CLOSE CALL!

So there I am, driving down the street, minding my own business. It is very dark, as it is after 9 pm. I usually don't go out late on a work night, but there it is, I needed a burrito. No, not wanted. Needed. So I schlepped out to Taco Hell Bell.

Driving up Barrington Road, suddenly 2 shiney eyes in the road in front of me! Low to the ground, I see a black mass in the road. I yank the wheel to the right, then hold my breath...

I did not hit the skunk.

Thank the Goddess!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My Window is Stuck

BAH

I hate the windows in this house. If someone wants to contribute the 3k or so it will take to replace them all, I'll send you my paypal info. *grin*

I took out all the windows (inner and storm) to replace the screen that IAK (Illegal Alien Kitteh) had shredded. It wasn't easy. These windows are very large, quite heavy, and it is awkward to get them out of the slides. (Windows in my house go sideways < > instead of updown ^ v). I got 2 of the 3 windows back in but one of them is being ornery. I am not sure how the heck I got it OUT!

I am probably going to have to have a co-worker come help me put it back in. *sigh*

I prefer being independent, you damn window!

Attempted Break-in

Last night I actually SAW the culprit. Squatting down on the roof of the neighbor's house, just outside my upstairs hall window, looking for all the world as if she were expecting me to hand goodies out to her.

Fortunately, her choice of wearing apparel gave her away. Had she been all in black, I probably would have missed her, especially if she'd closed her eyes - but the whispy grey was ghostly, shining in the darkness.

Yes - it was the Illegal Alien Kitteh. Finally spotted. This time not at the window in the livingroom where it had torn the crap out of screens (the new anti-pet screening seems to be working) - but on top of the neighbor's roof. I hissed at it. She scooted back a few steps, but kept looking at the window. I hissed again, louder and raised my hand... she scampered off. I closed the window down over the screen.

This morning there are 2 small holes in the screen. I have put a spray bottle of CleanUp on the windowsill. Fucking cat comes back, it will get a face full of Chlorox.

I am NOT happy with this little housebreaker.

Songs to which I do not understand the Lyrics of.

Listening to the "Oldies" station. Because I am.

Song lyrics have always fascinated me. Some of them more so than others. Some of them are supposed to - like "Lookin' out my back door" by CCR and the ghastly "American Pie". I realize this and just enjoy the former and switch stations on the latter.

Today, however, a couple have played that I am confused about, and I realize I've always been confused about them, and I don't think they are SUPPOSED to be confusing.

"Big Old Jet Airliner, Don't carry me too far away. Big old Jet Airliner, 'cause it's here that I've got to stay"

Ok. Why exactly is this singer at the damn AIRPORT if he has to stay where he is?
Moron.

Then there's:

"Heard it from a friend, who heard it from a friend who heard it from another you've been messing around. I'm telling you, Babe, that I don't think it's true, Babe, and even if it is, keep this in mind... {snip} I don't believe it, not for a minute"

Ok. So he doesn't believe it. Not for a MINUTE! He doesn't think it's true! Yet, he feels the need to harangue and threaten her over FOURTH HAND GOSSIP????? Yeah, we can tell how much you love her, you scumbag. No wonder she's cheating.

Emotional

I am angry. I am horribly angry - and I have no outlet. Carolyn, my soul-sister is gone, and with her my outlet for things like this - guilt and anger that have no place to go, but swirl around in my brain making me feel powerless, inadequate, small and frightened and even more angry.

Oy - Wench - I miss you so much right now. I know the words you would begin with, but my mind keeps swirling in this miasma of emotion and I can't hear your voice and feel the absolution wash over me, the permission to feel, and the forgiveness I can't bring myself to give myself just yet.

I can only catch portions of phrases, and it's not enough.

Logic only goes so far - emotion is overriding it and oh, how I wish you were here to help me screw my head back on correctly again.

I have to go it alone now. I know eventually (as UncleHBK used to say) "This too shall pass". I suppose it's time to grow up a little more and find an outlet that doesn't require another human being to get involved. I know housework does it for some - exercise for others - meditation...

Meditation is out. I'd brood and sulk. Exercise?..... dunno. I'll try some housework tonite. I doubt it, but I'll try.

Hey Mick - Emotional Rescue, please?

It was so much easier when they were on strike...

Construction on the Eisenhower Expressway extention (near which I live) had halted for a while this month while the workers went on strike. This was lovely for me, as the on-ramps were still closed so the usual morning backup was still missing - plus nobody rubbernecking at the workers causing accidents or just slow-downs.

Yesterday they were back at work. *sigh*. *sigh again*

They for some ungodly reason decided to screw up the traffic signals so they were blinking red instead of doing their correct red/green/yellow rotation. This meant that I creepy crawled to work thru a 5 mile backup. Even worse, I creepy crawled back HOME through a 2 mile backup in 90 degree heat with heavy humidity, bright sunshine and a dark blue car with no A/C.

I am dreading the commute this morning.
*sigh yet again*

Illegal Alien Kitteh tries to break into my house!!!*

*please note - I have never seen this kitty, nor have I any clue to whom it belongs. It might be the cat belonging to a member of the DAR. The Kitteh, however, is not a legal resident of MY house!

Ok, for a few days, I've been worried about Kili. She ate, but she would hide. Constantly. I couldn't figure it out, and she was acting as if she didn't know me. Everything seemed to frighten her, and that's not normal.

I even called the vet office to see if there might be something that I'd need to watch out for.

Yesterday morning my neighbor clued me in. Apparently there has been some free-ranging kitteh who has been clawing at my window screen and trying to get in. I heard Kili snarling at it one night, but had heard nothing since so I figured it was ok. It wasn't.

There is a HUGE rip in the screen just at a spot where I can't easily see it from inside the house because of the vertical blinds. Apparently the Illegal kitteh was trying to enter. No wonder Kili's been spooked.

So yesterday AM I closed the window so that even if Illegal Kitteh does get thru the screen, it can't get inside the house.

Yesterday after work Kili came out when I came home and "talked" to me. Then she got on the back of the sofa and peeked thru the blinds for a long time before running off to get some kibble noms. This morning she was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs and gave me the usual nagging until I gave her the canned food.

Spending Money

This last weekend I went shopping. I bought a new chair for my computer desk because the old one broke and I am sick and tired of getting backache from sitting on a metal folding chair. I went to Office Max and sat in EVERY single chair they had. I ended up buying the 2nd best one there - because the very best one cost twice as much and was only a TINY bit comfier.

Then I went to the mall. It was really rather sad. More than 1/2 of the stores were out of business. I broke down and went into Macy's - which I swore I'd never do when they bought out Marshall Field's and changed the name (and I won't go back - the only things I ever bought at Field's were good leather gloves, cooking equipment and Frango mints). They did NOT have the cooking pan I wanted, but there WAS a sale on bedding, so I purchased my first set of 450 thread-count pima cotton bed linens.

Oh

My

Goddess.

It's like sleeping in a cloud. They're so SOFT!! I want to get at least 1, maybe 2 more sets. One for the wash, one for the bed, one for the linens closet.

I ended up getting a replacement pan for the one that gave it's life in the Great Kitchen Chicken Fiasco at K-Mart. It's a nice enough pan, and it's actually a double-boiler so I can melt chocolate and stuff like that without doing a stupid balancing act with 2 pots and a rubberband.

By the time I got home, I was toast. I haven't gone power-shopping like that in years. Traipsing all around through the (shudder) Mall and all was quite exhausting. After wrestling my purchases into the house (the chair box was VERY heavy and exceedingly awkward), I made myself a huge glass of iced tea, smashed my toe into the chair box, swore vigorously and then plunked myself down on the sofa and read for several hours.

The toe is bruised, the chair is still unassembled, (although in progress), and the sheets are... heaven.

I need more hands and another body or 3.

And the energy of an ADHD toddler.

Things are slowly improving at La Casa de Sewmouse. I have had another "burst" of energy, and used it fairly well. The upstairs is in muh better shape, the downstairs still needs a lot of work.

However. My biggest concern right now is my quilt dilemma. I have 3 quilts that I use for my own sleepingness. Veggie I, The Yellow Thing, and Turquoise Stars. The Yellow Thing has issues, as it was the VERY FIRST quilt that I ever made, and I kind of... well... I was stupid then, and I used whatever fabric I had to hand which was, unfortunately, made of all sorts of fibers, and now a lot of the squares from it are just falling apart into clumps of yuk.

It isn't all that hard to fix, since all I need to do is sew another patch of fabric over the one that has disintegrated. Unfortunately, this has to be done by hand in order to not make an utter crap mess of the entire quilt. Also, this is the quilt I assembled and quilted 100% by hand, so I am loath to use any newfangled technological claptrap like a sewing machine on it.

Turquoise Stars also has the disintegration problem. Again due to injudicious fabric selection during my noobie quilter period. I've already patched over one of the stars, but it appears at least 4 more (possibly more) may need attention as well. These stars are BIG, (18") and have to be hand-repaired also to avoid puckering on the reverse. *sigh*

Veggie I has only 1 bad spot - but it is the central square of a rather specific pattern, and AS GODDESS IS MY WITNESS - I do not have even so much as a 3 1/2" x 3 1/2" piece of that fabric left in the old stashola - so I'll have to patch the ENTIRE pattern with a new, similar, fabric.

*sigh*

I would LOVE to use the Ocean quilt in the meanwhile, however that one is off the frame while I work on Kal's Surprise quilt (which after all this time, I suspect he will consider the surprise to be that he actually gets it at all... *slaps self*)

I only thought about the Ocean quilt this morning because co-worker M has a big bag of goldfish crackers on his desk.

New Fire Alarms

Ok, after the Great Kitchen Chicken Fiasco of a week ago, I purchased new batteries for my (current) smoke alarms. After 3 days it became abundantly apparent that this was not the "fix" that was needed.

The alarms went off if the cat walked past. They went off when I opened the bathroom door after taking my shower (that is STEAM, not smoke!!) they went off if the wind blew through the windows. They went off if I cooked bacon. They went off if you looked at them funny, and they LOVED to go off at 2 am. Obviously with fresh batteries, this was not a "low battery" warning - they were just being snots.

So yesterday I went to Menards to Save Big Money, and looked into some new smoke/fire detectors. I figured that after 20 years they probably had advanced in smoke-detector technology to where one could live with a smoke alarm without hearing from it every 20 minutes or so.

Pedro, the nice guy in a blue vest at Menards showed me where the alarms were and we went through them. I bought a more expensive one, because it has a feature that I simply WILL not live without ever again. You can use ANY television remote control and tell it to STFU if it goes off when there really isn't a valid reason for it to do so. You can also tell it to STFU if it decides it's battery is low at 2 am, and it will wait for a more civilized hour to get it's power supply replaced.

Now, granted, the Great Kitchen Chicken Fiasco was a valid reason. There was certainly smoke, lots of smoke, and it was certainly a BAD THING®. But it's now been over a week, and the house barely has any smoke smell anymore, so there is literally NO reason for the alarms to be having fits anymore. The new alarms are somewhat more "hi-tech" looking as well. No more large white lozenges on the wall. These look more like blobs of marshmallow fluff.

They better work. I'll be putting them up this weekend.