sunflowery's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One More Step On the Way to Finishing My Degree Yesterday was hellascious! (Is that how it's spelled?) If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn it was a full moon day. And not just me, but other phone bank workers I spoke with also agreed as to the hellasciousness of the days and the phone calls we were getting. Bah! Not only THAT, but my best friend the dentist called me to say the lab didn't like the impressions she made of my post and crown and can I come in again to have it done. *Sigh* ANOTHER 40 minute appointment to do what has already been done once. This is the biggest pain in the mouth I have ever had to deal with. I hope it's the last root canal and crown ever and it makes my original statement of having all the teeth pulled and using dentures sound less sarcastic and facetious and better with each passing day. This morning I drove myself out to the school that is my number 1 choice to attend next semester and met with an admissions rep who took my application sans application fee! So now, my college transcripts are in, as is my app and we are just waiting on my high school transcripts. (Which I don't understand them needing 18 years after the fact, especially when they have 2 sets of college transcripts, but whatever.) Once they get those, everything goes to the admissions commitee and I am notified a few days later. So, I am hoping that by the end of next week, I should know if I've been accepted to the program or not. There are 2 other schools I'm looking at and partially interested in, but this first school has everything I want, the way I want it. Because I'm a Princess. Hee. One thing I noticed though. On the transcripts from the college I got my Associate's Degree from, the diploma says I earned an Associate of Arts degree. But the official transcripts say I've earned an Associate of Science degree. Hmmmm. Odd, no? Oh, our house smelled yummy when I got home from work last night. So yummy! The stew was fabulous! It was even better as leftovers for lunch this afternoon. Someone asked about a recipe for tatertot hotdish. There are many different ways to make it, but here's how I made it. 1lb of ground beef, browned. (you can brown it with onion and garlic if you want) Once the beef is browned, mix all the ingredients together EXCEPT the tatertots. Before you put the hotdish in the oven, pour them out on the top of the hotdish. Then put the hotdish in the oven to bake...I baked it at 350 for about 40 minutes. You can add cheese if you want, but we didn't. Yum! Sunday is the 5 month anniversary of my gastric bypass surgery. I know our scale isn't as accurate as the scale at my doctor's office, but I weighed myself this morning and it fell below the 260 mark! That means I am either now 100 lbs lighter or very darn close. Wow! 100 lbs! Can you even fathom that? I can't. I no longer carry around 100 extra pounds! And let me tell you that it feels so good! Someone at work today told me they do a double take every time they see me now. My pants...the ones I bought in September...are loose now. Still have more energy (duh...not lugging 100 extra pounds around) and am suddenly not requiring so much sleep at night. Seatbelts fit around me without me having to pull the entire length out. I fit into restaurant booths and chairs just fine now...with room to spare. My husband can get his arms all the way around me when he hugs me now and we fit together better. I feel better about myself. I don't worry what other people think about how I look anymore. I am more outgoing. More prone to go outside and do stuff. More apt to talk to strangers and strike out of my comfort zone. It's been an interesting 5 months. I've been looking at photos of me...both recent and from months ago. I still think I look fat, but I look more like what I think I look like in my head. 5 months ago, photos of me were a rare thing indeed. And whenever I saw a photo of me, I always said in my head, "that's not me. That's some fat lady." I was shocked at how big I'd gotten. Photos of me now are far more plentiful and I am smiling or laughing in most of them. I still have the fat store hanging on my chin and I wish that would go away as that is ALWAYS the first thing my eyes are drawn to in photos of me. But on the whole, I am happier, healthier and most important, I have lost 100 lbs that I will never see again! Today began with a Kitty Crisis. Maisey was bullying Daisy and not letting her off the bed this morning. Poor thing was so freaked out from being stalked and hunted down that she went over to Sweet Baboo's bed and took a dump right there next to him. More unfortunately, he put his hand right in it. Both cats are banned from the bedroom for now because of it. I will miss Daisy's sweet, warm little body cuddled up next to mine while I sleep, but the only other alternative is to keep Maisey in the bathroom overnight and that�s not fair either. If any of you have any suggestions as to how to co-mingle these two cats, please leave them in my comments. We have had a very low maintence weekend. We slept in yesterday as per our usual Saturday schedule. Then it was a little cleaning for me as Sweet Baboo tried to get his scooter off of his truck by himself. He did it using the crane mechanism my dad installed, but we don�t think we can use it anymore as when SB lowered it down, it partially came off of the truck bed. So, looks like we�re done with that. Bob was so tired after all of that, that he ended up going to lie down for an hour or so around 5:30 but ended up sleeping until 11:30. Then he was up all night only to come to bed and stick his hand in cat crap. So, we missed church again because he has to sleep and I have to clean cat crap up off the bed. We are meeting with friends for a late lunch/early dinner around 4 or so, so by then we need to be up and ready to go. I need to wake SB up around noon or 1 so he can sleep OK tonight. Thankfully, he is seeing his respitory therapist tomorrow and maybe will have some answers to why he hasn't been sleeping or breathing so well lately. This week I only have to work Monday through Wednesday. I took Thursday and Friday off so SB and I would celebrate his birthday. Money is tight though, so I�m not sure what we will do. Although, I do have a gift certificate for a nice dinner at a restaurant nearby and I also have free tickets to see Triple Espresso at the Music Box Theater. So, if we can get all our reservations in order, we will probably do that. I also have a chocolate cake mix in the cupboard. Friday will probably be a day of laying low and hanging out. Next Monday is the home visit and wheel chair assessment for SB. I think we have a pretty good lead on a power chair for him through a ministry called Wings. Otherwise, the therapists are also going to check with the MDA equipment pool to see what�s available. If nothing else, we can make due until the first of the year, then our new insurance will cover part of the costs of a new chair and MDA will help as well. So it looks like we'll be covered on that end. Now all we need is a way to get his chair around. We would still like to get a van and get rid of my car, but we�re not sure how that will work out. We know that God is in control and has been supplying our every need up to this point, so we will just continue to wait on Him. I've been having weird dreams again. I dreamed that I was nannying the 3 girls I used to nanny for our East and that they were the ages they were in 1990/1991. There was a big flood and I was trying to rescue them in a boat. It�s all convoluted in my thinking now, but it was so real then. Last night I dreamed that SB and I were both going to college at the school I went to in South Dakota. I have those dreams sometime...that I go back and enroll to finish my degree. In the dreams I�m always living in the dorms too. Yeah, right, a 35 year old married woman living in the dorms. The funny thing is, if I went back there, I would be a "non-trad". We kind of used to make fun of them when I was originally in college. Not all of them, there were some cool ones. But for the most part they just seemed so eager and brown-nosey. Now I know that they knew where they were going and getting their degree was the way to get there. I, on the other hand, didn�t have a clue where I was going or how to get there and wasted my time and money in collge. If I had that chance now, I would most certainly go back and do well. Ah the ideals of youth. One of our favorite families moved out of our apartment complex yesterday. It�s the family with 4 kids, one of them being the little girl that flirts with SB. So, Anna, Raymondo, Michelle and their older sister whose name I can never remember are gone now. It makes me sad because they were always over here or outside playing. They moved to another building down the street where their mother got a job as a cleaning lady. I am hoping to still see them occationally. My sweet, adorable husband wrote me a 6 page love letter last night. I read it this morning and just have to say, that man certainly can pour out his heart on paper. I never imagined that being in love and being married could be as good as it has been for us. I wished it and dreamed it, but never really believed it for myself. SB is the most amazing man I've ever met. Though he has Muscular Dystrophy, he is the strongest man I've ever known. His strength lies in his heart and spirit and mind. He frets that I�m not being taken care of, but he doesn�t see that by lavishing love on me the way he does I am cared for more than I've ever been. What a marvelous man I've married. Thanks for reading. So, other than the Cat-astrophe yesterday morning, our weekend was good. I didn�t get all the cleaning done, but I�m off Thursday and Friday this week and will probably catch up on cleaning one of those days�probably Friday since Thursday is Sweet Baboo�s birthday. I did manage to get all our recycling and garbage taken out and that feels good. I woke up this morning to a cleaned out sink and dishwasher�Sweet Baboo was busy last night. We had a really nice visit with some good friends of ours yesterday. D and J are some of my favorite people and we haven�t seen them for over a year. There is a big long story behind why, but suffice it to say, we missed them and they us and now we are making an effort to get together more often. J made a yummy dinner and we enjoyed their fellowship and that of their 3 active children. I LOVE their children. So sweet, polite, and very loving. It is nice to sit in their kitchen chatting and having kids rolling, hugging, jumping, and squirming all over you. We got there just before 4 and didn�t end up leaving until almost 10. It was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon/evening. **********WARNING!!!!****************** If your name is Sweet Baboo and you are married to the woman who writes this journal, you must now stop reading! I mean it�go to another websight or play Yahtzee�but stop reading this now as it pertains to a certain event coming up late this week and I�m not yet ready for you to know of my plans for you yet. Thanks! I think I have a good and affordable plan worked our for SB�s birthday. I won a gift certificate at our company�s silent auction last week for a nice restaurant nearby. The GC is only for $25.00 but on Sunday I found a 2 for 1 coupon in the paper and we will utilize that as well, so we should be OK. I made reservations for 2 at 5pm at a table near the entrance so SB doesn�t have to walk too far. I then called the box office to the place where I have a free voucher for 2 tickets and made sure they save 2 seats near the door for us on Thursday evening. So, we will be having dinner and seeing a show all for a fairly affordable price. Yay! *************************************** OK...SB...you can read from here on. This morning when I got to work, there was a car 3 stalls down from mine with smoke pouring from under the hood. Pouring smoke from under the hood is never good. I guess it belonged to a guy who was delivering some stuff to our building. He came out, and started his car and it didn�t blow up. I actually expected this vehicle to blow up. But, thankfully for me and several other people in the parking garage, it didn�t. But I couldn't help thinking I should get down behind other cars as I made my way to the entrance. I kept imagining the car exploding with CGI-like effects and saw myself being blown up and out several yards, with schrapnel flying and cutting everything in its path. Do you think I've been watching too much CSI? Thanks for reading. October 20, 2003: Plop Plop Fizz Fizz it ain't Just thinking...more commercials I HATE: Reminded by Lobsterchick (http://lobsterchick.diaryland.com) about horrible tampon commercials. The one where the girls are passing tampons in class and the teacher thinks it�s candy and asks if she has enough for the whole class. Hate it! Also the one for the pearlessence tampon that the girl in ALL WHITE drops out the open window...duh! First of all, even if I trusted my period protection, I would not wear all white in public. Then, I wouldn�t set my precious tampon on the window ledge of an open window unless it was super close to the toilet and there was a screen in the window. Have we not heard of counters or toilet tanks? Sheesh! Also most hated...that hemi truck commercial. It was cute when it first showed up but now it�s all used up. Finally, there is a commercial on the radio here in the Twin Cities that I HATE with the white hot hatred of a thousand suns. It�s for something called The Release Program. The woman on it talks about how she�s a wife and a mother and A BEAUTY PAGENT WINNER. Her voice takes on this all important inflection when she gets to the beauty pagent winner part...as if being a wife and a mother isn�t impressive enough. Then she talks about how preparing for the various pagents was tough so she asked her husband, who is a doctor, to help and he recommended this program you can get from General Nutrition. Whatever. Get over yourself lady and stop competeing in pagents and start making Halloween costumes for your kids already! That commercial just irks me to no end. So, OK...share all your hated and beloved commercials. October 21, 2003: My Babysitter and Praying for a Miracle I do not want to make this space a workplace/co-worker rant area. Actually, I just don�t want to get into the habit of talking trash about my work or co-workers. However, today I need to vent a bit. I need to preface this by saying I really like where I work and, for the most part, I really like my co-workers. We get along well. We go out for drinks after work. We hear stories about each other�s lives, ups and downs, good and bad. I work in a call center as a member of a support team. There are 7 of us on the phones, 3 data entry people, 1 supply clerk, 1 number cruncher, and an open position within the team that I don�t know much about. (And there is only 1 man on the whole team!) Therefore, in total, there should be 13 of us plus our manager on the team. Of all the people I work with on my team, I really like, admire and get along with all but one of them. I will call her my Babysitter. When I very first started my new job, my boss asked my Babysitter to show me around and bring me to our first staff meeting so I could be acquainted. Ever since then, she has not only insisted on telling me what to do, how to do it and when to do it, she sits several seats behind me and if my computer screen happens to linger on one frame too often or too long, she will come down to my desk and ask me if I understand what I am doing. I have been with this company for almost 3 months now. Not a long time, but long enough to have a hold on what I am to do and how to do it. What I don�t know or understand, I bring to my manager for clarification. My Babysitter seems to think it is her job to make sure I am doing my job and doing it well. One day she emailed me a short note. I opened it, read it and deleted it just as I do all my emails unless they require a response. Hers did not. As soon as I deleted it, she called me to ask me if I had received her email. I responded that I had. She then asked me if I have read it. I replied in the affirmative and kind of gave her a run down of what the email had said. She said she did not think I had read it because she saw me delete it right away. Another time, she emailed me and after my open, read, delete sequence; she came down to my cube and asked me if I ever actually read her emails or if I just delete them. I replied that I do read them but if they don�t require a response, I delete them. Sheesh! So she watches me read my email. Creepy! What is she looking for in response? To be fair, I am not the only one who has problems with her. She seems to make it a part of her day to check up on the welfare and workload of all her co-workers as if that�s her role and task at hand. Her desk is the closest to our manager�s and therefore she can often be found in the manager�s office, giving her the latest on the workload of the team. Today our manager is gone so my Babysitter must think it�s her job and within her rights to come down to my cube and let me know that she�s watching me and keeping track of my workload. Oookaaaayy. Not like I don�t get all my work done. We are a call center, so we are all on the phone all day. In between calls, we process paperwork, a job that is secondary to calls. So if my paperwork load is down, that means call volumes are up. Not just for me, but for everyone. So, how does she have the time to watch over everyone else and what they are doing or not doing in the midst of high call volume? It�s beyond me. A couple of weeks ago a bunch of us went out for drinks after work. My Babysitter was not among the crew who went to imbibe. As we were talking, I shared my frustrations about this woman and I was greeted with affirmations of my own conclusions. I felt like a cool kid at lunchtime. I was with the �in� crowd and it felt good. Honestly, the �in� crowd seems to include everyone on our team except my Babysitter. I think it�s because her social skills are so lacking and she comes across as rude and intense. I think she means well, it�s just so very frustrating to work with her. On to other news. Our apartment is still the home of World Wide Kitty Smackdown 2003. Last night I came home to find Maisey in the bathroom and Daisy hiding. I let Maisey out while I picked up the apartment and sat down to fold laundry. Daisy came out of hiding long enough to sniff the April freshness of our clean warm towels and to try to lay her little feline body on top of them. I petted her and loved on her long enough that she got brave enough to make the trek into the kitchen to eat and use the litter box. 3 minutes later came the loudest caterwauling I had heard to date. I turned to find Maisey on top of Daisy as she ran around the room trying to rid herself of this feline menace. I was finally able to pry Maisey off of Daisy and put her back into the bathroom. Then Daisy and I enjoyed a conflict free evening until Sweet Baboo got home. Once he�s home, we can work tag-team style to keep an eye on the little critters. Nevertheless we invariably end up leaving one of the cats in the bathroom overnight and when we are gone. Poor things. Daisy didn�t mind it at first, but now that she�s thoroughly explored the apartment, she knows what she is missing and doesn�t like to be in there anymore, even if it is for her own protection. I am praying for a miracle to bring those cats together in some way, shape or form. Thanks for reading.
4:24 p.m. - Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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