Hurray I heard from the bellydancer. Can I just say *phew*? I had all sorts of awful thoughts about that job. First I worried that I was pestering her with my emails and that she’d probably had a family emergency or something and the last thing on her mind was me, then I worried that she hated what I did and skipped out on me, then I decided not to analyse it to death and just keep sending emails periodically. Turns out she’s just taken possession of her new dance studio and has been busy getting it set up for a May 15th opening and she’s only just now getting to her emails.

Which is a relief but now I’ve just sent the first bill and I am now stuck worrying whether she will faint at the price. I can’t get used to charging the fee I came up with. I come from a long track record of working for minimum wage on up to where I am now (which is waaaaay low end of the scale compared to what I’m charging for the same services freelance). So it’s a bizarre feeling charging someone $60 bucks an hour. I feel like I don’t deserve to be charging that much, and I also feel like she’ll see the bill and balk. But, she knew my fee going into it and even said that it was reasonable so we’ll see how quickly I get a check. I stipulated that payment is due within 5 days of receipt of the bill so I’ll keep my lovely reader posted 🙂

In other news, looks like I get to hook up with biodad on Friday which will be nice. Still don’t know what we’re going to do, but we’ll figure something out. He mentioned something about seeing if there are any concerts going on and doing that rather than having dinner (we can eat anytime he says). I reminded him that this is not exactly a mecca of culture here and all I could find to do was see a movie or get our blood/glucose levels checked. Exciting eh? Maybe we’ll just hang out at a park. The thing is that he’s very athletic and outdoorsy, and I’m just not. Ah well, we’ll see how it goes.

Still no word from the bellydancer. I’m starting to get a little mad. This may be quite stupid of me but I’m rather new to this freelance gig, but I didn’t have either of my two jobs sign a contract. If I end up with a third job, there will be a notarized, written contract so I don’t have to sit and stress about the fact that I have $600 bucks owed to me and no way to prove it. I also need to work out how to pay tax on it so I don’t get fucked by Uncle Sam (ooer missus!).

Saw X-Men 2 last night and it rocked quite a lot. I remember back in high school, or maybe it was a little after, I had a friend who was a huge fan and I might have had a thing for this guy, so I began reading the comics. And I remember liking Wolverine and his sexy Adamantium claws, but I thought Storm was the coolest. Sadly, that phase was short-lived and I remember very little about the storylines. So I wanted to see X2 when it came out but I figured I’d better rent the first movie beforehand. When I did, everything came back to me. “Oh right they are *mutants*, not superheroes!” “Hey I remember Jean Grey!” and so forth. I’m glad I saw that first because I wouldn’t have enjoyed part 2 nearly as much otherwise.

So needless to say I really liked X2, as did my daughter. That was probably the highlight of my week. I did go to my little cousin’s 3rd bday party but you know, it’s a room full of people I don’t know and a little boy wired on candy. He’s an absolute doll, but frankly, seeing my uncle all cosied up to his new gf still isn’t sitting well with me and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Then Wednesday I had a bitch of a headache so stayed home from work, felt 100% better Thursday, and Friday I felt like I had a cold coming on (you know, skin is sore to the touch, just standing up is an effort etc.) But I guess I’m not because I feel fine now. So it’s been a bit of an odd week.

So, signing off for now.

What a weekend. What a bombshell. I don’t know how I feel about it yet.

It’s been a bit of a crazy week. I went from puttering around on the TCZ site to gung ho make a lot of changes to it at once and then go live with it in just a few days. It’s been a whirlwind, and it seems to be going over okay. It did turn out well if I do say so myself. Just a few minor tweaks here and there to go, and then I can start adding new features that people are coming up with. I wish I could get my bellydancer to write me back. I finally got her site up and running, domain and all, and now it’s been five days since she’s written. I hope she’s just away or something.

Anyway, so the family (that would be me, my cousin, his wife, and my grandparents) had a garage sale at my grandparent’s house this weekend. I took Friday off to help out with it which meant getting up at 5.30am (ugh!) and it went all right. Very tiring and on top of it all I had the most horrendous cramps. Ohhhh no she’s talking about periods and such – Ewww. Well deal with it – that pain was awful. And unusual for me. I never get cramps like that so I’m wondering where these came from. I couldn’t even stand up straight.

Anyway, at the sale also was Ida’s (my cousin’s wife) sister, Sherry. My uncle stopped by as well, mainly to drop the bombshell: he is now dating Sherry. It’s been a bare 6 months since his wife, my beloved aunt, died. Apparently they have been dating for about a month and a half now. She’s riding around in the truck my aunt rode around in when she was well. She’s probably over at my aunt’s house, spending the night, invading her space.

My question is why the hell are men so quick to jump into the next relationship? If my spouse of over 20 years had just died a few months ago, I’d be gutted for a long time. My mother mourned for my dad for years – until the day she died in fact. And what makes this doubly awkward is the fact that the woman he’s seeing is his wife’s son’s sister-in-law. In relation to me, it’s my cousin’s wife’s sister. The one who was in prison. Not jail, but the actual state penitentiary. So fucked up. I still can’t quite get my head around this. Yesterday at the sale he came driving up with her in his truck and it stung.

I just don’t think it’s right. It’s too soon.

At what point do I step back from certain family members and say ‘Hey, I’m a grownup now, you have to stop trying to run my life.’ In theory, this should stop as soon as you move out. But I don’t live in a perfect world and damnit I hate being made to feel guilty – especially when I don’t even know what I did to deserve it. Grrrr. Okay, so I’ve spoken to my grandmother a couple of times this week, and she’s been really short with me. You know how you can just detect when someone’s not happy with you? I became an expert on it with my mom, the queen of silent treatments. And she must have gotten it from my grandmother because I find she’s doing the same thing now. So now I get to try and rack my brain and figure out what I could have possibly done to irritate her.

Yesterday she nearly had a fit because I offered to bring a jug of milk to the Easter brunch she’s having. She was telling me what we’re having, and said ‘blah blah blah, and juice.’ I asked if she needed me to bring anything, or pick anything up for her. She said no. I said, ‘Well, how about if we bring some extra milk?’ And she says, ‘No we are having JUICE.’ and got positively petulant about it. For fuck sake it’s just milk! My cousin’s wife is bringing stuff, why is it okay for her to bring things and not me?

*sigh* I know it’s a totally stupid thing, and I think if she hadn’t been irked with me about other things (though what those other things are, I dunno) she wouldn’t have had such a fit about the milk. But see how this works? When I call, she acts as if I’m putting her out because I wanted to know if she had any ideas for where I could hide my daughter’s new bike. ‘Oh you’ll have to ask grampa.’ Well, why? Doesn’t she live in the same house? It just irritates the fuck out of me when she acts like this. For fuck sake, my daughter is more mature than that. It’s an old story though. I grew up idolising my grandparents because, well because they always brought presents and they lived far away so I didn’t see them much. Now I know why we lived far away.

I know I’m making a big deal out of nothing, and I wish I could get it in my head that I don’t care if she’s miffed at me. But I do care. I hate it when people are upset or mad at me, and I always want to fix it when I really should go about my life and be happy. I suppose it’s this hangup that keeps me in Nebraska. but that’s another rant altogether.

So I typo’d on an article on my work website. Now I feel like shite, and have done nothing but make myself look like an ass all day today. I wish I could go home, rewind and start this day over again.

First, I got a call from my boss saying that he got a nasty email from a department that *my* department is not fond of saying there were errors in their article I posted for them about a raffle. Well fuck me, I took a look and what do you know. I left a ‘d’, and ‘c’ out of a couple of words, and put an apostrophe in the wrong place (though, to be fair, it was a proper name of a place and I thought there actually was an apostrophe in the name. But I was wrong.) But before I looked I told my boss that I thought I’d cut and pasted the information from stuff they’d given me, which is what I normally do. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have looked first. Because now he’s sent them a message saying that the errors must have come from them. Which of course, they denied and got huffy about. So not only did I make myself look dumb, I just made my boss look dumb in front of the one person he does not get on well with in our organization.

Then I had to do some damage control and explain that yes, the errors were my fault, I apologised and explained that I did cut and paste some of it, while some of it I had to type myself because the poster/flyer they gave me was too large to shrink and still be readable.

Oi. On top of that mess, I missed a conference call yesterday because I thought it was happening today. This was after I emailed the host of the call to say I’d be there for it today. *sigh* I want a rock to crawl under please. I think I will lock my office door and just hole up in here for the rest of the day.

Snow snow snow. In April. Big, fat, wet, heavy snow too, not the nice kind you can just brush off your car, but the kind that requires an actual shovel to get it off. *sigh* Nebby is so weird for weather. What was even weirder waas that during the storm yesterday, there were several booming, rolling thunderclaps. It was eerie and surreal. It’s not supposed to thunder during a snowstorm!

Anyway, the kidlet got her ears pierced this weekend. I used to tell her that she would have to wait until she was 13 for that because, well, because I had to wait. Then I thought, well that’s stupid, if she wants her ears pierced now, I feel she’s old enough to handle it. But as we were shopping for shorts at the mall, I decided to tell her she could do it if she wanted. The thing is, she was scared. I think she really wanted to do it, but was afraid it would hurt. This from a kid who doesn’t even bat an eye when she has to get a shot. So after much convincing from me and a friend of ours who works at the mall, she held her hand behind her back and made me guess whether it was ‘1’ or ‘2’. I said 2 and luckily, that was right.

So she got in the chair, tightly grasping the stuffed ladybug and making nervous jokes about ripping its head off if necessary. They did both her ears at once and she didn’t even blink. She said “That’s it?” Hehehehe.. Silly girl. The rest of the weekend was spent admiring her pretty ruby earrings and doing the ‘I got my ears pierced’ dance.

I wonder if this thing has stopped being a pain. Don’t really have anything exciting to blog about. I refuse to talk about the war and the only cool thing that’s happened this week is that we bought the new Zelda game and have been happily addicted to it ever since. Right now is a good time to be holed up in the house. The other night apparently someone fired a gun into a house a few doors down from me. No one was hurt, but police found six bullet holes in the wood. So I have been afraid to let the kidlet go outside to play. This used to be a failry benign town, as much as I hate its dreariness. But even I have to admit the violence is more frequent than ever. But I do refuse to blame it on any one ethnicity like some other residents here do. Apparently our problems started when “those damn Mexicans” started coming here and taking our jobs. (If you could see me right now, watch my eyes as they roll). I hate to burst the hicks’ bubbles, but quite a lot of the violence in this town is related to *gasp* drunken white people!! *SHOCK – HORROR*.

A couple years ago I worked as a waitress at a steakhouse, and I had a friend there who was, shall we say, friendly with a number of drug addicts and gang members and you know what? They were all white. One night I was parked outside her house waiting for her to get home (no way was I going inside without her as her boyfriend was home and had a slew of idiot around drinking beers). Suddenly a car comes flying around the corner, it shut its lights off and ground to a halt right behind my car. The occupants inside, all 3 white boys jumped out and flew across the street and into neighbour’s backyards, blending in with the shadows. Seconds later a police car races by, lights flashing, looking for them I presume. But they didn’t see them and didn’t notice the car they were after was parked right behind me. I don’t know what they did – I didn’t stick around to find out, but suffice to say I had no desire to hang around this gang of idiots anymore. I liked my friend a lot, she was a sweetheart, but I hated her boyfriend and his friends – all white, all self-professed members of some stupid ‘westside’ gang of privileged delinquents. Some of their parents are prominent business people in the community. I wish I could open up the eyes of the ‘I hate Mexicans’ crowd here, but it’s a lost cause. It’s like arguing with a wall.

Anyway, I doubt I’d find much different anywhere else in the country. I’m looking to the day when we can move away from here, but I can’t think of a single place I’d want to move to in the United States. I don’t know what I want. Maybe it’ll come to me. Until then, I’ll toil away here.