I'm Taking My Act on the Road

Bossholio is gone all this week, meaning I'm running around like a cat with it's tail on fire, playing catch up but never actually accomplishing any damn thing.

Taking a break to catch ya'll up on the latest news in and around the holler can't hurt. I can't get any behinder.

Ma's been moved from the nut hut to the nursing home for some physical therapy. She didn't want to go at first, there were phone calls from doctors, I called Ma and she hung up on me. All this took place during my lunch break last Friday. Eventually they sent in a hostage negotiator the social worker from the nursing home who convinced her to go.

It's a decent place, unlike the nightmarish hell hole they have here in Hee-Haw county. There's a beauty parlor on site, they have a manicurist come in twice a week, pets can come visit, there's all kindsa food and activities. They even have a guitarist come in to play during the morning coffee social twice a week. Hell, it's like summer camp.

I'm ready for the home. It doesn't seem like a bad deal at all.

Ma has a roommate, Dorothy, who can't hear unless you put your face right by hers and scream, so conversations with her are fun. At least Ma can sit there and babble about residents shooting their pet possums in the middle of the night and Dorothy can just smile and nod and thank the powers that be for the gift of silence.

Meanwhile, back at the trailer...

Saturday was Pupzilla's first birthday. I'd hoped to have new pictures, but between running to Big City, working on Ma's room and The Asylum, I've not had much time to do anything. If I sit still too long I fall right to sleep.

I'm more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

I finally got that package of jewelry supplies from Istanbul. I'm hopeful I'll get a chance to work on them some this weekend.

In addition to everything else, my FMF is doing the nasty on me lately. This time it's attacking my toes and my thumbs. I get home at night, take my shoes off, put my feet up and watch in amazement as my toes turn into pudgy little divining rods, doing their own little dance, pointing in every direction.

Seriously. It's like they're possessed.

Sometimes one will curl up and shoot off to the left, all on it's own.

You can't get entertainment like this just anywhere. I'm available for parties and fundraisers. Email me for pricing information.

Anywho...

I should get back to work. Ya'll have a good one. We'll talk again soon.

Later Taters!

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Buggy Inspiration

The power was out in Frog Pond Holler yesterday, giving us all an extra day off from The Asylum. We knew about it ahead of time, the electric company was making some repairs to the line, way up yonder on that hidden pass where crap falls down every time it snows, causing us to be sparkless for weeks at a time.  As a bonus, they had the lights back on by noon, five hours sooner than their predicted finish time.

We could have worked half a day. A good employee would have taken a shower, gotten dressed and headed on in to the office without hesitation. I used to be a good employee. But good employees get more than a 1.5% raise every two years.

So I stayed home and worked on Ma's bathroom.

I have been to the seventh level of Purgatory, it lies beyond her bathroom door. I called upon the forces of assorted toilet cleaning deities, casting their scrubby bubbles upon the grotesquely stained porcelain and did not emerge until the sparkling shine became so intense, one could become blinded if looking directly in to it.

I have worked a miracle with these hands people.

Ma's social worker called me yesterday. Today, she will be moved to a nursing facility for physical therapy, probably  just for two weeks, then she's coming home. He feels that she's been exaggerating her symptoms to keep from going anywhere because she's decided she likes it there. When I talked to her yesterday, she told me she wasn't going anywhere.

Today could get interesting.

The place she's being moved to has field trips, a Wii with a big screen t.v., two computers with internet access, arts and crafts and a garden with a gazebo.

If she won't go, I will. Sounds like a vacation to me.

In the meantime, I'm packing up all the clothes that are piled up all over her room, the ones she hoarded when she helped Aunt Moses run the work center for developmentally disabled adults. They don't fit anyone in the house, they never will and there's absolutely no reason to keep them. The Salvation Army is in for a big donation.

For the past few days, there's been a ladybug living on my bedside table.

Just the one.

I dunno what it's living on or why it doesn't go somewhere, but I figured it must be a sign.

Because sometimes you just need for there to be a sign.

So I looked it up and found that ladybugs are a sign of ending worry and finding happiness, of letting things flow and of the granting of wishes.

Coolness.

It's Friday ya'll. It can only go up from here. Have an awesome weekend. We'll talk again soon.

Later Taters!

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The Title Kinda Sums it All Up

I'm just....


Riding the Storm Out
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Of Yemen, Alyssa Milano and Istanbul

It's rainy and cold in Frog Pond Holler this morning and we're under our first winter storm watch of the season. Today I am thankful for the new tires and my 4x4.

Ma is still at "the place." I talked to one of her docs the other day, a real jerk, and he seemed to think she'd be there for another week or so.

I still haven't cleaned her room. I guess that's how I'll spend my weekend.

Remember the big garden fiasco of last year? Yesterday, T.A. got a visit from the guy who did the initial ground breaking. He said he'd finally gotten a working tiller and wanted permission to come clean up the now ginormous weed patch. There was poke growing in there over six feet tall. Unfortunately, I forgot about the mimosa that had sprouted there, I would have liked to have saved it, but there's more up on the bank. By the time I got home, that big eyesore of a weed patch was gone. I'm debating whether to get out there with the hoe and get some of the rocks out of it before the ground freezes. It'll give me an excuse to look for more archeological treasures like the big quartz scraping tool and pot shards that I already have.

Yes I'm a weirdo. By now you shouldn't be that surprised.

In other news...

I found the PERFECT supplier of earring bits on etsy. I have weird taste and had a hard time finding exactly what I wanted. When I did discover THE shop, I was a little worried because it was in feckin' Istanbul, but I eventually took the leap and ordered a whopping $11 worth of stuff.

Ooooo I like living on the edge.

But then? THEN those feckin' Yemenites or Yemeneese  or whatever decided to try to blow up the U.S. mail like a bunch of jerks. U.S. Customs is probably backed up like a Wisconsin cheese taster. It is taking forever for my crap to get here.  I suspect my little, manila envelope of exotic happy is laying in a pile somewhere or being used as a bomb sniffing dog's new chew toy.

Stupid terrorists.

I can't be hatin' too bad on all of Yemen though. Eddie Izzard was born in Yemen. Betcha didn't know that, did ya?

The worthless information that resides in my brain is endless, people.

In other, other news...

Elections were held Tuesday all over the United States. Honestly, I don't even know who was running for office locally. Here in Hee-Haw County there is already someone screaming about corruption of the polls, the SBI has been notified and there will probably be a recount. The flood of political ads over the past months, the 8 million little cardboard signs littering the road side between here and big city and the ugly accusations and name calling are all just a big carnival side show to me.

I have very little respect for our political system and I did not participate.

If you voted, I assume you researched the candidates and the issues at hand, making an intelligent decision and I applaud you for it. We are lucky to not only have the freedom to chose a candidate in this country, we also enjoy the freedom to remain silent if that's our choice.

For some reason, a few celebrities think their imagined self importance gives THEM the right to insult the American people, simply because their choices differ. On Twitter, @Alyssa_Milano called those who didn't vote a douche and @rainnwilson chose to call those not voting, a dick.

Really? And this is how you use your "celebrity" to make things better? Name calling? What are you.. FIVE?

Get the hell over yourself.

Anywho...

I'm up to my arm pits in new orders.. good news for The Cubicle Asylum, not so good for my blogging. Ya'll have a good one. We'll talk again soon.

Later Taters!

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Eddie Izzard, Fighting the Crazies and Trying Not to Become Homeless

It's cold as crap in the holler this morning and they are all ready muttering about the white stuff by this weekend.

Let the games begin!

I had one of those marathon Saturdays where I try to get a week's worth of running around done in a day. Nail salon, Wally World, hair salon AT Wally World, hospital then back to Wally World again.

If I don't have to set foot back in the World of Wally for a while it'll be okay with me.

In the middle of all that running around, I visited with Ma for a bit. I took her some socks and a few other things. She was using her lack of decent clothes as an excuse to keep from leaving the room and interacting with anyone there. The staff, not Ma, requested we bring her some things so she'd be out of excuses. This has left Ma a little snippy.

I wish I could tell you how she is, but I don't really know. Physically she seems pretty good, although to hear her tell it she's going to drop dead any time now from a mysterious flesh eating disease. She talks nonsense the whole time I'm there, at least now it's imagined gossip about the other patients instead of hallucinations of body parts.

I'm scared to death she'll end up in a nursing home and we'll lose everything we have, which isn't much. The land is in her name, the trailer in both and everyone keeps telling me that if she goes in a nursing home, the state will take it all. I called Legal Aide for advice and they told me to call the Senior Citizens legal aid number because it was an "Elderly Issue." So I did. There I was told that they couldn't advise ME on the situation, only Ma because she was the "Elder" and the land was in her name.

What the hell? So I pay for this damned trailer for the past 15 years and now it's going to be yanked out from under me? The only reason her name is on it, is because we had it refinanced.

I don't know. I've been hitting the "losing my shit" anxiety pills a lot lately.

I've pretty much decided that if that were to happen, I'll take whatever pittance the government will let me have, suck my 401K out of here and run like hell to the coast, where hopefully I'll have enough to put a down payment on a little shack somewhere.

Forget sleep. I toss, turn, flip and flop. Every time I close my eyes and try to relax I remember Ma's pitiful face as she watched me leave the other night, sitting in a dark room with nothing but a chair and a bed. Yeah I know, I sound a tad bit mellow dramatic but it's the truth. I feel like I'm being drawn back to that dark place I was in before I started therapy. I'm fighting it tooth and nail, but sometimes it still washes over me, that doom feeling. If I start to feel like I can't claw my way out of it, I may have to put a call in to the noggin doc.

When I wake up and can't go back to sleep, I've been watching stuff on Netflix on my little netbook. Last night at 2 a.m. I was lying in the dark, cuddled up with the dogs watching Eddie Izzard's "Believe." Ya'll should check it out. It's guaranteed to thwart oncoming anxiety attacks.

Well for me anyway.

For now, I should get to work. Bossholio is gone for the day, as is Lulu. I'm back on the end of the hallway all by myself. I'm going to take advantage of the situation by getting some stuff done.

Ya'll have a good one. Later Taters!!


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