Week of Wows

Wow, has this been a weird week. We’ve done the high and low and in-between thing.

Last Tuesday: posted rant

Wednesday: Did you know there are some (supposedly) Eco-friendly Bratz dolls? *shudder* According to the packaging, it is recycleable. Of course, you have to tear it apart to recycle the pieces of it. And you get seeds and a Save the Planet badge.

Thursday: Total Grandma Day
It was a perfect day. Grandma was in a wonderful mood. Mom was in a wonderful mood. We bought some patterns and put the last quilt Grandma marked in the parlor to finish. Grandma helped. All three of us were happy and joking and no one was crabby. So cool.

Friday: Grandma breaks her streak
Grandma hasn’t had to really go to the hospital for almost two years now. Friday changed that. I was trying on a pair of shoes when I finally turned on my cell phone, topped it up and listened to my voicemail. Apparently Grandma lost her balance while finishing up using the toilet and fell. She wedged herself between the toilet and tub and managed to get a long cut on her right arm. We had three fire engines, two ambulances and two police cars at our house. The police had to smash the toilet to get her out, she was wedged that tightly. How she fit in there so well, we have absolutely no clue. Oh, supposedly one of the cops was cute, but she didn't get me his number, darnit! When I teased her about it, she said, he was too young. So I brought out the axiom, "Get 'em young, train 'em right." She just laughed.

Saturday and Sunday: typical boring weekend in which I sit home and do nothing of interest.

Monday: Sewing class
I went to my first sewing class. It was so exciting. I picked out the pattern I was thinking of using then went home. It took a total of half an hour. Then Mom convinced me to pick a different pattern. *sigh* I’m going to make a shirt instead of funky froggy sleep pants.
Before I went to the class, my cousins came over. J is pregnant. We saw the little fishy-looking blob on the ultrasound printout. I asked her what she wants the room to be decorated in and she’s talking about jungle animals. I’m not sure what her husband, B, wants. Now, we just have to finish renovating their house before the baby gets here.

Tuesday (today): Narc
I have a cold. I have asthma. The two are not a good combination. I had to take two puffs on my inhaler. Albuterol gives me all the terrible side effects, so I’m not really a happy camper after I use the inhaler. Well, right after I took it one of the gentleman (and I do use the term loosely) in the backroom decided to get pissy with me. He listens to sports radio constantly. That’s all he listens to. He has the radio in the backroom on constantly. Well, this time when I went in there, he wasn’t in it. The radio was still on, though. So I turned it off. He came in and got all hot and bothered about it. He literally told me I didn’t belong in there, even though the back room is not his exclusive property. He also told me I couldn’t touch the radio because it wasn’t mine. Technically, it’s not his either. It belongs to another backroom worker, which I reminded him. He told me not to talk about what I don’t know about. I brought up the fact that the other guy’s name is written on the radio with a nice little tag: Property of. I then proceeded to ignore him and finished my tasks. I then went to the HR person and told her about it.

Usually when he pulls his shit I can just ignore him. We all do. He’s a miserable little bastard who needs to get laid more than I do. He’s almost never cheerful and treats everyone as if they’re inconveniencing him if they so much as breathe in “his” stockroom. Everyone just says, “Oh, well, that’s just J. Ignore him.” Well, today I felt miserable enough that I wasn’t about to ignore the little shit. I’m really sick of him getting away with being mean to everybody, dammit. The funniest thing is that at times he can be really nice. Maybe he's bipolar. Whatever, he's getting in trouble today.

So, what else will happen this week?

Thursday: Grandma goes to TAFH for a few days.
Friday: Mom and I pick out fabric for my project and possibly go to Roba’s.
Saturday: Mom and I go to the RenFaire in Lancaster and pick up Grandma on the way home.

I just hope nothing else goes wrong. Knock on wood.

What a Woman Wants! (rant warning)

Someone kindly tell me what I did in a former life to deserve this one. I am getting more and more discontent with this whole babysitting grandma bullshit. Actually, I passed discontent a couple of years ago. It's so hard to maintain a positive outlook on life when the only thing you can be positive of is that you will wake up around 3am, go to work, possibly get a chance to chill at Borders for 45 minutes to an hour, come home and stay in your room waiting for grandma to actually need you. This is your life every Monday through Friday. Every weekend, you get to be the one making her breakfast and lunch and usually dinner, because your mother, her daughter, works most weekends so she can have a day off during the week in which she takes care of grandma. For this round the clock care, you get emotionally and verbally abused by a woman succumbing to dementia and diabetes. Your relatives treat you as if you should be thankful because, don't you know, you're getting a free place to live. Excuse me?! Grandma pays three bills, all directly related to her individual and specific care. She pays for her health insurance, the caregivers that come in when we have to work and her meds. Lately, Mom and I have paid for a lot of those meds and we're going to be taking over all of the taxes this next year.

I have no life. I have few friends. I have no boyfriend. I have no college degree, hence no future doing what I love to do. I feel like any time and money spent on myself is basically theft. I have arranged to take sewing classes. This will cost $75 and will run from 6:30 to 8:30 pm every Wednesday for the next 5 weeks. Mom has to make sure she can be home those nights. I get a small opportunity for self-improvement, but Mom hasn't had any time out for herself lately, so I feel like I'm being selfish in that I'm taking time that she could be using going out. Even though she doesn't.

I'm whining. Oh, woe is me, poor me, my life is so hard. I have a job. I have food (even if a lot of it is poison to me since grandma won't eat GF for us - only TAFH). I have a place to live. I have some spare money for hobbies. I may not have a lot of them, but the friends I do have are worth their weight in gold-pressed latinum. There are people out there who have none of the above and don't whine. So, that makes me selfish for whining in the first place, I guess. You know what? Feck it. I want to be selfish in this. I'm getting the raw end of the deal here. I spend more time with grandma than anyone else in the family and my only reward is abuse. I think I have a right to vent a little.

Here's a list of what I want:
1. Master's Degree in Library Science so I can make something of myself.
2. A boyfriend. Lots of wild monkey sex would be really nice. He should also have a brain that functions well above his shoulders, if I'm not asking too much.
3. Time to myself. Time to do what I want to do. Time in which I am not tied to a baby monitor waiting for my grandmother to call my name. Time in which I do not have to rush home every day and could go downtown and research if I so choose.
4. A relationship with my family that doesn't send them running the other way if I call them because I might be calling them to ask for help with their mother or grandmother.
5. The opportunity to travel and have adventures. There is so much of this world I have not seen, even with the whole army-brat thing. I want to see Africa and Asia. I want to walk the Giant's Causeway in Ireland and bask in the glory of Stonehenge on Solstice. Oh, and I want to fly to these places myself, in my own plane because before I die I will get my pilot's license. Hell, just the chance to hop a bus on Wednesday morning and take in a play in New York or visit my friends in DC would be exotic travel at this point, yearly vacations notwithstanding. Mom and I earn those vacations with every hole we bite in our tongues and every tear we shed silently when we should be trying to get sleep so we don't imitate the walking dead at work the next day.

In Memorium - Bette Hagman

I just found out that Bette Hagman died on August 17. She can pretty much be considered the pioneer of GF cookbooks. Her cookbooks are the staple that every Celiac has in the house, at least to start with.

Ms. Hagman, thank you so much for your contribution to the good health and happy tastebuds of Celiacs everywhere. To your family, I wish to offer my condolences.

Grammar Nazi time!

Okay, this one is good. It's true, too. While surfing a blog that had reviewed a book I really like, I found this grammar quiz.

You Scored an A

You got 10/10 questions correct. It's pretty obvious that you don't make basic grammatical errors. If anything, you're annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs. As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they're only human. And it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes.

The It's Its There Their They're Quiz

Shark vs. Man

Here's a good one and hooray for the lifeguard. He did the right thing!