More This and That

DH was listening to the idiot Octomom 911 tape when listening to Howard Stern last week. I haven’t heard it yet, but DH said that is was maddening to listen to because she was completely off her rocker. Screeching and wailing, freaking out, but the worst was when the idiot said that she was going to kill herself… in front of the other children! The 911 operator had enough presence of mind to tell her not to say that in front of her kids. What a freaking nutcase. Those poor children!

 

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Why do people ignore their dogs? Barkbarkbark in this neighborhood for hours on end, all over the place. WTF? And I don’t get mad at the dogs—not their fault—but their stupid owners’ fault. Stupid people.

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I hiked for nearly an hour in Pima Canyon on Thursday morning, about elevenish. I was astonished that so many people were there. More importantly, I don’t believe that the South Mountain trails are really too kid-friendly. Lots of jagged rocks poking through the surface after all the rains this winter, a constant incline, no shade, etc etc. Are parents really so stupid these days?

 

No, wait, don’t answer that.

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I got my hockey pants in the mail today. I have to return them. They just won’t work; my ass is just too fat and they’re made for men who put the waistband of their pants below their beer (or Warcraft) bellies. Not surprised.

 

Today, I went to the hockey shop (Behind the Mask) near my house and a really nice guy helped me size a helmet and adjusted it for me, and even gave me the proper size of face cage. I also bought gloves. I’m about ready to go.

 

While we were chatting and he was adjusting my helmet, I asked him if the new facility in Queen Creek has been good for them. He said yes, actually, it has. There’s been more movement, more demand, more interest in this area. I later told him that for me it was a wash – I’m dead between the two facilities (see previous discussions of) and CSC has the baby leagues I need for now.

 

I said that it should be looking up – I see more and more kids and adults blading around, more than I’ve seen for years. Sports associated with inline skates invariably follow.

 

My clinic starts Tuesday. I’m excited but apprehensive. Am I ready? No. Am I anywhere near the shape I need to be in for this? Hell no. Doing it anyway.

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Earlier this month, The Young Victoria premiered in London. In this movie, the real life Queen Victoria’s great-great-great-great granddaughter (hmmm wait *mutters* Victoria, Edward, (g) George, (g-g) George, (gg-g) Elizabeth, (ggg-g)Andrew, (gggg-g) Beatrice… OK, good), Princess Beatrice–colloquially “of York”, properly “of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”–had a cameo as a lady in waiting. Princess Beatrice has the bug eyes of the Hanoverians and actually very strongly resembles a portrait of Queen Victoria done when she was in her twenties. Anyway, there was good reason for this royal kid to be there.

 

Here are Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie flanking their mother at the premiere:

 

 

 

(Photo: Entertainment Press/Splash News)

 

These girls are the granddaughters of the Queen of the United Kingdom, nieces to the recently-awarded Best Dressed Man (Prince Charles), and have access to the finest stylists and clothes in the world.

 

So WHY IN THE HELL ARE THEY DRESSED LIKE CRAP???

 

This isn’t the first time, and for criminy sakes you would think they’d learn. These young ladies are twenty and eighteen, supposedly somewhat sophisticated, and old enough to know that you don’t wear crappy off the rack items (or things that look like them) that fit poorly and/or make you look decades older than you are. Eugenie’s too young to wear something that makes her tits look like they’re already migrating south like a sixty year old, and Beatrice looks ghastly in that shapeless piece of crap. Their mother has learned to dress well, and their Wales and Phillips cousins dress beautifully. So why the horrible choices? Damn.

 

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 Check out my recent entries at Meant to Be, my sister blog. Things are moving along.

Shift of Gears

At one point in my elation yesterday, I realized that when one blogs about an adoption journey, one should not have in the title “fail” or “failboat.” So, after much consideration, I decided that further discussions on this topic will be held in this venue. When I write there, I’ll notate it here, and vice versa.  Here’s where I’ll blather about the other topics of lesser gravity than this all-important journey.

Go to Meant to Be to see what happened yesterday.

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President Obama  is in town today. Big whoop. He’s going to Dobson High School–a stupid place for such a high profile visitor, since its fields are right off of a major thoroughfare. Someone didn’t think their cunning plan all the way through.

Instead of traipsing around here, why isn’t he in Washington, doing his job? What good does an expensive visit to the armpit of the valley really do?

GBTW, sir.

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The reservations I’d had in accepting my SIL’s offer for the Ireland trip are starting to rise to the top of the simmering cauldron. She’s given a directive that everyone shall only bring one carry-on, and when her mother said she was checking her bags in, SIL said something to the effect of  ‘then you’ll have to find your own way to the hotel’ because she isn’t going to wait for anyone who checks bags.

I shook my head when this exchange reached my ears. I’m usually the last one to defend my MIL (she drives me insane), but this is ridiculous and rude. SIL is determined to make everyone miserable before any of us steps on the plane.

I’ll bring it up at the dinner this weekend, in front of everyone. That way I have witnesses and she’ll have to control herself. Someone has to.

Why make it miserable? It’s going to be a make-or-break trip as it is.

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Back to work. More later.

Getting Ready to Jump Into the Deep End

For the past several weeks, I’ve been loath to bug DH about finishing up the adoption paperwork. He’s now a head honcho and trying to unravel the mess of things to do in his new job. Now that things have settled down, we sat down and went through all the paperwork and got all the 178650 pages that needed to be signed. Now all I have to do is copy things and send the packet off.

I left a message with the social worker attached to the adoption agency we’re working with, telling her that I had a question of definition on one thing, and that on Tuesday I’d be dropping the packet in the mail. When I hung up, I couldn’t help but smile.

At dinner, I couldn’t withhold my glee. Now and again I’d grin and quickly clap my hands in suppressed excitement. Finally, things have settled down enough to actually DO IT.  Elated and hopeful, I’m scrutinizing the paperwork to make sure we didn’t miss anything. I’ll make copies tomorrow and YEAH BABY! WE’RE ON OUR WAY!!

YEEHAAA!

*SPLOOSH!*

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The hot topic of these two weeks has been that trainwreck who has 14 kids via IVF so that she’d “have someone to love me.” On welfare and food stamps, dependent on her parents, she’s had plastic surgery and is banking on the media frenzy to finance her piss poor choices in life.  And you know what she’s going to do if (when?) she gets money? More plastic surgery and more IVF, and therefore the increase in both her Angelina Complex and more litters of children. She’s apparently quite proficient at doctor shopping. She also appears to be adept at fraud.

She doesn’t care for the six she already had, the grandfather has to go back “to the Iraq” (ha) to finance the care, and the grandmother is tapped emotionally and physically.

What pisses people off from all walks of life the most is the fact that the taxpayers are paying for this completely screwed up chick and her children.

I’m elated that the gravy train hasn’t reached her! She needs serious mental help (a chronic liar with security and other issues), and her children need to be placed with families–yes, plural–who can actually care for them.

I really don’t want to type her name; she disgusts me. Octomom’s nicknames include Octard and Octopussy, and there are other rude nicknames floating around out there. I don’t think there’s a word strong enough in the English language to fully reflect the negative backlash in this situation.

I don’t think there’s a single person out there dealing with infertility and loss whose nerves aren’t humming with indignation and rage. I certainly don’t have the money for one, let alone how many she’s had (allegedly financed through a workplace injury settlement, but since she’s incapable of keeping her stories straight, who knows), so between her and her unethical doctor I know I want to fire them both out to outer space.

 

There is only one party I feel truly sorry for, and that party is those poor children, every single one. Not only are the older ones’ formative years completely screwed up, the octuplets will always be a curiosity and the recipient of all sorts of opinions, good and bad. I hope CPS gets involved, pronto.

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So a new week is here. Tomorrow is a half-day, a compromise with the boss. I’m going to go for a nice long walk and enjoy this wonderful weather. The system is finally moving in from California and the temps have dropped to levels appropriate for February. We’re supposed to get rain and up north they’re supposed to get more snow. It’s looking like it will be a great week!

Salted Slug, That’s Me

My response to stress is not like others’ response: many people become manic. They go nuts, can’t sit still, work out more, walk more, talk more, etc.

I become a salted slug.

I get depressed. I stop all activity. I stop hiking, walking, working out. I sit on the compy or read interminably to get my brain off of the topic. I ignore my body. I mindlessly eat a shitload of cheddar Goldfish. This time around, I’m back on Warcraft, which actually still bores the hell out of me, but I’m back in touch with old pals, which makes the boredom tolerable (my saving grace is that I’m not getting the expansion pack). I ignore my homework until the day before it’s due, instead of the good habit of doing my homework on a quiet Sunday.

With any luck, all of that is going to change. Last night, I was typing back and forth with a pal on WoW when DH calls out, “Baby!”

The tone broke me out of my trance. “Yeah?”

“Come here!”

The one night that he leaves his cell in the car is the one day there’s an important message on it. The one company he was hoping to go to had their recruiter contact DH and say, “They want to hire you ASAP.” The problem was that it was already nine, so it has to wait until today.

So last night, and this morning before I left the house, we’re cautiously happy. It depends on the offer they make. Dan’s condition is that it’s contract to hire–and the guy who interviewed him was having difficulties getting his boss to give him the green light. The downside to the contract deal is that we’ll have to do COBRA for three months–not cheap–but you just cannot be without health insurance these days.

So things are looking up.

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The preliminary offer means that once an appropriate offer is made, we can go forward with the adoption process. For obvious reasons (see previous posts), it was on hold. Assuming it’s an appropriate offer, we’ll sit down, complete it, and send it in to the agency. Then we’ll have to wait anyway for the application and the fingerprints to crawl through their process.

Cross your fingers, please.

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Yesterday, the media was all panicky over the ’skinhead plot’ on Obama’s and 102 other people’s lives. Funny, by this morning, it’s been diffused to a couple of idiotic wanna-bes spouting off with racist bullshit.

Nice little piece of fearmongering.

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I can’t wait until November 5. Since I truly believe that neither candidate is appropriate for the highest office, it won’t be with a sense of relief in that regard. Rather, it will be a release from all of the ridiculous media bullcrap.

I am wary of Barack Obama because after all of this time, nobody still really knows who he is; he’s been cleansed of any real past (his flighty mother has been elevated to sainthood and his absentee father is not spoken of at all). I’m not an ignorant fool–I know he’s no Arab or Muslim, or any of that ridiculous rumor mill bullshit–but really, who is this first-term senator from Illinois? Why are people so hysterical over him? That kind of mindless hysteria bothers me, and I don’t care who is the object of the hysteria. Old biddys who are vehemently anti- many liberal stances are voting for him, but can’t explain why to save their souls. It’s a weird phenomenon. And where in the hell did he come from that he has this insane rise?  Nobody heard of him until about a year and a half ago.  

I’m no fan of John McCain, either; he represents my congressional district, and as far as senators go, he’s been relatively steady and all of that; certainly he’s no Ted Stevens. For me, the only thing going for him is that he is a known quantity compared to Mr. Obama.  I’m not worried about his age–look at his ass-kicking mother–but I do wonder about his legendary rages, his irrationality, his vindictiveness. I do not believe he’s Bush, Continued–people who are saying that could never then vote for many people, as for the majority of the time, a candidate of a particular party will vote for the party line the vast majority of the time. Duh. But McCain has many weaknesses that makes him equally undesirable as a potential president.

DH has wished often that we were voting for the Veep candidates–both of them are more desirable than their running mates. You want change? Let’s aim for Sarah Palin: she’s a charmer and a half, smart, witty, and has actually held her own in the ghastly mud-slinging from the media and everyone else. Talk about a woman with guts! Have you noticed that every single thing they try to pin on her has pretty much slid off, much like egg off teflon? Not that I’m naive enough to think that she’s faultless–not like my boss, who has been useless since her nomination, praising her to the skies every chance she can–but then none of the four represent the lily of a blameless life.

Eh, that’s just dreaming. Don’t fool yourselves, folks: we’re screwed either way this election cycle.

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The paint is done and the tile is in. It’s beautiful. I like the fact that I can Swiffer the place. I’ll post on that later–it’s phenomenal.

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I don’t care what is written about me as long as it isn’t true.  –Katharine Hepburn

Confession Session 3, Part 2

REITERATION: Still going to be some graphic scenes here. You are still under warning.

 DH had a playstation, and he had bought Sly Cooper II. I was watching him play as usual that night when I started to feel very uncomfortable. I figured it was a delayed MTX Express, so I went to the bathroom downstairs there. I had severe discomfort on my left side. By the time I’m on the toilet, I’m breathing hard, nothing happening. I try to stand up and I can’t, I’m in so much pain. I manage to get my underwear back on, but almost immediately drop to my hands and knees in pain. I crawled out to the living room and called my husband’s name.

 He’s playing away on his PS2. “What?”

 I wail his name. “It huuuuuuuuuurts!” I’m on the floor, this screaming ball of pain in my abdomen getting worse and worse. I braced my feet on the walls to counter the pain.

 I have been burned on a fire and spent a week in the burn ward; I have had my right knee reconstructed after I blew it out in high school, and a few years ago I had it scoped. I know pain… and this was untouchable.

 DH flipped out when he saw me writhing on the floor, and called 911. The FD was there in less than five minutes, but it felt like forever. All I could do is cry piteously, with DH holding my hand. I told him to call my mother as they wheeled me out the door.