Queen B

Archive for the ‘Punishment for what?’ Category

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Well I’ll be damned

In Punishment for what?, Things we've put the ground on January 31, 2012 at 5:28 pm

We ate the glazed ox tail. Of course it was probably one of the most delicious things I’ve ever cooked. Shocking.

Go and use the internets and find thee a recipe for glazed ox tail and make it. You will not be sorry.

**Except when trying to separate the meat from the fat. But that only lasts for like 30 minutes…. 45 tops.**

Today it was almost 60 degrees in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I was lucky enough to wade through our creek and backyard to document our easement situation. Now I’m no attorney, but I think that when a creek running through an easement causes this kind of erosion to adjacent private property that maybe said easement owner might have to take some responsibility. Behold:

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No, we did not build the fence over a hole originally.

Hubby claims he’s going to do something to rectify the situation this year.

So I put on the waders and walked in the water on this fine day to document the losses. They’re pretty bad, and getting worse every rainfall, every snow melt, every time you so much as look at the damned creek or the wind blows. The Village better step up is all I’m saying.

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As you can see, the Great Wall of Z is holding up moderately well.  We had to seal between the beams to stop the alarming loss of soil from behind, which is literally all that is preventing the rest of the fence to remain in the ground.  Just barely.  I’m sure the Village will find some way to use it against us.

We are hamsters on a wheel with this nonsense.  Every year, come spring, the easement and creek remind us of how much they suck.

A LOT.  The answer is A LOT.

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A newbie

In Big time stuff, Healthy shmealthy, Punishment for what? on November 11, 2011 at 5:06 pm

I did it.

I pulled the trigger and got me a new rheumie.  The bottom line is that I feel like utter crap all of the time and I’m not even so good at hiding it anymore.  So I caved and I’m back in full Dr. mayhem again after a three year Dr. hiatus.  And really, I’m kinda/sorta excited about it.  Well, just a little.

The new guy scheduled my appointment less than a week from the day I phoned his office.  A week!!  That is unheard of in my world.  This has been a whirlwind week of planning, and scheduling, and researching, and making lists of symptoms, and trying to retrieve my old files from the previous rheumie (unsuccessfully, btw… good riddance you crappy old rheumie), getting the insurance on board and dotting all the I’s and crossing all the T’s to pull this off.

I went in hopeful but full of anxiety, and really I liked him very much.  He didn’t make me feel like my symptoms were psychosomatic, he didn’t dismiss anything I said to him, he let me rattle off my two pages of symptoms without making me feel like I was keeping him, he agreed to all of the many tests suggested by my nutritionist and didn’t even flinch when I said that I wasn’t really the medicating type, if it can be avoided.  I even told him that I drink Pond Water and he didn’t seem phased by it.

Here’s a fact:  Rheumatologists have very, very soft hands and a very light touch.  Even my old Dr. had that going for her.  He very gently looked at my joints and fingernails, put my arms through some movements that made me feel like I should be doing the wave or the robot with him, and then felt my spine and back and poked me in my sides in a few places to ask if it hurt (it didn’t).  There were some questions about family history which I only have 1/2 of, unfortunately, and took everything I said VERY SERIOUSLY.

Then he sent me for some additional bloodletting with a “don’t be alarmed at the number of vials” and a “see you in two weeks!” and “oh, here’s a sample of a topical that might help with the extreme pain in your neck.”

My favorite part?  He finished up with “We’ll have you feeling like a human again in no time.”

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Then someone told me there were 16 blood work orders, which is a two digit number, people.

THEN, I plumb lost my mind… on account that I was on the pokey end of that deal.  However, I didn’t cry, and I didn’t bite anyone (yes, I have…), and I lived to tell it, so apparently it all worked out.

The end.

PS.  I’ll let you know when I get my results, I think I’m gonna get some good stuff (info) out of this!

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So here’s the thing

In Healthy shmealthy, Punishment for what?, Self-deprecating humor on October 11, 2011 at 3:39 pm

When you take a Dr. Hiatus, as I have done, the sad part is that eventually it has to come to an end.

Next week Wednesday I have an appointment to see my special lady doctor, and it’s been a long time.  Rumor has it I’m of the age I’ll be recommended to get a mammogram.

It has been so long now that I’ve kept my head in the sand, drinking my pond water and popping my vitamins, that I have to admit that I’ve got myself scared.  To see a Dr.

I’m experiencing major anxiety.  Like MAJOR.

I just had to get that off my chest.

***there is nothing “new” wrong with me, I have simply scheduled a long overdue checkup… so don’t anyone freak out, K?***

That is all.

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Gender bias

In Punishment for what?, Who comes up with this stuff? on July 2, 2011 at 1:03 am

Normally I’m all feminist and shit, in case you were wondering.  Not like in-your-face feminism or anything, but it’s in there.  I vote it, I think it, I teach it to my children, occasionally I talk about it, I live it.  Every so often I become outraged over it and shake my fists at stuff.  I know the entire song about Woman’s Suffrage from Schoolhouse Rock.

Of course I know the lyrics to pretty much all the music I’ve ever heard since childhood, but still.

All of this makes the crap I put up with at my job that much more shocking.

A few days ago I came home and realized that although we have been mowing our lawn every week, it had been many weeks since we had weed whipped it (or weed whacked for those of you who prefer that terminology, we like to call things by strange names around here).  All of my flower beds (and in some cases, weed beds) are edged by large boulders and rocks so the mower can only get so close.  Normally THE MAN handles the whipping, but as I’ve mentioned ad nauseam, he’s been abroad, and then we’ve been up to our eyeballs in mineral wool insulation (itchy), drywall (heavy), and paint (causing carpal tunnel, I’m pretty sure).

In answer to my complaining about the lack of whipping, my husband gave me a quick tutorial on using the whipper machine.  Let me just stop here for a second for a WTF.

WTF, dude?!

Let me tell you how pathetic it was when I came home from work the next day and whipped the edges of my yard (of which there are trillions, I’ve decided).  It was the very first time I had ever whipped a yard, and I expected it to be tedious, but not horrific.  I was wrong.  It was horrific.  I had to take breaks; like, as in to set down the whipping machine so that my arms would not fall right off of my torso.  A lot of them.  It was embarrassing, and I’m pretty sure the neighbors were all in their windows pointing and laughing.  I was excited when the evil stick ran out of gas.  Then THE MAN filled the damned thing back up while I wasn’t looking and left it for me to finish while he took my girl to the library.

Whippers are not made for short people, I decided.  I tried to pass along that little tidbit of information, but THE MAN claimed that it’s just as difficult for him and he’s much taller than me.  I’m not buying it.  I had dirt in my hair.  In all of it.  I don’t think that he has a 1:1 ratio of dirt to hair on his head by the time he’s finished whipping.

When I tried to eat my dinner, I complained the entire time that I couldn’t lift my arms.  In my whiniest, saddest of voices.  I couldn’t. Lift. My. Arms.  Got no sympathy, as usual.

THE MAN tells me “you don’t have to do it every week.” as if I will ever be whipping anything again.  Silly thing.

Man’s work.  For reals.

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Round Two

In Nothing to it but to do it, Punishment for what?, Random nonsense on June 27, 2011 at 11:01 pm

So we got the first half of phase 1 basement remodel completed, and here we go on the second.

Just finished carrying a trillion plus six pounds of 10 foot long 5/8″ drywall for miles (ok, from the car around to the backyard into the basement, but still).

This is not something we should be doing in preparation for a party. Seriously, most people just clean the floors, right?!

The upside is that somewhere in all of the dust I can see the outline of my dream home, which fills me with joy.

Still, I can’t wait to be done, because drywall is heavy. And I’m sorta on the woosie end of the strength spectrum. Just sayin’.

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We’re f*’d

In Big time stuff, Nothing to it but to do it, Punishment for what? on June 7, 2011 at 12:04 am

My husband and I decided today that we both need to be working every single free moment of every single day between now and July 16 to be ready to host my son’s graduation party or we’re f*’d.  Except I didn’t abbreviate when I was talking to Craig.  And then we laughed, because we both know we’re f*’d either way, and it’s pretty typical.

So in that vein, this is my day:

4:40am :  swear at the alarm clock.  swear word should not be how I start my day.  but it is.

5:20am:  holy crap, get out the door!

6:03am:  OK, only a tiny bit late.  if I hadn’t been behind that gravel truck the entire ride I would’ve been early.

8:00am:  feed me, I’m melting!

11:00am:  rush of energy, I’m off like a prom dress.  my coworkers just love it when I say that on my way out.

12:00pm:  run to the orthodontist to get more rubber bands for the boy.  it is ungodly hot because i’m not accustomed.

12:30pm:  spackle the drywall screw holes in the basement.  sucks.  i think he used a million screws plus four.

4:00pm:  freak out and string together a sentence consisting entirely of swear words when I realize that a carpenter bee has started drilling a new hole in the BRAND NEW SIDING my husband put up but didn’t yet stain.

4:15pm:  craft an entirely new and equally impressive sentence of swear words when I can’t find the house stain in our ridiculously disorganized and messy garage.  make mental note that in addition to the other million plus thirteen projects, we should clean the garage.  curse the missing paint.

4:20pm:  notice zinnia seeds have sprouted!  the neighbors probably think i’m crazy when i start to jump up and down.

4:30pm:  kick can of paint while washing the spackle knife in the laundry tub.  do a little dance.

4:40pm:  kill that f*cking carpenter bee who has the nerve to come and start drilling into my siding while I’m trying to paint it!  do a new dance, that makes eight kills.

4:45pm:  dance around in a panic when the ants start biting me because I’m standing on an ant hill while attempting to paint the siding.  Hate. Ants.

5:30pm:  clean up from house paint, move on to trim paint to paint over the old cream (when was this house cream?) trim paint that was exposed when we moved the gutters.

6:00pm:  clean the danged old paint brush again!

6:15pm:  edge the impatient bed with stones I have laying willy nilly in a flower bed, plant more impatients in the bed from whence I removed the rocks ~ it’s all a delicate dance around here.

7:00pm:  make my husband walk around so I can point out all the work I did.  expect praise.  didn’t get nearly enough.  Pfffft.

Cook dinner, clean up from dinner, empty and reload dishwasher, wrangle children, send long overdue emails.

Rest while husband takes his diy shift.

12:01am:  feel guilt for writing blog post instead of working.

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What the hell?

In Punishment for what?, Things we've put the ground on May 25, 2011 at 11:51 pm

As I was leaving for work this morning, I noticed that our gutters were overflowing in front of the house.  Not just a little, a lot.  And there was a big ass puddle right up against the foundation.  I had to go to work, so I looked at it sadly but kept on truckin’.  On my way to work, I phoned my husband and mentioned it.  His reaction got me worried, and since he was already close to work and I was not nearly as close (and my work not nearly as far from our house) I decided to turn around and clean the gutters before we had an incident in the basement.

I don’t need to get into the details of the ordeal of gutter cleaning, as I’m sure everyone has done it at one point or another.  I will say, however, that it completely and utterly sucks to do it in the rain.  That thought of how badly it sucked passed my mind several times, actually.  When I reached my hand up to grab a blockage and a whole bucket load of water filled with the foulest smelling rotten vegetation poured over my head I thought about it.  When the lightning started while I was perched on an aluminum ladder clutching a metal gutter I thought about it.

When I came to, laying in the pile of mud after the flipping ladder flopped out from under me and clocked me in the face I thought about something else.

I thought about that tree in my front yard.  The one planted entirely too close to the house.  The one people call the bird shit tree because its bud covers litter the sidewalks of the midwest during a rainstorm and make it look like a flock of birds landed at my front door.  The one that fills my gutters multiple times every season, usually in the middle of a rainstorm (so that we have no choice but to get on a ladder in the middle of a downpour).  The one that made me cry because I thought my jaw was broken before I even made it to work this morning.  THAT tree.  IT HAS TO GO.

Because, essentially, it punched me in the face.

I used to be a tree hugger.  Now, it is dead to me.

(And YES, I’m ok.  But sore, thanks.)

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The field trip

In Nothing to it but to do it, Punishment for what?, The little roomies on April 17, 2011 at 10:53 pm

I do not do field trips.  The primary reason being that I have motion sickness.  If you suffer from motion sickness, busses are bad.  Very, very bad.  Prior to this last week, I have volunteered for exactly ONE off property school field trip.  I was so miserable, I swore it would be my last.  That was in 2002.

The secondary reason being that other people’s children are out to get me, and should not be left in my care.  I am not one to be trusted with the responsibility of keeping track of any more than two children at a time.  Maybe that’s the real reason I have two children.  You’ll have to decide on your own if that’s the case.

No one cared about my motion sickness, nor my inability to keep track of children when MY HUSBAND volunteered and subsequently backed out of my dear daughter’s field trip to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry last week and I was left to resolve the quivering lower lip of said daughter.  She who has never, ever had a parent chaperone on a field trip.  In her whole life.

This is how I came to find out that if I sit over the wheels of the bus I can last about 1 hour before a headache sounds the motion sickness early warning system.  Thankfully, I held it together because this ride was an hour and a half.  This is also how I found out that child wrangling is best achieved by adults who are actually taller than the children they are wrangling.  Damn, there’s no fixing that.  This was when I realized that children don’t care one lick about weather, nor about the list of questions their teacher put me in charge of making sure they could answer related to the weather exhibit.  My six little bullies made no bones about it, they were not interested. Unfortunately, this is where I witnessed first-hand the drama that is girls of the fourth grade.  Hate it.

This is where I saw my girl in her natural habitat.  And she was so, so happy just because I was there.

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No children were lost or harmed in the making of this special day.

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What a day

In Big time stuff, Healthy shmealthy, Punishment for what? on March 19, 2011 at 11:15 pm

It was a perfectly lovely day today, wasn’t it?

It made me think that I should run outdoors.  I have since decided that running = the perfect way to ruin my perception of a perfectly lovely day.

It did make it a tad easier to order a cheeseburger for dinner, though.

My daughter has been sick for a week and a day today.  First it was a fever, then coughing, and then vomiting.  Now we have a lingering cough with occasional vomiting induced by gagging due to the coughing.  It’s not been a lot of fun, in case you were wondering.

She is my main running partner, but coughing and running are not a good match so she rode her bike to keep me company.  It was really nice to have company, and in all honesty I probably would’ve quit running a million times if she hadn’t been circling me on her kick ass retro red bicycle.  At some point I reminded her that if I passed out in the road, she would need to fish my phone from the pocket of my windbreaker and call 911.  It was that bad.

I’ve decided that my poor eating habits are having a serious impact on my running.  And by that I mean a negative impact.

You’re welcome for the clarification!!!

I’m weighed down (in more ways than one), sluggish, and slow.  It makes it more painful, much more difficult, and less enjoyable.

I may have just had an epiphany, in case you didn’t notice.

Dammit.

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Window seat

In Punishment for what? on March 9, 2011 at 4:12 pm

I have a window cubicle at work.  It’s not a golf course view or anything, more like the parking lot, but still.  It’s a window as opposed to another cubicle wall, which is what I had previously.  It’s nice.

Except….

There is this man.  This horrible, horrible man.  I know his name.  He is a CPA in another office suite in the building I work in.  He has a daily ritual.  Actually a multiple-times-per-day ritual.  A horrible, horrible ritual.

Cigars.

Every day, multiple times per day, Mr. CPA stands right outside of the window by my desk and smokes a cigar.  No matter that smoking is prohibited on the west end of the building where I sit.  No matter that Illinois statute mandates you must be 20 feet from the nearest entrance of the building to smoke.  No matter that the building management company has informed him on many, many occasions that he needs to take his stinky cigar smoking ass to the other side of the building.  No matter that I am flipping him off through the window as he is checking himself out in the reflective coating on the windows.

The smoking isn’t the worst part.  Every day he puff, puff, puffs away and then suddenly decides that he urgently needs to go in to take care of some business.  He rests his still-lit cigar on the ledge of the window sill (on the outside, obviously) and heads into the office.  The ledge is right next to the door.  So, unfortunately, you’re gonna reek of cigar if you use the west door pretty much any time of the day.  That’s pretty bad, right?

THAT isn’t even the worst part.

When he finally comes back out to reclaim his cigar that has been smoldering on the window ledge (assuming that no one has since accidentally poured a cup of water over it or inadvertently smashed it or thrown it in the trash because they thought it was, you know, trash), he will smoke it a little more and then throw it down on the ground!  The planted areas, grass, and parking lot are riddled with this man’s half smoked cigars.

Admittedly, it makes me CRAZY.  Because as he stands at the door to the building and whips his cigars all over tarnation, he is also STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO A GARBAGE CAN!!

So yes, I throw things in the trash if they look like trash,  and if it seems like something is burning maybe I’ll step on it.  What can I say?  I’m clumsy, and I spill water all the time.  It happens.  Luckily all my accidents are outside during work hours.

Obviously this man is dealing with a vindictive reformed smoker.  I know that there is nothing worse than a reformed smoker.

He is my nemesis.

Maybe I should move to a regular cubicle.

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