Ridiculous Thoughts

So, I haven’t written in here for a few days. It’s hell keeping up with all of these blogs you know 🙂 but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I can’t get over how much they motivate me to write stuff down. Well, apart from my story over on Evolve, but well, I’m think that story wasn’t going anywhere anyway. I dunno if I can write horror.

Anyway, yes the big 3-2 today and what am I doing? I’m at work, writing a brochure, tweaking some webpages and I don’t have any plans to go out this evening. It’s Monday for goodness sake. Not that I’d have plans if it were Friday but well you know. There’s nothing in this town I wanna do anyway. Not even anyONE I wanna do *cheeky grin*.

My cousin has said he will be bottling and shipping my 12th of Maibock beer he brewed for me. Said it was “sweet and roasty”. Okiedokie. I’m getting six bottles of it and I have a feeling that there will be five and a half bottles of it still in my fridge a year from now. I’m not a beer drinker by any means. I never developed a taste for it. At parties when I was a teenie, I used to dump out my can of Bud and fill it with Coke and pretend I was getting drunk. I feel bad though because Rick went through a lot of trouble to brew this for me (and I basically whined that I wanted a beer named after me anyway) but ah well, I will definitely try to get it doon ma neck.

Had a lovely weekend that started with dinner and ice cream with Biodad that went very well. I enjoyed it a lot, as did my daughter. He’s a pretty neat guy. Look forward to meeting up with him again soon. Saturday the kidlet spent the night with the grandparents so had the house to myself and I veg’d to my heart’s content. Sunday we had a nice family dinner that was a combo Mum’s Day and my bday. I found out that my beautiful, gorgeous, sweet and wonderful daughter spent her own money on the presents she picked for me (a gorgeous cherrywood jewelry box and a perfect rose encased in glass). She is truly a wonderful kid *sniffle*.

What else… oh chatted with Meechie a bit last night. The boy always seems to call me when he’s in the loo. I don’t know how to take that 🙂 Kelly rang me at 6am this morning and it was great to talk ot her. I’ve caught her online once or twice but she’s busy jobhunting etc and really, it’s always nice to talk “live”.

Today, as I said, I’m working and then tonight I think I will play Zelda 🙂 I’m so exciting 🙂

What a weird week. Meeting yesterday with advertising firm we use. Was supposed to be “fun” according to my boss, was really just okay. The food was shite (mental note: don’t eatat the Garden Cafe in Hastings) and all I really did at the meeting was say “Why isn’t the website on that ad?” over and over. Fuck sake, what is the point of me busting my ass to put together a decent website when they don’t even bother to help me drive traffic to it? I mean, I could understand if I were doing this for, I dunno, one of my freelance jobs where they don’t have the budget for advertising, but I work for a hospital that has millions of dollars in the coffers, you’d think they could spare some change to put the fucking URL on print ads. Argh. No wonder the forums I added aren’t getting any use.

Right now I’m watching the 200th episode of ER. It’s pretty good but I could really do without all the vomit. I don’t handle vomit well. Not even my own child’s. You know how they say (who THEY are, I have no idea) when you have your own child you can deal with their body functions and odors with no problems, but with me, vomit is a different story. I don’t know if it’s the actual goops that hurls itself out of the body, or the involuntary wretching and *ugh* I’m making myself ill just writing about it. I think I’ll move on to the next topic.

Which is ummmm… Heheh, I don’t know. Oh, dinner withbiodad tomorrow night. Should be fun, I’m looking forward to it. We’re going for Chinese and who knows what. Depends on the weather. It rained most of the day today and again I regretted that I had to spend the day cooped up in my windowless office. There is something about the rain that I just love. I love turbulent weather more than sunny days. I really am only happy when it rains. Such beautiful weather. I remember this one time, on a hillside… Well I’ll keep that to myself. Thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are just… ohhh.. They thrill me. Anyway, if it’s not rainy tomorrow night, we might take my daughter to the new park the city built, or just let her ride her bike around or something.

Right ER’s over, I’m freezing (after being out in the rain to plant some flowers, I’m a bit nippy.) so my nice warm bed calls. night.

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.