Yippee! Yay! Wahoo!

My banishment is almost over, as I just placed the order for my new "notebook". (Why aren't they laptops anymore? What's up with that?)

I turned down a promotion at work I was actually considering accepting. I'm pretty sure it was temporary insanity that made me consider it, cause I just got my period and it had to be hormones. Luckily they screwed me over the other day before I formally accepted and it brought me back to my senses.

So I am cutting my hours and my responsibilities and soon I will be back on my ass on the computer sharing my life with you all. I can't wait!

Uncool

So I finally have something really great to talk about...
and I can't.
For legal reasons.
See? I told you it was something good.
Once it's done I'll spill all the gory/juicy details.
But not now.
The lawyer wouldn't approve.
We have a lawyer!
Anyway.


Today is the third and final of a three day off period from work. It's been nice, but I don't really feel like it's been enough. Especially since due to a number of events I will be an acting manager for a week. A week in which I am scheduled over forty hours. (I won't work all of them, but still. Sucks hardcore.)

I am not sure if it's stress, or how I've been sleeping, or just that Jack weighs over 20 pounds now and isn't so easy to fling about (not that I'd ever fling my child), but I have done something horrible to a muscle in my neck. You know that feeling like your neck needs to pop, so everything stiffens up and you can't move it properly, but you also can't pop it for the life of you? Yeah, that but a little worse in that it's wanting to spread down into my back. I need to have my boobs cut off.

We were talking about boobs size at work the other day and it occurred to me: you can donate tissue, and marrow, and kidneys and still live, and we have liposuction, so there must be some way to donate one's boob fat to a needy A-Cup. I said at one point "I could make three women very happy". Then I realized how that sounded. Aren't I funny?

I may be quiet over the next week what with all the obsessive working, but I'll try not to disappear, even though I've been kinda sucky about it lately.

HI There!

Jesus.
It's not really that I have news, I mean, there's potential news but I didn't want to talk about it until we knew for sure, but that contributed to my not posting for a week so I have to get over it.

Joe had a job interview in St. Louis last week, and we are supposed to hear back this week or so but here it is Thursday and we've heard nada. I worry that I jinxed it since I was so ambivalent about it. The job isn't his dream job, but it's in his field. It's not huge pay, but better than what we are both bringing in right now. I'd get out of Rolla, but the job itself is right down the street from his family, and they have a tendency to come over unannounced at all hours. I mean, his dad gets bored and drives two hours to visit as it is. We'd have to move again, and we just re-arranged the house around the fact that Jack now walks regularly. (After he hit thirteen steps in a row I stopped counting every time).
I don't know anyone in St. Louis. Well, I know people from the interweb, and a few people from UMR, but not anyone I talk to on a regular basis. Then again I don't hang out with many real people here in Rolla. I was going to go to MoPS on Tuesday but chickened out at the last minute. I was afraid they'd all be "grown-ups" and mature and not foul mouthed freaks. I'd like me some foul mouthed freaks for mom friends, but that's why I have you all.
Anyway, we are still up in the air on it, and I'll let you know as soon as I do. Being a pessimistic person by nature I keep thinking if we haven't heard yet we wont. It's no reflection of Joe's abilities, he's brilliant. It's just that I'm negative like that.

I have been busy, and it's all my own damn fault and rather ironic at that. Remember the whole thing where I laid down the law and said I wouldn't work with the bitch, and they told me they wouldn't cut my hours and then they did cut my hours and I was angry and hurt? Remember how I also said I prefer fewer hours anyway, so it was prolly for the best? Well, while still upset I went by one of the other locations and asked for a day here and there.
I've been working about 30 hours a week since then. I know. Like I said, my own damn fault and ironic as hell. I like everyone there though, and work has become somewhat fun again, but I'm always busy now and it's affecting my internet usage and that's just wrong.

There is a plus though: part of the reason my usage has been down is that with the broken laptop I have to use the desktop and can't sit on my ass on the couch and watch TV and surf all at the same time. BUT!
I'M GETTING A NEW LAPTOP!

I haven't decided on a particular brand or model yet, suggestions welcome since I'm about to start my research. It gives me something to look forward to. Plus, if we do move to StL I wouldn't be working so I could go back to being a lady of leisure. I mean, you all know how leisurely being a stay at home mom is right?

I'm really sorry I neglected everyone for so long. Please say you still love me?

Watch This Space

All is well, and I haven't disappeared or lost the internet, and I have many tales to tell.
Real post later today, I swear.

March Books

March 1-15

Lucky- Alice Sebold*
The Lovely Bones- Alice Sebold*
The Black House- Stephen King and Peter Straub
Twelve-Nick McDonell*
The Other Side Of The Story- Marian Keyes
Sushi For Beginners- Marian Keyes
Gal: A True Life- Ruthie Bolton
A Man Without A Country- Kurt Vonnegut
Breakfast of Champions- Kurt Vonnegut*

March 16-31
A Monk Swimming- Malachy McCourt
I Am A Fugitive From A Georgia Chain Gang- Robert E. Burns
You Have to Kiss a Lot of Frogs-Laurie Graff
Memoirs of a Geisha- Arthur Golden*
Female Intelligence-Jane Heller
Gump & Co.- Winston Groom
The Problem With Murmur Lee- Connie May Fowler
The Summons- John Grisham
Cell- Stepeh King
There may be others I've forgotten in the interim.

* Re-read

Better living through Chemistry.

In honor of Huey Lewis' "I Want A New Drug" and the role it's been playing in my mind lately, I got a new drug.
This was at my own request, and if you had known me for any amount of time you'd be like "What the Fuck JRM! You've vowed not to do this since the late eighties!"
See, the drug I got is Strattera. An ADD/ADHD drug.

In the fourth grade the school I was attending insisted to my parents that they place me on Ritalin. It was 1987/1988 and ADD and Ritalin were the hot new things. Hell, ADHD hadn't even been coined yet but you can bet your ass that once they were my diagnonsense was amended.

At any rate, on the Ritalin I went, and suicidally depressed I became. Yep. In the fourth fucking grade I was suicidal. Now, my mental issues are genetic in my family, and it's likely I would have had them no matter what, but I believe to this day that they were triggered early by the Ritalin. It was only a year later that I began to take laxatives and exhibit the signs of my eating disorder.

Ever since then I have been adamant (successfully so) to every doctor I've had that I will NOT take ADD drugs. I developed tricks, and I put up with the lack of focus and the loss of attention to the task at hand.

Then I had a baby.

May I just say that all my coping mechanisms have gone straight out the window? Babies make even a non-afflicted person feel like they have ADD. For me, well, I have no clue what I'm doing any more. The other day at work I literally walked around for ten minutes because each time I changed location I couldn't remember why I'd done so.
Also, like I said, I wanted speed. So I thought hey, I've got therapy coming up, I'll get me some Adderal. After all, Tom Cruise hates it, there must be something going for it.

Well, it's a schedule two drug, one that drug companies won't provide for free to the poor and that the hospital won't allow the clinic it's ridiculously low $3 co-pay on. So I got Non Stimulant Strattera. And hey, if it's going to help me focus I wouldn't need the speed anyway. My Doc said it can take up to a month to hit full effectiveness since it's not like Ritalin and Adderal, so you can chart the progress with me. Won't that be fun!

I want a new brace*

Did I ever tell you about my knees? I have this funny patellar something or other that basically means that my kneecaps like to spontaneously dislocate. Yeah, it's just as much fun as it sounds like.
I have this really fancy orthopedic brace made of neoprene that I can wear when it happens to get the muscles strengthened back up, and if I can catch it in time I wear it before I dislocate at all. I hate this brace. I really, really do. I get heat rash just about any time that I wear it since neoprene isn't the most breathable material, and I don't like the feel of it. I don't even hardly ever wear socks and shoes, and they are much less restrictive. So I hardly ever wear the thing, and I'm very bad about keeping it on when I do wear it.
All this is to say my left knee is hurting like a sonofabitch and I can't find my brace. Which would be fine, except by the twinges I am getting this one feels like a doozy.

Funny story- My knee once popped out while I was doing the Time Warp. My friends at school proceeded to tell everyone it happened while I was performing a ritualistic sex-act. Gotta love the Rocky Horror fans.

*Between reading American Psycho and the discussion about speed/caffeine I've had Huey Lewis stuck in my head. Whatever happened to him anyway? I saw him in Duets (Which didn't suck) but nothing since then. I hope he invested well over the years.

blargh ^2

You know, it's funny. I was in such a bad mood, and so not looking forward to work, etc. etc. and I just knew it would be a bad day. Then it wasn't. Partly due, I'm sure, to the two Xanax I took before going in. (My life really is a lot better if I've taken my meds. Keeping that lesson in mind I took them this morning. Yay me!) It was mostly uneventful. Well, in regards to me and the bitch. There is this one manager whose been on her side in the sense of "Maybe she'll get better, play nice, blah blah blah". So at the end of the bitch's shift she was told she could go home and she insisted -practically begged- to stay and do some more work off the clock to help out. Ok, maybe she really is getting better.
Then our GM showed up as she was finally leaving. I saw her whisper something to the GM and vaguely wondered what she was saying. Then the GM comes up and says to the manager who has been nothing but nice to and about the bitch and says "Why did you make D work half an hour off the clock?". I stood up for the manager at this point, but she was really hurt and angry. Part of me was reminded about the story of the woman who saved the rattlesnake from the snow. "You knew what I was when you picked me up".

Fast forward to last night and the new schedule being put up. Now, I knew it would be hard to work it so that I didn't work with her, and I told my other manager I understood if I had to lose hours. She reassured me I wouldn't. Also bear in mind that for the last two weeks I've had half of my shifts where I didn't work with her anyway. So at most my hours would only be cut in half, right? But none of that matters because I was assured they wouldn't be cut at all.
So why then do I only have one shift all of this coming work week? Oh, I got lied to, that's why.
Now, to be honest, I like only working one or two shifts a week. I'd picked up a lot more hours lately and it was starting to take it's toll. So one shift per week is not that bad. Except when I honestly believed what I'd been told. I'm far less upset about the hours than about the fact that I was lied to. There was no need to lie! I said from the beginning I would understand having to have less hours. I was still so mad about it this morning I remembered to take my meds. I am completely aware of how much good is coming from this. But I'm a woman. I'm totally allowed to have conflicting opinions and emotions.

SO ANYWAY.
The real reason I started a new post was to ask if any of you out there in internet land keep rodents as pets, and would like some rodents as pets supplies that I have left over from when the Brunos were alive. (I had two twin mice who I couldn't tell apart so I named them both Bruno in a reference to a guilty pleasure book. You get cool points if you know what book I mean.)
I've got an aquarium, one of those balls where they can run around the house, some of the expensive bedding, and an almost full canister of food. Any takers? I'm such a packrat. I just can't throw out things that have use and or value, even if they have no use or value for me.

In the spirit of cleaning up I've already put together a trashbag full of clothes, and a box of books I will be taking to the thrift stores. If you've ever seen pics on my Flickr account you've seen all the crap in the background of all of them. I need serious downsizing. So that's sort of my thing for Lent. Downsize me and my belongings. And I'm not technically Catholic! I'm like Friday Playdate, I like the concept.
Side note- When you link to someone whose real name you know, but it isn't used on their website do you feel obligated to use their alias? I do, but I think it's because of how secretive I am about my real name. It can be found here, if you are looking closely, but it's an odd name so I don't mention it openly. I'd be too easy to track. (I always wished I could be like Dooce, with her "My Name is Heather B. Armstrong and you can suck it" but hardly any of us have her balls. Then again hardly any of us have her notoriety or career that her blog has wrought. That's both good and bad I think.)
I also wont use the names of people in my life outside Jack, Joe, and Caleb. It's mostly due to the fact that I feel I would need permission and very few people know about this blog. If I asked permission I'd have to tell them where it was and I like that people I know can't read this site, thankyouverymuch.

So yeah, blargh. Squared.