Fighting back?

Richmond

I filed a grievance against the evil one today. It's a first step, I suppose. In the very least, I am priming the state to have ammunition against her when she ever comes under their control. Daddy says I have a major edge on her because she's not very bright. I my edge has more to do with the fact the she has underestimated me every step of the way.

Today was a slow day. Everything was hard. Dad's trying not to push, but I know Mom's nagging him to get things done around here. What's also odd is that everyone but my aunt has offered for her to come down and stay with me. I have done everything short of beg her to come, but she's not offering and I just can't beg. I guess Mr.-I-won't-come-between-you-and-your-family is contiuing that trend now that they're married.

Finally heard from Devine. She responded to my Uncle Bunty obit that I sent her. She deleted the original email I sent her in response to the email she sent to my office that got my auto response about "being out of the office and unavailable." ~ my yahoo account still had my name as "abc efg" ~ oops! So I recent my long email to her. Hopefully she'll respond in the next few days.

I'm really behind on my book group reading. I actually have 3 books to read for June! Well, one I read in Mrs. Timme's 5th grade Language Arts class, but I think I may need a bit of a refresher...

The pictures of my nephew are so amazing. I need to get some prints made. He is just soo beautiful now and soo photogenic! I'll have to call Tim tomorrow to see what his schedule is like to find out if I can use his use his high speed internet to upload these pictures to the web.

Reconnecting with "ME"?

Richmond,VA

I've been trying to do thing that make me happy or at least made me happy at some point. Today Dad and I went to Barnes & Noble and went to the Ashland Berry Farm and got annuals for the pots on my front steps. I know at one point I loved growing flowers so I'm sticking to that! My orchids are still blooming and they look gorgeous. The yellow one in the bathroom has all sorts of new buds even.

I've been reading a lot and joking with my sister about how this is the best time to read sad books. What are they going to do, depress me? I'm actually pretty numb. The crying response is so easily activated, it doesn't even seem to hold any meaning. I've gotten "102 Minutes" about the people in the Twin Towers on 9/11 and actually really liked "Good Grief." There's a scene where the main character, who is trying to come to terms with the death of her husband and has consoled herself with a little too much ice cream (to the point that her work clothes no longer fit), arrives at work in her pajamas and bathrobe. I cannot even begin to describe how much I wish I had had the nerve to do that. There were days and days where it took everything I had to get myself into that horrific office and getting out of bed was the hardest part. But to demonstrate, especially for one of those stupid 7am mandatory staff meetings would have been so liberating.

I still need to avoid the damn Wellbutrin XL commercial. Don't need to be reminded that I'm not myself, thank you very much!!! Quite aware of the fact. There will be a day when I finally have the feeling -- yes! this is me. I remember this!

But, that is months and months away.

Valentines Day 2005

Why on earth would someone ever create such a horrid holiday?

I am having a ridiculously weird day. I hate Valentine's Day, but I've matured out of wearing all black for the occasion. I'm actually wearing something pink! (rose quartz, to be catalog-colors-that-don't-even-exist-in-Crayola exact) I think it brings out the uneven skin tone in my face, verifying the fact that I didn't wear any foundation today. It's a good look for me. Did I mention weird day?

I came into the office and the receptionist is all apologetic and please don't be upset with me. I'm expecting some new ridiculous policy that the evil people I report to have once again made her deliver to me. I'm thinking, I don't know, I have to wear skirts from now ~ no more slacks ~ and I should understand, being the professional that I am. (Yes, they use that word to the effect of fingernails on a chalk board.) But no, she wants to apologize for accidentally opening my mail. It's just a photocopied article from a colleague with a note "Happy reading!"

It's actually an article about a smallpox outbreak in a Midwestern town around the turn of the century and all the political and social fallout that occurred as a result of quarantine and isolation orders. Happy reading, indeed!

So why, you ask, is the receptionist terrified of me? Let's just say everyone around here is afraid of everyone else these days. Ridiculous new policies appear everyday, some for everyone, some for just a select few. I am one of the lucky ones who gets special attention, at least some of the time. What's sad to say is that we all breath a sigh of relief when we see someone else getting the "special attention" because it means we're safe for a few hours. We can't question the authority, as it is absolute. I went to Human Resources to discuss the situation, to point out the mass exodus that was going on and the strange fact that those leaving seemed to have something in common (skin color, anyone?). They talked to the director about it and I got my hands slapped for going to Human Resources. Oops. My bad. Won't make that mistake again. Make no mistake, if a white administration was doing this to black employees, the NAACP would come crashing in here like a bulldozer. I guess, when this happens to white people it's just considered restitution.

I heart spam, NOT

So I seem to have gotten on the mailing list for "sexually explicit daily". I kid you not, it really does exist!! And it's not like it's my yahoo account or my gmail ~ oh, no, it's my work account!! And all those great filters that prevent me from getting any email that uses the term arboviral (as in an infectious disease passed by mosquito) do nothing to block sexually explicit daily, what's that about?

But my curiousity does get the better of me. (NO, I haven't clicked the links or anything, didn't I mention the *work* computer bit and I really don't want to encourage the spammers.) It's the descriptions of what they're trying to draw you to that I adore. You expect the cheating housewives and the naughty school girls, but the grandmothers and other senior citizens gave me a good laugh.

Even my cat isn't immune to spam. Alright, entirely my fault. I was wondering about the validity of those "free iPod" banner ads, so I clicked on one. I didn't want to use my own name, so I used my cat's. I did, however use my yahoo email account. I've had in excess of 100 messages in my spam box since then ~ most of them addressing my cat by name in the title and offering her some great deal. If only my cat had a mortgage to refinance...

I heart 24!

I watched the first season of 24 and was relatively enthralled, but got a bit bogged down by all the awful stuff the kept happening to Mrs. Jack and their daughter, Kim. (They just got back together! She was pregnant too! So then they killed her???!)

Anyway, I half heartedly watched season 2 and completely avoided season 3, but when season 4 started with a bang ~ 4 hours on two consecutive nights ~ I couldn't help myself! And what's not to love?? Edgar, the self-esteem-challenged bumbling, mumbling computer geek who's looking like a hero! Madeline from La Femme Nikita back in command of her own little black ops cell! William Devane NOT getting smoochy with anyone. (I've probably just shot myself in the foot on that one ~ he'll probably start some red hot affair with Sarah next week...) And don't even get me started on Behrooz and Dina!! Yes, yes, yes, it's a horrible depiction of Arab Americans. But keep this in mind ~ Dina is willing to risk everything, EVERYTHING, for her son who has realized that he just doesn't believe in this cause. Sure, she seemed cold and calculated when she served the imfamous tea to Debbie (who was a wee bit stalker-ish, if we're all honest with ourselves), but now as she stoicly perseveres with a gunshot wound to save her Behrooz, she's just not so cold. And as far as Behrooz killing Tariq ~ of course, his father didn't believe him!! No father of the year award for him! And I think he can forget getting a father's day card as well...

I can't just leave this without throwing in some predictions. And these are just off the top of my head, since I have no connection to anyone even remotely involved with the show. I think Chloe and Andrew are involved. Why? She seemed awfully concerned about his well being (to the point of threatening Jack ~ like that's gonna happen!) and just the fact that Andrew knew her direct line at work pointed to the fact that they were more than just "old classmates." Audrey's husband is up to no good. As much as I want to believe he is as wonderful as Forney, the character James Frain played in Where the Heart Is, I'm just not getting that. And while we're talking about the extended family of the Secretary of Defense, the son, Richard, does have something that he's hiding, of a very personal nature. He kind of alluded to that with his father, but never gave it up under torture. Perhaps he and Tariq were lovers??

Since I'm not the only one getting a laught out of 24, here's something from the Washington Post! http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6489-2005Feb7.html?nav=most_emailed_emailfriend

Care bears on the Ark

My nephew turned one just two weeks ago. He's truly an exceptional child and I'm not just saying that because I'm his aunt or because most of the relatives say he reminds them of me. He has a vocabulary that would astound you. He says the regular Hi, Mama, Dada, no (no, no, no, no), yeah, kind of stuff ~ but he also says tank ooh, baby (or bayBEE or BAYbee as there are several different meanings for this word), buh-bye, oof-oof, mao-mao, brown bear (the kid's an Eric Carle fan!), baa (bath, not the sound a sheep makes, thats ba ba), boo (book) and I'm sure there's other stuff that I'm forgetting.

I couldn't be at his first birthday party since he lives on the other side of the country, but I did leave his birthday present when I visiting for Christmas. I got him the Fisher Price Little People Noah's Ark. Now I could go on and on about how different Little People are since my childhood ~ beginning with the not-s-much-a-chocking-hazard aspect ~ but I won't get into it. My nephew loves the 'raffes and the lions (he roars). He keeps asking my sister what sound the giraffes make and she bluffs "munch munch" or "nibble nibble", but he won't have any of it. You're not pulling that kind of crap over on a guy whose "baba" (what he calls all his grandparents) taught him the actual sound a zebra makes. Yes, that would be my father. Apparently, if you ever watch documentaries on wildabeasts (which I apparently can't even spell!!) you would hear lots of zebra noises. Um, okay.

His birthday cake was decorated with two little care bears which match nicely with the little animals from the ark, so there they reside. It's become quite the topic of conversation between the adults in the family. Consider, for example, if the care bears were to have survived the great flood, there would have needed to have been two of them aboard Noah's ark, right? I mean, you can argue the historical accuracy of care bears on the ark, but you can't even definitively prove the historical accuracy of the ark itself. So it's really a toss up! If my nephew stays in the state where he currently lives, he will no doubt be learning about creationism and perhaps even the ark in his biology classes. I like to think I've done my part to make that job a little more difficult for whoever attempts to cover those topics with him.

Watching the state....

So I can't actually bring myself to watch the state of the union address. It all seems a little too pep-rally-ish too, what with all the applause and standing ovations ~ just without the congress sitting in areas marked "class of --" I suppose that really wouldn't work considering they just don't know when their constiuency is going to send them packing back home.

I have a friend who likes to get her video from network television and her audio from NPR. Apparently they're a fraction of a second or so off giving the appearance that the president is poorly dubbed from some other language. She says it keeps things interesting.

The constitution says that "from time to time" the president will brief congress on the state of the union, so I'm wondering exactly how it became an annual thing? I guess it could be worse ~ a monthly state of the union??? If that were the case, I'm not seeing the network executives giving up a night of primetime once a month even for a president they adore, especially not during sweeps!! Then maybe they would rotate it ~ an idea I think they should serious consider. It's not like every network gets to show the Olympics or the World Series or the Superbowl!! Maybe if they bid on it, it would mix things up a bit? Could you imagine if there were commercial time slots for the state of the union that commanded the same kind of interest as the super bowl commercials? How about a little half time show? Then I'd watch!

State of the Union?

So I've been wondering, as I often do. With all the concern about the FCC and live television broadcasts, do you suppose they'll be televising the State of the Union on a 3-5 second delay? I mean, I realize the likelihood of a wardrobe malfunction is miniscule, but you really never know when W is gonna abandon the teleprompter and drop the F-bomb.

hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I HATE MY JOB.

I remember a time not so long ago when I LOVED my job. I love my work. I love my field. I hate the people I'm working for right now. They are actually gunning for me. And I'm not the one who said it ~ my mother did. The woman who is stone cold observant, never paranoid, just calls it as she sees it...

I have actually been scolded twice in the last two days for being rude and taking a "tone" with my new supervisor....

I'm supposed to kiss her ring or something...

Not my style, not in my job description, and probably above my pay grade!

I'm pretty sure I'm going to get reprimanded on Monday for not completing an assigned task. The thing is, she never actually told me to do anything, she sent others to tell me. And I'm not really skilled to be doing what she wanted me to do, plus I was supposed to be doing something else at the time and she never bothered to check and see if I was even available!! And beyond that, she wanted to send me into a facility where they were using latex gloves and I am severely allergic to latex! And she knows that!!Not that any of this will really matter, since I'm the bad person in this whole scenario.

Why?

Because I'm young (or at least they think I'm really young) and female and from the North and really well educated and white and so obviously everything's be handed to me my entire life, I've never had to actually work for a thing, and I could never even begin to understand anything. And, apparently, I have a reputation for being snippy....

Gaston Conquers

I thought my biggest problem was going to be getting my trash out. HOW wrong was I??

So, it seems Gaston decided to dump 14 inches of rain on us!! I had the most insane night!!

First, I got stuck in the elevator as I tried to leave my office. The power went out just after I got on and I wound up stuck between floors. Two sheriff deputies and the building manager had to rescue me ~ not a pleasant experience.

Then I embarked on the four and a half hour journey home. A good part of the city flooded and at one point I found myself trapped with washed out roads in all directions. Having a rental car in no reduced my temptation to attempt to cross the flooded roads, but I did know better than that!!! I decided to amuse myself by taking pictures of the flood waters...

By 9pm, I thought I was going to lose it ~ I had gone 4 city blocks in one hour... I got paged by a coworker for some information for the shelters we were opening ~ mandatory evacuations because of flooding. Turns out all the East/West roads were closed except for one and not the one I was stuck on...

I've finally gotten home which really didn't seem like it was ever going to happen....

Alright, I'm exhausted... going to bed....

Gaston Cometh

So, the remnants of Tropical Storm Gaston have hit this afternoon and it's been pouring down rain and apparently there have been some tornadoes touching down in the counties around the city...

Right now, it's just sheets of water coming down outside my window and I am not looking forward to driving home in this ~ especially with the rental car I have this week. (note to self: find windshield wipers immediately)

I'm realizing now that I should have taken out my trash this morning before I left for work as I'm not going to want to be doing it this evening. Even if the rain stops, it will still be a whole lot of wet grass to trapse through. Too bad I don't have a second date lined up...

Grrrrrrrr....

Okay, still in a foul mood today...

I have ridiculous cramps and I'm on the conference call about brucellosis and the speaker keeps going on and on about spontaneous abortion in cattle and dogs. Don't want to be concentrating on that part of the anatomy, thank you very much! Not to even mention, that I don't think there are any cows among my constientuency!

Of course, after the graphic description of what happens when a cow gets infected with brucella, she bothers to mention that they're all vaccinated now. Good of you to mention!

Alright, I'm cranky and PMSing and whatnot. I'm using enthralled in science for the sake of science, but I'm just so stressed about this drill from hell and I can't bear to be spending/wasting my time on something that is irrelevant for said enormous event!

And now we hit the comedy part of the lecture. We know brucellosis is a bioweapon.

How? Because we made it into one!!

Thank you US Army for advancing the means of killing people!

a new dating plan

So I just spent an hour and a half talking on the phone with an old friend who I haven't really seen that much of in years. He's over in Europe and probably getting divorced and hopefully coming back to the U.S. So we were talking about relationships and how the utility of men has been decreasing over the years and how I've positioned myself to not really need a man and exactly what utility he's capable of providing and how one would go about demonstrating these attributes while dating. (His main utility, by the way, appears to be killing spiders!!)

Since I already own a house and inherited a very nice diamond engagement ring, I'm not looking for the usual matieralistic things. So, this is what he's come up with for me. On any given first date, I should arrive with a particularly tightly closed pickle jar and request assistance opening it. The second date should include a test of my date's ability to unload my dishwasher and take out my trash ~ it's very important that I grade form and not just functionality, since in the beginning just getting the job done may be satifactory, but 20 years down the road, technique is going to matter. The third date will include moving furniture and killing wasps (I have no problem killing spiders, but I'm allergic to insect stings) ~ it's important here to grade not the ability to take directions, but the instinct to already know what I want, again, 20 years down the road... I could go on, but I think that's enough for now....

Some things are just wrong!

7am mandatory staff meeting.

I have proof that there is evil in the world. It requires me to attend a meeting at 7am on a Monday morning...

I cannot even begin to describe all the many levels on which this is wrong....

Of course, I couldn't fall asleep last night. I was definitely awake to see 4:00am on my clock and I'm honestly not sure I had been sleeping before that.

But I'm bright siding things. There was no traffic at 6am!! There was a 3 to 1 barrista to customer ratio at Starbucks when I got there. (they still gave me the wrong scone) And I had my choice of parking spaces when I got to the office!!

And did I mention how VERY early I am leaving today?

All that said.... there may not be enough caffeine in the world to make this a habit....

You gotta love Dad

My dad has been visiting for the last few days. He's been visiting my new car, I believe, more than me. Alright, not really. He did schedule the visit shortly after I purchased said car, so it is awfully suspicious. I guess that what happens when you buy some new fangled automobile like a hybrid....

I can't complain about my parents. They're wonderful. They would do anything to help my sister and me. They are fiercely loyal and protective and they've supported us through everything, good stuff and bad.

Over dinner last night, my father and I were discussing the dolls my sister and I had as children. He was saying he didn't remember our dolls having a particularly long life expectency and there were a number of headless dolls that we were unwilling to part with. He's absolutely right! Donnie Osmond was the only male "Barbie" we had, so when his head was lost, his social calendar was not limited. Then there was the Dorothy Hamill doll, or should I say dolls, I apparently went through 4 or 5 of them. You could take her skates off, but when you went to put them back on, you would break her legs in the process. And apparently the learning curve a bit steep on that one as I needed to break at least three sets of legs to figure that out for sure...

Then, of course, there's my sister's favorite story about me as a child. My father bought me this beautiful doll with blinking blue eyes. She had long blond hair that probably went down to her feet or close to it and she was called Angel doll or something like that. I named her Stanley. Apparently I'd always liked the name. Stanley met her demise when I decided to bath her with Crest. But as my father pointed out last night, she never did have any cavities....

Geez, Louise...

So all day at work yesterday they had us all a twitter...

Hurricane! Hurricane!!

We might open shelters!! We might have to close bridges! Roads might wash out! Trees may come down!

Open the EOC!! Get into emergency mode!! 3-5 inches of rain!! Gusts of 50+ mph wind!!

It's no Isabel, but we need to be prepared!!

Then what happens? Nada...

Charley never makes it West of I95. We don't even get much rain!!

And, yes, I'm a little disappointed ~ not that we really were in need of any action right now, but if they were going to run around getting us all worked up....

Wait, is this what it feels like to be the naked guy when the naked girl says, "you know, I just don't think I'm ready yet"?

Uhhhh????

Okay, I am officially brain dead....

I went to a meeting this morning, a week early. As I was trying to fall asleep last night, I became convinced that I had this meeting first thing in the morning. My palm has been doing this thing where it resets itself instead of recharging, so my calendar was wiped out. Anyway, I was the only one at this meeting. Not so much accomplished.

I've gone on about my day in a truly spacy manner, doing things like responding to a coworkers question of "Do you know Audrey's last name?" with "Audrey who?" And so on and so forth... It's a very good thing there's nothing particularly vital going on today....

Good bye, Granny

I'm going to talk about my grandmother today.

She grew up on a farm in upstate NY. Her father was something of a mythical figure ~ he claimed to have been brought down the mountain "in ropes" like some sort of wild man. He was a dowsey, a water witch and a one man band and a farmer. She would carry baked potatoes to school to keep her hand warm and then eat them for lunch. My sister and I always imagined her as something out of Little House on the Prairie, even though, the time was off by a good 50 years. My grandmother got an 8th grade education and then went to work at the mill stitching clothing in some rural sweat shop. She met my grandfather at a country dance. He told her he was in land transfer ~ he was digging ditches. They both loved to dance. There was no great love story, at least not that I heard, but they married when she was 33. My father was their only child and my grandmother was bound and determined to send him to college. She conspired with the principal at his high school (graduating class of 13) to get him a scholarship to a jesuit school. She was diagnosed with breast cancer my father's freshman year of college. She the most radical mastectomy I've ever seen ~ I honestly believed for the first half of my life that she was born with her deformity. My father, convinced she wouldn't survive, promised her he would finish college. And she lived to see that he did it!

She was already in her 60s when my sister and I were born, but her energy was unbelievable. She cooked constantly and could be counted upon to have at least 4 cookie jars filled with all different homemade cookies. When I was 10, she had a massive heart attack when the two of us were alone in her old house. I was left to call the rescue squad at a neighbor's house. When she got to the ER, they tried to take her teeth out because they couldn't imagine a 70 something woman without dentures, but she had all of her own teeth. She spent nearly 2 weeks in the hospital, but she recovered completely and quit smoking in the process.

She was surrounded by neighbors and relatives with great grandchildren, so she took to collecting stuffed animals from the colleges and grad school where my sister and I had earned degrees. Whenever the little old ladies got out their pictures and started bragging, she would pull out her collection and shame them with the fact that their families didn't get past high school. But she did desparately want the great grandkids. Family holidays would be several verses of "Are there any nice boys in New York?" (where my sister was living at the time) with refrains of "You never should have let the Matt get away" (the college boyfriend of mine she had met)

When my sister finally did get engaged, Granny had fallen and broken her collar bone and fractured her hip. She never was quite able to walk again after that and all the trips to hospital and rehab had made her level of dementia unignorable. She was terrified of three men dressed in clown costumes who came and terrorized her at night with their motor cycles. It was completely in her head, but as real as anything else. She didn't attend the wedding eventhough my father would have carried her on his back. And she finally got her great grandchild 6 months ago. Although she never got to meet him, her room at the nursing home has been decorated with his photos since his birth.

My grandmother died today. She was 98 years old.

This is in her memory.

Stress, anyone?!

So things have been a little crazy in real life and not so much in a good way. As you might have figured out, I work in public health; I'm an epidemiologist. Most of my job is outbreak investigations and bioterrorism preparedness. Lately, things have been just nuts!!

We have this enormous drill coming up. It's actually the DoD drill, an annual event that was in Las Vegas last year and Seattle the year before. The whole idea of a DoD drill is that the events have to be so huge that they overwhelm all civilian capacities: local, state and federal, so that the military has to be called in to assist. What that means for all purposes is that we're being set up to fail on a grand scale. Now, generally speaking, drills are run to see where the systems break. The point of the drills/exercises is to find the flaws so that they can be repaired before an actual event. That doesn't mean everyone isn't running around like chickens with their heads cut off in the mean time.

And meanwhile back in the "real" real world, we've had some outbreaks and other events that required heavy investigation. I've been looking at a really rare outbreak that we just can't find a link for and we're completely dumbfounded. And then the media had to get involved. Don't get me wrong ~ I'm all for warning the public about potential hazards! But, there's no point in creating hysteria or putting undue attention on something that is otherwise under control. Once the news gets involved, it just makes the investigation ten times harder. Plus, we've got more TB and West Nile season is upon us, so it's only going to get worse.

But I suppose to keep the level of difficulty high, I'm back at work today after three days of unbearable migraines. I actually spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday flat on my back with ice on my head and a towel over my eyes to keep the light out. Vertical was not good because I felt like I was going to vomit. I couldn't read because the words wouldn't stay still on the page and the tv was too close to a strobe effect. The worst part is I have no idea what brought it on.

Bramasole

I've been reading Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mays. I've seen the movie repeatedly, but the book is a completely different story. I loved the movie. It's one of those tales about thinking you're in the absolute worst place in your life and winding up exactly where you want and need to be. I guess that's something that I'm really identifying with at this point in my life. When you get to a place, numerically, where you thought you would have certain things, have accomplished certain goals, but realize you're in a completely different place than you thought you'd be. Not a bad place, per se, just a different one. And you wonder if you've taken a path that took you somewhere other than where you thought you wanted to go. I'm turning 34 in a few months and I always imagined that I would be married by now and have children. I'm not and I don't. I have other things, things I'm very proud of, but I wonder what I may have sacrificed on the way. Did I completely miss the married with children exit on the interstate? Was I so focused on the left hand lane of higher education and career? (Hang in here with me, I'm enjoying this metaphor! )

But getting back to the movie, this story, at least in the film, is one of those tales where people end of getting everything they want in the end, they just have to get used to the idea that it doesn't look like what they expected. That's what I like. I think maybe the interstate is really a beltway and that if I just keep driving, I'll hit that same exit again. I just took a longer time getting there.

The book is different though. She doesn't run away to Bramasole, it's a summer home with her second husband. And she has a grown up daughter who visits. But it stills makes you fall in love with Tuscany and gives a romantic feel to the lives of American expatriots in Italy. I am jealous that my tomatoes and peaches will never taste as vivid as the way she describes the fresh fruits and vegetables from the markets in Cortona.