Awwww ,,,,,

Sorry - Couldn't resist. Happy Halloween!

Freaky Friday!

After three attempts to remove Thinkpoint from my computer, including a total scrub of the hard drive, it's still f*cked up. Which means I'll have to haul it BACK to the computer dude (because they're too SPESHUL to come to YOU, doncha know) for yet another attempt.

This is getting old.

And! I lost all my bookmarks, all my favorite blogs, so I need some help. If you are in the list over there to the left under "Interesting People", I already have your site saved. If you read this, and you're NOT on the list over there, please let me know so that I can find you again. Email me at rockycat24(AT)yahoo(DOT)com or leave a note in the comments. Thank you!

God.

Here we go: Freaky Friday!




You should be able to click that pic to embiggen. It's a movie poster for "In the Realms of the Unreal", which is an absolutely fascinating documentary about Henry Darger, who was either a genius or crazier than a shithouse rat, or possibly a little of both. People who devote their entire lives to their art, especially if said art is a little out there, fascinate me. This dude spent his whole life inventing and chronicling a fantasy world where children fight the forces of evil. And nobody ever even found out about all he was doing until after he was dead, which is a bummer, because he never got any recognition during his lifetime.


Happy Freaky Friday, everybody, and have a happy Halloween! I think I'll give away my computer to a trick-or-treater.

Still Gone

Well, my computer's in the shop for the third time in two days. And I'm beginning to intensely dislike computer dudes; they ACT like they're the king turds of shit mountain, but when you ask them to actually FIX the problem you're paying them to repair, they just shrug their shoulders, like, "what do you want ME to do?"

I want you to FIX IT, asshole. And if you shrug your shoulders one more time, I'm gonna go postal on your butt.

I'll be back as soon as I can. Miss you!

Questions

1. A box of checks came to the house yesterday. A box of checks addressed to the previous owner. What do I do with them? And why is he getting checks with his old address sent to his old house a year and a half after he sold it?

2. The window installers are coming next Thursday, provided the stars align. It will be the owner of the company along with one or two helpers. They will be there the entire day. Do I tip them? How much? A percentage of the cost of the labor? Do I buy them lunch?

3. Is Corona beer made with Mexican water? Could drinking it give me Montezuma's revenge? Just wondering.

Yesterday

One good thing about going out on a rainy, gloomy day is that you've got the woods to yourself.

There was that one horrifying moment when I sneezed a big sneeze and ... well ... I'm pretty sure you don't want to hear about it, but other than that it was all good.

I don't know what kind of pine tree this is, but its needles were just as soft as down:

'

Back home, it was time to put up the Halloween bats, with help from The Runt:

'

And then I caught the end of the Bills game, which ... all I can say about that is, I sure know how to pick 'em. NOT.

'

Oh! Oh! And later, on The Amazing Race, came the best line I've heard all week. The poor vegetarian girl had to, like, eat the face off a (dead) (cooked) cow in order to stay in the game, and as she choked down the meat she grimly smiled and said, "Tastes like money!"

'

So, okay, question of the day: If you were a vegetarian, would you eat meat in order to have a chance at a million bucks? What's the worst thing you'd do for a chance at a million? What WOULDN'T you do for a chance at a million?

'

See, I haven't smoked for a year and a half now, and I have no intention of smoking again, but if I had to smoke a pack of cigs to advance to the next round, I'd do it. I could eat gross food, as long as it didn't involve live bugs or anything that had gone rotten. I couldn't do any kind of bungee jumping or anything that involved heights. No way. And I couldn't do anything, like, ethically bad.

'

How about you?

Freaky Friday

Okay, I talked in yesterday's post about how when I get sick, I go shopping. Hey, it makes sense to ME, anyway.

So! After getting my totally ironic flu shot, but before I found the world's best chest of drawers EVER, I headed for the junk shops of antiques row. Outside of the first store, out on the sidewalk, I saw an awesome (yes, I am aware of the fact that I totally overuse that word. See also: "totally") carousel horse. I knew I wouldn't be able to afford it, because people around here collect carousel stuff like crazy and jack up the prices.

I went into the shop and started nosing around and chatting with the owner, and I asked him how much he was asking for the carousel horse, just for the heck of it.

"Well, I'd have to have thirty bucks for that," he said. Thirty bucks?

Sold!

Now, while the metal pole the horse is mounted on is obviously quite old, the horse itself is not, which is why it was priced so reasonably. (See also: The horse is plastic, not wood.) Still, I think it looks really cool in my entryway - hell, the thing's four feet high, and it makes a good companion piece for my koi-fish-and-lily-pad birdbath.

What's that? Why is there a birdbath in my entryway?

Because it's the land of Freaky Friday all up in here, that's why.

What I did last Saturday

Okay, so the first thing I did last Saturday was drag my butt out of bed and go keep an appointment for a flu shot.

Which, hahahaha is so FUNNY, here I am, half dead* from TMJD and pharyngitis, and I've got to go get a flu shot! Whee!

So THEN, once I was up and out, I felt so damn lousy that I figured I'd do a little shopping. Does that ever happen to you - you feel so crappy that you don't want to go home, because you know that once you do, you'll just lie on the couch and whine and the rest of the day will be shot? No? Just me? Okay then.

ANYWAY, I went to the local "antiques row", except I tend to gravitate more toward the "junk store" end of things, and I found something that is absolutely, totally awesome, which is without a doubt going to be the focus of this week's Freaky Friday.

Now, I should probably interject here that I'm not a compulsive shopper. For one thing, I'm cheap as all get out - I don't even get McDonald's that often because I think it's too pricey. Ninety percent of the stuff I buy comes from thrift stores and junk stores, and I very, very rarely buy anything that costs more than, say, five or ten bucks.

Okay, that said, once I found the awesome thing at the junk store, I was all, like, "I might as well quit now. I just used up all of my shopping mojo; there's no way I'll find anything else cool today."

But! See: Illness making me not want to go home. And I'd been looking for a chest of drawers since I moved over a year ago, so I decided to stop at the used furniture place.

Voila:




Dudes. Duuuuuudes. How awesome is that dresser? Okay, you might not be impressed, but I think it is teh bomb. I love old shit like that, with the carved curlicue stuff that's impossible to dust (see pic) and all the ornate details. I'm trying to figure out if the heart motif on the bottom looks more like the Batman symbol or like Mickey Mouse ears.

You know how much they wanted for it? This full-size, awesome chest of drawers with a built-in jewelry box on top?

A hundred bucks. A hundred bucks.

"Sold!", I said. I even did that thing where you grab the tag off of it before you go to the counter so that nobody else can claim it.

heeheeheehee TWO awesome finds in one day. I may never shop again.

And that was my Saturday.




*wild exaggeration

I'm back!

... From the dentist. I just HAD to go back again; I love it so much there. *cough*

Anyhow, the permanent crown is now permanently affixed, and hopefully my jaw can now start settling down. The dentist and I had a nice long chat about what's going on with my TMJD and what we can do to minimize flare-ups. Holly Jane, she was in complete agreement on the bite block and we actually gave it a go!

I'd been thinking about it for the last few days leading up to this appointment, and it seems that both the dentist and I had been taking kind of a reactive attitude; wait until there's a problem and then try to get it under control. I think, instead, we need to be more pro-active (corporate-speak; sorry) and work to keep the jaw calmed down before it goes berserker.

So! Now I have a nice new thousand-dollar *sob* crown in my head, and we'll see what happens with the jaw.

Oh! And my dentist did suggest valium to "smooth out the edges" if the pain continues; anybody have any experience with that?

Oooh! Oooh! And in other news, there was something snuffling and snarfing and pawing through the leaves outside my bedroom window at about 5:30 this morning. I walked around the house this morning and didn't see any chewed-up vegetation (like from deer), or holes in the lawn (like skunks do), so it looks like there's another mystery to solve. Paging Nancy Drew!

I guess the feeling was mutual

So! The cats had to go to the vet the other night. The new vet, the cat specialist, who they will now be seeing.


I loved my old vet's office, I really, really did. They were incredibly compassionate through Rocky's final illness. But then they hired some new vets, and started jacking their prices, and misdiagnosed The Runt.


And when they marked up a teeny bottle of iodine by, like, a kabillion percent, that was the last straw.

So! Feeling a little like I was cheating on someone, I found a new vet. I figured that when the old vet's office sent their annual reminder card for yearly check-ups, I'd just ignore it.

Except, they never sent their annual reminder card.


I think I've been dumped. By my vet.



Well, at least it was an easy breakup.

Yet another crackpot theory

Wait ... was there a weekend in there somewhere? Where'd it go?



I did manage to get some stuff done this past weekend, despite being laid low by the vapors, but I got to thinking ... The doc put me on antibiotics (Biaxin) for the throat plague, and the antibiotics promptly made me sick(er). Queasy stomach, general malaise, you get the picture. ALL antibiotics tend to do that to me - I can't even TAKE the Z-pack anymore, for Pete's sake.


So here's my latest crackpot theory. I eat a cup of yogurt every day. It has to be the fruit-mixed-in kind, not the disgusting plain stuff, but anyway ... yogurt is chock full of probiotics, right? I mean, according to the commercials it is.* So that means that I'M chock full of probiotics too, right?


So then ... so then ... I start taking ANTI-biotics. And hoo boy, it's like the Sharks and the Jets all up in my intestines, duking it out. They're fighting in the streets in there!


And that's why I get sick(er) when I take antibiotics.


There ya go: My Monday morning crackpot theory.





Oh, and thanks for all the kind wishes, guys. Looks like I'm gonna live, after all. Just in time to go have some more dental work done on Wednesday! *sob*

*And lord knows I get most of my medical information from Jamie Lee Curtis. Heh.

Freaky Friday!

Okay, so this is going to be an abbreviated version of Freaky Friday, as the cosmos have decided to gift me with what my doctor tells me is a case of pharyngitis, along with my other woes. DO NOT google that; just trust me when I tell you that it's basically a really bad sore throat.

Anyway, I really just want to wrap up my duties so I can pick up my antibiotics (evidently I've got the bacterial version as opposed to the viral ... um, yay?) and go moan on the couch.

So here we go, a Freaky Friday quickie:


The more things change ...



I found that pack of fake cigs down by the creek. "So real, you'll fool everyone!", the package says.

I had no idea they even still made candy cigarettes. And I'll bet that if you actually lit one, the way the guy on the package is doing, the results would be pretty nasty.

The doctor told me that it'll take about 48 hours for the antibiotics to kick in (there goes my weekend), so hopefully I'll be back here on Monday. See ya then!

Sorry about that

Whoops - didn't mean to go all boo-hoo-hoo in that last post.

It's just ... how do I explain ... this whole jaw thing is my first experience with chronic pain, and, man, I do not like it.

It's kind of what chinese water torture must be like. The first few hundred drops are, like, meh, whatever, but somewhere around drop one-kabillion, you just start to cry.

And I really, REALLY don't want to carry on about this, but the first time I went through this, back several years ago, I actually started to understand how people could off themselves. How you could be in so much goddam pain that all you wanted was for the pain to end, even if doing so ended everything.

Ohhhh, the draaaaammmmaaa! woooooe is meeeeeeeeee.

This is why I have to let the pain go. Because I don't want to be writing self-indulgent, whiny posts about it. I have better things to do, damn it!

Like watch the season finale of Teen Moms. Who is going to end up in jail for domestic violence first: Amber or Gary?

Heather, thanks for commiserating. It seems like every time I get a little bit ahead, financially, it's time to go to the dentist.

Holly Jane, I will DEFINITELY ask the dentist about a bite-block, whatever that is.

BNG, I checked out that TMJ med - Um, I'm not really up on the homeopathic stuff, so could you tell me if the ingredients in that are safe? 'Cause I've never heard of most of them.


Fish, thanks for the kind thoughts.


Oh! Oh! And here's a question we were discussing in the office yesterday: If you were one of the Chilean miners, what would be the first thing you asked for (other than family, of course) when you got to the top?


One of my co-workers said he'd choose a shower, after two months underground with a bunch of sweaty miners.


After two months of food delivered via tube, I think I'd choose a pizza and an ice-cold soda.



How about you?

Letting go

Warning: Discussion of things dentist-y ahead. If you don't want to read about what happens (to me, anyway) in a dentist's office, stop right here and go see how many pics of Charlie are on The Pioneer Woman's site today.

Okay! Here is what happens when I go to the dentist for a cleaning:

1. I walk in the door, feeling fine. No problems.

2. Nurse Ratched cleans my teeth and takes x-rays.

3. The dentist comes in, looks at the x-rays, says "hmmmm", looks at me, and says, "gimme all your money." (Okay, not really, but she might as well. It'd save some time.) She explains that I have a tooth that is about to go radioactive on my ass, and that it must be fixed right away, or else I'm gonna need a root canal six months down the road.

4. "but ... but ....", I splutter. "That tooth doesn't hurt! None of my teeth hurt! I feel fine! Really!"

5. The dentist shakes her head, shows me the x-rays which I cannot read, and explains that while the tooth doesn't hurt right now, by the time it starts to hurt, I will need a two-thousand-dollar root canal/crown. Which can be avoided by giving her a thousand dollars right now to grind down the tooth and crown it, avoiding the root canal.

6. Sighing, I make an appointment. An appointment with doom. hee.

7. Two weeks later, I walk into the dentist's office, feeling fine. I walk out a couple of hours later, numb to the gills. And once the novocaine wears off, the pain sets in. The grinding, constant pain, which will take anywhere from one week to a few months to go away.

I have TMJD, you see, a jaw disorder which means that any time I have to clench my jaw for any length of time, as in when they're taking impressions or setting crowns, my jaw says f*ck this and freaks out. Is fun! Not.

Right now I've been in pain for almost a month from my latest dental procedure. And who knows how many more days/weeks/months it may take until things calm down. And no, physical therapy doesn't help. TENS unit stimulation doesn't help. Hot/cold packs don't help. Freaking painkillers don't help. The mouthpiece helps a little, but not when the jaw gets cranked up the way it is now.

So I've come to a conclusion. I have find a way to deal with this, or else it'll take over my life and drive me crazy. I was there before, and it wasn't pretty. I have to find a way to ignore the bad, before I lose all the good.

I have to learn to let the pain go.

Kids these days

Yesterday afternoon I was out in the front yard, putting up my "fall" display, which consists of some Halloween pumpkin buckets strewn in the grass.

A bunch of kids were riding their bikes in the street, swerving to cut through a neighbor's leaf pile, when I heard a little girl yell, "Hey! Get back here! I'm hurt!"

I looked up to see a little girl who had evidently fallen off her bike and was lying in the street. I really didn't think too much about it - I mean, no cars had gone by in a long time, so I knew she hadn't gotten hit, and she wasn't screaming bloody murder, so I figured she couldn't have been hurt too bad. The other kids circled back to her, and a neighbor came out of her house and helped the girl to her feet, and that was that.

Until a little while later, when her brothers came back to see if they could find her teeth.

That poor little girl had evidently faceplanted into the street so hard that she knocked herself silly, losing several teeth in the process.

Man, it makes my teeth hurt just thinking about it. Poor kid.

Oh, and then! And then!

A few hours after that excitement, I was inside puttering around when I glanced out the front window and noticed a couple of little boys, maybe six and eight, riding their bikes up onto my lawn. They hopped off their bikes and were looking at my craptacular pumpkin display when the older boy grabbed one of the pumpkins, hopped on his bike, and went tearing up the street.

Well.

WELL.

I went flying out of my house in my sock feet and tore across the lawn, yelling, "Hey! HEY! GET BACK HERE WITH THAT PUMPKIN!"

Oh my lord I wish you could've seen the look on those kids' faces. The one with the pumpkin turned his bike around and sheepishly pedaled back down the street to me, bless him, while the little one just stared up at me, open-mouthed, like he could not believe what had just happened. "It was his idea!," he lisped, pointing to the older boy. "It was his idea!"

Pumpkin-boy hopped off his bike and, head down, put the pumpkin back on the lawn.

"Dude!", I said, and I couldn't help but smile a little. "Dude, that's not cool! You don't take stuff off of people's lawns! Those pumpkins are for everybody to look at! You don't take stuff that doesn't belong to you!"

"Okay," he said, dejectedly. I predict a life of crime.

The little one, who by this time had decided that I wasn't going to eat him for lunch after all, regained his composure and started to tell me about "the lady in the green house on the next street up who has a GUN in her house and will SHOOT you if you step on her lawn!"

"That's good to know", I said as they hopped back on their bikes. "I'll make sure not to walk on her lawn."


I foresee a massive invasion of toilet paper and eggs this Halloween. I'll try to remember to park the car in the garage that night. 'Cause, you know, they start off swiping pumpkins, and next thing you know they're hot-wiring cars ...

Kids.

Public Service Announcement

If you're wondering where Freaky Friday is

*crickets*

ANYWAY, scroll down for Freaky Friday. But first, here is today's PSA.

The cats had to go to the vet's last night, for annual check-ups and shots and, in the case of The Runt, discussion regarding his allergies.


As far as flea medications, The Runt is on Advantage and Little Girl is on Frontline Plus. (long story.) And last night, The Runt was flea-free. Little Girl? Had fleas. And flea "dirt", i.e., "poop", meaning that the fleas were not ones she just picked up in the waiting room.


Bottom line: Frontline does not work.


I don't know if they changed the formula, or if fleas are becoming immune to the active ingredient, but Frontline is no longer effective for fleas on cats.


My vet agreed, adding that she no longer recommends Frontline. She used to, because it also protects against ticks which Advantage does not do, but it's now useless against fleas.



Just so you know!

Freaky Friday - Feline Faction

Ah, alliteration. What a great way to annoy people.

This toy was one of my pity purchases:



He sat in a dusty corner of the antiques store for so long that I finally couldn't stand it anymore, bought him, and brought him home. And now he's commandeered the remote.

I'll bet they sell a lot of stuff that way. "Hmmmm, let's see, how can we make this look more pathetic?"

Here's a bowl that a local artist made:




I like the teeth.

Stay tuned, because later on today I hope to put up a Public Service Announcement regarding Frontline!* I KNOW! You can't wait!




*Preview: It doesn't work.

Very Superstitious

Okay, so we were talking about jinxes in the comments of the vacuuming post, so let me know what you think about this.


After the recent heavy rainfalls, I really, really want this postcard:







Not sure if you can click to embiggen that or not. It's a postcard of Venice, watery canals and all, with "Greetings from {my home town}" printed on it.

Get it? Get it? Venice is full of water, and my neighborhood keeps filling up with water, so ...

But here's the thing: Would displaying that in my house be tempting fate? Borrowing trouble? I don't want to invite anything bad in.

Then again, I have pictures of dead people in their caskets (memento mori) in my house. There's also (deer and bird) bones throughout. I currently have a bunch of giant (artificial) rats in my garage, waiting for Halloween. All you have to do is look at a few of my Freaky Fridays to know that weird stuff surrounds me. How much worse could a picture of Venice be? Or would it be, like, forecasting something that could happen?

What do you think?

And it was all yellow

What's that poem? Nothing gold can stay?

Is true.

I REALLY need to vacuum more often.

That, or start remembering to wipe my feet and stop tracking in half the backyard.

Don't worry, Little Girl, I won't try to blame this on you. You're just an innocent bystander.

'

In related news, does anybody know a good way to remove mildew from a shower?

'

I think I need remedial housecleaning lessons or something.

1.5

As of yesterday, it's been a year-and-a-half since I smoked a cigarette.


Let's run the numbers for old times' sake, no?

Number of cigarettes I would have smoked between April 3, 2009 and yesterday, had I not stopped smoking on that date: 16,425. Jeezus Christ.

Amount of money saved: $2,929.13. Almost three thousand bucks. And that was smoking cheap cigs bought on line; if I'd been buying name brand smokes at the corner gas station, that figure would easily be double.

You know, cigarettes used to be cheap. I remember when a carton was eight bucks; it was an affordable vice. Frankly, that's the main reason I stopped smoking; I got priced out of the market.

And I'm glad.

So, whoopee for me! I'm a quitter.

We interrupt this regularly scheduled Freaky Friday to bring you ...

... FLOOOOOOOOD!


Yeah, like this isn't getting old.

Now I know how I got the house so cheap.

Anyway, after a hurried heading-f0r-the-hills by me and the cats yesterday afternoon and a night spent on higher ground, the house is dry.

*whew*