Bee the Word

Congratulations, Emma!

This just in:  My wonderful niece, after finishing first in her class, finished second in her school’s sixth grade spelling bee.

Emma is very pleased with her finish because she did well but not so well that she has to go on to the next level (larger audience).  However, she is an alternate, so she is really hoping that the boy who won stays healthy through next week.

I think this calls for a bee charm for her charm bracelet.

Thanks for the phone call, Em!

Comments:

Foursomes

Steve tagged me on this, so here is my dutiful response:

RESPONSES ARE NOT NECESSARILY IN ORDER (THOUGH SOME ARE)

4 Jobs you have had in your life:
1.  Coffee/donut shop counter waitress.  Anything to avoid working for nothing on the family farm.
2.  Bank teller.  This was so cool.  After three months at Donuts ‘R’ Us, I knew I had to find something else.  Yet, so responsible was I at age 17, I stayed on until landing another job.  The savings and loan was in my neighborhood, so I got to show off to many who knew me what a wonderful girl I must be to have such a responsible, grown-up kind of job while still in high school.  Okay, it really wasn’t so much about the neighbors as it was the classmates who came in to cash their paychecks from Burger Ding and McDogbreath’s.  That was awesome!  (Little did they know, I was making minimum, same as them.  But, hey, I didn’t reek of fried crap or have to wear a nasty, polyester uniform.)  They were impressed.  They envied me.  And I knew it.  Hah!  The job was interesting, and my coworkers were lots of fun, so I stayed a while – clear through college and for six months past graduation.
3.  Corporate peon at small law firm
4.  Corporate peon at larger law firm

4 Movies you could watch over and over:
1.  Sid and Nancy
2.  Gone with the Wind
3.  Ben-Hur
4.  This Is Spinal Tap

4 Places you have lived:
1.  Smalltown, MA
2.  Rented apartment in RI
3.  Rented house in same city in RI (first with roommate Marianne, and later with roommate Brian)
4.  Own home in different municipality in RI

4 TV shows you love to watch:
This one is hard.  There are so few shows I currently enjoy.  Yeah, sometimes there’s something good on the History Channel or A&E (that two-parter on Bob Dylan was good).  I’m interested in watching “Lost,” but I don’t want to jump in at this point.  I’ll have to rent Season 1, and if I like it, I can play catch-up from there. So, here’s my attempt:
1.  What Not To Wear
2.  The Twilight Zone
3.  Beavis and Butthead
4.  Olympics! (preferably the Winter Games – woohoo!)  Does that count?

4 Places you have been on vacation:
1.  Hawaii
2.  Florida (North Lauderdale, Cocoa Beach)
3.  New York (NYC, Saratoga Springs)
4.  Montreal

4 Websites you visit daily:
Another tough one.  Well, almost daily:
1.  turnto10
2.  thesuperficial
3.  hotmail
4.  Land of D

4 of your favorite foods:
1.  Ice cream!
2.  Pizza
3.  Potato chips
(What am I, a kids’ birthday party?!)
4.  Um, how about homemade macaroni and cheese (no blue box crap!) or maybe fried clams (the whole ones, with bellies, not just the strips)?

4 Places you would rather be right now:
1.  Hawaii
2.  Torino, for the next few weeks
3.  Home.  I’d always rather be home than at work.
4.  Shopping at a deserted scrapbooking supply store that has a phenomenal inventory and a 95% storewide discount – oooh, baby.

4 Bloggers you are tagging:
I tag no one.  Instead, I’ll add an item I spotted on the same meme at another’s diary:
4 CDs you can’t live without:
1.  London Calling, The Clash
2.  Singles, The Smiths (the happy, beautiful sounds of misery)
3.  Kid A, Radiohead
4.  UB40, UB40  (Who saw that one coming?)

You can try the best you can
If you try the best you can
The best you can is good enough

Juiced

After many years (like, decades) of grapefruit juice, it looks like I have switched to cranberry juice – the unsugary stuff, not the cocktail stuff.  No rhyme or reason for the switch.  In fact, I at first thought it to be a temporary whim, but that does not seem to be the case.

The switch to grapefruit juice came about rather abruptly and for a reason known by me but not known by my perplexed mother:  screwdrivers, the first alcoholic beverage I got sick on.  Puke, puke, puke.  “Olivia, pull over!”  Puke.  Novice bartenders and drinkers that we were, half and half seemed like a good ratio.  Puke.  From that point on, I no longer wanted my morning orange juice, my longstanding breakfast staple.  Enter grapefruit. It has only been in recent years that I can once again drink the oj.  Funny, though, vodka drinks were a mainstay through most of the 80s.

Anyway, just thought you should know, in case I show up for breakfast someday.

Comments:

Pointless Survey Question of the Week

What is your favorite variety of M&Ms – plain, peanut, minis (dark chocolate), almond, crispy, peanut butter, or mint?

My preference is peanut.  Peanut butter is second.  The crispy ones, which are basically single Rice Krispie pellets in M&M coating, kinda suck.

Your turn.

(also accepting pointless survey questions for future posts)

Happy Weekend!

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Coloring Book for Lawyers!

Ooooh, this is one of the most wonderful things ever emailed to me:

Coloring Book for Lawyers

Hee-hee.  So true.  All so very true.

Thank you, Suzanne.  I shall share it with many.

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The Cost of Travel

Two new tires, plus mounting, balancing, and all that crap
Fee to dispose old tires
New something-or-other belt
New battery
New cluster control.  This baby alone cost $340.  Without it, my airbags would not deploy in the event of a collision, so, good to have.
Computer diagnostic evaluation

Total Suckage:  $877.93

Will that be cash, check, or charge, or do you just want to bend over?

At least the car is paid for.  That kind of repair bill on top of monthly payments would be doubly insulting.

* * *

Good News:  Kelly doesn’t hate me for life.  I received an email joke from her this morning.  The joke was lame, but I was relieved to see that she is at least on emailing terms with me.  And that hefty repair bill is just one more reason not to go on vacation this winter.  Road travel should be good for a while, though.

The Winter Vacation

I lied to a friend.  Well, it wasn’t a lie exactly.  More like an excuse.  A partially bogus excuse.

I told Kelly I couldn’t go on vacation with her this winter.

It all started back in September when Kelly asked if I wanted to go on a tropical vacation this winter.  I told her I didn’t really have the extra money, but Kelly went on.  She already knew exactly what she wanted to do, where she wanted to go.  She wanted to go to the Caribbean and stay at an all-inclusive resort.  She wanted to go somewhere warm in the dead of winter and not have to worry about spending any more money once she got there.  I suggested a cruise might be less expensive, and she point blank told me she did not want to go on a cruise.  Kelly kept on, despite my lack of enthusiasm.  In her mind, she had it all planned out.  Kelly does that.  It wasn’t really so much a suggestion to go somewhere together as it was Kelly deciding what she wanted to do and then finding someone to do it with her.  That approach doesn’t wash with me.  Instead of, “Hey, how about going somewhere warm this winter?” and tossing ideas back and forth, Kelly makes her plans and is then completely unwilling to alter them.  Instead of, “Let’s plan a night to go out for dinner after work,” it’s, “Want to go to the Cheesecake Factory tonight?”  If I said I didn’t like the Cheesecake Factory, then the invite would be revoked without giving consideration to a different restaurant.  It seems selfish, like it’s more about the restaurant than the company of a friend.

My other friends aren’t like this.  We decide to go out, we each make suggestions, and then we mutually agree on something.  This doesn’t happen with Kelly.

Also, Kelly does not easily take no for an answer, whether it’s a vacation or invitation to dinner.  Too often, she will call the day she wants to do something and then can’t accept that it may be inconvenient for me.  No matter what my reason may be to turn her down, she always has a comeback.  If I want to spend the day doing yard work, don’t expect me to drop it just because you want to go to the mall or wherever.  Don’t tell me I can have it done by noon and still have time to accommodate you.  Don’t tell me I’m not too tired and that even though you’re tired, you still want to go somewhere.  Don’t tell me it’s wrong to want to stay in for the night.  Learn to take no for an answer, even if it’s not what you want to hear.  I don’t appreciate pressure tactics.  I don’t do that to people.  I ask, you say no, life goes on.  I respect my friends’ wishes.

Anyway, back to the vacation.  I never said I would definitely go.  At best, I said something along the lines of “I might be interested” or “I’d be willing to look into it.”  I could see that Kelly took that as a go.  I mentioned several times that I didn’t really have that kind of money to burn.  Kelly responded that she didn’t have it either but that she simply wanted to do this.  Bully for her.  I didn’t like her suggestion that I just charge it like she was going to do.  First, financially, I don’t live that way.  If it’s not a life necessity and I can’t pay for it, then I do without.  If I want it, I save for it.  I don’t do debt.  Second, I don’t appreciate someone telling me to slap a couple of thousand on my credit card.  It’s impolite.

I probed to find out why Kelly was dead set on an all-inclusive if all she was interested in was going somewhere warm.  Kelly, who in my opinion doesn’t manage money well, wanted to pay for a vacation and not have to worry about having any additional expenses on the trip, such as drinks on a cruise ship.  Oy.  I’ve never been to an all-inclusive resort, but from what I’ve read and heard, you need to spend top dollar or else run the risk of crappy accommodations, crappy service, crappy food, crappy drinks, crappy beach, crap, crap, crap.  Kelly was set on an “inexpensive” all-inclusive.  This is why I suggested a cruise (not that I’ve been on a cruise either).  How often do you hear someone complain about the food, beverages, or service on a cruise?  And I know there are some good deals out there.  Kelly just wasn’t having it.  It was her way or no way.

I was also concerned about Kelly’s explicit desire to go somewhere warm and go to the beach and read and have cocktails.  Sure, I could do that for a day, or for parts of several days, but not for an entire week.  I prefer activity.  I would want to go snorkeling, go kayaking, see any sights to be seen, do stuff.  And while I wouldn’t mind doing any of those things alone (assuming Kelly would not want to do them), I suppose she would think I was ditching her, and she’d be resentful.  Would that be so wicked of me?  You want to read, so read.  I’m antsy, so I’m doing something.  Everyone ought to be happy, right?

I remained noncommittal.  Granted, I probably wouldn’t hate going on “her” vacation, but was it really how I wanted to spend my vacation dollars, dollars that I don’t really have?

Months passed, and there was no further mention of Kelly’s Vacation.  Fine by me.

The other day, I received an email.  “Let’s go out for drinks after work tonight and plan our vacation destination.”

Huh?

I had been leaning towards going on Kelly’s Vacation, but then I thought about it some more.  I’m not saying I don’t want to go because it’s not a cruise, and I suggested cruise, but I’m irked by Kelly’s unwillingness to consider other options.  And then there’s that twenty pounds I gained during my mother’s illness and recovery.  I wasn’t eating right, and I was too exhausted to go to the gym during the day.  Everyone kept telling me to remember to take care of myself, and I know it makes sense, but all I could think during that time was that I had to be there for my mother, be with her, and take care of everything that needed taking care of.  Things like eating right and exercising were not my priority.  Unfortunately, most of that twenty is still with me, and the thought of walking around in a bathing suit is disconcerting, to say the least.  I know I shouldn’t be so self-conscious, but I am, very much so.  I know Kelly (and anyone else) would say not to worry about it, that I look fine, and just go and have fun, but I can’t just shake those feelings so easily.  Believe me, I wish I could.  And Kelly, who is about half a foot taller than I am, is a size 4, no lie.  I really don’t need to spend a vacation feeling bad about myself.  Of course, I know better than to plead that case to Kelly.  She has always thought me beautiful.  She’d point out that my straight hair would look good, and hers would frizz, that I would tan like crazy, and she would burn in less than ten minutes without SPF 8,000.  But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t look like Laurel and Hardy.

So I came up with an excuse.  It’s a truthful excuse, it’s a plausible excuse, but it’s not the real excuse.

I have to redo my bathroom.  It’s my own fault.  I procrastinate like stupid — even when termites are chowing down on my house.  So, after dropping $1,000 to get rid of the little fuckers, I now have to replace the floor, floor covering, corner shower unit, and a section of wainscoting.

It’s a good reason to forgo a vacation, isn’t it?  I’d say a stable bathroom floor and shower are more critical than some fun in the sun.  Am I expected to be able to afford a new bathroom and a Caribbean vacation in the span of a few months?

Of course, if I really wanted to go on Kelly’s Vacation, I could do it, but Kelly doesn’t need to know that.  I have a good out, and I’m using it.  Besides, I never said I definitely would go.

I agreed to meet Kelly after work yesterday for drinks.  I thought it would be better to tell her face-to-face than by email that I wouldn’t be vacationing with her this winter.  When I returned from lunch yesterday, there was another email from Kelly.  She had to work late and could we reschedule for next week to plan our vacation destination.

I just couldn’t let it drag on to another week.  I emailed back to her that I apologetically could not go on vacation due to the expense of the bathroom redo.  I even tried to soften the blow.  After two years of near misses, Sandy, Suzanne, and I are once again considering a girls’ weekend at this place.  Strongly considering, as in, this year it may finally happen.  Hell, $215 for two nights’ stay, all meals included?  And it’s BYOB, so no big bar tabs?  And a saintly salad bar and a sinners’ sundae bar?  Hell, yeah.  I included some of the pertinent info in my email and asked Kelly if she would be interested.  If she declines, I will not push her.  I will respect her decision.

I sent the email just after 2:30.  No response as yet.  I think it’s safe to say she’s pissed.

I feel bad if she’s upset, but considering I never really agreed to the vacation, I had no part in planning the vacation, and I can’t easily afford the vacation, I think I did the right thing.  Maybe it was selfish of me (I don’t think so), but am I supposed to throw down a few thousand bucks in the name of friendship?

No doubt, she thinks I ruined her vacation, but if what she wants to do is sit at the beach and read all day, then why do I even need to be there?  In other words, if she wants that vacation so badly, couldn’t she just go by herself?  (Yeah, I know, she wouldn’t have someone to split the cost of the room with.)

Nevertheless, why must I be responsible for her happiness?

Comments:

Kermit

I’m sitting here eating my late lunch – a tasty spinach pie.  There’s this café downtown that makes really yummy ones.  The dough is super, super thin, so you don’t feel like you’ve eaten an entire pizza crust.  There’s just the right amount of spices and gooey cheese.  My only wish would be that they add sliced black olives.

Mmmm.  Spinach.  I love spinach.  Always have, even as a kid.  Freakish child.

Actually, I’ve always loved all my leafy greens.  Kale, collards, escarole, even dandelion greens.  Just boil ‘em up, and I could eat a bowlful – plain.  The darker, the better.  Don’t dare show me a salad with iceberg lettuce in it.  That stuff should be outlawed.  Talk about useless.

And to think, my dark leafy greens are really good for me, chock full of antioxidants.  Imagine that!  I suppose it makes up for my hatred of broccoli, especially those thick, stringy stems.  Blech.  Oh, and what about the smell of it cooking?  Just like garbage.  No, wait, that’s cabbage.  No cooked cabbage for me, but raw is okay.  Hey, that’s healthier, too!

How can I love spinach and detest broccoli?  That’s not normal, is it?  Do broccoli lovers typically loathe spinach?

I’ve finished my pie now.  Time to check my teeth for green stuff.

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A Look Back

I’m still here!

Christmas was lovely.  I enjoyed ten whole days off from work.  I had some ambitious plans, but most were scrapped in favor of sleep.  Much sleep.  Like I’ve never slept before.  It was as if I were competing with the cats those first few days.  I guess I needed it.  After that period of hibernation, I pepped up a little and spent some time with first the visiting Jenny and second the visiting Olivia and Dave.  I didn’t partake in the post-holiday sales (despite all the mad, crazy gift cards I received), figuring everything was too picked over.  I did, however, do a fragrance exchange at B&B Werx.  (Note to Jackie:  If one doesn’t eat melon, chances are she probably doesn’t care for melon scented stuff.  Next time, go for the Gardenia or Sweet Pea, s’il vous plait.)  While there, I saw these cute, goodie-stuffed mugs for half off:

Hmmm.  Note that it is winter themed, not Christmas themed.  So I bought three and decided to give myself all of 2006 to sew those three as yet unsewn scarves.  No pressure this week!

The celebrating continued through the week with a family birthday (post to follow) and Jeannie and Leah’s First Annual Come As You Are (As Long As You’re Not Dressed Up) New Year’s Eve Lazy Slugs Film Fest.

I truly intended to post the birthday entry on the actual birthday, but that didn’t happen.  In the meantime, as I have been catching up on everyone’s diaries, I noticed several posting the first sentence/paragraph for the first entry of each month of 2005.  Here’s mine:

January –

I was feeling a teensy bit better about this place, and then Mary the Pest struck.

February –

Mary the Pest game me a Page-a-Day cat cartoons calendar for Christmas.  It has to be the unfunniest thing ever.  Dental x-rays are more amusing.

March –

No more breathing tube!

April –

It’s a good thing I decided not to go to the gym at lunch today, because I just realized I left my exercise clothes at home.

May –

By the time I had finished showering last Thursday, I was standing ankle deep in water.  Yup, I had a clogged shower drain.  Dang.

June –

Who says my job is thankless?  That it doesn’t pay well?

July –

The amazing Jenny (soon to be Dr. Jenny!), my friend since first grade, is visiting this week.  Her parents’ 50th anniversary is Sunday.

August –

Okay, so I had this wonderfully bizarro dream last night.  It was one of those dreams that seems to go on forever and ever and eventually becomes a miniseries.  In a nutshell:  Blind Date with Brad Pitt.

September –

Washington, you are responding MUCH too slowly to this crisis.

October –

144.  That’s what I bowled in my third game last week.

November –

Email to coworker attorney from other (out of state) office (paraphrased):
Following last week’s meeting/paper flurry in your office, we mistakenly wound up with some of your documents.  Please let me know in what manner you would like your stuff returned to you (FedEx, pdf file).  Thanks bunches.  XOXO, Autumn

December –

You know what happens when, for the first time in several months, you are a good little do-bee and make your sandwich for tomorrow’s lunch the night before, instead of in the morning when you are rushing to get out the door?

Wishing all a happy, healthy 2006!