Monday morning, I woke up feeling great.  Optimistic.  Good about life.  I’d had a great weekend that had run the gamut from hot nerd talk on Friday to a massage on Sunday.  School is done, feeling good, gonna get caught up on everything I ignored over the course of the school year, summer is going to be great, get some good mo going into the fall, get shit on track.  Life is good.

Well, the Universe overheard me and she started laughing hysterically, did a shot of absinthe and said, “Well, I have my work cut out for me this week.”

Monday was fine enough, had some trouble getting my brain to shut off long enough to get anything else done, but not too bad.  Tuesday I managed to walk into a box in the living room with a rather spectacular amount of velocity resulting in a nicely damaged foot.  (No running for me this week!)  Wednesday ended up being dedicated more to reading than anything else, cause damn, I did a number on that foot.

Then yesterday happened.  Managed to get things done, but not without some fun and games.  The dryer died.  With a load of wet towels in it.  Not a showstopper dammit, repairman coming out today.  Then a couple hours later I had a filling fall out.  Awesome!!  And then – just to round out the day properly – I left my jacket at the pool hall last night…

I suspect there is a lesson about keeping expectations low in here somewhere, but I refuse to acknowledge it.

Called back, confirmed time, spoke with woman who coordinates it to make sure she had my phone number and understood that though Sharyn would be there, they would have to call me because I am 2,000 miles away.

“And who are you again?”
OMFG.
“I’m the one with the MEDICAL POWER OF ATTORNEY.”
“Oh, OK.”

So, I take myself out of the lineup today so I can be here to take the call and pretend like I’m terribly interested in this.  (Even though I’m not super interested in the details, I *do* need to know what’s going on.  Even though I get tons of info from Sharyn, I want to hear exactly how they react when she says she sees something she doesn’t like.)

Well, 2PM comes and goes.  45 minutes later Sharyn calls, says it went fine.  Um, what?  She didn’t realize I had told them to call me.  So I’m furious at the idiots at the care center, she feels bad (told her sure as hell wasn’t her fault) and I’m ready to punch someone.  I decided to cool off a bit before calling the care center and asking exactly what type of brain damage they are suffering from that they didn’t understand “here is my phone number, call me for the conference” means CALL ME FOR THE DAMN CONFERENCE.

I called, and I still couldn’t tell you what on earth that woman was thinking, other than she apparently wasn’t.  But they have very firm instructions that I am to be included on any other calls, dammit.

Tried to open a box at the UPS store so I can use that as her local mailing address and have them forward it to me.  (I want the mailing address to stay in AZ, otherwise I can just see things getting all screwed up as someone, somewhere thinks she is no longer a resident of the state.)  Easy, right?  HA!  We got past the idea that she was going to come in and do this herself after showing them the Power of Attorney.  But – and this still doesn’t seem right to me at all, given the fact that there is a PoA in place – I still have to bring in two forms of her identification, one with a photo.  Well, the photo ID is easy enough, but it’s that second one that is causing some angst.  Just looking at the list gave me a headache as I kept coming up empty, and told the UPS guy that I’d see what I could find  and go back tomorrow.  Here are the acceptable items:

Government issued ID – no problem, got that one covered.
Passport – expired
Alien Registration Card or Certificate of Naturalization – nope
Current lease – owns the condo
Mortgage – paid off years ago
Deed of Trust – nope
Voter registration card – if she has one, I would have even the faintest idea where to look for it
Vehicle registration – no car
Vehicle insurance policy – again, no car
Home insurance policy – YES!  Except it’s back east.  Don’t know why my crystal ball didn’t tell me to put that in my backpack before getting on a plane.

Thought I could get online and print out something from her account, but it doesn’t recognize the policy number.  Great.  So, tomorrow I will go scour the condo to see if there is an old copy of it somewhere that I can take in as another form of ID.

Seriously, not in a million years would I have thought the mere act of opening a mailbox somewhere would be something that would take me multiple days to accomplish, if at all.

The overly rational part of my brain chalks it all up to unfortunate coincidence and the ridiculous changing of the barometric pressure at this time of year.  The not-quite-as-rational part of my brain says, “Going to PHX is bad for you!” The smartest part of my existence which isn’t even attached to me says – “It’s the anxiety leading up to the trip that does you in.”  That smart part would be my brother trying to assure me I’ve not totally lost my mind.  (If you don’t have a brother to help you out in matters such as these, I highly recommend you get one.  I’m pretty sure there is a category on Craigslist for this.)

Seriously, I can’t remember the last time that I wasn’t sick either when my grandmother visited here, or I visited there.  (Same thing has happened to my brother as well.)  Invariably this has lead to my grandmother being more than happy to tell us that we were weak, lazy & pathetic and got sick on purpose just to get attention.  Yes, because I’d so much rather feel like total crap and have people saying, “Would you like a Ginger Ale?” than just happily going about my business without desperately needing to sleep for 24 hours straight.

Damned if I know why my body decides to betray me this way, but I’m very much over it all.  Seriously, I’m staying at a nice hotel with a pool and everything – I’d like to take advantage of it rather than sleep every hour I’m not at the care center…

*No matter how broken my grandmother’s brain may be, I never have and never will fault her for not knowing the date or day of the week without looking at the calendar.

Honestly, if you do a VbV transaction, that right there should be some indication of legitimacy of the transaction, and in theory it should save you a shitload of hassle if you have a shopping spree day.  Except that it seems that it doesn’t.

I had two trips to book today through Travelocity.com.  First was to Phoenix to do a “holy crap, we didn’t think her grandchildren would show up again until December!” visit to have eyes on the care centre, and the second to Las Vegas.  Phoenix went through (with VbV) with no issues.  Vegas?  (Again w/VbV) Not so much -  but with a caveat that some debit cards had a daily spending limit and it could be as simple and innocent as that.  It wasn’t until I tried to hit the ATM this evening that I discovered that my card was full on shut down.

I worked fraud prevention at a bank.  I get it.  However, when you or your automated systsem suspects fraud, the first thing that should happen is a call to the cardholder to verify charges – NOT simply shutting down the card with no notice or verification.

So, I’ve got a busted card and a system that thinks I’m making fraudulent charges, DESPITE using their enhanced security systsem.

WTF.

Yeah, I’ll be talking to PFCU tomorrow and I will spare the CSR that answers the call my annoyances and will ask to be transferred directly to fraud prevention – hopefully I’ll be slightly less peeved and won’t unleash the level of annoyance that I’m feeling right now.

Then, it took FOUR calls to Sears to get a human being to confirm delivery of my new fridge tomorrow. While their voice automated system happily parroted back everything I said, it had an unfortunate tendency to disconnect halfway through the call. Once I got to a REAL lady on the other end of the line, I found that they had not finalized the delivery schedule for 8/18/2010. Yippee… However, to their credit, their “tomorrow’s delivery announcement” call did arrive and in theory my fridge will be here between 11:15 and 1:15 tomorrow. (Donald says 4:00PM. But I have faith.)

Last night, my awesome little brother noticed a burned-out taillight on my car. It’s inspection month anyway, so – problem solved by getting the car inspected! I even told them about the light when I dropped it off for the inspection & oil change. I missed the “Your car is ready!” voicemail by TWO HOURS, but the message didn’t say “respond or we torch your car” so I think they were OK with my tardy response. I then picked up the car with the the same burned out taillight that I left at the shop. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Bonus: got the light fixed for free. Oh, and the “recommended ‘mini’ tune-up – yeah, they didn’t have the “right” spark plugs for my Jeep.

Missed the alarm on my phone to send my friend M a reminder text. I am quite certain the alarm went off, but I either missed it or was so distracted by everything else going sideways that it didn’t register.

I’ve also spent more than a few minutes sanding down my bamboo knitting needles, cause Carmen thought they were SPECTACULAR chew toys. (She doesn’t understand that the spectacularly wonderful binkie she had in the shelter came off MY knitting needles.)

Then I saw the weather report for tomorrow: I can condense it to: Monsoon. During which time my fridge will be delivered. Said fridge which has to go through the side yard and backyard to the back door to fit inside my house. The delivery men are going to HATE me. Oh, and Lily decided it would be great to explore the Great Outdoors while I attempted to measure the front (not quite wide enough) door!

All I ask is for tomorrow to be really, really quiet and uneventful.

I cannot relax. Seriously. My companions are great, the food is spectacular and the water is awesome, but I *cannot* relax.

If this were a one week stay and we were leaving on Friday, I’d go ahead and pack it in now, because I can be this tense at home. I can only guess it is a confluence of many small things because I can’t put my finger on any one big thing, and I’m finding it very difficult to enjoy myself because I just can’t shake this underlying, unidentifiable stress.

Friday morning Carmen had a (quite literal) massive hissy fit upon being dropped off at the kennel. (What idiot doesn’t know to leave the cat in the crate until the cat is ready to come out of the crate on its own? Oh – that would be me. I don’t know WHAT I was thinking.) However, her scaling the front of the 6′ bank of “suites” and installing herself in a kitty cube at the top was tactically impressive. Always go for the high ground. I did speak to the kennel later and they said she’d calmed down and both had eaten dinner enthisiastically and they were both fine if “a bit reserved” – reserved still being better than hissing at everyone that comes within 2 feet.

No cell reception for anyone in the house. Last year we were on the cusp, and this year the trees have grown just enough to knock it out altogether. Purchased internet seems to be working for others, but very slow & sketchy at best for me – I am not one that needs to be connected 24/7, but some level of access to the rest of the world is nice, and there are some internet based services I will need to use over the course of two weeks. (And it seems to work best when I enable wi-fi on my phone and then tether that to the laptop – I really don’t think that should work better, but it does.) This after my laptop decided to puke all over itself on Saturday and simply decide to not work properly. I got it going again, but I still have no idea what went wrong in the first place.

Massive insomnia 2 out of 4 nights, that I cannot ascribe to anything other than an inability to turn my brain off.

Thunderstorms Saturday and today, which is leaving the dog decidedly unimpressed with beach life.

I guess the phone ringing off the hook 24/7 the last two years down here just blocked out all the other little annoyances. Or maybe I have just never really mastered the art of relaxing – it never was one of my strong points. But I can’t say I really relish the idea of always being tense until I die…

1. Mini Mag Lites. Every July I go and buy 4 Mini Mag Lites for the beach trip. It’s the middle of summer, thunderstorms and power outages happen, and if you’re in an unfamiliar house, it’s nice to have a little flashlight on the nightstand should you wake in the middle of the night and have to make your way to the bathroom without breaking an ankle. (I do try to be the hostess with the mostest.) We go to the beach with 4 little flashlights and come home with 4 flashlights in the Beach Equipment Box. By Christmas, I am lucky if there are still two of these flashlights in the box or the pencil holder on the kitchen desk. By March I am usually down to one flashlight and both bulbs have burned out on it…

This begs the question – where the hell did the other 3 flashlights go? In theory, they should turn up in various places about the house as I go about my day to day business. Except that they don’t. If I ever move out of here, I am quite certain I am going to find some sort of packrat nest that has about 20 Mini Mag Lites in it.

2. Hex keys. Given all the various and sundry things I have purchased from Ikea over the years, I should have at least 3 of every size and shape of hex key available. And yet, I have none. (And right now, I need some.)

3. Hair clips. These do a disappearing and reappearing act. As soon as I am down to one of these spring loaded barrettes, I go snag another 3 pack of them at the drug store. And a week later, I find I have a dozen of them.

4. Fluffy black socks. A few weeks into the fall, it’s always the same thing. I find I have 4 pairs of fluffy black socks to wear with my Timberlands. I check the pending laundry – no fluffy black socks. I hit Kohls, get a six pack of socks, and three days later, I will do a load of laundry and there are 10 pairs of fluffy black socks in it… The upside is that I won’t run out of socks for near three weeks, but seriously – WHERE WERE MY SOCKS????

I’d blame the cats, but this has been going on for too long, and even during the year I was catless. (I can’t blame the dog, he’s not much into the ‘taking stuff and hiding it’ games.)

Part of the reason I’m not feeling particularly optimistic about the sweet escape to dreamland is that my brain has been going about 150MPH all day today, and it’s only gotten worse as the day has progressed into the evening. It’s been a day where every self-doubt, every question of choices made, and the rest of my mental flotsam and jetsam has decided to come bubbling up to the surface.

I was talking with a friend earlier about a mutual friend who had gone off and tried something new and potentially terrifying. Granted, it was a no-lose situation, but he went outside his comfort zone to do it. And we were both proud of him for the attempt, regardless of the outcome.

There was a time where I told The Universe, “Bring it on!!” Which she did, in spades. (Yeah, tempting Fate in the first place ain’t the greatest idea.)

But she’s winged about as much as she could at my head, and I’ve managed to survive it.

However, it’s left me ridiculously gun-shy. And I really hate that I’ve become a rather timid person for it – for no other reason that I’m tired of the fact that the Fates decided to have a psychotic break while cutting my strings.

But I just don’t want to discover that The Universe has more fun and games in store for me. I’ve had enough at this point, thankyouverymuch.

When you can’t convince yourself that anything new won’t end in spectacular disaster, it’s hard to psych yourself up for anything new and outside your comfort zone.

It’s quite an annoying spot to find yourself in.

And then that bitch of insomnia shows up last night.  I had a great plan – I was going to go to bed early, get a great night’s sleep, get up and conquer the world today.  The fact that I am talking about it likely indicates that it didn’t work out.

First, I stayed up WAY too late being a couch potato and watching TV.  Which in and of itself isn’t the worst thing in the world, but I was mildly annoyed with the fact that I’d not been paying a whit of attention to the time and turned off the TV at 3AM.

Went to bed, nice and tired, and could NOT fall asleep.  I’d start to drift off, and then I’d hear a noise.  Or some random thought would pop in my head.  Or Lily would be jumping up on the high boy again (which she knows she isn’t allowed to do) and I’d be awake again.  Then it was 4AM.  Then 5AM.  Then the Metrobuses started coming through.  The last look I got at the clock was 6AM, and I was briefly contemplating just getting up and going out for breakfast.  Apparently I finally fell asleep before I could attempt to follow through on that idea.

What sleep I did get was total crap as it was filled with odd dreams and when I woke up, I felt a bit like I’d been hit by a truck and with a mental state I’d graciously describe as cranky.  On top of it?  Craptastic weather!

It’s not a confluence of events that is particularly conducive to productivity.  I think the trip to the store should wait until there is a smaller chance of my bitch slapping a clerk.