I was named after my father's mother. Her first name was Ouida but her middle name was Elaine.

As a child I hated my name because it wasn't very common and I often was called Eileen or Ellen from kids not familiar with the name Elaine. Popular culture of late has alleviated this unfamiliarity what with Elaine Benes on Seinfeld and Elaine, the uber slutty secretary on Ali McBeal and I have grown accustomed to having a name that isn't exactly common. There is still a sense of amusement upon meeting other Elaine's and I have looked at all of the phone directory pictures of the six Elaine's at my work searching for similarities to my own face. I once had a fairly close friend named Elaine and we always giggled when saying "Hi Elaine" to each other.

Doing a bit of research with my friend Google the other day I found even more references to my name.

Elaine is:

-a construction company in Massachusetts (who own Elaine.com)
-a bed and breakfast in New Mexico
-a city in Arkansas with a population of 865
-a high end clothing store in Palo Alto
-a flower shoppe in Buffalo, New York
-a bed and breakfast by the sea in Newfoundland
-the lover of Lancelot
-a fine dining restaurant in Connecticut
-the star studded restaurant in New York (which has veal on the menu by the way)
-the title of a song from Abba

It's a dead end street
They tie your hands and tie your feet
And the street is narrow
A nowhere lane
A nowhere train for Elaine, Elaine, Elaine
You're like a goldfish in a bowl
Elaine, Elaine, Elaine
They have your mind, they'll take your soul

-a verse in the Robyn Hitchcock song Freeze

There's a justice in this world
She's cruel but she's fair
And I know just what she's called
She's called Elaine

I have many times emailed several of these businesses asking if I could order a t-shirt or some sort of marketing material from them but they generally end up thinking I'm rather odd. On eBay I have twice found jacket patches with the name Elaine on them (both of which I purchased). I don't know what the fascination is exactly, maybe I'm trying to reclaim my name by emphasizing how it is not as random as the kids on the playground thought when I was a kid? I fantasize about doing a road trip and visiting some of these places to see if they have a gift store or going to the thrift stores in Elaine, Arkansas and see how many items I can find with my name on them.

The transformation from cat lady to cat nerd.

For the first time since I was 19 years old I have less than three cats. Frankly my house seems empty and carefree with Twinky being the only animal I have over the age of 7 or 8 (I forget exactly how old Jingles is at the moment). This causes me to ponder...am I still a cat lady?

My friend Teagen and I have discussed this label many times before (while Teagen may not currently have any cats she is without question a cat lady). While it is of course mentioned light heartedly, the label cat lady brings with it a stereotype of a spinster woman in tennis shoes talking to herself much like Eleanor Abernathy, the crazy cat lady from The Simpsons. In fact, the image is so severe that a group has been formed to combat the assumption that cat ladies are animal hoarders without a productive connection to society.

Someone once told me that you are allowed to have up to one cat per bedroom in your house without receiving that title. My den is technically considered a bedroom despite the fact that it isn't actually big enough for a twin bed and that it has french doors leading into the living room. That would allow me two cats, which is what I currently have. So I am now declaring that I am no longer a cat lady ("Not that there is anything wrong with that!" she said reminiscent of that infamous episode we all know and love). Instead I declare myself to be a cat nerd. While nerd was once considered a derogatory term it has become an affectionate label of someone who is highly enlightened towards a subject but not to the point to cause alarm.

Of course, one factor threatening to effect my status is Barry White, the previously mentioned stray cat I've been befriending. Just last night in fact I was discussing with him (as he was doing his best to get past the screen door into the living room) that I am not a cat lady and therefore he is not allowed to be "my" cat. I suspect he knows as well as I that I won't be able to hold out for long. As the weather cools and as his health improves (turns out my next door neighbor to the South has been able to pet and romance him just as I have been and I have been treating him with antibiotics left over from Max) I will eventually adopt this very loving and affectionate little critter into my home and become a cat lady yet again.

**For those of you curious about my follow up to vindicating Max's death I offer you these updates. I have filed a very thorough complaint with Multnomah County regarding the two dogs (or really the owners of the two dogs). While I do not wish any harm to come to the dogs I do want the owners to be held accountable. According to the ordinances I have read, the worst that will happen is that the owners will be fined, required to restrain their dogs in a 5 foot enclosure while outside and carry a liability insurance policy.

In order to hopefully (but I am certainly not holding my breath) recoup some of the $1,700 I spent on vet bills I will be filing paperwork to go to small claims court. Yesterday I spoke with an attorney who sued the neighbor of his mother last year for nearly the same identical issue. He gave me a lot of helpful advice and support which will no doubt be of great use to me.

For those keeping track, I am in the "anger" phase of the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief.

Something old, something new

I nested this weekend and this is the new look of my bedroom. The quilt is new (purchased on eBay for 1/2 of retail), the curtain is a freshly purchased vintage sheet from Goodwill, the metal clock on the wall is from Pottery Barn via Goodwill, the nightstand was free from a friend, the little dresser is a piece of doll furniture my grandfather made for my mom when she was a young girl, the metal letter E is from an old marquee, the floral card hanging above that is a blessing with an inscription on the back dated 1921 (the same year my house was built), the metal lamp is old, the lamp shade is from Ross. Something old, something new, but nothing borrowed and nothing blue.

In other decorating news, I purchased this amazing chromolithograph at an auction Friday before last for $40.00.



As soon as I saw it I knew that it was going home with me no matter what I had to pay for it. Turns out I probably could have purchased it a lot cheaper but the people behind me kept bidding against me. We found out too late that we each wanted a different item (the auction was for one of any three art pieces held up at the time). Regardless I got to bring this old, old print home and hang it up in my living room so it is the first thing you see when you walk in my front door. The frame is rickedy and the old glass is broken but to me it is just filled with charm. When you consider some unlucky bidder paid $197.50 for almost the same print (only in an albeit nicer frame) on eBay you realize what a steal $40 really was!

I Heart Goodwill

I'm a slut for organizers, containers, most storage paraphernalia. In fact I finally have more organizers than I have things to organize but that doesn't keep me from picking up a good deal when I find one. Hence the two new additions for the craft room. The first is a rolling cart that after a little bath is just like new. I only paid $3.00 for it rather than $19.99 or whatever the original owner paid for it. The second addition is the little three drawer matching unit I have placed above it. That was purchased for $2.00 making the entire set $5.00 when retail would have been over five times that much. They have already been put into play serving as a caddy for my tape assortment, ribbons/strings/laces, glue sticks and such (yes, I have an entire drawer of salvaged glue sticks), adhesives, paints and miscellaneous items such as vintage photographs, Shrinky Dinks and origami paper.

The key to successful artwork is having everything right at hand. Plus it looks cool. Or at least it looks cool to an organizer.

Apparently I'm not the only Yaris fan that likes Goodwill.

Maxwell Silver

Rest in peace, Mister Man...you will be missed!

Welcome to my cat blog.

Seems like all I'm doing is talking cats lately...welcome to my cat blog.

We have a new cat tree in the house! At first I had it inconspicuously set to the outside of the living room but nobody would acknowledge it. Tonight I moved it to the center of the living room and it hasn't been empty since. Better entertainment than tv.

The update on Max...he was better then worse, then better, now worse. The last few days it seemed he was well on his way to recovery but tonight he has blood in his urine again. The vet seems to think this isn't that out of the blue as it is supposedly common when the bladder is bruised.

I got the paperwork from the county today telling me who owns the dogs that attacked him. They live three blocks away. Apparently the dogs have been loose many times over the past few years. I really want to knock on their door and give them a piece of my mind but I guess I'll wait and serve them with a court order instead.

And now for something completely different.

Send 'em something!

It's 10:30 a.m. in the morning...do you know where your cat is?

Picture this...Monday morning, 10:30 a.m. sitting in your cube at work. Your co-worker answers the phone, tells the caller you are on your break, pauses, then tells you, "There is an emergency at your house, your neighbor is on the phone!"

Your heart races, your creative mind flashes with visions of natural disasters, fire, robbery...you answer the phone not knowing what to expect and your neighbor tells you that two dogs went into your back yard and attacked your cat. They are not able to get to your cat who is growling and hiding under your above ground oil tank. You are at work without a car, a 45 minute bus ride from home.

Welcome to my Monday morning.

When I got home I found my 15 year old cat Max hiding in the back corner of my front porch shaking terribly and in a complete state of shock. He didn't seem to have any open wounds (no blood) but I took him to the vet to be checked anyhow. They held him in the hospital for the day and gave him IV fluids, sending him home that night thinking all was well.

Welcome to my Tuesday morning...wake to Max straining to urinate and only passing blood...back to the vet where the vet thinks he may have an infection. He stays the day at the vet getting fluids and a steroid injection to hopefully reduce what appears to be swelling in his brain creating vision problems and concussion symptoms. Three or so in the afternoon the vet calls me and says he doesn't have an infection. Now she suspects that his bladder has been ruptured.

During my commute to the vet I sit with sunglasses on trying to hide my tears...the vet calls my cell phone and tells me that she x-rayed his abdomen and his bladder is in tact...apparently just very bruised. She also found several puncture marks on his back leg that she fears will get infected. She sends him home with antibiotics.

Welcome Wednesday morning...I awake to an alert Max acting much more like himself. His eyes are no longer completely dilated and he eats breakfast, pees in the litter box so I go to work optimistic he will be okay.

Fast forward to ten o'clock Wednesday night and Max, who has withdrawn since the morning and not really interacting with me, simultaneously vomits and urinates on the pillow where he is laying. I call the vet and he says that he suspects it is a pain reaction since he was better and then got worse again. The steroid injection had worn off and now he is sick from the pain. The vet says that the worse is probably yet to come as "tussles" with dogs often creates severe pain.

I go to the vet and get pain medication only to return home and force the tablets down Max's throat with a chaser of liquid antibiotic. He froths at the mouth from the bad taste and scrambles to get away from me.

Now I am sitting crossed legged on the floor typing because I'm afraid if I get on the bed he'll hide under the bed in order to avoid me.

So yeah, that's the details up to the minute. THANKFULLY my neighbors were home when it happened. They ran into the yard and chased the dogs away (who were soon caught by animal services). Without their interruption it seems evident that the dogs would have killed Max.

I worked at vet clinics years ago and know the dangers cats that go outside face (and my two younger cats are not allowed out) but Max had spent his life in and out before I really knew better and my justification was that he never left the yard, mostly just watched the world go by from the back deck.

I never suspected that dogs would run into my yard and attack him...making sure that he was in bed with me by ten p.m. at night wasn't sufficient.

Going, going, gone!

Oregon City Auction holds a sale every Friday night that my mom and I have gone to on and off for many years. Several items in my house have been purchased from there. This auction is a lot like a garage sale, only in an auction format. You have to wait through a lot of junk in order to find a gem and sometmes you might not find anything you like.

I went to the auction this last Friday for the first time in awhile (I had a steady Friday night date with my friend Darren for the past year and then some). I had pretty good karma this week, maybe not as good as a friend of my mom's and I (who we know from Goodwill's as-is) who bought a doll for $12 at an estate sale and sold it for $2,000 on eBay, but good karma nonetheless.

For a total of $43 I bought a box of "stuff", a wicker chair, an old oak coat rack and a brand new rolling storage unit.

The boxes of stuff sold at the auction are often randomly packed with miscellaneous odds and ends and many times you don't know exactly what you are buying.



This $10 box provided me with a bunch of old unfinished craft frames (they are made in the U.S. if that gives you an idea of the age, ha ha) that I will use for an upcoming project to sell at the Handmade Holiday Bazaar in December (more about that project in a few months), a bag full of little plastic charms and toys, a ton of metal filagree pieces to do who knows what with, several dollhouse miniature magazines and food items that will be perfect for collage (including a miniature 54 page illustrated Sear's & Roebuck catalog) and random ceramic dolls/parts.




The rolling storage unit has turned into a portable organizer for all of my rubber stamps, inks and embossing powders. I paid $7.50 and when I looked at Fred Meyer yesterday I noticed the retail price is $17.99.




The $8 wicker chair is the new throne in the craft room.



The $17.50 coat tree is still on my front porch as I have yet to decide exactly where it is going to live but I'm very excited to have found it. Coat trees are often crappy in construction, almost always partly broken or unstable but this one is in fantastic shape and really high quality (and old which of course makes it even better).

Animal Testing

Several of you have mentioned that you enjoyed the photos I used to post of my organic veggie deliveries. While I'm still getting my weekly delivery I will admit that the novelty has worn off and now I look at it more like, "Ugh, now I gotta clear out all the veggies I didn't eat last week." I try to make soup or veggie pot pie to clear out all the previous weeks veggies and sometimes I'm successful. Once the weather cools down (Summer is not my season) perhaps I'll be more motivated to cook and actually make a meal rather than eating a bowl of cereal.

I did want to inform you however, that I have implemented a new inspection process.

Now what do I do?

Tonight was one of those nights where you go up and down in a matter of minutes (although in this case it was down then up).

I came home to a package from UPS containing a pair of shoes that I found for less than half retail on overstock.com. Turns out they weren't the color I thought they were gonna be though (and the color I really want isn't available). Sad, very sad.

But then my luck changed. Remember the feral cat, Barry White, I have been befriending for months? Well, each day I've been reaching out trying to pet him every time I give him food. Tonight he actually let me kind of do it then he turned around and looked at me. Seconds later he walked over to me and rubbed on my leg. Within minutes I was petting him from ears to tail, rubbing his bony sides and giving little scratches to his head. He began to purr and then marched up and down. I nearly had a heart attack. I was in so much shock I couldn't hardly believe it was happening. Something just clicked in him apparently and he recognized me for the cat sap that I am.

So, be careful what you ask for because now I have a filthy dirty unneutered male cat with an abscessed mouth, mite ridden ears and puss filled eyes that wants to come into my house.

Two months outta my life.

Today is exactly two months after the deadline for art card orders. To jog your memory I had this brainiac idea to sell 40 art cards in celebration of my fortieth birthday and then to turn around and order a commissioned piece from one of my favorite collage artists. Well apparently I have not acquired wisdom with my age. I ended up getting orders for 51 cards and have spent A LOT of time over the past two months completing them. This weekend I put the finishing touches on the last ones...they are post card style so that pretty much means I did 102 collages although I did make some of them only one sided. For those of you who ordered I am sorry it took so long but I wanted to complete all of them before sending them out and frankly it took me giving up a ton of my free time to get them done this soon as it is.

As you can tell from the picture it was a messy project but I did receive help (luckily cat hair just provides "depth" in a collage). Throughout the project I fluctuated from being inspired to being absolutely so sick of the project that I was gonna send everyone their $2 bucks back but now that it is over I'm happy with the results. These cards were ordered all the way from Portland, Oregon to Maine and are being shipped to New York, Connecticut, Arizona, California, etc.

What struck me at the end of the project is how diverse they all are. Part of that is thanks to the diversity of the requests...pink/sparkles/Hello Kitty for a 4 year old to "art" for someone I didn't know and "busy woman doctor" to "robot." Surprisingly the subject matters that were the furthest away from my comfort zone ended up being my favorite.

I will be mailing the cards out tonight after work. For folks getting more than one to the same address I am mailing one a day to stretch out the pleasure, ha ha. My intention had been to scan each one and post it to my flickr site to show off my work but many of them are 3D so I couldn't get good enough pics to bother with and photographing over fifty cards just wasn't appealing to me. For those of you in town I do have an album that I made with color photocopies of most so you'll be able to get a rough idea of what I did.

Disclaimer: My approach to mail art is to push the envelope. What this means is I often mail things through the mail that gets comments such as "I didn't know you could mail that." Most of the time the items go through but occasionally the machines at the post office eat them or the computers can't read the addresses so they have to be processed by hand which takes longer, etc. Several of the items have 3D effects which might get damaged or fall off in transit. Some might avoid such techniques given the possibility that they don't work but that isn't my style. All I can say is that if you don't get a card you ordered for yourself or a friend/family member doesn't get theirs or is broken just please let me know and I'll send out a replacement.

Thanks to all of you who supported my $2 birthday card project, I hope you enjoy them!

Oops. Ouch. Dang.

Well, I just cut my hand...it feels pretty bad but coulda been a lot worse. I was digging around in my basement looking for a 10 key calculator that I could take to work. In a brainiac moment I pulled a very large and very heavy box down off the shelf full well knowing that I didn't have a landing destination for it. I half heartedly put my left hand underneath the box and when I caught the box the force of it pushed my hand down really hard on top of rusty metal snowman sign. Now I have an inch and a half gash across the top of my hand and it hurts like crap. But I realized almost instantly that it could have been way, way worse and I could be sitting at the emergency room getting stitches rather than whining on my blog.

Now I'm at that point when you cut or burn yourself and you have to decide if it is going to be too painful to get into the shower. I'll have to check my hair again in the mirror to decide.

And after all that I still didn't find my adding machine. So much for doing a good deed (I was gonna loan it to a co-worker).

Since my photography skills are not what they should/could be I can't photograph my hand so instead I have attached the cutest picture ever of Corgi girl Twinky lately. She was laying on my bed unattended and after thoroughly cleaning out my take out salad container decided to take a comfy snooze on top of the pillows. Cutie patootie!

My life as a beauty pageant contestant.

I am laying here in bed flipping through TV stations and just watched Mario Lopez crown Miss Teen U.S.A. The chick from Colorado won. She already looks older than me.

I found it interesting and seemingly inappropriate that the backdrop on the stage was a giant comic book drawing of a woman's face with a dialogue bubble that said "OMG!"

Miss Teen Colorado started crying immediately and her father jumped up in the audience pointing to his sign promoting his daughter. No doubt he is a very proud man.

When I was a very little girl I once joined hundreds of other little girls in a tryout to become the Junior Rose Festival princess. As shocking as it may sound I made it past the first round of disqualifications. I think all we had to do was walk up to the microphone and state our name.

I remember the dress I was wearing (a hideous pea green floor length nightmare) and I remember the answer I gave during the second round when we were asked if we could invite anyone to dinner who would it be and what would we serve.

My answer was that I would invite the Easter bunny and serve ham and corn. The audience laughed and I didn't know why.

Daily Observations

The thing I like about blogging is having a place to record random thoughts.

Today I took a different bus route home from work in order to stop by "the grocery" (as my friend Maggie would say). On the #8 bus going down 15th I passed an area of town near the last apartment I lived in before buying my house. Instantly I was filled with nostalgia of walks through the neighborhood with my old Lab, Abbey.

By that time Abbey was fairly old (she died when she was 15, a few years later) and didn't do a whole lot of things that surprised me. I got her when she was just weeks old and thought I had seen her do all that I would ever see. Well, one morning while we were goofing around in a school yard I hid behind a giant container (the type used to haul stuff behind a semi or on a train or tanker in the ocean) and when she had lost sight of me I would jump out and surprise her. After a few mornings of doing this, Abbey not only caught on but actually fooled me by turning around the opposite way and surprising me from behind. It was so adorable and clever and unsuspected it made me laugh out loud. Turns out that not only can you teach an old dog a new trick...perhaps your old dog can teach you one.

On 15th and Fremont I got off the bus to go into Wild Oats which is located right next to a branch of Planned Parenthood. On the sidewalk there were a handful of people standing with huge signs stating that "Planned Parenthood kills babies"
as well as huge pictures of tiny fetuses. I had a multitude of emotions with this. It was the second protest I had walked by today (the first was downtown on my lunch break at the University Club regarding Tibet). Unlike the protest downtown, these activists didn't say a word. They had video cameras but I was fairly certain they weren't filming at the time. I didn't say anything to them but thought to myself a few things.

First was that I have a neighbor who works for Planned Parenthood. Her and her partner have two children whom they love and spend a great deal of time with. Therefore, the idea that Planned Parenthood somehow was harming children didn't fit for me. Additionally I was reminded that Planned Parenthood does not offer tubal ligations for women. Men can get sterilized there but women can't because the procedure actually involves general anesthesia (although I can personally vouch for the fact that it is a super simple surgery). Therefore I thought, well, that whole thought got me going on a lot of issues. For instance, many (well, most I think) hospitals are owned and operated by churches which do not allow for sterilizations. In fact when I got my tubes tied (by Kaiser for a $5 co-pay ten years ago) the doctor had difficulty scheduling it as they were leasing space from hospitals that did not allow them to perform tubal ligations there...which triggered me to thinking about the lack of accessibility to birth control, blah blah blah. I just don't think focusing on abortion is the best approach to helping babies. Preventing unwanted babies strikes me as the more useful approach. Of course I also thought that war kills a lot more babies than abortion and that unless the protesters were vegans they were responsible for a lot of death. Of course I didn't say anything to them...I have stood on a street corner with a protest sign way too much to ridicule anyone for standing up for what they believe in. Mostly I just wanted to document how one activity triggers thoughts.

My third observation is still cracking me up and perhaps is a good way to end this post on a less serious note. As I was looking out the window of the bus riding down Fremont street I noticed that there is a bus stop in the middle of a block right in front of a very large cemetery. No houses on either side of the stop for at least a block (on one side it is more than two blocks). Um, who is gonna catch the bus there?

Hipster Nascar

This Saturday hosts one of my very favorite things in Portland. It's the annual Mt. Tabor Soap Box Derby and you shouldn't miss it. That is, unless you are a lame, buzz killing, rain on the parade kinda folk. If you are, don't go.

I'll admit it did get a little mainstream and been there/done that for awhile but as of last year, the charm was back baby, back!

Greg, ya comin' down for it?

Dollars for Darlings

Okay, that is a cheesy headline but as you all should be painfully aware I am a cat lady more than I am anything else. Well, I'm pleased to say that my employer has a program for employee giving that I'm thrilled with and I might add that it feels really weird to be proud of a corporation. My work will match every dollar you contribute to a non-profit, dollar for dollar, up to $10,000 (per employee)! Mind you I don't have $10,000 to contribute but I can certainly afford something each check and through this program the charity of my choice will receive twice the amount. Now of course I realize that I work for an insurance/financial investing company and the money they are using to provide this benefit was not made in the most ethical and utopian of manner, but heh, good deeds are good deeds, at least to some degree and they don't have to be doing anything so I'm gonna give 'em props.

The charity I chose has been a long standing local favorite of mine, The Cat Adoption Team (C.A.T.). CAT is a no-kill shelter meaning that they don't euthanize healthy animals just because they are homeless (my theory is we need to stop killing dogs and cats just because they don't have homes...they should be lining the street corners with cages to help get them adopted and forcing sterilization of all domestic pets--yes, I know that would put an end to the careers of all the people who profit off of breeding animals and no that doesn't bother me). Behind closed doors quietly putting to sleep thousands and thousands of animals just because they don't have homes is not acceptable to me but I won't lecture you too much here.

I'd just like to suggest to all of you to pick a charity and donate to it. If you work for a non-profit (as I know many of you do) you can certainly attest to the importance of contributions but we can all spare a few bucks each payday. Making it a big event like my employer does (we have a two week period where they have tons of opportunities to give...raffles, games, donations so you can wear jeans, etc) is a fantastic way to do it but if you don't work for a big company like I do you can still give.

The non-profit you chose will appreciate it.

By the way, yes, I used a picture of my dog Twinky instead of one of my cats...she was feeling under represented and yes, she is a purebred. Twinky however was adopted from a rescue group...I didn't buy her from a breeder.

Budget Decorating

For the most part I'm pretty happy with how my house is decorated. One of the keys to budget decorating however is to make due with what you have until something better is attainable.

I don't have a fancy stereo (just a crappy old boom box that I got secondhand probably 15 years ago) and it is impossible to decorate with that thing. No matter how attractive the table or shelf that I put it on it looks like late 80's college style, which is not the look I'm going for.

Well, today I had one of those decorating epiphanies that can turn just an ordinary weekend into a fabulous weekend (don't worry, I'm just goofing...it isn't THAT significant).

Anyhow, I took a $5 cabinet that I got at Goodwill, took off the door, painted it with a can of paint I got at Fred Meyer for $.03 (yes three cents) and whalah, I have a new cd/book cabinet in my living room placed where a table that I got for free once lived with my stereo on it. I'm so much happier not having that stupid boom box gathering dust now.

So, you ask...what did you do with the stereo? Isn't it just being ugly in another part of your house? Why yes, it is. Under the bed though so I don't care. Yep, under the vintage twin metal bed that I use as a day bed/couch in my living room. The controls are surprisingly easy to reach so I can still use it and now I have a technology free living room (the tv was banished to the bedroom months ago because you definitely can't decorate with a tv in a house the size of mine.

Family

My mom is 67 years old and not in very good health. Her current issue is a cyaic nerve being pinched in her back that is creating an overwhelming sense of pain from her hip down to her knee. I once suffered with the same issue so I know how much she is in pain. When I was going through my back issues I was in so much pain I had to go to the emergency room several times trying to get some pain relief. Not much works. Weekend before last my mom called me at 4:45 a.m. Sunday morning crying hysterically because she couldn't stand the pain any longer. I stood next to her bed in the emergency room as she screamed in pain begging for them to "put her out" because she was in so much pain. For an hour and a half they tried to start an IV in her arm but after nearly 50 years of smoking her veins are just too hard and resistant to get a needle successfully inserted. (I'm sorry folks, but if you are a smoker do your family a favor and stop now). They eventually gave her an injection of morphine and it alleviated the pain enough for her to walk for most of the rest of the day but it didn't take long for the pain to begin again.

My brothers and I are in the process of trying to sell her condo and have moved her into a retirement community less than a mile from my house (as I am the only daughter in the family--with three brothers--I am the main caretaker of course). The new place isn't an assisted living facility just a fancy (and frankly really nice) apartment complex for seniors. All of this is forcing my family to interact with each other and it isn't going well. Funny, just because you are older and have all moved away from each other doesn't mean that the dynamics change. Therefore, in addition to dealing with my mom's health and move I am having to relive many emotions from my childhood which was not a pleasant time in my life. I hadn't been able to get in touch with my mom all last week and knew my brother's had physically moved some of her furniture and her to the new place so I visited her on Friday.

Turns out my mom had been left without a phone for an entire week which meant no communication with anyone including her doctor. She couldn't get online which meant she couldn't pay her bills, view her bank account, answer emails or order her medications to be mail delivered. When I went on Friday she didn't have any groceries, had only one of her heart pills left (she had a heart attack a few years ago and now has a stint in her heart and yet she keeps smoking). Both of my brothers had left town for work and just left her there either assuming that I was gonna take care of everything or that my mom would somehow take care of herself (which she refuses to do). Not only do I get left with the day to day care taking, I get zero respect or recognition for it (from my brothers, much less my mom).

My point in all of this is that I spent the entire weekend moving boxes, unpacking boxes, doing laundry, washing dishes, cleaning, lifting, shopping, chauffeuring, cooking, sorting through papers, entertaining and providing moral support to my mother (not to mention giving her my cell phone so she can have access to the outside world). While I wouldn't mind doing that once in awhile (she is my mother by the way) I can't stand the fact that it is just assumed by my family I will do it (or frankly mostly assumed that my mother does it herself and that I don't do anything). I was completely disregard by one brother, lied to by another (the third doesn't talk to either of my parents), yelled at by my dad (who my mom divorced 24 years ago and nobody requested play a role at all). I hate the drama. My role in our family for so many years was the scapegoat, the drop out, the radical left winged ignorant liberal (my family is all very homophobic, racist, conservative and --other than my brother who has an engineering Master's degree from Stanford-- uneducated). I am an outsider and it is clear that my assumed role hasn't changed even now that I am an adult.

Needless to say my weekend is over, my dishes aren't done, my laundry isn't done, my papers haven't been sorted, my back is now killing me and I am an emotional wreck from being manipulated, yelled at and misunderstood all weekend, just in time to go to work for one of the busiest days of the month. Ugh. For those of you that have cohesive families please appreciate the heck out of it because those of us who have a big, fat wreck of a family that only deals with each other in emergency situations (that God, I couldn't handle much more) are more envious than you know.

The Temp

We have this temp at work that is driving me nuts. He is a nice enough guy but has no business working in our department. He has somehow managed to take a project that I used to work on at most a few hours a week and turn it into a full time job for the past 9 months. He takes leisurely long breaks and lunch hours, he leaves early to go to class, he spends the majority of his work time on the internet (even going as far as having his Yahoo account open on his desktop throughout the day. Other than an occasional email to a supervisor, this temp really has no reason to be on the computer at all. I've pointed out to him numerous times that our company monitors internet usage so if he was indeed trying to get hired on as a permanent employee (in a different department) it might be good idea to quit being on the internet so much. When that approach didn't work I finally took the guy aside and told him he was really ticking the rest of our department off because the money paying his salary was coming out of our department budget and the rest of us were working our butts off because my supervisor didn't want to spend money on another employee yet we were essentially subsidizing this guy's social life. That didn't work either. He was self absorbed and I think just didn't even realize that what he was doing was so out of line for the work place (the only real job he has had previously was working in a mail room). I know you are asking yourself why wasn't your supervisor doing anything? Well, you know how some people have blinders on because they don't want to see the truth? That scenario is alive and well here. She doesn't chose to recognize that he doesn't know how to use a 10-key calculator, that he stammers on the phone to the point of complete ineffectiveness while trying to relay company policies to employees, that he is always the first one to know if Lindsay was arrested again or if the highway is closed, if he takes a 30 minute 15 minute break, etc.

Well, the other day, while the temp was gone on his break or lunch or whatever...since he does very little while he is there we don't always notice when he is gone, a "tech" guy stormed into our office asking my supervisor which computer was #562281 or something like that. She pointed to our temps computer and the IT guy unplugged it and make this big fuss about nobody logging in as their was a virus and security risk, blah blah blah (remember that I work for a publicly traded company and the confidentially of information is of highest importance). The guy was gone just as fast as he had come in and my boss and I were left reliving the scenario which simulated the scenes in the movie Brazil (my favorite movie by the way) where the government broke into the family home, abducted an innocent father and then disappeared again.

Why am I telling you this? Well, because of that virus my boss has now placed a strict no personal email accounts policy on each of us in our department. No Yahoo, no Gmail, you name it. I can still shop on eBay and beat to death my Google skills but those privileges are no doubt short lived. All because of this damn temp who never should have been working for our department in the first place. He is probably feeling it most of all at this point (funny, now he doesn't have any work to do and has a hard time pretending that he does). So I continually walk by his desk, refuse to make eye contact and point out that his inbox is empty (yeah, I'm a bitch to him but the dude has totally worn out his welcome). Problem is, one of these days he will walk out of these doors to another job and (hopefully) I'll be at this same job for years. His self-centeredness has cost me a significant benefit of my job (with dial up at home it was so refreshing to be able to look at photos, etc while on my lunch at work).

At a previous job (where we didn't have any internet access) I pointed out to the owner of the company that in this day and age it isn't realistic not to offer internet services for your employees. It is like a phone. It's just a sign of the times. In order to attract and keep good employees you need to offer them that tool. That tool is gone from me and I am oh so sad.