.

oh and started cleaning up/preparing the spare room, which my parents will be staying in starting tomorrow evening. i suppose i should have called to confirm they actually left AZ, but they should be on the road now and here sometime tomorrow. i hope having them here will make me as happy as it FEELS to think about having them here for christmas. but we'll see. the idea of family is usually better than the reality, but we're all certainly good at pretending things are fine, so i'm sure it will be.

ok time to go back to work. happy festivus!

if the shoe fits

i forgot to add, i love my new slippers from zappos. all the great reviews (mostly for similar slippers from LB Evans) meant that i intentionally ordered one size too big and sure enough, they fit PERFECT.

i was so set to have to return these shoes. i was so not convinced that you could order shoes off the internet and have them fit automagically. but the free shipping, good return policy and well, the fact that i finally found slippers approximately my old standbys, all pursuaded me to give zappos a try.

all hail the internet,
from which all blessings flow!
i loves my internet,
it's better than doing blow!

kisses,
bubbles

and now, the toupee report

tomorrow i expect to be outside. at least i have a new cute (and sexy) hoodie to wear! our group at work is doing an offsite for habitat for humanity. i think it's a great idea. i just hope my ovaries will cooperate. all week they've been staging an overthrow of the government. frankly i think they should be sentenced to death, but whatever.

in more cheery news, it's really looking good for my parents coming up here for christmas, en route to oregon. talked to my mom tonight finally and she's feeling better. has a meeting with the cardiologist tomorrow but expects him to say, 'sure, you can head up to oregon!' so hopefully we will in fact have a full house for christmas.

i've gotten no further on decorating the tree, thanks to aforementioned coup d'abdomen. but i have this weekend to wrap that up, wrap presents, and clean up the house. wooo! again, i should be exhausted on monday but happy. good way to start a short week. :-D

oh and ALMOST done buying christmas presents - 1 more to go. waiting for some to arrive, and others are trickling in. phew! thank YOU, almighty internet! i bow to your magnificence.

you don't light up my life

i think one of the universal constants must be that every year when you pull out christmas lights for the tree, one or more sets of lights will refuse to work, forcing you to buy replacements.

on the other hand, maybe this is part of some master consumerist conspiracy. maybe, in inner circles, it is known that christmas lights are engineered to have no more than a 2 year shelf life. by keeping the time so short, it forces us to by replacements every few years, thus keeping the industry alive. hmmm....

at least replacements are en route. :-)

ps. i am definitely feeling more festive today. working on the tree and listening to christmas music all day may have something to do with that. hard to say!

happy holidaze

last night i called my mom at the hospital. no answer. so i call her at home. hey! she just got home an hour before. so it turned out that she really was getting overmedicated, for the most part. they severely reduced her blood pressure medicine and adjusted/removed others. after a few days, she was already feeling halfway better, so yay!

there still were some other issues, which unfortunately i've already forgotten, that require another test involving tilting her on a table. wheee! anyway, if they can get that test scheduled in the next 2 weeks, then after the test they'll come here for christmas before finishing the trek to oregon.

and actually there's a good chance that if it's going to take more than 2 weeks, they'll wait til they get up to oregon to get the test. which again, means christmas with us. and the thought of that is making both min and i really happy. we miss my mom a lot, and besides, christmas is always one of those moore(hah)-the-merrier kind of holidays.

holy shit it's just 2 weeks to christmas.

today we went up to berkeley for a moving sale min read about on our famous basappho. free or almost free stuff! how can you resist? well, you can't. got an extremely sturdy butcher block for $20 and other things i didn't pick out.

after that we went to the berkeley version of fat apple's, and i have to say, that one is not as good as the one in el cerrito. no parking, much smaller, and stuffy (air). the food was alright but not quite as excellent as our usual.

oh and no yule log. hello! i was all ready to take a picture and everything, after the amazing one they'd had in el cerrito. bastards.

went home for a bit, then back out to get our christmas tree at home depot (cheap, excellent trees). as some of you may know, i did a stint (with my illustrious, nomadic family, who at the time was living in a bus) in a christmas tree lot, so i'm pretty good at picking out a good tree.

so found the Best Tree For Us. but what a doozy of a snit we got into, tying the tree to the car. whatever. fyi: being together for 9.57 years means a) you've mostly learned when to give each other space and b) there's still things to learn about talking to each other (successfully).

we then popped into home depot for some electrical cords and agreed that doing ANYthing with the tree should wait for tomorrow. give ourselves a break. :-)

came home, dinner, a mini-attack for min (which was mostly soothed by time, medicines and trolling on ebay), then she went to bed about 930. and here i am at 11, bored but still alert enough to blog and listen to 'it's a wonderful life' behind me.

suddenly i'm remembering that i STILL have not put together christmas lists for all the people i need to buy for. i think, very soon, i am either going to be doing a crapload of internet shopping or a bunch of people are getting gift cards. i really do love buying (and wrapping) gifts for people, but for some reason christmas is really sneaking up on me this year. and not like, oh yay, it's finally christmas! no, this is like, fuck! already? normally by thanksgiving we've bought EVERYONE'S gifts. this year, maybe 2 people are done. ieeeee.

this is my favorite holiday of the year, and i have the HORDES of boxes to prove it. but for some reason it seems to be here too early! hopefully getting all the boxes from the basement tomorrow, strewing their contents about the house, and getting a backache from spending all day decorating the tree will put me in a christmas frame of mind. i'll be tired as all shit heading into the work week, but the house should be more festive. oh and hopefully me too. ;-)

math is fun!

recently overheard:

person 1: you know what would be cool, to have a cool math job.
person 2: math job?
person 1: yeah and then you could figure out and understand all these equations about earth and nature.
person 2: ahhhh.

really, i think that says it all.
love,
heather the ex-math major

oh right

sorry, forgot to update y'all on my mumzi. i talked to her tuesday night and turns out the overmedication premise is not that bizarre. i didn't realize my mom had lost about 100 pounds over the last year or so. the month or two she was just with us, she lost maybe 10 pounds? but before that i saw her maybe once a year, for the last few years, so it was kind of hard to keep up with that.

anyway, apparently her meds have not really been adjusted during that time, particularly her pain meds and blood presure medicine. mostly they are concerned about the blood pressure, since that would explain the fainting and lack of energy quite well. obviously the pain meds could affect that too, but the blood pressure especially.

i meant to call my mom last night but fell asleep too early (nice for a change tho, i have to admit). i WILL call her tonight. i will!

meantime today min and i had a really nice lunch downtown at sonoma chicken and then trolled the farmer's market right there. was pretty spartan, especially compared to what i used to see when i worked a few blocks away, but it was still fun to go and get a couple veggies, flowers, and a christmas ornament.

because we don't have enough of those. no, we need to have about 20% more than the tree can hold. that way the ones left behind are not so ronery.

i suspect a lot of this weekend will be about christmas (getting stuff from the basement, buying a tree, maybe getting some presents finally!) -- and really that ain't so bad. :-D

happy weekend!

i should have guessed

that since i hadn't heard from my mom for a few days, that they did not really leave arizona as planned. no, i should have guessed that instead, she was having blackouts, unable to get up out of her chair and doesn't have enough energy to do almost anything.

the next thing i should have guessed is that it would take them 3 days to get her to the emergency room, where she would then be admitted for more testing and observation.

sigh. so far the doctors are thinking that either a) they don't know what the fuck is going on or b) she is overmedicated. while option b is possible, somehow i doubt it. but i'm no doctor. mom is on quite the battery of medications due to several medical conditions (does anyone in my family NOT have medical issues? no.) but somehow that explanation seems fishy to me.

in the meantime my parents may have to move out of their shared housing situation by saturday. i suppose i will find out more about that within the next few days, but i'm a little freaked out for them.

not that i can do anything about all that, of course. nor should i (probably) try. i have rescued them so much, i really should take a break. but on the other hand, they are my parents. i guess we'll just see how things play out this week.

anyway, enough whining. please send good vibes to my mom, and divination powers to the doctors overseeing her. thanks!

am i running out of love?

yes, 5 whole days since i last posted. i know you've enjoyed the respite, so yes, you're very welcome!

so what's going on in my corner of the world? that i'm willing to tell share in mixed company? hmm.

1. my mom is not only out of the hospital, she is at this moment either en route to or has landed in the smoldering hotbed of salem, oregon. as to what ended up being wrong with her, the working theory is hypoglycemia. yes, apparently if you time it well and don't eat right, you, too, can have a grand mal seizure as a result of low blood sugar.

re: moving to oregon, she and my dad could not locate a place down in phoenix in time (they had to move by the 15th) so up they're trekkin to ore-e-gone, to her brother richard's questionably fabulous apartment. i do wish them well.

2. we had a nice but mostly quiet weekend. tried to go see syriana but since it's difficult to see a movie that hasn't actually been released yet (p.s., yahoo movies lies), we saw harry potter instead. well, the special effects were nice, and that's about the only thing good i can say about it. not as good as the other potters, and no i did not read the books so that's not tainting me. plenty of other things taint me, but we'll save that for another cranial-sacral therapy session.

went to buca di beppo before the movie and had some scrrrrrrumptious lunch. although before we could finish, min accidentally knocked over a glass, that then broke, whose shard cut her finger. the manager brought some bandaids and gave us free cake as an apology. and may i say, honey, i'm sorry you cut your finger. but DAMN. i'm so glad we scored that free cake and accompanying sambuca sauce. my god. good shit.

after harry blahblah we tooled around the mall looking for christmas presents and slippers for me. i have had my $4 leather winnetonka slippers for almost 10 years. cool in the summer, warm in the winter. perfection. but they are really about 2 years overdue for the trashbin. heels are a bit shredded and smooshed, sole is cracking and fading away, and they're stained pretty thoroughly. but dammit i love them! and want exact replicas!

this morning i couldn't stand it and started trolling the internet for them -- alas they are no longer in production. but i think i have found some suitable replacements via zappos. finally taking the zappos plunge, we shall see how that goes..

3. work is still boring the shit out of me. but thankfully, i have liz to keep me amused and high-profile projects to get cancelled because people can't get their shit together. oh and a fire drill is coming sometime this week. i'm so excited!! wait, what was i thinking? work ROCKS!!!


ok that's enough love for now. don't want to smother you.
good night, and good luck.

today was a good day to blog

consider it my sleep-deprived gift to you, my darlings.

630 am: wake up too early so you can go get pain medicine that - you guessed it - the pharmicist fucked up and you can't get for another whole day.

845 am: go get frappaccino because you're so bloody sleepy from getting up at the crack of dawn.

10 am: learn about career paths in a department that you are trying to leave. attempt to feign interest. fail.

11 am: work?

12 pm: enjoy the aromas of Ranch 99 biological waste

12:45 pm: enjoy the aroma of some toffee crack that you didn't order (because of the earlier frappaccino), but they made for you anyway because - hello - you're there. OBVIOUSLY you need some toffee crack. get guilted into paying for unexpected crack. enjoy crack guilt-free.

130 pm: work. attempt to feign interest. fail.

3 pm: get urgent call about emergency bug going live tonight, because the original bug owner went home early. determine that the bug doesn't apply to your Favoritest Cuntry Ever. enjoy the aroma of unimpacted irrelevancies and not having to work late.

430 pm: discover need to play ping pong, or pool. waddle downstairs to game rooms. pick up paddle. move toward table. get ousted by geeks who RSVP'd the room.

431 pm: quickly jump to adjacent room to secure pool table, since primary aforementioned geek was playing pool while waiting for secondary geek. glare at annoying dude who magically took over table during the last 60 seconds.

455 pm: after narrowly losing at air hockey, emerge triumphant at subsequent round of pool, since annoying dude has left the building.

530 pm: realize it's time to go home. call for your chariot.

6 pm: chariot arrives with a wife and puppy in tow. kiss both. exit stage right.

7 pm: forage for dinner and finally settle on leftovers. attempt to feign interest. fail.

7:20 pm: write checks for bills. wish that you could pay rent online.

7:45 pm: brush my cat because she has skin issues that make her hair mat. ignore 15 minutes of wailing and hissing.

830 pm: watch min like a hawk because her dinner is causing her to have an attack. get meds and a bowl in case she throws up. pump adrenaline intermittently. wait.

9 pm: sit next to min on the couch and have her fall asleep on you while you watch surprisingly interesting little show. pet pearl occasionally after she perches on the other side of you and chews her bone.

9:50 pm: put min to bed. kiss both.

10:15 pm: attempt to feign interest in lame law & 0rder episode. fail.

10:17 pm: put pearl to bed. kiss both.

10:18 pm: get on the internets. catch up on all your reading.

11:45 pm: feel not ready for bed yet. start blogging.

12:10 am: continue to not feel ready for bed, but go anyway. wish your readers sweet dreams and happy ucmjoining.

END TRANS

oh and p.s.

i hate hormones. and ovaries.

get thee to a mummery

i know this is serious, but believe me, my mom would love that i was having fun with these headlines. after all, she came up with murrito.

so the news i have is, she's still in the hospital and they are running tests. they have two theories that they are poking and prodding to death: diabetes, or heart trouble. we will know more late tomorrow, or maybe thursday. in the meantime my mom is exhausted but fine. altho she bit her tongue pretty severely during the seizure, but they didn't have to do stitches.

also i found out that she and my dad are definitely moving up to oregon. to stay with one of my uncles, who has an apartment attached to his house. you may recall i described this a few moons ago as a deplorable sounding place. apparently it has undergone some renevation. but also, my parents are literally out of options. my dad's disability doesn't make it easy for them to get a place on their own, and they've been looking! but at least this seems to be working out, odd a jump as it is.

anyway, thanks to everyone who sent well wishes and other forms of positive vibery! both she and i really appreciate it.

moron!

undefeated champion = me.
i am a moron.
just a fyi.
sorry for the cryptic-ness, but i just have to document this moment for myself.
i now return you to the regular blend of fluff and medical reporting.

i am such a geek

this just came into my inbox, and my first thought was: cool!

Dynamic View Training on UNIX
Come and learn how you can save time by developing with dynamic views. This will be an informative training session on dynamic views. It will clearly demonstrate the benefits of using dynamic views and how to get started with them.


oh and ps. no update on my mom, sorry. my sister's stupid cell doesn't take incoming calls, and i haven't heard from her since yesterday. thanks sis!

mom's the word

please keep my mom in your thoughts. 15 minutes after we returned home, from a great weekend in bodega bay (more on that another time), i got a call from my sister that my mom is in the hospital. apparently she had a seizure (probably grand mal, from the description) while at the mall with my dad. this was about 2 hrs ago, and they'd all just gotten to the ER about 30 minutes earlier, so they have no idea yet what brought this on. anyways, any prayers or good thoughts are greatly appreciated...

sleep, data

apparently i am turning into a night owl. which is truly bizarre to me, because i friggin LOVE sleep. i guess i need an android to trick me into a forced regeneration cycle.

yesterday, redux

again, utter lack of concentration when it comes to being productive. however, i have been able to point out some flaws in other people's work. and try a new frosty caffienated drink. oh and get those itunes errors again.

my work is done.

and now, the rest of the story

it occurs to me that i haven't really updated you all on my home life. so here is an attempt at a BRIEF recap. ok. so:

1. my mom went back to my dad about two weeks ago. she says it's only for a few months while he gets settled, but he also (supposedly) only has 6-12 months left period. they have been saying that for years, but whatever. i don't mean to sound callous. altho i know i am on this point. but i guess i feel like i've heard this before and she's just getting sucked back in. her life though. oh and two bonuses:
   
   - the day after my mom left to come here, my dad apparently tried to kill my sister by throttling her. way to increase family spirit!
   - my dad was later diagnosed as being bipolar. he is on meds now and supposedly is doing much better. i hope that continues to be true.
   
   ps. we really miss her already. it was good to have someone else to bounce ideas off and just generally be silly with.
   pps. taking a break is probably for the best since we were running out of money in the 'help my mom rack up frequent flier miles' department
   
   
2. min just got out of a weeklong stay at the hospital.
   
   what? you thought her surgery was going to take care of everything? no shit, us too! i could regale you with details that min would probably despise me for sharing, but i will just say this: it was kinda scary for a while, but in the end it turned out she has extremely bad diverticulitis and will need to pay even more attention to all the little signs her body does/n't give her in order to avoid losing part of her intestines in the future.
   
   and she does feel a little better now, thanks. but drained, like me, so we're going to go up to bodega bay this weekend with pearl.

ok that's it for now. this ends the blogging tourettes portion of the evening. going to try to invoke some sleep now. later, corn!

sometimes you feel like a nut

actually most of the time i feel like a nut. and not like a Pe-can, almond or chestnut (which i just remembered was an old handle of mine - chest-nut. heh). no, i mean nut like a goofball. this is because, in case you didn't catch it between my more serious posts, i am an extremely silly girl.

and i am good company. this is a little shoutout to NUTS. you know who you are, and you:

1. are all fucking hilarious
   
2. give me a space to mock, enjoy my own wit and inadvertently vent, guilt-free
   
3. keep my inbox from being empty
   
4. make me happy when i'm bored, blue, or both

i wish i could share more of our brilliance with the world, but sadly, there are too many lawyers out there. until the world becomes a safer place, i will enjoy our wimmin's only space and say:

thank you. =)

ok fine

i have been peer pressured into not letting this blog die a quick and painless death. also, liz wisely reminded me that every post does not have to be a tome. with that in mind, and no promises about how often i will post, i bring you this:

i cannot generate any interest in working today. normally i love mucking about in the code, and the window behind me is full of it, ready for me to code sweet love to it, but i'm just bored as shit. i'd much rather look at maternity clothes liz is considering or try to buy songs on itunes but keep getting an error. excellent.

cutesy, girly shirts

are something i sometimes enjoy on other people, but have absolutely no interest in wearing myself. and the same thing holds true for blogging. there are so many blogs i love reading and (sporadically) commenting on. but clearly i have neither the time nor inclination to keep my own blog updated. which i'm sure is obvious to my 3 readers, since my posts have dwindled to nothing.

so, sorry, but consider this official notice. if you are interested in keeping up with me and don't have my email address, go here (to avoid spammers) and drop me a line.

and the rest of you who blog, keep it up! i have an self-entertainment quota to meet. :-)

i love popgadget

because i always find about such interesting things there. like:

- how to geekify your child from an early age

- making the perfect hot dog at home

and so much more! yes, i love popgadget.

and now that my grep is complete, i return you to our regularly scheduled hiatus. although i guess not before randomly saying: things seem to have calmed down with my family. my mom is still with us, and naturally there has been lots of mini-drama between today and the last time i posted. perhaps some day, when i'm less busy, i will regale you with some highlights. in the meantime, think good thoughts for me turning into a fiction writer one day. i certainly have plenty of fodder.

tangled

that's the song on right now, but it's a good description for the last few days because things have been all wacky getting ready for:

my mom to come live with us.

because she's separating from my dad.

and she's going to be here in about 30 minutes.

there's so much more i could say, and i'm sure eventually i will, but at the moment my brain feels a little too fried. i guess i'm just taking a moment to document that fact (or at least i would have completed the 'moment' last night, when the 30 minute thing was true, but blogger was toast).

ok now i'm going back to *trying* to work until i have to leave in a bit. bleh.

p.s. my mom got here fine. i have dramatic re-enactments dancing in my head but otherwise things seem relatively quiet. of course, my mom isn't up yet and who knows what exciting developments there may have been since i went to sleep!

relativity

so as i probably could have predicted, had i not gotten a little too worked up, things are not as dire for my parents as previously thought. this is, of course, the relative, hybridized truth that i've decided on after hearing conflicting stories from my parents and my sister. i really should know better, but i guess that's why i called the last one 'inescapable'. family sucks you back in like no one else.

whether my parents move or don't, where they move, when... well, i just asked my mom to keep me up to date. other than that i think i'm going to stay out of it. well, other than sending them some $. which again i never thought i'd do, but i can't stand the thought of my mom not getting medicine just because insurance won't cover it. especially if it's just $30 freaking dollars/month. an amount that is relatively nothing to me, but everything to my mom.

in other family news, min hasn't been doing so well. she's started having mini-attacks again (almost went to the hospital last week, and she's having a smaller but long-lasting one today) and is back on disability. which hopefully is a temporary thing while they try to adjust some meds, calm things down. keep her in your thoughts.

the inescapable

pearl has a hard time sleeping past 8am and today was no exception. she's fidgeting in her kennel, so fine, i get up and take her out. of course, she has no interest in going to the bathroom once we're outside, but details.

we come inside so i can have my little frosted mini wheats (and she can have baby nibbles i break off for her. and no, she's not spoiled one iota.) while i watch a little bit of the x-files bonus disc that came last night. ah, sweet gillian.

min gets up about 9 and so about 930, after we watch another featurette, i take pearl for a walk up into the hills off alum rock. she's pretty skittish in major traffic areas, so i keep to the side streets, which quickly gets so rural i feel like i'm out in the country. except that the higher into the hills i go, the landscaping and detail on each house borders on opulence. welcome to california. :-)

anyway we do a couple good, leisurely miles because it was just so lovely, sunny but a nice breeze. we get back home around 1030. i shower, lounge a bit more, eat some lunch and head off to get min some algae-eating catfish for her aquarium. since it's a petstore trip and nothing else, little pearl gets to come again. i love traveling with her so much. she either wants to fall asleep on us, or on a seat.

a little while after we get home, i decide to get on the internets. and for that i am blessed with a whopper of an email from my mom, an email that later makes me cry harder and longer than i have in years. here is my attempt at the short version of why:

my parents, who have extremely bad health, have been living with my sister katie & husband jake for about a year. my dad is on permanent disability and my mom is applying for it. she hasn't worked for about 3 years so they've just been living off my dad's $700/month plus food stamps. they moved in with my sister under the grand plan that my sister would pay at least half if not more of the shared living expenses, including rent. at that time i think both katie and jake were working, plus attending trucking school.

that plan never really worked quite right, but for the sake of brevity, let's fast forward to now. katie and jake are on the road with werner trucking and want to move up to portland, OR, closer to one of werner's main offices. there was talk of my parents moving up with them, presumably with my sister's support since they couldn't afford to move by themselves. but for reasons that i still don't get, despite a 2,965 word email, that doesn't appear to be an option anymore.

a new option offered to them is an apartment in salem, OR, on the grounds of a house that my uncle richard owns and lives in along with my mom's parents. and let's just say that this apartment, and the situation in richard's house, sounds so completely and utterly undoable (for physical and psychlogical reasons) for my parents that it breaks my heart that they're even considering it.

why do they need to get out of arizona? they don't. they do need to get out of the apartment that they're in (hello scorpions!), but since they have no money, shit credit, can't even get onto the 4-year waiting list for section 8 housing, and it sounds like my sister may be moving no matter what (leaving them with nowhere), my parents are running out of options.

let me add: my mom did not 'ask me for help'. they don't do that anymore because they used to do it ALL the time and my dad spent that money on stamps instead of rent or food. yeah. both my parents have been in therapy for a few years (government $ doing some good work) and as far as i can tell, shit like that isn't going down anymore.

so my mom didn't ask for help, but she did tell me all about their drama and conclude with comments about how she knows they're paying for their earlier mistakes, and all of this has left her so depressed she cries several times a day, and her antidepressants aren't working any more according to her pain specialist, and she doesn’t know what to do but she's trying to work on it and she begs my forgiveness for any stress this whole thing might cause me.

if this is not a cry for help, i don't know what is. how do i respond and still be a good daughter? as frustrating and annoying as they can be, my parents can also be an incredible amount of fun. i love them and don't want them to have to struggle so damn hard for their existence.

sorting through all this... that's why i spent most of yesterday afternoon crying. min and i are considering everything from committing to sending them some $ each month all the way to having them move in with us. and i have to tell you, i NEVER thought that day would come, for so many reasons that i won't get into because this post is long enough already.

i'm trying to get a hold of my sister, objectively hear what's going on from her POV and then decide what i want to do. i can't solve all their problems and i shouldn't. but i have to do something. i just wish i knew what the fuck that was.

the truth is out there

and now for my 'it only took me 3 days to do this between firestorms' post...

i don't mind experimentation -in fact i love it- but going blonde is a mistake for some people. and someone who should never go blonde is gillian anderson. at least not full on blonde like she is now.

i found that pic yesterday, after looking up the little hottie. after finally seeing the last x-files ever (i know it finished several years ago, but i stopped watching the last few years) i thought, man! no more x-ies! ok fine, what's new with that damn sexy redhead now? and then when i found her, obviously i went into Shock.

so yes, i found out she has a couple of movies coming soon, and i for that i am very glad. but i also hope that means that soon i will start seeing red. or at least, not blonde. i'm all set in the blonde department, thanks.

i rule

every quarter at work, they give an award to whoever fixed the most bugs. last quarter that was me. i rule.

i got this the day before my birthday, which was nice. but also for my birthday i got a really horrendous bug/throat infection/god knows what, of which i haven't fully recovered from (i'm 98% there tho).

anyway, to what do i attribute my bug fu success? my quality work ethic? workaholic nature? well naturally those played a part, but no. the real reason is that i was the lead on an insanely f'd up project at work that lasted for months. which led to insane numbers of bugs being assigned to me.

so, don't worry, liz. you'll win next quarter. again.

ps. sorry to everyone for the last two posts. those really were too long. i don't think i'll get the urge to do something like that again, but if i get tempted, i'll try to stick my finger in a socket first or something.

road trippin, part two

and now, i bring you the continuing saga of the Great Road Trip of 2005:

saturday, 7/23
what'd we do for breakfast? I forget. but checked out of the sheraton, went over to see wilma real quick to let our ice paks hibernate in her freezer til monday morning (when we'd have to return to tucson to get lori). then we made the trek up to phoenix to visit my side of the family. arrived around 12 and called, as planned, when we got close to see if they wanted to go to outhouse steakback for lunch.

but naturally it couldn't be as simple as that. no, my mom started crying because they didn't have enough money to go to lunch and she was embarrassed. plus they were having trouble in general because my sister/brother-in-law's (katie/jake) check hadn't arrived yet (my parents share an apartment with them) and were having to cover all the expenses. of course she couldn't say that at first, she just hinted that there was trouble with katie and that she thought katie didn't want to come to lunch.

sidebar: my sister and my parents can create drama, confusion and conflicting versions of the truth like no one I know.

so when she said that there was 'trouble' and 'did I want katie to come', I said 'if katie coming means that people are going to have trouble behaving, then no, I don't want her to come. if you don't think there will be a problem, then yes, please tell her to come.' I know that may sound harsh but it's just a defense mechanism against further family angst.

anyway, whenever my family comes to visit or we visit them, we always try to treat them to whatever we're doing - movies, meals, whatever. because even though we're faaaaar from rich, we gots a lot more dough than they do because they (the four of them) are perpetually broke. the reasoning for that is another therapy session, but suffice to say that we expect to treat them. budget for it. so when my mom started crying, I said that I understood why she was upset, but not to worry about it because we'd cover it. she replied as expected with a statement about not expecting that, and of course I responded with, 'I know, it's ok.'

and so off we went to lunch, altho naturally outhouse steakback was closed so we ended up at a mimi's café a few blocks away. after that call with my mom, min and I were both pretty anxious about how lunch would go, but it was really good. min sat near my parents and i forget what insights she found. but for me, talking to katie and jake, i found out more about their trucking misadventures. apparently they did not quit their job, but are actively looking for other trucking jobs because they've realized that the company they're with is not as above board as they thought. and i respect them for trying to be responsible (it's a lot more than i'm used to hearing).

after lunch we went back to their apartment. they moved into it in january i believe, so it was the first time i'd seen it and…my god. it was packed to the gills with all their stuff. not to the ceiling, although in some places it was very close. but it spread out so that a narrow path between boxes, furniture and just STUFF was the only way to navigate from room to room. the place was tinyish, but each couple had their own bedroom/bathroom. as a bonus, in the last 2 weeks, katie & jake's bathroom has sported the occasional scorpion. that's right! zing! apparently this is grounds for breaking your lease in arizona, if the management doesn't take care of it (which he's refusing to) so hopefully they'll all be moving somewhere bigger and better soon. needless to say, this revelation made me paranoid during every visit to their place.

we chilled for a few hours, then after much debate, went to go see the fantastic 4 which was really a lot better than i expected. really good special fx and the story - not so bad. not gonna win any oscars but it was a good way to stay cool and you know, get out of Scorpion Apartment. after the movie…hmm. we probably had dinner somewhere, but i'm blanking on it.

afterwards min and i went back to our hotel, the hilton phoenix airport, which is apparently very new. it was nice but had horribly long hallways and of course we were most of the way down. good thing we were only staying for one night. we watched tv for a little while and ordered a very yummy and cheap quesadilla from room service, then crashed.

sunday, 7/24
woke up early (730) so min could go visit her niece wendy. another very long story that i don't want to tell today, but wendy is a sweet girl who because of a minor lapse in judgment involving alcohol, is in prison for vehicular manslaughter. consider this a very brief PSA to not drink and drive.

anyway, i was supposed to call my family and meet them for breakfast, but i remembered that they like to sleep in. so i lounged around a few hours then went over to their place. after another debating session that went on entirely too long, we went to mcgrath's.

mcgrath's will always hold a special place in my heart because i went to the original and original spinoff back in salem, oregon LIKE A BANDIT. the spinoff was in lancaster mall and being a teenager, naturally i was at the mall a lot. but i was also downtown a lot, where the original is, and that one was the best. breakfast, lunch, dinner, they had it all. super yummy and not too pricey. i've been to 3 or 4 mcgrath's since (other places in oregon, arizona), but unfortunately, none of those were as good as the original. they were fine -- better than denny's or anything like that! -- but not the same. oh well.

we had a very extended lunch, chatting away. dad asked me a lot about The Place Where I Work and the Big Project i've had this year because he still trolls for stamps (the philatelic kind) at The Place Where I Work's parent company website. while this may sound innocuous, it really bothered me because my dad has an addiction to stamps. the buying, selling, collection and obsession with stamps, especially from the far east. this addiction, in addition to some other lovely personality traits, led my parents down a path of financial devastation from which they will probably never fully recover. they lost their house, cars (still have one barely functioning car) and many other possessions. my dad almost lost my mom (she left him a few times but always returned) and i lost a lot of respect for both of them (mostly my dad).

that said, i'm also really good at denial. so i answered his questions and tried not to think about WHY he was asking. supposedly he's not buying stamps anymore, he just looks at them and catalogues information about them in his billions of stamp catalogs. which seems to me like an alcoholic spending all his time with his face pressed against the glass of a liquor store, but whatever. i try to stay out of it.

min came to mcgrath's after she was done visiting wendy. min was also lucky enough to hear the tail end of the aforementioned work-stamp conversation and gave me some annoyed looks. yeah, i know.

afterwards we went back to the apartment and hung out a little but then thought hey! let's go see another movie. isn't that the best way to kill time with people you feel emotionally unsettled with who also have an extremely cramped apartment? i know we all thought so. so we agreed to go see batman begins which, except for a couple of too-long philosophy-of-war monologues and blurry fight scenes, was actually pretty good. but before the movie, both my dad, and katie & jake wanted to take naps. and they did! but min, my mom and i went to the outlet mall right next to the theater and snagged min a bunch of really cheap but nice clothing.

the movie didn't get out til about 10pm so after that we just said our goodbyes and jetted down to tucson. on the way down, i got to find out some juicy tidbits about min's family, as related to the funeral proceedings. my favorites include the fact that pam (matt's mom), a longtime drug user who just finished her last rehab stint a month or so ago: a) was caught doing drugs at the viewing, b) those drugs were supplied by a longtime friend of pam and matt's - a woman whose son matt was friends with, but that son died at age 13 (so probably about 4-5 years ago if they were the same age) after his similar death-by-cop experience, c) pam didn't need any $ for the funeral at ALL. her we're-separated-but-still-living-together husband, rick, paid for it, and despite this, d) pam apparently gave her/min's brother louis shit for not sending her more $ than he did.

needless to say, things like this made the trip to tucson just fly by! we checked into the lovely 4 pts sheraton around midnight and promptly zonked out.

monday 7/25
woke up around 9am. wanna have breakfast at the good egg again? i sure do! and let's meet up with all the family except lori so we can avoid extra drama. i hear she doesn't have to check out of the hotel until 1pm, sweet! but wait, who's this calling on the phone, as we sit here, waiting for our large party to be seated at a table? and proclaiming how she has to be picked up right now (1015) because her hotel's checkout time is 1030?

you guessed it - my favorite sister-in-law. but min just called her back and said we couldn't pick her up until 1pm and pretty much left it at that. woo! go honey!

we had a very nice breakfast with everyone else (about 10 of us total), chatted quite a bit about not much in particular. but so much that it was almost 12 by the time we finished, and 1230 by the time we got over near lori so we just went ahead and picked her up early. good thing because it took about a half hour to pack her stuff back into the car between her trips back and forth to the room, plus complaining to the manager again about some random problem with her room, bill, or whatever.

by this time lori was pretty grumpy but we cheered her up by going to the aforementioned fabric store. sas fabrics i believe. their deal is a lot of the fabric is by the pound instead of by the yard. plus, they had craploads of fabrics. wow. so we helped deplete their supply, quite admirably i might add, and then started down the Road Entirely Too Traveled.

but before we got on i-10, we stopped for ice cream at the coldstone creamery. yum yum!

ok anyway, on the way to california, min and i swapped stories about MY side of the family. min had heard from my parents that they wanted katie & jake to get their own place and to stay with the trucking company. that k&j were driving them batty in some way (probably in part because they hadn't really lived up to the original agreement to support my parents, who are living just on my dad's disability checks).

however, k&j told me that mom & dad had prayed and god told them that they should quit the trucking company and get local trucking jobs. katie also told me that yeah they were looking for another place, but for all of them because of the scorpions (bleh). but katie also said that they didn't want to do that right away so that they could keep bringing in trucking $. you know, being financially responsible (about time).

i'm sure there's more juicy gossip i don't remember right now, because it's taken me too goddamn long to finish this post (work insanity). but really the whole visit just served to remind me Why I Stay Out Of My Family's Business. oh and Why Feigning Obliviousness Is A Great Way To Deal With Conflicting 'Truths'.

we had a pretty quiet ride back to california, really. except, that is, for every time we had to burst out with "bump!" or "curve!" for lori so she wouldn't wheeze and whimper after every time we encountered such items and she hadn't noticed they were impending.

stopped at many a truck stop. truck stops are one of my favorite parts of road trips. i don't know why. i don't know if it's the odd conglomeration of options (showers, arcades, icees, down-home country cooking, dvd rentals and miniaturized appliances) or the fact that being there just means that i'm on the road. and i love that road, man!

at one truck stop we picked up an audio book that looked interesting. don't ask me to tell you the name of it - WE ALREADY SOLD IT. but it was a mildly interesting thriller. the worst part was the narrator, who had this god-awful southern drawl. it was so bad we almost called it quits after a few seconds! but it softened a bit, and thankfully there were some other characters without the twang attack.

the best/worst part was the straight sex scene around disc 3. it started up and i said, 'if this goes on too long, i want to fast forward.' min said, 'well…' yea, we lasted about 30 seconds. so we fastforward a few chapters. still heaving. skipped some more. she's feeling his… FASTFORWARD!! then, i swear to god, the lead female goes to get chicken breasts from the freezer. i said, 'what kind of crazy straight sex ritual is this?' so we rewinded just a bit… no, she was just makin her man supper afterwards. twerp.

we rolled into badass rialto, calif around 11pm and discovered the inexplicable joy of yet another best western. though dark outside, its 3 stories+pool looked nice and new. min goes to check us in and upon return we find out that the room lori so carefully coordinated ahead of time (scent free, first floor, handicapped, etc) is not available. we have a 2nd floor room.

i'm fine with that. min's fine with that. but of course lori is not, so she goes back to intimidate the hotel employee, who could clearly care less, into giving her what she wants. this is a great way to end a full day of interstate driving, in case you wondered. when you're tired, can't wait to go to bed, you should try just hanging out by the car for 20 minutes or so and watching all the other hotel guests getting impatient at the increasingly long checkin line. however, this was an opportune time to point out to min that the short flight of stairs lori would have to climb is nothing compared to the 2 miles she has to walk each time she works at the farm in fremont (which she does 1-3 times a week). but i digress.

finally lori returns. turns out all the rooms on the first floor are smoking. trippy! our room is still on the 2nd floor and way down the hallway, but turns out there's an elevator! also no more handicapped rooms left so too bad for you and your faux needs. min gets to the room first and turns on the air. i arrive second and min says, 'don't show lori the AC' and points up to the vent near the ceiling. i've seen worse, but it was pretty dirty and surprisingly old looking. there wasn't really a lot we could do about it, but thankfully lori didn't notice (or didn't say anything, anyway).

no, lori got herself bringing all her shiite up, then busy going to the jacuzzi to ease her back. sure, fine, go. inbetween lori's trips, min pointed out how stained the carpet was. at first i didn't see it but then…i didn't want to take my shoes off. so except for the vent, stained carpet, cracks in the bathroom linoleum, the lamest ppv ever, and mirror placed behind the tv so you couldn't use it - that best western was great!

tuesday 7/26
i can't wait to get home. we got up around 9, packed up, and started looking for a place to have breakfast. stupid mcdonalds stopped their bagel sandwiches! so we tried burger king, i got some egg thing i thought i could tolerate on my upset stomach. sigh. finally we get on the road.

again, today was really pretty quiet overall i think. we remained mildly entertained by our audio book. no more weird chicken sex, thank god.

mid-afternoon we rolled into gilroy and stopped at mimi's café again, but just to pick up the receipt book that lori had accidentally left there on our first visit. oh and get muffins to go, heh. an hour or so later, we dropped lori off at her fabulous semi-permanent residence: the quality inn, sunnyvale. then we scurried home to unpack and see our critters. poor pearl, she's always a bit frazzled when we're gone for more than a day or two. but we just try to spoil her with extra love. she seems to take that ok.

that's it. now back to my usual not-so-much-drama-and-i'm-okay-with-that life. i do have things to report on since that trip (that i haven't posted, in attempt to wrap this novella up), like this, but i think we all deserve a break for now. :-p

road trippin, part one

since my computer died, I have a bit of somewhat guilt-free time at work while I have to redo some clearcase/related processes. wheee. thus I bring you my arizona road trip report, part one. apparently I've had a lot to say about this trip, so I'm breaking my recap into a couple posts.

wednesday 7/20
got the rental car, went to whole foods and got some snacks. back home to pack up snacks and the rental car. then went to get lori and all her stuff at the hotel…got all her stuff in, so was a relatively drama-free experience. everything seems rosy at the beginning. we leave sunnyvale about 230pm, heading for ontario. should get us in about 7-8pm but we have to stop every 2-3 hours for food, gas or other biological imperatives. stopped for an early dinner at mimi's café in gilroy (very yummy scallop dish). later stopped for gas in extremely hot and smelly coalinga (bovine hell). so it is that we arrive at the completely unimpressive best western ontario about 11pm.

min had some minor trouble with them confirming our AAA rate, but worked it out. also lori had called ahead to make sure the room was scent-free and conformed to whatever other medical specifications she had. unfortunately the hotel van was parked in the only handicapped parking next to our room. after some wrangling, she got them to move and I was lucky enough to get to move the car closer. incidentally lori had already moved all of her stuff over already on foot. but I digress.

the room itself was pretty damn basic, but clean enough. except for the bathroom which had a minor ant problem (hi baby! bet you're glad I didn't tell you that til now, eh?). I got rid of what I could that night and didn't see any more in the morning thank goodness.

thursday 7/21
had a mediocre continental breakfast at the hotel around 9am. went to get gas before we left town and took one curve, and then a few moments later, a bump a little too quickly. lori yelps, practically screams both times. apparently she has some kind of problem with her back. which we knew about. and we'd been trying to drive carefully but … well, sometimes the unexpected happens, especially when you're driving somewhere new. and you can't remember to announce (let alone notice) every bloody curve or bump in the road that could potentially be a problem. so min asks lori to calm down a little and not shout every time we encounter something like this. lori says she can't help reacting. blah blah blah. I SO don't want to be in the car.

after a few minutes, they work it out, we get gas and get on i-10 east in relative silence (music, little talking) for the next few hours. all I can say is it's a good thing I really like being a passenger on road trips. I just zone out, appreciating the scenery whether it's the peculiarities of a small town we're driving through, watching clouds move across distant mountains, or noticing how this one type of arizona cactus and its budding blossoms look like a little tiki god. there are hundreds of them and they're all providing me the teeniest bit of comic relief. also providing comic relief is lori, talking with the oxygen tank people in tucson, trying to arrange replacements and a wheelchair since we didn't have room for all that.

we roll into tucson around 7pm and check into our hotel (4 pts sheraton) briefly before going over to lori's hotel to drop her off. then min and i go back to our hotel and chill out the rest of the night. tried to get together with her sister wilma but she was at matt's viewing til almost 10pm so just agreed to see her the next morning at the funeral. anyway, our sheraton room was VERY comfy. a big luxurious bed, lots of room, very clean. and video games, so I get my yearly fix by kicking yoshi's ass until my eyes got too blurry to continue.

friday, 7/22
went to a place called the good egg for breakfast. min can't eat a lot so we split some not-too-shabby eggs benedict. funeral was at 10am. drove up to a ton of gangster-looking types hanging outside the funeral home chapel. apparently this group comprised several of matt and jr's friends, many of whom were wearing special tshirts they'd made, with matt's pic on it, saying 'you will not be forgotten' on the front and little hands praying on the back.

we went inside but didn't see anyone we knew right away. after a minute we found vanessa (min's neice), who let us know where the rest of the family was. apparently a friend of jr's had gotten pulled over en route so jr (and friend) were waiting to proceed until said friend finished with the cop. so while we waited, we stepped into the sanctuary. matt was about 50 feet in front of us and it was (in my opinion) unfortunately an open casket. I say unfortunate not because it made things 'too real', although sure, there was an element of that. no, it's because IT DIDN'T LOOK LIKE HIM. it had nothing to do with how he died -- I just didn't realize how much embalming could change how someone looked. min wanted to sit further away because this was weirding her out (rightly so) but other family members started balking so we moved up to the fourth row, maybe 15 feet away.

within a few minutes the service started, and that itself was very weird. mostly because it almost completely glossed over his extremely checkered past and instead focussed on his recent churchgoing ways (in between prison stints, that is). all I can think is that SuperMinister (who freely admitted to not really remembering matt - a nice touch, I thought) thought that this funeral was the perfect opportunity to bring all the gang attendees to the lord. during the 20 minute service/sermon, SuperMinister informed us at least 5 times that we should take this opportunity to reflect on the direction of our lives and accept jesus as our lord and savior, because if matt were able to speak, that's what he'd tell us. the hyper-christianity led lori and her husband aaron (who are jewish) to leave about halfway through. a bit drama queenish but I expect nothing less, really! SuperMinister also closed the service with a direct altar call via prayer. very classy.

also during the service they asked the attendees to share stories about matt. several relatives spoke, and it became clear that he really did earn the nickname smiley legitimately. apparently he had a habit of smiling a lot - with certain people - especially ones that he visited/called out of the blue, just to say hi and how it was going. while very sweet, it also made me sad. he must have had a real soft, good side to him that just got twisted and shadowed by the thrill-seeking side that perpetually landed him into trouble.

afterwards, we all went outside and drove over to the part of the facility where the actual cemetary was, to have another mini-service while they laid him in the ground. amazingly it wasn't too horribly hot - around 100 but a very nice breeze. it took a while for everyone to get over there, but in the meantime I got to see min's dad's plot. her mom's name is already on the other half of it, which is a little creepy but I was informed that it's relatively traditional for spouses to do that. anyway, once everyone arrived, matt's brother jr read a few words, then everyone said goodbye by placing flowers or dirt on the casket. also they released balloons into the air.

from there we went to wilma's house (min's sister) to have lunch and reminisce. it was pretty damn mellow and many people hung out for several hours. in the late afternoon min started feeling really sick and had to lay down for a while, but eventually felt well enough for us to go back to our room. if I remember right, she got a nap for a little bit and we also watched the interpreter (pretty good!) on pay per view. later we went out to dinner (mediocre mexican) with lori, aaron, wilma and min's mother. on the way there, saw the bargain sas fabric store that we would later visit on monday. :-D

part two coming soon...

survey says: i had downtime today!

What with funerals and computers crashing, I’m just now getting to this. So, a bit of fun before I post about all that (sometime over the next week or so).

1. What is your occupation? Product Content Developer
   
2. What color is your underwear? An extremely pale blue
   
3. What are you listening to right now? LizD and MichaelM typing, my stomach growling, and too-loud people in the conference room behind me.
   
4. What was the last thing you ate? Frosted mini wheats (breakfast)
   
5. Do you wish on stars? No, but I like to look at them.
   
6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Mahogany, mahogany, mahogany!
   
7. How is the weather right now? Mildly warm.
   
8. Last person you spoke to on the phone? A helpdesk technician because my work computer is experiencing terminal errors
   
9. Do you like the person who (sent this to) you copied this from? Yes
   
10. How old are you today? 32.9589 years old
    
11. Favorite drink? Mango Fandango (Knudsen soda). Most common drink is water, but I wouldn’t normally call it a favorite.
    
12. Favorite sport to watch? Basketball, not that I watch anymore.
    
13. Have you ever dyed your hair? Nope. It changes color at its own whim.
    
14. Do you wear contacts or glasses? Glasses.
    
15. Pets? 2 kitties, muffie and dolce. And of course, pearl the wonderpuppy!
    
16. Favorite month? November I guess. Cooler weather, paid time off and yummy food.
    
17. Favorite food? Probably almost anything with carbs
    
18. What was the last movie you watched? Spiderman 2, last night. A mediocre but mildly entertaining movie.
    
19. Favorite day of the year? Christmas. Presents, good food and holiday stuff everywhere!
    
20. What do you do to vent anger? Glower. Alternately make snarky comments and avoid speaking.
    
21. Fall or Spring? Fall
    
22. Hugs or kisses? Smooches!
    
23. Cherry or Blueberry? Raspberry
    
24. Do you want your friends to blog you back? Good idea, but I’m not sure who’s left.
    
25. Who is most likely to respond? A ghost
    
26. Who is least likely to respond? Same answer.
    
27. Who do you live with? Min plus the critters listed above
    
28. When was the last time you cried? Really cried…wow. Several months ago? Don’t remember. But got misty at the funeral last Friday.
    
29. What is on the floor of your closet? Carpet. Also shoes and one corner dedicated to gift wrap and wrapping accessories
    
30. Who is the friend you have had the longest? Karen, from junior high, although we only email once every few years.
    
31. What did you do last night? Watched my computer tumble towards death. Enjoyed the evening at home (dinner, walking pearl, email, watching a movie)
    
32. Favorite smell? Um..
    
33. What inspires you most? People living life to the fullest. Oh, and really funny people. It inspires me to be even funnier.
    
34. What are you afraid of? A life without chocolate.
    
35. Plain, cheese or spicy hamburgers? Cheese please!
    
36. Favorite car? Normally I would say “none” because I don’t really think about it. But then I met Betty. Case closed.
    
37. Favorite dog breed? I have plenty I don’t like, but most of the rest, bring ‘em on!
    
38. Number of keys on your key ring? 5 – 3 for the house, 1 for the car, 1 for my bike lock
    
39. How many years at your current job? .86301 years
    
40. Favorite day of the week? Saturday or Sunday will do just fine!

Whew!

it's a family affair

as a reprieve from our own personal dramas, i now bring you drama from the unbearably hot streets of tucson, arizona: early wednesday morning, min's nephew matt was shot and killed by local police.

no i am not kidding.

i was ready to tell you all about it but min just sent me that article a little bit ago. and turns out some of the facts were wrong so see? link's even better than my version. although the article doesn't also mention that matt's mother, pam, also recently had a fire blaze through her apartment complex, demolishing most of her belongings, and that her husband rick recently lost his job. leaving them with no income at present.

min wasn't super close to matt, so she seems to be doing ok. (sidebar: she's doing a bit better, tube came out fine (by itself!), she's got more energy, just having some trouble eating). but we are going down to help support the rest of the local family, which is understandably pretty shook up. especially, it sounds like, his brother, who witnessed the event and has a similar history with the prison system, unfortunately.

funeral is next friday so i'll be taking off a few days while we trek down there. meantime i've got craploads of work to do so i probably won't be posting much for a while (like i've got tourettes now). if you feel so inclined, please send your well wishes/good thoughts to min's family, particularly his brother paul (JR) and mother pam.

now this is cryptic

the adventures of TerseMan

all i can say is i hope this guy uses paypal to send the "reward money". clearly this guy spends a lot of time at the keyboard. too much time, i suspect. and by enabling him to send money with a few keystrokes, paypal can help him continue his strange little life.

adventures of baroness min-chausen

yesterday min went to get her j-tube removed, both because she doesn't need it (yay!) and it was getting too cranky to stay there anymore.

ok fine. but a few seconds after WonderSurgeon starts pulling it out, min SCREAMS. for most people, says the doc, it just comes right out and doesn't hurt. but you know us queers, we gotta be different. apparently min wasn't really ready to let go just yet. WonderSurgeon says problem is most likely the swelling around the tube so it should be better next week, now that min's on antibiotics for it.

other than yesterday's excitement, min is doing relatively well. eating, overall, is going more smoothly both in terms of what options are and how well the food goes down. still having more trouble with the latter than she'd like, but at least once in a while - brace yourself - we can eat the same food.

i know that doesn't sound like an earth-shattering comment, but about two weeks ago, we prepared a meal together that we both subsequently ate. and that hasn't happened since..hmm.. maybe february or march. it's been quite a while, and it was fun. i kinda forgot how much so.

also i can tell she is doing better because in general she is more chatty and just happier. funny how not being in contant, almost unbearable pain will make you chipper. :-p so i'm happy for her and i'm happy for us.

and now for some randomness:
i can't believe this is news
badass science stickers
nietzschesaurus

the elves have spoken

i have been certified fit for duty in the areas of

• Code of Business Conduct
  
• What you need to know about E-mail

although i passed with flying colors, here are some things i learned before passing the exams:

• What E-mail Is (and Is Not!)
  
• It's never a good idea to send a funny e-mail to coworkers.
  
• E-mail messages are a virus's best friend.
  
• Don't send any message that you'd be embarrassed to see on the front page of the newspaper with your name on it.

and that last one is why i'm so glad i have such low standards. i don't care, plaster my wiseass messages all over the paper! i'll just laugh.

wearing the pants (and flowers)

after reading this, suddenly i'm remembering back when min and i were getting flowers for our commitment ceremony. early on the florist, filling out her standard wedding form, said, 'so who's the groom?' and i said, 'first of all, there is no groom. second, you can put down heather.'

the completely flustered and confused look on her face was priceless. we'd already told her it was us two girls gettin hitched, and we were standing right in front of her during this whole thing, but did that stop her from asking such a stupid question? noooo.

and actually she was totally cool. it was just her being straight, clueless and trapped in HeteroVision, i'm sure. but it was still fun to freak out The Straight Person for a minute. bwahaha.

so i've been a little busy

and haven't posted recently. but in case you were wondering, not only have i been kicking ass, i'm on fire. so much that this image got sent to me yesterday as proof:

so there you go.

bite my shiny metal blog entry

my coworker michael forwarded this piece of futurama awesomeness to me. i think he could tell i liked futurama by all the paraphenelia around my cube, but that's just a wild guess.

btw for the min's-health-status followers: min is doing fair. she got an infection in her surgery site, which now is high maintenance instead of low. but it seems to be healing ok so far, so she should be doing better (less pain, more mobile) in about a week. also doing a bit better on the food front, now she's starting to eat semi-solid food. yay! much easier for this non-cook to manage. :-)

mahogany love

this woman named "mahogany love" posted today on a list i'm on. her actual email was kind of sad. but her name...well i can't resist commenting. mostly because when i was in first grade, my best friend and i loved the word "mahogany" so much that we would just say it to each other and start giggling. apparently i thought it was funny enough to say to my parents too because to this day they'll bust out with "mahogany!" just to get me to laugh.

obviously i could have a lot more fun with this woman's name, but i don't have time or mental energy to do it justice. and i think it does quite well on its own, really.

return of the min!

min got home tonight, woo! she's hanging in there, doesn't seem to be too bad with her at-home pain meds (which only took ~5 phone calls to the doctor, ~10 calls to varying pharmacies, and 2.5 hours to fill at the pharmacy). right now she's watching a dvd and getting sleepy i think. hope.

tomorrow her sister lori starts her award-winning role of nurse, and i can't describe how grateful i am. i could have taken a few days off, and i would have been fine, but then i wouldn't have vacation later (we're hoping to take a bit, in a month or so when she's better). on top of that, lori used to be a bonafide nurse, so she'll do a much better job than me. and as an extra primo good bonus, she COOKS. and min will need lots of blending, cooking and food preparation over the next several weeks. i cook like, spaghetti. homemade soup? special fruit/fortified concoctions? um. yeah, you have the wrong heather.

in more personal news, i seem to have calmed the fuck down. sorry if i weirded anybody out with my earlier rants. i'll claim stress, stress and hormones as a defense strategy. oh, and stress. in any case, things seem to be calming down externally and internally, and whether that's permanent or fleeting, i don't care. i'll take the respite either way. i likes my sanity.

and i like bouncing. bounce bounce!

murphy's law

ack. probably because i just admitted to my evil twin, min just called me to say she's having a lot of trouble all of a sudden with pain, distension and nausea. the distension makes me think it's the food she's eaten, that it's not moving down correctly. they just have her on soups, yogurt, but still. today has seen her first non-IV nourishment post-surgery. ieeeee.

also i forgot to mention earlier that today min officially lost her job. they sent her a letter explaining why (inability to work? what gives?) and in an unexpected but pleasant twist, they will continue to pay her health benefits through the end of AUGUST. 3 extra months that we don't have to worry about, if it takes her that long to get another job. hopefully she'll be able to start looking for work in a month or so, after she's healed.

so, next time you're thinking of min, please send her an extra ray of positivity for tonight's struggles and for the challenges ahead.

all part of life's rich pageantry

min is doing a lot better, yay! she's still sleeping a lot but is having a lot less pain (5 out of 10) and been going for a couple of walks down the hall each day. she is still not up for talking really but i have been sending on everyone's well wishes and prayers to her, so keep 'em coming! at this point, we are guessing she might come home monday or tuesday but our next talk with the doctor will be telling. whenever that might occur - doc has been a tad awol.

in other news, i am in this weird place where i am both loving and hating (different) recent changes in myself. fyi, good + bad does not equal null. it equals self-induced torture.

and i can torture myself with the best of them, i tell you what. when i was younger i used to cut (still have some faint scars on one arm) and journal like a bandit because i was too shy or embarassed to talk out loud. i'm sane enough not to cut anymore, and i've developed enough charm (hah) to have acquired friends who let me yammer sometimes and don't call me an idiot (to my face anyway).

but maybe that's what i need - someone to tell me to step off. wake me up. give me a reality check. but in other ways, i feel recently my eyes have been reopened to the world. i guess what i'm saying is right now i'm not sure i trust my own judgement. i feel a little lost.

sleep, glorious sleep

just back from visiting min tonight. she is doing a bit better overall but still having a pretty difficult time. lori was with her all day until i got there about 6pm, and i'm so glad she was there to help her! apparently min even got up and walked down the hall a bit, woo! so that's good. but her pain was still pretty high (never below 7, usually 8-9). fortunately that special cocktail i mentioned yesterday got put on her regular pharmaceutical rotation, so i'm sure that's why she did better today.

after lori left, within about a half hour min started falling asleep. and proceeded to sleep, on and off (mostly on), for the next 4 hours or so. believe it or not, sleep's quite an accomplishment - her pain has been so unyielding that she's barely slept over the last 3 days. so i was very glad she zonked out!

but at the same time, it was weird because i'd been away from her all day, and after i get there she falls asleep. if she hadn't been in the hospital (or sick, because for a while this was happening at home,too), i'd say it was time for a marriage counselor. i know today's sleepfest was just because she felt happy and safe once i was sitting next to her, but i still felt pretty alone. thankfully my friends in tvland were good for passing the time and helping me ignore my true feelings. tv rocks! denial, i love it! wheee!

choose your own adventure

over the last week i have:

spent 42 hours in the same clothes
screamed and laughed at almost the same instant
admitted to truths that should remain hidden
lied to keep the status quo
reveled in fruits forbidden and permissable
felt, caused, and tried to alleviate pain
enjoyed and despised silence
taken the road well travelled
wanted the other road more than life itself

i've been:
reckless
responsible
cavalier
compassionate
selfish
selfless

and most importantly, i would imagine, is that i've been without much sleep in the last two days (45 minutes in total). in other words, all the above is true, but that doesn't mean i'm not being slightly melodramatic, either, due to lack of REM. sorry to be cryptic, but there are some things you just can't blog about in intimate detail about without avoiding interpersonal crises. and yes i know that by saying that, i leave myself open to having to deal with it later. later is fine. this is enough honesty for today.

on the other hand, maybe i'm just chickenshit. maybe someday i will be a little braver and say what i really feel instead of what i think or filtering it all first. on the other other hand, maybe i should just shut up.

ok enough. i need to go to bed. and since i crammed enough metaphor and angst into the beginning of this post, here's a more legible update:

min's surgery appears to have gone smoothly. however, her recovery is not so swell. insane amounts of pain and nausea, which began to get mildly, mildly under control this afternoon. tonight she got another special cocktail from the doctor that seemed to bring things down to a 7/10 for the first time in almost 2 days. so i'm hoping she will get some solid rest tonight. her sister lori is with her (i spent last night, woo) now thru 6pm thursday. that means i can go to work tomorrow for the whole day! ironic that it's the day we're doing an offsite of a purportedly quite silly nature. good thing i can be pretty damn silly. in any case, it promises to be a diversion and i do welcome that since i'm feeling the tiniest bit loopy.

that's my cue. head: hit pillow!

d-day is coming

so as i mentioned the other day, min's surgery has been scheduled. it's in just 3 days. wow.

i'm still a bit fuzzy on the complete details, but i can tell you that they are doing this and this and a similar thing to that last one up in her esophagus because of her achalasia. and yes that's a new term to both min and i and yes we gave our surgeon a hard time for giving us a hard time for not knowing it since no doctor had ever told her the technical name for that condition. :-p

anyway, i hear there will also be an external tube involved but that should be temporary. also because of the complexity they have to do it open (large incision) instead of laproscopic.

needless to say min is pretty freaked out. but she is handling it pretty well by not thinking about it too much. nice that after 9 years together (anniversary last week) that behavior of mine has rubbed off on her a little bit, heh. i mean, we are preparing and all, and trying to do some fun things to stay a little distracted (going to star wars in a few hours, woo!) but i know it's not very far towards the back of our minds.

so if you made it this far, please keep her in your thoughts for this tuesday morning and the rest of the week really. thanks to everyone who has sent well wishes so far, too.

living and breathing

about 1030am today i got a call from min. she said, "pearl's dying! get home as fast as you can so we can go to the vet!"

in case you were wondering, that's a great way to start a phone call.

normally it takes me 15-20 minutes to get home. today i made it home in 10. i would say that i, um, bended some laws, but i was still safe.

right before i got home, min called to see if i was close. yes. so she told me she'd be waiting on the sidewalk with pearl so we could just go to the vet. i pulled up and min has pearl, a limp little lump, wrapped in a towel. they get in the car and she tells me: pearl ate some of her (min's) pain medicine.

she'd already called the vet so they knew we were en route. they're only a few miles down the road so we got there pretty quick. they rushed her to the back and got her started on all those lovely medicines that make you vomit, plus monitoring her vitals.

while we waited for the doctor to come in, she told me more about what happened at the house. how pearl sneakily got into the medicine, the subsequent roster of symptoms particular to a dog dying (which she has seen many times, unfortunately, since she used to work at the SPCA), and her frantic dash about the house trying to get help for pearl and get ready to leave (was still in her PJ's).

a few minutes later, the doctor came to us and told us that they'd started the meds, etc. that her system was naturally a little depressed but they would be keeping a close watch on her and try to clear the BAD medicine from her body. learned that there is a medicine for counteracting the effect of opiates! interesting.

anyway, he said to call back about 130 to check her status, presuming they hadn't needed to call us first with a change for the worse. but when min called - yay! - she was doing LOTS better. heart rate up, she was more alert, and it seemed like she'd be able to go home tonight. yay! and apparently she'd gotten everything out of her system at home. so, icky for min to clean up, but glad it got out so fast, really. probably kept pearl from getting as sick as she could have.

i suppose i'm jinxing things by saying pearl's fine when she's not actually home yet, but...i'm just so happy she's alright. she is SO our little baby. our little pearl. i can't really deal with thinking about her dying, so i'm glad reality swerved away from that possibility relatively quickly. :-p got enough going on already, anyway.

min's surgery is scheduled. for reals, for trues. for may 31st and i'll write more about it later. not enough time or energy today.

for sale: integrity

this is just so wrong. not because INXS was some kind of awesome band that championed the environment, queer rights and things like that. no, just because back when they were cool, it was because they were quirky and raw in their intensity and lyrics. even though they were plastered everywhere and marketed to death, they didn't seem like they were for sale.

which clearly they are. thus, the wrongness. i know this isn't the lamest thing in the world, but it's still LAME.

geeks rule

lately it feels like there has been a minor exodus from our department, and it feels a little surreal. one person is transitioning to another role (still in our department, but they will be doing totally different stuff), one person left for another department altogether, and one is leaving to freelance.

i was musing on this yesterday (after the announcement bout the freelancer) and wondering WTF? then it occurred to me: the one thing all these people have in common apparently is that they like to write more than they like battling with technology, tools and/or code. which is actually a great deal of what our daily work lives are about. we're not knee-deep in the code like web developers, but sometimes we really have to muck around to figure what the hell we need to do to address the Issue of The Moment.

thing is, i like all that. working in the code, figuring shit out. don't like the problems of course, but troubleshooting can be interesting. i really like being on our little SWAT team. i like being helpful and i like being one of the resident geeks. but i guess that's why i'm still here and not leaving so that i can write pages and pages of content inside word docs instead of an average one sentence every month directly into the code.

i guess this is all just another way to say: geeks rule!

and in other news, yes we saw the surgeon earlier this week. but i don't want to talk about it yet because it was kind of scary. we have a followup appointment next week where we should nail down exactly what should be happening (instead of scary things that could happen but we really don't know for sure yet). :-p

task 1 complete!

got an appointment with the GI surgeon for next tuesday, yay! and after that we can schedule the actual surgery. no waiting for a psych consult, yadda yadda. we're getting her in so fast because apparently the surgeon (who i'll call dr. f to keep the trend) and dr. t are good buds.

anyway, think good thoughts for getting the surgery scheduled quickly, too. i'm sure it will still be several weeks until the surgery, but that's better than 2 MONTHS (the normal wait time what with their pre-surgery rituals) to even get the surgeon appointment and then many weeks more for the actual surgery.

meantime min's been doing worse the last week. BUT she got some different meds yesterday and they seem to be helping the pain a little bit more. hopefully that trend will continue!

meantime part deux: thank god the main code delivery for our Big Project at work is DONE. in related news, i think i'm going to explode if (in my near future) i have to spend more than 2 full days in a row looking at a spreadsheet with 30 tabs and at least 30 rows per tab. 5 tabs are enough to manage on a daily basis, thanks (stupid metrics).

progress (sort of)

it's official: the last botox shot min got is not helping enough. she still can hardly eat, and even when she does gets really bad pain or outright attacks. her daily level of pain is just too high - not livable or workable long term.

the last option she has, and it's supposed to be a pretty good one, is gastric bypass surgery. yes, the same one that millions of people are using to lose weight. in this case they're just doing it to bypass her 98% uncooperative stomach and duodenum. which should cut down significantly on the pain, etc.

she'll lose more weight, yea. in the scheme of things we really don't care about that, though. she's already losing plenty (10 pounds last week, and i am not exaggerating). on the upside maybe the dietician they're forcing her to see for the surgery can help her figure out a more workable eating/supplement plan.

surgery isn't scheduled yet. surgeon has annoying but understandable pre-appt rituals we must navigate. so in the meantime, i guess wish us good luck in getting this scheduled asap!

i now return you to your regularly scheduled workaholism (and my own).

a river to skate away on

last night i went ice skating for the second time in my life. liz very graciously let me borrow some skates and saved me from potential ankle trauma from rink skates. she also gave me a few pointers which i'm sure enabled me to not fall the ENTIRE TIME. i was very impressed with myself. especially since i definitely fell a LOT during my virgin skating session so many years ago, in a land far, far away.

actually calling that first skate a virgin skate is not a bad idea because it was also the first time i touched another woman's breasts and realized that was The Life For Me. before you get some wacky ice porn movie going in your head, let me tell you what really happened:

feb 1995. nashville. me and 10 of my closest BU dorm-mates decided to go ice skating. among them was my friend tami. very much a dyke. and very much was i crushed out on her, being the babydyke that i was (out for less than 2 months).

tami was from wisconsin which meant that she was the best ice skater in our bunch. she gave me and i think another friend some lessons, skating around with us almost the whole time. at one point it was just tami and me though. we're skating, she's on my left, holding my hand. i wobble, almost falling, and my right arm oh-so-ungracefully flailed to the left in an attempt to hold on.

i got stabilized. i also got the delicious sensation of tami's breast in my hot little hand. i didn't grab hard or anything - just cupped her for a second, and that steadied me.

steadied on the outside that is. immediately i was 10x more jittery on the inside (already crazy because a) i was trying to skate and b) tami was helping me do that) because OH MY GOD. i knew what it felt like to touch another woman that you were attracted to. and i knew that there was no going back. yep, i'm a dyke! end of story.

that story, anyway. :-) that story's the first thing i think of when someone talks about ice skating. if i start skating more regularly now (and i might), i'm sure that will fade away, but i hope not.

we cambria, we saw, we conquered

late february we escaped our worldly troubles for a brief time and traveled down to cambria, a quiet little town on the coast of southern california. and it's only taken me three months to get the pictures all prettied up for y'all. i'm fast, i tell you.

enjoy the silence

blogging silence usually means either work or home life are pretty busy. or both. for most of the last week or so, it's been both. we're trying to wrap up development for a Big Project at work plus my little group is now a SWAT team (we have patches to prove it!) so those two things keep things perking along quite frenetically.

for home busy-ness, min got her botox shot on friday. the actual procedure was not tooo bad...but it took a lot longer than normal...apparently he had to do much more manipulation than normal and this left her insanely sore instead of just really really sore. really rough weekend but then the last few days were getting better.

until last night. last night she tried to eat more normal food (e.g., chicken and rice instead of cream of wheat). within 15 minutes she was having a "dry" attack (no vomiting but same amount of pain as if she was). we tried the usual remedies for abating an attack, called the amazing dr. t an hour later for more ideas, but nothing worked. so! in to the hospital we go again.

it'd been, hmm, maybe a month since we'd been? they changed their triage and patient shuffling procedures. haven't decided if it's good or bad overall. good: a doctor AND nurse triage instead of just a nurse. and our favorite ER doc (the most compassionate and friendly one), dr. fox, was triaging. so he knew exactly what to do for min and said he'd have her medicine ordered and ready for her by the time she got back there. and when she finally DID get to a room, we got them in about 10 minutes. yay!

bad: now they're splitting the ER exam room areas up by type of patient. half is for non-urgent, half for those that need monitoring/privacy. min fell into the latter category and because a) we got there earlier in the evening (930pm instead of 2am) and b) they had 3 ambulances come in after we did, she had to wait in the lobby for over 2 hours before she got any meds. normally when we go in it's maybe an hour until she gets something (15 minutes waiting in lobby, 15 waiting for/talking to doc, 30 minutes for meds to arrive).

i'm sure it was just shitty timing and that the ambulatories were much more important, but that didn't make the Waiting any less difficult. grr.

i got a little more sleep than normal (for an ER night) but i'm still exhausted today. at least i can pray to the gods of mocha-infused frappiness and get my own yummy, caffeinated deliverance.

twistin the night away

as some of you may know, i got my undergrad degree (after many years of school-hopping) at the university of montana. montana is not a very queer-friendly place in general, but missoula is a little pocket of relative liberalism. made it a little easier for us to be out and not worry so much (like we did in other parts of MT).

anyway, there was a small lambda group at UM when we left - maybe 30 people - in 1998. but it sounds like things have really improved because the kaimin (who i wrote for briefly) has reported 700 attendees at their queer prom. how sweet is that? rock!

flibbetygibbit

i was sleepy all day at work today. my ass was seriously dragging - no amount of walking, tunes, sugar or teasing liz was keeping me uber-alert.

that is, until i caved in and went to starbucks around 3pm. i know it's probably an illusion, but from the first moment that sweet frappaccino hits my mouth, i feel caffiene zooming through my veins like a freight truck. sweet lady mocha frapp.

anyway, since i had that so late in the day NOW i'm uber-alert. this is giving me a chance to work on some marketing for launcharoo, which isn't all bad. but it's a tad boring too.

so good thing i found liz and andrea's old geocities sites. hah! adorable! i love it. it really brings me back to my own humble beginnings. this is an archive of the original geocities site, back when i used to care about the old site. i just keep it up because it gets a lot of traffic which then bounces to my main site. and like liz & andrea's sites, it's kind of cool to have a testimonial to the early days (both of coding and of partnership). it's also a testament to bad design, but i'm past that now. i think.

that said, if anyone teases me about how fluffy it is, i'll kick your ass. :-D

and now for something completely obnoxious

lately i've had the worst time thinking about things that are completely inappropriate. my work-safe (unless you work with me - in which case, start going LALALALA) example is the "Idea Wall".

the Idea Wall is a place where employees can share their ideas to make the company's products better, introduce new products, etc. it is literally a gigantic piece of paper (maybe 12' x5') taped to the wall. people have taped their ideas (including pictures) and scribbled all over this paper, such that it is pretty crowded already even though it's only been up for a month, tops.

the inappropriateness? every time i see it, i want to tear it down, rip it up, smash it into a ball and throw it into the garbage. the Wall evokes my deep-rooted cynicism of the corporate world in two ways: 1) this is a way for us to all appear happy/productive while having corporate interests at heart and 2) because these submissions are anonymous, i think that eventually this is a way for some executive to take credit for an underling's idea. and to both of these ideas i just want to say *#@?%!

that's just one inappropriate idea. the rest i'm not sharing because, well, they're inappropriate.

i think i need a vacation.