Petunia rambles on and on….

Stuff

1. If it had been colder here over the last week or so, the snow we would have gotten instead of so much rain, wouldn’t melt until 2012 - we’d have gotten that much! As that coincides with the end of time, we’d never, ever see ground again.
2. My husband has the “hots” for my gravy. It’s good to know I do something well.
3. I have little sense left, but even so, I DID NOT go shopping on Black Friday, but we will not discuss any clicking about anything that has to do with or was once worn by sheep.
4. Giving the dog table scraps, particularly poultry, gives her a hideous case of the “Brown Breeze” and she usually likes to sit right at my feet when its at it’s worst. We had a turkey yesterday, and Pop believes table scraps “can’t hurt her.”
5. It would appear that giving the dog table scraps, particularly poultry, also gives the dog the $hitz. If we got off work at the same time, I’d have left it all for him to clean up, as he’s the one that keeps giving her stuff but I got off at 4pm, he works until 8pm, and I couldn’t have stood the stink that long!! Poor dog must have really been miserably ill – while she is a thorough pain in the ass much of the time, she does not have potty-training issues.
6. I worked for a day and a half on a shawl pattern out of the lace-weight yarn I spun. The pattern had lots of yarn-overs and k2togs and ssk’s and my eyes couldn’t handle it. I was making the occasional error and couldn’t see it well enough to get the errors fixed. A simpler pattern is all I can do with yarn that fine. Ripped it back. The yarn’s in Time Out right now, til I figure out what I’m gonna do with it. One option is to find the other end, inside the center-pull ball, and ply the two ends together, making a cabled yarn that will be heavier, thicker, easier on my eyes.
7. I started the same pattern over again in a heavier weight yarn, Cherry Tree Hill fingering weight. I can see what I’m doing, which allows me to correct the mistakes I still make.
8. I’m good at recognizing voices. Pop mentioned it again while I was just typing here. He’s surfing through the channels endlessly, and I’m not paying any attention, til I glanced up and saw a penguin and heard 4 seconds of a voice and immediately said, That’s March of the Penguins, cause it’s Morgan Freeman’s voice. It’s a handy talent for someone who’s worked as a telephone operator almost all my life. Recently I was able to instantly recognize a voice that I hadn’t heard in over 40 years. My heart stopped, in a good way.
9. The heat didn’t come on where I work today. I had to wear a coat for the whole shift. So did the guys, so it wasn’t just sissy me.
10. My finger is clearly broken again. I thumped it against something AGAIN, and heard the little crunching sound that’s getting all too familiar to me. It’s the last wee bone on the littlest finger on my left hand. The one that hits the “A” key and the Shift key all the time.  The original injury happened about 5 years ago; with artificial acrylic fingernails firmly in place, and in a hurry as usual, I shoved my hand into the dryer too quickly, not watching what I was doing. Caught the end of the nail on the edge of the dryer opening, bent the whole finger back nearly to my ear, and dropped to the floor in pain. I swore profusely, shed a tear or two, cussed again. Figured that I really sprained it good, or the pain was from that nail being thrust back so far. Baby’d it a bit, but went to work the next day, where I’m typing and keying all day.  Hurt like an SOB! And continued hurting for weeks, way too long for a sprain. Finally went to my doctor who ordered x-rays. Sure enough, the bone had been snapped right in two, just at the base of that artificial nail. (A natural nail would have broken off or just bent back painfully) Where the real problem came in was the weeks that I had kept on typing, and rebreaking it. Over and over. Now, I don’t think it will ever heal properly as I keep hearing those crunching noises. And to make this all a bit worse is the fact that I’m LEFT-handed.

When I got home from work on Thursday, I checked my e-mail, and there must have been 50 advertisements sent to me! Staples, Bose, Dell, JoAnn’s Fabrics, Bath and Body Works, Sears, Victoria’s Secret, Borders Books, Patternworks, The Loopy Ewe, Amazon.com, Wolf Trap, Journey Music, Little Knits, Audible.com.  Some of these companies are now sending me 2-3 e-mail missives each day. Oh, I’m familiar with them all – I’ve done business with all of them. Some more than others.  Bose and Dell love me!!  Half my craft books or more, which is a hideously huge sizeable collection, came from Amazon, the lady from The Loopy Ewe sends out hand-written notes addressed to me by name.

But these people gotta knock it off.  Some of them, I can easily delete without even glancing at.  Desktop is working fine, older laptop works well, and I just got a new RED one.  I can DEL Dell!!! Same for Bath and Body Works, Sears, Victoria’s Secret.  Journey Music can’t tempt me anymore. I’ve got most of the shirts and ALL of the music, several times over.

The ones that are really getting to me is Amazon, because I’m a book freak, and The Loopy Ewe, because they have such beautiful stuff, and my spending with them is 85 cents SHORT of a $25 store credit and it’s killing me.  And if another Loopy Ewe package arrives here, there’s gonna be some serious words between Himself and me, and he could be justified in that, I guess!

But did ya see the new stuff from Cherry Tree Hill?

• My three children, and their children. Enough said. 
• I’m not cooking a huge turkey dinner on Thursday. Daughter is cooking at her house, 3 hours south, and invited us all; Pop has to work Friday and the rest of the weekend, absolutely; one of  the joys of working in “retail.” We decided early on that we were not going to race down to Tig’s, gobble down some gobbler, and then race all the way back that same night. We’re too old for that. Once that was decided, I scheduled myself to work on the holiday, giving someone else a day off to gobble. I’m comfortable with these plans, EXCEPT it’ll probably be the first Thanksgiving without my kids. AND there’ll be no turkey sandwiches, piled high with sausage stuffing, cranberry sauce and mayonnaise late that evening. AND the house won’t smell like turkey, or pumpkin pie.  No one will be trying to sneak mushrooms onto the oldest one’s plate while he’s not looking.
• This week, I’m employed. This isn’t the case for everyone. Despite bullshit claims in the media that things are getting better, millions who need to work and want to work can’t find work. Businesses are closing; families are losing what has taken a lifetime to achieve. I read an article today about career fields out there that are hiring and paying well NOW, during this crisis.  Yeah, but 4-year degrees and 3-5 years of experience in very specific fields are needed to qualify – Great information, a real quick-fix for those that have lost their job and can’t pay their bills right now. It might help young folks whose parents are paying their bills who are thinking about going back for more education; might help to steer them in the right direction. But it sure doesn’t help someone who’s currently facing foreclosure; they don’t have the time or money to go back for retraining at this point in their lives. It doesn’t help someone my age. And I’m scheduled to lose my job to “Advanced Technology” in April of next year.
• My stash of yarn and fiber will last longer than I will. I will never really NEED to buy any more yarn, ever. Now I’m not saying I won’t! Just like we buy a new blouse, with 40 in the closet at home, because we like the color, or the collar, or we’re in a pissy mood. I’ll probably buy more yarn because I seem to “collect” it, with only the vaguest idea in mind of what it’ll be used for. But if I’m gonna be stuck at home, broke, for an extended period of time, I’m thankful that I won’t have to spend all my time either scrubbing the kitchen floor or watching daytime television – I’ll have stuff to play with!
• Freedoms. We need to thank and remember all those in uniform, those who are currently serving in the military, those who’ve served in the past, those who’ve been far from home and family, spent holidays alone, those who gave all. Without them and their efforts, our lives would be very different.
• I know how to make my own socks. They are warm, and comfortable and they fit well. I enjoy doing small projects, where progress is quickly seen and a finished item doesn’t require a lifetime commitment. And I make socks in bright, colorful yarns that make me happy just to look at them. (And I’m up to my arse in sock yarn).
• Medical, dental and prescription drug coverage. Never thought that would be one of my Top Items!!!! Another indication that this getting-old stuff sucks, and the outrageous costs for medical care in this country are crippling all of us. Do you know what it costs to ride 5 blocks in an ambulance? Well, I didn’t either, but when I opened the bill for that short trip, hell, for that price, they should have taken me damn near to Chicago. I asked my doctor to write for generic, cheaper medications and HE WILL NOT. He says what I’m currently taking is just exactly what I need and the generics won’t work as well for me. He did not offer to pay for the Name Brand stuff. I told him that I could not afford to be quite as healthy as he’d like me to be, and these meds would be the first to go, before I’ll have the electricity shut off or do without heat or groceries or a high-speed internet connection.  I’m not taking my football-sized Lipitors right now, waiting on them and one other to come in from a mail-order pharmacy service which is 1/3 cheaper than getting them locally. Oh, well.
• My hopefully last dental appointment is December 9. And after 15 months of seemingly endless appointments with dentists and oral surgeon, and having seen more of my exposed jaw bone than I ever wanted to see, more times than I cared to, the idea that there IS an end to all this still seems amazing. (Maybe it’s all a joke – and there really is no end?? I’ll just keep going and going and going……) Dental insurance pays $1,000 per year/per “issue”; that ran out about 13 months ago.
• Friends. There are very few people that I call “friend.” Guess I’ve been a loner for much of my life that way. It’s my doing, not trusting very many people. Getting burned pretty bad a couple of times early on does that to you, perhaps. Not caring so much about people minimizes their ability to really kick you. Those few special ones, though, mean everything to me. I’ve been separated from some by time and distance, a long time, a long distance. It doesn’t matter at all, doesn’t change anything. The feelings are all still there, strong as ever.
• There ain’t no mountain high enough……….