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      Sunday, March 08, 2015


otherstuff
12:56 PM - 03/08/2015

The topic: Everything’s okay here
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I'm just in a place where I have so much to do, I'm not doing anything. I just sit on the sofa watching reruns of Forensic Files or similar crap. Then I fall asleep.

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I have been pretty tired and it's really weird. I'm not eating more, but my pants are getting tighter and tighter. Looking over the past couple of months, I'm wondering (I wondered this before, just not out loud) if the methimazole that DaNiece and Richie get is affecting me. I've never been careful about the administration of it and getting in on my fingers and hands happens often. I did a little Google search yesterday and remembered that this is a drug that can be given transdermally. So, I'm going to definitely be more careful in my administration of it and wash my hands thoroughly when I'm done. 

We haven't walked much the past couple of weeks, I'm having a really tough time getting moving in the morning (and now this effing time change thing...I wish they'd just leave it one way or the other, screw changing it, it's just too hard on the old body) and now it will be dark at six am. Last Monday it was raining, Tuesday my left leg hurt, I must have slept wrong, but just walking through the house was painful...always some excuse. It sucks. After I finish this entry, I'm going into the extra room so I can get to my exercise bike. It's a recumbant and easy on the joints and I enjoy riding it. 

I'm sure the stress of the past couple of months hasn't helped. Jackie, Richie, Jackie again...it wears on me.

Yesterday, the dryer we got last May quit putting out warm air. It came with a year warranty and they'll be out Tuesday to fix it. I'll get up early Tuesday and pull everything out of the laundry room and wash the floors and walls. I keep it mostly clean, but not a company clean, you know? There's clean and then there's company clean. This house is not company clean in the least. Anyway, I had a load of jeans and sweatpants in the washer, socks in the dryer and ended up putting the laundry line cord in the garage (Brian put it up for me the last time I made the Disney shirts, back in 2013, for the transfers to dry so they'd last longer once pressed on the shirts). Luckily we've hit another warm spell so they were mostly dry last night. This morning I put the socks on the line. At least I have a line to put them on, that's a good thing.

Orders are slow now, that always depresses me. I just hate not knowing where the next bank deposit will come from. But when it does come, I was finally able to get external bank transfers on my account. I can get into both the personal account and the small business account and now Brian won't have to rush to the bank that has our mortgage with a check each month. I can do it electronically.  That's a good thing.

Remember all of my rants about CostCo never getting my pill quantities right?  Well, last month when I called to get my BP refilled, I was told they will no longer sell me refills all at once. We're talking three hundred pills, a ten month prescription. Besides the convenience of only having to go once to get the meds, it's way cheaper to get them in bulk. A thirty day supply is ten bucks. A ten month supply is less than twenty-five bucks. So, $100.00 vs $25.00, in bulk we save $75.00. No brainer. Since I'm getting low, I called my doctor's office. "Well, you still have a prescription on file, you still have refills".  Well, I promise to not get that refilled, I would like to have a new prescription like you do Brian's. (He has one scrip that's 1 @ 270, no refills.)  It took most of the day with phone calls back and forth to finally get it right. But all three of my prescriptions as well as Brian's have been sent over to CostCo and none of them comes with a refill. Fingers crossed. 

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Anyway.....guess I should get busy. Get something accomplished today.


otherstuff
01:20 PM - 03/08/2015

The topic: Last weekend
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We had the opportunity to meet up with some of our Disney friends. They were visiting a ninety year old uncle in Old Town. I took my camera, because I try to always take my camera. I took some photos and a few videos while we were at Coronado. We had lunch at a little restaurant named McP's (I had a deli sandwich, I haven't had one in years and sadly, it wasn't as good as I remembered), then cruised around the island, Brian doing guide duty.

Here is one of the videos. The one with the ocean. 

 


otherstuff
01:25 PM - 03/08/2015

The topic: Last weekend
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We had a winter storm. There was a little rain on our way to Coronado (video on my youtube channel). It rained a bit while we were eating lunch (we were on the patio under an umbrella, but the showers quickly passed and the rest of the day was San Diego gorgeous. 

But Sunday and Monday we got slammed with precipitation. It was great, we loved it. Monday we actually got some hail. And I got it on video (well, sure, isn't that what I do?). There was a little thunder, but not much. The cats weren't thrilled with the whole concept of water monsters from the sky. They pretended to be indoor kitties for the duration.

 

 

      Monday, March 16, 2015


otherstuff
07:56 AM - 03/16/2015

The topic: I’m around
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And I have some stuff to put up (like pictures from our trip to the Safari Park last week), but I have a stack of paperwork to do (you know how much I don't like doing paperwork) as well as needing to switch out the yearly files (move 2013 into storage, move 2014 to the 2013 drawers and set up file folders for 2015). 

And since I know I need to do this and it's here in the office, I'm staying away from the office. Out of sight, out of mind. 

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For the past week we've been having record high heat for this time of the year (90s) and the office is NOT the place to hang out when it's hot.

I tripped over one of Brian's implements in the backyard last Friday and it's finally hitting my back, boy, howdy am I sore.

Katie is hanging in there, still grooms herself and laps up the A/D I give her (I mix it with water so it's easier) and she REALLY likes it when I add a jar of baby food to it. The only thing is I have to stand by her while she eats. If I don't, she'll get pushed away from the food by the likes of Opie or Mystie.

Jackie's ashes are back.

Tired of rewashing dishes in the morning, I've been getting the put away the night before (I have to rewash because at least one of the cats gets on the counter at night and pees on the dish drainer). And we've been eating before five each night. My stomach has been crappy since I had my gallbladder out and I'm tired of the reflux at night. I really need to see the doctor about this, but I'm still paying off the colonoscopy labs and the mole I had removed and checked out last December.  The labs were almost five hundred bucks and the same for the mole removal and testing (and it did have irregular cells so it was good it was removed. Three and a half years to Medicare!

But it's really nice to have a clean kitchen in the morning.

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Orders are coming in slowly and it's really nerve racking. We had a couple of flush weeks and Brian's ordering stuff, I warn him to not do this, but does he listen?  Nope. Last week he had to go pick up custom sized boxes to the tune of almost $400.00. There were a hundred and ten boxes, he uses maybe six a week. Yeah, he really "needed" all of these boxes. This morning he "reminds" me that he also needs to get cylinders. I asked "why tell me, you're the one spending money". I guess he didn't like that, he got up and did his ab exercises (it really helps his back). 


otherstuff
03:09 PM - 03/16/2015

The topic: Last Monday was good
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Not today, but last week.

Last Sunday was spent cleaning, because the repairman for the dryer was supposed to be here between 11:00 and 1:00 on Monday. He called Monday morning and said "I can make it earlier, is that okay?" It was. He was here a little after 9:00.

Before he got here, Brian emptied the laundry room of baskets and the litter boxes and even swept the floor of loose litter (I'd washed the floor the day before). The house was pretty much cat mess free by the time the repairman got her. He pulled the machine out from the wall, took it apart, checked all of the internal electrical and couldn't find anything wrong with it. He put it back together, hit the start button and voila! Heat! He said there must have been something loose. Good thing one. 

Then, Monday evening we went to CostCo. I got in line for our meds. Guess what? I got nine months of meds all at once.  The total for our meds (including thirty Xanax pills, the doc upped that from the twenty he presribed previously) was a little under $69.00. We won't be needing to hit the pharmacy until December! Woohoo!  This was a major thing to me, the not fighting to get all of my pills at once. Before I'd stress when I called it in ("please fill all refills at this time, it's cost effective", "okay, I've put a note on your account"), stress when I got in line, stress when they handed me  the pills and stressed again when it was wrong. No more of that! Good thing two.

So, last Monday was a good day.

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catstuff
07:05 PM - 03/16/2015

The topic: Earlier this month
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I took this short little video of Mario and Rocky. The look on Mario's face makes me laugh. 

 
 

 

 

 

 

      Sunday, March 22, 2015


entertainmentstuff
07:13 AM - 03/22/2015

The topic: We went to see “Home” yesterday morning
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It was a really cute movie. We liked it, I think it's one the whole family will enjoy. 

But like the last movie we tried to attend (The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) which we didn't see because of line jumpers and a special group who got in before the ones who won radio or television contests, the seats weren't the best. 

For the Marigold movie, there was a group called the Cinema Society. Then you have the same group of line jumpers. A couple of people get there hours early and then all of their friends start showing up after others (like us) have been waiting for over an hour. We usually try to be at a movie at least an hour and a half before it starts.  There will be less than fifty people in front of us, but by the time they start letting us in, the line in front of us has doubled or tripled. And it's annoying. We could have gotten seats in the two front rows, but keeping your head tilted back for over an hour and a half isn't very comfortable and for some of us, we feel the pain for days after. So, we left the line and came home. We'd been in line for an hour and forty-five minutes,  we should have easily gotten decent seats. But the line jumping prevented that.

Yesterday, it was Girl Scouts. The line jumpers don't usually hit the Saturday morning movies and I thought we had a real good chance at awesome seating. Nope. 

We spent four hours (driving, waiting and viewing) away from home for a ninety-minute movie. When we got home, Brian changed and when to work.

And I started rethinking this whole free movie thing. 

In Brian's business, time is money. Time away from home is time spent not making his product. For a lot of last year, he was running at eight weeks to get orders out. He feels this is unacceptable. How much money is it costing him in time to go to a "free" movie? Add to that the frustration of waiting so long and getting less than great seats.  I asked if what he thought about the idea of just setting aside a couple of days a month to go see a matinee? If we play our cards right, it would cost us less than twenty bucks a show (we don't buy stuff to eat or drink). We'd see the shows we wanted to (no more things like Purge: Anarchy) and wouldn't drive as far and wait in line as long.

He's all for it.

So, I'm not going to try to get the advanced screenings for a while. Maybe later I'll pick it up again, but for now, I'm going to just back off.  See if it helps lessen the stress level somewhat.

      Monday, March 23, 2015


mrs. crankypants
01:17 PM - 03/23/2015

The topic: The first candidate has thrown his hat into the ring…
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For the love of God, people, get out and vote this next election!

I found today that there is absentee voting in EVERY state. That's right. Every state has absentee voting so that you don't need a ride, you don't need daycare, you don't need to take time off of work. 

We've done the absentee voting for years now. All we need is a stamp for each envelope. 

It's your right to vote. Exercise it!

      Tuesday, March 24, 2015


catstuff
02:12 PM - 03/24/2015

The topic: Katie update
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She's hanging in there. The tumor doesn't seem to be growing as quickly as it started out, but that could just be wishful thinking on my part. I'm sure we've all been there. 

Anyway, I got some video of her eating this morning, you can get a good idea of her chin. 

I'm thinking she'll be with us for a little while longer.

 

      Saturday, March 28, 2015


otherstuff
07:39 AM - 03/28/2015

The topic: A fun day in store
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There's something not nice going on with the trees.  Really tall pine trees and parts of them have started dying. There were a lot of things that went through our minds, the neighbors poisoning them was one of the first, since the worst are the ones on the property line, but the ones in front of the house have no problems at all. And it appeared that all of the trees that are in the backyard didn't have any problems. Just those three on the property line. But when we noticed the smallest of them in the backyard, the very last one in the line, was doing poorly, I came up with the idea that maybe it's not poison, but lack of water (because of the drought and the rising cost of water, we've cut way back).

Brian bought some things that you put into the trees to kill beetles, in case there are any, and the trees have been getting a lot more water than they had been. And they seem to be responding. But there's still the matter of all of the dead stuff at the top. We don't see it much on this side, but as you come down the street, on the other side, where the asshole neighbors live, it's pretty bad.  I haven't had much use for either of them since we came home from dinner at my in-laws one Thanksgiving to find Junior drenched to the bone - they'd hosed him, probably because he'd been barking; and he learned this behavior because of their grandson who used to come out to the fence and yell at the dogs, kick the fence and throw things at them. I quit talking to her when everytime we had a conversation, she's start in on me about the trees. I always responded to talk to Brian about it, but she kept after me. She's a slow learner I guess, but she's one helluva nag. I liked the time when Brian was putting up the wood fence when they were dogsitting for their daughter and the dogs rushed the fence, scaring the crap out of Marco, he fell from the retaining wall and broke his hip. Two thousand dollars at the vet to get it taken care of and eight weeks in a crate.

Brian gets wood and puts up a wooden fence so that the dogs (or anyone in their yard, for that matter) can't see into ours. Brian at first was going to attach the wood to the chain link and Mr. Asshole says "you can't do that, the fence won't bear the weight, besides it's my fence and I don't want you attaching to it". (They didn't install the fencing, it was there when they moved in.) Okay, explain this then. Why are all of the poles that the fencing attaches to on OUR side of the fence? But Brian didn't say a word, he just went down to Home Depot and bought wood that he'd just build the fence as if there was nothing there. Well, Mrs. Nagatha Asshole comes out and starts screeching at Brian "my view! my view! what about my view?" and then asks Brian "well, are you going to cut down the trees?"  Brian and Mr Asshole had discussed why this was being done and Mr Asshole's comment was "well, the did the dogs hurt your cats?" (My head voice was shouting "no, you stupid fuck, but they rushed the fence and our cats didn't know what they were going to do, it was new to them, and it scared the crap out of them and ended up costing us a buttload of money." My head voice loves expletives.)

(Yeah, all of this time I was in the extra room, listening, amazed that Brian was so calm.)

Finally Mr Asshole said "Nagatha" (that's what I call his wife) "Go in the house, Nagatha"... and Mrs Asshole went inside.

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So, a couple of weeks ago we get a thing in the mail that the company that carries our homeowner's insurance wants to come take pictures of the house, inside and out. Brian's nervous that because of the dead part on the trees, there will be a problem. And he contacted the guy who stopped by last December. "It's time to do something about the trees."  And then he tells me "I hate to bring this up, but we're going to need to sell some of our stock to pay for this". I was hoping we could skip a year (every year since he quit the glass business we sell some stock - our retirement money), but it needs to be done.

All of the cats are inside and the cat doors are blocked. Rocky is already going nuts and it's only been fifteen minutes. I'm sure once they start working, he'll be happy to be inside (he's not happy with strangers, he learned Stranger Danger well in kitty school). And because of Rocky, the catdoor in the garage is locked for in and out, a baby gate is in front of that and there are two #38 containers pushed against the baby gate. In the laundry room, the door is locked for in and out, a big heavy litterbox is in front of that and I've got the lid to the litterbox (we use Sterlite containers) is between the door and the litterbox. Getting out will take some work. Oh, and the backdoor is locked so no one accidentally opens it to get into the house.

Brian put out a cooler with lots of ice and bottles of water for the workers. I need to clean the bathroom, because you never know if someone has to potty. 

This is going to take a couple of days because the guys are climbing the trees to do the work, no equipment was rented. 

The workers are here. Keep us in your thoughts that all goes smoothly. 


otherstuff
09:31 AM - 03/28/2015

The topic: I’m really sad right now
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Birds are flying around from tree to tree. Nests are gone. 

*tears*

      Sunday, March 29, 2015


otherstuff
06:39 PM - 03/29/2015

The topic: We didn’t realize the trees were dying
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when there was a knock at the door last November or December.  The part of the trees that was dying was on the outside and since we didn't go that way (due to the road being incredibly potholed at the end), we never saw it. It was a man who owns a tree trimming company. He and Brian walked through the yard and he gave Brian an estimate. Brian was up front with him, let him know we didn't have the money to do this, but he would get in contact with him when we did.

The first thing Brian did was to order some insecticide spikes for the trees. He did this years ago, before the last time they were trimmed and the insecticide stopped the killing almost immediately.  He did what he knew had worked in the past. Then he watered the hell out of them. He had a hose going for two weeks, he'd move it from tree to tree.

It's been stressed by well meaning (ha!) folks that once a tree has beetles, it's doomed. 

You tell me.

The first photos were taken on January 8. The second set were taken yesterday morning. There was no change in the dead area in the months since the insecticide was applied. 

Clicking on a picture will take you to a bigger photo in my family album; clicking on that picture will open a larger photo.

So, do you think they're gonna die anytime soon? I'm not betting on it. 

But then, there are those who have no experience, but know someone who knows someone who said...and that makes them experts. Even though they've told you in the past that trees NEVER stop growing....(oh, yeah? Then show me a tree that's reached the moon. Go ahead, I dare ya.)

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      Tuesday, March 31, 2015


otherstuff
07:04 AM - 03/31/2015

The topic: Well, with the trimming of the trees
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Comes the lack of privacy. Our house used to be pretty blocked from view, but now, it's wide open. So, I'm thinking we should plant some sort of hedge on the bank. Not all the way at the top where it would bother the neighbors so much (anything we plant is going to bother them, they'd be perfectly happy with dirt, they like dirt, their backyard is dirt), but more along the middle, so when I look up, I don't look at the side of their house or the street.

Brian's mom has Oleander planted about eight feet back from the street at her house and it does a good job of privacy from the street, so I'd like to do that, but the problem is Oleander is pretty poisonous. Then I wondered about bougainvillea, but Brian said that's a vine, not a bush. We don't want something that climbs.

Any suggestions for something that flowers, is hedgelike and grows fast? 

I really want my privacy back.


otherstuff
09:15 AM - 03/31/2015

The topic: One of the crummiest things about the trim
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Was the loss of the birds' nests. This really upset me. There are more trees around, but these trees were the perfect place for a nest. Because of all of the needles, they were fairly hidden and safe. No sun beating down and protection from the wind and rain and cold. 

And that's all gone now. Brian's buying some fertilizer spikes that supposedly will bring back the growth a lot more quickly. I hope so.

I'd made my concerns to the trimmers, but they had a job to do and a short time to do it and watching for nests wasn't in their job description. But one of them did come up to Brian with his hands cupped. It was a baby bird. He handed it to Brian. Brian handed it to me. Brian went back into his shop and found a small box and an old teeshirt and I brought it into the house, putting it into the extra room. Then I closed the door and came online, looking for advice. I contacted someone in rescue, but he didn't get it, he kept telling me to take it to a rescue place. This wasn't practical at that moment. I kept looking.

I found some advice and cut up fragrance and chemical free paper towels. Found a couple of plastic bowls to put the baby and the shredded paper towels and an old shirt of mine to cover it partially up so that the warmth would stay in. We have some high quaility kitten food that we'd got for Marco last year when he was losing weight. I soaked it in filtered water until it was soft, then used a hand blender and one of the many unused syringes I've gotten over the years from the vet. 

I heated up the food, washed my hands and started feeding this little bird every forty-five minutes to an hour. The advice I'd found is they don't need to be fed from sundown to sunup. The parents don't do that, so neither do the humans who rescue them. 

Anyway, I grabbed this video the last time I fed him. This was the first time I heard full on chirping from him. And the first time he spread his wings so widely. I'm really hoping he makes it.

 

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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities.

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