I've always known I hated Mondays,

I just never knew Mondays hated me back.

The MS flareup is still ongoing, making it very difficult for me to do anything much more than type with my left hand (and at that, I'm wishing I didn't need to capitalize any of the letters I type with my right hand). I still managed to get the bathroom cleaned and the laundry done yesterday, at which time every thing in the house was normal.

I knew today and tomorrow were going to be absolutely crazy at work, because Mom has a big trial coming up on Wednesday and so there'd be a lot of copying, collating, etc. for me. I was already half-dreading the day as I showered, got dressed and packed my lunch, but that was nothing compared to the fact that when I went to put Piggie Pie in the basement there was standing water at the bottom of the steps. I left her down there, went in to work, went through the mail from Friday and Saturday and called both of Mom's afternoon appointments to cancel. I also made all the copies of the finally balanced accounting from last week and got them ready for Mom to take to court and checked the voice mail. By the time Mom got there at 9:15, I had the decks cleared enough so that I could come home and call my insurance agent.

Of course, said agent isn't sure whether the damage is covered, but he gave me the name and number of a cleanup guy and started the claim process. Michael, the cleanup guy, was booked solid today and is hopefully going to come out early tomorrow, because I made a point of telling his office that I had to be at work to do trial prep.

Please note that at no point in this process did I call my father. Dad is pretty much out of the home repair business after almost killing himself with work on his own house last summer, and right now, I can't manage cleaning up the basement, even if he had brought me a mop and bucket. I couldn't even do my usual trick of putting towels down and then taking them to the washing machine in a basket--there's just too much water!

I did put on my boots and go down and check, and the water appears to be coming in the west wall, and it's pretty much all gone towards the south (front) and east walls, which means that it is away from the furnace, water heater, washer and dryer (good) but far away from the sump pump (bad). At some point while I was exploring and evaluating, Mom called Dad.

Dad called me, told me he couldn't do anything but said he'd come over after dinner with his mop and bucket. I have not told Dad about the flareup, because he's going through enough medical crap on his own, so I didn't tell him that wouldn't work, just said that my insurance guy wanted me to have the pro clean it up. Dad then yelled at me for not keeping better track of the one piece of paper we have regarding the alleged basement waterproofing done two decades ago. I declined to get into that with him, because while I believe that Mom has said piece of paper, I also know that I could have stuck it "someplace safe" and I'm tired of hearing about it from him.

Mom called about 6:30 and said she'd found it, and gave me the name of the company plus the phone numbers from the sheet of paper. Dad said he'd looked them up online and they had a good rating both with Angie's List and the BBB, but he couldn't give me the url because he used Google and just went straight to the site. I used Google too, but got several different companies in different states with the same name. I finally found it and wrote down the number. The last thing Dad said to me was, "Don't make an appointment for tomorrow." I said I had to, because I can't leave Little Miss in a wet basement. His response was, "Your mother needs you more than your dog does."

I hung up on him. I am SO sick and tired of him being a crabby ass bastard that if he were here, I'd hit him with his own damn mop.

*breathe breathe breathe*

I did reach three different guys at the waterproofing company, and someone will be at my house between 8:30 and 9:00 tomorrow morning to take a look. I tried to call Mom to tell her, but the phone's busy, and since they have call waiting, I think maybe crabby ass bastard took the phone off the hook. Fine, I'll call in the morning and wake his crabby ass up.

Wahooooooo!

Mom and I got the accounting balanced, and I am not going to say one word about the client. *zip*

Little Miss Piggie Pie had a dental cleaning with anesthesia this morning, which mean no food or water after 10 last night. She was a very sad doggie when I dropped her off this morning, and a very NAGGY doggie when I picked her up. Per the standard instructions, she got half a normal dinner at 7, and I just gave her the other half, so she has now forgiven me and is sleeping by my chair. This morning, LMPP was a good girl and got on the scale (and she is two pounds overweight, the little fatbutt!) but then sat down and looked at me when the tech tried to take her downstairs. I had to leave before the guilt ate me.

So tomorrow is a matter of getting all the forms ready for the accounting and then holding down the fort while Mom takes three accountings over to court, eek. Then it will be the blessed, blessed weekend!

I can haz Friday?

Mom and I have been working for weeks on an accounting that just won't balance. Today we decided that my short day tomorrow will be a long day so we can go over all of the numbers from start to finish, and the whole thing makes me feel like a failure. In my head I know it's not my fault it doesn't balance, but that doesn't change my feelings about the whole thing. I just want to hide under the bed whenever I think about it. :(

It's official!

For their 50th anniversary, Mom and Dad are taking the whole famdamily on a cruise at Christmas time 2012. We'll be going on the new Disney Fantasy and I'm going to have my own room! With a balcony! Time to start saving money for fun spending. :)

In the meantime, I am struggling with the fact that it's now been more than a year since I was laid off and I've had only two in-person interviews and with the fact that I'm having a MS flare-up which consists of hands (especially the left) feeling like they're swollen when they're not, very painful and tingling more than usual. Also, there is a pompous, pretentious, patronizing, preening jerk on Goodreads I'd like to slap into next week and I've been very bad about sticking to my workout schedule. I'm not sure what I need, but I need something.

Why bush babies shouldn't drive

Last Sunday was bad, what with falling hard on my butt onto iced-up concrete and a few other small disasters, Monday was worse with a tough workday which ended with the discovery that at some point I'd lost the left lens out of my glasses and failed to notice until I went to put them on to drive home.

I managed to get through Tuesday and Wednesday without killing myself or anyone else, and made a Thursday appointment for an eye exam. It had been two years since my last exam, so I was due anyway. The good news was that my right eye hadn't changed, only my left was a bit worse. That was good both because it was the left lens I needed replaced and because my right eye is my dominant eye, so I was okay to use my old glasses for a couple of days. I had a nice chat with the receptionist about knitting, and was about to leave when she commented that my eyes were still dilated and maybe someone should come get me. I assured her I didn't have far to go, and left.

Usually, when I have an eye appointment, it is in January or February, and every appointment I've had until now has been on an overcast or full-on snowy day. Thursday was different. It was sub-freezing cold but brilliantly sunshiny, and in the four minutes it took me to drive less than a mile home, I was in acute pain. I had intended to measure the distance between my pupils so I could get a spare pair or two of glasses from Zenni, but when I looked in the mirror, I didn't even see irises, my eyes were all pupil and I looked like a bush baby. So I took a nap. Two hours later my eyes still hadn't gone back to normal, so I did some desultory knitting, ate dinner, had a bath and went to bed early.

Happily, my replacement lens was done on Friday, so I will be ordering my spare pair(s) soon. Plus, Mom paid for a nice lunch for all of us yesterday, and we had an enjoyable hour, so the week ended much better than it began.

Workout stats (a work in progress)

Water walking, 02/05/11:

Steps in to building: 84 (was lazy and parked near the door, plus it's COLD)
Steps in first 2-minute jog: 184
Steps in second 2-minute jog: 192
Steps in third 2-minute jog: 170 (lazy, lazy, lazy)

Water walking, 02/12/11:

Steps in to building: 134
Steps in 4-minute jog: 292

Observing cats

Everyone with MS needs to spend some time watching cats. Not only do you learn about the importance of personal grooming and frequent napping, you can also learn the nonchalant walking-away stalk which clearly conveys "I meant to do that" even when "that" is something incredibly stupid.

One of my fun MS symptoms is occasional spasming of my right hand and arm. Of course I am right-handed, so if I happen to be holding something in my right hand, it goes flying. Usually it's a pen, but it has on occasion been a knitting needle, a cracker, a cigarette...

Today I essentially threw a stapler halfway across my mom's desk, and then had to explain about the spasms and my "I meant to do that" theory. Twenty minutes later, it happened again, this time while I was holding the lid to the large glass jar she keeps her paper clips and binder clips in. I just said "I meant to do that" and we went on getting subpoenas ready, so I must be getting better at the nonchalance.