– I STILL wish that my Mom had gotten a gas range instead of the smooth cooktop when she remodeled the kitchen.

– This neighborhood doesn’t lose power very often.  I have really gotten spoiled.

– Being without power for 15 1/2 hours sucks.  For anyone whose power has been out longer, that has to REALLY suck.  You have my condolences.

– If I have to sleep with no heat again, I need to remember to throw my jeans and shirt under the covers, because very cold jeans aren’t particularly comfortable to put on in the morning.

– Next August, I am getting a damn snowblower.  Unlike last August, when I said to myself, “No, it’s silly and excessive and an overreaction to one bad winter.”  I do not need a giant industrial version, just something to make storm cleanup a touch easier.

– I will also remember to get the water balloon slingshot when they are on sale so I can knock the snow from the tops of the cypresses in the backyard from the office window.

– A generator might be nice, but that may be going over the top.

– Since the power has returned, Carmen & Lily have been taking turns sleeping in front of the heat register.

– Many, MANY thanks to the custodian that let me in to retrieve Spot the Gecko.  I suppoose she decided it best to not get in the way of a crazy woman on a mission to rescue a small animal.  It helps that “I’m a sub this week and next and need to get the classroom gecko!” would be a very odd thing to just make up.

– I have a leopard gecko for the next 5 days.  I’ve read the care sheets online, but if anyone has any fun or interesting information that might be helpful, I’d like that.

Saw some kickass bluegrass by Over Under Down Yonder, with not one, but TWO spectacular gentlemen, followed by many, many New Year’s smooches at the pub. Had an excellent sleep-in this morning, followed by an afternoon of catching up on my TiVo. (Dr. Who Christmas Special FTW. I want a flying shark.) To top it all off, the Caps won the Winter Classic this evening.  Suck it, Penguins.

Really, it’s already going SO much better than this time last year where I was fielding calls from my grandmother yelling at me because we had “just up and left in the middle of the night.” (Mind you, we stayed at a hotel, but no, she was fine and didn’t need any help with anything and no one could possibly think that anything was amiss. *I* was the one with the problem.)

To top it all off, you and Mother Nature are throwing us a bone – it’s a good 60 degrees out there. I appreciate your giving us a tiny break to reassure us that spring will eventually show up again. We’ve got our somewhat-delayed Christmas day after tomorrow, and that is going to be excellent as well.

Really – so far, so good and I absolutely ADORE it! Let’s keep it up, shall we?!!

The icing on the cake has been watching Carmen get high on a catnip birthday cake this evening and having Lily in my lap purring like an Evinrude outboard.

It’s gonna be a good year.

*When grandma went into the care center, Sharyn said, “Go get your grandmother’s jewelry from her house.”
Me: “I feel like I’m stealing!”
Her: “Take it home and WEAR IT. It’s just been sitting in her dresser drawers for at least the past three years! Someone should enjoy it, dammit!”
She’s got some spectacular costume jewelry, and none of it has seen the light of day in a good 20 years.

Glad to have the year behind me. Tons I want to accomplish in 2011, and with grandma in the care center, I feel like I have a shot in hell in actually doing that. Getting her a full professional staff sure has made my life a hell of a lot easier.

I’m giving a 365 photos a shot this year. Kicks off with a somewhat blurry shot of Moxley and his uber-fluffy haircut.

Given that my grandmother had *zero* interest in going back to her room after lunch unlike every other day so far, I should have realized something was up. She went back & forth with knowing who we were (that doesn’t bother me at all – maybe it should, but it doesn’t) – unfortunately she realized it was us (or my parents) just enough to get all spooled up about paying for dinner, money, her checkbook, her wallet, etc, etc, etc. All the things she doesn’t worry about when her brain has decided to happily park itself circa 1978, or what she worried about 24/7 for the past 3 years before hitting the care center. Yay family time?

Seems the lunchtime Xanax didn’t kick in today, and our presence threw things into just enough disarray in her mind to make things that much worse. The memory resets and the repeated questions aren’t fun, but I can deal with them. The anxiety? Not so much – just kills me every time.

Attempting to make a graceful exit was a bit of a challenge – especially when you know that YOU are the cause of the anxiety, but leaving could also cause MORE anxiety… This is where the care center is a godsend. We could tell my grandmother that we needed to go run some errands, warn Andrea (her CNA) about how wound up she’d gotten thanks to our presence, and head on out knowing that dinner would be in a hour (a good distraction for her) and Xanax (thank god for pharmaceuticals) and then bed around 7:30 – and she has multiple people around her to reassure her that it isn’t the end of the world. Fortunately, Andrea says she doesn’t have days like this terribly often (thankyoujesus) and everyone knows the “right” answers to queries about checkbooks and wallets and such.

As Donald pointed out, if it wasn’t for the care center, she’d be up and worrying herself sick until 2AM – and we’d get the brunt of it. These people are saints.

First, it’s 70 degrees. Don’t get me wrong – it’s GREAT. But we haven’t had weather this nice any other year we’ve been here, so it’s odd. (This is year 4 out here for the holidays…)

Got to the care center today and grandma was in a lovely mood, up and ready for lunch and absolutely zero recognition of who we were. (And it didn’t seem to bother her one bit, and we weren’t going to cause problems.) But, we had a nice lunch and she liked her presents, so it’s all good. Classic moment: After lunch, we’re sitting in her room chatting, and she rolls herself out the door and says, “OK, well, turn the lights off when you leave!” We took that as our cue that she was done with visitors for the day. :)

There is a football game starting in about an hour and a half right next door. This is great because all the restaurants at Westgate are open this evening. If you lived in the area, I can see how a Christmas evening football game could be fun – and others must agree since the parking lots are filled with tailgaters. However, the hotel is also filled with football fans and I can’t say I can really wrap my head around traveling at Christmas for a sporting event. Hell, I’m not even thrilled with traveling at Christmas for Christmas itself, so this is really lost on me.

It’s just been a really, really odd day.

We leave a week from tomorrow and I am booked Monday to Wednesday of next week. However, I have no bookings tomorrow or Friday – and I am going to be leaving it that way. Figure a couple extra days of sleeping and eating everything in sight*, I might have a tiny chance of heading this nonsense off at the pass and not feeling like death at 30,000 feet.

Now, this exact situation is why I love subbing. I have already set myself to unavailable for the next two days, because I feel a cold APPROACHING. Not because I am already at death’s door, not because I cannot function, but because I am trying to stay somewhat well in the first place. Even better, I can do this and NO ONE GIVES ME ANY CRAP ABOUT IT!!!! This is definitely a new and novel experience for me with any kind of employment situation, and I have to say, I’m liking it.

*Ridiculous amounts of sleep and comfort food – that’s how you treat a cold.

- Reintroduce yourself to your family. Face to face – you know, talking. Think hard – it’s what you did before Facebook chat
- Read a book.
- Go for a walk (Outside – it’s like FrontierVille, but it renders faster.)
- If you have cats, play with them. (Though they may point out to you that 4PM is for sleeping, and 4AM is for playing – at least mine did.)
- Play ball with the dog.
- Knit something.
- Catch up on some of those TiVo shows you’ve been ignoring while playing Farmville.
- Make something to eat. (Note: Unlike CafeWorld, It will likely take more than three clicks.)
- Take a nap. (Remember sleep? It’s what you used to do before you were constantly trying to level up in Mafia Wars.)
- Figure out how you can be the next Mark Zuckerberg and become a billionaire with a movie treatment.
- If you’re lucky enough to have a job in this economy, your boss would probably like you to do something actually related to said job.

I’d add more, but WOOHOO, FACEBOOK IS BACK UP AGAIN!

Let’s see, she served 14 days of a 90 day jail sentence, and then 22 days of a 90 day court ordered rehab program.

Can’t imagine how she could have walked out no better than she was the day she walked in.

And really – who in their right mind really thought she would have been able to get herself together in that amount of time?

First off, I am completely freezing my ass off. When I was in Phoenix, the highs were between 95 and 110 each day, and I was acclimated to it instantaneously. While I won’t bullshit you and say “Oh, but it’s a dry heat” because it certainly isn’t anymore, it’s certainly a heat that is a far sight drier than Virginia. I got off the plane at National and immediately felt the need for a sweater. Someone threw a switch while I was gone and we went from summer to fall damn near instantaneously. Don’t get me wrong – the weather has been GORGEOUS since I got back – but I came home prepared for more of the 90s and humid that I left, rather than low 80s and dry that has actually been here.

When I was in Phoenix, I rented a Wrangler X – normally I get a motorized rollerskate because I cannot judge what cars in the rental inventory will actually fit in my grandmother’s garage other than the super-compact. (This has not been helped with the knowledge that my Mom managed to crease a quarterpanel on a rental car in said garage the last time she was there.) No garage issues this time, so I told the rental agent when he informed me I could get an upgrade, “Well, do you have any of the Wranglers? Cause this trip is gonna suck, so I might as well have a fun car.” The only problem was it was a 4-banger, and I quickly learned that I had to stand on the gas to get any giddyup out of it. Come home to my Liberty 6-banger, and I damn near gave myself whiplash when I tried to drive yesterday. Today was somewhat better. I suspect that by Monday I’ll no longer look like a 17 year old learning to drive a stick shift. It’s especially bad since my Liberty is an automatic. (Mind you, I still covet the Wrangler X – just in a V6.)

Finally, and the most disconcerting – I am having some real problems wrapping my brain around the fact that we are hurtling our way towards mid-September. Last night I looked at a piece of paper for a Football Survival league that said “Money in by Sept 8th” and I said out loud, “Well, that’s still a week off.” (Thanks to my brother for pointing out that it we were actually a day past it. And thanks to the organizer that took my entry anyway.) Seriously, when I left town it was still August! And HOT! Honestly, the only way you could prove to me I was gone for 11 days would be to show me my hotel bill. Other than that, it was a complete and utter blur and all the days completely ran together. It was such an expedition down the rabbit hole from start until finish, that without documentation, I couldn’t tell you if I’d been out there five days or a full month. One thing that I have never faulted my grandmother for was the fact that she had to look at her calendar to see what day it was – lord knows I had to look every morning while I was there , and by noon I still forgot what part of the week we were in. Oh, and I was the one who supposedly had all her faculties intact. It’s very weird to have 11 days basically dematerialize – probably made worse by missing Labor Day weekend – not having that ceremonial “change of season” can really muck with your brain, especially when you come back and everyone else has had it except you.

Hopefully going for a hard-core “sleep late and be a lazy bum” weekend will help me somewhat get back into sync with the universe come Monday. We’ll see!

Colleges Shoo Away Helicopter Parents

I’ll admit that the concept of “helicopter parent” is still somewhat foreign to me, despite what I have read. The rallying cry of my childhood was, “I’ll do it MYSELF!!” and my folks did everything they could to let me “do it myself” right up until the point where I would injure myself. When it came to college, my folks helped me move into my dorm room, and then I seem to recall chasing them off like they had some highly communicable disease.

I still remember being exceptionally conflicted one winter break when my Dad told me, “Hey, our office needs a receptionist over Christmas break, would you be interested in doing that instead of temping?” While the job sounded great, I also didn’t want to be “Don’s daughter” at the office, lest people think I was just a dingbat whose Dad got her a Christmas job. On top of that, everyone adored him, and I didn’t want to disappoint him, and also wanted NO treatment that was different than anyone else because he was my Dad.

I ended up taking the job and it was great – because everyone (including, and maybe especially, my Dad) was more than willing to dump any and all work on me that they thought I could handle. Right there I knew that I wasn’t a token timesheet. However, I will admit that a perk of working with your Dad is that he will make sure you get lunch before the cafeteria closes for the afternoon. The worst day was the first day – I busted my butt to accomplish anything and everything asked of me – and I wore heels. Then Dad wanted to go Christmas shopping afterwards. I certainly wasn’t going to say, “No Dad, my feet hurt!” I seem to recall walking around Tower Books & Records in Tyson’s in my aching stocking feet, and trying very hard not to cry from the pain. (I’m fairly certain I wore flats for the rest of the engagement.)

The only real time Dad intervened was when I came walking downstairs one morning with a skintone somewhere between green & grey – he took one look at me and said, “You go back to bed, NOW. We can cover the rest for the day.” He was right, as I was rather violently ill for the rest of the day. (Occasionally, parents do know what they’re talking about.)

But that was really the extent of my parents involvement in my college and professional life. Had I asked for assistance, they would have gladly provided it, but they never said, “Let us handle this for you.” It was always, “If we can help somehow, let us know.”

Now, if I had a little one of my own, I am quite sure I’d be insanely protective of them. However, I would also like to think that I’d raised them in such a manner that when the time came to do things on their own, they could do it without my intervening on every level. I really can’t comprehend getting terribly involved in their college careers other than providing $$ for tuition and board, and being a sounding board when they needed it, or getting involved in the job process other than, “Want me to fake interview you?” In my mind, beyond that, you’re not helping, you’re just hindering their independence.