Boo!

I'll tell you what will make you feel better fast: mixing up a giant bowl of candy, sticky eyeballs, assorted Halloween-themed plastic rings, and skeleton keychains in preparation for trick-or-treaters. I plan to let them choose 3 things apiece. Such is the abundance of Halloween goodies. I'm excited.


It feels like Halloween for the first time in a very long time. :)

*This is not a picture of my Halloween candy- I had to stop purchasing any chocolate items for the kids after the second time I ate all the Halloween candy before the month of October. My kids are getting tootsie rolls, Dots (whatever the heck those are), and other gelatinous things I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. But I bought them sticky eyeballs! :-p

Little Miss Sunshine

I think my bluebird of happiness died. Seriously, I don't know what it is lately (yes I do) but I am totally miserable. Which is unusual for me. It doesn't take much to make me happy, but I think what little it does is lacking. Something has to be done. Luckily, I'm going home for a visit at the end of the month, so I have something to look forward to. Right now though, I'm wallowing through in "everything sucks" mode. And here's why:

1. Work. Work, work, a thousand times work. Which is perhaps the biggest blow to my happiness, because I have always taken a great deal of pride in what I do and how well I do it. My job is important, I'm good at it, and it helps people. Makes it possible to pull 24 hour shifts without committing suicide. When I was offered the position up here, everything was all "Oh, you have experience, you'll be off orientation in no time, blah blah blah." Lately it's been more, "This person thinks you should do this many things to be up to *our* standards" and then after I've completed those things, the rug is promptly pulled from beneath my feet and I'm starting again at ground zero. It's frustrating to say the least. It's going to make me tear my hair out. My big problem is that I don't see that big of a difference between what goes on up here and what went on at my old place of employ. I can do this job, I was hired to do this job, please for the love of God let me do my job and be happy. Also not on call every freaking weekend. I honestly have like a million more things to say about work, but I'll try and curtail it. Let's move on, shall we?
2. Home. My house is frigid. Like 12 degrees colder than outside. I wake up and need to go outdoors to warm up. It's kind of ridiculous. Also, my landlady is currently having the house painted. Toward that end, there is a man outside at this very minute pressure-washing the entire exterior of the house. Fine. What is not fine is being too lazy to move my two jack-o-lanterns and package from Amazon off the patio before you commence with the high pressure beam of ice water. Everything soaked. Pumpkins on the ground, saturated- those will be nice and easy to light tonight I'm sure. Halloween decorations on the door completely soaked. Cardboard of the Amazon box nice and and soggy. Way to be a total jackass, house painter guy.
3. People. I miss my friends. I miss my coworkers (who incidentally, were my friends.) I miss having lunch with someone other than my television and microwave. I miss going to the movies and eating ridiculous amounts of smuggled food out of C's Mary-Poppins-esque purse. I miss P randomly showing up at my apartment for a nap and I miss nights at the Phoenix.
4. Illness. I've been sick for a week now (thanks Mom.) Hacking my lungs out, choking on air, medicating to the point of having to Google "acetaminophen overdose", and otherwise feeling blah. (FYI, more than 4000 mg of tylenol in a day is bad news for your liver...says the girl who was at 3700 when she figured this out.)
5. It's cold. Did I mention I'm cold? Cause I am.

Anyways, I'm sure everything will get better. My Dad just sent me I swear to God 18 lbs of chocolate, so things are looking up already. I just can't wait to see everybody at the end of the month. Also, we're going to eat non-stop, because I can't narrow down which restaurants I miss the most. Prepare yourselves. :)

The Surprise

Sorry I've been MIA from the blog for pretty much the entire month. You see, I had a big surprise. A little over a week ago, my Dad called me.

Dad: "Your mother needs a vacation, I need a vacation, I'm sending her to come see you."
Me: "Great!"
Thinking I haven't seen my family in 3 months, it would be cool if they came to visit.
Me: "When are they coming?"
Dad: "How about Saturday?"
It's Thursday.
Me: "This Saturday?"
Dad: "Sure."
Me: "Dad, it's Thursday. Tickets are going to be wicked expensive, I'm on call at work almost every day next week, and I have to spend a day in New Hampshire at a conference."
Dad: "Take her with you."
Me: "Mom and Jo (who is 12 years old)?"
Dad: "Sure, whatever. Just buy the tickets, I'll pay you back."

And thus began my week with Mom and Jo. I found out Thursday night, they arrived Saturday afternoon. Friday was a day of frantic cleaning (not that it did me any good as Jo went around taking pictures of the apartment after it got messy again, and with the closet doors deliberately opened so people could see "what my apartment *really* looked like.")


Luckily I now have both Tom's Wii and his XBox 360 at my apartment. I found that they are pretty useful in entertaining people when you're not around. My mother and Jo played Lego Star Wars on the xbox every morning (you could hear them shouting at each other from upstairs) and Jo and Tom played various Wii and xbox games every night. My favorite though, had to be the first night. They arrived at my apartment, I gave them the tour, and then Tom showed them how to play the Wii. And over the next few hours there was a lot of laughter, a lot of yelling, and even some glass breakage. (I was bowling, swung my arm up, completely shattered the top of a glass. Only the top though...didn't spill a drop of water. Skillz babay.)

The day after they arrived, I was on call and had to go to work at about 7 AM and arrived home after they went to bed. I told them how to get to the train station, and told them which stop to get off at to arrive in the city. Of course, they got lost going to the train, walked like 26 miles over the course of the day, but ended up seeing a lot of stuff. Not that that was much consolation to the sullen 12 year old with the tired little feet. They seemed to get around pretty well, and ended up having to spend a lot of time without me during their trip. They went to Salem, MA one day- Jo brought me back this badass souvenir (pic).


They went to the Science Museum, the USS Constitution, Quincy Market, Faneuil Hall, all over the place. They even hiked over to the Bunker Hill Monument. But I did have a couple days that I was able to spend with them. And of course, I wanted to spend those days showing them the best the city has to offer. I'm talking of course, about little blue penguins. We went to the aquarium on Monday and got to see them feed the little blues! A-dorable. Seriously. We were at the little talk that the keepers do and they were talking about how the African penguins will be extinct by 2040 (huh!??) and I got really worried about the lil' blues. According to the keepers, the lil' blues aren't even on the threatened list. Apparently everyone knows they're too adorable to eat. So, phew, no problems there.

Here's a note for people that live in Boston, or plan to visit. When you walk into the aquarium, and they make you take that stupid picture that they'll try to sell to you when you're walking out the door, finish and then take a left. I always try to get past that cameraman as quickly as I can. There's no sense in wasting paper and chemicals on a photo that I swear to you I will not pay $10 for. So, I rush past him and then walk straight into the aquarium to the right. Because of this, I've NEVER noticed that there is an entire exhibit area to the left of the cameraman. Right now they have a jellyfish exhibit that is totally awesome, and I would've missed it had my mother not needed to hit the restroom on the way out! That is poor signage on the part of the aquarium, but I prefer to blame the camera people. It's ridiculous.

The other day I had off I took them to Fenway Park, and walking through Boston Common and the Public Gardens. This was perhaps my favorite part about the trip. Why? I will tell you why. My mother has some kind of weird bird guano radar when she's on vacation. A couple years ago when we were on vacation, Mom was crapped on by a seagull at the zoo in Chicago. You may remember the famous photo. So, when we were in the public gardens and I sent Mom and Jo up on a bridge to take their picture, it kicked in again. Mom put her hand on a little-used section of railing. Perhaps it's little used because it is actually covered by a heaping pile of bird dung. In the picture at left, my mother's right hand is covered in bird crap and Jo can't stop laughing at her. We ended up walking under the bridge and pouring sprite all over Mom's hand to clean it. We later lost her in a 5 story Banana Republic where she tried to find a restroom to wash her hands. Everything's an adventure with these two. :-p

So, in the end they saw most of the city, and I got to hang out with them a grand total of two days of the seven they were here. It was a little crazy. But, I think we all had fun and that's what counts I guess. Well, that and the fact that you can't bring baseball bats on an airplane (even little souvenir ones wielded by 12 year old girls.) That is also important as my mother discovered on the way back. Hehe. :-p

The End.

PS- To my AOC readers: my mother doesn't know about my blog. Let's keep it that way. ;)

Letter from the Grave

Dear Zicam,

You are *not* virtually undetectable in any liquid. You taste like propane.

Also, I hate you.

Sincerely,
Samantha

The Pact

My Dad is taking our dog to the veterinarian's office tomorrow. Cookie has had skin issues for a while, but now he's having trouble getting up and down the stairs and his spine is cracking like Bruce Lee's knuckles. So, we're kind of worried. Dad called this morning.

Dad: "I'm taking Cookie to the vet tomorrow."
Me: "What do you think is wrong with him?"
Dad: "I dunno. But if he's in pain, I've gotta do something about it."
Me: "Yeah."
Dad: "We made a promise to one another. If it ever came down to it, he'd do me and I'd do him."
Me: "Is this during or after a game of POW (poodles of war)?"
Dad: "It's not a game, it's a simulation."
Me: "There's something seriously wrong with you."

The SKP

My parents' house is located down the street from an assisted living/nursing home for mentally challenged elderly people. I'm not really sure whether they've always been challenged, or they're Alzheimer's patients, or what. I just know that we drive past every day and there's always at least one guy in a helmet sitting in a rocking chair on the porch waving at every car that goes by. We've always waved back because my mother used to work at a nursing home and loves old people.

She made me volunteer at the nursing home when I was a kid...in retrospect I'm sure it made me a better person and all that jazz...really it just helped me develop mad domino skillz. Also, I was suckered by some diabetic octogenarian into giving him a deadly batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies and spent certain days forcibly removing bacon from one guy's socks. Good times. Anyway, that's not the point of the post. The point is that my sister Jo called me the other day.

Jo: "They're building a fence around the nursing home."
Me: "Why?"
Jo: "Probably for the SKPs."
Me: "Huh?"
Jo: "Didn't you hear what happened? We came home from school one day and there was some old guy out on the porch just sitting in a chair. With a blanket. And one shoe. We went in the house while Daddy talked to him.
Dad: "How are you today, sir?"
Old Guy: "Doin' juuuuust fine."
Dad: "You okay out here by yourself?"
Old Guy: "Doin' juuuuust fine."
Dad: "Okay."
So Dad came in the house and told Mom there was some old dude out on our porch and that she should probably go take care of him. Mom went out to talk to him.
Mom: "How are you doing?"
Old Guy: "Doin' juuuuuust fine."
Mom: "Can I get you anything?"
Old Guy: "I sure would like some biscuits and coffee."
Mom: "Okay, come in the house."
So Mom brought him in and he drank 3 cups of coffee and ate 2 biscuits! Then Mom called the nursing home to come get him."
Me: "Wow."
Jo: "Yeah, they must not be feeding them down there, cause he was really hungry! And now they're building a fence so there won't be any more SKPs."
Me: "SKPs? What the heck is a...escapees. It's pronounced "escapees", Jo."
Jo: "Whatever you call them, soon they're gonna have to start tunneling out for biscuits."

Only my family. Psychos.

Ignorance is Murder

I was reading the headlines yesterday and ran across this little gem:

"The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately. "

I can't tell you how much this disgusts me. This archbishop is telling people that he personally knows of two countries in Europe that are making condoms coated in the HIV virus. Why would you even do that?! Is it *that* important that people don't use condoms? He also said that the antiretroviral drugs were infected "in order to finish quickly the African people." Paranoid much? Honestly, I have quite a number of issues with this, but I'll break it down for you.1. I don't go around telling people they're going to hell, why don't you stop going around telling people they're going to get AIDS? I will yield to the Church on dissemination of any and all information about Jesus, if they will yield to someone who knows what the hell they're talking about on the matter of HIV prevention and treatment.
2. If you're going to give information about something you know nothing about, at least give out the right information. Telling people that ARV's are contaminated isn't some shrewd move by the Church to convince people not to use condoms. It's a lie that succeeds only in killing people. As far as I'm concerned, it's murder.

I could go on for days about everything that's wrong with the Catholic church's approach to AIDS. In the end, it's about being consistent. If the Church is pro-life, they cannot be anti-condom. Condoms in countries where the virus is spreading like wildfire are not to stop reproduction, they're to stop death. Not only for the sexual partner, but for the HIV-positive children that they might have produced.

Honestly, I have a really hard time seeing what's not to understand in this whole situation. It's the "fight against HIV/AIDS" but I think activists spend more time in the fight against ignorance. And public figures spreading misinformation isn't making that fight any easier. Ugh.

*If you're interested in reading more, I enjoyed this article (actually posted in a Catholic magazine!) It's old, but whatever. Unfortunately not much has changed.