I don't know what to do...

Here's the thing... I have all these ideas running around my head and I keep thinking if I want to make plan x (adopt kids in 2 years) and plan y (vacation in Ireland next spring) I have to stay the current course. However, I'm not totally satisfied with the current course. If previous cat wrangler had stayed there'd be no question. But with the new cat wrangler in place and the toolman, well being the toolman, I'm now starting to question staying put. Therein lies the problem... I currently have time on the books which will allow me to take my adoption leave fully paid. That's going to be important for a single parent. A three month fully paid period of adjustment has to be better for the kids than less... although who knows really. Maybe it would be better to settle into a regular routine and begin things as I plan on them continuing. That's a very pondering thought, one I hadn't considered... But I digress. Also if I want to go on vacation I would need to not abandon my current cat in the near future because I won't have enough vacation at the new one (unless I negotiate it, and let's be honest, I'm shit at that). BUT in order to get the time off for the adoption plan, I'd need at least a year with the new cat. I don't know. Otherwise I have to push things back further and I don't know if I want to do that either...

So I have options. I think that in CA, I'd have a better support system for the adoption plan than I do here. (No offense intended, Stephen, but Michelle's got a whole family there who while not my family, would be supportive I think, plus Michelle is my BFF and I do miss hanging out with her.) The downside of CA is that in all honesty, I don't think I want to live there again. Although maybe if I could find a job and a home in Ventura Co, that would not be totally bad. (Oxnard, while scary, is still somewhat cheap.) They don't terminate parental rights, though, until they have families to adopt the kids so I wonder what their disrupted adoption rate is.

Option 2. There's a cat available in Portland. I could move there. It is a cheaper Seattle with fewer ridiculous laws. And the Portland cat is worth a lot more money. However, the downside is that there is even a smaller support system there than there is here. I could create my own but clearly I'm not good at that as I have a support system of 2.5 people here in Seattle. (Ben, who is 4 doesn't really even rate a .5 but I figured I'd offend Stephen. :) )

Option 3. Stay here. Possibly find a new cat. Possibly keep the old one. Work on building a bigger support system (there's a group for singles adopting that meets in Kenmore I think.). Just see where things go. (That tends to be what I usually do by default since I am generally lazy.) Option 3 keeps me with my girls and I do like them. The problem is, I feel like I have to figure this out sooner rather than later, but I honestly just don't know. (If I were married I wouldn't have to figure this out. Someone else would have an opinion that is equally as valid as mine is. I might be sulking about that. ;) )

Foodless

I hate it when I go poking through the fridge to find what I am cooking for dinner and I can't find anything that I want to cook.

Update: I had it in my head I wanted to make chicken salad. I cooked the chicken. Let it cool. Mixed it with some mayo and some other things and had it with crackers. It didn't taste that great so I stopped after only like 3 - 4 bites. Ate PB & Crackers and went to bed. 4:30 this morning... ill. So clearly my chicken salad idea was not a good one.

That's one way to force me to mop the floor...

Last night I got home from dinner with Stephen and went to the bathroom. (Number 1 which is pertinent to the story.) And I flushed the toilet and the water didn't go down. Now because apparently I'm a moron, I flushed it again. (Unlike most of y'all I don't have a toilet with a tank. I have a flushometer type and this is the style you see in like the mall and what not.) This was a very bad thing as it caused all the water to spill over the toilet and flood the teeny tiny bathroom I live in. It was quite a mess. And then, suddenly all the water went down so apparently whatever was blocking it quickly got over itself. It was very weird and very messy. I'm sure in this case it is all me and not my apartment itself that caused this but moving on. So I will say this. #1 Brawny paper towels rock! I used them to reach the areas that I couldn't get with the mop. #2 Mr. Clean Mop (in a box) also rocks. I used that to absorb much of the liquid off the floor.

I crack myself up.

I was just sitting on my sofa making this weird throaty growly noise until I totally busted up laughing. It is a good thing I live alone sometimes. :)

Unrelated, although I hate the Olympics (I know how UnAmerican of me I confess) I do kind of like the Visa commercials that are going on right now about memorable Olympic moments like Kerri Strug's vault and Derek Redmond getting helped through his run by his father after tearing a hamstring. (I had to Wikipedia that one). They make me all weepy. (or maybe this cold makes me weepy. Oh who am I kidding, most things make me weepy because I'm a weepy weeper who weeps.)

Pondering

Why doesn't Nyquil have an 8 hour formula? Isn't it illogical that the medication wears off after 4 hours? I need to sleep longer than 4 hours. And when I woke up at 1 this morning totally unable to breathe because one nostril was so full of whatever that I couldn't get enough air I pondered taking more Nyquil but then I thought I didn't want to take too much and be groggy in the AM. So instead I didn't and was groggy in the AM. Hm.... I usually worship at the alter of pseudophedrine but I recently read that it can cause sleeplessness so I don't want to take it at night when I'm already having a terrible time sleeping. However during daylight hours I'm all over the Aleve Cold & Sinus. I love it!

I had another pondering thought but apparently in my cold induced foggyness it has escaped me.

A$$ a redux

So apparently sleeping poorly was a precursor to a cold. Who the heck gets a cold in the middle of summer? Apparently I do. I'm falling asleep at my desk. I would've called in sick today but I have a big important work meeting. I may do so tomorrow. Although I have a PT appointment tomorrow.

A$$

I feel like a$$. I didn't sleep well at all last night. I tossed and turned until at least 4:30. I would've called in sick this morning except my new boss started today. Sigh. Plus my employee is out for the month on a mission trip. So I've sucked up the headache, nauseus, vaguely flu-like feeling I've got right now. Hopefully as the day wears on it will go away.

My notboss is now sitting in the office next to mine. Since my employee is gone for the month, I foolishly offered up her office for the notboss who had been the interimboss. (Like I couldn't... it would be figured out eventually and stupid of me to be all stingy about the spare desk when we need a spare desk.)

Oh but I did see The Dark Knight on Friday night. It was really good. Much better than Batman Begins which I did not like. However, I will probably not watch it again. It is too much mayhem for me. Stephen's never sat near me while I've watched a movie like this. It was a bit of an experience for him I think. I tend to cover my eyes when something I don't want to see is about to happen. I also jump a lot with fight scenes and with gun shots.

I also did PYOP with Lyday at this place in Bellevue. I love PYOP.

This week...

So far has not been the greatest week ever. Last night I went down to do laundry. After I dropped my clothes in the laundry room and started the first load the elevator stopped working. (My coworker who knows how much I pay in rent likes to tease me about that any chance she gets.). Someone got it going again or else I would've been miserable. I could only get one washer all night so laundry took me 3 times as long to do as it usually would. Also, I totally spilled spaghetti sauce on a shirt I liked and even though I got it into the washing machine right away, it is still stained all to crap. AND as I was walking past a curio cabinet I hung on the wall it randomly hurled itself off the wall. I didn't even brush it or anything. One side just fell throwing everything piled on top off and so then I grabbed it to make sure it didn't totally fall and break and took it down. Now I have to get new hooks to rehang it because apparently after 6 years the present hooks have failed me. (And I lost them when they fell out of the wall leaving big holes in their wake.) It dawned on me last night that I might care more about what damage I may have caused to my apartment (holes in the wall, scraped wood floors under my sofa before I discovered I should put little coaster things under them, the tiles that fell out of the bathroom wall that I haven't gotten fixed yet) if it seemed like the managers cared about our building. We have graffitti in the elevator (the elevator that frequently breaks down) and at least 3 burned out bulbs that have been out for 6 months. And just to clarify, these aren't like little lamp bulbs, these are 3 full flourescent lights. They don't vacuum regularly anymore. I'm kind of like obviously they don't care why should I? (I know why I should... deposits, but whatever. The company is notorious for not paying those back anyway. I've googled them before and it is an ongoing complaint about them.)

Can I start today over?

And not in a tomorrow is a new day kind of way, but can I wake up tomorrow and it be Monday again?

Let's start with what went wrong today: My mom IM'd me this morning asking if I got a package on Saturday. I did not. Apparently she sent back my antique watch that she had repaired via USPS and it allegedly arrived on Saturday. It may have, but if so someone else has it. Fuck. Also, this totally undoes the 6 years it has taken me to convince her that she should just mail packages to me via USPS. I'm still hoping it may come in and that the postal carrier just hasn't delivered it yet.

I was supposed to go on a fancy schmancy dinner cruise tonight. I was excited to go and came home and changed clothes several times to look appropriately "smart casual." I walked down to catch the bus and got on bus 17. Turns out I got on the express bus which doesn't go down Westlake like I wanted it to. (Looking at the trip planner that bus must have been 15 minutes late because that should have been there at 6:00 and I didn't get to the stop until 10 after 6. So I jumped on the first 17 I saw presuming it was the right one.) Anyway, luckily someone else asked the bus driver about the fact that it was an express since it wasn't going the right way and luckily that bus driver directed us to get off and how to get to the right bus. So I get on the right set of buses to get where I wanted to go and it is just 7 PM and the boat trip was supposed to start at 6:30 but I noticed there was a shuttle from a hotel that left at 6:30 so I was hoping the boat hadn't left yet. It hadn't. Theoretically yay. Except as I walk up I see a worker for the boats and she says they were just untying it from the dock and it was just pulling away. Missed it by a teeny tiny bit. So then I go to catch a bus back to my home and I wait and wait and wait and the 17 I was waiting on doesn't show up at the time it was supposed to so I get onto a different bus that only goes to Seattle Center. And then I catch the monorail (of course getting my ticket just as it is pulling away so I have to sit and wait for the next one). And then I catch my usual bus 2 home (after waiting 20 minutes for it.) Seriously I spent over 3 hours either on buses or waiting for buses or for a teeny tiny time eating mcdonald's food.

I get home. Finally. And what is broken? I'm sure you can guess. It is broken frequently enough to be ridiculous. Yup. The elevator. Jesus fucking christ. I'm so glad today is done.

I'm Back!

I'm back from camping at Camp Cushman. I had a really fun time with the people, but I sure as shit would never go back there again. I yelped about it. I really wanted to like the place, but the people around us were not good and the park itself was ridiculous. The group right next to us was a rather large group of mixed age and all redneck. At one point on Saturday night one of the grown ups said to a kid "You're just a fucking 10 year old kid, I don't give a damn what you think is fair." I'm not 100% certain what the kid could've said, but I'm fairly certain there isn't really anything that should've warranted THAT response. I joked with the group that I'll be seeing that kid in a couple years when he's no longer with his parents. Well after midnight they were carrying on loudly and when I woke up at 3:45 they still were going at it.

The good part, I had fun. I relaxed. I swam in a nice cool lake. I had napped in my tent in the afternoon so I was nice and toasty and so the dip in the lake felt really good. Although where we chose to swim was not so good because shore was totally crazy rocky. It was also really loose so I kept slipping when I was standing in the water. I had my traditional kebabs that were lovely. (I just realized I left the left over meat in the cooler. :( ) I finished one book that was great. I started another and continued reading my adoption book. I am totally wiped out though and I'm glad I've got relaxing weekends coming up. I'll really post pictures when I get the chance. I promise. (Ok I keep doing that don't I?)

Camping!

I'm heading out camping again this weekend. It is starting to make me a bit tired. :) But we're going to Camp Cushman over somewhere I don't know where it is actually. I've never been there before. It is the annual trip I take. Although I think this might be my last year. This year boyfriends have been invited. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It changes the dynamic of the group quite a bit. I will do one more camping trip later this year. Maybe late August or early September. Lyday wants to go still and since she bought a shitton of camping gear in Feb for our Feb trip, she should probably use it more than once. :)

Maybe I'll see if Stephen wants to go on that one. ;)

On the right track?

Or just reading too many adoption books. The one I've been reading recently, The Post Adoption Blues: Overcoming the Unforseen Challenges of Adoption is really good, but it is also really intimidating. I know it is doing its job, normalizing some of the feelings that people have after adoption. I also know they are not looking to scare anyone off but to offer a realistic picture of what can happen and what is to come. It's terrifying. :) I believe I have a pretty realistic view. I know things won't be all sunshine and roses, but damn... it is intimidating to say the least. I'm reading through this book going I thought I thought about all this but maybe I haven't. Maybe I'm supposed to be more panicked about it.

Anyway... I had a dream last night that I adopted four (or at some point it became 5 or 6) daughters all at once. In my dream I was at the DSHS type office (basically a drab looking cube farm like you see on TV maybe like the one from Dead Like Me) and they bring out these 4 random girls and drive us all to our 'new' home. It was thundering and lightning outside and pretty late so we all just went into the house and we all found rooms to sleep in and we went to bed. In the morning I started searching the house for where the girls fell asleep (since apparently settling them into rooms was not a priority for me). Two had fallen asleep in the master bedroom which had black laquered furniture like Michelle & I had when we lived in the apartment in Little Beirut. They had just woken up and were jumping on the bed holding hands. (They were maybe 4 and similar to the little girls I saw walking at the mall in that one was African American and one was white and blonde). I kept searching the house and found several more girls in different rooms. I finally found a room I would get to sleep in since the other two girls took what would be "my" room. I gathered all the girls (and here's where their number multiplied) and we went into the kitchen to cook our first breakfast as a family. And then I saw a roach. And then there were several others and we were jumping on chairs and tables and screaming (which in real life I am totally inclined to do) and I was trying to call DSHS to find out what kind of house they gave us because really... roaches! And then I woke up. I think the horror of the roaches did me in (either that or Rigby walking around my body in a clockwise motion did it).

Children: To see children in your dream, signifies your own childlike qualities or a retreat back to a childlike state. It is an extension of your inner child during a time of innocence, purity, simplicity, and a carefree attitude. You may be longing for the past and the chance to satisfy repressed desires and unfulfilled hopes. Take some time off and cater to the inner child within.
To save a child, signifies your attempts to save a part of yourself from being destroyed. (This one interested me because depending on your definition of save, I saved the girls.)

Adopted: To dream that you or others are adopting a child, indicates that you are taking on something new and different. Ask yourself what is missing in your life that would make you happy.

Storm: To see a storm in your dream, signifies overwhelming struggle, shock, devastating loss and catastrophe in your personal affairs. The storm also represents unexpressed fears or emotions, such as anger, rage, turmoil, etc. On a more positive note, the storm signifies the rising of spirit within.
To dream that you take cover in a storm, foretells that whatever disturbance or problems is occurring in your life will quickly blow over. Consider also the phrase "weather the storm", which suggests your ability and strength to withstand whatever comes. (I definitely think the home was cover from the storm.)

Cockroach: To see a cockroach in your dream, signifies your need for renewal, rejuvenation and self-cleansing of your psychological, emotional, or spiritual being. You need to reevaluate major aspects of your life. (Totally unrelated but I hate the word cockroach. I much prefer to just call them roaches. It obviously is a c0ck thing.)

Bedroom: To dream that you are in the bedroom, signifies aspects of your self that you keep private. It is also indicative of your sexual nature and intimate relations. (Interesting, I was outside the bedrooms, I wonder what THAT means.) :)

Alternately Rooms: To dream that you find or discover new rooms, suggests that you are developing new strengths and taking on new roles. You may be growing emotionally. (I think that one makes more sense.)

Kitchen: To see a kitchen in your dream, signifies your need for warmth and spiritual nourishment. It may also be symbolic of the nurturing mother. Alternatively the kitchen, represents a transformation. (Also interesting... )


Only sort of related, but not to that dream last night, I frequently have a dream where I'm in a bathroom with no stalls and have to pee in public but I can't because I'm too embarrassed. Who knew that had a meaning: To dream that you are in a public restroom with no stalls, signifies your frustrations about getting enough privacy. It may also indicate that you are having difficulties letting go of old emotions. If you reveal these feelings, you are afraid that others around you will judge and criticize you.

Impractical

I know it is impractical, but I really think the developers of the latest luxury condos should have to be able to contain their construction to the footprint of the building they destroyed for their new construction. I was on 8th walking down to Enterprise Rent - a - Car and I kept having to cross back and forth across the street because the street and sidewalk was closed on alternate sides of the street. Near my apartment there is a building that just got torn down and a new one is going up that is also closing sidewalks.

A new toy!

I was looking at my netflix list earlier today and I saw that you can get a netflix player for 99.00. I haven't bought it, but I am intrigued by it. Netflix now has that thing where you can watch now instead of waiting for the dvd to arrive. This could be an interesting thing and allow you a lot more access. As always, though, I'm hesitant to buy something before I get a chance to try it out. I wish someone had them available for check out. :)

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills

Sometimes when I'm at work that's what I feel like. Especially when dealing with a particular person I have to deal with sometimes on a regular basis. Frequently her responses to queries don't answer the question asked. It confuses me.

And then her ovaries exploded

I was with Lyday at the mall yesterday when my ovaries exploded. There were two little girls ahead of us. They were between 18 months and 2 years I'd wager. One whose mom was walking nearby was African and the other (towheaded) had her father nearby pushing a stroller. They were so freaking cute together. Neither could talk I think... or if they did it was pretty limited vocab so they kind of did a little dance and then one chased the other and then ultimately they ended up walking down the corridor holding hands. As I turned around to walk backwards and watch the little scene I'm pretty sure an ovary exploded.

Nothing became something!

So now that I have a 2 gig SD chip for my camera, it seems I never ever take photos off my camera anymore. I vow to do that soon. (of course I've still got pics on there from Nashville, so who knows when soon is.)

July 4th I did the all American thing and went to a baseball game. It was boring. The Mariners were playing against the Tigers. Neither team was that good. I've been to baseball games before that didn't suck. I know we were in weird seats (behind the outfield) which made seeing exactly what was going on at the plate a bit difficult but I swear every damn pitch seemed to be a ball. I forget which side it was (the game was THAT unmemorable) but at one point the pitcher had walked all three people who were on base. One more round of balls and he would have walked the first guy home. How ridiculous is that?

After that I joined Stephen for 52 activities in a row the way he is so fond. Ok it was only three but for someone like me that is a lot to do in one afternoon. We went to a beer festival at the Seattle Center. I know he's already forgotten what beer it was he liked. I'm sure if I saw the name again I'd remember it (for now. :) ) We hit dinner. There were a lot of places closed. I tend to forget that. But we had Indian and it was good. :) After that we went to his office where we hung out in the conference room with a lot of other folks and watched the fireworks over Elliot Bay. That was pretty cool. :)

Sunday was my day of nothing... well nothing except for going to TGIFridays for dinner with Lyday. That was okay, but I'll not be getting what I had there again.

Sunday Stephen, Ben and I went to the Center for Wooden Boats. That's a pretty cool place. They had their annual wooden boat festival. I want to go back next year. I also want to go back sometime and see all the exhibits. I missed a lot of them because we were doing festival stuff. It is no wonder I need a nap now! :)