The Cure for Boredom

I’m borrowing this from Sundry, check out her answers if you like.

 1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?

Hmmm, this year wasn’t exactly my most adventurous unfortunately.    I had a District position with my local scouting council only this year I was actually TOLD what I was supposed to do and given the tools to do it.  Hooray!  I also agreed to be PTA President as well as recruiting a new Tiger den in June instead of waiting until September so that was fun.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I didn’t make any resolutions for 2009 but I need to make resolutions for 2010.  The big one: I want to lose 15-20 lbs by the end of February; and the remainder of my excess weight by my next birthday (Nov).  In the meantime I’ll start an exercise regimen and work on getting healthy as well.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth??

Yes, two people: NGD’s wife JS had a baby girl in August and one of my newest scout’s mom had a baby boy on Dec 28th.  Hey, better them than me!

4. Did anyone close to you die?

My Uncle D died in May.

5. What countries did you visit?

I didn’t visit any foreign countries but I did visit a few altered states.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

A job of some sort, preferably part time.  I also need to go back to college and get my Bachelor’s degree but I can’t do that in a year’s time.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

No dates in particular jump out at me.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Finally taking my health seriously and putting myself before anyone or anything else.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Waiting three years to do #8.  My husband and kids deserved better.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Oh yeah, I pretty much stayed sick throughout the year.  Some of it was just  allergies but enough to make me feel miserable.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Well, I didn’t buy it (I traded my old printer for it, the one I bought at a yard sale for $20): a Brother MFC7820N.  The only drawback: the color ink cartridges are VERY expensive so I’m only printing in B&W right now.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Auntie M’s, for helping grandma with EVERYTHING (sometimes by herself) and somehow managing to put up with my mother’s shit at the same time.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

My mother’s, as usual.  Something pissed her off this year and not only did we not receive any card (not even a free e-card!) we didn’t even merit a “Merry Christmas”.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Bills, food, mortgage and the kids.

15. What did you get really excited about?

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  Too bad the movie wasn’t nearly as good as the book.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?

None.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

– happier or sadder? Earlier in the year I was way sadder, now I’m happy again.
– thinner or fatter? ??  Fatter but I’m working on it.
– richer or poorer?  Definitely poorer, the economy caught up with us this year despite cutting back.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Knitting and photography, equally so. 

19. What do you wish you’d done less of??

SNACKING!  Oh sweet Jesus, the snacking.  WHY???

20. How did you spend Christmas??

At home with my boys.  Hubby had to work everyday except Christmas day (he was on call so we couldn’t go out of town) but he had us around him so he was happy.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?

Well, I’m married so I don’t think this applies to me.
22. What was your favorite TV program?

Just one?  I’d have to say Criminal Minds, although what I watched were re-runs.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

I don’t hate anyone.

24. What was the best book you read?

I’m embarassed to say I didn’t read any books in 2009, at least not any novels.  Hubby got me an extended guide for my D70 for Christmas so I’ve been reading through that and I’ve been attempting Fellowship of the Rings but the paper it’s printed on is so damn shiny it gives me a headache no matter what lighting I use.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Didn’t have one.

26. What did you want and get?

The boys got me my own Nintendo DS for Christmas, so now I can re-learn chess and get some Brainage going on.

27. What did you want and not get?

A new vehicle.  Well, not NEW but newer.  I need more room!

28. What was your favorite film of this year?

The newest Star Trek movie withX-Men Origins: Wolverine a close second.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I had a normal day and a den meeting that evening.  I turned 41.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

An inexhaustable budget to fix up the house.  I could have just said “more money” but everyone says that.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?

Sloppy housewife chic, and I ROCKED IT.  Mostly flip flops and capris with cotton t-shirts in warm weather and sweatpants and hoodies in cooler weather.  Tres sex-hay!

32. What kept you sane?

HA!  HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Hugh Jackman, preferably with his shirt off.  RAWR!

34. What political issue stirred you the most?

Healthcare, of course.

35. Who did you miss?

My grandfather, who I miss every day.  Now I get to miss Uncle D, too.

36. Who was the best new person you met?

P-mom, who I met at the school parking lot.  She’s the one who traded the printers with me and she’s been a good school buddy while waiting for the bell to ring.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.

Sadly, the same lesson I tendto re-learn every few years or so:  just because someone is friendly does NOT mean they are your friend.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

No song lyrics but I do have a quote:  “Do or do not: there is no try.” 

I’m not overly superstitious but I don’t plan on being online at all tomorrow; I will be spending the day (and hopefully setting the tone for the rest of the year) by playing games with my boys, spending time with my husband and maybe doing some knitting and/or photography.  See you guys on Jan 2nd and have a wonderful New Year!

 

Greetings and salutations those of you who (for whatever reason) are still reading me.  I seem to have hit a dry spell, a little episode that can be summed up in three little words: I Don’t Care.   Oh, not that I don’t care about YOU, gentle reader; I pretty much stopped caring about everything.  Gradually, over the course of about three years, I stopped enjoying the little things in life, things like watching my kids play sports, taking pictures, crocheting or knitting, dealing with the people at church (although in all honesty I really wasn’t getting what I needed from that particular church), etc.  Everything became such a chore when it should have been a joy.  The last 6 months took a turn for the worst; I couldn’t stand to have my husband even hug me.  My children never did anything right and all I did was harp and bitch at them.

My kids and husband deserve better.

So I finally bit the bullet and got some help:  Hello Prozac!  I’ve been taking a 10 mg dose for just over 2 weeks now and so far so good.  The only side effect has been insomnia and hey!  I already had that!  The serotonin dreams were a bit freaky; last night I dreamed that my Allegra pills all turned into pebbles and bits of scrap and I was telling the pharmacist something was wrong because they USED to be peach.  YA THINK?  I started the Allegra yesterday and it seems to work, I dusted yesterday and my nose didn’t itch once.  I was really hoping it would do something with the excess fluid I have in my ears SO I’LL STOP TALKING LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME.  Seriously, that shit gets old.

For the first time in years I’m really feeling the Christmas spirit.  I WANTED to do Christmas cards this year, a few years ago I didn’t bother at all.  I didn’t do the Christmas letter simply because I ran out of time; I had several scout meetings, a PTA function, two class parties and basketball for both kids in one week so I was a bit stretched.  I’m hoping to find more to write about here as well; the blog was the first casualty of the I Don’t Care brigade so all of you hoping to have your boredom cured?  Sorry about that.

I’ll go into more details about the prozac and the effect it’s had on me in another entry, right now I wanted to let the three of you know I’m still alive and kicking and to have a Merry Christmas!

I’ve always admired your writing and secretly wished I could write like you.  I was always amazed at the weird, comical things that happened to you and your loved ones and again secretly wished something wacky would happen to me so I could write about it.

Then again, this is the internet.  I could write anything I wanted and no one would be the wiser.  As long as I cured their boredom, right? 

Sometimes you wrote stuff that made me laugh until I made a pee-pee; sometimes you wrote stuff that made me cry.  Sometimes you wrote stuff that made me sob and hug my kids until their eyes popped out.  I had a pretty crappy childhood but when I read about yours it made mine look like a fairy tale.  Sometimes your writing was this-close to being Too Personal, sometimes that wee bit of TMI made it worth reading.

Your latest entry made me cry but not in a good way.  I was shocked.  I was appalled.  It made me question your motives and it made me angry that you felt like you had no other choice but to do what you did.  I lashed out at your loved ones and as of this writing I’m only 46% sure I said the right thing.   My never having met said loved ones erases the remaining 54% surety I thought I had the other day.  Thinking back I did what I always do: I put myself in front of you computer and thought Now how would I have written that same story?  In hindsight your story seemed rushed, like you were in a hurry to get it out of your head and away from your person lest you be fouled by the memory of it.   Perhaps you didn’t save a draft so you could come back and “pretty it up” a bit?  There were big chunks that were left out that I found out about later in the day, chunks that would have given your story the humanity and warmth that you are famous for.

Jesus said that he who is without sin cast the first stone.  Who reading this has NEVER sent that hastily written email, or blog comment, only to regret it later?  Who here has never sent a poorly written email only to hurt the recipients feelings, whether intentional or not?  While the subject of the story was indeed heartbreaking (and I’ll be honest, I’m STILL having trouble wrapping my brain around THAT) the story did have a happy ending, if only in the yowling, floppy-eared-running-through-the-woods way. 

Your comments are turned off, you are taking a mini-vacation from emails (and if they are half as nasty as I think I don’t blame you) and I called the only contact you’ve provided an asshole.  Hopefully you’ll read this and realize that I’m not trying to demonize you; I’m just trying to understand you.  Everyday my cat improves; his eyes are livelier, his fur is softer and better groomed and the incessant drooling has stopped.  He was smelling and foul and horribly inconvenient but I NEVER entertained the solution you felt you had no choice in doing.  I’m still mad that you were pushed into that emotional corner yet again I’m mad at you for not being strong enough to resist despite the hells you’ve been through in your life.

You have not lost this reader.  Not yet, anyway; if you suddenly start singing disco and posting pictures of Obama with a halo and angel’s wings all bets are off.

What, more drama?  But of course!  This time it’s Scout drama as it seems the PTA front seems to be calm (for now).  Our cub scout pack has t-shirts; this identifies us as our pack and is handy when you don’t want to wear your uniform to a function where it might get dirty or you might lose a bead or something.  The vendor who makes our shirts for us is local; she charges us $9.50 per short sleeved shirt and we charge $10.  The extra cents left over help cover the tax.  This was never meant to me a money making venture for the pack; we just wanted shirts at a good price.  This arrangement was set up long before I joined the pack.

We formed a Tiger den at the beginning of the summer as an experiment; we wanted to see how well it would work out to have our Tigers be able to benefit from a summer of activities instead of joining right when school began.  As acting den leader I took it upon myself to have 5 shirts ordered for the den.  I email the designated Shirt Orderer and get the order in.  This lady specifically requested that one person be assigned the task of calling orders in because too many people were placing orders and the lady couldn’t keep track of who what ordering what plus we had some duplicate orders.  Since the person complaining about this was the Advancement Chair (one in charge of ordering restricted badges and such) she is now in charge of ordering shirts.  I’m thinking she wanted it this way but honestly I don’t remember.  I just remember being told that I now had to give her any t-shirt orders.  I pick up the shirts for the Tigers and write a check and am puzzled at the total: $53.85.  I see an extra $5 charge on the receipt.  Why are we paying MORE than what we are going to get back on the shirts?  The lady was busy with other customers so I ask the Shirt Orderer to find out why we now have this extra charge as there was no explanation  on the handwritten receipt.  We later find out the extra fee is to offset the time she takes to set up the printing press; she says it’s not worth it to her to set all the stuff up just to print a few shirts at a time. 

Okay, fair enough.  She has a business to run and she needs to make a profit just like everyone else.  With the economy the way it is I’m sure she’s taken a few financial hits like every other business in town.  It would have been nice to have been told about this BEFORE we placed anymore orders, though.  I relay this message to the pack and suggest that we raise the prices of our shirts $1 across the board (she makes long sleeve shirts and hoodies for us too).  This price increase is just to break even and I’m sure that’s just what our parents want to hear.  Not only are re-charter dues going up $5 a year now our shirts are going up.  I’d been trying to find a way to get PTA hoodies made at a price that parents would be willing to pay and I found a solution:  one of our den leaders gets his business shirts made by this guy whose business is out in the country in the neighboring county.   His prices were so good I suggested him to the Cubmaster and he okayed the switch.  We could LOWER the price of our shirts by $2 and make an actual profit from the sale!  All that was needed was the design to go on the shirt and we were set to go.

I contact the Shirt Orderer to ask about our current shirt design; were we paying to use it do did it belong to us?  The Shirt Orderer tells me we paid to have it made and it belongs to us.  Cool, now all I need to learn is the proper etiquette on obtaining the pattern.  Do I ask the current vendor for it?  Do I bring a shirt for the new vendor to see to made a new one?  I hadn’t yet gotten to that point on account of being busy with Book Fair at school and getting ready for the Pack Overnight all in the same week.

I get a phone call from the Shirt Orderer, she’s confused as the current vendor has just called her wanting to know if a Mrs. Smith was allowed to place a shirt order for the pack.  Shirt Orderer thinks it might be one of the new den leaders and did I know who it was?  I tell her I don’t know any of the new leaders yet and suggest she call current vendor to tell her to cancel the order.  I then tell her we are in the process of changing vendors.

Shirt Orderer promptly lost.  Her.  SHIT.

I spent the next 10 minutes listening to verbal diarrhea about how we can’t change vendors because she wasn’t notified and WHY wasn’t she notified?  “I don’t think we should take our business out of the area!  I think we should VOTE on this! ”  First she’s pissed off because no one consulted her, then she’s saying she shouldn’t have to do “the dirty work” because she’s not in charge of the shirts, she just places the orders.  She then brings in how she shouldn’t be in charge of Advancements anymore because he son is crossing over in a few months and honestly, after this point I pretty much just tuned the bitch out.  I tell her I’D call the Cubmaster and ask them to find out who the person was who placed the order (turns out it was a parent of a scout who needs a new shirt) and that they would talk to her about current vendor vs. new vendor.

Some of you may remember Fearless Leader, Jr’s old den leader?  Well, she’s  Shirt Orderer. She was also Cubmaster for a year so she KNOWS what’s necessary as a leader; sometimes you take a vote, sometimes you make a decision but because SHE was inconvenienced she’s pissed.  She’s also notorious for dumping shit she doesn’t want to do into other people’s laps.  One example: She was Cubmaster Captain Destructo’s Tiger year.  One of the new Tigers was put into a Wolf den.  This was discovered two months after Round Up.  The solution?  “I put this scout into the wrong den, he really belongs in yours.  YOU need to call his parents and let them know”.  Uh, no I don’t.  And I didn’t.  I’m sorry the scout didn’t get the full scouting experience but part of being an effective leader is fixing problems, especially ones YOU YOURSELF ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR.

Another example: Right before school let out she assigned each summer month to a person; this person was in charge of organizing the Summer Pack activity for that month.  June was fine, July was okay, August didn’t happen.  AT ALL.  I mentioned it to her at the end of year party for the class (our kids were in the same class that year) and instead of addressing the situation and promising to look into why there was no August activity planned she told me “when you’re Cubmaster you can run the pack anyway you want”.  Nice leadership skills.

Anyway, I call the Cubmaster’s wife and vent at her for a bit.  We figure out who the inadvertent orderer was and CM’s wife says she’ll contact her den leader.  I thank her for listening to me rant and call it another crisis averted.  Later that night I get a phone call from the Cubmaster; he’s LIVID that I was yelled at like that and says he’ll send all the leaders an email clearing the air once and for all.   Part of that email read: It seems to have caused a problem today and I don’t understand why because nothing has changed as of yet and if it does you will be the first to know. One t-shirt seems to have been the end of the world today and I don’t like that. If anyone has a problem with us looking at the cost of these shirts and trying to save our scout parents some money please let me know. I really don’t like one shirt causing so much BS. We are talking about a t-shirt folks.

Dude, seriously.

I subscribe to two magazines and the second I bring them into the house I start ripping out inserts: adds, subscription cards (which is odd because I’m already subscribed) and perfume pages.  If I keep the perfume pages in I end up with a screaming headache that nothing will get rid of.  So I’m sitting at my desk, merrily ripping pages and one catches my eye.  Apparently, the Queen of Sleaze has her own fragrance out: Circus Fantasy. I didn’t hazard a sniff but I’m betting it smells like peanuts, sweaty, hung-over clowns and elephant shit.

The next fragrance found me: Donna Karan Cashmere Mist. This fragrance caught my nose on the way to the trash can; it smells like a cashmere sweater feels. Seriously! I’m almost out of my staple scent (Heavenly by Victoria’s Secret) and I need to give this the wear-test: get a spritz of a sample of it and wear it around for a day to make sure 1. It doesn’t drive my allergies crazy and 2. Make sure it smells the same with my body chemistry as it does on paper. It didn’t trigger any itching or sneezing on the sample page so that’s a good sign. Anyway, if you’re looking for a new fragrance for yourself or as a gift I recommend this one.

I’m not entirely sure my local PTA really wants me as President.  I mean, so far I’ve gotten good feedback including the compliment that I’ve done more during the school year so far than previous presidents have done all year but I think most of the “In” people (i.e. the SAHM’s whose husbands have more money than God) really didn’t expect to get a president who, you know, DID PRESIDENTIAL STUFF. 

Silly me.

I’m now avoiding my treasurer like the plague; every single time she gets a check she expects me to drop whatever I’m doing and come to her to sign it.  I was getting two or three calls a day.  EVERY DAY.  For checks that were not time-sensitive.  Get the check signed and mailed to our CPA?  Absolutely!  Meet you during my lunch hour to sign a teacher reimbursement check?  That can wait until after school.  I asked some questions about how a certain committee spent their money because they went over budget last year and I wanted to know why.  Next thing I know I get a real shitty email from the chairman of that committee PISSED OFF because someone (*coughtreasurercough*) told them that I was questioning HOW the money was spent, as in I thought they were crooked.

Oh fuck me now.

Since this lovely email caught me off-guard and simply responded to said chairman that I was only asking because I wanted to know why they went over budget and that if they didn’t want to continue being chairs they could quit, just let me know ASAP so I can find a suitable replacement.  This was the part of the shitty email that really pissed me off; I don’t do drama well and stating that “if you think you can do a better job we can quit and you can run said committee”.  I needed to nip that shit in the bud.

A few days later I get a more civil email, with a rational explanation, about why they were mad.  I’d have been mad, too, to be honest.  They agreed to stay on as chairs (to which I thanked them very much) and we all agreed to not let this get in the way of a fruitful PTA relationship.  In the meantime, I only speak to the treasurer about PTA related stuff and ONLY about shit she is directly involved in.  I can pick my own battles thankyouverymuch, I don’t need your gossipy ass doing it for me.

Add to all of that we’re having our annual Book Fair all week this week and we are camping with the Pack this weekend.  I’ve got some activities planned, everyone will go home most likely earning a bead or a badge or both and I’m very excited about it.  Of course, I don’t have anyone to give the pack the animal/plant presentation because the park ranger isn’t working that Saturday (guess who gets to do that) PLUS the den leader I was hoping would give the 15 minute Scouts Own worship service around the campfire Sunday morning isn’t spending the night so again, guess who gets to do that.  I’m working said Book Fair Friday 8:30-11:20 then helping pack up (the Book Fair chair is also camping this weekend) so I’ll have to get everything ready tomorrow.

Pray for me, people; even if you don’t pray.