Tomorrow Is Another Day...

Stressballs

Eleven days after it first began, I am STILL plague-ridden.  I really thought that yesterday would be the last day of my horrid cough and froggy voice, but come bedtime, I was kept awake for hours with the gagging TB cough and woken up this morning by the same affliction.  I would feel guilty about not working out, except for the fact that my abs are actually sore from all of the coughing muscle contractions.

So, I don't necessarily feel guilty about the fact that I haven't run in 10 days, but I do feel exceptionally stressed about that fact given that I'm meant to be running a half marathon in five days.  I honestly don't know what to do.  I've always operated under the rule of symptoms above the neck, okay to run, symptoms below the neck, keep the running shoes in the closet.  But I HAVE to run this week.  I'm worried about the fact that I'm still coughing and my lungs are all mucousy (yum!) but I really need to gauge my running ability at this point.

I'm hoping to get in four or five miles today and Wednesday, then a short run on Thursday before taking Friday off in preparation for the half.  I'm comforting myself with the fact that a lot of people surely run half marathons with far less training than I've done, and if I can't run it, well by golly I sure can walk for 13 miles.  I've been working up to this for so many months now, I can't just throw in the towel and not even try.

But oh, I'm so, so disappointed.

On top of that, I'm starting to feel incredibly anxious about our house in Washington.  We had wonderful renters in it who were planning to be there long-term, but sadly they had some personal issues arise that forced them to move to a new city.  So our house has been waiting for a new occupant since December, and so far, no bites.  Our tenants were kind enough to pay their rent through the end of January, so as long as someone moves in by February 1st we aren't missing a payment, but January surely is speeding by awfully rapidly and so far no bites.

This is why I've never been remotely interested in becoming some kind of super-landlord with rental houses across the map.  It's too stressful and unpredictable, and the idea of having to pay the mortgage with no help from rental income for months on end makes me want to throw up.  In addition, we're going to have to drop thousands on our IVF procedure in February, so the extra padding in our savings account is a lot less fluffy than we would like.  And we're having to drop some money on home improvements in our Charleston house to make it ready to hit the real estate market in the next couple of months.

Ugh.  I really do have high hopes for 2012, and I'm still hopeful that things will start turning around soon, but oh my god, we are not getting off to a good start at all.

What Goes Down Must Come Up

Down: It has been an incredibly long week since Colby left, and I still have moments where I just want to stop whatever it is I'm doing and throw a good, loud tantrum.
Up: We're one week into this and that's one week less to get through.

Down: Colby's internet connection in Overtheristan is complete crap making it impossible for us to carry on a phone conversation over Skype.
Up: I finally figured out how to use the Skype app on my cell phone, so we're able to use the chat option like text messaging.  It's nice to not feel chained to my computer in order to hear from him.

Down: I left quite possibly the most embarrassing voicemail in my history of embarrassing voicemails for a propsective babysitting client.  I managed to 1) say "um" about seventeen times 2) refer to the two children of unknown gender who I would be watching as "her son" 3) sound as though I were about to hang up before launching into a whole new series of ridiculous sentences and 4) forget to say anything along the lines of "goodbye" before hanging up the phone and launching it across the room in sheer terror.
Up:  She called me back.  And I've got three other parent meetings set up for this weekend and early next week, as well as a job that will give me 15 hours over the course of Friday evening and Saturday.  Woo!

Down: On my Tuesday run, my knee started to feel twingy around mile two.  I kept running, and the pain was gone by the time I got home.  But then it started throbbing while I was in the shower, and has been sore ever since.  I've been scared to run on it, and tried wearing a brace yesterday, but the brace just hurt even more.  The pain has abated, so hopefully this is just a one off incident and I'll be back in business for my run today.
Up: My runs have been getting much better and are verging on enjoyable.  I've also been working on improving my speed, and am so close to getting my pace under 10 minutes, I can taste it!

Down: It's been about seven years in internet time since the new Facebook was released, and I still hate it.  There are so many posts from people I love that I never get to see, and while I used to get tons of hits and interaction on my blog from friends, now I get about 20-30 click throughs a day.
Up: I'm spending a lot less time on Facebook these days! 

What are your ups and downs this week?  I hope the ups are vastly outweighing the downs!

Like Comparing Apple and Pizzas

(Thanks so much to all of you that offered to guest post!  I'm so excited about the amazing bloggers I'll be sharing with you while I'm on vacation.  There's still room for a few more if anyone didn't get a chance to throw their name in the hat last week.  You're welcome to write about anything your little heart desires, and I just ask that you send me your post by August 10--let me know in the comments if you want to volunteer!)

Is it kind of sad that Colby has been gone so much over the past few months, that I've almost gotten used to him being away?  I feel like I entered deployment mode a long time ago, and the deployment doesn't even begin until October.  Ugh.  Anyway, I spent another weekend without my dearest darling, but it still managed to be an awesomesauce few days.

Friday, I went over to a friend's house for a lovely wine and pizza date, and it was so nice to sit and talk for a few hours.  We had talked about going out to eat somewhere, but I really think we both needed a night in to just hang out, chatting without worrying about whether a restaurant needed to turn a table.  Saturday, I fit in a good run--I finally broke below the 11 minute barrier and ran my 3 miles in about 10:45 per mile.  It's frustrating, because my legs feel like they could go all day, but my stupid lungs just struggle so much to keep up my oxygen supply.  But I'm getting better!  And I rewarded myself for all of the healthy eating and exercise I've been up to lately with a second day in a row of pizza with a friend.  You can never have enough pizza, right?  I also had a scrapbooking date last night to work on my (SO CLOSE TO BEING FINISHED) Ireland scrapbook that has been ten years in the making and watch The Bachelorette: Men Tell All episode.

Sunday, things went a little downhill when I realized that the optical drive in my creaky old Macbook had died.  I don't use cds or dvds in my computer very often, so I don't really now how long it's been broken--I do remember trying to play a music cd in there at the beginning of the year and it didn't work, but I thought it was because it was a burned cd and my old gal was just being finicky.  But a friend let me borrow their copy of the French Rosetta Stone to prepare for my upcoming trip, and after spending about 15 minutes inserting the cd, listening to it whir and click, then ejecting... over and over and over... because I thought maybe if I were just persisistent enough... I admitted defeat.

I think my inverter cable has also been going.  For the past year and a half or so, I've had an issue where the screen has to be in juuuuust the right position for the screen to light up.  Otherwise, it's black and I can just see the faint image of what is on the screen through the black.  I haven't felt like that's a big enough deal to justify getting a new computer since it works perfectly otherwise, but now with the optical drive going, I feel like we're getting closer to having to drop a wad of cash on a new one.  It is almost a four year old computer, so I'm lucky that she's been going as strong as she has for so long now.  For the time being, I ordered an external cd/dvd drive, and hopefully that will do the trick for the few times that I need to use a cd.

But being that I'm also anxiously, and not at all patiently, awaiting the release of the iPhone 5 so that I can upgrade my dinosaur first gen iPhone, I think Apple is going to really love me over the next few months.

Elusive Sleep

Last night I was in bed before 10 o'clock.  I read a chapter of my book just to help wind down, but I was abnormally exhausted and I'd been fighting off a bad headache since the afternoon, so I was really looking forward to sleeping.  At about 10 after 10, I turned off the light, rolled over and closed my eyes, prepared to drift off into dreamland.

I proceeded to toss and turn for the next two hours, and then woke up five or six times during the night before my alarm went off at 8 o'clock.  I wish that this wasn't the norm, but unfortunately, this is just how sleeping is and always has been for me.  It's part of the reason I typically wait until around midnight to finally begin the falling asleep process, hoping that I'll be so tired that maybe I'll drift off quickly and naturally.  I used to take my precious 3 mg melatonin about 30 minutes before going to bed, but I've read some research that has shown it can be detrimental to conception, so I no longer have even that crutch.  It's just me, the bed, and the stupid clock.

To add insult to injury, I happen to be married to a man who could easily compete in falling asleep races.  His head touches the pillow and he is instantaneously unconscious.  If he happens to stay awake for five or ten minutes, he flops around like a dying fish, cursing the heavens for the tragedy of beng unable to asleep.  So, on the few nights that he is home, sleeping beside me, not only do I have the frustration of insomnia, but I'm also fuming over the snoring emanating from the other side of the bed.

I have a theory that the kind of sleeper we are as a baby is indicative of the kind of sleeper we will be our whole lives.  When I was an infant, evidently the one drawback to my perfect baby self was my complete lack of interest in sleeping.  This continued into my childhood, when I would sneak under my comforter with a flashlight and some books, or play with my stuffed animals, or sit by the door of my bedroom, listening to whatever it was my parents were watching on tv.  I couldn't fall asleep easily, even then.  I remember, laying in bed, counting the cycles of the ceiling fan, attempting to hypnotize myself into sleep.

On the other hand, a part of the lore pertaining to my little sister's perfection is that she was an amazing sleeper.  To this day, it's shocking to me how quickly she falls asleep and how hard she sleeps.  When we travel together or are home together, we usually sleep in the same bed or bedroom, and I'm constantly waking up to her cellphone buzzing or her alarm going off while she sleeps tranquilly through the cacophony of noise.  

So, mothers, take heart, maybe your anti-sleeping baby isn't an asshole, maybe they're just an insomniac in the making!  I recommend a little bit of melatonin crumbled up into their pre-bedtime meal.  Nothing about that could possibly go wrong.

The Desert of South Carolina

After living in Seattle for two and a half years, I thought I would be happy if I never saw another raindrop again.  I was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Do I want the wearying, depressing month after month of constant rainfall and grey skies back?  No.  Do I want just some tiny dent made in our 10" rain deficit?  Oh my STARS, yes.  I am so bloody tired of the sun.

I feel like I'm in that episode of the Twilight Zone where the earth is moving closer to the sun, and everyone is dying of heatstroke and all of my paintings are going to start melting off the canvas.  You know, because I'm just knee deep in paintings over here.  At what point am I going to wake up from this nightmare and realize that we are actually drowning in an endless deluge of monsooning rain?

What is even more frustrating is that our neighborhood seems to be in an entirely separate climate from the rest of the greater Charleston area.  When we went to Myrtle Beach, we drove home in such heavy rainfall that Colby was driving below the speedlimit and we were struggling to see the brake lights of the cars directly in front of us.  We were in that downpour until we were about 10-15 minutes from our house, then we came home and watched on the radar as the massive storm skirted right around us and dumped all over the rest of the city and surrounding towns.

On Tuesday night, I had to come downstairs to sleep on the couch so that my nutcase dogs wouldn't jump out of their skin with all of the thunder and lightning that was crashing overhead, but nary a drop of rain deigned to grace our yard.  When Colby drove to work, he discovered that the rain had started about 3 miles away from us.

Is this some kind of clever punishment for my lack of appreciation for the Emerald City while I lived there?  Am I condemned to a life of exorbitant water bills and plants that slowly wilt, crumble, and die--shrieking silently in their death throes--as I look to the skies and beg for the rain to fall?

WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS ARID MADNESS!!!!

The Donut of Misery

Congratulations!  You're over the hump!

I haven't been posting much about Colby's deployment because... well... it's just easier to not think about it.  Between my trip to Japan, my mom's visit, never-ending classes, and spending time with pals in the local area, the first half of the deployment has gone by pretty quickly.

Yes, that's right, we are officially well into the second half of the deployment!  And really, I thought I was handling it with aplomb.

But part of me wonders if the deployment isn't what's taking a toll on my energy levels.  If there's a subconscious stress there that I didn't even realize I was feeling with Colby gone.  If that is the case, it does make sense that the exhaustion would have peaked over the past couple of weeks as we're in that dreaded mid-deployment hump.  Those few weeks in which half the deployment is behind you, but the second half still stretches out before you in an endless parade of lonely days.

It bugs me when people complain constantly about deployments.  We knew what we were signing up for when we attached ourselves to these military men, and unless anyone was told a bald-faced lie, we knew there would be plenty of nights alone.  There's also a tendency for military spouses to pull out their rulers and start measuring and comparing--there's always someone who has it so much worse and wants everyone to know.  And you can't help but feel envious of those who have shorter deployments to get through.  Honestly, it's just a minefield of a conversation, and I try to avoid it as much as possible.

But I think every now and then you just have to get it out, and I'm taking that opportunity now:  This deployment suuuuucks.  I'm so tired of Google chat and Skype crapping out on us and having to fill out customs forms and having questions that can't be immediately answered and cooking dinners for one and making plans for one.  So there.

The good news is that the deployment IS more than halfway done, and the next month or so is incredibly busy.

Next week is packed with fun activities with friends, the following week my San Francisco bestie is coming for a visit, then I'm visiting my sister in NYC for a few days and heading to Vermont for a wedding.  I'll have one day in Charleston to recharge before driving to Louisiana for a week and then my sister is driving back home with me to spend some time in the Holy City.

By the time she leaves, just a few measly weeks will stand between me and Colby's return.  So, the exhausted part of me is pretty overwhelmed by all of this upcoming activity, but the lonely part of me is looking forward to the craziness and the fact that when it's over, it really will be almost over.

And then my vote is for two weeks of re-constitutional leave spent sitting on the sofa, watching tv, eating Dominoes Pizza. It will be so nice to be boring WITH someone else again.

Bad Things Come In... Fives??

1) Busted air conditioning for over a month.

2) Broken dryer for over a month.

3) Find out that my advisor enrolled me in the wrong class.  One that doesn't even count toward my degree.  So, instead of being in my last class with 4 weeks to go, I still have another 3 months of school stretching before me.

4) Attempt to Space A to Washington.  Wake up at 5 am.  Shower, finish packing.  Happen to think, hey, maybe I should call and double check on that flight before I drop off the dogs to board and drive all the way to the base.  Yeah, flight is canceled.  Pushed back to tomorrow night.  Given the weather forecast of afternoon/evening thunderstorms, I'm not optimistic.

5) I just can't wait to find out!!!

You know what's worse than unpacking after a vacation.  Unpacking after NOT going on vacation.  Next time, I'm just promising my first born in exchange for a plane ticket.

Musical Theater Geekery

This has been my week, in a nutshell (Help!  Help!  I'm in a nutshell!)

Dryer begins flashing mysterious code.

Angela:  Hello, some shit is wrong with my dryer.

Dryer Phone Lady:  Hello, have you tried unplugging your dryer and plugging it back in?

Angela: ...

Dryer Phone Lady: ...

Angela: No.  (Unplugs and re-plugs in dryer.)

Dryer Phone Lady: ...

Angela: Some shit is still wrong with my dryer.

Dryer Phone Lady: Okay, we will fix it for you!

Many days later...

Dryer Repair Man:  I hear some shit is wrong with your dryer.

Angela: Yes.

Dryer Repair Man:  I will fix your shit.

Angela: ...

Dryer Repair Man: ...

Dryer Repair Man: I do not have the appropriate shit to fix your dryer.  Will order it!

Angela:  ...

Many days later...

Dryer Repair Man: Hello, I am here to fix your dryer with the appropriate dryer shit!

Angela:  Good.

Dryer Repair Man: ...

Angela: ...

Dryer Repair Man: I do not have the appropriate shit to fix your dryer.  Again.  In the meantime, here is some useless dryer shit.

Angela:  ...

MEANWHILE!

Upstairs air conditioning ceases to function, Angela moves downstairs.

Angela: Hello, I would like to file a service request for my air conditioner.

Air Conditioner Service People:  Okay, we will have someone contact you!

People Who Are Meant to Contact Me:  It seems we do not exist and you will never again have air conditioning upstairs.  We hope you enjoy the lasting physical benefits of having your own personal 1000 square foot sauna.  We hear you can sweat out lots of toxins that way!

Angela:  *Head Explodes*

Basically, it's hot and all of my clothes stink.  But I am STILL excited about life because of the two following pieces of news.

1)  GLEE karaoke is coming to the Wii!  Yes, it is true!  I wish I could remember the person to whom I said, "Man, wouldn't it be a good idea to have Glee Karaoke instead of Rock Band?" because then I could call that person up and be like "OH MY GOD!  Am Glee prophet!  They totally stole my idea that no one else ever had before me and was definitely not the only next logical marketing step!"  Except I'd probably email them.  Because I don't really make phone calls, except in cases of dryer and air conditioning emergencies.

AND... drumroll please...

2) It seems as though Wicked, the movie, is finally going to happen!  And that it will be the musical version.  I got all excited about this news way back in July of 2008, but now rumblings are surfacing again, and this time they sound much more official.

"The hugely successful musical "Wicked" is on its way to becoming a feature film, and that news has already attracted the interest of several high-profile directors.

Although the project is in its very early stages of development, "Glee" co-creator Ryan Murphy and "Star Trek" and "Alias" helmer J.J. Abrams have already expressed interest. So have Rob Marshall ("Chicago," "Nine") and James Mangold ("Knight and Day", "Walk the Line")."
from Zap2News&Buzz

I think either Ryan Murphy or Rob Marshall could do an amazing job directing, but what do we think about casting?  In years past, I would have loved to have seen Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth reprise their roles as Elphaba and Glinda respectively, but sad as it is to say, I think they're too old for the parts now.  They have to play teenagers convincingly for a good portion of the story, and it just wouldn't work for me.

Elphaba is easy in my opinion, especially if Ryan Murphy really does end up attached.  Lea Michele has the pipes, the acting ability, and the quirky look that the role calls for.  But what about Glinda?  I honestly can't think of a single person who could play her sympathetically and pull off the operatic segments, and I absolutely hate the thought of dubbing.  I think this part calls for an unknown, much like Emmy Rossum in Phantom of the Opera (but NOT Emmy!).  As for Fiyero, this may be controversial, but I really like the idea of Corbin Bleu.  He's grown up into a handsome, talented young man who would bring with him a huge fan base from High School Musical.

Any other Wicked fans out there?  Who would you cast as Elphaba, Glinda and Fiyero?

Sail Away, Sail Away, Sail Away

Well, I'm leaving for Japan in one week (I'm actually leaving on Friday, but since I have to be in the car on the way to the airport at about 3:30 am, I'm just not counting that day), and as if I don't have enough to take care of in the next week, yesterday we woke up to a $900+ charge on our credit card for our automatically paid water bill.

Yes, you read that right.  NINE-EFFING-HUNDRED DOLLARS.  For WATER.

Colby immediately went to work trying to figure out what is wrong, calling the water company, making calculations, and generally stomping around the house with a look of stormy consternation upon his face.  I just tried to stay out of the way and resist the urge to go to the bathroom.  We're currently working under the assumption that the meter is broken.  According to our toilet, it uses 1.6 gallons when it flushes and according the meter, it is using approximately 16.  You'll notice  a very importance difference in decimal places in those two numbers.

Granted, we've been using a lot of water lately as we've put in new grass seed and a new garden and we've been trying to keep them thriving in our recent near drought conditions.  But we have definitely not used $900 worth of water.  So.  That's been fun!  I'm thinking of just building an ark and floating away from all of our cares and worries on all of this water we're supposedly using.

I'm also stressing a bit because my next (and last) class begins on the 24th, the day before I leave for Japan, and I know I'm not going to have time to finish all of my work for the first week before my flight and I'm not going to have any homework time during my trip.  Last summer, there was a week long break in the summer, and I thought it fell between these two classes, so that's why I thought the trip would work out perfectly time-wise.  But apparently, Grand Canyon has gotten rid of their summer breaks.  Argh!  So, I'm going to email my professor as soon as possible and request an extension on my first week's assignments.

I'm still searching for the perfect day bag for Japan.  I got the Sherpani Flora Minor in the mail the other day, and while it's an awesome day bag, I'm concerned about also using it as my sole carry-on.  My goal is to carry only one day bag and a 24" expandable suitcase to make train-hopping easier, and I'm bringing this small hideaway tote in case I absolutely cannot cram anymore souvenirs into my bags.  I ordered a different day bag that is a little larger than the Sherpani to do a test run--now I just hope it gets here in time!  I really want the Sherpani to work because it is so much cuter, but I feel like the Rick Steves is going to be a better size.

(L) Rick Steves Avanti Flight Bag, (R) Sherpani Flora Minor

On top of that, I have homework to finish for the last week of my math class, I haven't even started packing or organizing for Japan, and we have two pages of house projects to finish before Colby leaves.  But on the positive side of things, our bedroom, master bath and upstairs hall is finally painted after three days of workmen tromping through our house and it looks AMAZING!  And we're leaving behind all of our cares and worries on Saturday for a romantic weekend in downtown Charleston.  We can only do what we can do, and everything else has a way of working itself out.  This weekend I just want to focus on enjoying the time I have left with my husband and eating dessert.  Priorities, people.  Priorities!!

If You Want Something Done Right...

I'm so frustrated right now, I don't even know how to put it into words.  This is going to be a long one.

Almost two years ago, I got the brilliant idea to go back to school.  I did my research and found a program that I could finish in a couple of years and have a Masters and a certification in Elementary Education.  I started in June of 2008 and everything seemed hunky dory.

I noticed that there seemed to be a revolving door of people who were assigned as my academic advisor, but it didn't bother me much because my program of study was already fully planned out and I didn't have much need for any academic advice. 

Fast forward to the Fall of 2009 and I decided that I needed to take a break from school to focus on the move from Washington to South Carolina and settling in across the country.  I was bounced from advisor to advisor, and finally found out that if I skipped one two month term I had to skip both of them because of the way the program is structured.  So instead of pushing back graduation by 2 months, it was pushed back 4 months.

I wasn't happy about it, but I knew that there was no way I could work, focus on school, and organize a huge move and still maintain my 4.0 GPA, so I sighed and agreed to the 4 month leave of absence.

After we moved to South Carolina, I realized just how dire the teaching situation is here.  Not only are teachers not being hired, but they're being laid off.  I also realized that with my four month break, and four months of student teaching once I finished my classes, I wouldn't earn my degree until the end of 2010 at the earliest.  Then the job hunt would begin, halfway through a school year.  And at some point in my life, I would like to have and raise children of my own.

So, I made the decision to switch my degree from a Masters with certification to a Masters without certification, with the idea that if I ever get to the point in my life where I'm able to look for a teaching job, it will more than like be after we've moved from South Carolina I'd have to get certified in that state again anyway.

I talked to yet another new advisor, who completely supported my decision but explained that the school had overhauled their degree program and while most my classes could be transferred to the new system, one of them doesn't transfer to the non-certification degree, but I would only need one more class to finish out my program of study.

I got excited, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and powered through my second to last class, looking forward to those last eight weeks of school.  Wednesday I finished my science class, and Thursday I was supposed to start my last class on classroom management.  Unfortunately, I was enrolled in a different class--about math.  I emailed my advisor a week ago, questioning this and got an out of office reply.  I emailed the point of contact she'd directed us to twice over the next couple of days with no response.  I called and left two messages with random academic advisors because mine is still out of town.  No response.

Finally, I pulled out all of the paperwork my advisor sent me when we changed my degree and I broke down exactly what all of my old classes transferred to in the new system.  It turns out, in the new system there is a combined science and math class, and according to my advisor I met the requirement by taking the science class, but according to the paperwork it specifically states that you must have taken both the science and math class for your class to transfer.  So instead of one class, I have to take two to fill that requirement.  Then, after this math class, I have to take the classroom management class.  And yet, I have an educational psychology class that doesn't count towards anything.

I'm upset that my advisor didn't give me the correct information.  I'm upset that I spent 8 weeks and a thousand dollars on a class that won't qualify for my degree.  I'm upset that instead of having one class left, I have two.  I'm upset that even though I'm expected to conform to the degree requirements of the "new system", I still have to take all of the classes from the "old system".  But mostly I'm just really upset that I had to figure out all of this on my own, and no one from the school will take the time to respond to my multiple messages.

Anyway, I have a textbook to track down and two weeks worth of homework to do this weekend so that I don't have to spend my entire trip to New York writing papers about teaching math to elementary students.  So, I'm going to stop bitching and start getting productive.  But I'm still going to be really, really bitter about this.

A Distraction of Microscopic Proportions

Today was meant to be  a day all about the joy of shoes, as we compared and contrasted the relative merits and drawbacks of my New York shoe contestants.  Instead, I am sitting downstairs in a nearly empty room, while a man cleans all of our carpets, and am awaiting a delivery from Amazon of mattress, box spring, and pillow covers.

It appears we have been infested.

With what, I do not know.

A couple of weeks ago, I received what I thought was a red ant bite on my leg.  It itched, and I grumbled about it, and waited for it to go away.  A couple of days later, I got a few more bites all in a row on my left arm, and I noticed that the "red ant" bite appeared a little less red antish than it had previously.  I continued to itch and grumble, as the bites mounted up.  We decided it was probably biting gnats as I'd been spending a lot of time outside in the evenings working in the garden.  But then, as I spent less time outside and the bites continued to increase in number, that seemed to be a less and less likely option.

There was still a lot of itching and grumbling going on.

Ever since I saw a 20/20 or Dateline or Nightline or somesuch special on bed bugs, I've been absolutely paranoid about Colby bringing bugs home from one of his trips.  He frequently makes fun of me as before I get in bed, I'll fling the covers back suddenly, in hopes of catching one of the blood suckers scuttling around beneath the sheets.  So, of course, the more I thought about it and the more time I spent with Dr. Google, the more I was convinced that our house was crawling with tiny bugs.  Colby raised the valid question as to why he wasn't being bitten, and even more valid, why after intensive searching we still hadn't found a speck of physical evidence of a bed bug infestation, but I was itchy, grumpy, and still intensely grumbly, so I stripped our bedroom of anything fabric and ran it through the sanitize cycle in the washing machine.  I also ordered the aforementioned mattress covers, and set to applying cortisone cream liberally.

At last count, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty to sixty bites covering my arms and legs, and one particularly cheeky bite inside my belly button.  Colby has... zero.

Last night we slept on a bare mattress with just a sheet that is to be thrown into the washing machine shortly, and I wore a long sleeve shirt, pants and socks to bed.  And I still woke up this morning with more bites--or "bites" I don't even know at this point.

Currently Dr. Google has me convinced that I've managed to somehow contract scabies, perhaps as a throwback to my former life as a fearful pirate sailing the seven seas.  I already have a doctor's appointment set up for Thursday, so I'm going to ask if they can check out what is rapidly becoming a rash covering my appendages so I don't have to make another appointment and wait even longer to find out what is wrong with me.

Sooooo, the point of all this is that in my intense panic and grossed outedness, ordering shoes fell by the wayside.  But no parasitic mite should be able to take away that one last joy--you may feed off of my blood and ravage my skin, but you shall not take my shoes!

Oh Frabjous Day, Callooh Callay

Look at me, being all positive despite adversity.  Rise above and all that.

Obviously, lots of fantastic things have happened lately.  Hawaii was smashingly fun, and I'd definitely do that again.  Then over the Labor Day weekend, we had some college friends come in town for the LSU v UW game.  We had a great time showing them the sights of Seattle and Tacoma, eating ourselves half to death, and of course watching the Tigers beat up on some Huskies. 

It was actually kind of hilarious--I think we managed to frighten and overwhelm a large number of Seattleites as 10,000+ LSU fans crashed into their city and turned it upside down.  I couldn't help but laugh as we walked through Pike Place Market on Friday and heard the mellifluous tones of Southern accents on every corner, LSU flags and stickers flying proudly from cars on the street, and I don't think I've ever heard any zydeco in Seattle until this past weekend.  The natives seemed a bit bemused by the influx, and we were asked on more than one occasion if we were here for some kind of conference organized by the university.

Um, yes.  It's a conference on a large grassy field upon which we take turns throwing a strangely shaped ball and ultimately defeat you.  It's lots of fun.

But there have been some other less thrilling events that have taken place over the past few weeks/days.  First, our offense is decent, but our defense is deplorable.  Then, I found out that the amazing opportunity I had at work to move to a closer site had fallen through when not enough kids were signed up for the before and after program at the school.  And my old site had already filled my vacated position.  And being that I'm moving in a little over three months, it wouldn't really make sense for me to start at a new site anyway.  So, I was offered a position subbing, which is better than nothing, but not the income we were hoping to be able to save for moving costs.

Still, things were looking up when I got a call to sub at a site both yesterday and today--I started to think maybe I actually will be able to get some hours!  So, I got all dressed to go, grabbed my name tag and a granola bar, went to start my car and... nothing.  Nothing but a click, click, click... whine...  Sigh.  So, I called my boss and apologized profusely about the fact that there was no way I could get to work in the next 20 minutes and instead of making money, we're going to be shelling out money to have God knows what on my car fixed.  And I'm stuck at home.  Not that I necessarily wanted to go anywhere mind you, but I don't like feeling stuck.

And on top of all that, I'm having the worst time getting my car signed over to Colby's name so that we can legally register it in Louisiana and not have to worry about changing it every time we move.  I thought I'd taken care of everything I needed to and was ready to go to court to argue my case, and then, I suppose unsurprisingly, the form that we paid a notary twenty bucks to fill out was filled out wrong.

So, there's that.  But to console myself I've taken to scouring realtor.com and reading Charleston message boards and dreaming of a life in the South where nothing ever goes wrong, money grows on trees, and the streets are paved in gold.  Maybe I could be a notary... twenty dollars for 10 minutes of work and a fancy stamp?  Not bad.

Resigning From Life

BLEEEAAAAARRRRRGHHHHH!!!!!!

I quit.  Consider this my two week notice.  I am turning in my resignation letter to the Department of Living Amongst Society and moving to a hut on the beach in an as yet undiscovered island.  I'm not leaving a forwarding address.  I go alone.  Don't come looking for me, because I am DONE.

I don't want to clean up after a destructive dog who will pull items out of thin air if there are none within reach that he can rip to shreds in my absence and then prance about proudly when I return home.  I don't want to clean the bathroom, wash the dishes, do the laundry, vacuum the floor only to have to do it again in what seems like mere hours.

I don't want to be a law abiding citizen, vote in elections, throw my garbage in the trash can, give money to causes that need it more than I do, and be a generally good person, only to be given a $340 ticket for not registering my car in the state of Washington, when I had no clue that I was supposed to.  I'm not registered to vote here, I don't claim residency here, I'm a military nomad and I'm sorry you Office-Space-Boss-Looking-Asshole Cop, I have never been made aware of this rule.  I'm not claiming that ignorance of the law is the perfect excuse, but how easy would it have been to have given a friendly warning and gone about your day?  You can take your, "Have a nice day, ma'am," and shove it up your power-tripping, quota-filling rear end.

I'm tired of being tired.  I'm sick of exhausted kids who treat me and each other like crap and make me dread the day I see two lines on a pregnancy test.  I'm flummoxed by my suddenly shitty gas mileage that makes me suspect a gremlin is sneaking into my garage at night and siphoning the gasoline out of my car.  I wish the damn cd player in my car would stop overheating and spitting cds out at me with a snotty "Check CD" message on the display every time I try to listen to something other than our lame radio stations.

I'm so over feeling negative.  I want the fucking sun to shine.  I want to wake up and feel excited about another day.  I'm sick of being a single wife.  I'm worn down from the constant stream of "what ifs" running circles around my brain about where we're going to live this time next year, how we'll sell our house without losing our shirts, whether or not we'll be able to get another mortgage, and what furniture or precious family mementos will be destroyed in the move.

I'm just so ready to check out.

But I can't quit.  This is my life.

As shitty as it makes me feel sometimes.  I love my retarded dogs.  This job is the first one I've ever had where I feel like maybe I'm making a difference.  I know I need to just suck it up and have a little faith that God won't dish out more than we can take.  The military infuriates me on a daily basis, but it has also been very good to us over the years.  As for the cop and the ticket situation... well, I tried, but I can't find the silver lining there.

I just want to escape from it all.  But then I guess everyone does, and we just keep riding this completely absurd roller coaster of life.  In the meantime, thank you Jesus for wine, carefully cultivated savings accounts, Gossip Girl, and giant, liquid puppy dog eyes that just won't allow you to stay angry for too long.

But I'd still rather be in Capri.

Much Needed Perspective

I was still feeling like a grumpy puss throughout Friday, and despite the copious amounts of wine I drank on Friday night when we went out to dinner with friends, I was still in a dour mood when Saturday rolled around.  I was stewing about all of the injustices inflicted upon me by the world--you know, no trip abroad, a husband who clearly doesn't give a hoot about me, the cold, dreary weather.  We decided to head up to Seattle to see Lucy at the Pacific Science Center, before she left Seattle for the next leg of her American tour, and then go out to dinner with friends.

On the way to the city, I pulled out a piece of gum, casually tossed the wrapper into the console of Colby's car, and became infuriated when he snapped at me to please not just throw my garbage in his car.  I mean, sure, I was the one who threw the garbage, but who was HE to talk to ME that way?  Never mind the fact that I had probably rolled my eyes at least four times at him throughout the course of the day and made a few not so nicely phrased comments myself.  We finished the rest of the long, construction extended drive in silence, each glowering out our respective portions of windshield.

We got the the science center, and slowly began to thaw as first we were forced to talk to each other to figure out how to get to the museum from our parking garage and eventually ended up engaged in a friendly game of mancala.  The rest of our stay was relaxed, and we finally got our chance to enter the small, dark room that housed the bones of Lucy and an artists rendition of what she may have looked like.

I stood over the glass case, staring down at the brittle, ivory colored remains of a creature that lived millions of years ago.  A mammal somewhere between an animal and a human, a 3 foot 6 inch skeleton of a female who was on the cusp of an entirely new species.  A creature who had lived her life, died under unknown circumstances, and was now on display for her ancestors 3.2 million years down the road.  Something about that moment gave me a catch in the back of my throat.

Our lives are truly so insignificant.  In the grand scheme of things, who are we really but self-important beings that lucked out by being at the top of the food chain, here for maybe 80 years if we're lucky and then gone.  In the blink of the eye as far as the earth is concerned.  It's easy to think that our small worries and sadnesses, celebrations and happy moments, grudges and angers can change the course of the universe, but in reality, life goes on every day, whether we're happy or sad, angry or joyful, and it is our choice in each moment of our lives to choose our attitude.  To choose our paths.

In 3.2 million years the world will never know or care if you were a millionaire or a pauper, if you had a happy life or a sad life, if you were alone or surrounded by people you love.  If we are anything to them we will be bones, fossils, relics of an ancient time, a mere stepping stone in the timeline of the past.

After spending time with Lucy, Colby and I went out for drinks while waiting for our friends to arrive in the city.  I downed a rasbperry lemon drop and then told Colby that lately I'd been feeling he hadn't really been registering many of my hopes and desires if they didn't affect him directly, or if he didn't feel that they deserved the same amount of importance I did.  I told him that I was still hurt that he had forgotten the talent show, that it came as a surprise to him every time I mentioned a trip this summer, or a vacation in France next year.  It all came rushing out, some of the things I had been feeling, I didn't even realize until that moment.  We sat together, quietly sharing a plate of garlic fries, both thinking about the things that I had said.

Yesterday, I woke up in an empty bed.  I came downstairs, bleary eyed and still a little tired, to find a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts waiting for me on the counter.  I took a glazed with chocolate frosting and sat down next to Colby on the couch.  "July 14-August 22," he said, as I took my first bite.  "I put my name in the leave books for the whole time since I wasn't sure when you'd want to go.  I can always give some of it back."  We started looking at airfare later that morning.

Life is what you make of it.  In 3.2 million years, not a single person will care that I spent two weeks in the Northeast in the summer of 2009, but while we spent those few minutes together remarking on the fact that the fares were cheaper than we expected, to me, it felt like the most important moment in the world.

Restless

You like how I patted myself on the back there for blogging more frequently, then promptly fell off the radar for the rest of the week?  Yeah, that was great.  I've been consciously making the decision not to blog, because honestly the only thing I want to write about right now is just how restless and apathetic about life I've been feeling lately.  And it seems of late, every time someone dares blog about something making them unhappy trolls have come out of the woodwork to lambast them for daring to not be happy about everything in their perfect lives, and quite frankly, I just feel too fragile for trolls right now.  But then I was all, "Angela, this is YOUR blog and if someone doesn't want to read your little epistle of unhappiness, they are free to navigate away to cutepuppies dot com."

So basically, I've just felt like a huge old lump of grump for the past couple of weeks.  I've been picking fights with Colby at home, I've been ridiculously sensitive and defensive about just about anything anyone says to me, and my tolerance for nonsense at school has been dangerously low.  Every morning I wake up and tell myself that today will be better, then I really make a concerted effort to be more positive until around midmorning when I reach the end of my rope.

I don't know precisely what my problem is.  One can really only blame so much on that much dreaded time of month, and the excuse wears a little thin when it is used every day of the month.  When I try to put my finger on exactly what is upsetting me, it just makes me feel utterly ridiculous.  Por ejemplo, Things That Are Currently Bumming me Out:

1) I am not going to Italy next month.  Or anywhere glamorous and European for that matter.  We're getting closer and closer to the one year point of when Colby and I left for our honeymoon last year, and I've been torturing myself by reading through my posts leading up to and after the trip.  I know, I'm a twit, some people never get to leave the country, and I'm bemoaning the fact that I have to go more than a year between trips abroad.  But still, every time I broach the topic of my dreams of a trip to France next summer, Colby all but laughs in my face.  In the interim, he's jetting off to Korea, Italy, and Germany, while I'm stuck in Washington, explaining once more to 9-year-olds exactly why it is not okay to use the term "cracker" in a derogatory manner.

2) I'm sick of winter, I'm a little over Washington, and I just want to know what our future holds so that we can stop stressing about the what ifs and start making a plan.  We've turned in our updated dream location list for Colby's next assignment, we have a pretty strong feeling that we'll end up at one of our top two choices--either Charleston or a base about an hour outside of San Francisco.  That's all well and good, but with the real estate market in its current state of gloom and doom, those two options provide us with two very different paths down which we'll travel depending on where we're assigned.  And of course there's always the threat of ending up in Alaska or middle of nowhere Oklahoma.  And please don't tell me that Alaska is actually quite beautiful.  I don't want beautiful.  I want warm.  And not Oklahoma.

3) I really do enjoy what I do.  For the most part, I think the kids I work with are pretty great, and we just had a talent show on Wednesday night, that oh my God, had me in stitches the kids were so damn cute.  But there are are 3-5 kids (depending on the day) that absolutely make me want to rip my hair out.  It is amazing to me how just a couple of disrespectful, physically and emotionally aggressive children can really ruin what should be a great day.  And every day it's a different thing.  A fight. Name calling.  Lying.  Sidebar lessons on what sex is while I'm talking about Dr. Seuss's birthday.  I know this is no different from what I'll experience as a teacher, but it really is exhausting and I feel that in a daycare setting, children are allowed to get away with more than they would in a more structured school setting.  I find parenting other people's kids exhausting, and it's frustrating that they all seem to operate under the delusion that their little angels couldn't possibly be the problem.

4) I've been feeling a little bit taken for granted by Colby lately.  Not in a huge way, just in the little things, I don't necessarily feel that what I do is important and that somehow I've become a little bit of the Lucy to his Ricky.  I know I probably bring this upon myself in the way that I make jokes out of things that I'm really serious about.  Like, I constantly make jokes about wanting a third dog.  I joke about wanting to plan that trip abroad next summer.  I don't come across as really serious about my desires and I often make jokes about my job, so it's to be expected that maybe he would do the same.  But the other night, after repeated reminders about the talent show at school, Colby completely and utterly forgot to show up.  I'd been talking about it for weeks, and it just wasn't on his radar at all, even though he'd participated in the conversations with me.  I was incredibly hurt and angry, and I think it was sort of a culmination of all those feelings I've been having for a while now.  I'm okay with making light of situations, but I don't want to be the foil in the relationship.  There is probably a whole blog for another day, exploring this further, but basically, these feelings had been seething for a while and that was just the final straw for me.

Anyway, the sun is shining today, I've got two hours of America's Next Top Model to watch before I go back to work, it's Friday and I think we're actually going to do something fun this weekend instead of sitting around the house doing homework.  I'm hopeful that next week will be better, and if not, maybe I'll just write about it as it comes instead of saving everything up for another ten page long missive on why I'm still not feeling like rainbows and starshine.

Hope

Just about everyone, myself included, likes to blog about the good things in life, particularly when they're in a happy, loving marriage or committed relationship.  I like to get all mushy, and sometimes banging out some sappy, heartfelt blog post is just a really fun way to spend a Friday morning.  But the thing of it is, sometimes being married can be kind of hard.  I know!!  Big shocker!

I'm not even talking about in the big ways that you always hear about in those stories about why the divorce rate is so high.  Like, obviously money issues can cause problems.  You want five kids, he was thinking more like one kid and some new golf clubs.  That stuff can certainly have an impact on a relationship, but I'm talking about the little things.

Like, you want to set the thermostat at 72 because you both make a decent wage and can probably afford to pay the gas bill, but he wants to keep it at 68 because he's kind of miserly and wears a lot of fleece.  So, you compromise and set it at 70, but no one is ever really happy about a compromise, so you both make disparaging comments about the other's temperature preference from time to time.  Or maybe you like the feel of crisply, tightly tucked sheets when you climb into bed at night, and he's more of a "tornado just hit the house, leaving the bed intact but rumpled" kind of a guy.  So you keep your side tucked in and he kicks the sheets out on his side, which SEEMS like it should work, but in reality, every morning the entire bed looks suspiciously more like the tornado situation, and it is POSSIBLE that one time you actually cried, because seriously, is having the sheets tucked in really THAT HORRIBLE??

And then of course, maybe I--I mean, YOU--want to get a third dog, so you kind of joke about it all the time, but in a way that makes it pretty clear that you're not actually joking, and then he's like "the yard is too small, and you aren't the one that picks up the poop, anyway."  Then, completely by accident you stumble across an adoption listing featuring this adorable, Fraggle-like face:

So, you kind of once more jokingly bring up that whole crazy third dog idea, and you're once more kind of jokingly shot down.  And then you get seriously sad, and you think guiltily to yourself that if you weren't married and didn't have to make joint decisions, you'd just get the damn dog.  And then you realize that you're a horrible person, and obviously being married and having someone else to pick up the poop of the two dogs you're already lucky enough to have and to share your life with is about a million percent better than getting a third dog.  But you still obsess about the dang Fraggle dog and pray that someone else out there will adopt her and give her the love she deserves, and then you just hope that the dreams about Hope go away some time soon.

Because really, what kind of moron has multiple dreams about a dog she's never met anyway?  Not me, that's for sure...

Freakin' Brrr

Dear Winter,

I'm writing to you in regard to the recent chilly temperatures that have spanned these United States for the past few months.  You see, when I first moved to the Seattle area, I was assured that it was really quite temperate and that the winters weren't too bad.  And of course, to make up for the dreariness that envelops the region from October through March, the summers were absolutely magnificent.  I suppose when I compare the winter weather here to that of say, Fargo, North Dakota, no the winters aren't that terrible.  However, for this southern girl who has been conditioned to begin shivering once temperatures dip below 65 degrees, Washington winters are indeed miserable.  And the summers?  Honestly, they just barely miss being categorized as Spring: The Sequel.

It doesn't help that I was also assured that it practically never snows here, a fact that I am beginning to doubt after spending two winters dealing with snow and ice on the roads in a county that has approximately zero concept of how to deal with such hazards.  And as if ice on the road isn't bad enough, now I have to scrape ice off of a giant 15 passenger bus every morning--and not just on the outside of the windshield.  Oh, no, that would be silly!  The ice coats the inside of the windshield and windows as well.  It's really an interesting discovery when you realize that the reason you just can't scrape that damn ice off of the windshield is because it is INSIDE the windshield.  High-larious!

So, here's the thing, Winter.  I think it would be best for both of us if you would just go ahead and leave now.  This is clearly an unhealthy relationship, and I don't see it getting any better any time soon.  We both just have different interests--you enjoy coating the world in frost and black ice and I just really want to bitch and moan about how hot it is outside.  I really thought that things would be different for us.  When I was a little girl, I dreamed of white Christmases and being able to bundle up in scarves and mittens without breaking a sweat, but I guess I didn't know what I really wanted.  And what I want is just not you.

Know that there are plenty of people out there in the world who are happy to have you in their lives.  People who think I'm crazy to let you go, and would give anything to trade places with me and experience your dismal grey days and constant blustery winds.  So, go to them.  Be well.  I can't say that I'll miss you, but maybe someday, when things are getting a little stale between Summer and I, we can rendezvous for an illicit (and brief) tryst beneath the clouds.

No longer yours,

The Enforcer

I've been working in my new(ish) job as director of a before and after school care site for close to three months now.  Almost as long as I worked as an assistant at my old site.  That is just absolutely crazy to think about.  Could someone please do something about how quickly time is passing?  It's freaking me out.

I loved my old job.  LOVED IT.  The kids were awesome, the site was really perfect for our needs, I really and truly enjoyed going to work every day.  This new job... I don't hate it.  It's just so much freaking harder.  My site is notorious for having some of the most poorly behaved kids in our entire pool of childcare sites.  They are disrespectful, not only to staff, but to each other.  They are physically and emotionally aggressive.  They had absolutely no structure or rules before I was hired.  They aren't bad kids, but they have been running absolutely wild and it's been a struggle every single day to get them under control.

It's difficult for me, because I enjoy relating to kids.  I think they're amazing little things and I love talking to them and playing with them.  As an assistant, that was my job.  From time to time I might have to throw out a little discipline, but since the kids were already firmly under control and the site director did most of the reprimanding, I was free to just have fun with them.  And they loved me.  They would run screaming at me when I got to work and at times there were actual tears shed when I would leave early.  When I left to take on my new position, I was truly heartbroken to leave those kids behind.

As a director, I am now the one doling out the discipline.  My assistant is a great girl, but she's only eighteen and sometimes it seems like she's just as wild as the kids.  Of course, they adore her because not only has she been around longer than I have, but she isn't the one doing the punishing and the lecturing.  I know that it's not my job to be a friend to these kids, it's my job to keep them safe until their parents can come get them and hopefully teach them a little something about values and manners along the way, and of course to form a bond with them, but it's a very different relationship now than it was before.

Things have gotten better--the site is much more organized now, kids are starting to follow rules before I have to remind them for the tenth time per day, parents are warming up to me a bit more, and I know that the kids have accepted me and respect me for the most part.  But there are still days when my fuse is short and the day has been long, and I think how much  easier the road would have been if I had stayed on in my previous position.  I know this is great training for when I'm in a classroom and am expected to manage a class for 6 hours a day, and I don't regret accepting the promotion at all. 

But sometimes, I just want to be the cool one again.

ARGH!

So, I was all set to come home, curl up on the couch with a cup of tea and a backlog of Property Virgins episodes and tell you all about my New Years resolution to be a more positive person, and  outline my various self-improvement strategies.  But then it started raining, and the snow started melting in far off lands, and the rivers started rising.  And then they shut down all of the roads leading into my house.

AND THEN THEY EVACUATED MY DADBURNED CITY!

I left work early, hoping to at least check on the dogs, but I couldn't get through on any of the roads before they started evacuating my neighborhood.  A friend managed to hop some fences and get into my house so that he could get Jack out of the crate in the garage and put him inside, but I had to divert to another friends house for the night.  (I say that like it's terrible--I love Nicole and bless her for letting me stay here, but you know, I can think of less natural disastery circumstances under which this hang out could have occurred.)  Anyway, I'm sitting here as she and her boyfriend take turns sucking up the water that keeps seeping through the walls of her basement apartment, trying not to worry about whether the dogs are eating each other (or all of my possessions) and if we did or did not buy flood insurance.

But quite frankly, I'm just not feeling all that positive.  Mostly I'm feeling a little dirty and greasy, since this morning was my non-shower day, quite tired because I was at work from 6:30 am to 5:30 pm with a break of just a couple hours mid-day, and sad because of course Colby is out of town right now on one of his mini-deployments and I could really use a good cuddle right about now.

Searching desperately for the positive in all of this, at least my friend DID manage to check on the dogs and they should be okay until I can try to spec ops my way into the neighborhood tomorrow, I got fed a pretty damn tasty tortilla soup for dinner, and I am presently working on my second enormous glass of red wine.

We'll see how tomorrow goes...

Don't Wanna

I've got a lot of don't wannas going on right now.  Don't wanna go upstairs and haul down a load of laundry to fold after putting another load in to wash.  Don't wanna go back to work tomorrow, even though I don't have to be there until 8:00 (as opposed to my usual start time of 6:30... am) and will probably be done by 1 o'clock or so.  Don't wanna clean up the downstairs which has been overrun by Christmas and birthday goodies, as well as dishes from our last few meals that have, for some reason unbeknownst to me, not cleaned themselves.  And really, really just don't wanna blog.

Ugh, as Stephanie put it, I have just lost my BMJ--blogging mojo.  I have SO much to tell you about.  The piles of snow we got last week (Maggie did a great job covering that phenomenon--check out the snow guillotine).  The amazing birthday dinner I had last weekend followed by a wonderful performance of the Nutcracker--even my frillionth illness of the winter couldn't keep me away from my birthday celebrations.  Then there was our fabulous Christmas Eve celebration with Lori and cozy Christmas spent at home.

But I just don't wanna.  So, you'll just have to imagine it all in your pretty little heads, and then maybe go be my friend on Facebook so that when I finally get around to combing through the millions of pictures you'll be able to see them that way.  Until then, I hope that you're all having very happy holidays, and if I don't "talk" to you before then, have a very Happy New Year!

Ugh

I'm probably the only person in the world who is NOT dreaming of a white Christmas.  No, scratch that, I'm certain my mom is not dreaming of a white Christmas.  So, yeah, me and my mom, not dreaming of a white Christmas.  Do you know why?  BECAUSE SNOW KILLS!  And also it's really fecking cold.

We're supposed to be heading back to Leavenworth, Washington tomorrow for the Christmas tree lighting.  I've been looking forward to this trek all year as it's supposed to be one of the most beautiful Christmas towns in the country.

This is the forecast for tomorrow:

 

The only silver lining I can find to this is that at least we'll already be on our way back home, battling certain death by snow and ice, by the time it gets to the "Feels like 9 degrees" portion of the day.

I'm off to locate my long underwear and every scarf I own.

Thinking About Just Hibernating This Winter

So, November pretty much kicked my hindquarters.  November was the lion and I was the unicorn, and it resoundly beat the crap out of me all about the town.  Things started off fine and dandy.  October drew to a close with a splendid Halloween celebration involving a limousine, copious amounts of liquor, dancing, and the company of good friends.

November commenced with my decision to accept the promotion and take the child care site director position which came with a sizeable raise and additional hours and just a few days later, Colby returned home from his deployment.  That day also brought with it Illness #1 of the month, a cold which dragged out over the next two weeks as we spent a weekend in a charming bed and breakfast in Leavenworth, WA and then entertained house guests for the next week.

Then I was informed that there were some fairly sordid activities going on right beneath my very nose at work, and I'm still not sure if I should talk about them publicly, but suffice to say that a lot of children got some very Serious Talking Tos by a lot of Very Important People and Angela had the joy of being interviewed by those same Very Important People.  The situation seems to have been defused, but it will certainly be hanging over my head for a long time to come.

Upon the departure of our house guests, we planned to have a romantic evening in the city to celebrate our anniversary, plans that were postponed by the arrival of our good friend rotavirus.  Colby was taken out on Saturday, and I took my time following suit, but surrendered to Illness #2 of the month by Tuesday morning.  The next two days I spent moaning on the couch, willing my body to just give in and die already, and that is the story of our disappearing Thanksgiving holiday.  I celebrated the pilgrims arrival in and subsequent rape of this New World with a packet of saltines, some ginger ale and a black cherry popsicle.

By Friday morning I was feeling a bit more human, but by the time bedtime rolled around I could already feel that familiar ache in my throat and I woke up Saturday morning with yet another cold, bringing the Illness count up to three for the month.  So yeah, while November had its high points, it is with a happy heart that I bid it adieu and welcome December with open arms.

Of course, it's not off to the greatest of starts as yesterday my alarm clock failed me and this morning I woke up with the voice of a 60-year smoker, but there is still Christmas and my birthday to balance the scales, so I have high hopes for the month over all.  My house smells like cinnamon, the stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and Christmas tree number two is going up this evening, so I'm already feeling better about life.  I'm going to try to be more present around here, but if I've learned one thing, it's that when I'm not sitting in front of a desk all day every day, it's best not to make too many promises about publishing entries and keeping up with my reader.

The Hills Just Ain't Happening This Week

I'm just going to be honest, blogging is not top priority this week.  I feel like I'm drowning at work--I've been there from 6:15 until 9:00 in the morning and then 2:45 until 6:30 at night the past two days.  Today I worked the same morning shift and I have to go back from 12:00 until 6:30 this afternoon.  Tomorrow the kids don't have school, so we're combining with another childcare site and my hours are 7:30 to 4:00 on Thursday and Friday.  I'm working so much more than usual because my site director has been out of town, so it's been just me and a herd of screaming, unruly children, and honestly, I am about this close to snapping their necks.  This morning alone I dealt with a bloody nose, twisted ankle, and bruised knee. 

Then, in my off time, I'm trying to get all of my homework for the week finished by tomorrow, because on Friday night I'm taking the red-eye to Boston, where I'll be hanging with a large portion of my fandamnily for my Memere's (that's "grandmother" for those of you who didn't take 5th grade French) 90th birthday.  And let's not even talk about all of the laundry that has yet to be done, the packing that I'll probably be frantically trying to finish 15 minutes before departure, and the fact that the dogs have to be dropped off at the kennel at some point which I have yet to determine.

All of this to say, I probably won't even have time to watch The Hills this week, let alone recap it, because my head is busy doing something like this:

I Am So Close to Going Over the Edge Right Now

It has not been a very good week.  In fact, it's kind of been a fucking bad week that, God-willing, reached it's pinnacle last night in a giant 30 minute crying jag, followed by about 15 more minutes of delicate, ladylike sobs as I tried to give half a crap about Project Runway.  (Digression:  I honestly couldn't care less about who wins at Bryant Park.  Has there ever been such a boring season as this?)  It's not one huge, gigantic catastrophe that has occurred, it's been a multitude of tiny, stinging pinpricks, one after another in painful, infuriating succession.

Monday was really pretty okay, between multiple glasses of strawberry vodka and lemonade with chocolate fondue and a fairly excellent episode of Gossip Girl.  But then Tuesday, I woke up feeling utterly exhausted and rundown, and that evening came with the revelation that Colby's leave request for the holidays was not approved, so it looks like I will be spending my second Christmas in a row away from my family and this will be his third.  Yesterday, I'm pretty sure I broke my damn toe playing Yahtzee! of all things.  I shit you not--I was sitting in my chair, waiting for my turn when I felt like I got a cramp in my toe.  I stood up and couldn't put any pressure on it without feeling nauseous from pain (granted, I do have a VERY LOW tolerance for pain...) and it's swollen and painfully bruised feeling today.  Then, last night I read something that really astounded me with its insensitivity and I decided to just throw in the towel and go to bed before I exploded all over the internet.  On top of all of that, I am still so exhausted, I'm uber-PMSing right now and I had to wake up at 5 a.m. this morning for work, and will have to do so through next Friday.  Oh, and my background check hasn't been cleared yet, so I can't do my classroom observation and I can't get any of my teacher friends to respond to my messages so that I can interview them about bloody Social Cognition Models before Saturday.  And of course it is cold, rainy and completely grey and dreary outside today, which is doing absolutely nothing to improve my mood.

It was when I was trying to hobble upstairs last night so that I could switch out a load of laundry that I started to feel my "brave face" collapsing.  The only way I could get up the stairs was by sitting down and scooting up backwards, and by the time I got to the third step up, I was already experiencing full on, body racking sobs. Just this past weekend, I began a post about how well I've been handling Colby's deployment, and how as much as I've missed him, it has been completely awesome jet-setting around the country and spending loads of quality time with some of my favorite girls.  It's only a few days later, and now I honestly don't know how I'm going to make it through another month without him here.  I'm so goddamned tired of being alone, of having to deal with life by myself, of having to constantly run up and downstairs on a broken fucking foot and not having anyone here to just take care of me for a little while.  Of having to come up with things to say to him on the phone after we've talked about everything under the sun when all I really want is to have him sitting on the couch next to me while we watch television together.

And that is why, at 9:33 in the morning, I am sitting on the couch, watching Top Design, and drinking a giant glass of red wine.  It is either this or cry some more, and I just really don't feel like reapplying eye makeup right now.

Deep Breaths In.... and Out...

I need to find a pillow so that I can scream into it desperately for the next five minutes or so.  Maybe then I'll feel a little bit better.

I'm giving my notice at work today.  I have my resignation letter all typed up, and I've spent the past 24 hours rehearsing my speech in my head in the hopes that my propensity to word vomit won't overcome me while I'm meeting with my boss.  I just really hope that we're all able to part on good terms, and no one harbors any resentment toward me for not sticking this out longer.

Confrontation.  It is not my favorite.  My method for breaking up with a boys or ending friendships has always been to just stop calling in the hopes that eventually they would get the message.  Horrible?  Yes.  Do I still really wish that were an option with my job right now?  Absolutely.

So now I'm just sitting in my chair, shaking like a leaf from a combination of nerves and the lack of heat in our office, waiting for my boss to get here so that I can set up a little meeting with her for early this afternoon.  Oh please God, let me get this over with!

Additionally, I have still not been able to figure out what the heck is going on with my domain registration.  I bought the URL through Wordpress, and I've attempted to contact them with my questions twice and haven't heard anything back yet.  I'm starting to get the idea that wickedlyscarlett.com is gone for good--or at least the next year--and that makes me sad, because I'd already formed a deep attachment to it.  We had all kinds of plans for the future together, and now they're all coming to pieces.  I will not be ignored, Wordpress!

But all is not lost.  There is still the prospect of Colby's birthday dinner tonight, and I feel confident that a well made cocktail could help pull me from the depths of despair.  And of course, Easter has managed to sneak up on me once again, and we've made plans to go over to my pretend mom's house on Sunday to celebrate the day that Jesus rose from the dead and rabbits customarily hide eggs.

If I can only get through the rest of this day without throwing up or hurling my computer against a wall, I think I might be off to the start of a rather pleasant weekend.  Here's hoping!!

My Dream Job List

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.
~Honore de Balzac, "Scenes de la vie Parisienne," La Maison Nucingen, 1838

My level of stress about leaving my job has now begun manifesting itself in snappish remarks to anyone who dares speak to me and a constant eyelid twitch.  I'm like Popeye with severe rage issues.  Additionally, according to WebMD, I'm going blind from staring at the computer 24/7. 

Many years ago, when I was a charming young naif, I dreamed of the day that I would be sitting behind a computer, muttering sarcastic comments under my breath while my eyelid fluttered uncontrollably.  And just look at me today!  Living the dream, people!  Living the dream.

I've been thinking a lot about my childhood dreams lately, and just how far short of the mark I'm hitting on a daily basis.  In all fairness to myself, the vast majority of my childhood dreams were ridiculous.  And so, to make myself feel better about continuously failing meet my own expectations, I'll share those more far fetched dreams with you today.

Ballerina

Oh, how I wanted to be a ballerina.  I began taking ballet classes long before I can even remember, and I so loved the beautiful costumes and ballet slippers that the older girls wore.  I can remember sitting, hunched against the wall, watching the girls practicing en pointe, dreaming of the day that I would be just like them.  When I was in 5th grade, our wonderful teacher left our school, and she was replaced by a woman who would sit on our backs to "help" us with our splits.  It was around this time that I began to realize that becoming a ballerina would take a great deal of practice and require eating far fewer Cheetos than I would have liked.  At nine years old, I hung up my ballet shoes for good.

Psychiatrist

I'm honestly not sure what sparked my obsession with psychiatry, but this dream lasted from 7th grade through early 9th.  At some point along the way I discovered that if I really wanted to become a psychiatrist, I would have to go to medical school, and that didn't seem like so much fun.  Then I found out that a psychology degree required a statistics course.  NEXT!

FBI Agent

Mostly I just wanted to marry David Duchovny.  Once I started to figure out that television shows are not real, and I would never be able to help Mulder track down creepy aliens, I kicked this idea to the curb.  But not before I read up a great deal on FBI application procedures.  Did you know you have to learn how to fire an actual weapon?  Scary!  So, you know, then I joined the Air Force.  No guns there, thank goodness!

Cupcake Shop Owner

This one still sounds kind of fun sometimes for two reasons.  1) Cupcakes are delicious.  2) Frosting is delicious.  But then I remember that I would have to make the cupcakes every day, probably quite early in the morning.  Also, it would be beneficial to me to work rather long hours with the end goal of not going out of business.  Neither one of those things sound very enjoyable, so instead I just frequent other people's cupcake shops.  It's win-win I think.

Astronaut

I went through a period of intense obsession with all things NASA related in elementary school.  It was sparked by a classroom exercise of writing a letter to an astronaut to tell them about ourselves.  I wrote my letter to Bonnie Dunbar, and was thrilled when I received a letter back from her (read: NASA's PR department) along with some glossy 8x10s of her headshot and their crew group photo.  I was entranced and spent the next year begging my parents to buy a telescope (which I seem to remember they did do, but it disappeared shortly thereafter) and reading books and magazines about the stars.  Then I saw Apollo 13.  Dude, nobody told me you could get STUCK out there in space.  Screw that.

So please, make me feel better about myself.  Are you living your childhood dreams, or would your nine-year-old self arch an eyebrow, curl their lip and swear they'd never turn out like you?

Kind of A Crappy Day So Far

Do you know what is a super not fun thing to wake up to on a morning that is not Friday when your charming and lovable husband has just flown the coop for a two week deployment?  Dog poop on the carpet by the foot of the stairs.  And over by the coffee table.  And next to the kitchen table.  And next to the other side of the kitchen table.

My house smells like crap.  I didn't have time to clean it this morning, so I wiped up as much as I could and will just have to spend the evening with a clothespin on my nose so that I don't die from the stench.  Poor puppies.  One of them must be sick with a little puppy ailment of some kind.  Since I don't know which one, they've both been crated for the day.  They are going to HATE me tonight.

Also, Home Owners Association and your $75 fine?  You suck.  I would really like to know how a clause in our neighborhood rulebook prohibiting offensive items on your property such as trash, broken furniture, and broken down cars extends to a violation of the rule when you don't have curtains hung in your back window.  I hate that we spent a truly ungodly amount of money to buy our house, have to pay money each month for the privilege of living in a neighborhood ruled by our dictatorship of an association, and don't even have a say in whether or not we hang curtains.  Yet our next door neighbors have a veritable jungle of weeds and beer cans in their yard and apparently no one seems to mind.

And Comcast DVR?  You try to convince us all that you're just as great as my old lover, TiVo, but we all know that you are not.  You suck us in with your lower prices and promises of equal service, but your complete disregard for my orders when I tell you to record something, or fast forward, or play, or NOT DELETE AMERICAN IDOL WHEN I HAVEN'T YET FINISHED WATCHING IT have pushed me over the edge of irritation all the way into blind fury.  If I just wasn't a lady, what wouldn't I tell that varmint.

And can I just mention again that today isn't Friday?  I'm ready to go back to bed, please.

Moving On...

I want to thank you all for your supportive comments yesterday.  After I wrote my post, I started thinking that maybe I was taking things a little bit too personally and being too sensitive, so I felt a nice sense of validation when you all seemed to agree that things weren't handled beautifully.  Even so, I think everyone knows that there always two sides to every story and then the truth.  Either way, I feel very uncomfortable in the office today, and I lay awake for a long time last night just thinking.

In short, what it boils down to is that I don't feel like I am respected very much as an employee.  I don't know if I want to work somewhere that initiating a dialog is going to be seen as giving attitude or defensiveness.  There were a lot of things I didn't like about the Air Force, and there were a lot of people that I didn't love working for, but almost every boss I ever worked for respected what I had to say and encouraged candor and two-way discussion.  (To a degree of course, at the end of the day, we all knew who was the boss and that line in the sand was firm.)  The only time I didn't feel respected was with a female boss.  I wonder if there's a connection there, and I've often contended that it is much easier, as a woman, to have a male boss.

There are a lot of other things I'm thinking that I'm not going to document here.  Some issues I've discussed with Colby and with friends, but I don't feel that it's right to go into detail on a public blog.  Over the years I have learned the wisdom of having a few boundaries!  So, thank you again for your indignation on my behalf, and my plan now is to go back to doing my best to rise above this situation and do my job to the best of my abilities while I weigh my options.

Anywhoozle!  How bout them Top 24 on American Idol?  Is anyone else watching this season?  As I've said before, I always try to refrain from picking my favorites until we get to the Top 12, but I am finding it just about impossible to not adore David Archuletta.  Usually, I think Paula is full on whacked out Crazy-Pants McGee (in a totally lovable way, of course), but I fully agreed with what she was saying last night about wanting to squeeze the stuffing out of adorable David A. and hanging him from her rear view mirror.  That was actually kind of inspired.  He has made me cry with his beautiful voice and song selection twice now, and I have officially released my fear that he is going to be this year's Sanjaya.  That is an honor I think I'll be leaving to Danny Noriega, whom I also kind of love in that weird inexplicable way I love Christian Siriano.

I'm a little meh about the girls at this juncture which is rare, since I usually find them far more interesting and talented than the boys, but maybe they'll really turn it on for me tonight.  All I know is that if next week is not "Songs from the 80s" I will feel a deep and painful sense of betrayal.

Get It In Writing

I might delete this later, but right now, I am so upset I am literally shaking.

I started working at my job almost six months ago.  At the time, I was seriously considering just temping through May because I knew that very few jobs would allow me to take a week and a half off for my wedding and then an additional two weeks off in April for our honeymoon.  However, a really great opportunity came along, and I decided to put my name into the hat for consideration.  I had a phone interview and two in person interviews, all three times making it very clear that I had a wedding in November and a honeymoon in April and that I would need more time off than the customary 10 days in your first year.  Everyone nodded and smiled and shook my hand and said, oh no problem, you'll just go into the hole and if you have any excess vacation time when you leave it will be deducted from your paycheck.

That was a practice I was very familiar with as the Air Force has a similar policy, and I was extremely grateful to the company for being so understanding since I knew they were going out of their way to accommodate my already set plans.

I started working, took my time off for the wedding, and then earlier this month submitted my vacation request for the honeymoon and waited for it to be approved.  And waited.  And waited.  I had decided to ask about it when I got an email from my boss asking that I come meet with her about the vacation time.  I went in to meet with her, and she had a print out of all of the vacation time I had taken so far, compared against what I was asking for with all kinds of calculations on it.  I closed the door, and she started telling me about how this was very out of the ordinary to approve a request like this that went so far over the allotted vacation time an employee is allowed to take, and so I'd only be able to take such and such amount of time until Date X, and so on.

Of course, I was incredibly taken aback, because hadn't we already discussed the fact that I was going to be gone for two weeks in April before I was even hired?  And hadn't we already had this discussion about how vacation time overages worked?  I know I must have had kind of a surprised look on my face, and I said, not rudely but with a little confusion in my voice, I'm sure, that I had told them about all of the vacation time I would be taking in my first interviews with them.  My boss gave me this look like I had sprouted four heads, and with a very blank expression shook her head, like I was lying to her.  This just upset me more and I felt my face turn beet red as I stammered something inane.  She said that I had told them about the wedding, but not the honeymoon, and I know that's not true, because the honeymoon was the part I was most concerned about since I would already be in the vacation hole.

I just shook my head and couldn't think of anything to say, and then she took a sort of disappointed mom tone and said that she was getting a defensive tone from me, and a bit of attitude.  I just... I just didn't know what to say at that point.  I have done nothing but smile and nod and do what people have told me to for six months, and when I take one time to defend something that I KNOW we talked about more than once I'm copping an attitude??

The vacation time was approved, she's being quite nice to me now, and I'm smiling back, but I can't say that this hasn't put a really bad taste in my mouth.  I know now that I should have had the wedding and honeymoon discussion documented by all parties at the time, but everyone was so nonchalant and easygoing about the whole thing, it seemed like a total non issue.  I work for a wonderful company with wonderful people, but I'd already been spending a lot of time wondering how much longer I can handle the commute that comes along with this job.  This whole interaction has really tarnished a lot of the items I had on my "Pro List" for staying on board.

Skiing: What It's Really Like

"When it comes to skiing, there's a difference between what you think it's going to be like, what it's really like, and what you tell your friends it was like."
~Author Unknown

Ah, skiing.  The soft, white snow capping the majestic mountaintops.  The whispering swish in the air all that meets your ears as you glide gracefully down the slopes in an elegant dance with nature.   Hot chocolate in the lodge to warm you from the inside out.  Pink cheeks and eyes sparkling with laughter.

That's Colby's experience on the mountain.  Mine goes more like this:

Strap on one ski, fall over multiple times while attempting to strap on the other.  Huff and puff, sweating profusely while laboriously side-stepping up the side of a small hill.  Position skis carefully to begin slow descent down the fifteen degree incline, begin crying halfway down when I realize I don't know how to stop and so fall squarely on my ass, to avoid hurtling into the class of snowboarders five feet from the bottom of the hill.

In short, this girl is not so much a fan of the skiing.  For years I heard about people who would go on these mysterious "skiing trips" over the Christmas or Mardi Gras holidays.  I'm sure that these people really did exist and maybe they even had fun, but I never knew anyone that had actually been skiing aside from my mother, and her resulting multiple knee surgeries didn't exactly spark my interest.

When Colby moved to Washington, he would call me in the evenings after weekends spent on the slopes, enthusing about how great it was, and how much fun it would be when I could go skiing with him.  When I moved up here, one of our first tasks was to outfit me with the proper ski gear.  To Colby, that meant a jacket, pants, goggles, and gloves that would keep me warm and protected from the elements.  To me, that meant another pink jacket added to my collection, and a really adorable pair of puffy white pants.

The clothes were tucked away in the back of the closet for a few months, and then the Christmas holidays rolled around, and Colby, with the joy of a child in his eyes, suggested that we take a day to go skiing.  I was excited about breaking in my cute new ski pants, so I agreed and before I knew it, the alarm was going off at six o'clock in the morning on D-Day, I mean, ski-day.

Everything went great up until the point that I had to wave Colby off as I got dropped off at my first time ski lessons and Colby went to hit the slopes.  As soon as he said goodbye, tears sprung into my eyes, and I suddenly remembered EXACTLY what it felt like when I was dropped off at school for the first time and had to watch my mom walk away.  I lost every shred of my dignity, and practically begged him to let me go back inside and read my book.

He calmed me down, told me I really should at least give it a try, and at some point rational thought kicked back in and I agreed that it would be silly to have spent all of this money and then quit before I'd even tumbled down the hill once.

So, with a bracing hug, Colby wandered off to slide down some mountains, and I pasted a smile on my face and joined my class.  A class that was labeled "First Time Skiers", but actually turned out to be "Refresher Class for Everyone Except Angela and an Equally Terrified Nine-Year-Old Girl".  After a brief explanation of how to put on our skis, we all formed a line and then glided around in a circle, some (read: everyone else) a little more successfully than others (read: me and the nine-year-old).  I fell down a few times, once completely unable to get back up again without the assistance of two grown men, one to yank on my arm, and the other to keep my bastard skis from willfully sliding out from under me again.

Just as I was started to get the hang of how to remain upright on flat ground, our instructor had us side-step up the small hill to begin careening downward.  Trouble was, he'd not really gone into any detail as to how one should actually SKI, because apparently, we were not going at the pace of the slowest learners in the class.  Whatever happened to No Child Left Behind, I ask you!

Anyway, I slowly ascended the hill with great effort and exhaustion, and upon reaching the top, looked down the tiny slope and was immediately slapped in the face with my crippling fear of heights.  My phobia is an incredibly difficult thing to pin down.  I'm absolutely terrified of fire escapes, platforms more than three feet off the ground, and the prospect of bungee jumping, but I'm totally cool with roller coasters and airplanes.  So, I never really know when my fear of heights is going to kick in and totally debilitate me.

And so, of course it did so just as I began awkwardly sliding down the hill.  I was partially blinded by my tears, my arms were windmilling furiously since our poles had been confiscated at the beginning of the lesson, and my skis were skidding hither, thither, and yon across the icy snow as I rapidly picked up speed.  Of course, our instructor hadn't gone over that crucial Stopping Lesson, and so I martyred myself so as not to take out the adorable five-year-old boy snowboarding effortlessly, directly into my trajectory.

It was at this point that I realized that skiing is decidedly NOT FUN, but apparently I was in a class with a bunch of losers who don't believe in quitting.  So I was hauled bodily back up the side of the hill, to repeat my catastrophic descent multiple times.  No one ever told me exactly what I was doing wrong other than to point out that I shouldn't cross my skis.  But then when I was going downhill they would tell me to form a "V" to slow down, at which point, I am sorry, but my skis are GOING to cross, ASSHOLE.

Eventually, the instructor has the brilliant idea that he'll take off his skis, wrap his arms around my waist and walk behind me as I skid down the hill.  But since I still couldn't really grasp the concept behind slowing down, and now I had a man hanging from my back, we ended up in a pile of arms and legs, halfway down the hill.  I think I broke his elbow or something, and he left me alone after that.

At some point, when I was standing at the bottom of the hill, stewing silently, my little nine-year-old friend literally somersaulted down the hill, landing at my feet.  I handed her the little pink hat that had flown from her poor head, offered up an understanding smile, and then said to myself, "Eff this noise, I'm out".  Our instructor arranged for me and Pink Hat to go over with another first time skier class, one that was apparently actually made up of first time skiers, but since I didn't have Pink Hat's whip wielding parents hovering over my shoulder, shooting me encouraging looks and insisting with a will of iron that "SKIING IS FUN!", I hauled my poor bruised body back inside and turned in my skis.

And that was my introduction to the sport of skiing.  I hated every second of it, but Colby loves it, so because I LOVE HIM, I have promised him that next year I will try again.  On Saturday, he went skiing with some friends, and I know he would have liked me to come along, but not enough time has passed yet to dull the painful memory of that horrible experience.  So, I opted to stay home and watch a lot of crappy tv and work on thank you notes some more.

We both had a really great Saturday, he got to ski, I managed to spend the day without developing any tears or new bruises, and it ended with dinner at our favorite Greek restaurant.  Now I'll just be spending the next nine months praying for a freak snow-less winter.  I'm not terribly optimistic about my chances.