Well, thank you goddess! Sparky and I watched the debate tonight, and yes, the Emperor really has no clothes! It's been proven. And thank goodness also that the networks actually showed the reaction shots (which they weren't "supposed" to per the 32 pages of rules) and we got to see Kerry taking studious notes while Dubya swigged water, rolled his eyes, slumped on the podium and flipped his piece of paper back and forth (which appeared to be covered in doodles).
And miraculously, the pundits even seemed to agree that Dubya was nervous, defensive, repetitive and completely inarticulate. Though he does seem to have practiced saying nuclear, after a pause and deep breath he even managed to say "nuclear prolification". But he did say emeny instead of enemy. Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews even agreed that Dubya was seemed the annoyed monarch who did not want to be there and is unaccustomed to being questioned. My husband was so worried, not that John Kerry would do badly, but that Dubya would beautomatically be proclaimed the winner because that mean old smart guy was picking on him. That's how he won Texas, because Ann Richards (who was a wonderful governor, BTW) picked on "poor George".
Once again, can I make a plea - can we PLEASE have the smart, well spoken guy for President?? Please??? I don't want the average Joe Blow running our country, I don't want the "everyman" in charge, I want the smart guy who is going to plan things out before he acts. Running the largest nation in the world requires a lot of knowledge, education and experience. Here's an analogy to chew on - If you were going on a car trip and were bringing your family along, do you want to ride with the guy who never passed his driver's license test, who is prone to road rage and spent the first part of his life drinking to excess and snorting coke or would you rather ride with the responsible guy who reads the maps before he goes somewhere and would never drink and drive? Because that's where we are America, we've been riding with the road raging cowboy and we're out in the middle of nowhere and the other drivers won't get near us because they're afraid of OUR driver. But now he's finally running out of gas and hopefully soon won't be able to harm anyone else. We're going to take the keys away from him.
So we're both taking sighs of relief, and I have a feeling even the propaganda masters in the GOP won't be able to salvage this disaster. I do not want to wake up tomorrow to headlines that say "Bush Won Debate". If the media does not want to lose all of their credibility they will play it straight on this debate. Kerry slaughtered Bush. And Kerry answered everything clearly, succinctly and in plain language. Meanwhile Dubya interrupted, ran over in time), and kept raising his hand to object though when called upon he often had nothing to say. Except that the country needed someone who didn't change positions. Who didn't play well with others. And who refused to learn from or even acknowledge his mistakes.
And there are two more debates left... And next week is Edwards vs. Darth Cheney. This is going to get bloody.
But seriously, I REALLY want the smart guy to win this time. Will everyone get off their butts and vote this November? We can have a peaceful, prosperous America again. We've done it before, I remember, I was there. And your vote really is anonymous. And registering to vote does not mean you're more likely tol be picked for jury duty. They don't do that anymore, they use your driver's license info. Yes, really. So if you don't want to go to jury duty, don't drive. But please vote.
I saw a house a few blocks down from ours today with not one, but two Kerry-Edwards signs proudly displayed in the front yard. I'm wondering when the guy across the street from us is going to put up his Dubya sign. Our neighborhood is pretty conservative, if we were about three miles to the east we'd be in a predominatnly liberal Jewish neighborhood. And, yes, the houses there cost more. I saw quite a few Kerry signs driving through there today (sigh).
Sparky's been really bi-polar this week about the debates this Thursday night. I hope I get my Fiorinal renewed before then, I've had a headache all week myself. At least I do have some Valium left if he gets too angry at the "liberal media". My mantra? Polls are crap and the only person I believe on TV is Jon Stewart.
I'm looking at two Kerry-Edwards bumper stickers on my desk, a pretty navy & red one and a smaller baby blue, navy and white one. I've been dying to put the red one on my car, but Sparky's too paranoid. Mostly of some idiot keying my relatively new (i.e. expensive) car. I've got nothing but a Carmax sticker on it right now. My last car had about half a dozen stickers in the window and on the bumper. Of course it was 13 years old too.
I mentioned the yard signs to Sparky today and wondered aloud where we could get one and he wondered also. So we're making progress. Or he's not afraid for the house, just my car. He also pulled out the stickers and looked at them, I told him I had two and the white one would look great on his white car. He also agreed. But his car is 16 years old...
Everyone watch Oprah's Voting Party, today's show is to convince people to register to vote. Maybe she could give a new car to anyone who votes for Kerry, I think it would work.
I think I'm going to get hooked on plugins, I added Mt Entry If Comments tonight, which basically only displays a number count for comments if you have more than zero. Very nifty and makes me feel less unloved because I'm using my blog as my startup page on Opera.
Although the spammers seem to love me, MT Blacklist is working it's little heart out, bless you Jay Allen!
Whee! Not sure whether to feel like a genius or an idiot ;-) Instead of doing my real work tonight I decided to figure out the whole weblog syndication thing. I honestly think the whole thing used to work but I hadn't checked it in ages and I've done a lot of updates and found out that I had old, invalid syndication feeds. So I went back to the MT forums, because it's not really clear through the MT users manual, and found out here is how it all works...
The syndication feed is just a link to a template in your blog. The older one is the RSS 1.0 index and the newer XML feed is the RSS 0.91 index (which should now be renamed 2.0). Mine were out of date, apparently they don't update themselves when you upload a new version.
To check yours go to the Feed Validator and enter your link (should be your weblog/index.rdf or index.xml). This will pretty much tell you what to do. I got this page telling me how to update my Movable Type templates, which I did and the XML one works but the older one is buggy so I didn't add it to my syndicate link.
And MT 3.+ is supposed to support Atom feeds... hmmm, looked through my templates, nothing for Atom. Nothing in the user manual, but there is an Atom template on the default templates page (and the newest RSS 2.0 one). So I added a template and named it atom.xml and the validator says both now work!
So I think I may finally be a real blogger now :-) So that's my aha moment for today, my sincere apologies to anyone I frustrated with my blogging ignorance... Next lesson - how the hell does trackback work...
As you can see I've been playing with my CSS for this page, it still doesn't look as I imagine it, but I like it a bit better. I'm a big fan of grey anyway, so that much will probably stay, I'm not sure about the banner, but I know if I redo it I'll keep it the same size... I didn't realize it was specified in so many different places, geez...
I seem to have gotten the HTML working on the bottom of the sidebar again, I have got to learn how to get everything working better, now I've got Atom feeds, XML, trackback, pings... I know one day it will all click and I'll have my aha moment, but for now my head hurts... Gonna go take a shower and got to bed. I'm all PMSy too, which makes it hard to concentrate (envisioning Jon Stewart yelling "Damn you estrogen!")
Just FYI, I got bored last night and made a new logo, but had to go in and redo some assorted HTML, and (at least in Opera & Safari, Netscape looks fine) some of my CSS seems to have gone a bit wacky so please let me know of any viewing problems...
So far I'm missing the links beneath my little moon phase chart, but I'm working on it...
Found a couple of bugs after the new upgrade... first the CSS on my search page was messed up, all fixed now, reuploaded the pervious search template.
Also my comments were apparently all going straight to moderation mode, so I clicked, unclicked, and rebuilt MT and Blacklist, still didn't work. I read the instructions for the new version, then finally I read the help forums and it said "remove the old version of Blacklist". I had wondered about that when I was uploading the new one, and duh, yes, it was interfering with 3.1.1.
So comments are being posted immediately again now... except for you spammer idiots out there, the log says it's been doing a great job against you guys ;-)
OK, I'm very confused... I hardly ever watch network TV these days and my idea of a reality show is Cops. Which is how I saw the promo for Renovate My Family, and I saw they were doing a Goth family. So OK, I'll check that episode out...
What the hell is wrong with the world today??? Why does this show exist?
I had figured that:
-The family must have been having some sort of interpersonal conflicts that merited the intervention and "counseling" of Dr. Phil's son
-They were in some sort of dire need
-That this was something that they really wanted
-That they were seriously disfunctional and weird
Nah! None of the above.
All I can figure is that Fox thought they were weird looking enough to be ratings-worthy, which I guess they were because they got ME to waste an hour of my life watching a reality show.
I will admit that I did watch Mad Mad House, but all of the "weird" people on that show were very earnest, learned and devoted to their "weirdness". And they were all very interesting personalities that were treated with a certain degree of respect by the people producing the show, thank goodness. The family on tonight's show was just your run-of-the-mill group of gothy folks, except for the one Marilyn Munster preppie blonde girl. Though Marilyn respected and appreciated her family. Somehow this girl made it through 17 years of living with her family, in this same house and now she wants a "normal" life. The first thing I thought is - she's 17, won't she be going off to college or a job on her own soon? The rest of the family did have dyed black hair and an absence of eyebrows, her mom had a few small tattoos and one piercing that I could see, but nothing the average person hasn't seen at the mall a million times.
Their house just looked like a pre-fab 70's ranch, with one wall painted a dark green in the living room, a couple of jack o'lanterns on display, some cheesy Mexican-type crosses on the wall, and a cheap Halloween coffin in the corner. Ooh, and a couple of resin gargoyles. If Fox's point is to highlight "weirdos", is that the weirdest they could find? They had a couple of pet lizard (and a dog and cat). Not even a snake or two? This whole thing reeked of set up, IMHO, it all just looked really cheesy and thrown together. Honestly, if this is really what their house looked like, they're just guilty of being poor and having zero decorating skills. Or just not giving a crap what their house looked like. I can't believe they've lived their for 18 years, it looked like the home of a a couple of college kids living together and renting for the first time.
So the little blonde girl was ashamed of her family, poor thing. And she wasn't sleeping with her sister anymore because her 19 year old sister wanted to stay up late, so she moved out onto the couch. Her mom is dating a Goth guy, and mom and he have a band, (OMG! she stole my Addams Family background GIF!) so this TV show decides in order to make this family normal they will:
-Tear down their house and build them a brand new one... in seven days
-Give them all new hairdos and soften their makeup
-Have mom and her boyfriend get married
-And pimp their cars
So Dr. Phil's son walks up to them as they're eating breakfast at a hotel and tells them that they're... BEING RENOVATED! Whee!!! Blink, blink... Hardly a reaction from any of them. Wow, cool, OK, whatever. No questions. No shock. Not really much in the way of thanks. I've seen more reaction out of the girls on What Not To Wear, at least they ask "who" and "why", and seem either enraged or excited. But Dr. Phil's son says "it's going to take a lot of work on your part too". So what, therapy? Do they have to help paint the walls? No, they spend a few hours whacking at sheetrock in the house with sledge hammers, then they stand in the front yard and watch while a bulldozer caves their roof in. Then they are driven off (in a black limousine, ha!) bemoaning the fact that their bland, white trash house has been knocked down, then are taken to a beauty salon where their hair color is lifted a few shades and they get some lowlights, they are given a Super Cuts hairstyle and eyebrows are penciled in for the girls. And the mom - gasp - even removes the piercing on her face! And they go to a flower shop and pick roses, then a bridal show and get suits and gowns, then suddenly we are at a low-budget outdoor wedding. And on one side of the folding chairs sits the "normal" people, all wearing white, and on the opposite, are their "freaky" friends, who are Gothed up to the max and in all black, of course. Literally, it's yin yang.
First off, were mom and boyfriend actually ready to get married? And if so, will getting legally married make this a "normal", happy family? I think this is all part of the new mindless, society... do whatever a television show tells you to, don't ask questions. It's for your own good. Do not have your own personality or identity, if you're not the status quo there's something wrong with you. Conform, conform... It's all part of what my husband calls the Dumbing Down of America.
So Dr. Phil's son and a huge troupe of assorted photogenic decorators (including three cute blonde triplets, what's the deal with that??), come in and tear the house down and then throw a new one back up, complete with an indoor fountain, a gigantic aquarium (they didn't even have fish before), a huge glass cage for their lizards, a sushi bar, an anime based room for the son, a Zen room for the oldest Goth daughter (and a nursing scholarship to a community college, did she want to be a nurse?), and a Holly Hobby room for the blonde girl. And a pool! Just what every pale Goth needs...
So in one week (which seemed to only be like two days... maybe if they showed more of the transition and put this into a two hour time slot it would have made more sense), bam! they have a house with all new furniture, big plasma TV's, a remote home automation system (why??), and a recording studio for their band in the garage (complete with cameras so they can shoot their own music videos). Then, ta da... both of their cars have been pimped out and now look like lowriders (I'm surprised they didn't just give them new Hummers, why the hell not). One of the hostesses proudly points out that the two cars have wheels and rims worth over $7000!
So suddenly they have a house that's worth like five times what their previous one was worth (who pays the property taxes? the utilities? the house insurance? the car insurance???), their kids will never move out, they're married (we didn't even see a proposal or wedding ring). And they still live in the same lower-middle class neighborhood, but now they've got lots of things to steal. (Does the new boyfriend/husband automatically get joint ownership of the new house?) And no garage to park their two new showcars in. And all because their whiny daughter didn't want to sleep on the couch. It was just an hour of non-stop needless hedonistic consumerism. Here's a bunch of stuff you didn't really want or need...and here's more, and even more! Have more, we've got lots of sponsors!
At least Oprah gave cars to people that needed them, and let me tell, you, those women were fricking excited and appreciative to the point of hysteria. But then I've seen the same audience reaction from Oprah giving out frozen turkeys, people just hyperventilating like crazy. I know this is all corporate advertising and network ratings, but I don't get it?? Why??? Ooh, look, we renovated the freaks and now they're "normal" and have tons of expensive stuff! For no reason! (Did they get new clothes too, it didn't say...) And where did their dog and cat go? They had a German Shepherd at the beginning of the show, now he's got no yard, it's all pool...
I don't understand television. I like my makeover shows on TLC and HGTV, they actually make the people work, sort through and evaluate their stuff and figure out why they have so much, and then they give them like $1500 worth of furniture. I even like What Not to Wear, they take women who are wearing clothes that don't fit them properly and are all worn out and "train" them how to dress to show off their best features. ("You've got big hips, don't wear tapered pants") I don't always agree with their choices of what's best (too many pointy shoes), but I can at least see the point of what they are doing. And that's my form of mindless, relaxing television. I used to watch Animal Planet, now I watch home stuff...
I went to the fansite for Renovate My Family and was even more depressed. The forums are full of people begging and pleading to be on the show, it's just sad. The world is full of people with no food or electricity, living in one room shacks, with no education, no health insurance, and what are we watching on TV? Non-stop orgies of people getting expensive meaningless, stuff heaped on them. All I can think is that during the Great Depression the movies were full of spectacles, Busby Berkley musicals and classy rich people. Somehow it comforted and reassured the starving masses. But if we're going to transform people, wouldn't it be better to maybe give homeless people a place to live, and a chance at a future? OK, so I'm a Communist, I guess. I believe everyone should have a decent life. The new hit on Mexican TV is watching people eat worms and compete against each other for just a chance at getting a Green Card, to come to the land of opportunity. And free stuff! Whee!!!
And the preview for next week's episode of Renovate is a family whose house burned down (OK, worthy) but then Hurricane Ivan threatends to ruin it all (drama!). I just looked at the forum again to get a link and the newest posting is:
"I HOPE we see more of the Goth family The Cole-Reimers. This was one of the best shows and they seemed so interesting. I'm tired of being sad by someones hardship. Bravo FOX channel....We want to see the Goth Family again. I hope this isn't just 1 episode."
Aaagh! I was right, America doesn't want to see "someone's hardship"... I give up.
Yippee, everything seems to be working! Just slow browser cache problems, apparently. So far version 3.1.1 is beautiful, and the entry boxes seem bigger which is nice (I always thought the boxes in version 2.6+ were too small)
I got my key to be added to the MT "recently updated list", I've bugged tech support twice and gotten prompt responses. I installed the new version of MT Blacklist, I think I did it correctly. I'm already thinking up subcategories to add, exciting stuff for an obsessive compulsive...
Lots to learn, but time to sleep. My brain is overloaded enough for one night.
Well, I uploaded, set permissions, ran cgi thingies, and I think I've got it all installed. My sign-in says 3.11 though my weblog is still saying 2.64. Also, my login entire menu is justifying on the left, which better not be correct because it's really annoying...
Going to bed now, wish me luck.
OK, I actually broke down and paid for a license to MT 3.11 and I think I've backed up everything that can be backed up, so I'm going to give it a shot. Just FYI, in case anything acts weird this weekend...
We really are in Nazi Germany, aren't we? This is just creepy.
I'd elaborate more on this, but I've been sick the last two days and I'm very braindead...
P.S. 9/18 - Even my 75 year old father called me and told me it's time to practice my Sieg Heil's... He should now, he was stationed in Germany soon during the post WWII occupation. Grieving mothers haled off in handcuffs... at least I studied German in school.
Seriously, though, I spent a lot of time when I was younger studying Weimar Germany and WWII, and there are too many parallels going on here, it's freaking me out...
and finally
Unconscious Mutterings for this week (couldn't pass this one up!):
I messed up on my dinner plans, I thought we would be eating with my parents Sunday night instead of our regular Chinese delivery, but my mother had a stomach virus. So when my husband asked what was for dinner tonight, I blanked out and gave him my backup emergency dinner plan - spaghetti and meatballs. Which I don't eat, but it makes him very happy.
So he got out the big 8 quart pot, filled it half full of water, started the burner, and even got the meatballs out of the freezer. Then it hits me - we don't have any pasta sauce, I used the last jar a few days ago. And I don't have any spaghetti... crap. I've got meatballs and water, not good enough.
So off we went to IHOP, where the waitresses have our orders memorized. We each took our own cars, I'll shop for real groceries after dinner. We also have our favorite boothes, which we always scope out when we walk in to see which one will be the quietest. Booth to the right - screaming kid. On the left - more screaming kids. The smoking area is quiet, but the sun is blasting in the windows, and, well, it's the smoking area. OK, to the right but back near the kitchen, it shouldn't be that bad two boothes away...
Jesus H Christ! We had completely deaf parents on both sides of us and several toddlers competing to see which one could scream the loudest. My back was to them, which actually made me sort of nervous but was probably a good idea because I have trouble "pretending to ignore" ear-splitting children. Besides being annoying, they cause me actual physical pain, I visually wince when they make that "Memorex" noise (that can shatter crystal?). Finally one of the families finished eating, then went out into the lobby where their kids just went frigging bonkers screaming and running around, bouncing off the windows. Whee!!! more sugar!! After about 3 or 4 more minutes of daycare run amok they went out and got in their minivan and drove away.
OK, just one kid left, maybe he'll be quieter while I finish my french toast and bacon. No, he actually got louder, yelling repeatedely at his mother and (I think) older sister, "Read me a story! Read ME A STORY!!". Then he somehow got out of the booth and starts running up and down the aisle, spewing toddler germs into the air hacking and coughing like an old man. On about his third run-by our booth I finally said "GO AWAY!" which he actually did. I don't care if anyone thought I was rude, I say:
As we were finishing up our dinner, Damien the demon toddler and his family left, and my husband looked at me and said "I'm so glad you didn't want kids!'. Likewise, in my 20's all I found were men who wanted "big families". I'm missing that mommy gene, always knew it, I never even did babysitting. I'm totally clueless and quite content to remain that way.
So off I went, in my nice clean, perfect car and bought hundreds of bucks worth of groceries for me, my husband and my cat (who was crying at the door when I got home).
Birthday wishes to my mom, who is 75 today! We're at that place where she doesn't really NEED anything, doesn't use perfume, etc. so for Mother's Day and birthday she usually gets a book store gift card from me. Other than cash, it's my personal favorite gift, you can never have too many books or too much music :-)
Actually she's easier to buy for than my father. I don't like to pick books for other people unless I know they actually want something or really like an author. It must run in the family, I'm hard to buy for also. My husband just asks me what I want and gives me the money for it pretty much. My dad and I also share that guilt gene where we obsess whether we're getting the right thing, right size, color, etc. And I grew up in a retail family, so we always get way too carried away at Christmas. It would actually be fine with me if we just got together and ate dinner, we stopped exchanging gifts with most of our friends years ago, it just got too crazy. Christmas always gave me headaches. I don't mind sending cards, that's actually kind of fun, but when stores put out Christmas decorations in August (before Halloween even), it just really takes a lot of fun out of the holiday...
My best friend Mary's birthday is this Wednesday, she's in New Orleans or I'd get together with her also. I travel so infrequently now, originally because of lack of money and lack of reliable transportation, then because we had an elderly dog. But now I have a decent car, about the same amount of money, but now we have a codependant cat. We haven't spent more than a few hours away from the house since we adopted her last March. My husband says she sits at the door and cries when I go to the grocery store until I get back.
About the only place I'd like to go is to NOLA, I don't mind the 7 hour drive, if I could take the kitty I would, but I don't think my friend's three cats would appreciate it. Plus Phoebe hates to ride in cars, she cries the whole way to the vet, which is about 2 miles away. But I'm so paranoid, even taking her to the vet makes me nervous, hell, opening the garage door makes me nervous. I could never have kids (sigh).
Ramble, ramble... but anyway, happy Birthday to my two favorite Virgos!
OK, everyone exhale... It's officially September 12th throughout the US of A. Not out of fear, but out of some strange sort of morbid respect or superstition I did not want to leave the house today. We didn't watch much "real" TV today either, just the CBS evening news and Cops and part of AMW on Fox. Then I did computer stuff for a few hours and came back in and watched TLC Clean Sweep another messy couple's house. Why do people sign up for this show if they aren't willing to get rid of anything??
Sparky's been very depressed with the latest Kerry vs. Dubya polls, but he watches that crap all day on TV. I keep trying to tell him polls are bullshit (have you eve been polled? I haven't, I've been a registered voter since 1980), and most of the news he watches is biased, but he can't see past the haze of helplessness and despair that is being projected. (Cue up the loudspeakers on the streets, "Don't think, obey blindly or die...", rinse and repeat till braindead) He's trying to force himself not to watch as much and has been watching things like MST3K videos instead. The TV in the den has actually been turned OFF some during the last few days (it's never off, this is really very eerie).
We both watched some of Al Franken's show since they've been airing it on the Sundance channel this week. We don't have satellite radio and he doesn't do computers, but I actually streamed it one night after he had gone to bed and ended up catching it and Randi Rhodes, who blew me away. I'm not sure I can handle that much excitement at 5 am. I'm not a good listener, I really dislike things like books on tape and talk radio usually, but she managed to keep my attention. Honestly? I believe I have something called Central Auditory Processing Disorder, I've never been good at listening to speeches, I still think that's the reason I did so badly in college. Suddenly school consisted of sitting in huge auditoriums listening to speeches... zzzzzzz.... Reading I have no problem with, I can read for hours, as long as it's not something I have zero interest in, zzzzzz...
I can't distinguish what people are saying in large crowds, I'm the one that sit and nods blankly at people, I've always gotten song lyrics wrong, I'm really easily distracted by people talking while I'm trying to concentrate on typing, etc. I sleep better with white noise in the background (I grew up with the air conditioner humming against my bedroom wall). I used to have to be really careful when I worked nights and was driving around to keep my car radio either up where I could hear it clearly or off so I wasn't lulled into dozing off. About the only talk radio I used to listen to was Larry King back in the 80's, he actually managed to keep me awake. But I don't like to talk on the phone, I'd rather email people or see them in person. And I have severe tinnitus, which doesn't help.
But I love music. I'd go insane without it, it works better than Prozac. It plays in my head 24/7 whether I want it to or not. But more to follow on the musical subject...
Damn, I just went to Air America to get links and what's on right now? The Best of Randi Rhodes, I'm listening now... so I'll be all fired up again tonight, glad I got my Ambien refilled.
But, regarding terrorist attacks, I'm not sure why we're uneasy anymore, Cheney actually told us the other day that THEY are the ones in charge of whether we get attacked or not, so I guess we can all rest easy until November 2nd. He knows when they'll be coming for us, he can make it happen. Cheney would really look like an idiot if something happened before the election now that's he's declared that we're basically safe until afterwards (but only if they win). So why are we afraid? Ummm.. because our own government is threatening us with a terrorist attack if we don't vote Republican? OK, yeah, that's a good reason to be scared. The corporate mafia is running our country and we're all running out of payoff money to keep them from hurting us...
I told you I can't type and listen at the same time, so I think I'll go play with Photoshop while I listen, I know I can do that safely...
P.S. Just heard this comment about how we're all getting rich on eBay. As an eBay Powerseller I can officially say - NOT!!! But at least I'm not working for someone else anymore, they're trying to take people's overtime pay away too.
OK, I was about to pass out but I'm having a little burst of mental energy, so one more entry before bed...
Due to lack of finances (not by choice) I was off of my Ambien for an entire month. I tried really hard to sleep each night, I just took my "normal" Lorazapam and things like Fiorinal, calcium, magnesium, and even some Valium I had around the house, but I still didn't sleep. My husband tried keeping the cat out of the bedroom during the day while I tossed and turned. She'll nap with me which is actually very nice, but she'll also come in and try to get into the windows and bang the blinds around which will wake up even a sound sleeper, which I am not.
Monday afternoon Sparky was making the bed after I abandoned it for the day when he suddenly let out a yelp. The fitted sheet at the bottom of my side of the bed was shredded! Of course, he blamed it on me, even though he has the toenails of death and I usually wear socks to bed. I'm still wondering if the kitty had anything to do with it because there were two parallel rips, but I honestly think it just gave out from age. We have a California king and he'll yank on the sides to try and tuck them in.
Since it was Labor Day, and my Foley's bill was due in a week or so anyway, I decided to grab the coupons out of the paper and drive across town (to the "nice" mall) and get another sheet set. I worked in retail most of my life so I do at least know how and when to buy linens. For $80+ bucks I got a top and bottom sheet (it would have been $130+ regular priced), but alas, no new pillowcases. I'm not real keen on replacing my pillowcases, though, because they're SOO soft and my skin is hypersensitive. I had to touch test all of the sheets at the store and ended up with some Wamsutta 300 count cotton sheets in a nice colonial blue. And I found the comforter set I'd been looking for for the past ten years (seriously). It's by Ralph Lauren and called Putney Paisley. Finding a cobalt blue paisley comforter is next to impossible, so I'm going to really work on getting this one. Our drapes are royal blue and most of the bedding I find is either navy (which looks like crap) or mostly white with a little blue. My two big goals for the bedroom are to paint the walls blue and replace the burgundy comforter set with a nice blue paisley one. So another $250 for a new comforter, $110 for a bedskirt, $80 for pillow shams (sigh).
So I came home, washed the sheets and added some fabric softener and we remade the bed. All of the damn sheets at the store were "extra deep" so it's still too wide (besides being a CA king, we have a Tempurpedic mattress which is not very deep), but it'll work.
But that night I lay in bed for like an hour, tossing and turning, and finally I actually got out of bed and tiptoed into my office, found the receipt for my Ambien and called it into the pharmacy so I could pick it up when I got up that afternoon. I just couldn't stand it anymore. I've never been good at sleeping and now I have additional stupid health problems that cause insomnia so I caved and spent another $80 to get a month's worth of sleeping pills. Even with them, I don't always sleep well, but at least the odds are in my favor again.
Homework: A Household Meme questions from last three weeks...
HomeWork: Week 31
What about outdoor work: how much time do you devote to it? Is your yard well-manicured, or does it tend to look like a prairie? Do you sweep your porch regularly, or only when leave and dust begin to create visible hills? If you have an apartment with little or no outside maintenance required, did this play a part in your decision to live there?
Acck, neither my husband or I do yardwork. We have people come in every two weeks and mow the yard and blow the pine needles off the roof. I'd really like to have a nicer looking yard, but I can't tolerate the heat or pollen from working outside. Amazingly, though, our yard is pretty healthy.
HomeWork: Week 30
Do you have a "junk closet"? "Junk drawer"? A junk room? Where do you stick stuff that has no other designated home? Does it bother you, or is it a case of "out of sight, out of mind"? Snap a picture of your catch-all space, if you're brave.
I try really, really hard NOT to have junk repositories around the house. I'll actually file stuff in lieu of leaving it sitting around whenever possible. I have a little rolling milk crate thingy under my desk that I dump random magazines in, and a big magazine sized envelope in the crate that I try and put loose receipts in as soon as I've recorded them in my checkbook, etc. Then I'll go through and file or trash them maybe two or three times a year. I have folders in my filing cabinets for things like medical and pharmacy receipts, post office receipts, and the masses of weekly eBay paperwork I accumulate. I have a shelf devoted to just magazines and catalogues and I try and weed it out every so often... Piles of paper follow me around and breed like rabbits so I have to make a huge effort to fight them off.
Actually the ickiest room in our house is probably the garage because I have a lot of random packing materials for eBay out there. I actually have some of it organized, but all of the boxes waiting to be reused tend to be a leaning tower of terror sometimes.
HomeWork: Week 29
How do you cope with living with other people whose ideas of "clean enough" differ drastically from yours? Are your housemates comfortable with much more clutter than you are, or perhaps much less? What compromises have you found? (Or do you compromise, in the case of family or children?)
My husband is a neat freak in ways I'm not and vice-versa. He likes to vacuum constantly and neither of us like to leave dirty dishes lying around. But instead of putting them in the dishwasher he'll balance them all on a towel on the counter to dry which drives me nuts.
I don't care if the bed doesn't get made daily, but it drives him nuts. Our compromise there is if I make it I'll throw the comforter over the pillows instead of laying all of them on top of it so it's easier to unmake. (We have tempurpedic pillows, they weight a ton).
He also has even more stuff than I do, but we sort of divided the house up - I get my office/living room, most of the kitchen, the hall bath and the master bedroom. He can put his stuff in the rest of the house (his room is a claustrophobic's nightmare). He's trying to work his way into the master bedroom, he thinks I haven't noticed, but I'm keeping an eye on it ;-) It's the only room in the house which is sort of unfinished and he's been told he's not allowed to clutter it up.
We each dust our own respective rooms (usually before company comes over), and clean our own bathrooms, etc.
OK, I've been swamped this week and too busy (and brain dead) to type, but this story is too good to not pass on:
Well I just couldn't stand it anymore last night and colored my hair black again. It was a weird combination of black ends, red in the middle, and my own yucky brown (and gray) on top. I did use a bit of restraint, though, and used a semi-permanent color for a change. It was also so long it was starting to do the curling up thing all over, since it's layered, and I also broke down and made an appointment to get it cut. I went in today and got it done, though I think both the stylist and I got carried away and cut it actually TOO short.
I had brought in a photo from the last cut, which was damn near perfect IMHO, and he tried to work from that but for some reason he just couldn't seem to get it. I'd been good and left my bangs alone, so I thought he should be able to just go in and trim the layers and voila - but apparently not. My husband freaked out when I got home, he said I looked like David Cassidy (I could do worse, he had gorgeous hair), and now he's afraid I'm going to want to keep it short short from now on. No way with the winter coming, my neck and ears get way too cold. But it is really fabulous to be able to wash & dry it so quickly without having to detangle the whole mess. And it's so damn hot here in the summer, I never wear it down when the temperature is over 80 degrees (i.e. March through October).
The last cut grew out so nicely I figured I'd get it done again before fall, my hair is thin but it grows really fast, so by Halloween I should be back to shoulder length at least. The last haircut had a bit more swing and body to it, I'm afraid this one really is a little too severe. But Sparky doesn't understand what it's like to go through your entire life with long, tangly, wavy hair that the best you can do with it is keep it pulled back. At least with the shorter hair I can walk outside for five minutes without my hair going berserk in the least little wind [sigh].
But I'm much happier with the color, I haven't used semi-perm in ages, I might start again because it's so much easier and quicker than permanent color (and it doesn't reek). Plus if I can get the exact color I want for $5 or $6 I'd rather keep doing that than plunk down $55 for something I'm not happy with. The damn haircut is $45 plus tip by itself. And when I got home today I checked the account I charged it on and they had charged me $54 even though the receipt had $45 on it. I'm guessing he gave himself a 20% tip. The "rules" say you should tip about 15%, but I handed him $5 in cash which seemed adequate for 45 minutes of his time since all he did was trim, I didn't even need a shampoo. And he waited on several other people while I sat there with wet hair twiddling my thumbs. I had meant to stop at an ATM on the way so I could pay the whole thing in cash, but I got caught in the school zone traffic jams. But I've called the salon and left a message and we'll see if the $9 pops back up on my account tomorrow. If it doesn't, I'm going to call the owner, I've spoken with her several times and she seems pretty down to earth.
(Pictures to come, I may wait till I shampoo it again first, it's very flat now and a little too boyish even for me)