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I’ve been trying to think of something to write all week. Something funny, something light, something… eh?? But unfortunately, I have been in the absolute foulest of moods for the past several days, and I got nothin’. I think it can be chalked up to a particularly severe case of PMS, or maybe I’m pregnant and don’t know it yet. Actually, I won’t know about that for a couple of days, and it got me thinking about whether or not I’m going to blog about it if/when I do get pregnant. On one hand, my blog is sort of like my journal, and I do write a lot about everyday stuff that’s going on in my head, so it makes sense to write about it since it’ll obviously be taking up a good chunk of my brain space. On the other hand, first pregnancies = higher risk than normal, plus miscarriages run in my family, and I really don’t want to have to write about it if that happens, so… I honestly don’t know what I think about that. I guess I’ll wing it and figure it out if/when it happens.

So to showcase a total lack of creativity, I present to you a list of things that are annoying me this week:
* Every other driver on the road, particularly that stupid red VW EuroVan that I keep seeing that has “WNDRLND” as its personalized license plate. I don’t need any pot-smoking hippies going ten miles per hour in front of me when I’m trying to get to work, thanks. Pull over and take another hit off the bong, why don’t you?

* I have a headache. Also, even though I’ve been sleeping at least 7 or 8 hours every night, I’m still so exhausted during the day that I can barely keep my eyes open. It feels like the tiredness is in my muscles and bones, everything just aches.

* Going through the salad bar at lunch today, I thought I was putting ranch on my salad, and it was actually bleu cheese. Gross.

* The cats got mad that their litter box wasn’t cleaned according to their precise schedule, so they peed on some blankets that we had left on the futon. I don’t know what it’s going to take to get the smell out of the den, but I’m not sure there’s enough pet stain remover and Febreze in the world.

* Speaking of cats, this story made me cry. I’m glad it has a happy ending, because too many of them don’t. But reading articles like that reaffirms my belief that there is a special place in hell reserved for people who abuse animals and children. Oh, speaking of the children part, this one also made me feel like crying, although mostly it makes me want to gather up an army of angry militant feminists and unleash them on Pakistan. Hell, I might even join them.

* Apparently the milk in the company kitchen went sour over the Christmas holidays, and hoo lordy, it stinks in there. The smell is reaching all the way out into the hall and into the ladies room, which is unfortunately located next door to the kitchen. It’s so bad that it makes me cough and my eyes water every time I walk past there. It reminds me of when I was 16 and worked for the summer at a grocery store. (For you Jxn residents, it was the Kroger on County Line.) There was always one of those gallon milk jugs in the case that would leak and cover all of the others with foul, stinky milk. And because I had to pick them up to run them across the scanner, my hands smelled like sour milk for that entire summer. That was long before I discovered that I’m lactose-intolerant, but the experience put me off dairy for at least 2 or 3 years.

* Dave didn’t load the dishwasher the way that I like it. This one obviously points to a case of PMS combined with my obsessive-compulsive disorder. I load it a certain way to allow for the maximum possible number of dishes in there, and he just sort of casually tosses things in wherever they fit. I actually bitched at him for doing it “wrong,” as if it’s an algebra problem instead of a freakin’ dishwasher. Wouldn’t most women just be happy that their husbands were doing the dishes at all and keep their mouths shut? I think so.

* Ok, this one might actually be a legitimate complaint: it looks like my trip to Memphis to drive cross-country with Kris is going to get delayed, because her boss is yanking her along about exactly when her end date is going to be. He originally told her mid-January, now he’s trying to make it the end of January. It sucks, because I booked my plane ticket weeks ago, and we’ll have to pay to change it. Plus, I just want her to hurry up and get here already.

* We have no plans for New Year’s. I suppose it isn’t really that big a deal. I have Dave, so the issue of who I’m going to kiss at midnight is pretty well settled. We were trying to get a group of our friends together to do something - I liked the idea of getting a table at a restaurant so we could all just hang out, talk and have a few cocktails - but we can’t seem to rally a group together. So we’ll probably just go to the little park in our town to watch the fireworks and call it a night. Ho hum.

So… yeah. I’m sorry this is so whiny. Just call me Miss Crankypants. I do hope that all of you have a good New Year’s, though. See you in 2006.

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I wrote a long post a few days ago about our plans for the holidays, and never got around to posting it because I thought I’d wait until it seemed more time-appropriate. And as it turns out, our plans? Didn’t so much happen. The top item on my agenda was that we’d go to church on Christmas Eve, even though I haven’t been to church once in the 4 1/2 years that I’ve lived here. I’m not a huge fan of organized religion, and it’s hard to find a church that that jives with my particular brand of laid-back liberal Christianity (read: no hellfire & brimstone). But, I love the Christmas Eve service, and it’s one of the traditions that I have with my family that I thought I would really miss this year. So I did some investigating and found a church: Methodist (of which I am half), in the middle of downtown Seattle, and one of the oldest buildings in the city (very cool). And they mentioned tolerance and acceptance on their website, so I was totally down with that. Then, since we were going to be downtown anyway, after church we were going to walk around and look at the lights, and have our nice little romantic Christmas Eve, just the two of us.

Yeah. How that played out? Early last week, Dave came down with some sort of cold/flu thing, so even if he could’ve stayed conscious for the entire hour-long church service (which was doubtful), he also has this incredibly scary cough that sounds like he’s dying of TB. We figured it wouldn’t have been too cool for us to subject the other church-goers to such horrifying sounds, so we stayed home. No downtown walking/looking at the lights, either. And probably no going to the movie theater today, since he still has the horrible cough. Darn it. I really wanted to see Narnia, too.

What we did do, instead, was have a ridiculously huge meal (some I cooked, and some that came ready-made from the supermarket), the leftovers of which we’ll be eating for the next week. My grandmother would be so proud. Well, she wouldn’t have been proud of the ready-made items, but I used her recipe for stuffing, and it turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. Meanwhile, Dave drank enough Bushmill’s that he was not feeling too shabby by dinnertime. (Alcohol kills germs, right?) And we watched the first Lord of the Rings movie. I’ve never seen any of them, so we rented the whole trilogy for the weekend. As for the first one…. hmm, I’m not sure what I thought of it. It was good, I guess, but toward the end I was getting antsy, like, “could we just wrap it up already, please??” Maybe it was all the festive holiday egg nog I drank (and by “festive,” I mean “containing large amounts of bourbon”), or maybe I just don’t have the attention span for 3 hour movies. It’s definitely making me re-think the whole idea of seeing King Kong in the theater.

Anyway, even though my plans got scrapped, and in spite of Dave being sick, it was still a very nice Christmas. I like that we spent our first Christmas as a married couple alone; and particularly in light of how sick Dave is, I’m really glad we didn’t have to fly anywhere. But I talked to everyone in my family last night, and Dave talked to his today, so it’s not like we’re totally disconnected out here. Overall it’s been really cool. Now if we can just figure out what the heck we’re doing for New Year’s…

Hope everyone is having a fantastic holiday weekend!

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This morning I had a dream that Dave and I had a baby. Not that unusual, as I’m sure most of you know that I’ve had babies on the brain a lot lately. But in this dream, we had a little girl, who we decided to name Grace. (Honestly, it’s not one of my top ten baby names, although I do think that Gracie is sort of adorable. Reminds me of George Burns and Gracie Allen - I loved watching the reruns of that show when I was little.) Anyway, since I had just given birth and was all caught up in checking out this new baby that I just had, Dave and I asked my mom to fill out the paperwork for us, including the birth certificate.* My mom decided that she didn’t like the name Grace, so she would put it down as her middle name, and give her the first name Joanne. Obviously, my dream self totally flipped out. I remember screaming at my mother that Joanne was a name for a middle-aged chain-smoking divorcee who has crispy bangs and wears frosted eye shadow, not my beautiful little baby.** What’s weird is that my mom is totally not the passive-aggressive type at all, and even if we did pick a baby name that she didn’t like, she’d keep her mouth shut about it. So that was odd. And I was in the middle of the dream when I woke up this morning, so it’s sort of been looping around in my head all day. Moral of the story: yes, my brain is a very strange place. Thanks for noticing.

* I have no idea how birth certificates go about getting filled out, but this seemed totally plausible in dream-land.
** I’m sure there are many young & lovely Joanne’s out there.*** That was just my dream self talking. Honest.
*** Although I did used to work with a Joanne who pretty much fit that exact description, so I’m guessing that’s where it came from.

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Good: The moisture-suckers were removed today, so our house is quiet again, and the cats are acting relatively normal. Also, tomorrow is Office Move Day, and since I won’t have anywhere to sit while my belongings are being transported from one building to another (just across the courtyard, it’s not going to change my daily commute or anything), I have permission to work from home. I get to stay in my pajamas all day, whee! And third, Dave’s company Christmas party is tomorrow night. I really like at least two or three of his co-workers’ wives, so I’m very much looking forward to that.

Bad: There is a commercial that I despise, and therefore I see it every time I turn on the television. It’s the new Tampax commercial that features a jingle about how, “it’s just an ordinary, ordinary day”, and it shows women - I swear to God I’m not making this up - operating a jackhammer, climbing off of a firetruck, and pitching a softball. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a feminist, and that I’m all in favor of women working in male-dominated fields. (Hello, I work with computers for a living, I am one of those women myself.) But seriously? I don’t know about y’all, but that would be anything but an ordinary day for me, period or no period. And why is it that in every commercial that has something to do with women’s menstrual cycles, there’s always at least one woman wearing tight-fitting white pants? In this case, it’s the aforementioned softball player. The commercial inspires really hateful thoughts in me, like, “yeah ok, lesbians have periods too, but do I need to be reminded of that while I’m trying to eat breakfast? I just want to know the damn weather forecast!” And that’s no way to start my morning. Also, before anyone goes jumping to any conclusions that I must be having my own period right now to be overreacting about a silly commercial: I’m not. This advertisement just makes me hate the world.

Stupid: I managed to slam my own hair in my car door this morning. I’m still not sure exactly how I managed to do that - I guess I was picking up my laptop bag at the same instant that I threw the door shut. But the door was locked, so I had to fumble with the keys to unlock it, open the door and get my hair out. And can I just say? OUCH. I realized right then that it probably didn’t bode well for the rest of my day. (Cue the jingle: “It’s just an ordinary daaaay…”) I can only hope that the security guys were watching the parking garage monitors at that exact moment, and that I gave them a good chuckle.

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As delightful as some news has been lately (like that of Kris moving to town), not everything is sunshine and peaches at our house. The plumbing problems that I wrote about last week? Turns out, those problems are not so much fixed yet. Last Friday, Dave worked from home so he could meet the plumber at our house. We had been told that the most likely problem was a blockage in the line between the house & the septic tank. Fine. The plumber showed up, snaked the whole line, and found no blockages. He did some exploring, and found that our septic tank was not draining like it’s supposed to (it’s supposed to drain something like 2 inches per minute, and instead it was doing 2 inches per hour; translation: hi! You’re screwed). He’s technically not allowed to fix the septic tank himself (big legal licensing issues), but it’s a good thing he showed up when he did, because we were about thisclose to having another flooding disaster in the house. He also found that there was lots of sewage water under the house. Ewww. I’m so glad I was at work while this was going on. I’m sure I would have freaked right out if I had been there when this discovery was made. It was much easier to take the news over the phone when I was 10 miles away.

Dave called 1-800-Water-Damage (who knew such a company existed?), and they were out within the hour. They got rid of all the water under the house (again, I was at work - I don’t want to know how they did it, I was just happy to know that it was gone), but they told us that our hardwood floors in part of the house were damaged because of the water. Which really wasn’t a surprise at all, since I had told Dave a couple of weeks before that I thought the floors in the downstairs bathroom were warping. So, the dude rigged up these huge rubber mat things that suck all the moisture out of the floor. They look totally science-fiction, check it out:

He also had to hook them up in the hall in front of the bathroom, along with these enormous industrial dehumidifiers.

They’re kind of creepy, aren’t they? And they’re loud, it sounds vaguely like a jet engine is taking off in the kitchen. The cats are terrified and have been camping out in our bedroom since Friday night. The noise combined with the cats fighting in our room makes it interesting to try to sleep at night. Not to mention that the moisture-suckers are giving me nightmares that the yellow hose parts are going to detach themselves from the mats, latch on to me, and suck out my soul, dude. Yeah. Anyway.

Meanwhile, the septic tank repair guys came out on Saturday and fixed that part of the problem (the entire pump failed and had to be replaced! Whee! Thank the lord almighty for homeowner’s insurance!). We have since been able to shower and run the dishwasher without the thought of doing so striking fear into our hearts, so that’s been good. But the water damage dude - his name is Jim, I think we’re starting to become friends - has been back to our house twice since Friday, and he says that there’s still too much moisture in the floors, so it’ll probably be tomorrow (Thursday) at the earliest before we can get rid of them. So that’s a week of headache-inducing non-stop noise. Not to mention what those enormous appliances running 24 hours a day are probably doing for next month’s electric bill. Mmmm, good times. I love it when huge expenses come up in mid-December. I think Dave and I just unintentionally bought each other’s Christmas presents: a new septic pump and perfectly dry hardwood floors. Ah, the romance of it all.

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As for the issue of the horrid Jane Austen, I must confess that the movie was not that bad. At least, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it to be. (My expectations were severely low, after all.) But I must say that I am just so tired of the whole “oooh, you’re horrible, I will hate you forever / no wait, I love you but there’s some conflict so we can’t be together / no wait, I love you & you love me and the conflict resolved happily so we’ll get married and have thousands of babies” formula. Yes, I know that Jane Austen probably invented the formula, but let’s face it, it’s been done. to. death. However, getting to spend time with the girls before and after the movie was awesome, so I really can’t complain. And I think we might now have plans with all of them for New Year’s, so that’s very cool.

In totally unrelated news, I’ve been waiting to write about this because I didn’t want to jinx it, but I think I can officially say it now: Kris is moving here next month! I’m so excited, she’s been my best friend since college and I absolutely adore her, and she’s wanted to live in Seattle since long before I ever moved here, so I’m really happy that she’s coming. She’s had a few almost-moves in the past, but something always came up (usually money-related) that kept her from doing it. But she found out that her boss wants to retire, which means she won’t have a job after mid-January, and there’s nothing else to really keep her in Memphis. Her boss is also giving her at least two months’ severance, which is enough to cover moving expenses and the last few repairs she needs to do to her house to put it on the market. She’s going to move in with us for a month or so while she looks for a job and an apartment. (Poor Dave. He has no idea how loud our house is going to be after Kris shows up.) So it really is going to happen this time. And here’s how I know that it’s definitely going to happen: last night, I booked myself a one-way plane ticket to Memphis. Well, actually, I’m flying to Little Rock because it’s several hundred dollars cheaper, and then I’ll rent a car & drive 2 hours to Memphis. Because, you know, it’s just such a long way to drive by herself, so I’m going to drive with her. And her dog, Lucky. It has nothing to do with just wanting an excuse to take a 4-day road trip with my best friend, singing Indigo Girls and Ani DiFranco songs at the tops of our lungs and making each other laugh until we have to pull over and find a place to pee. Oh no, nothing like that. But hey, it’s a non-refundable plane ticket, so she’s locked into her end of the deal now. Hah!

Anyway, I’m flying down on January 19th - which, for those of you keeping track, is three days after my 30th birthday - and we’ll set off the next day. I’m hoping that we’ll make the 2400 mile journey in four days, but I’m a little skeptical of how a very tiny Mazda is going to fare on the very big mountains of Wyoming. (In January. In case you missed that the first time.) Dave is being given the responsibility of acting as our road trip meteorologist. We’re going to check in with him once or twice a day for weather updates, to make sure we aren’t going to be driving head-on into any major snowstorms. It should be fun. The dog is going to make it interesting; I’ve driven thousands of miles with Teenie in the car on multiple occasions (and flown with her several times too), but I’ve never traveled with a dog. The only aspect of it that makes me nervous is finding cheap motels on the road that have pet-friendly policies. I’ve snuck my cat into motels before and it was pretty easy. But it’s a bit more challenging to be stealthy with a 50-pound dog who really likes the sound of her own bark. Unless we can put her in a hat and a trenchcoat and teach her to walk on her hind legs. That might work.

But who cares? Best friend is moving to town!!! Yay! Happy dance! Lots of exclamation points! Whee!!!

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This is going to be short because I’m exhausted after my 10-hour workday and not enough sleep. Forgive me if I’m a bit rambly and nonsensical. Work is good, it’s just very different from my last job. During my last contract, no one really knew I existed and I just sat in my office and did my thing all day. “My thing” consisted either of writing, or goofing off when I had nothing to write. Here’s the difference: today was my first day on my own, because the guy I’m replacing is now gone (yesterday was his last day), so I finally got a computer that I could log into and check my work email. I had literally 59 emails from people either asking me questions or inviting me to meetings that I “need” to attend. I don’t think I had that many emails in the entire 5 months I worked at the previous job, so obviously this is a bit of a shock to my system. I think I’m going to enjoy it, I’m just going through an adjustment period. I was very panicky/anxious/edge-of-tears all day today because I was freaked out that I wasn’t going to be able to respond to everyone adequately or quickly enough. I’ll be fine, I just need more sleep.

Unrelated: Last night, in the middle of taking a shower, Dave banged on the door. We generally have an unspoken “thou shalt not disturb each other’s bathroom time” rule in our marriage, so I figured something bad had happened. I couldn’t really understand him through the door, I just heard, “Turn off the water!” Good thing I was just finishing up. It turned out that while I was in the shower, he was downstairs in his office, and he heard a vaguely familiar glub-glub-glub sound from the downstairs bathroom. The septic tank overflowed into the house again. It’s so gross. We’re getting a plumber this time. Don’t get me wrong, Dave is still a gem among men, because when this happened and I was running around the house in a towel, freaking out over sewage on the freshly-cleaned floor for the second time in less than a week, he told me to go to bed and he’d clean it up. And he did, too. But we still need a professional to look at it, because seriously, that just ain’t right.

And on that note, it’s my bedtime. Tomorrow after work, I’m going to see a movie that I have no desire to see (Pride & Prejudice - I know someone is going to revoke my Girl Membership for saying this, but I really loathe Jane Austen), just to have an excuse for a girls’ evening. I don’t even have the energy to ask the other ladies to change the movie selection for my sake. I just need a night out.

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