Good day for ducks

Well, I have another dentist appointment today and I woke up to a torrential rainstorm. Tornado warnings to the south of me. Flooding to the west, which is the direction I'm going to be heading this afternoon. When I woke up, it was so dark I thought it was still nighttime. I think the worst is almost over now but the rain is supposed to linger on all day and into tomorrow.

Last time I had a dentist's appointment it rained also. I'm beginning to wonder if there's a connection.

EEK! A mouse!

I was sitting on the deck and a little mouse popped up coming over the front edge. I don't know who was more startled, him or me, but he ran right back down again when I screamed. I didn't know mice could climb like that. I thought they could only do that inside walls.

If you use gmail

You should probably read this post. I don't quite understand what he's talking about here, but it sounds like a serious security problem so I'm going to try to figure out how to install the safeguards he listed.

And then there were four...

My hummingbird population is growing. I now have four visiting me on the deck. But the ditzy little buggers spend so much time fighting over the feeder that none of them get to eat much. It's amusing to watch them divebomb each other though. It's kind of like watching a Warner Brothers cartoon.

Interestingly they seem to fight more in the evening. Somehow, in the morning they seem to manage to visit in shifts and the food disappears quicker. I still don't see why they can't all share though. It is a four station feeder. They could all feed at once and everybody could be happy. It's not like I don't fill it as soon as it's empty. Silly birds.

Old fogey faceoff

My pal expat Brian has started a little contest to see who can find the best old rock and roll tunes in the dim reaches of our baby boomer memories. He's started the game here and his first challenger has stepped up to the plate.

Now I'm a little younger than these guys but I can't resist a challenge like that. I'm going to split up my entries between two blogs though. So here's the first half. Love that Wild Thing.



Get the rest at A Quarter to Three.

You can play too. Leave your links at Brian's place.

Yuck

There's been something in my ear for a long time. I thought for a while it was some built up wax, but Qtips never seemed to clean it out. It's been really bothersome this week.

It tickled and I kept digging around with my pinkie, trying to dislodge it. I thought today it might be a stray stitch from the operation and bucked up my courage and stuck some tweezers in there, figuring to grab it and hope like hell I didn't tear anything or puncture my eardrum.

I finally got it out just now. It was an old blood soaked cotton ball, I assume from the operation. Yuck. I kind of remember when the nurse swabbed my ear in recovery, it felt like she had jammed something in there. I'm shocked I didn't get an infection from it.

On the bright side, I can hear a whole lot better now.

Cuddly



Catfish sends me this cute photos all the time. I really like this one. Don't you just want to scoop them up and hug them? Thanks for the phone call darlin...

Silly Hummers

I'm really glad I put the feeder up. The hummingbirds are good pets. They don't require much care and they're endlessly entertaining. They're crazy though.

I have a four station feeder yet they spend a ton of energy chasing each other away from it, instead of just sharing what's there. It's not like I don't keep it filled. Silly birds.

Hummers

I was going to post about this last night but I came home and found that my internet access disappeared. It's a little dicey here, because I don't pay Time Warner directly, I get my access through the complex. The waits for service were estimated at two hours so I gave up for this morning. It was still a long wait. I spent most of the morning on hold by the time management here at the McCompound gave me a direct line to a tech that services our main account. It only took two minutes to fix. Gah.

Anyway, I hadn't put up the hummingbird feeder this year because I had only seen the little guys a couple of times and with my current financial situation I didn't want to spend money on it. But last week one of the little hummers buzzed me on the deck and just hovered there, ranting me out for failing to feed him so I broke down and spent the five bucks for food. Silly really not to have done it sooner. I only seem to have the three hummers and they don't eat much. I probably have a two year supply at the rate they're going through it.

So they're back and it's cheering to see them stopping by. They're already brave enough to eat while I'm sitting there as long as I don't move suddenly. Of course, I also have some kind of wasps that love the stuff. I watched one eat so much yesterday that he looked drunk. He kind of fell off the feeder and could barely fly. It was pretty funny but I brought the fly swatter out so I can kill them. I think they bother the birds.

Driving and crying

I came home from the dentist feeling like crying again today, but this time it was tears of pure joy. I love my new dentist. I love my new hygenist. I hugged them both before I left. I love the staff. I love the not so fancy office. I'm almost excited about getting the work done. It will be so great not to be embarrassed about my teeth anymore.

The only big down side is it's going to cost a small fortune. I don't even have a figure yet but it's clearly not going to be small. I had part one of the teeth cleaning today. The technology has changed a lot since the last time I had it done. She used some kind of ultrasonic thingy that doesn't hurt or make you feel like they're yanking your teeth out with the scraping. But I have to have it done in two stages because I let it go so long that I have to wait for my gums to readjust in between the treatments.

Meanwhile, the dentist is a charmer. Real southerner with an strong accent. He spent a lot of time talking to me after the hygenist was done. He welcomed me into his family. He's gives you his home phone. I get to call him Danny. How cool is that? I left there actually feeling like part of their family.

The worst part of the whole experience was getting lost on the way over. Internet directions have their limits if you know what I mean. I checked mapquest and google before I left. It looked pretty straightforward on the maps. I decided to take the slow road instead of the highway because the directions looked just as complicated and the slow road was five miles shorter and only five minutes longer in estimated time, which was about half a hour. I left an hour early. Good thing, because it took that long to get there.

I'd never been inside that city before and the streets are really squirrelly. Also it was raining and even though I trusted Sam's recommendation, I was still a nervous wreck in anticipation of the impending horror of having strangers messing around in my mouth. I missed the turn that was supposed to be a slight right just over the railroad tracks. I never saw any damn tracks. I realized on the way home that it was because you drive under the tracks and the turn is a hard right on a much smaller road than the map made it seem to be. But I'll be good the next time. It only took a little over 20 minutes on the return trip, the road is scenic and quite lovely, and now I have some landmarks.

If it's a sunny day for my next appointment, I'll get a photo of the little house with the giant three tiered fountain. It was quite remarkable.

Changes in attitude

Thanks so much to everyone for your kind and thoughtful comments and emails. The positive energy has really helped and already things are going in a better direction. In a remarkable stroke of luck, I have a dentist appointment tomorrow.

I have a good feeling about this one. He comes on a good referral and a cancellation opened up right before I called. I was able to get copies of my xrays this afternoon so I could take it. And he's going to be out for a couple of weeks after this so it really feels meant to be.

Oddly, I'm not even that nervous. Hope that feeling holds through tomorrow.

Update: Okay I woke up this morning, remembered that I had the appointment today and immediately got so nervous I feel like vomiting. But usually I feel like this for days before, so it's good that the appointment came so quick.

Think I'm in Trouble

Well, I suppose it's time to confess my ugly little secret. I'm unemployed. Two weeks after I signed on for another year on my lease here, based on the assurance that I would have another year's worth of work, I was told that I would be laid off in a month. It's been six weeks now and I haven't been able to find even a crummy part time job. To say I'm unsettled would be to understate the situation considerably. I don't sleep well and I can barely eat.

I'm sad about leaving the old job. I miss the person I was caring for but mostly I'm embarrassed. I haven't had to look for a job in 25 years and it makes me feel like a total loser not to be working. I'm finding the job hunting process incredibly demeaning. I'm not even getting polite acknowledgements of receipt of my resume, much less interviews. Apparently there's not much of a demand for a 56 year old woman, with no real academic creds but 18 years of office management experience who works hard, learns quickly and is a crackerjack assistant.

I'm in a world of grief dear friends. I'm almost $5000 in debt from my operation. I need at least a couple of thousand of dollars in dental work done immediately or I'll probably never get a decent job. On the bright side, I finally got a lead on a good dentist, but I'm going to have to drop my health insurance. They're charging me $750 a month as a single payer. I have a really strict lease that can't be broken. I'm stuck here for the next 9 months in a tiny little town with no social network. I don't have a single friend here since John died. I don't think I've ever felt so alone.

It's really difficult for me to ask for help. I'm used to helping others, not needing it myself, but I really need it now. If you've ever felt inclined to donate a few bucks to the blog, now would be a good time to hit the "Make a Donation" button at the top of the sidebar. If you don't want to use paypal, you can email me for a land address. If you can't donate money, any advice would be welcome in either the comment section or by email as well. Kind thoughts would also be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Life is funny

I'm working on a long post to tell you what's going on in my life. It's not good. But in the interim, let me give you a couple of cheery links. Here is a really cool video of Slow motion lightning.

And it's Sunday, so how about an old cartoon?



Check back later to hear my sad tale of woe.

Long Day

I've got nothing. It's just too much to explain. But it is a funny story. I may still tell it but for now, I'll just tell you that I bought an iron today and let you use your imaginations.

Bad marketing

I don't understand the logic behind selling celery.

I wanted to make some egg salad. I don't really love egg salad, but I don't mind it if it has celery in it. One store only had big celery they sell loose by the single bunch. Not acceptable. I only like celery hearts. Another store has the hearts, but you have to buy three bunches at once, wrapped in plastic, to get them. Everything else you can buy loose.

I have six eggs. I only need one bunch of celery hearts to make egg salad. I won't even use more than three stalks anyway. Even if I felt like chewing on the leftover spears, it would take forever to eat one whole bunch. What the hell am I supposed to do with three of them?

I bought horseradish instead. Maybe I'll make deviled eggs. I like those if they're spicy enough.

Day at the dentist

After waiting forever, I finally had my dentist's appointment today. It was awful. The tech was nice but she crashed the xray machine into my teeth and lost track of which tooth she was gauging. Not exactly confidence building. And the dentist was not as nice as I was told she was. In fact she was cold and uninterested. I saw her for all of three minutes and she didn't dicuss my options at all. Plus I found out at the end, she farms out everything but the most simple work. The reason I went there in the first place was because it was close to home. I can't get my work done there. It was so disappointing I came home and cried.

Now I have to start from scratch again. I wish John hadn't died before I got the name of the dentist he found in Durham that was fast and not wildly expensive. Maybe I should just go to Mexico and get it done. I've heard that you stay there and get the work done for the same price it costs to get it done here. I could surely use a vacation. I haven't had one in almost three years.

Day at the dentist

After waiting three weeks, I was pretty excited about finally going to the dentist. I'm in bad need of dental work having put it off for so long on account of my dentist anxiety. It was just awful.

The receptionist is nice, and so was the tech, but they appear not to know what they're doing. The xray person knocked the machine knocked the machine into my teeth. Then she lost track of which tooth she was gauging. All that wasn't so bad but then the dentist was not nice at all. She spent all of three minutes with me and was entirely uninterested in discussing my options. I came home and cried, it was so awful.

Bright light, big city

What a day. I went to the outdoor jazz brunch this morning and decided to do some shopping while I was in the big city. I spent three hours trying on clothes. I came home with a bottle of hand lotion and a package of disinfectant wipes for the bathroom.

No one sent me the memo that said the designers lost their minds this season and only produced bizarre frilly stuff. And badly made I might add. I should have skipped it and come home after brunch.

On the bright side, brunch was good. A sweet older guy offered to share his table with me. I regretfully had to decline. I was meeting John's old girlfriend Karen. She was very nice and the vibe in Carrboro is very much like lovely downtown Noho in the old days.

I had fun. It was nice to get out and talk to human beings in person. I ended up staying much later than I expected.

Castles made of sand

Okay, so they cheated a little by using special trucked in sand but just wow. If you love sandcastles, check out the detailing on these babies. [For some reason Blogger won't let me link to the video directly. You have to cut and paste this URL into your browser to go directly to the video. You'll have to take out the space between the number "8&" the word "playlist". It's worth the trouble.]

http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&vid=2028f4f2-2ab3-4b18-83f8-c8078b933d18&
playlist=videoByTag:tag:viral:ns:Gallery:mk:us:vs:1&from=MSNHP&tab=m137>1=42003

Meanwhile, that video reminds me of one of my favorite songs.

Blogger meltdown update

Following up on yesterday's Blogger lockout, it appears that the problem was wide-spread and not confined to one category of blogs, so it wasn't that you were posting any particular content. However, the lockdown does remind me this morning about the importance of internet neutrality. If we lose it, this sort of thing could happen all the time and it could easily be content related.

Anyway, most of you should be unlocked by now but there's a new problem that affects the whole system. No one can open any Blogger blog in IE. Avedon figured out that it was a sitemeter problem. If you remove your sitemeter code from the template, it seems to solve it.

Good reason to switch to Firefox as your browser but in the interim, for those who can't give up their IE, I removed the sitemeter from The Impolitic and this blog until Blogger figures out what they broke when they fixed the lockdown.

Locked Out

This is so weird. I'm locked out of my other blog. The spambots flagged me as a spammer. I would have taken it personally but there's a lot more people who got flagged. Details at the link.

Jebus, what a pain in the butt.