Well, it's getting even weirder over here...

My last entry was partially about the fact that Akron's former mayor, who served for 27 years, took his toys and went home suddenly.  

The new mayor was sworn in by my boss, and on Monday, we had arguments in City Council that resulted in the cops being called.

Now, the interim mayor announces that he had "inappropriate contact" with a co-worker on his last day at City Council.

Meanwhile, the city in which I live has had some upscale development and a new mayor.  I'm wondering if there's only so much civilization to go around, and if it's all migrating to Cuyahoga Falls from Akron...

Somebody gets me!

Five days a week I park my car at the downtown parking garage closest to work.  I pay $65/month for the privilege, and consider it well spent when I don't have to slog through a polar vortex for more than two minutes.  However, I am wondering what the company that operates the garage is doing with my money (and everyone else's).

When it rains or snows heavily, all of the pipes carrying the water away from the flat roof leak and all of the drains back up.  Huge puddles form, great swathes of parking spaces are blocked off, and this spring, the lowest level of the garage had two feet of water in it for almost a week.  The only "maintenance" ABM seems to do is to put out "Wet Floor" signs convenient only for blocking more parking spaces.

Last Wednesday, I got out of my car and stepped right in a puddle.  Fortunately I keep my work shoes at work and I was wearing sneakers, but I was still ticked.  I thought about it all day, and at 4:00, I grabbed a sheet of paper out of the recycling bin and made a little sign.

Welcome to Lake Morley, Cabins and Fishing are in my handwriting.

I taped it on the door to Level 2 and went home.

On Friday night, as I got to the door, I saw that "Kiddie Pool", "High Dive" and "Canoes" had been added, each with their own unique arrows.  As long as it's up, I can start my day happy with the knowledge that even if I don't know them personally, someone in Akron shares my sense of humor.

Black Friday disgusts me

Thirty-plus years ago, my mom and my aunt used to go shopping the morning after Thanksgiving, because that was when the Christmas stuff was first sold and because it was a little time alone for them, with their families sleeping off turkey hangovers.  Now, we have people camping out for a week, with generators, to buy things that will wind up in a landfill; retailers making their staff work on Thanksgiving night, and herds of people who need nothing and want everything trampling each other for the latest plastic crap.

My mother taught consumer education for thirty years, so I grew up with Maslow's Heirarchy.  I may spend like a drunken monkey sometimes, but at least I always know that I'm buying stuff I want rather than stuff I need.  I don't have a problem with people out there buying Christmas presents that would otherwise be smaller or non-existent, and I don't have a problem with people out there buying clothing or home goods that they need.

But people like the jackass with the generator?  They're disgusting and they tarnish what Thanksgiving is supposed to mean.

From Hell to Heaven in 36 hours

Yesterday was Monday on steroids, a seriously horrible day full of angry clients, sobbing clients, drama-queen Wards, paperwork and even when I came home and called Mom in Dallas, she had to hang up immediately because Tinkerbell had fallen off her bike (Tink's okay, thankfully).  I wanted to hide under the bed, or yanno, in it, because when I'm depressed, I sleep.  However, I decided it was too late in the day to nap.

So I nuked a cup of coffee and turned on the computer, and checked my e-mail and found something that cheered me right the heck up--an invitation to a salon opening from Zoya Nail Polish!  I sent my HELL YES response immediately, told all my friends, and then spent the rest of the evening until bedtime fussing over what I was going to wear.

I will post details and pictures at Bubbles and Baubles soon, but I will say tonight started with a name tag, a shampoo and blow-dry that left my hair looking stunning, continued with gourmet food and a serious swag bag, meeting a ton of great new people, including several Zoya polish fairies, as they are known, and Zoya herself!   It really was the perfect antidote to Monday. :D

Hodge Podge

Aerosmith's "Back in the Saddle Again" keeps running through my head. A little under four years ago, I underwent all kinds of tests to see what exactly was wrong with me, and after many scares and diagnoses of minor ailments, I found out I had MS. Now I'm back to the testing thing again, this time for that pain I had a month or so ago. My new doc says it's too low on my body to be my gallbladder, but it could be adhesions from the hysterectomy, a hernia, or possibly even the c-word. I have an abdominal CT scan scheduled for tomorrow evening, and my diet tomorrow will consist entirely of water and barium solution. I'm worried that the CT scan won't show anything, and I'll be back in the saddle of endless medical tests again.

One thing I learned from my first experience with medical testing is that you go on. It's difficult to live your live at a fever-pitch of fear, so you keep going. On that basis, today I did half an hour's worth of weeding, baked a cinnamon streusel coffee cake I can't eat but will take in to work tomorrow, made three Wet Willies, did five loads of laundry, cleaned the bathroom, took a nap and shortly I will go take a bath with one of my precious Ice Hotels, scrub myself with my R.I.P. cauldron from Isle of Eden, and take a benadryl or four to make sure I sleep.

This week, I will plant thirty daffodil bulbs; help Mom transplant three azaleal bushes I'm giving her; get back in the habit of entering a few books each evening to GoodReads; mail off some packages to friends, and attend Ohio Mart with my mother and my sister-in-law. I will throw out all of the sweatpants that no longer fit, take a large box of clothing to Goodwill, and celebrate the fact that the scale this morning showed 222.2 pounds. I will also build a book for the first time.

Whatever happens with the medical stuff, life has to go on, or there's not much point in anything, is there?

Don't like Ohio weather?

Wait five minutes, it'll change.

Last night, when I couldn't sleep, I sat on the breezeway and watched the thunderstorm for a while. It was quite satisfactorily flashy and noisy, and I enjoyed it very much. I entertained myself by thinking of songs that mention rain, then tried to remember exactly how Terry Pratchett described Sam Vimes' childhood imaginings about raindrops as soldiers.

Littlefoot was less delighted by the storm than I was, and kept trying to plaster himself up against me. The accepted wisdom is to ignore the fear, because when you pet & reassure the dog, it reinforces the thought that there is something to be afraid of, and reinforces the needy behavior as well. Cruel pack leader that I am, I ruffled his ears and wouldn't let him crawl under the covers with me when I finally went back to bed.

This morning when I woke, it was snowing. The snow continued long enough to coat everything, including the daffodils & grape hyacinths that are just starting to sprout. Even though I know this happens frequently, and that the plants will be fine, I still feel sorry for them, getting snowed on when they are just babies.

The snow also highlights all the downed tree limbs in the yard, and now that I am permitted to lift up to twenty-five pounds, I may go out this weekend and drag a few of them up to the driveway so I can break them up and stuff them in a bag. I think one of the reasons I've been sleeping poorly is that I haven't been active enough to get tired. If I spent Saturday out in the yard, I have all day Sunday to recover so that I can go back to work on Monday.

Best of...?

In the most recent issue of Northern Ohio Live, the new food columnist bemoaned the fact that Clevelanders and other residents of NE Ohio are not yet ready for whole pigs' heads and similar delicacies. I personally am not ready to eat a pig's head or its feet, but I did notice that an earlier issue of NOL, devoted to the "Best of..." had in its restaurant category a huge number of chain eateries.

While I find it a bit irritating to be lumped in with the residents of Cleveland, which frequently happens to those of us who live in the area but outside of the city, what I really find irritating is that the folks who responded to the initial survey ignored many of our exceptional local restaurants. With places like Crave, LeFever's, Moe's, Mariachi Loco and others available, it is incomprehensible to me that Panera, Damon's and Olive Garden made the list.

C'mon, Buckeyes, even if we're not ready for pig heads, let's at least support some of our wonderful local restaurants!