Archive for October, 2007

Def: when Halloween sneaks up on you and catches you unawares, resulting in a non-decorated house, cheapo costumes for the kids (none for the adults) and crappy candy to hand out to trick or treaters.
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I don’t like Halloween. It used to be fun, when I was a kid. Then I went to college and it wasn’t so fun anymore. It wasn’t about dressing up and having fun, it was about getting drunk and going to the midnight jazz band concert. Not my thing. And then I was a teacher. Teachers deserve hazard pay for teaching (uh, wet-cat-herding) on Halloween…though my very favorite day of teaching was November 1st; the kids were wiped out and sugar crashed from the day before. Nice and quiet.
I don’t like the chaos of trying to find a costume (and then trying to keep it clean, ’cause A and J want to wear them…there are two Obi Wan Kenobis here tonight; they’ve been jousting with light sabers for weeks), I don’t like the expense of the holiday, I don’t like how a child’s holiday of silliness has become an adult’s holiday of gore and horror. I don’t need haunted houses and horror movies to be scared, I can just watch the news. Or the prices at the gas pump. Or the recalls website.
I’m not a Halloween grinch, I really do wish I loved the holiday. If someone could come in and decorate my house and take care of costumes, I’d love it. But my decorations are still in the basement and the costumes haven’t come off the boys all day. I haven’t had a costume since I was about 9. The unnecessary stress of the holiday just turns me off, and for some reason, every year Halloween sneaks up on me. Apparently I’m not terribly observant, as the holiday begins in August.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go scrape the boys off the ceiling for dinner before they go trick or treating. As for me, I’m staying in to drink wine and hand out candy. Why, may you ask, am I the one who gets to stay inside and imbibe? Because I am the one who worked two, yes two, school Halloween parties today and I need the wine.

“…and now, let’s go to Becky in the backyard for today’s forecast…”

groan

Roll over, click the lamp to low, find the thyroid meds and toss ‘em down the hatch (the sooner in, the faster to coffee).

Roll back over and catch a couple more zzzz’s.

beepbeepbeepbeeeeeppppp….

groan

Roll over, slap off the alarm clock, turn the radio back on, just a few more winks…

CLANG. BANG. CRASH. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

Who needs an alarm clock when construction on the school begins at 6:15 in the morning?

This weekend it’s supposed to be pretty nice out, so it’s our “last hurrah, get the house and yard ready for winter” weekend. Things like ripping out the tomato plants, getting the shovels within reach, finding the rock salt, adding insulation and caulking…that sort of thing. Our reward for a productive Saturday is a Halloween party that night (still hunting for costumes; Tom wants to go as suicidal Cubs fans, but given the Rockies’ performance last night, we could probably be a little more local). But planning for the weekend got me to thinking, yet again, of all the home improvements I want to make. How a house that is only four years old needs improvement is beyond me, but the builder really skimped on quality and we weren’t going to pay builder prices to upgrade. Last summer we finished the basement and it really became obvious how many corners the original builder cut when building the house; the basement guys didn’t and it’s my favorite part of our house.

1. Put in a deck or patio or something other than the crappy crushed gravel patio we currently have. Yes, that would be the crushed gravel patio we covered with indoor/outdoor carpeting this spring in an attempt to keep the gravel and dust out. I’m happy to report it worked, but it is still the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Bright green faux carpet, nailed over two by fours, and not one big piece of faux carpet, but several patched together. Nothing like sheer ugliness to motivate you to replace it within a year. Tom is leaning toward a patio, but since we need to keep the drainage moving away from the house (especially since my scrap room is in the basement right below there and I’m not too keen on flooding that room), I’m pushing for a Trex deck with bench seating (where we could store toys) and solar lights on the posts.

2. Replace the crushed gravel walkway from the backyard to the front with something else. Anything else. We’re leaning toward colored concrete or brick.

3. Once those two things are done and the possibility of ruining the floors is reduced, we gotta replace the flooring house-wide. The builder-grade carpet…I’ve never seen anything like this. When we first moved in and I’d vacuum, I’d have to change the vacuum bag every couple of runs because it was sucking up so much fuzz. I could have woven a new carpet with what I vacuumed up. And it holds on to stains like nothing else. The carpet is worn down to threads over the tack strips, so you have to be really careful when you walk barefoot, not to step on the tack strip area, ’cause those tacks hurt. The linoleum we put in is scratched, gouged, and stained. This stuff is four years old! I want to put down wood laminate, house wide. Yeah, it’ll be a bit loud upstairs, but much easier to clean, and rugs will dampen the sound and be easier to clean and replace.

4. Speaking of rugs, I’m getting them here. This is so me. Easy to clean, easy to recycle when you replace them, all sorts of designs and styles. Did I mention easy to clean?

5. All of this may need to wait because of a pressing house issue. The mortared stone on the bottom part of our house is falling off the house in sheets. No kidding. Some of it is only still up because it’s resting on the stone below. Crappy builder. That needs to be repaired. Since I will only deal with the builder at this point if there is a “life and limb” problem with the house, we’re doing this on our own. And since we live on the only beige fungus block in the community, we want to do something different. Brick, instead of stone. And repaint the damned house. Again, the builder screwed the whole block on paint color. We’re all variants of the same shade of “baby doodoo” yellow, with a few houses having actual color. So we’re thinking dark blue, white trim, and brick. And I dare the HOA to contest this.

6. Our house faces west, with no foliage to block the blazing summer sun. It gets so hot on the west side of the house in the summer that we can barely be in the rooms on that side of the house, and those rooms are the kitchen and family room. You know, the rooms with the food, the entertainment, and my computer. Going outside after about 11 in the summer is brutal. So we want to put in a retractable patio awning, one with a wind sensor so when a storm blows up it doesn’t rip off the house and we don’t have to run out there in a storm to deal with it.

7. We have put off painting our front room the entire time we’ve lived here. We just can’t deal with it. It has a high ceiling that goes up the stairs to the second floor. We have no desire to rent scaffolding to paint, or to try to paint a high ceiling while balancing on scaffolding going up a flight of stairs. With young, active boys who would want to “help.” The front room also needs real furniture. It has become the repository of “furniture with no other home” and is less than soothing.

8. I really wish we had a three car garage, or at least a 2 1/2 car garage, so we’d have room for the cars and all the accoutrements of a family. I’m sick of pulling the cars out so we can get to the bicycles. I think a small shed for the backyard is in order. Don’t know where exactly we’ll put it, but we need something.

9. Doors. Don’t get me started on the doors. I’m sure I complained about the doors before. The builder screwed us on the doors and it would have taken an attorney to get us unscrewed. It just wasn’t worth it. Imagine the cheapest POS doors you’ve ever seen on a college apartment and you’re pretty close to what we have now. Except in the basement (where everything is of good quality) and in our bedroom (where we replaced them last spring when we painted), crappy door reign. The joke has become, before making a purchase, “is it door-worthy?” Because we found out that doors are roughly $35 at Home Depot. So we have…lemme see…oh, about 9 doors to replace, then closet doors and the door to the garage. One.At.A.Time.

10. Is that it? I seem to think there were a lot more projects on my list.

11. Paint the basement I guess would go on this list.

12. I’d like to somehow drill holes into the back of my built-in desk so I can feed the cords down there and actually have some desk space.

13. I think that’s everything…until this weekend, when I come up with another half-dozen projects. Paying for it all? Good question. I guess I don’t need both kidneys…or both sons…LOL!

(Writing this from Word 2007, which has a blog post function. If something seems funky, let me know)

Well, I started off writing a post about how busy I am, and how tired I am of it all, and realized that I’m sick of thinking about that, so my two readers are probably even more sick of it. We’re all busy, dangerously so, so enough whining from me already.

Tonight the Rockies play in the World Series. There are some seriously pissed off people in Denver because tickets were only available for purchase online. And the server crashed on Monday and was slower than molasses in January yesterday. As crazy of a sports town as this is, you woulda thought someone would have seen this coming.

I’m volunteering in A’s classroom this morning, then staying for lunch. He’s over the moon about it.

Cross your fingers, I may have gotten my computer all straightened out. At least, I have email and my iPod functional, everything else can take a number.

And since I have to get J to preschool and this is, by far, the most incredibly boring post ever written in the short history of bloggityville, I’m outta here.

OH! Quick. Funny story. Tom and I went to see “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” on Sunday. The musical, not the movie. It was the last (thankyouGod) set of tickets we had from our subscription; lemme tell ya, getting a sitter for a Sunday night ain’t easy. So we’re sitting in the balcony, second row from the front…intermission comes. There is a couple in front of us…dear God. She sits in his lap and they just go to town. He had his hand up her shirt…not on her back, but lookin’ for nubbins. About this time, we heard from directly behind us: “How are you feeling?” “Well, I my stomach doesn’t feel like throwing up anymore.” Tom and I just froze. We didn’t know whether to give the couple in front of us a couple of bucks, or go dashing for another seat. Ahh…the theatah…

Karen over at PediaScribe tagged me for the “what’s outside your blogging window?” meme. My laptop is in the corner of the kitchen, in a built-in desk with cabinets and never ever enough space. To my left and slightly behind me is the deck door to the backyard. The view from my blogging window used to be a pastoral scene: large, empty field with wild grasses and my favorite, silence. Not so much anymore.

That’s Longs Peak in the background, flaunting the snow we got this weekend. It’s all melted down here, but the peaks are all frosted with snow. In the foreground is the school land, set aside for ballfields and such. That arena-like thing is an inline hockey rink; that park was put in this summer. Before about May or so, this entire field behind my house was empty.

Tag, you’re it: momumo, Tendril’s Ink, Three Little Words (’cause I’ve known Andrea IRL for 5 years and have never seen her house), Christina, and Cursing Mama.

The couple of comments I’ve gotten about my latest computer trauma have gently suggested I move over to Mac. Trust me, I’ve thought about it…as in, “if this stupid thing doesn’t get fixed this time, I’m moving over to the Dark Side.” I have a love/hate relationship with Apple. On one hand, I adore my iPod more than words can express and am deeply saddened that they didn’t exist when I was in music school because it would have made my life immeasurably easier. I look at the iPhone or the iPod Touch and I get lightheaded. Sexy technology does that to me.

But I have had nothing but trouble with Mac computers. Trouble that makes this current computer trouble look piddlin’. See, I was raised in a PC home. Schools had Apple. I had a PC in college (really, not much more than a glorified word processor), married an Apple. I’ve played both sides here and was fine with it.

Eight or nine years ago we got a Blue Bondi iMac and I’m still recovering from the trauma. That sucker crashed if you looked at it cross-eyed. Heck, it crashed if you walked in the room. Not just a little burp of a crash, but a projectile vomiting blank screen of a crash. I did more IT on that damned thing. I zapped the pram, I defragged the hard drive, I held seances to find out WTF was wrong with it. Software wouldn’t work on it, I couldn’t download anything from the internet, and it was s.l.o.w. My parents finally took pity on us after a couple of years and got us a PC laptop and we haven’t looked back. Last summer the iMac took an unfortunate tumble off a table onto our hot water heater (thank you so much, A) and didn’t survive the experience. The hot water heater? Dented but functional.

Tom uses a PC for work, A uses PCs in school, so does J. All of our software is for PCs. I had a terrible experience with an iMac and it scarred me for life. ; ) I know an iMac would be a loved addition to our home, but it ain’t gonna happen.

Unless this laptop zonks out on me yet again…

For the last several months I’ve been all whiny and complainy about not having enough time to do all the things I want and need to do. Things like exercise and catching up on work and cleaning the house and, oh, fun things like reading blogs. I’ve figured out where all the time has gone.

My.Stinking.Computer.

I bought my laptop last November and since then I’ve had it in the shop three times. Once to replace the hard drive, once to install Vista (^%^&*&!#), and again this last week to reinstall Vista because it was apparently corrupted. I’ve now had to set up my computer four times in the last year. You know, little things like importing favorites, making sure all my contacts and emails made the trek, reinstalling all my programs. I finally got iTunes fixed a couple of weeks ago and now I get to do it all again.

I’m so not happy. KnockwoodmylipstoGod’sear I haven’t lost any data because of all of this, but I’ve lost hours of my life. And this isn’t counting the hours I’ve spent trying to fix the problems before throwing in the towel and just taking in the stinking machine.

This should be the end of it. Once I finish getting everything up and running, all should be well. And I should return to fun things like exercise and cleaning my house and reading others’ blogs. I’ve missed it.

Denver is a sports crazy town. No, wait, that’s not quite right. Denver is a certifiably insane, kiss ‘em goodbye ’cause they’re going away for a long visit with a padded room, sports crazy town. I’ve never seen anything like it. I thought Chicago was nutso, but Denver is even worse.

The sports craziness became crystal clear when, right after we moved here, all life stopped when the Broncos won the Super Bowl in 1998. And again the next year. On big sports days, Tom and I take bets whether it’ll be a sports story or national news as the leadoff story on the 10 o’clock news. It’s usually sports. The best time to grocery shop? Sunday afternoons when the Broncos are playing. You can shoot a cannon down the deserted aisles. The worst time to grocery shop? The couple of hours before the Broncos play on Sunday afternoons. Ten kinds of insanity; you couldn’t pay me enough to do my shopping then.

Notice how I’ve only mentioned the Broncos? Our football team? Denver is one of few cities to have major league teams in all sports (don’t ask me to name them, I don’t know that much, I just know we have the familiar ones plus soccer, arena football, and lacrosse…there’s probably badminton in there, too), but really, only the Broncos get massive recognition, even in down years. This is a down year, a very down year, for the Broncos. Listening to the news, you wouldn’t even know we have a football team this year. But that’s not because they suck donkey bits this year.

I’m really tired today. Coffee can’t touch it kind of tired. Hmmmm…why might that be?

Oh, yeah, I was up until 12:30 last night WATCHING THE ROCKIES WIN THE NATIONAL LEAGUE PENNANT! What the absolute @#&#%$???? How did the Rockies do this? They’ve been the bastard child of the Denver sports scene for years. You could buy tickets at the grocery store for $4 all summer. Decent tickets, not the nosebleed seats. They closed off the nosebleed section earlier in the season because tickets weren’t selling. How in hell did they do this? They’ve won 20 of the last 21 games, the longest run in MLB history. Huh? The Rockies????? Where did this come from? A post-season sweep. I doubt you could find a broom in Denver right now, they were all at the game last night. Tom and I have watched more baseball in the last two weeks than we have in the last two years. The team has been so strong, so consistent. They have been a joy to watch, and we get to keep watching.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, “Jen, you’re a rabid Cubs fan. Are you switching teams?” And my response is, “Are you kidding?” The Cubs are my team. End of story. I cheer for the Rockies because they are the home team, but my true love is the Cubs. My heart isn’t really with the Rockies, I’m watching more out of “how is this happening?” than true love for the Rockies. I will say, though, that getting Rockies vs. Cubs tix next season is going to be next to impossible. Getting any Rockies tix next season is going to be next to impossible. The Cubs’ year is next year; 2008 will be 100 years since their last World Series win. The damned goat curse will be broken then. I hope.

Go Rockies! You’ve been fun to watch, and you’re going all the way!

My God, I love baseball. : )

I’m going with…nobody.

Let’s review:
Toys recalled (this is just one of many)
Food recalled (this is also just one of many)
Childrens’ cold and flu medications recalled
Cub Scout badges recalled

My computer has been fracking around since I bought it last November and I have been the IT department for the household for too long.
My health insurance covers 100% of nothing that involves A’s ADHD or SPD, and only covers the ADHD meds because we hit the ungodly high deductible earlier in the year.
My PDA crashed on me this morning for absolutely no reason; I was able to get it back up and running, but good grief, why did it poop out on me?
For reasons known only to higher powers, I totally spaced giving A his ADHD meds this morning. Remembered just as I was pulling into his school…25 minutes away.

And it was that last one that broke the camel’s back this morning. I.Forgot.A’s.Meds. I don’t know why. And it occurred to me: no one, no one, got my back. I can’t trust that the food I bring into my house is safe. I can’t trust that the toys I bring into my house are safe. I can’t trust that the Cub Scout badges my son proudly earns are safe. So I have to check and double check the rest of the world’s work. And then my brain gives out and I forget to give my son his meds. He’ll make it through the day (oh, God, please help him get through the day), but I’m worried about him. You’re probably wondering why I don’t just hop in the van and take his meds up to him. Well, I’d love to do just that. BUT. J has speech therapy this morning and I don’t have time to make the nearly hour round-trip. AND. If I don’t give A his meds at a certain time of day (around 6:45 AM) he doesn’t eat lunch. Or dinner. Or sleep. It’s a delicate dance. And this morning I tripped on my dress hem, stumbled, and fell on my butt.

I’m beyond tired of this. I’m pissed off. I’m pissed off that I don’t have time to take care of my family because I’m so busy making sure the rest of the fracking world is doing its job. I have to send in reimbursements for therapies and hope that insurance covers it. I have to take my son to OT because we don’t yet have an IEP in place for him, and let’s face it, the school isn’t going to be able to provide all the services he needs. I need to be a technology expert and figure out WTF is going on with my computer, and modem, and PDA because Microsoft, Earthlink, and Palm can’t work the damned bugs out and keep them out. I need to investigate which foods are safe, consult my mental list of what the boys will eat this week, cross check that with allergies and the fact I’m trying to lose weight, and hope to hell I don’t blow a year’s salary on groceries.

This isn’t a case of “watch my kids for a couple of hours so I can get caught up.” I know I have people who would watch my sons in an emergency, or if I needed a break before I cracked. This is an ongoing societal problem, and I guarantee I’m not the only person feeling like this. What happened to doing your job, and doing it right, for the good of society? Has everything become “the bottom line?” Well, world, here is my bottom line: Get off your half-moons and do what’s right. Because my brain can’t take much more.