Category Archives: Whining

and now, the not-so-happy

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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:
Science fiction bathmats
He also had to hook them up in the hall in front of the bathroom, along with these enormous industrial dehumidifiers.
more moisture-suckers
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.

crashing

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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.

Oh November, how you have kicked my butt

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I have to be on an airplane in less than 48 hours, and I’m still sick. Ugh. I’ve tried everything I know how to do: I’m downing Emergen-C and vitamins like crazy, drinking tons of water and orange juice, doing that disgusting nasal irrigation thing, and I’ve even tried that “magic potion” that Angie recommended. (And she’s right, it’s not that bad. It’s not good either, but at least I didn’t have to slam it like a shot of tequila. Which would’ve hurt with a hot beverage.) And so far? None of it has made a bit of difference. I’m still miserable, coughing all the time and blowing my nose approximately 37,000 times per day.

Credit where it’s due: my sweet husband went to the store for me to buy the lemon herbal tea, honey, and cough drops that I needed to make that little “magic potion”. Isn’t he a good egg?

So yes, the flight to New York on Tuesday morning is rapidly approaching. I’m still hoping that I’ll make some miraculous recovery between now and then, or that the super-duper heavy-duty Sudafed will knock me the hell out for the duration of the six hour flight. I was worrying about how I was going to pack NyQuil without it leaking all over my bag, since that’s the only thing that lets me get to sleep and not wake up with coughing fits. (And yes, I must have the liquid. The pills don’t do squat for me.) I finally decided that I’m just going to buy a new bottle when we get there, and I’ll leave the leftovers with my sister. So, if I don’t recover between now and Tuesday, at least I have a plan to manage the symptoms. I suppose that helps?

I have nothing to report on the job interview scene. I think they went well – I ended up doing several interviews last week, for a couple of different jobs, but I don’t have any feedback yet. I guess I’ll find out in the next week or two, but I feel too lousy to really care at the moment.

In other exciting news, we have had crazy fog here for the past few days. Right now I’m looking out of my office window, and I can’t even see the house next door. That’s some seriously thick fog. Which sucks for us, because we have a satellite dish, and thick cloud cover = bouncy Internet connection. I believe the term Dave used for it the other day was that our connection was “up and down like a whore’s drawers.” Nice.

I’m planning to bring my laptop with me on this trip, so there may be a blog update sometime later this week from the Big Apple. If not, I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving.

whimper

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I have a job interview today, and I’m sick. To elaborate: I’ve been struggling with this cold thing for the past few weeks, but it’s mostly been either a constant runny nose or a lot of clearing my throat. (Not even real coughing, just that annoying “AHEM” thing that won’t get out of there.) Nothing too horrible. Today, however, my throat is swollen and achy, I have a killer sinus headache, and I just generally feel awful. It hurts to swallow. Whee.

As for the job, it’s a contract position at the Giant Software Company, and I’m not sure that I’m in love with it, but I’m sure I’d enjoy it well enough if I got it. Plus the whole regular paycheck thing would be nice. It’s a bit weird that my interview isn’t until 6:15 this evening, but apparently the hiring manager (who I’ll be meeting with) is going out of town tomorrow morning, and she wants to meet all of the candidates for this job before she leaves. Hence the evening interview. Kind of strange to go in for an interview after dark, but whatever.

The upside of all this is that I just took two ultra heavy-duty Sud@fed, and I’ll have time to nap off the ensuing grogginess before the interview. Cross your fingers that I don’t yawn too much during the interview. Or hack up something on the poor lady.

clearly at a loss for decent blog content

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I have a feeling that this full-time studying gig is going to wear me out quickly. I was all proud of myself because I’m already halfway through chapter 4 – I mean, come on! Three and a half chapters in two days? That seems like a lot, doesn’t it? Then I realize that I’m on page 70 out of 450, and I want to go lie down and take a nap. Yeesh.

I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. New doctor. I’m not sick, I just, um… oh hell, let’s leave that topic for some other time, shall we? I’m not good at talking about my personal health issues (particularly girly ones) on the Internet. I mean, I got totally spooked when some freaky eyeglasses fetish group found this picture of me and I got like 5 different emails inviting me to their message board and wanting to know details about the exact prescription for my corrective lenses. And that’s just my eyes, so I’m really not inclined to talk about this other stuff. We’ll file it under the cool and vague mystery that is me. Trust me, if anything life-altering happens, I’ll write about it. Until then, let’s just forget that I brought it up.

Oh, and for the record, I have no idea how the eyeglasses fetish weirdos even found that picture because it’s not in any of my photo albums, I just stuck it up there so I could send my friends and family a link where they could see a picture of my new glasses. It’s a couple of years old, which you can tell by how short my hair was back then (man, that was kind of a cute look, wasn’t it? But such a pain to style, I think I’ll keep my ponytail-able length for now). And I don’t even wear my glasses anymore, even though I should, as it would probably get rid of a lot of my headaches, but they bug me. I don’t like having them touching my face all the time. So there you go.

Moving on: cat news! And another reason why I don’t like being home alone during the day. Cleo, our normally sweet mild-mannered kitty, brought a dead bird into our dining room & started batting it around. She’s not much of a hunter, so I’m guessing that one of the other cats killed it, and she just decided to play with it afterward. (Btw, I need to get a picture of this cat’s feet on here, because they’re awesome. One paw has 6 toes, the other has 7. Kitty has thumbs, I kid you not.) So I screamed (again, can’t control it, it just happens) and chased her out of the house. There was no birdie to save in this scenario like last time, as this one had clearly long since departed this earthly dimension. Normally I make Dave deal with the dead things that the cats bring inside, but it was the middle of the day and he wasn’t going to be home for hours. So I took a deep breath (and I didn’t cry! Go me!), scooped the bird up with some paper towels, put him in a plastic grocery bag and deposited him in the trash outside. I did a little sign of the cross after I put the lid on the garbage can. I’m not sure why, it just seemed like such an unceremonious burial otherwise. Poor little bird. And then I scrubbed my hands with anti-bacterial soap and hot water for a good couple of minutes, because eww, death cooties.

Oh, and the two cats who do hunt on a regular basis (Beaumont & Greta) apparently have tapeworms. If you don’t know what that’s like, just… God, I can’t even describe it without my gag reflex kicking in. You can read about it here if you have a really strong stomach. (Warning: there are photos of poop and animal nether-regions on that site. I’m not kidding.) Anyway, apparently one of the ways they can get it is from eating rodents. Hooray for my little hunters! So, we got some medication from the vet’s office for them, and I get the joy of trying to shove the rather large pills down their tiny little kitty throats, once today and again in 2 weeks. I got Beaumont already today – I found an empty syringe from one of Teenie’s medications and used it to squirt some water in his mouth as soon as I put the pill in, so he sort of had no choice but to swallow it. It seemed to work pretty well, he didn’t even draw blood. Somehow I have a feeling I will not leave the Greta experience quite so unscathed, as she’s a bit more feral than the other cats. I’m already plotting how I’m going to sneak up on her when she’s sleeping. Yeah, I think I need a hobby. Or a job. Whichever.

oh sh*t

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So you know how I have that rule about not talking about work on my blog? Well, I’ve kind of decided that rule can go to hell for now, because my job? Doesn’t so much exist anymore. Or at least it won’t in two days. I was informed this morning that it’s nothing personal, they don’t think I’ve done a bad job, blah blah blah, but they’ve decided that the work I was hired to do is going to be outsourced to someone who has like 12 years of experience writing the types of documents that I was supposed to write. “So thanks for everything, but your last day is Friday. Buh-bye!”* The thing is, when I was hired, I was told that I was going to be working for the marketing team, so the documents that I was going to write needed to be “dumbed down” so that any random non-techie person could read and understand them. So that’s what I was doing. Then my boss (the guy who hired me) left to start his own company, I got a new boss, and apparently my job description totally changed, but I was never informed of that change. Oops. So I’m a little annoyed, a little relieved (because I wasn’t really enjoying the work I was doing), and a whoooole lotta stressed.

I talked to my rep at the agency who got me the position in the first place, and they’re looking to find something new for me as soon as possible. My officemate works for a different agency, so she forwarded my resume to her rep on my behalf (hey, can’t hurt to get the word out, right?), and I talked to my old boss, who said that he will look for a position for me with his group as well.** So I have a few possibilities, which is good, and that’s honestly what is keeping me from completely all-out panicking right now. Meanwhile, if everyone can send “find Cindy a new job immediately… and a 20% pay raise while you’re at it” vibes, I’d much appreciate it.

* Not an actual quote.
** He also said that they were idiots for cutting me, which was nice to hear.

random boring stuff

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I survived the dentist with very minimal freak-outs. I have 4 cavities, which is the same as I had 6 months ago – but sadly, my insurance company sucks and only covers 20% of my fillings, which means I have to come up with several hundred dollars to pay for them, and… yeah. It’ll get done, eventually. Meanwhile, I’m trying to just pretend like I don’t know about them. Please don’t tell me how bad an idea that is. I can’t hear you, la la la la.

I got all excited because the weather was really mild yesterday, and again today (high in the low 70’s), and I started making plans of how Dave and I can do stuff outside this weekend, like using our new grill, or cleaning the garage, all that fun stuff. But according to weather.com, it’s going to be in the upper 80’s again this weekend. Which means that if we try to clean out the garage, we’ll last all of 15 minutes before we die of heat exhaustion. Hm, perhaps not.

In other news, I just got this exercise video collection (and I am NOT typing the name of it here because I don’t need those types of Google hits, thank you very much; let’s put it in code and call it “C@rm3n El3ctr@’s A3r0b1c Str1pt3@se”), and I love-love-love it. It feels very silly at first, and I was all self-conscious and kept worrying that Dave was going to stick his head in the room and ask me what in the sam hell I thought I was doing. But I’ve done it twice now, and I have muscles aching today that I haven’t felt in a while, because, well, let’s just say it works *entirely* different muscle groups than walking or jogging, which is basically all I’ve been doing lately. So that’s pretty cool.

And the exercise thing is good, particularly since I had the very healthy lunch today of leftover pizza. Which has the very unfortunate side effect of making me feel something like this:
See how skinny I am in the morning?
And see how not skinny and unhappy I am now?

Yeah, the pizza? Is not my friend. (As a side note, aren’t my artistic skills impressive? The stringy hair in particular is frighteningly dead accurate.) But all is well, because I shall go home tonight and prance around like a big ho in the privacy of my living room. And pray that if there’s a God in heaven that my neighbors don’t have binoculars aimed in my vicinity.