25 December 2007

I am so proud of Mozart! He has really taken to the new kitten, including trying to catch the little guy when their wrestling brings the kitten too close to the edge of the sofa, and coming running when the brat starts squalling.

Mozart played a little rough and the kitten's sharp "meOW!" was bringing an automatic, loud, and shocked "Mozart! Play nice!" and Mozart would loose the kitten, who would cease the screams... When I heard it start again this morning I responded without turning.

However, unlike before, the kitten's cries continued so I turned around and found the brat was mewling because Uncle Mozart had him pinned for a much needed and thorough bath. Sorry Kid, no sympathy here!

I told Mozart Santa made an early delivery, but the truth is Wednesday morning when I went out to the car to leave for work I was rushed by this tiny kitten mewing at the top of his lungs. Scared the hell out of me since I heard him before I saw him and he sounded BIG, and as I live in the woods, who knew what was coming out of the mist and fog at me from the shrubbery? Of course I knew it for a cat, but was it sick, rabid, wormy-What??

I shined the key ring torch at the thing, and my LED light bluely illuminated a truly tiny black and white kitten with, of all things, a wagging stub where a cat usually has a long and luxurious plume (oh, jeez, I hate cliches when the cliche fits!)

Did I mention the weather was misty and foggy? It was also breezy, and cold. And, because I really didn't want to run it over, I went to the door meaning to go in and retrieve a plastic box and some old towels to make a shelter...

Kitten had other plans, and he scooted around me into the house, whereupon he came face to face with Mozart, who was not happy to see this weird little cat without a real cat tail.

I couldn't catch the kitten, who'd taken shelter behind the toilet, so I threw down an old towel, a little tin of wet cat food and another of water, then I closed the door and left for work.

Thinking I'd get home early enough to ask around the neighbourhood, I got through my day, but didn't get home until nearly nine pm. I brought the kitten out of the bathroom, set him up in the LR in Mozart's cat carrier, and fell asleep in my clothes on the sofa.

The next morning I fed the kitten again, tidied the carrier, and went to work, where I tried to get a co-worker, any co-worker, to take this poor kitten.

Same on Friday, and Saturday afternoon. But late Saturday night Mozart took a ball and set it down outside the carrier. He stopped hissing and growling at the kitten.

So Sunday afternoon when I got home from work, I let the kitten out of the carrier, and he and Mozart have become fast friends. At night I still put the kitten in the carrier, but will more than likely leave him out tonight. I have to feed him in the carrier since Mozart feels he needs to test the kittens food, but then again, last night I put the bowl on the floor outside the carrier and Mozart just tested the water side of the dish while the little guy inhaled his Kitten chow.

It was comic, really, Mozart watched the kitten out of the corner of his eye, gauging the reaction when he tried to nudge his way into the food section-when the kitten didn't growl but kept eating without moving in response to the nudges, Mo moved to the water, then away completely.

When the kitten tried to chew the electrical wires he found here and there, Mozart played Kitten Bowling, and now Kitten doesn't bother any wire he finds.

Still, I think the kitten will spend the work day in the carrier.

I got the Christmas tree decorated on the 23rd; it looks pretty nice. It needs lots more ornaments, because 'it' is really three (graduating sized Alpine pre-lit fakes I got last year) bunched together in the corner. Mozart has behaved nicely this second decorating attempt; see, he has really made me proud this first Christmas of his! I guess his behaviour the first time I tried to decorate was his way of understanding this Christmas thing:)

So, now we are three, me and two cats.

I am trying to figure out what to name the kitten, who is going to stay as the people who 'owned' him are total goobers who's stepped on his tail when he was about two weeks old (they 'own' his mother), and were relieved when he scooted out the door Sunday week and didn't come back-they told the kid next door they thought the wolves had got him, and oh hell no, they do not want him back!

While I'm glad to have a friend for Mozart, and this kitten is so damn cute I am amazed, vet $ is going to have to be spent and I had other plans for that $, dangit. Sigh. Life happens when you have other plans...

The landlord is going to level the house and replace the front door, then I am probably going to buy this place from him. I love the back garden, a tangled and overgrown mess with a beautiful garden hiding underneath...
I am learning to do electricity again, and am going to run a dedicated pair of circuits for the electric fireplace heaters I found online (which will have to wait now that I have a kitten AND Mozart to take to the vet, Mo for his annuals, which are coming up the end of Jan, and of course the kitten will need everything), plus a wood burner for the kitchen for grid failures-which happen a lot up here.

One room at a time this spring I plan to strip the tin from the outside and re-insulate the walls; the bathroom has to be redone-I WILL have a decent bathroom before I put another year on my life, dang it!

Ah, the adventures of living in a tin shack clinging to the side of a North Georgia mountainside!

Happy Christmas! If you see Fox, tell him I miss him...

08 December 2007

One of us should go and I am certain it is not me. One of us will go and I am becoming more and more sure it is me.

Blondie got Young Mr Boss fired on Halloween Day, how we are not sure, although we know why.

Since his spectacularly bizarre removal from the building things have gone from getting much better to incredibly screwed up.

I finally lost it and told Blondie that if the rest of the team did not stop taking out their stress on me I was going to file a report against her for not only permitting it but openly encouraging it.

She responded by lying to me and then going to several others and claiming I was going to file a report against them.

Meanwhile, I'm turning out perfect spreadsheets that I've taken to copying the appropriate persons on while I get the information contained therein to the pinhead who is buying into Blondie's steer manure.

SIDEBAR WARNING: I don't say BS. I've owned many a fine bull in my life, and I promise you to identify something as worthless by calling it BS (bull manure) is to display first one's ignorance of just how very valuable a bull is, and then secondly to display for all listeners one's sheep flock mentality-as in I'm so easily led I will pick-up on any catch phrase that makes me look as though I am part of the in-crowd.

OH PUHLEEZE!

Steers, on the intelligent hand, are good for one thing only-FOOD. Duh. Therefore the manure produced by steers is logically useless, ergo worthless. Duh.

DIGRESSION CESSATION:

I love diving into my work. I hate being treated the way I am by those who are apparently so insecure they find me threatening when I am enthusiastic about what I do.

Lord, send me a real job! Surely out there near by is an employer who really means what he/she says when he/she adverts for a team-playing self-starter who has think-on-his/her feet skills along with terrific organizational, business and cyber skills and is not afraid to say " don't know but let's find out!" and then does.

Things are so awful at work that I refuse to participate in any of the group feeds (as in I will not break bread with those who are not trust-worthy and make me feel terribly uncomfortable with the hypocrisy of all that steer manure of bonhomie at the holidays. Hope floats, but not in a cess pool! Duh.

I read a thing about toxic workplaces, and how 'teams' are a family. As such, these teams can be functioning at varying degrees of success from highly to sub zero. Dysfunctional, just as flesh and blood families.

I spent my first 28 years in a family so dysfunctional I am completely surprised, daily, that murder wasn't done.

I spent another 18 years in a completely dysfunctional marriage wherein my husband was such a coward he resorted to 'accidental' pushes, shoves, slams, etc, instead of the beating he so obviously wanted to administer. Maybe he knew I would shred him if he dared openly lay a hand on me. At any rate, he took the coward's way of the 'oops, did I do that?' and I'm such a nice person I always gave him the benefit of the doubt. Silly me, to a point. Christian me, to a fault? God will decide.

Well and truly, methinks it time to shake the dust of my current employer from my poor tired feet.

I'm looking. I am in full faith the Lord will lead me and those of us with our self-esteem still intact right the hell out of Egypt.

Lord?

25 November 2007

OH MOZART!

I am rethinking the tree. Mozart managed to overcome his aversion to fake tree (you should have seen his shocked and horrified face when he realized it was fake), and I managed to save the glass ornaments-my very bad to have ever thought Mozart the fluttery, dangly, and now sparkly things lover would be able to stay away from a Christmas tree loaded with the stuff.

I thought I'd gone the smart route putting the tree on an end table. I was kidding myself.

So much for the idea of putting a little Christmas train around the base.

I'm thinking a big wreath on the wall with the ornaments-surely 'Zart can't jump that high, can he?

Goofy git!

The Christmas decorations lasted about an hour. The worst was him grabbing the Baby Jesus out of the manger and running down the hall with it in his mouth. I'm still looking for the little guy. Jesus, not the cat. After he stashed the Messiah he came back for Joseph and Mary, but I'd already returned the Holy Parents to the box.

Gee, if he likes Christmas, he is going to LOVE Chanukhah.

I finally bought a real menorah, and am planning to light up the candles beginning on the 4th. I've got a window that looks out to the front, and I'll be able to put the menorah on the window sill.

I'd already planned to sit quietly by the candles, but Mozart makes that an imperative, now. However I will not give up on the lighting.

Chanukhah commemorates freedom, religious freedom. Frankly I am surprised more Americans don't light a menorah at Chanukhah, I really am.

Every year I read about those Christian families who light menorahs after a Jewish neighbour has been targeted by anti-Semites for lighting a menorah during Chanukhah. Crusty was such an neo-nazi/kkk wannabe that I was afraid to suggest we light one, too.

He never knew Barbara, and he barely knew my sister, who'd converted early in her marriage. Crusty did not like Jews, so he refused to be around my sister.

Crusty didn't like black Americans, either.

He didn't like Southerners, or Mexicans, or poor people, or Brits, or the physically and/or mentally challenged.

I could on-Crusty didn't like anyone but himself.

I started lighting a menorah in '03 at the request of three young people dying of cancer, and a young woman who pretended to be a Methodist to avoid trouble in her small Southern town.

Her name was Deborah, and she was a prostitute, but as long as she pretended to be Methodist she was relatively safe in a town filled with Hate. Deborah died at the turn of the century, still young, and still pretending.

But not with me. She knew to me the greater problem was the selling of her body, and she died as a consequence of it. She faced Death bravely, but asked me to light the menorah, to remember her, to pray for her.

The children I wrote about in '05.

Rachel.

Rebbecca.

Benjamin, the would be rabbi.

Barbara never asked me to do anything including convert. I doubt I would be permitted, I do believe Yeshua bar Joseph was the Promised One.

But somewhere, every year I can feel her presence. I feel her, and Deborah, and the children; I hear them lead me through the steps of preparation.

I hear young Benjamin's voice quietly and confidently begin the proscribed prayers for the first lighting, and I hear little Rachel's eight year old forever voice join, then Rebbecca's, Deborah's, and finally Barbara's voices fill my ears and heart.

Freedom. Forever.

"As for me, and my house, we shall serve the Lord."

22 November 2007

Happy Thanksgiving, America!

I watched the days tick past wondering if the annual grief of the aloneness would swamp me. I buried myself in work hoping I would simply wake one morning and realize I'd forgot to get a turkey.

I tried to avoid the Christmas merchandise aisles in progress at Wal-Mart and the grocery.

I tried to be happy for my co-workers already looking exhausted as they juggled our increasing work load (I work in financial services-this is our busy time!) and the activities inherent in family arrivals.

I succeeded for the most part-few moments of longing heavily outweighed by the many moments of real happiness for co-workers who have someones...

Payday I gave into the little voice reminding me I needed to get a turkey breast and the rest of the holiday trimmings; I have few needs now, so my basket overfloweth not, but did sport a nice turkey breast and Cool Whip for the frozen pumpkin pie I will 'cook 'n serve' in an hour or so.

I even know where the Christmas decorations are, and am trying to figure out where to put the tree-oh is Mozart gonna love that!

Once upon a time, before my world crashed and burned...

I began planning the holidays in January of the following year-what homemaker worth her salt did not?

The food and shopping began in October, August or September in leaner years when Crusty was bringing home the traditionally tiny pay packet of young men in trades requiring higher education but involving hand tools and engine oil.

(Why is so little respect accorded the men and women who doctor our mechanical transports? To me they deserve deep respect-their patients speak a language so foreign I am always awed when they revive what seemed a dead or at least dying vehicle. Crusty was an aircraft mechanic and at one time one of the top five rotor wing men in the world. Until he sold his soul, that is...)

The gift shopping was a constant, and because I was quite good at my chosen trade (homemaking) I managed to pull off some spectacular gift giving occasions.

But to the little collection of miserable souls I was trying to make a home for, Thanksgiving was the kick-off of a months long period of Holiday. Fox and I would decorate the tree Thanksgiving night around Crusty sprawled on the sofa snoring so deeply the windows rattled.

Fox and I would put on the VHS copy of "Santa Claus the Movie" and when the elves shouted "SEASON'S GREETINGS!!", well. for Fox and me, it was the beginning of the Christmas Season-a truly magical time at house that even the ass Crusty couldn't completely spoil no matter how hard he worked at it...

The Advent wreath, the anticipatory stockings, the drives just a bit out of the way to see a neighbour's annual display; church choir practices, until the last Christmas (1997) we were still a 'family' when Crusty deliberately scheduled his flight to arrive at such a time that I couldn't get to church in time to sing my solo...I gave up after that, I think.

What is worse, I ask, than the only gift you receive being an obligatory one?

What hurts more than approaching the holiday knowing the husband will not plan a secret shopping outing for the children so that Mom is gifted, yet is fully committed to punishing if a lavish display is not made for him?

One year I put nothing under the tree for Crusty, and did not plump the flat stocking hanging next to Fox's. I skipped his birthday, too, and Father's Day as well-O! I was on a roll that year. 1996.

Predictably he was outraged. When he asked why I told him that I wanted him to know how I felt every Christmas-Mother's Day-birthday when I had no token of consideration from him or Fox; he was furious with me for being so small, so petty as to try to teach him a lesson.

It's the thought that counts!" he pontificated, and merely blinked then turned away when I replied "Yes, precisely."

So Fox grew up with total contempt for me, a lesson learned at Crusty's ruthless knee; a profound, utter contempt fanned by my quiet surety that Crusty would turn his heart through my constant rosaries and prayers, and become a human being before it was too late-he would either grow into a person I could respect if not love, or he would summon enough common decency to let me and Fox go before it was too late for Fox.

But that was not Crusty's plan; he waited until Fox was sixteen to finally get the bloody hell out of our lives, and by then it was too damn late.

And he did it on Thanksgiving.

I googled Thanksgiving 1998, I wanted to know the date. 26th November.

I picked Crusty up at the Columbus Georgia airport around 8pm on the 25th. As though someone else was speaking through me, I asked him 'How's tricks?" A reference to his brothel patronage and preference for the company of the degraded over the wholesome...

The next day he sat down to the table and forced himself to eat everything on the table, ensuring there would be no leftovers for Fox and me.

He spent the entire time he was 'home' whiskey soaked and thus missed that Fox had already carved the turkey and had squirreled back enough Thanksgiving food to set a very nice table the day Crusty pulled out of the drive for the last time.

Crusty missed how empty was the pantry he cleaned out in his last move out the door saying that if I would not have sex with him, I didn't need the food he's paid for...

Fox knew what was coming, I don't know how, and had hidden enough food to feed us decently for a good while after Crusty's savage departure. Canned goods, and I have no clue how Fox kept the frozen things frozen, but he did. Within two hours of Crusty's U-Haul rumbling down the street, pantry and freezer looked a bit lean, but not empty. It was very nearly the last nice thing Fox did in the years before I finally left town.

Yes, that's right, Thanksgiving Day 1998, Crusty, my husband of 17 years, inhaled every thing not moving on the Thanksgiving table then got up and left the house for an hour-returning in a U-Haul, which he and an equally unsavory accomplice filled with everything paid for in the house-including all of the food from the fridge, freezer,and pantry.

He left the furniture, which confused me until the bill began to arrive-he'd NOT paid cash for it but had retrieved the check I'd written the March '98 afternoon when we'd filled our new little house with furniture. He took the money we'd been saving for years for the day we would furnish our first real house (we'd been living in a remodeled trailer for years).

In a not so amusing sidebar, the manager of the store off offered to let me keep the furniture if I serviced him once a month in his office, under his desk. Crusty was furious with me for letting the store repossess the furniture, saying I'd ruined his credit.

I still have the beach chairs Fox and I sat on for a year after Crusty cleaned us out, but the cardboard box we used for a dinner table went to the curb in it's time, as did the rest of the Goodwill and other cast-offs I managed to accumulate over time and then gradually replace.

The next Thanksgivings were in each year's uniquely awful way, awful; subsequent Christmas' agonies as well.

How can I forgot the special New Year's Eve '99 morning I pulled Fox out of a crack house at gunpoint?

Boy oh Boy, ya can't quickly get past Holiday memories that special!


Finally, after the shock and horror of Ivan in '04 was compounded by the monumental madness of Katrina '05, I left SouthEast Alabama.

I walked away from my son and his son, my grandson who lives with his mother and maternal grandmother; my grandson,whose mother is still an 'exotic dancer' who last I heard would like to leave the life but wants to fulfill her mother's request to replace all the household goods first.

No-one is battling the traffic, the weather, or their mixed emotions about a family Thanksgiving to make their way to my house for the holidays. No-one ever will now. I'm pretty sure of that.

And yes, the hurt is incredible.

Thanksgiving '05 was perfectly horrid. I drove down to Dothan with my then roommate, who swore to me Fox had said he wanted to spend the day with me. Ah, no.

But last year could have been worse. Thanksgiving '06 I spent alone in my own place. I did cook a turkey. I managed not to feel too awfully pathetic, too, spending most of the day cleaning house and raking the leaves. I watched the parade.

But I didn't cry.

This year is Mozart's first Thanksgiving with me. He is doing well, relaxing enough finally to luxuriate in his life; he sprawls on the sofa belly up. He gets into just enough mischief to make me strongly doubt the plan to decorate one of my fabulous fake trees.

Which I will do tonight. I will try to decorate for the holidays. I will try to overcome my fear of permitting my God graced natural optimism to be expressed-hey, it ain't easy being Sunnie when every single friggin' time I do let ME shine through some sorry little gremlin decides to teach me a lesson!

Yes, it hurts to know I have no-one but a half feral cat to care for me, and let me clear this up for you, I know Mozart sees me primarily as the big orange food bag carrier.

But I'm going to try anyway. What the hell, right?

25 October 2007

Strange, strange days.

I work in a lunatic asylum-today I discovered a coworker stapled through my name 17 times-on 17 different reports that he knew I would be handling. It scared the hell out of me-someone comfortable enough to staple through a co worker's name 17 times is scary.

I come home from work every afternoon this week to work at finding out if my best friend since seventh grade is burned out yet-she, her daughter, grandson, and son-in-law are sharing her Irvine California home. I have been simultaneously glued to the tube and Internet since Sunday night.

I feel like a modern day Jeremiah. My life has become a routine of trying to keep my mouth shut as all around me act as though they have declared war on the reasonable; I come home after work and try very very hard to avoid my fellow man after spending the day at work avoiding the loonies.

Probably not a good idea. I Googled 'scary coworker' and found that some of my own preferences mark me as a potential instigator of workplace violence. Yikes, and not something I would actually do. My total contribution to 'workplace violence' consists of leaving the room if I feel my mouth control slipping.

I avoid my co workers as though they carry plague-self preservation, to me, does not include an astounding willingness to take the most innocent remark and spin it into a whirlwind.

And of course, without fail, if I seem to have friends, Blondie is suddenly short with me and the next thing I know co workers who twenty minutes earlier were smiling at me are now scurrying past my desk eyes averted.

Hmmm, this behaviour also seems to coincide with Blondie having just been in conversation with them...

Of course that suits Blondie. She actively works to isolate me from co workers and is rather good at subtly indicating her displeasure if anyone compliments my work, which she works at undermining and reducing.

Just now I think she is in a snit because I work well with others and they don't hesitate to tell our mutual boss.

She is of course Mr. Staple Happy's biggest champion.

Of course I (after a heck of a lot of digging and some calling in of markers from friends still in the biz) found out I should take several precautions because yeah, Mr. Staple Happy is showing signs of being a dangerous nut job, a guy I should be very careful around.

I was right, it is highly disturbing that he found a way to precisely staple through my name at the very nearly exact spot on 17 of 31 reports, and I need to be very careful.

Swell.

I am completely sick of the lunacy.

At least two of the fires out west were deliberately started.

Both my children hate me because I refuse to give up on God and clean living.

I'm watching my back against a twisted co-worker.

And Blondie, always Blondie, poor thing. She'd be funny if she weren't so blasted stupid and ruthless-I hate that combination. It's a combination I know too well.

I think at bottom, what I am really tired of is giving up, leaving then finding out six months or a year later that I was right; oops, "Hey Fox's Mom, you sure called that one." Wouldn't it be lovely if I could be proved right while still a part of the: group, workplace, family?

Swell day in a long line of swell days-hey God, since I missed it, could you show me where I signed up to be an anachronism? But I didn't really miss it, I signed up for this, I guess, and if I had to do it all again for the most part I would do the same things...my kids are in a bad place, I will keep praying for them; Blondie is scared and having health issue, I will keep praying for her; Mr Staple Happy needs a swift and sure attitude adjustment, I'll keep praying for him, too.

Day capper? The main compartment of my fridge is 58 degrees. The property manager promised a week ago to have the repairman out.

I am so sick of take-away!

19 October 2007

I have to go in today. I wish I didn't. But a project I have been trying to finish since mid-August needs to have a full eight or more hours of the workday spent on it-if my idiot "team mates" can be circumvented long enough to get the job done.

If you've checked my profile you know my industry and if you keep up with the modern workplace you know I have to be circumspect in how I vent my frustrations born at my particular workplace. I can't be specific, and I wouldn't want to be, really-I am a team player unlike the pin-heads I 'work with'.

I say 'work with' out loud in a sarcasm drenched tone. Most of my day yesterday was wasted cleaning up their messes, putting out their idiocy fueled fire, and trying not to let their ridiculous self-importance push my last button.

Blondie is trying somewhat lately, and I unfairly unleashed on her yesterday-I say unfairly because she is so pathetic that it is rather like screaming at an irritating child to "behave like an adult!" The trouble is that she is 63 years old-certainly adult by now, right? Sadly, she has been made a team lead, can not handle the job, and refuses to admit it. She wastes entire work weeks covering her and her little pets mistakes and asserting her authority over others.

She also sabotages the rest of us, and yesterday I unfortunately stumbled onto paper proof. Again.

Were it me, I would either trouble myself to learn my job or I would get the hell out of the way.

She and her two pets know this, and have united to ensure that no-one else is permitted to have enough knowledge to put the puzzle pieces together. They think this grants them job security. They play games with a depressing consistency.

Which of course frustrates and puzzles the rest of us into an endless cycle of: confusion, frustration, infuriation, exhaustion, and then back to confusion, frusstration, infuriation...

For the rest of us, who once loved our jobs, the monumental effort required to accomplish anything is so bloody difficult that as we head into our busiest season, we are worn out and down by the repetitious antics and the required end-runs to get our jobs done despite our so-called team mates.

A word of advice-any time you are tempted to accept an offer of employment with a company touting their successful team workplace methodology you should run like a scalded dog.

When you go for the interview, if you see posters plastered on every available wall proclaiming their team-RUN!

If HR has to hang posters reminding every one they are on a team, trust me, there is no team and you have entered a hostile workplace. Get out while you can, because your team mates are hyenas and will savage you.

I am completely sick of the steer manure these people spread. When the younger of the two HR guys calls you a know-it-all because you know the answers to a pop-quiz in a corporate class, it really is too late for you.

When the air-head with her finger on your time-card only reminds you how much overtime you've put in (while bitching that she had to stay till 1800 and didn't get OT) if she's pissed at you-know it's past time to be tidying your resume.

Hey Blondie, decide-you accepted that salary because they made you a manager-something you wield like a ball bat, so do you want to assert your power-over, or do you want to put in an honest day's work?

You knew going in that you would be expected to work long hours-that is what 'managers' do. You knew going in that you would never be paid OT again at that company, so get over being angry at those who would GLADLY trade the OT so that they comfortably spend the time needed to get something done fully without the worry of a petty little idiot threatening them with cut-off.

ARRGH!

I can't sleep for trying to determine who upsets me more-Blondie or my exhausted co-workers who have got to the point they shrug and say "It's like this every where."

People like this are company-killers. Why our parent company has not swooped down and cleaned house is beyond me, and I have enough understanding of how the corporate world works to have some unpleasant suspicions as to why they have not-except I researched the parent company before accepting the job and thought the parent company to be a pretty great organization.

I've watched these three destroy co-workers. In the process they've destroyed the workplace, corroding the efforts of those of us who care.

I despise people like that. Joyless, petty, perpetually proactive against anyone they perceive to be a threat; psychic vampires suck all the joy of a job well done right the hell off the table. They scurry like cockroaches to negate anything complimentary to their rivals and in the process, they destroy their company.

Blondie was laid off when her last employer finally gave up on the people like her, and closed the plant.

She wonders why she was laid off even as she repeats the same behaviours that drove her last employer out of town. She tries to claim integrity while bemoaning her low pay (excuse me, is that managerial behaviour?), and while scorning the very people who pay her cheque really-our customers.

GRRRRR!

13 October 2007

I've needed the heater the last two nights. YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I live for this time of year. Less heat, less humidity-the top two of three reasons I left South East Alabama. (Reason three being Fox's life style choices-I simply could not stay in the same town watching my son live in such emotional squalor.)

I've spent the summer preparing for winter up here-more adventures in reclaiming a house trailer that had been essentially abandoned for seven years, and then half remodeled when they finally said "Oh go ahead and move in." And like the true optimist/idiot I am, I did.

The guys at Lowes think I own the little trailer I am trying so hard to prep for the coming winter. They love that I know my way around the store and only rarely have to ask for help-they love that I can sink my own wall anchors and that I now own every book they sell on home wiring and plumbing-they love that I am not looking for a man to do it all for me, and they especially love that I do know my limitations and rely on them for recommendations on reliable handymen.

They wish (most of them) that they were available, or that their wives were a lot more interested in being more like me. A few think I am a lesbian.

Ah, no.

But today's blog is not about Lowes Home Improvement Centers, or even the sidebar amusement gained by the Lowes guys respectful nod and wave when I cross their threshold.

I will say this-if you are a middle aged reasonably attractive and intelligent single woman and want to get to know a potential 'steady' or even potential new husband (at my age most women look at a guy they've gone out with twice as potential husband material, and most middle aged guys with half a brain look at every woman who crosses their rapidly aging path as a potential older years helpmate/wife) really well, the quickest and best way is to make him take you shopping at Lowes-not Home Depot, ya gotta go to Lowes.

Lowes is considered higher-end (read more expensive, although it really is not while quality and selection is considerably better) and Home Depot is where the cheap guys want to go. So from the start you'll know if the guy is gonna be El Cheapo if he is not willing to hang out at the Lowes tool bar with you, happily perusing the drill bits and driver selection.


OK, maybe todays blog is about Lowes...

A guy who is happy to take you to Lowes for the afternoon is a guy who knows quality when he sees it and isn't afraid to get a little Spackle on his trousers. WOW, now that's a combination! When you find one like that who's orientation is not same gender, you've struck gold, girlfriend!

I want a guy who knows more about home improvement than I do and wants to find a partner who isn't afraid of using a power drill, maybe owns her own tools, and likes to gut interiors with an eye to the future.

And cleans up REALLY, REALLY well. He has got to know how to waltz, which fork to use, and what not to say to Her Majesty.

It would be great if he owned at least three tuxes AND a working backpack. Totally fantastic if he could pass for a (straight-remember, I am hetro) Metro-Sexual and a frontiersman in the same breath.

I'd be captured in rapt attendance on an age appropriate guy who looked good, thought right, and was therefore able to appreciate a good woman when he saw one.

A guy who thinks it totally right that I can sink my own wall anchors (and have a good selection of the many different types Life requires already neatly organized in my appropriately coloured (Gun-Metal Gray and Hunter Green-Pink is for clothing, thank-you-toolboxes).

I'm looking for the guy who is not afraid to read the newspaper; the guy I can have an intelligent conversation with and in the next minute crank up the ACDC 'coz 'Thunderstruck' just came on:)

I'm looking for the real man, the one who knows Mozart is named for the composer, not the graffiti artist known as Mo (Mo'z'art-get it? Gads, I was horrified!).

I want the guy who has season passes to the Symphony AND the local rugby team-I need the guy who knows football (both kinds) is like, vastly overrated, OK?

I've got a serious Jones for the guy who thinks it perfect that I can do Valley, Surfer, AND King's English (God Bless George and 'Bess forever!); the guy who adores that I can be comfortable in any environment except a vulgar one.

Now, that's a guy I could get old with!

Cool. I opened todays blog thinking I would digress on the horror of 21st century life-failing infrastucture, the historic drought we in the Metro are suffering through, the dangers in nearly all of the imports we have come to depend on. I was filled with gloom and disquietude. God purposes, Man disposes-think about it. I damn sure was this morning!

However, God really is in charge. My mood is lifted, and I've found some healing humour in keying my wish list for the guy I want to meet (um, the sooner the better Lord, I am not getting any younger, not in this life anyroad:).

Wishes do come true. Nothing that has happened to me has made me think otherwise.

Thanks Dad! Now, can I please meet him??

About a year before my best friend's husband died of lung cancer she replied to my spoken wish to meet a great guy and my complaint that I'd been single for too long with this-"You don't need a man in your life!"

I knew about Mike's cancer, and he'd sworn me to secrecy because he thought he could beat it. I agreed because after the weekend I spent at their house in '99 trying to help him tell her he'd just been diagnosed made it clear she didn't want to know-everytime we sat her down and tried to get her to understand, she'd blanked, drifted off in response to some distraction, changed the subject...We gave up.

But he was still alive, and seemed to be fine, so I blurted without thinking-"What if something happened to Mike?!"

They had nearly twenty years, and she is completely disinterested in finding someone else; she has no longings for love because she has had that and knows for her, it cannot be replaced. She has her children around her, her grandchildren, her sisters, her mom, and although she just lost her nearly 100 year old father, she has the memory of a great father. And she has me to be her forever best friend. Her life is not perfect, who has a perfect life? But she has Love.

And now, sadly, she understands the answer to my stupid question. I'd pray for her to meet someone, but she doesn't want to.

For a long time I didn't either. I've loved someone (not Crusty,oh please, that rat bastard held me at gunpoint for 18 years-absolutely no love there, trust me), and I lost him, the guy I know God meant for me to be with. Not to Death, but to pride (his) and circumstances (don't ask).

I'm ready. No rebound-eesh! No consolation prize. That is so dishonourable! I'm ready for The Real Thing, with the Right Guy.

And that makes for a much cheerier blog entry than The End Of The World!

30 September 2007

Friday I was in a mandatory corporate class. After sign-in we were free to choose our seats and I naturally chose to sit next to people in my comfort zone. Late comers (and man, did that chuff the instructors-who BTW called themselves facilitators) were of course stuck taking the only chairs they could find.

My organization is a bit troubled as of course are most organizations today-mine is not unique in it's problems. So I believe it fair to say no-one sitting in my little corner of the kingdom were pleased to see one of the HR guys slide into the spare chair and try to look as though he'd been there all along.

I am a certified member of the Nerd Herd. Need a red, blue, and/or black pen, or fluorescent highlighter-while standing on the smoking area? So not a problem if Fox's Mom is near by as Fox's Mom ALWAYS has one hanging from the badge chain.

That said, my Nerd Herd quietly-very quietly, keeps the company running and we have moles in every work area so as to facilitate the flow of intel that permits us to end-run our 'co-workers' and 'bosses' idiot/willfully ignorant/'not my table mentality'/"I'm just here for the paycheque" efforts to close down our campus. Most of the time we are frankly supremely successful although lately our patience and willingness have been sorely tried!

The HR guy we got stuck with is more of an idiot than we'd realized, and I think we were finally broken by his arrogant display of impunity.

Nerd Herders are by nature actually quite tolerant, patient, caring, and of course, the team player extra-mile types, but sitting through the morning with this pin-head may have spelled the end for most of us.

I think the final straw broke when he called me a know-it-all. Three of the four team members (we'd been assigned as teams based on seating clumps) visibly shut down at that point, and the flow never resumed.

The HR guy called me a know-it-all. I spent the rest of that day, and most of yesterday thinking about that.

In the process, I came to several valid insights, perhaps I owe the jerk a thank-you note.

The first insight is that I can still take 'developmental feedback' as an opportunity to examine my behaviour and motives-I pondered, "Am I a know-it-all"?

Ah, no.

Do I know a few things, having been around for at least the 51 years in this lifetime? Well, YEAH! Duh.

Does my behaviour indicate that I believe myself to know everything?

Only to someone with an extremely challenged sense of self-worth.

Insight #2: I work with one hell of a lot of people carrying around the terrible burden of low self-esteem who are incapable of working past that to learn from the people around them thus becoming contributive assets instead of obstructive asses.

Insight #3: I am still possessed of a high self-esteem AND the interest of meeting/exceeding team goals demonstrated by my willingness to share my knowledge and avail myself of the gift of others similar willingness to share.

Insight #4: I may be wasting my time in this organization.

16 September 2007

Just when one thinks one knows everything...

Friday afternoon I had need to put in an hour or three of overtime-something Blondie waves like a cudgel whenever she is chuffed with me, as in: "You've been working too many extra hours (usually on the stuff she didn't know how to do and quietly has shoved over to me) and I may not be able to approve the hours this pay period..." and Blondie had already decamped at the end of her eight hours, so I approached our mutual boss to ensure I knew what he wanted-the work done or me out of his sight.

In the process, he realised he'd not 'read from the bottom' and ended up profusely apologizing to me and dressing down (gently, the young man really is quite a good leader) the vault manager (and I suspect our little Blondie is in for more of the same on the morrow), which of course reduced me to tears.

How awful for him and me, that I was so overcome with several emotions that I was unable to control the breaking voice, threatening-to-overflow-tear-filled eyes; I begged to leave the room and it took me nearly a full half hour to control myself.

All weekend I've been trying not to be cynical, and think more positively-perhaps finally I'll be able to be about doing my job instead of watching my back.

I love my job. I'd like to work with people I don't have to be 24/7 wary of-bad for production, that lack of trustability:) I believe in what I do, actually.

And I've been looking for a new job that I can love, while able to trust my co-workers, too. It's been rather rough at my office for all of the days I've been there, and the past few months I've been questioning my sanity or least mental stability and self-esteem. Driving to work wondering what the hell is wrong with me that I keep going there is no way to begin a productive work day, now is it?

I'm no different from anyone else on the planet.

But it took real integrity for Young Mr. Boss to apologize, and it took more of the same for the vault manager to send an immediate email apology to me and those others who'd been on the receiving end of his somewhat blistering Thursday email outlining how we'd erred in exchanging information. Friday he made it clear that he felt quite badly about it all, and that he knew he'd been wrong both in the original email and his understanding of who I was and was not permitted to speak to.

But I reserve my deepest respect for my former supervisor, and one of my co-workers. The former supervisor came to my desk with raised voice to ask me to please run an important report for him hours before the truth had come out; he made sure Blondie and Young Mr. Boss knew he was counting on me and trusted me. My co-worker went quietly around the building investigating to discover the truth, and while she was doing so she made it clear she was reserving judgement. Before the truth came out.

Still, the problem of Blondie and her comrade in co-worker crime have yet to be addressed.

Now, Young Mr. Boss is not at all stupid. He has not missed the problems nor the source of said problems. My worry is how he is going to address the problem.

Blondie is 63+ years old, she's is trouble, she's desperate, and she is going to have a very hard time finding a job if she loses this one. I've already had to plead her case to two people in a position to send her packing by insisting she has a lot to offer-which she does, actually.

Too bad the last thing she did Friday before sliding out the back door when no-one was looking was to delete my portion of a 'request for direction' email (although not my name or the fact that it was a forward from me that caused her to contact the vendor) contact a vendor who'd overcharged us, making herself an obvious credit grabber when she forwarded the entire mess back to those I'd copied in the original email requesting direction. The deletion of my request for direction after I'd noticed an excess charge was so very clumsy! Even if she had no intention, the way she deleted made her look as though she was trying to appear in-charge and on top while cutting out an underling-bad form that.

So now our boss and our Accounting demon know that she got a good portion of the money back-and deleted my part of the chain in the process. What a 'hero' she is.

My conscience forces me to confess that I sincerely hope the back draft she started to make herself appear the hero does what most intentionally lit back drafts do-roar back in her face and scorch her beyond recognition.

However,she has just been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and is utterly unable to control it-she's not at all bright (being feral is not the same as being bright) so she is incapable of learning and implementing said learning in order to save her life. She is mentally vague-disturbingly so; she gives into the cravings for all the wrong foods that typify the uncontrolled diabetic and the resulting mood swings and poor decision making are destroying her while simultaneously exposing her past mistakes as her increasingly desperate and clumsy attempts to cover fail, badly.

Before the diabetes took control of her entire self, she was a basically sweet little airhead whose pretensions to the 'elite' circle of as she would crudely phrase it-the big dogs-were controlled by her basic sweetness.

Now she is an out-of-control monster-airhead in an even greater position to tear rather huge chunks out of this company.

Being completely Celt and therefore one hell of a business-person, this outrages me.

Being completely Celt and therefore nearly completely sentimental, I am hoping a place can be found for her wherein she is incapable of inflicting any more damage without losing her much needed salary. Peter Principled, if you will-promoted at the limit of her incompetence to a position wherein she is rendered harmless...

Being completely Celt and therefore capable of utter ruthlessness when the Law of Hospitality has been so thoroughly violated by someone I come perilously close to considering little better than a mangy cur or ally cat, I hope she is rooted out Monday morning so that we can get some damn work done.

Back, forth, I feel sorry for her in the same moment I am trying to figure out her next sinister move...

14 September 2007

I work for an idiot who works for more idiots-the entire plan of the day at my office is "be a bigger ass than the next/last" and I am beyond tired of it. They are of course destroying the business-the mess reminds me in a small way of the brain drain going on globally. The incompetents drive out the competent until there is no-one left with the brains God gave a grapefruit, and then they all go on the dole. My office is a microcosm of the world and why it is currently a miserable place to live.

The little airhead who thinks she is my manager is so bloody stupid she cannot even manipulate the software required to approve a day off for any of her "employees" as she calls us. She managed to make it to 63 years of age by lying, cheating, and tossing her bouffant dyed blond hair; giggling breathlessly in that ridiculous and embarrassing manner of all social climbing trailer trash who miss the point of " A Streetcar Named Desire" and truly believe they are the quintessential Southern Belle-Miss Scarlett reborn.

Meanwhile she and her equally pretentious (but at least slightly better bred) 'friend' are putting the finishing touches on a department that had the potential to keep all of us solvent. They spend so much time covering up their mistakes that I am ceaselessly amazed when they simultaneously find the time to eliminate anyone they perceive as a threat.

The threat being of course anyone who actually does their job, can string together a coherent and comprehensible sentence, and know how to find 'spell-chek' consistently while still getting work done successfully enough to receive thanks and compliments from other team mates.

I've come to believe they lie awake nights figuring out the latest way to make life miserable for other people in an effort to reassure themselves they have worth.

I've watched them destroy four vault managers and our reputation within and without the company in the past year and a half in their drive to garner acknowledgement of their status as powerful insiders; they waste a gob-smacking amount of our employers money as they expose themselves repeatedly as petty idiots far more interested in exercizing their 'power' while they clearly demonstrate a disregard for the bottom line-the production that ultimately pays our salaries.

Ah, such is business life-EMAIL IS FOREVER, kids, never ever forget that when you are making that awful decision to either do your job and cooperate with the rest of your fellow employees OR show that you don't read to the bottom.

Too bad I got both my 'managers' in not one but several emails to clearly expose their adversarial attitude toward our fellow 'team mates' who are in other but interrelated departments of our 'one big happy team'.

Not to mention making it clear that they have created and are actively fostering a hostile workplace by failing to communicate policy to immediate 'team mates' while harshly penalizing them for failing to be a mind-reader when lack of said communication results in what to a reasonable person in a reasonable workplace would be considered team work turns out to be contrary to their latest definition of one's area of responsibility.

I wish I knew what my job is. My managers keep changing the definition.

If I ask what my job is I suffer the silent treatment that is encouraged to spread through the team, accompanied and embellished by sideways scornful looks; if I again request clarification I am subjected to Blondie calling a meeting with the 'bigger boss' (not to be confused with the Big Boss, the one I was for the longest time apparently the only person on the team who knew she was our Big Boss-ya really gotta read to the bottom, kids) to say that I am causing trouble by suggesting one of the team is pocketing the merchandise.

The first time she pulled this will hopefully be the last-I immediately requested the presence of HR in an emailed reply to 'bigger boss's emailed summons to a meeting to discuss comments I'd made to Blondie-and then proceeding to laugh when she stumblingly and in her usual poor grammar tried to make me look like a gossiping troublemaker. She tried to claim she thought it a good idea to get the team together while I pointed out the team was still downstairs and she and I were the only members of the so-called team in the bigger boss' office that morning.

Day before yesterday everyone on the team was called to a meeting to discuss how to deal with customer service requests from the CS team. Except me. Not only was I not invited, although a precedent has been clearly established (oh those pesky emails with my name in the 'to' line) with the clear approval of management that I am to be a part of CS requests, but the new policies were not communicated to me in any way.

So when CS reps contacted me requesting information for the second time because our little Blondie had ignored them all day, I replied, answering their question directed to me (again) because it was their understanding (mine too) that I was one of the people they were to direct requests for information to. After all, for years I have been answering their questions-and my managers have not once clearly stated this was not to happen but instead have relied on me to answer; they have therefore established a precedent when they made it clear they had no objection to my inclusion in the requests for information.

But Blondie really hates it when I do anything that she feels is her purvey as 'Manager' and too, she is lately becoming ridiculously ruthless in her efforts to cover her rather huge mistakes.

Including trying to enlist our mutual manager in confusing the hell out of me and everyone else in the building as to what I am or am not permitted to do or say on a particular day.

Ah, email. Email is forever. In one fell swoop I (inadvertently, I assure, I am simply not clever enough to have planned it out) exposed every damned one of them as hostile and un-cooperative towards our fellows, getting it in print and on the server that:

CS is not to know anything beyond what the rest of my immediate co-workers choose to tell them;(in response to the angry email that I was not to ever tell CS anything ever again-too bad they 'replied to all' and CS was able to read all about the utter contempt in which they are held, which generated a response from them defending their right to know, which led to...)

it is not my job to know what the policy is in regards to communications with CS although I will be subjected to public humiliation for not knowing whatever policy they've decided is in force that day; (in response to my response to CS that they should not include me anymore as the inclusion that day had resulted in an yet another angry outburst from the part-timer and Blondie. I replied to one CS team mate, and copied the vault so they too would cut me from their list of who to ask, unfortunately the vault then 'replied to all')

if I need to know something about my job all I need to do is communicate that need, and they will let me know if it is something that applies to my job;

only one of them can spell or find 'spell-chek', and even he leaves quite a lot to be desired in the grammar department-if you think my sentences are run-on you should see his:)

and finally, that none of them 'read to the bottom'. CS was trying to clear an issue that has been on the table for over a month. They were told that something is on backorder. It isn't, but it a took over a damn month for that to emerge and then only as a footnote to these idiots so intent of making sure everyone in the building knows they are the boss of me.

Blondie thinks she won a victory, as our mutual boss in his idiocy made it clear he backs Blondie-right or wrong.

She is not at all uncomfortable about bringing him down with her, and after yesterday, I think she's gonna get her way.

Email. It's forever.

10 September 2007

Legacies...

Happy Birthday, Pop. My dad would have been 86 cantankerous years old today if COPD hadn't claimed him at 2121 on 21st Dec 1985.

I miss him.

Happy 8th Aniversary of the Divorce, Me.

Too way cool, on 9.9.99 at 0909 hours, my divorce was final (oh yeah, well, we did have 'till November 16th to patch things up and thus render the divorce null-obviously I passed on that).

Thank-you Blake Green, and thank-you Pop.

Blake was a lawyer. Blake was a dad. Blake was something of a lush until his lung cancer metastisized to his brain and he decided to see a doctor about what was wrong. How nice, to go in to the doctor and find out:

"Hey, you've got lung cancer!" But wait, there's more-

"It's metastisized to your brain and you've a whopping big tumour going on up there...we'll do all we can to keep you comfortable."

But he passed on that so his kids would remember him drug and drink free.

And then he passed on, 4th July 1999.

I like to think that between the two of them, Pop and Blake shuffled the papers on Judge Little's desk until just the right moment.

Again, thank-you guys.

Right before I left Dothan I read in the Eagle that one of Blake's sons was in a softball championship; both on honour roll.

Legacies.

30 August 2007

OK, that's a wrap-I am truly fifty-one years old. It feels pretty good, actually.

Thanks Mum and Dad!

On a much heavier note, two years ago today Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf of Mexico destroying life as they knew from Northwest Florida to just west of The Big Easy.

Scouting the online TV guide for birthday fare to watch as I spend the first evening of my fifty-first year, the only thing on is CNN and a group of teen-age video diarists. I missed 'The Prisoner of Zenda' (Ronald Coleman version) 'coz I worked late tonight; the other good stuff on is after my bed-time. So I listen as I key to the kids.

Richard Jewell has passed due to diabetes complications.

I was driving through Atlanta as the bomb was going off ten years ago-that night I didn't know the husband who would lose his beloved wife to Eric Rudolph's hatred, not yet, and as I drove us back to South East Alabama after another miserable visit to Crusty's deliberately negative family I told myself I would never go there again and so would probably never see Atlanta again; never say never:).

I gasped when I saw the banner on CNN.com that Mr. Jewell has died. It just does not seem fair that he went through so damn much and just died at only 44 years of age! I'm praying for his wife, and his mother. (Did the FBI ever replace her Tupperware?)

I'm hoping that Mrs. Hawthorne was one of his greeting party. He tried so hard to save her life that night ten years ago in Centennial Park. From what I learned of her from her husband John when he was one of my storage tenants in Alabama, she is the sort of lady who would want to say thank-you for trying.

The world abounds with the great, the quietly great and heroic-God has blessed us with heroes.

The Children of the Storm, they are my heroes because they went through so much horror and most emerged with dreams intact, with the courage to adjust, to dream newer, different, bolder dreams.

Richard Jewell, a guy who was treated like a nutter wannabe after being finally 'cleared' by the FBI; he kept hoping right up to the end. My hero.

Thank-you Father!

28 August 2007

I thought about blogging today. What would I say? Happy birthday to me? Naaaaaaaa.

I wasn't going to until I clicked on my profile to see if the ticker had rolled over to 51; it had, so I had to comment.

But first I clicked on my blog from last year on my State of California minted BD, nice one, and how the heck does Me top that one?

So I am not even going to try.

Happy birthday to me.

One of my neighbours, who has something of a mad crush (poor guy) on me, brought over two birthday cards with the warning one of the cards is very mushy (oh swell); my co-workers gave me a card and brownies-not the '70's kind, sigh.

I think back, ten toes-ALL TEN (take that slag, and you know who I am talking about you bloody identity thief!), still attached after fifty-one years, although that blasted arthritis makes me wonder how much longer, hehe.

Ten fingers, damned arthritis again, but I've had that in my hands most of my life. It's kept me from my one true love-the violin. Oh yeah, I can drag a bow across the strings-for a few minutes that descend into the inevitable screech/caterwaul. For that I should take up the pipes, eh?

Hey Fox, do you remember how we used to torment Crusty by getting out the tape of the 'screaming cats'? (The screaming cats being the fine Frasier lads on bagpipes...)


Any road, I think back-did my mother count those now achy fingers and toes in the nearly universal moment of awe?

The way I marvelled at Fox on his first day? His sister, but not on her first day-I really did almost die giving birth to her, and wasn't able to even lift my head from the ICU bed until she was nearly a week old, much less marvel and coo over my newborn daughter. But I did, finally. She, like her younger brother 4 and one half years later, was amazing!

Did my mum think the same about me? Before she left and went home to Britain? Did she come out to see us when we'd holiday in Bolton?

(dear God, who in their right mind packs a load of children across the ocean to holiday in Bolton, Lancashire, for crying out loud-I refused to go once I was old enough, everyone acted so completely odd on those wretched trips!)

Her children she could peep at through a hedge but never speak to, touch, hold, rescue?

(For that matter, who raises their children in the middle of the California desert completely surrounded by fellow ex-pat Brits and East Indian exchange students, educates those poor children in a Roman Catholic private school run by German nuns, who I swear to you, brothers and sisters WERE the exiled daughters of hunted SS officers? Zounds, no wonder I'm 'strange')


I was raised by my dad and his second wife; I didn't know #2 was not my mother until I was around 16, although no-one knocked themselves out to confirm my older sisters angry tirade on the back porch until shortly before my dad died.

But in my heart, I knew the woman we called Alice Capone was not, no waaaaaay, my real, live, mom.

For all the lost years, I've wondered, did my real mother, who left me with my father in her heartbreak at his adultery with the aforementioned Alice Capone, get to spend a few awe filled and joyous moments with me that morning fifty-one years ago?

Any road, where ever you are, Mummy, I want to say:

Thank-you. My life has been the epitome of the Chinese curse-lived in interesting times; it has not been easy; I've never known much of any real love but God's. But I'm so glad to have the chance to run the race.

BTW, Pop wanted me to tell you something-

He never stopped loving you or hoping he would look up and see you crossing the threshold again, he always completely regretted his stupidity; he did his best to teach me to be a good person,and not a burden on society.

He tried to teach me to never ever give up hope.

So thank-you for that, too, that you gave me a Dad like that.

I wish I knew you.

Happy birthday to me.

Oh yeah. I know about the dates. See you Wednesday.

Hey, hope floats! Fox could show up, too:)

Happy birthday to me, and many more.

25 August 2007

I Googled it.

"Define:" I typed, "Climate Refugee" and I deliberately depressed the 'enter' key...

And got the response that no definition existed. However, a link to the following was posted, so I clicked:

Climate refugee
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
A Climate refugee is a displaced person caused by climate change induced environmental disasters. Such disasters result from both incremental and rapid ecological change and disruption that include increased droughts, desertification, sea level rise, and the more frequent occurrence of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, cyclones, flooding and tornadoes


I've been thinking about that term 'climate refugee' for the past week. The plain fact is the term applies to me and many others here in the Metro; we were displaced by climate related concerns.

For some of us, it was Ivan-although it took another year for me to leave the Gulf Coast region, I left it because of what I went through in Ivan. 18 hours of full-on terror will do that for a person.

For others it was Katrina.

But careful consideration in regards to myself brings me to the realization that it was actually the '71 Quake in L.A.

I've blogged here before about the quake. Briefly, for new readers (HI!) I was around 14 and knocked off of the couch by the waves emanating from Slymar that morning. The quake was my introduction to organized disaster relief-I was part of the group from Orange County that loaded a rental truck and drove it to San Fernando to bring relief supplies. What I saw on those truck runs led me to join the Coast Guard, the Red Cross, and grass-roots relief organizations; to try to take some sort of control by learning all that I could about natural disasters-surviving and triumphing...

30+ years later all of that training did little more than make it possible for me to hear over 80 simultaneous tornado warnings on the battery powered AM-FM and NOAA weather radio sets blaring as the dog and I took shelter in the bathroom, in the tub under a mattress at times. Crammed in the tub with us were the weather proof small evac bags with food, clothing (for me), first aid supplies, maps, compass...I clutched the dog's collar in one hand and the bag straps with the other, hoping the dog and the bags and I would somehow land in the same place if the place blew around and took us for the ride of our lives.

And when we emerged from the tub, the bathroom, the apartment, the landscape around us was relatively intact (compared to the places that took direct hits), but I was ruined inside. So was the dog, I think. Gator was never the same after Ivan, and so far, neither am I.

I lived in Florida during Hurricane Andrew. Friends brought their boats to our huge Lake Washington (Melbourne) yard, their cars, their children. We braced, but never saw so much as a cloud.

I was working for a landscape maintenance company at the time as a contract administrator; my boss and some of the crews went south with chain saws and other tools. They weren't gone more than a week and they brought back stories and photos that left them shaking visibly, and me shaking inside.

I started my personal plans to get the hell out of Dodge at that point, and I got my family out, back to Alabama where we owned a little place that Crusty hated.

We were in Guatemala when Opal knocked out the power for nearly two weeks. We heard from the neighbours that a mini-tornado came up our driveway; from the furrow left in the drive, I had to believe. They said at the very last second before it hit the little house it veered off to the right and went harmlessly out into the pastures.

I ramped up my training upon return from Central America. I became a certified Red Cross Disaster Relief Provider. I created a store of emergency supplies for my family.

I was OK. Until Ivan.

Now I am a Climate Refugee.

All my labels. Mom. Survivor. Ex-wife. Divorcee. Depression sufferer. Full time employee. Administrative Assistant. Christian. Optimist. Survivalist. Resilient. All my labels now refined, distilled down to one single description.

Climate Refugee.

11 August 2007

I've just come from gratefulness.org, where I lit a candle for Michael Rainer and his family, child, and friends. The candle is marked "!Year" Please go there and click on 'Groups' to find it. I ask you to add your voice by lighting a candle for them, and while you are there, you may find yourself lighting another for someone you know, or know of...

One year ago today Michael Rainer's family made the awful, difficult, soul shattering decision to turn off the machines keeping him alive.

How did they stand the horror of having to make that 'choice' for the son they loved so deeply? They'd stood by him through every loving parents nightmares-rebellion squared, drug abuse that put him into rehab, unplanned and unmarried parenthood.

He was doing so well, they said in an interview given to the local paper in hopes of keeping some one else's son from dying the way he did. He was doing so well, why did he go back to the drugs that night?

Why?

When I read the obituary and read who acted as one of the pall bearers, I nearly threw up.

One of the pall bearers was a little worm who'd encouraged my Fox to blow-off his 'successful' rehab. The day before Fox came home from rehab I'd begged this dirtball to keep his own drug use separate from his friendship with Fox. Within two hours of Fox getting out of the car he and the dirtball were smoking a joint.

So far my son is still alive.

Mr and Mrs Rainer had to bury their son.

Why?

03 August 2007

I've lived up here on the side of a North Georgia almost mountain for one year. I moved into the tin shack 31st July 2006. Today is 2nd August 2007.

Wow! That really was one of the fastest years I've spent in a long time!

A year ago Gator and I were trying to settle in; he was feeling so good to finally have kitchen rights again, and a yard. He didn't seem to mind that he still had to be on the lead as I had no fence, he was just happy to have a kitchen floor to flop on, a couch to flop on, freedom to roam the house again. I was worried, a bit scared, OK, aghast at finding myself living in a tin shack clinging to the side of a North Georgia mountain; I was saddened by the events that led to my moving out of the roomie's place, but thrilled to know that I would actually be able to count on my groceries being exactly where I'd left them, and my room not being pillaged...

(Roomie, where ever you are, know this-the oxen are slow, but the wheel does grind. I'm not looking for 'revenge' but if you don't get into rehab soon, and learn to tell the truth, well, you know-what goes around comes back when you least expect or need it to.)

Two years ago we were (OK, I was, Gator wasn't big on TV after the Rosie show went off the air) nervously watching the tropics and the Gulf for the next wicked little hurricane to crop up.

One year, two years, all the years. I miss Gator, I miss Fox, and 'Bas-who does not miss their first grandchild?

Gator I know I will see again when I cross from this life to the next; Fox and 'Bas are a scant 250 miles south; I check Fox's blog for updates on him and 'Bas, and shamelessly beg Fox's friends (who call regularly to check up on me) for pictures...

But I'm OK. Mozart and me, we're OK, thank-you Lord!

30 July 2007

I took today off. I've slept through most of it, although I have done a couple things-went to breakfast with a neighbour, and put dinner in the oven. Oh yeah, I let Mozart blog a bit over on his blog over at www.shecallsmemozart.blogspot.com

The cat's got a pretty good blog:) He's been pretty good company considering that I've worked the last twenty days straight. He's not destroyed anything, or even missed the litter box on purpose, the #1 way for a cat to let you know he or she is not impressed with your misdeeds.

Wot a grreat cat!

As mentioned above, I've worked the last twenty days-straight. So I need to blog off and go clean the science projects out of the fridge, and I should probably firehose the ladies room.

Yeeesh!

11 July 2007

I am a real person again.

There is a washing machine running in my humble abode. There is a dryer in there, too, waiting for a load of clothes to emerge from the washer-it will have a bit of a wait as I am running at least one and more likely two loads of cleansing bleach through with HOT-HOT-HOT water and no clothes. The washer and dryer, a mis-matched but lovely none the less pair, are after all used and only a fool throws a load of clothing in a used washer and dryer first day out.

Two of my neighbours fetched the set home for me from the secondhand store today, wrestling the appliances in through a pouring rain up the steep steps and across the narrow porch until finally the pair landed in the laundry room.

By God's hand, I was able to leave work early and come home via the Lowes, where I tried to find hoses a bit less deluxe than the $22.00 braided steel hoses I ended up with-turns out there is no such thing as a cheap pair of rubber hoses for a washing machine anymore. Oh well, I have to admit the steel hoses look quite smart really.

$47.00 later I was the proud and excited owner of everything I needed to hook up the washing machine and dryer.

If you doubt God is good, you need only tell yourself he landed me where my neighbour's are good and generous people, amoung them a licensed contractor who kindly hooked up the power cord to the dryer when I realized I was less abled than I thought to figure out where the wires go-how did I ever get my last one hooked up-OH, I know, I had the owner's manual! Rest assured, I've downloaded the one from the washing machine manufacturer's website, the dryer people want me send them three dollars. I'm thinking about it.

The washer, thank-heavens is a no-brainer; the dryer came with fancy ground wires (my Maytag didn't have that!). The neighbour came in, hooked up the dryer, moved the appliances into place, tightened the washer hoses, visited for a few minutes and then departed.

I got busy with the bleach.

I sit here at the keyboard marveling that I am once again a real person-I've a washer and dryer to prove it. I'm not quite sure why a pair of appliances speak to one's validity as a real person, I only know that is the case. I felt adrift, rootless; now I've an anchor busily cleaning itself in the next room. The house feels more like a real home now-how strange to be the owner of a washing machine and dryer again! How lovely to know that I can throw a load in and go about another task as the laundry cleans.

How grand it feels to feel real again; how wonderful, how wonderful.

I was on the Eastern Side, the tornadoes raged and howled all around me; Gator and I emerged from the bathroom to see our immediate environs eerily untouched yet the shed doors across the street hung at unnatural angles and swung drunkenly; tin roofing was everywhere but where it was supposed to be and other great pieces of debris lying about made me think of the old cliche of a giant child's haphazardly discarded toys.

Yet Gator and I and the spot we stood on were completely untouched. Not a scratch on my brand new car nor a leak anywhere in our building-more 'proof' should you truly require it. I care but only a little that my stored goods did mold like you would not believe unless you've been through it your own self. Gator, Fox, 'Bas, and me lived through it, although not together.

At the worst point of the continuous and simultaneous tornadoes ravaging my little corner of Houston County Alabama I was completely sure I was about to die. I used those last minutes to text Fox a farewell message as I knew that even if the calls were not going through, the text would eventually make it's way to my son and he would know however an imperfect mother I had been, I loved him, his son, and spent my last living moments saying good-bye.

And yet.

And yet standing there awed by the damage and the miracle of my seeming unscathed survival I knew I was not the same person who went into the tub with the dog. I may never be again. I stood there looking around, looking at the dog, the cell phone in my hand finally ringing and thought to myself something truly terrible had happened. Not just to me but to the entire world.

A lot of the choices I made after Hurricane Ivan I made because, I've come to see, of my profound shock.

I've come to believe that for me, Ivan was the final straw.

07 July 2007

OK! I hate to be right, and I love to be wrong.

The co-worker previously mentioned apparently thought about things, and 'the next day' went rather well. And the day after that as well.

So I was wrong about that. Whew, 'coz I actually love my job!

But I was also right about her, she is frustrated with her home situation and is more suited to being a professional working outside the home.

Not that great a problem-we recognize the tremendous asset she is and work with (and sadly, a little around) her skills set. Now there is a big fat hairy DUH!

I just hate that she was so unpleasant, and so willing to make things very difficult when she perceived me as a threat. (GODS! I am so everlastingly tired of being perceived as a threat!) I especially hated the quite counter-productive whispering campaign she started. I am about production-can you say "Job Security"? I know I can!

Tuesday when I went in I demanded...her input. Actually I demanded input of everyone and she ended up being the one who compiled the intel. And, working as a real team we managed to come up with a real solution that worked. I hope we can keep that momentum going, and I truly hope that our boss, who will be returning from holiday on Monday, is not going to throw a monkey wrench into things. I also hope our mutual boss doesn't fire our team boss upon his return from his holiday.

Ahhhh, real life...

Speaking of, I am really hoping to get some boxes unpacked, the kitchen cabinets painted, and the bathroom towel racks up. If I get all that done, I'll be a happy camper.

I should do some laundry, but I am also hoping that by the end of the day, the washer and dryer I found used, and in excellent condition, have been installed and I am happily adding to carbon emissions, blah, blah, blah-trust me PLEASE when I tell you the automatic washer and dryer are one of God's greatest gifts to Mankind!

After one year (minus about 20 days) of hand-washing all of my clothing including towels (a chore chosen after finding out the local laundromat owner refuses to turn the hot water on until all the Hispanics leave town) I know absolutely that the automatic washing machine is NOT a luxury but a real necessity!

I want to be 'green' and I am buying a reel mower, does that make you feel better? I'm even springing for the optional sharpening kit.

Well, that's all from the trenches. Have a great weekend!

04 July 2007

Happy Fourth of July!

I spent all of mine (so far) looking at dog blogs and local rescue sites. I think I may be ready to actually find another dog.

Maybe.

I've been working a lot of overtime; I left work last night so late I was not home until 2100! The cat flung himself at me and wouldn't let me alone until I fell asleep on the sofa.

I thought groggily that I would set the couch on fire with a lit cigarette, so I made myself get up and go to bed about an hour after I got in.

Not the sort of life one brings a dog into. Maybe I'll just donate the cost of dog food and vet care to a local group.

One of my co-workers asked what I'll be doing for the Fourth, when I told him I would be painting the kitchen cabinets he looked as though he felt sorry for me, so I lied and said I would be BBQing with the neighbours, too.

The cabinets are not painted, and all of my kitchenware is still slopped into boxes and stacked everywhere.

I think I might be in trouble-I just don't care anymore about anything because everything I care about goes away. No matter what I do, or how I do it, things just always seem to go south...

I know that sounds extreme, and it isn't really true, although right now it sure feels that way!

I got a promotion with pay-Hurrah! But apparently one of my co-workers who is unfortunately the HR guy's wife has decided that although she's run off three other people and is the root cause of our department being the laughingstock of our company, I am the problem.

She is part time but seems to run the department, to it's detriment because she end runs our boss, spreads gossip about people and then accuses them of spreading things about her, screws up just about everything she touches, and goes off thinking she's saved the day again while we have to clean up her messes...

Tuesday I told her I am not trying to make her look incompetent and the things she is incensed about me enforcing are things that have always been the rules-I didn't make them up!

Tuesday she told me that since I transferred into the department no-one is happy and there is all this brand new squabbling going on.

Tuesday I told her if she wanted a meeting we would have one with our bosses and someone from corporate.

Tuesday, I am reasonably certain, she decided I'm going to be fired.

Meanwhile, I figured out the spreadsheet they have been having such trouble with and was told two thirds of the way through that I had approval to go ahead with the rest of the project because the management and accounting had been following my progress with the analysis on the shared software and could see I knew what I was doing...

Which is not going to endear me any further to the 'ladies' I work with since they couldn't figure it out and are responsible for making some serious mistakes that have cost our company thousands and thousands of dollars.

Nope, not the sort of life to bring a dog into. I think the cat and I may be homeless if the Drama Princess gets her way. I don't think that I have unfortunately amassed quite a lot of evidence of her, er, well, incompetence, is going to help, either.

And my patience has worn dangerously thin, as in if her little best friend who is now unfortunately my boss pushes me too far I may just have to tell her to go to hell.

See, the HR guy's wife thinks she should have my job, our boss' job, and maybe all the jobs in our department. She used to work full-time for another company, has some things going on at home that preclude her working full-time, and is going through menopause at the same time. She managed to drive the guy who was our boss to transfer to another department, three vault managers in a row to transfer or quit, and is now working on me.

She spent the last couple of days our boss was in town whispering-no, really, I'm not making it up, they were whispering, and cramming things into file drawers, and arranging to have my email diverted to my old boss. Then she spent Friday, Monday and Tuesday undermining me with my old boss, who is just nice enough to fall in with her until it hits the fan, which it almost did and I was able to stave off until she got him all fired up again, and he went upstairs and made us all look even more like fools. Which unfortunately right now only Accounting and I know about, but word wil get around...She worked on him all day Tuesday and by the time he left he was looking at me as though I am the enemy; wait till he finds out how stupid she made him look-why the hell do I bother??

She might just manage it, too, getting me fired. She needs to be transferred somewhere she can't do any damage, she needs to get a different job, she needs a damn attitude adjustment, because what really pisses her off is that I am older and look better, have a job she wants, and that our boss was thrilled by the work I was doing.

Actually, any of our team has a job she'd like to have-she wants to be working full time and have the respect she thinks she deserves. Did I mention she is a Southern Belle, too? The worst kind, the claw her way to the social top kind, who thinks her parent's friendship with the Archbishop and her New Orleans college education entitles her to be the ONLY Drama Princess. She refuses to understand there is no room for Drama Princess' in adult life and she is perfectly willing to be a real bitch about anyone she perceives as getting in her way. That kind of Princess Southern Belle, come on, you know at least one.

She wants our boss' job, she wants my job, she wants the vault manager job, and I know that poor kid who just got the job has no clue that she is going to shred him. He thinks she is his friend and won't speak to me while she is around.

Hmmmmm, that might be interesting to watch. I hope I get to keep my job at least long enough to see what happens. But I kinda doubt it. She is going to be thoroughly pissed when she finds out I managed to do the spreadsheet she and the department boss have not been able to figure out even with a bullet list. A bullet list they hid just before the boss went on her vacation last week thinking that when I couldn't do the spreadsheet they would be vindicated.

Nope, sorry. I found the bullet list that I didn't even know existed that my boss had stuffed in to the file drawer under the previous week material that I wanted to look at in hopes of figuring out the way to start the spreadsheet.

After about a half hour of studying I sat down to the spreadsheet. I got it done in a bit too many hours, but I got it done. And it's right, and I understand it, and I felt pretty good about it until I thought about the reaction I'll be facing tomorrow.

What is upsetting is that I wasn't telling anyone that she was incompetent, her work was.

02 July 2007

In memory of Gator, will you please go to dogsayeview.blogspot.com and click on the purple link? The dog mom there is giving a very generous amount of money to dog rescue services for everyone who clicks the purple link, posts a comment at her blog, and mentions the blog on theirs.



Jeez I miss him!

30 June 2007

I've a home improvement weekend in mind.

I have so many items on the list-finish painting the bathroom, paint the kitchen cabinets, finish unpacking, get the washer and dryer going, shorten the mini-blinds, hang curtains, clean out the fabulous chest of drawers I found and got home two weekends ago so that I can FINALLY, after too, too many years to count have my clothing neatly folded and put away in a dresser instead of on a shelf, continue working on the gardens-front and back; whoa, I'm tired just making the list-I have to do the weekly 'investment' cooking so that when I crawl in from work during the week the most strenuous thing I have to do is nuke a plate, firehose the house; yikes, I should get started! But where??

Thirty years ago I was working at a photo-finishing company in San Francisco. I worked at the flagship store and had several co-workers.

One morning we arrived to find an overwhelming list of tasks all urgently needing to be done before our leaving for the day; one of my co-workers suggested we stand still for a moment, take a deep cleansing breathe, then whatever task our eyes fell on first was the task to perform.

By following her excellent advice we were able to accomplish a tremendous lot of work.

Some of my age contemporary co-workers learned a quite valuable lesson that day-old people know stuff.

The co-worker was in her sixties and was working because she needed the money to supplement her meager SS. My contemporaries thought she was an unpleasant old hag who wouldn't mind her own business and worked at finding extra, silly work for us to do.

They liked to grumble that she wasn't our boss, who did she think she was to tell us what to do under the so-called good work ethic bit she adhered to?

Who cares, we could always get another job when our stupid boss let us go for some stupid reason like lack of punctuality, arriving for work properly dressed, or demonstrating a willingness to go the extra mile...

Somethings never ever change-some of those pinheads didn't get it.

I remember sitting in senior econ class looking at my particularly obtuse classmates thinking-"Oh sh__, these idiots will rule the world one day. God, help us!"

It was a no-brainer then, and it is a no-brainer now.

Old people know stuff.

So, I bid you adieu, dear and gentle reader, and go to take a close eyed deep and cleansing breathe...

28 June 2007

Happy Anniversary...


Retrieved from: MSNBC.com on 6/27/07

Heart may react to tragic anniversaries

Doctors report evidence that unconscious mind keeps track of time

Reuters
Updated: 2:13 p.m. ET June 27, 2007


WASHINGTON - A woman whose defibrillator activated one week to the hour after her father died, and recorded the event, may provide the first documented evidence of “anniversary reaction,” doctors reported.

The defibrillator acted as a pacemaker, perhaps saving the 50-year-old woman’s life. Its function of keeping a precise record of when it was activated made it possible to establish the precise time of the event, the doctors reported.

In a dramatic extra twist to the story, the patient was standing by the open grave of her sister-in-law, who had herself died when she heard the news of the father’s death.

Dr. Michael Sweeney of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston and Dr. Michael Quill of the University of Rochester School of Medicine in New York reported on the occurrence in the journal HeartRhythm.

“We have all, almost to the point of being urban legend, heard stories of people literally dropping dead upon receipt of tragic news ... or a widower dying on the anniversary of his deceased spouse’s (death),” Sweeney said in a telephone interview.

No one could really prove it, but the case of the woman, who had had the defibrillator implanted after an earlier heart attack, may provide good evidence, he said.

Sweeney said he learned of the story when the woman came into his office for a routine checkup. He noticed that the defibrillator — a device that sits quietly in a patient’s body until an abnormal heart rhythm activates it — had provided a mild shock to her heart five months after it was implanted.

“My patient ... had an event which, had she not had a defibrillator, she would have fallen into the grave,” Sweeney said.

She was also not aware that the defibrillator had fired, as it gave her heart just a gentle pulse and not an overwhelming shock. Because it fired at almost the precise hour of her father’s death, but one week later, Sweeney and Quill believe it was this shock, and not the funeral of the sister-in-law, that precipitated the abnormal heart rhythm.

“The concept of anniversary reaction is that it is a response to the unconscious sense of time. Just because you aren’t thinking that it is exactly seven days later ... a part of your mind ... is thinking that,” Sweeney said.

The event also suggests a possible biological cause for “anniversary reaction” — a change in the heart’s beating pattern, Sweeney said.


Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19460290/
MSN Privacy . Legal© 2007 MSNBC.com

So, I get in the car after a particularly grueling day at work. I hit the CD, because I didn't feel up the chance that a song would trigger my own personal flood.

Rod Stewart's voice filled the cabin-

"Smile, though your heart is breaking..."


27 June 2007

Happy Anniversary, my heart, my soul, my everything, wherever you are. Did you have to believe his lies? Did Fox?

18 years, 19 years, 20...

This year, 26.

I go back and forth. One year I am so broken I can't leave the house, other years I have no choice, I have to go to work, I have to attend to the daily struggle-those years I hate Crusty so much I long for a mere three minutes alone in a room with him and I contemplate the damage I could do in three short minutes to him if I had a nice Little Slugger in my hands.

26 years-he stole the years, the hope, the chances...

Some years I actually make it through the day and don't even think about it until something triggers a wave of grief so strong I think I will fall through the floor instead of only to it. But it is private, and no-one sees, no-one knows.

Thanks to Crusty, no-one cares. He set me up for this. What a swell guy.

Tomorrow I will go to work, I will do my job, I will probably work late as usual.

Tomorrow I will try not to think about the ruins of life that I stagger through.

No-one will know and no-one will see.

26 years.

Happy anniversary.

24 June 2007

I blog to vent, I blog to keep people up to date; I blog to explore.

Yesterday I spent the day catching up the Internet. I checked in on the Tiny House Movement most of the day, learning all sorts of things about the movement that scorns the MacMansion (but not the price, whoa! Some of those tiny houses have some majour prices! I mean, how can 350 sq ft cost close to a hundred grand, American???) by taking 'downsized' to new and amazing extremes.

That said, in complete sticker shock, I promise you, I got some great ideas. The best one is to see if I can buy the current tin shack, tear out the wall coverings, re-insulate with real insulation, and completely re-wire the whole house so that I can wash clothes and run the air conditioner at the same time, or bake in the oven, or whatever, and if you don't get it, I am glad for you that you've never lived in an inadequately wired shelter.

Who has the kind of money required to purchase the Anti-MacMansion? Not I. So I must make do.

And I'd better get on it, because winter will come, and I for sure do not want another three hundred dollar electric bill!

But first I think I should get the place levelled.

Yup, that's right, the damn thing sits slightly tilted to the back left, and as I sit here typing, I am slowly rolling southwest.

Sigh.

Adventures in being downsized.

Ten years ago I was sitting in a little completely remodeled trailer, snug-maybe slightly too snug-and paid for. I was a homemaker, although married to a through and through rotter, and a 24/7 mom. Most of my time ten years ago was spent cooking, cleaning, sewing, and trying to figure out how to keep Fox from killing himself, accidently or on purpose.

We had money in the bank, and food in the pantry, freezer, on the table. We paid all of our bills in cash, the credit cards carried no balances, and we went to some pretty cood places inspite of Crusty.

But Crusty wanted a mortgage, he wanted a 'working' wife, and he damn sure didn't want a family-which I knew back in '81 and told him-"Hey Mike, you and I want different things from life, I think you are getting too serious..." At which point he put a .41 mag to all of our heads, and well, it took 18 years to be able to get away.

I Googled him a couple of nights ago and was nauseated to see he'd also been in the 'cane. The difference is that he's taken the divorce as a chance to buy some place down in Central Florida, which the 'cane took out and garnered him a $90,400.00 drain on the American tax-payer by way of a federal interest free loan.

That sorry bastard. Fox and I went hungry, homeless, had no medical care while he was buying into a coming disaster zone!

It completely pisses me off to think that the ambulatory fecal matter went down to the worst place in America, a place I'd got us out of to avoid being there when the big one hit, bought himself some crumbling piece of rotting Florida landscape and then when the inevitable happened, got that loan.

I hate that my tax dollars are being wasted on a piece of sewage like him! I utterly despise people who deliberately choose to place themselves in danger expecting the government to bail them out.

I have nothing but contempt for the breed-'rich' people who are mortgaged to the hilt, leveraged to the max, and expect you and me to rebuild their wanna-be marble palaces that slid off cliffs-Malibu, go up in flames-also Malibu; are washed away in yearly floods-OK, also Malibu, but also the Gulf coast, any dry river bed, any ocean cliff...Sorry, but how hard is it to figure out Florida and the rest of the hurricane/tornado zones are perhaps a nice place to visit but only the idiot or incredibly selfish actually move there with the expectation of a US government bail-out.

Is it not a no-brainer that if you insist on building some architechtural nightmare, you should have the burden of replacing it on your own nickle when the inevitable happens?

Oh, please! How complete is the sense of entitlement that it takes to be the very incarnate vampire?!

I mean, DUHHHH!

And F___ you if you think I am going to smile and throw MY money at your willfull ignorance!

Not even when Hell freezes over will I think it is ok for anyone to think I should support their stupidity habit!

Meanwhile, I'm sitting hoping to scrap up the money to insulate my walls, one room at a time.