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.

Book review

The Painted Girls: A Novel by Cathy Marie Buchanan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Although this is a fictional account of the van Goethem sisters, it's realistic while being engaging.  While some of the supporting characters are rather flat, the main characters are fully realized and I came to care what happens to them.  Without descending too far into adolescent angst, the author nevertheless manages to convey the pains and joys of growing up.  Without delving too far into grossness, Ms. Buchanan manages to convey the dangers and fears of a life lived on the ragged edge of poverty.  And without crossing the line into erotica, the author manages to convey the joy of sex with a loved one and the shame of sex for money.

After reading this book, I am torn between wanting to know more about the van Goethem sisters, and wanting not to know, so I can imagine them in a happy old age, chortling together over cups of tea and surrounded by reminders of lives well lived.

This book was sent to me for review


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...and then the princess turned back into a troll

Tuesday night was really lovely.  I got out, met new people, got my hair done and a goodie bag, ate lovely food and talked nail polish and techie toys, and just felt like a princess all evening.

Sadly, I woke up Wednesday morning at 3 a.m. with a migraine, too far advanced for me to keep anything down, including meds or coffee.   I relied on a hot shower followed by an ice pack until it was time to get dressed and go to work.  I had, I thought, brought home a bunch of documents that needed to be filed, so I headed for downtown Akron.  At the very end of my drive, a turnoff I needed to take was closed, so I wound up in an unfamiliar area and missed the detour.  Once I was done with a long trip the wrong way and back, I parked the car and went to put my wallet and car keys in the envelope folder where the documents were.  Ohshit.  I had picked up the wrong folder, and everything I needed to file was at Mom's house, 30 minutes away.

Head still hurting, I tried to do the rest of my errands.  I went to the bank, forgot to go to Office Max, went to drop off my vacuum at the repair shop only to find out that they didn't open until 10, and got lost trying to find the paper recycling dropoff.  So I went to the office, only to find myself in the middle of a shrill squabble between a nursing home and a ward's family.  By the time I left, driving home in the sunshine was miserable.

But at least after the Monday from Hell and before the Wednesday from Hell, I had a few hours of fun, and now I have a whole weekend under my bridge to nest and read and play before I have to go back out in the scary world, and I am thankful for that.

Of course, I am as always, thankful for my family, my friends, my dogs and my health, and I wish all of my US friends and family a very happy Thanksgiving.

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

The turkeys were an omen.

Gah, what a day.

My drive to work this morning was perfectly normal, right up until I had to brake for the flock of wild turkeys crossing the road.  That was when my brakes went almost completely out on me.  Fortunately, I didn't hit a turkey.  I drove carefully and slowly the rest of the way to work, and told Mom what had happened.  Oh, Mom and Dad were supposed to be en route to Dallas for Thanksgiving, but they didn't leave on Wednesday because of Mom's work schedule and they didn't leave this morning because Dad didn't feel well.  I will spare my readers a rant on the idiocy of people who do not take antibiotics that have been prescribed for them and who instead prefer to fix dental problems on their own.

At any rate, Mom was home, and she and I talked while she had her second cup of coffee, and then I checked the voice mail while she paid bills.  There was a message from the outside company we use to prepare QDROs (court documents dealing with the division of retirement accounts for divorcing clients) saying that they didn't want the form we'd sent to them for one of our clients, they wanted a different form, which, btw, we'd sent to them in April, at which time they rejected it.  So the first thing I did was call the client and tell him what we now needed.  Next, I tried the local tire & brake shop, and got a busy signal.  So Mom and I started work with a look at the payroll account and then doing a bunch of letters.  When I finally got through to the tire place, they said if I could bring my car in and leave it for the day, they'd try to fix the brakes for me.

With Mom ahead of me in her car, I drove very, very slowly down a main road until we got to the tire place. I dropped off the keys, gave them my information, signed the form and hopped in with Mom to go to the post office and then back to work.  Almost immediately the phone rang, and a semi-hysterical non-client tried to drag us into an estate dispute involving one of our incompetent clients.  I told her Mom was unavailable, took her name and number and wrote up my notes from the call.

Mom then decreed a short break, and we went to the Disney Cruise website to complete our pre-registration.  That's when we discovered that there is no record of transportation from our hotel the day of the cruise to the ship.  Mom was livid.  She sent an e-mail to the travel agent (who still hasn't replied) and then had to pick up all of the assorted paperwork all over the floor.  While she did that, I talked to a client in a divorce case where opposing counsel is ignoring us AND ignoring the judge's office.  Unfortunately, we can't send enforcers to his office to make him return our calls.

Then the phone rang again, and it was one of our clients who is involved with a nasty estate dispute.  Mom did her best to talk to the client and tell her what she needed to do so Mom could do her job, and when that phone call ended, it was time for lunch.  While we were getting lunch ready, the phone rang again and it was the semi-hysterical non-client again.  This time Mom talked to her, then we ate, then she wrote up her notes and I went downstairs to look for some paperwork.

While I was down there the phone rang again, and the tire place told Mom that my car wouldn't be ready today, that they had to replace two brake lines and that it would cost at least $300.

The rest of the day went downhill.

Dad's Road Trip

2 a.m.: Go to bed

4 a.m.: Get up, eat ice cream

4:30 a.m.: Go back to bed

6 a.m.: Get up, drink coffee, surf the web, chain-smoke

6:30 a.m.: Panic!  Load the car.  Repeatedly call your wife out to the garage to help you, only to let her stand there for 10 minutes before you say you're not ready for her.

7:30 a.m.: Ask for pillows, a blanket, sandwiches, coffee and snacks.  Get them because your wife is awesome and did everything but the coffee last night.

7:50 a.m.: Leave 

10:30 a.m.: Take first nap

12:00 p.m.: Call home, joke that the food Mom packed means he's travelling the Trans-Fat Highway.

12:30 p.m.:  Take second nap

Arrive somewhere around 4 p.m.

On Saturday, Dad and his friend were driving back from somewhere when Dad's phone rang.  It was his friend D, whose family has known our family since the late '60s.  D was in New Jersey too, helping out his daughter who lives there, and he knew Dad was in NJ because Jeeves posted it on Facebook.

Dad thinks it's funny, Mom thinks it's an invasion of privacy, and I think the world just gets smaller and smaller. :)

Another hero (although this one's not soggy)

An old friend of my uncle's lives in New Jersey, and is without power.  Because my father is smart and caring and thoughtful, he purchased a generator today, and tomorrow morning he is driving to New Jersey to get it hooked up.  He just says that it's something he knows how to do and something he has the time to do, but I'm pretty damn impressed.

A damp hero

Last night was mostly a typical Monday night at Casa de Jammies.  Work sucked on toast, it was cold, raining and horrendously windy, and I was glad to get home, shuck out of my work clothes and settle down to read a nice, spooky, vampire apocalypse novel.  The Twelve, by Justin Cronin, if you're curious.   The dogs were both fairly needy, thanks to the wind, and after the third time Little Miss Piggie Pie tried to climb into my lap, I gave up on reading and headed for the computer.

Around nine o'clock, I was sitting at my desk with four programs running on my desktop computer when the power went out.  I waited a minute until I was sure that the power wasn't coming back on immediately, and then I reached over and turned off the power bar for the computer and peripherals before pushing back my chair.  Because the study is at the back of the house, there was very little light coming into the room.  When my eyes adjusted, the first thing I saw was six glowing spots to my right.  After a blink or two, I realized it was my glow-in-the-dark nail polishes!

If you've never tried to navigate a pitch-black house with dogs pressed to your legs, I can't give you any advice, because once I got past the study door to the hallway, I could see the light from the streetlamps.  All the lights were on at the sub-station across the street, so I lit some candles and called my folks to request a wake-up call in the morning in case the power wasn't back on by 6.

Okay, technically, I called my mother, because the only time my dad sees 6 a.m. is from the wrong side.

Then I picked up my knitting and did four rows on The Scarf That Will Take Forever.

At about twenty to ten, Little Miss Piggie Pie started going crazy, running back and forth from the living room window to the breezeway door, barking her head off.  I tried telling her that nobody would be walking or bicycling past her turf on a night like this, but she persisted.  I finished my row, set the knitting aside and walked out to the breezeway and looked out the door.

There was in fact someone out there, a dark shape on foot, with a flashlight.  After a minute or so, I realized that it was the poor city electrical worker who was on call last night, walking between the substation building and the cage full of, um, transformers?  about a house lot away.  And he stayed out there, going back and forth between the two, for the rest of the evening.  Granted, by the time I went to bed at 11:30, he was no longer on foot but taking his truck back and forth, but he was still working to get my power back on.

I read a few more chapters in my scary book, thanks to the LED book light Sherri gave me, then set up the coffee, set the alarm on my cell phone, and went to bed.  When I woke up at 5:30, the power was on, but I thought it was only 3:30, so it's a good thing Mom called at 6.

So tonight I am raising my glass to all of the gas and electric workers, the damp heroes out there getting the power back on and keeping people warm and safe and well-lit.  Thank you all.

Serious Paypal Stupidity

(cross-posted from Bubbles & Baubles)


Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab recently re-introduced single note scents, which change monthly.  This month, the scents are (or rather were) Iranian Galbanum and Rum-Soaked French Tonka.   If you're a reasonably internet-savvy person who doesn't happen to know that these are perfume components, you look them up.

If you're a drooling idiot who works for Paypal, however, you shut down the account of a perfume vendor who is selling a perfume with that name.  Really, Paypal, have you NO employees there with brains?

Wonderful video

The adorable Jack Russell?  He's co-owned and trained by one of my Goodreads pals.  Yay Milo!

Bits and pieces

Dad left for the lake house this afternoon, after staying up until 5:30 a.m., sleeping until 11 a.m. and packing the car/playing on the computer/drinking coffee until 1:30 p.m.  Mom's not going up until after her pre-trial on Friday, but my aunt and uncle arrive from Colorado tomorrow, so someone's got to be there.

Dad just e-mailed Mom and me a list of all the things he forgot to bring, which he wants Mom to bring with her, and closed the e-mail with "All is well here.  Buddy looks happy."  Buddy, of course, is the new golf cart.

Little Miss Piggie Pie just belched, and her breath is so incredibly stinky that the smell of my newly-polished nails is preferable.  That was disgusting.

I have a new floor steamer, a Haan FS20, and I love it!

That's pretty much the news from 'round here.

Ugh.

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Just ugh.  I give up.  The mention of Victorian perfumery sucked me in, but there's nothing of the art of perfume in this novel and not one likable character anywhere.  While I don't object to sex scenes in my reading, I do object to an abundance of dreary, joyless, sometimes disgusting sex scenes and overblown writing that gets the plot nowhere.


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A Jammies Family E-mail Exchange

Plaid Jammies:  I just bought a really fancy golf cart for the lake house.  It seats six!

Captain Crossword: Wow!

Jammies:  I bought a new coffeemaker for $20.

Jeeves:  SHOTGUN!

Of buying and books and boycotts and bastards

In February, one of my favorite contemporary authors was put through a miserable period of stress thanks to Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  Ms. Seanan McGuire tells her story much better than I would, so please go here to read it.

I stopped buying from Amazon years ago, when they said they'd continue to sell magazines about dog-fighting even though dog-fighting is illegal, and I was glad of that when they unfairly de-rated LGBT authors.  But I've been a Barnes & Noble customer for ten years, and continued to buy from them, reasoning that it was a one-time error and wouldn't happen again.

Well, it did.  In fact, they're doing it right now, and so I am done giving them any of my money.  I pre-ordered the book I want from Books-A-Million, and will happily wait until September 4th to read it.

My discretionary spending isn't much.  It's a drop in the ocean compared to what Bastards & Noble get daily, let alone yearly.  Still, it's my drop, and I will not put it in their ocean until they stop this tactic.  *sigh*  It's very discouraging that they feel the need to put profit ahead of author relationships, but I guess that's the way the world is going.

Quick update

1. I turned down a job in Columbus because I'm not ready to move, but it was nice to have the offer.

2. I ripped off half a toenail a week ago and it still hurts.

3. In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Mouse got distressingly and messily sick in my bedroom, leading to a 4 a.m. wakeup and much laundry, followed by an excruciating morning as Mom and I worked on an estate where the final balance had to be divided between 14 people in 3 generations.  Ack, fractions!

4. We got it done and out, yay!

5. Apparently, some people think it's okay to send 38 or 57 page faxes.  No, no it's not.

6. I am still alive. :)

Random pic spam!

The ice cream cone piñata that Mom and I made:

Sad Mouse with black eye:

 

 

Sad Mouse with ice pack:

Eventful!

The family schedule for June and July:

June 16th: my parents' 50th wedding anniversary
June 17th: Father's Day
July 4th through the 9th: Jammiesfest
July 13th through the 22nd: My nephews staying with Mom and Dad
July 25th: My father's birthday
July 28th through August 4th: My nieces staying with Mom and Dad

August 4th through August 12th: Most of the whole famdamily staying at Lakeside.

*whew*

Some highlights:

Jay, Sherri and Zeus the Wonder Poodle came for Jammiesfest and rearranged my living room, cleaned all the glassware and alphabetized the books.  Yes, I'm a little embarrassed by letting my friends see the cobwebby corners and work on their vacations, but I'm also thrilled at having a living room I can actually live in!  And I did take them out for Thai food and make yummy lemon pound cake...

On my birthday, I woke up to a dog who looked like a losing prizefighter.  Mr. Mouse had gotten stung or bitten and his right eye was swollen shut.  Two vet visits, two weeks in the Collar of Shame, two steroids, two antibiotics and close to two hundred dollars later and he is fine.

The Awesome Nacho remembered that I like lavender and got me a lovely lavender soap for my birthday, and SuperDoughnut got me an adorable birdhouse.

Thanks to the new working arrangements, I got to see my nephews every day they were here.

For his birthday, I took my retro Dad to RetroDog, which was fun.  My hot dog was good, Dad's onion rings looked superb and Dad liked it so much he and Mom took the girls there.

I got to see Bookworm Mathgeek for a couple of hours on the 28th, which was my only chance to spend some time with her before December, as she's not going up to the lake (and I'm only going for one day this year). 

The girls had a tea party and invited Vegan Lawyer, her granddaughter and her stepgranddaughter.  Cupcakes were decorated and frosted and eaten, fancy dresses were worn, t-shirts and hats and birdhouses were painted and a good time was had by all.

Mom took my nieces and I to the Natatorium, and Princess Mathgeek rode the water slide at least 10 times.  Tinkerbelle climbed all the way to the top of the stairs, only to be told she was too short. :(  So I went up with her and basically bullied the lifeguard into letting her go down once with me.  Then they both jumped off the diving board multiple times and swam with me in the current pool.  Mom took pictures and said the water was too cold.  The next day, Mom took the girls to the outdoor water park and Tinkerbelle was tall enough to ride two of the four waterslides.

My father was so excited about his new tablet that he backed into my car and tore the driver's side mirror loose. 

Despite all this, Mom and I managed to complete and send out three notary subpoenas, many letters, and 270 pages of responses to interrogatories.  Today I am doing laundry and making a half-hearted effort to clean, and then tomorrow I will drive up to the lake for a few hours, spend some time with Captain Crossword and Jeeves, and then drive home.

From "Erk" to "Ewwwwww!" in 63 pages.

The Scroll of Seduction: A Novel by Gioconda Belli





Actual review is after the jump because of spoilers.

Happy Anniversary!

My parents have been married 50 years!

Google Chrome sucks

and Blogger sucks for making me use it in order to upload photos and add links.  I will not be using Google+ any more in protest.  Assholes.