Things left behind

It doesn't happen often, but every now and then I think of something I left behind when I left the Cities.

Anyhoo, I saw an ad tonight for some beef jerky and remember very fondly my adventures making beef jerky with my Ronco Food Dehydrator. But the food dehydrator is a rather large item and I had other things (clothes) to fill the limited space I had when I moved. Yeah, I suppose I could get another dehydrator but it's one of those things that spending the money to get a second one, when it isn't something I use all the time and when I know that there is a perfectly good one gathering dust that I spent the money to buy once upon a time is one of those things that makes me feel so guilty that I just can't justify spending the money a second time.

Other things I miss... my massaging foot bath (which is something I wouldn't have bought for myself and was one of the few truly thoughtful gifts purchased for me by my ex... ok, so I gave him the money to buy me the gift but didn't tell him what he should get...) Again, an item I didn't use OFTEN, but I liked having it.

My plush Cthulu... again...no practical value, but I dug it. Especially once I saw the "Cutethulu" video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP-33XI4frs

I'm sure there are more... but they are just "things" and you can't be too attached to "things". As Maude says "Well, if some people get upset because they feel they have a hold on some things, I'm merely acting as a gentle reminder: here today, gone tomorrow, so don't get attached to things."

I remember back in my early 20's it seemed we had a reason to have a party AT LEAST twice a month. There was a holiday or someone's birthday or someone had gotten a new job...I guess you are supposed to outgrow wanting to celebrate all of those little milestones. I wonder why that never happened for me...

Nostalgia

I've been pondering how times change. My mom had a friend she met in grade school. They were friends through their whole lives up until the time the friend passed away a few years ago. Oh sure, they moved away but they always kept in touch and visited and shared major life events. I wonder how many people anymore still have friends from college, let alone high school or childhood. How many people have friendships that survive even a decade anymore? And then I think of all of the people who have found each other after 20 or more years due to being able to track people down via the internet... and with social networking sites, this task becomes even easier sometimes.

I found a friend from high school (who is really the only person from that high school I care to speak to) and we keep in touch. I've run into a few other people (the ex-husband popping up after 15 years was maybe not so welcome). Some of the people I've reconnected with it seems like no time at all has passed. We picked up where we left off, we had similar life experiences, we resumed a friendship. Others, we sortve discovered all of the reasons that we drifted apart in the first place and really have no common ground. A few others, I find myself questioning whether they ever cared about me as I did them. I suppose that the answer could very honestly be "no". And I have one person I really tried to reconnect with, really WANTED to reconnect with and her husband intercepted the communication and will not allow me to contact her (I have no freakin' idea what's up there, but it bothers me, since I introduced them)

Nostalgia can be fun. It can also be frustrating. There are a couple of people I'll continue looking for because I am curious about what's gone on since "once upon a time". As time goes on, the opportunities will wane. I've all but given up on finding my biological parents since I don't have money to sink into searching but I do periodically still search the reunion boards out of curiousity. But I spend more time looking forward than back and close doors when I know that it's time. That's sometimes been a very difficult life lesson to learn... But there are alot of people out there to meet and some will come into my life and stay and others will move on all too swiftly and I can't be looking back and miss the opportunities that lie ahead

Lavender Parchment Paper

I used to print my resume on lavender parchment paper. It still copied well onto normal white paper and I really liked the way it looked. But every once in a while I'd run into someone who would say "you're never going to get a job if you use that paper" and I'd reply "if they can't handle lavender parchment paper, I know I can't work for them".

I've always been "different". It's not that I TRY to be, I just AM. And it isn't something that I can pinpoint and say "THIS is how I am different"... it's just one of those things. I am different and other people sense it and it creates awkwardness. I have TRIED to be a good little sheep, but it never quite ends up working out for me.

My trip to California did not net me a job, but it WILL make a fabulous chapter in the book I am writing. I worked so hard to try and figure out what they wanted me to be like(or what I needed to be for them to like me) that I completely lost being ME. So, who is this "Me" that didn't get to showcase herself? I'm the person who prefers a soda to a glass of expensive wine. I am the gal who will stay late to get the job done, who will come in on her day off (that also happens to be her birthday) because she wants to learn how to use the new Powerpoint equipment (and will not put the hours she spent learning it on her timecard). I am the gal who had a boss once tell her that he didn't want her as his admin, he had wanted to bring his admin from his previous position only to have that turn into one of the best working relationships EVER and generate a recommendation letter that still makes people say "Wow!" I am the gal that people love in spite of (or maybe even because of ) her quirkiness who will be a loyal friend who will love you with unbridled passion (and I bring my own scotchguard, cuz I know that unbridled passion can get messy)! I am the gal who prints her resume on lavender parchment paper and, at the age of 40-something still laughs at farts. And when I stop being THAT person... THEN I will truly be disappointed at who I have become.

I'm good enough...

A couple of years ago I worked with someone who went out of her way to be unpleasant to me. No, it wasn't my imagination... I had co-workers remark on how she was going out of her way to be unpleasant to me. I'm not quite sure what her issue was... I was always pleasant to her and always managed to avert the disasters caused by the fact that she always left EVERYTHING until the last possible second and then decided to invite everyone to the drama (again, this was a much discussed topic amongst the office staff, so this isn't just MY perception of the situation). On the day I left that job, she was walking into the office as I was leaving. She smirked at me and said "Yeah, well, ummm, have a nice life" and I looked her dead in the eye and said "I am so glad I don't have to get up every morning and be you" and walked out of the office. I found out later that she asked the one co-worker I had been close to "what did she mean by that" and my co-worker said "I don't know, TAP, what does that mean to you?" If you find yourself wondering what I meant by it, I'll tell you what I was thinking at the time... I may have been someone who just lost their job and didn't know how they were going to face their family and didn't know how I was going to keep a roof over my head or food on the table and I was afraid and dissapointed and feeling pretty low, but at least I didn't have to live with being someone who seems to radiate hatred to people who have done nothing to deserve it. I am not someone who is so self-centered that I get annoyed when everyone doesn't kiss my ass and feel blessed to be in my presence. I think about how what I say and do is going to effect other people. I am a genuinely kind and loving person who will help people out even when there is nothing in it for me except the joy of knowing I did something nice for someone else. I suppose you could tell me that it was an awful, unkind, maybe even hateful thing to say to her. And there is some truth to that, but it took six months of being treated VERY badly by this person for me to utter that one simple sentence. And what I really wanted to do was make her think about who she was and how she behaved.

Honestly, though, I look for the good in everyone. For better or for worse (and way too often, I get burned by this) I really want to believe that people are inherently good. There are very few people I can say I hate (the "dislike" list is a bit longer!) There are people I know only from the Internet who I'd put my life on the line for and people I've met face-to-face who I wouldn't piss on if they were on fire. And it may be wrong, but there are a few people who I'd like to have the opportunity to look in the eye and say "I am so glad I don't have to get up every morning and be you". Fortunately, though, the majority of the people I encounter are delightful or at least pleasant. There are several people who I admire and who it would be an honor to wake up in the morning and be them... but then, we all have our issues and things we deal with so it's probably best that we do our best to be pleased to wake up in the morning and be ourselves. The past couple of weeks has shown me that even after a good, hard look at myself, I'm not disappointed to get up in the morning and be me.

The things you can learn on the Internet...

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Here comes the Bun...

There are tasks the come along with critters other than poopsmithing. Today was a day we needed to tackle some of those tasks.

First, we put Mr. Pitr the Tortoise in for a nice, long soak as we changed the substrate in his tortitat. It is getting to be the time of year that he hibernates, so we wanted to get this done now so he can dig in and snooze.

Next... the chore we dread... trimming the bunzles nails. He hates being touched, held or (especially) trimmed. HATES. With a burning passion. So, we popped him into a towel (to resemble a bunny burrito) and trimmed his nails. We hit on the fact that he seems to struggle a little less if you cover his eyes. So, yay for that. But, nonetheless, this is what we had to deal with:

And he was plenty indignant once we were done (hunkering down in the corner of his cage and glowering at the wall).

But before we captured him and trimmed his claws, we let him out to run around a little. We hadn't done this since acquiring Weedy, our second cat and while she was curious about Greg, she wasn't really interested in getting to know Greg. Greg, however, was very interested in perhaps purveying some Bunny Luvvin' to Weedy.

Distractions

I have this horrible affliction whereby I cannot concentrate if things around me are in chaos. This means that before I can do anything productive here at home, there must be cleaning. Because what happens is that I'll start to work on something and then notice that the carpet really, really needs vacuuming and I just KNOW there are crumbs on the counter over there that are going to start attracting ants and then the ants come marching over to my desk and bite me and that hurts like a mutherfucker so I tend to like to keep things anti-ant around the house. We do not get the itty bitty sugar ants, either. We get the big black commando "we will take your shit down and strip you to the bones if you don't watch it" ants.

Also, when you house two critters who need hay for their intestinal well-being, there tends to be a need to be doing some hay policing so that the felines in the house don't mistake it for cat grass and get their nom on only to produce some of the most fantastic hair/food/hay balls that have been witnessed by man. This has become a problem to the point that the POSSLQ may walk around the house in skivvys but he's sure as HELL gonna have on footwear. because aforementioned conglomorate balls inadvertantly squished between one's toes on the way to the privvy in the morning leads to cussing of EPIC proportions.

Beauty Duty - Adventures in Femaleness

I am sadly lacking in personal style. Especially when it comes to all things "girly"...

My mom never really wore makeup...maybe some lipstick, some powder to keep her nose from being "shiny"... perhaps a very minimal foundation. But not the "full face" makeup that so many moms did. And in Jr. High and High School when all of the other girls were in front of the mirror for an hour before school and between every class, I wasn't allowed to OWN any makeup, let alone WEAR it. I had to BEG to get some Bonne Bell Lipsmackers (which was more a fancy chapstick than anything else). So, all of that beauty stuff pretty much passed me by. I never learned how to do it. (Didn't help that my skin was HORRIBLE from about 13-16).

So, it just never really seemed all that important to me. When I started working, I would hear women talk about it taking a couple of hours to get ready for work and I couldn't fathom why. Me, I hopped in the shower, slapped on some deodorant, whipped my hair into a pony tail and got dressed. 30 minutes if I hadn't picked my clothes out the night before (and I could do it in 10 if I had and wanted to sleep in...) I'd had a curling iron or two in my life but that usually lasted about 4 minutes because I'd manage to burn myself (oh how I envy women who learned how to NOT burn their ears using curling irons) and, for most of the time I was growing up, my Mom decided that short hair was MANDATORY for me (I got called "young man" alot until about 6th grade when the boobie fairy visited in a fairly significant way). So, when I got sent off to boarding school, my first real mission was "grow out hair".

For most of the past decade and a half, styling my hair has entailed whipping it into a pony tail... maybe a bun... I still very seldom wear makeup and when I do I just feel like it is false advertising. I have to fight from telling potential employers at job interviews "this is the only time you'll ever see me wearing makeup" because I feel like I am giving them the impression that I am somehow better looking than I really am. I have a Glamour Shots picture of myself and I've had people ask me "why don't you look like THAT every day??" Because, folks, THAT took a hair and makeup artist about 45 minutes. I have neither the skill or experience to replicate it. (The only part I've ever managed to replicate successfully was the lips. Opalescent gloss over solid lip color is sexay). Oh... I've TRIED to replicate it. And then I end up chucking the whole kitten caboodle (hot rollers, makeup kit, etc) into a dark corner of a closet somewhere and hope there is a comforting pint of Ben & Jerry's in the freezer.

I got some new hot rollers . Tried them out today. I think I need more practice. The result wasn't bad but it wasn't "OoohLALA!", either. Don't know that I would leave the house looking like this... Am interested to see if the curly bits last more than an hour or two.

Random Rambling

I've had my full day's supply of vitamin c (probably darn close to ODing on the stuff since I had 2 big glasses of orange juice)... Ahh, the joys of being a grown up who buys your own damn OJ... if you want to drink it all straight from the carton in one sitting, more power to ya! Not like when I was growing up and got one teeny, tiny glass of OJ in the morning with breakfast and HEAVEN FORBID if Mom or Dad caught me eyeballing the OJ when I was thirsty any other time because there was delicious well water right there in the tap and I was coveting the OJ (that was over a dollar a gallon! *GASP*)

And I just heard this sound like water pouring onto the floor and couldn't imagine what was leaking where only to look toward the kitchen (housing the nearest sink and, unfortunately, the nearest kitty box...and NO, the kitty box isn't next to a food prep area) and there's a cat in the catbox doing his best freakin' fire hose impression. Good Lord, how big is a cat bladder anyhow? Apparently, I need a course in cat anatomy because Wills seems to have stuffed a stallion size bladder in his compact cat body! Wowzers!

It's way past bed time, so I am going to log off and try to get some sleep.

Not a paper tiger....but another paper thingy...

Because of my cleaning, I now possess a metric fuckton of shredded paper. And there is more coming. And remember how I said that this:

would be helpful? Well, with the help of the internets, I found something spiffy and that would be this: http://tinyurl.com/6n9uwj

DRY PAPER LOG MAKER

Item number: 110320637642

item on Ebay. (I really need to figure out the whole tiny URL dealie... maybe I can do that tomorrow)(Update...Yay Tiny URL!). Thing is, the log maker is $30. Now, I know that $30 seems like a drop in the bucket but honestly, with the whole no job, no income thing, it's $30 I don't have to spend right now. But at least I know it's out there and that there is hope for making some coolio fireplace logs out of my shredded documents.

It was a pretty cool day in that there were TWO jobs to apply for today (I mean that sincerely... there are days where there isn't a goddamned new thing posted AT ALL, so to find TWO in one day... especially mid-week... is really cool).

I'm finding a couple of recurring "gosh, I wish I knew something about that" skills come up in my job searching... One is SQL and the other is a little more amorphous "web design". There is a new "Head First" book coming out on SQL and PHP that I popped onto my Amazon Wish List so I wouldn't be a dork and forget it was coming out. I really liked the Head First HTML/CSS book I was given so I have some high hopes for the SQL book in that series. Yes, I know, without having some sort of certification or some formal piece of paper saying I know something about SQL and Web Design it may well be useless for me to learn it from a "puttin' it on the resume" standpoint. But it would be nice to be able to say in interviews that I know what it is and the basics of how to work with it. I had one interview where they seemed impressed that I was trying to learn HTML/CSS on my own time (not impressed enough to offer me the job, mind you, but they did express in the interview that they were impressed).

Perhaps I'm CIA Material!

The CIA had an opening for an assassin. After all the background check, interviews, and testing were done, there were three finalists...
Two men and a woman.

For the final test, the CIA agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun. "We must know that you will follow your instructions, no matter what the circumstances. Inside this room, you will find your wife sitting in a chair. Kill Her!!!"
The man said, "You can't be serious. I could never shoot my wife."
The agent said, "Then you're not the right man for this job. Take your wife and go home."

The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room. All was quiet for about five minutes. Then the man came out with tears in his eyes. "I tried, but I can't kill my wife."
The agent said, "You don't have what it takes. Take your wife and go home."

Finally, it was the woman's turn. She was given the same instructions, to kill her husband. She took the gun and went into the room. Shots were heard, one shot after another. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet. The door opened slowly and there stood the woman. She wiped the sweat from her brow.
"This gun is loaded with blanks", she said. "I had to beat him to death with the chair."

Moral: Women are evil. Don't mess with them.