Damn

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This week I am once again training in receiving at work.

I like this department even though receiving is early morning shift.

There's a fair bit of freedom that I enjoyed when I originally trained for it a while back... before they sold the store and learning the old system made no sense anymore.

Small problem... I've been on swings for so long now, that I cannot fall asleep.

I have lain in the not really a bed for two hours... unexpected texts and phone calls not withstanding.

I have tried to meditate, done reiki and gotten as comfortable as the floor can be comfortable...

I even got up early this morning despite going to bed very late last night in anticipation of needing to be asleep early tonight.

I haven't had caffeine since noonish.

Nothing is working.

I'm awake.

Like bing-bing-bing friggin Ricochet Rabbit awake.

I have to learn how to input UPC codes and scan incoming inventory from multiple vendors among other things for 8 hours not including lunch break... and then I have to do laundry at the laundromat and read at least two chapters for school tomorrow night...

And no, can't do it tonight cause the laundromat is closed and the words of my psych chapters are all just swimming on the page... see, I tried.

Coffee is going to have it's work cut out for it in the morning. I'm gonna be so bleary-eyed I'll be lucky to not miss the toilet.

Coffee's gonna have to get me through the first five hours before I can come home and drink more to get me through the rest.

Thank God it adds IQ points, because with the amount I'll lose in the sleep deprivation, I might, MIGHT, break even... maybe.

Then again, maybe with enough coffee, I'll have a surplus of IQ points...

I'll just have to prove my brilliance from the bathroom.

Guess that beats falling asleep on the loaves of pillowy looking bread when that's delivered.

And to top it off, receiving is going to be HOT (which will make me more sleepy), cause South Texas has been so hot, the native Texans are commenting... and that's just one of the joys of living in this muggy hell-hole... along with bugs the size of Cadillacs.

I think maybe it's just possible I'm getting a little sleep-deprived bitchy.

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I Was A Cross Between Pretty Woman and A Compton Gang Member So We Went To Galveston

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"He said he's taking the day off."

"He's taking the day off?!?"

"That's what he said. He's taking the day off."

Quotes from Pretty Woman, in case you've been under a rock or girlfriendless since the 90's.

As you may recall, in Pretty Woman Edward took the day off to play hooky with Vivianne.

I'm assuming that you feel a little like Phillip Stucky as I behaved like Edward Lewis yesterday. I took the day off and didn't update. So it was that on Monday morning you were still staring at LMFAO Friday.

I took the day off to bitch at my husband about neglecting to spend time with his wife. A point that wouldn't have been as effective to argue if I'd spent two hours putting a Monday morning post together. So I'm sorry you had to sacrifice, but I was saving my marriage.

Between his buddy moving in and my not going outside to smoke anymore I hardly see hubby lately... unless he's coming in to eat and make a disaster area of the house. Which had me feeling like a maid and wanting to yell shrilly at both of them until their ears and eyes started bleeding tell his friend, "This is MY man; Get Your OWN, you bleepbleepedybleep!!!" while I discretely got my knife ready cause I was going to have to cut the suckah.

So it was that hubby, munchkin and I, unprepared with a destination, camera or diaper bag, took an impromptu family road trip...

And wound up in Galveston. It's been over a year since Ike devastated the poor island and hubby was a little shell-shocked pointing out all of the places where things used to be.

It was my Yankee-ass first visit to Galveston, which is a shame because seeing it in post-natural-disaster-rebuilding mode is no way to meet a place.

It went from this:


in March 2007, to this:



on September 15, 2008 to this:



They've done an amazing job cleaning up all the matchsticks that were restaurants and souvenir shops among other things, but the coastline is pretty much naked now.

The one hotel still standing majestically out on the water is actually condemned which you can see as you get closer...

I'm glad I hadn't seen Galveston before Ike, because I would have been heartbroken to see it now. As it was, it was sad seeing all the construction still going on.

Even if you can't argue with a remodeling project initiated by God.

For a much better photo-article of the destruction of Ike and the year later aftermath, GO HERE.

Swine Flu in the Old Lady House

Well, it's official. We took the munchkin to the doctor Monday, and he's on the back end of Swine Flu. Of course we found this out after he'd played with every single kid in the waiting room and gone up to every adult and said, "Hello!!" because my child is nothing if not social.

I, myself, woke up Tuesday morning with a very sore throat and a kinda snorkiness in my head and think it's quite possible that I'm on the front end of Swine Flu. Yay. Combined with the backache I've had for three days due to the rains coming in, I'm just havin' a grand ole time over here! That was sarcasm for the uninitiated.

But, aside from that, our good friends, D&D were here over the weekend (if y'all get Swine Flu, bitch at hubby he invited you for this weekend, instead of waiting a week like I'd originally suggested.) and Lady D was telling me that she got rid of all their bugs (they too are a Texas country household) by putting out moth balls.

She swore, no spiders or mosquitoes or tree roaches any of which, in Texas, are both par for the course, as well as large enough to abscond with your toddler and sell him on the black market.

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Needless to say, with my pussy ghostly white Irish-non-Texas-saddlebag skin, getting rid of the mosquitoes made my ears perk up, but when she mentioned the other bugs that she no longer had in her home, I was all, smell hell, I'm gettin' me some moth balls!

So I did... OK, I'm lying. I had hubby get them cause he owed me for sabotaging my Sunday

So it is that I'm sitting here typing this in a Swine Flu ridden home that smells just like old lady, except, I must have only known 'hip' old ladies, because I never knew any who had a house that smelled like this.

I think my sore throat is getting worse from the smell.

Happily, though, munchkin and I are new-mosquito-bite free. That's huge because they've been FIERCE since the rains started. In fact, I'm pretty sure that picture above is life-sized.

But, I'm confident I'll live. As long as no more flying-monkey-sized mosquitoes feast on me, thereby inflicting mortal wounds; and Swine Flu doesn't kill me, cause in southeast Texas, they don't give you antibiotics for Swine Flu. Which, just, ya know, as a deductive hypothesis, may be why the mortality rate for Swine Flu is kinda high in the Houston area. Just sayin'.

But, I haven't hit the lotto yet, so I can't die.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Till I'm floating above my husband who is picking out my pine box. Then maybe I'll consider believing otherwise.

Maybe.

Itchy Bitchy-itis

After my last post, and Obama's speech (only available at he time of this post in text form, not on YouTube yet) last night, I'm sure some of you are thinking I'm going to post about my views on it all today. And you would be wrong. Obama, and my political feelings have been completely usurped...

I am thoroughly aware that bitchy tends to be my normal.

And that I have nearly-albino skin that seems to call out to mosquitoes, "Free all-you-can-eat prime rib dinner! Come and GET IT!!!"

I grew up in New Jersey where mosquitoes are the state bird. I've known about my caviar-to-mosquitoes state of being my whole life.

And yet...

After three months of burn-bans and "extreme drought conditions", the weather guy's words, not mine, that yielded ground so dried out that I LITERALLY have six-inch wide gaps in the ground in my yard, gaps wide enough to suck up a two-year old's leg to the knee, which hasn't happened yet, but is a possibility every time we walk to the car, I guess I wasn't prepared for what has happened over the last couple of weeks as the rains decided that we were once again worthy to experience their wetness.

As in, it rains buckets during the day, awakening with great fervor, mosquito larvae that has lain dormant all summer... and possibly since the Jurassic period, I can't be sure.

What I can be sure of, is that I literally had to get out a fly swatter the other night to take one of these dinosaur-sized suckers out. For Real. The body was as long as my pinky nail.

Let me say that again for the cheap seats.

The body was as long as my pinky nail.

Hubby tried to tell me without seeing it by the friggin' way thank you very little it was a mosquito hawk. YaNO, it was NOT a mosquito hawk, it was, distant cousin to vampire and T-rex alike, a MOSQUITO.

And now it's rained so much that the trailer has shifted... and the back door needs the strike plate readjusted so it will latch when you close it, so it was pretty much hanging there free-range yesterday as hubby and the roommate went in and out letting in, you guessed it, a shit-load of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes that decided for some unknown reason, that my bedroom was the newest nightclub in town.

I need a transfusion.

And a whole lotta sleep that I won't get because my hands were last night's buffet, and I was not-so-blissfully nudged awake by needing to scratch HOLES into my hands because I have mosquito bites on every square inch of my hands, and yes, almost exclusively my hands. Did I mention they feasted on my hands?

One on each forearm; 97,787,789,376 bites on each hand.

So, I'm up and typing this, in part to get my mind off of my itching hands and hoping, like 2 billion rosaries hoping, that Benadryl will have some SOME shred of an effect and also, because the striking of the keys helps to scratch the bites on the tips of my fingers.

This also may explain to you, my reader why there are so many line breaks in this post... They are scratch-vigorously breaks.

The only benefit to this torture is that I've lost enough blood to finally complete my home-transfusion and switch my blood type over to coffee, French roast thank you, none of that Colombian shit...

Which I will be doing by IV, because you can't hold a coffee mug when your hands are submerged in calamine lotion.

Bugged

I know that I'm crazy.

Let me clarify that, I now know that I'm crazy. I wasn't fully aware of this fact until my "Yankee" ways were exposed to the harsh light of southern country living, but now that I know, I accept it... kind of.

However, I'm pretty sure that hallucinations are not part of my regular level of insanity. I'm also fairly certain, that I'm not having nicotine withdrawal hallucinations, because those would have kicked in much earlier than 24 hours shy of two weeks. Nor do I think I am having sleep deprivation hallucinations, because to my knowledge, you don't get those while you're sleeping and have them wake you up...

So it stands to reason, that I'm up after ninety minutes of sleep, posting and waiting for coffee to brew because I really did feel something crawl up my leg and what the bleepedybleepbleepbleep was that?!?!? O. M. G!

I kicked the covers off of myself and the bed, jumped up like a ninja and perused the bed in the dark to the best of my ability, but there was nothing there. Aside from a slight shift in position and what could only be categorized as a caveman-like grunt from hubby, he thought himself the only other occupant in the bed and was content to let me freak out alone so long as I didn't disturb him too mightily. bastard!

I did my rational-human-being impression and tried to lay back down... without my covers, because I was taking no chances, but my eyes refused to shut. Instead, the mutinous orbs thought they were Malcolm McDowell's stunt double in A Clockwork Orange during the brainwashing scene. Besides, now, aside from feeling naked without my covers; I felt 'buggy'.

Damn I hate that feeling. Like whatever bug that gave you the shivers is now crawling somewhere on your body. Since I originally felt the offensive whateverthehellyouareyouneedtogethebleepoffofme on my leg, I was feeling particularly 'buggy' on my feet. After more delusional ninja antics, I ascertained that there was still nothing there, but by then, I was done for. There was no way in living hell I was going to be able to fall back asleep.

Even if I did manage to crazy-glue my eyelids shut, my brain would convince me that the mystery-guest would be along the sides of the mattress, waiting maniacally for me to let my guard down . And with each internal retelling the thing would evolve from a June-bug no larger than my pinky-nail to a Texas-sized roach to a tarantula large enough to swallow a raccoon whole. And the 'buggy'-ness would expand it's creepy-crawly-range to the back of my thigh, then my back, then my face until I spazzed sufficiently enough to not only wake up hubby, but to have him call for back-up from the men in little white coats.

Because, somehow in a maneuver that defied logic and all common sense whatsoever, a completely bug-phobic woman moved to Texas. A place where half the bugs make residents say, "Holy HELL that thing is HUGE!" and the other half makes them say, "Holy HELL, WHAT IS that thing?!?"... especially when you take a picture of it and have it waiting to show them the second they hit the front porch, before they can even utter the words, "hello dear."... just, you know, as an example *totallyinnocentlookandnotmewhistle*

But, no such thing as that going on this morning. Just me alone in my 'buggy'-ness and my exhausted-scared-awake state. I can't even go out for a smoke to calm my nerves, cause I don't do that anymore. Which, in this instance sucks. Cause, what am I supposed to do to take the edge off? I've quit every stinkin' edge-blurring habit I've ever owned, except for cheesecake, but I'm totally out of cheesecake, cause I didn't know to plan for a non-existent-bug-freak-out-incident.

Guess I'm getting kicked out of the Eagle Scouts for poor planning... which is fine if they'll tell me how to de-bugify before they hand me my walking papers and a parting piece of cheesecake...