Travel and things

Freshly back from a work trip to London, I hopped on another plane less that 24-hours later and headed to Minnesota.  That’s where I am now–in some motel room off of 494, in between the airport and West St. Paul.

My grandma is ill. Or shall I say, more ill.  She’s been battling multiple myeloma for some years now, but it’s taken a turn for the worse as of late.  We had been afraid (from afar) that she was leaning towards some early stages of dementia. Seeing her now, in person, it’s obvious that she is just as quick-witted as ever but the overwhelming pain and the ensuing meds to battle it are what’s stopping her thought processes short and making her come across as confused. It’s a bittersweet revelation–good to know that she is lucid, sad to know that there is that much pain that shuts her down like that. She’s my last living grandparent.  She’s talking about her last days, trying to give things away so the “right” people get them, yet holding out hope to finally see a great grandbaby out of this side of the family.

Now that we know how’s she’s doing, that she is still “with it”, I think we will spend the next couple of days trying to spoil her a bit…bringing her favorite treats (bismarcks), stocking up on silly decor for her hospice room and visiting as much as we can between the naps and the pain.

BO-RRRRIINNGG

God, when did I get so freakishly boring?  I mean, I at least used to entertain myself.  Ugh.  I wonder if I’ll snap back once I have a fully functioning cooking element in my home.

In related news (ie, to demonstrate my staleness), these are the most delicious things on the planet right now.  I think  I just ate half a box for dinner.

Total deliciousness

Love and need

My girlfriends are a necessity in my life. I love them will the whole of my heart and could never imagine life without them. No, this isn’t single-girl drivel on Valentine’s Day. The ties I have to these girls are some of the most important relationships I have or will ever have in my life. I was just reminded of it yesterday when two of my lovelies cooked and prepared dinner, plied me with wine and just made me feel normal again. I think I would die without that.

Since I have another date with my necessities again tonight, I thought I’d prepare the perfect v-day outfit for hanging with the girls.

V-day with the Girls – by babybanana on Polyvore.com

Comfort

Here is what comfort looks like to me.  If I could bake right now I would be doing that, instead I think I will just try to recreate this outfit before heading off to the hospital.

Saturday – by babybanana on Polyvore.com

In case you were wondering…

When sitting with a loved one in the ICU, while a large team of medical doctors have not been able to produce a diagnosis for the reasons the loved one needs to be in the ICU, the last thing you want to see pop up on the in-room television is House.   At first, you might be able to joke about it–being a humorous family and all–but when it starts hitting too close to home what with all the mentions of “lupus” and “auto-immune diseases” you’ll find yourself itching to turn it off.

Ending the year a pathetic mess

After my last post where I lamented over the depths of my indolence, it seems I felt the need to sink into even deeper levels of worthlessness. Cut to the day of December 31.

Me @ work–approximately 10:30am: At this point I had taken great care to answer all three of the emails I had received that day. I also took great satisfaction with the one that announced that the office would be closing at 1pm.  Making sure the last few hours of work passed by smoothly,  I got up to make myself another cup of coffee.  Thoughts of late afternoon naps danced in my head. I even thought I might go get that long overdue manicure in the hours of free time I had before NYE party plans commenced. Life is good.

Me @ work — approximately 12:50pm: A light lunch and some office gossip had pushed us to closing time.  Woo, my last 4-day weekend was almost here and with an extra half-day thrown in! Gathering up the iPod and leftovers from the office fridge, a random thought pops into my head: it’s the last day of the year. It’s the last day to claim 2008 charitable donations for one’s ‘08 taxes.  Shit. My considerable pile of Goodwill items is still taking up a quarter of my bedroom. Shit! Shittyshiitshit.  I need to get all that crap to Goodwill before they close today!

Me @ home — approximately 3:00pm: I frantically step into the house and head straight to the bedroom, all the while praying Goodwill stays open past four.  Not that Goodwill is far, no no, there is a major donation center and storefront less than a mile from my house. Yes, I am that pathetic (hence the title of this post).  I grab a pad of paper and a pen and start taking inventory of everything heading out of the door for donation. Some  37 t-shirts, 7 small home goods,  10 pieces of outerwear later I have a list and everything bagged.  Four trips back and forth to the car and I am ready to go.   “Please still be open.” I pray.

Me in the car — approximately 4:30pm: I drive the three-quarters of a mile to the donation center and can spot activity in the parking lot from two stop lights away.  Sigh of relief.  I wait in the line of cars with all of the other procrastinators (I am not the only one! I am, however, the only one driving a shitty car!).  Goodwill is on it, they are prepared for this level of ridiculousness on this day, Dec. 31.  They extract my bags from my car and send me to the next station where I list the items I’ve donated and get a receipt.

Me in the car — approximately 5:10pm: I am now heading back home. I would have rather run out to go grab some bubbly for the party later, but in my haste to leave the house I forgot my wallet.

Me @ home — approximately 5:15pm: Heavy errands done, I decide I will work out, shower and then take a nap.  My afternoon is not totally gone.  There are still two+ hours before Jen gets here to whisk me away to DC.  I relax. I sweat. I shower. I freak the fuck out when I think, “did I spend all of my flexible savings account money this year?”. Shit.

Me on the laptop — approximately 6:10pm: Fuck! How much do I have left??  After some serious digging — pay stubs, old cashed checks, credit union accounts — I determine there should be about $202 remaining in my USE OR LOSE FSA account. USE OR LOSE! Money down the drain people!  I immediately go to  www.drugstore.com.

Me on www.drugstore.com — approximately 6:30pm: Band-aids. Neosporin. Motrin. Allergy meds. Oooh, a new heating pad.  Blistex. What’s my total? $85.00. Not enough! Ugh!  More allergy meds. More Motrin. How ’bout some cortisone creme? What else can I buy? Augh! I need to spend almost another $100.  Where can I unload big money? Ah, Sephora.  I immediately head to  www.sephora.com and load up on ridiculously expensive suncreen. My face will thank me?  I hope so.

Me texting Jen — approximately 7:10pm: “Running late, had to spend some $$. Getting ready now. Think maybe 8pm.”

Me finally ready to go out and party — approximately 8:25pm: Nap? no. Manicure? no. Relaxing afternoon? no. Could it all have been avoided? yes.

At least I can sweep this under the rug of 2008 and swear it off for ‘09, ya?

Lethargy–live it, love it

I have found that it is hard to write when one has been busy fostering a serious streak of indolence. I mean, doing absolutely nothing for days on end makes for a whole lot of nothing to write about.

It was cute and chalked up as a de-stressing mechanism last month when I holed myself up in Casa de Marci for four days while indulging my sloth.  Now, well it’s just gross.  This is what a ridiculously stressful summer and fall season, two+ weeks worth of use or lose vacation time, and no sense of gumption whatsoever will do to a person.  Give a girl three consecutive 5-day weekends, and you get a girl who eats crackers and grapefruit for lunch, dinner rolls and cream cheese for breakfast and I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-moldy bread with peanut butter and fake bacon for dinner.  Not to mention the unwashed hair, the piles of dirty laundry, the pajama pants, and the drool covered pillows caused by excessive napping.

Unless I make concerted plans to MEET someone OUTSIDE of my house, no sort of productivity will occur.  And by productivity I mean eating well-rounded meals at their appropriate times of the day, or maybe just getting showered and donning clothes that are not flannel–I mean I am not trying to solve quadratic equations here.  So with the holidays upon us and family time over, here I sit on the blue sofa with my new chocolate brown afghan, watching bad television, playing games on the internet and ordering dinner from places I would never eat if I were in a my usual  productive (neurotic?) way.  I did play a math game a few hours ago, does that count for anything?

At least there is football tomorrow, where I can sit on the couch and be just like the rest of America.

Please Minnesota just clinch something for once this year.

There must be something in the rubber

My car is old, a 1995 Nissan, that I bought in a nice, oxidized blackish color.  Actually I didn’t buy it that way, it’s sort of developed overtime, it’s tre original. I talk shit about my car all the time, but truth is I bought it way back when so that I would have a car that would last me a good ten years (check) and not be the bane of my existence (check).  I paid it off more than five years ago and since then have been hell bent on not sinking money into repairs that would off-set the cost savings of not having car payment.  So my engine leaks an almost obscene amount of oil, I battle that by getting more-than-regular oil changes and keeping a fresh quart in the trunk at all times.  So my air conditioner doesn’t work, I just try not to go anywhere in the dead of summer w/o  a bucket of ice or a fierce breeze.  Basically unless the car won’t run or unless the safety inspectors won’t release it without certain “fixes”, I leave everything as is.

This mantra also applies to my tires, in that they are the same tires I drove off the lot with ten+ years ago.  In addition to the inherent safety issues with this scenario, they have also taken to developing slow leaks which I like to combat with regular visits to Free Air stations and to my local repair shop for tire patches.  After my third patch in as many months, on the same tire (don’t judge), I began to feel nervous about driving the car any distance greater than four miles.  The last patch came about after returning home from this month’s business trip to find the rear, driver’s side tire flat–again.  Usually I can get to the deflating tire before it goes flat, but being out of town I missed my window.  So Jen drove me over to Cherrydale Hardware on the Sunday of my return to buy a can of Fix-A-Flat.  Applying Reddi Whip for tire holes was easy as pie, and it inflated well enough for me to tool around town running errands.  However laziness soon took over and a week had gone by and I was still tooling around on fixed flat tire.  Then on my way to go visit the illustrious Jen, I get a text from her that SHE had a flat on her way home.  She who took me to the hardware store.  Eesh!  So I am now I am just tempting fate.  I push it out of my head as I get up in the morning to drive to Springfield to meet these two chicks for coffee.  However concern morphs to apprehension when I hear than Jen has gotten another flat…Jen, not me with the crappy tires. Not me who has to get in the car and drive to Fredericksburg in a matter of minutes.

The whole way down I-95 I had visions of spiraling out of control on a blown out tire, so after completing my errand and happening upon a little tire shop I did the responsible thing and had them change my tires on the spot.  All four of them, not just the one that had gone flat three times.  I felt all good about being responsible as I headed back north.  I swear I even felt the nicer ride, chugging along on the un-bald rubber.  The ride felt nicer that is until I was fighting with my steering wheel to keep the car moving in a straight line.  The more I fought, the more I cursed the tiny tire shop for messing with my alignment until it got so bad I decided to get off at the next exit.  Some horrendous sounds and a visual proof finally confirmed that my tire was flat.  Like way flat, like soooo not a slow leak flat.  Bastards.

Forty-five minutes of tearing up my trunk turned up a spare tire, a tire iron, and a jack’s hand crank…and no jack.  So what do I do?  Taking stock of my surroundings I call the closest and strongest person I know, Harmony.  She brings a jack but within two minutes she also finds my jack that was in my trunk in some secret squirrel trunk compartment.  Brilliant.  We get the jack in place and set about loosening some lug nuts.  Some lug nuts that were just professionally ratcheted on a mere hour ago.  Yeah. You can imagine how that went.  We did actually get one loose before someone came by to help.  Some hulk-man that had more strength in his pinky finger than two, non-waifish chicks could muster even while STANDING  on a tire iron and jumping down on it with full body weight.

So some hours later I was home with four, inflated tires and not at all worried about my drive to Stafford the following day.  Stafford came and went without incident. But what did I wake up to this morning?  A lovely, new, slow, effing leak.   Beautiful.

My dirty tire changing hand.

Delusions of Restitution

As I am sitting here on my blue sofa, wrapped up in my blue blanket (the warmest one I have), in my blue polka dot pajamas, sipping a french pressed gingerbread coffee, listening to the cold wind howl outside, I am pondering my laziness.  I know it sounds all glorious and Martha Stewart, actually it doesn’t sound Martha Stewart at all considering that I am not decoupaging anything, which I guess is my point. It’s Tuesday. It’s Tuesday at 12:48PM and I’ve been here, in basically this same state, for the past three days — with just small, infrequent gaps to move to the bedroom and the kitchen.

I’ve been home for four days, home for four days  without even a drop of work needing my immediate attention and outside of spending some time with the girls to celebrate CeCe’s birthday I have done absolutely nothing.  True, I did have some good old fashioned relaxation in mind when I took Monday and Tuesday off…it’s been a bear of a season, one that’s kept me in the office past 10pm at nights, on travel over the weekends, and under an extreme amount of stress.  So relaxation is exactly what I had in mind.  However, I also had in mind the kind of things you do to keep your life in order, you know, when you have a normal life.  That deep cleaning you give your abode every once in a while.  Renewal of one’s long-expired driver’s license.  Paring down of the closet and heading to the nearest Good Will. Getting a nice run in or even heading to yoga for a change. Grocery shopping and preparing real meals, not just snacks.  Replacement of a newly flat tire.  Doing the laundry.

With just 12 hours left of my destress-a-thon, I have not done any of the above except for the part about laying around on the sofa drinking coffee. So I wonder, is recouping just another word for laziness?

A comma = Obama

You may or may not remember my lovely, articulate office receptionist. If not, you can read about her here. She is so brilliant that a certain somebody was inspired to start a spoof blog from my non-receptionist’s point of view.

Anyway, sometime this morning she announces a call to me from a company called Software Acomma* a frequent  exhibitor of ours.  The conversation unfolds as such:

Non-receptionist: Marci! Jan Crofton from Obama for you!

Me: Who?

No-receptionist: [Getting excited] It’s from Obama!

Me: Ok? (which is her cue to put the call through)

Me: Hello, this is Marci

“Jan Crofton”: Hi, this is Kristin from Software Acomma. I had some questions about your upcoming trade show.

Yeah.

But instead of fuming like usual, I was hysterically pleased with this exchange. Perhaps it was the glee in her voice when she thought Obama’s camp was calling me.

*I changed the name of the company slightly to protect them from any harm from having been associated with Barrack Obama, me, my non-receptionist or Baby Bananas.