Monday, December 24, 2012

Don't Worry......I AM Still Pretty Much Here.....I Think

To Ida, Maybelline and all you loyal followers, this won't be much of a  blog, but I want to reassure you that I have not yet crossed over the Rainbow Bridge.......I am still here schlepping along.

The past few weeks have been rocky in many diferent ways and I have not had the time or the heart to make merry.  However,  I promise I WILL blog again soon so don't give up on me.

If you really want the truth, I have had to retreat into the depths of my cave and reassess my life  after watching a recent football game in which a player was penalized for "Holding".   Now in regular football parlance Holding means grabbing and keeping a grip on an opponent's jersey or facemask or some limb or body part,  but in this particular case, the commentator had  to review the video of the play and finally determined that one player had simply seized and held on to the other player's HAIR. 

Aaaaarrrrrgh!

These days football players seem to either have heads shaven bald and shiny or else have locks braided, crimped, spiral-curled or simply streaming down their backs from under their helmets.  What the hell is a simple old person like me to do with that?

I hope to get over it by 2013.  Meanwhile, I wish you all greetings of the season and Good Health in the New Year.  Happiness you will have to take care of on your own.

Love,
Herself.














Friday, December 7, 2012

I'd Better Take the Fifth .....or Can I Just Hide Behind the First Amendment?

 The funny and altogether wonderful Joe Hagy at "crankyoldman.blogspot..com"  has posted a marvelous blog today about his visit to Disney World. I was tempted to leave a comment to end all comments  about that place and it's spawn of clones around the globe but I realized immediately that what I had to say was too long for a simple comment and possibly too libelous to put Joe in jeopardy.

The truth is that I have a long story unlike anybody else's to tell about Disneyland and Disney World and if anybody is going to be exposed to the risk of a lawsuit I guess it's only fair that it should be me.

The fact is that the last 10 years of my lovely computer programming career was spent at Disney Studios and  this proved to  be something of a mixed blessing for a monster such as myself who, to put it mildly, has no affinity whatsoever  for that small irritating race of humans known as children.  (as I often point out, I never actually hurt any children….I just prefer to have nothing to do with them until they are a decent size, have stopped dribbling and drooling and worse, and are  tamed and trained to do something useful like fetch me my coffee.  If that horrifies you beyond endurance, I'm afraid we will just have to part company.… Sigh) .

As I was saying, working for Disney had many pluses and only a few minuses. Well, I guess you could say actually only one major minus. Are you ready for this? Believe it or not all employees above a certain rank were required to spend a week at Disney World or Disneyland as what they call Cast Members. In plain English what that means is that all these high-powered people had to go down to Anaheim or Orlando and work in the cafeterias or as guides or ticket takers or whatever and ultimately,,,,,,, don one of those wretched furry critter costumes including the heads and prance around the grounds tickling and hugging small children and posing for photos with them and talking in squeaky voices and generally making fools of themselves.  Now this was bad enough during the months from November thru April, but during the warmer months it was sheer hell inside those costumes.  (I was told this by others who returned from their weeks as Cast members.   Temps inside were generally 20 or 30 degrees above the outside temps and you were doomed to sweat, perspire and exude moisture in rivulets and streams.......from your pores, that is.  At the end of the week all of these folk would pose for a group picture taken in costume, grinning like idiots with their heads off sitting on the ground at  their feet,,,,.The characters' heads that is.  Something to finally impress and make their children and grandchildren proud of them I guess.   Being a Vice President of one of Disney's Divisions didn't mean much, but playing Goofy made you a mench???????????

I have always said that there was no job or task that was beneath me. I guess I lied. Now, I would have gladly washed dishes in a cafeteria or restaurant, would have been happy to go around the grounds with one of those sticks with a nail in the end picking up trash or any other respectable occupation.…… But I drew the line at encasing my body in one of those silly costumes and pinching toddlers cheeks while perspiring copiously under the plush and getting a case of heat rash or worse.  And so began this strange dance, this battle of wits between Disney statute and my own standards. Sometimes, during my early years, when they were going around with their vile list of eligible victims recruiting this week's cast members I would hide in the ladies room until it was safe to come out. Later as I became more established as the department troubleshooter I managed to get excused from duty each time by convincing my boss that some emergency had arisen with the main program in the Payroll system and  unless I stayed available the payroll might not get produced this week. Any other system failure might not have done it but payroll was something I could always count on even without having a note from my mother. And so, dear souls, 10 years passed without my ever having to set foot in Disneyland and I did not feel the least bit guilty or disloyal.  Hell, what is more important than  Payroll, forgodssake?.  Not to mention being true to my own standards, and besides, what kind of cockamamie, silly rule was that anyway?

I had hoped to go through my life preserving my virgin status where Disneyland was concerned, but I met my downfall eventually, long after I retired and thought I was safe, when some of my Philly cousins visited me in California and expressed the fervent wish to go to that place whose name I will not mention again. My open handed generosity is what finally did me in, dammit. I had given away to other members of my family all of the guest passes which the company issues annually to employees including retirees, and all I had left was my own ID card allowing me free entrance along with my guests. The ID card was not transferable.  Shitpissfuck.  I was screwed.  Sob.

But at least I did not have to wear one of those damned costumes. Nor  tickle any sticky urchins under their chins.   In the war between Disney statute and Lo's standards I like to call it a draw.




Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Not Too Close.....I Am Not A Pretty Sight and Other Offputting Items

I  know, I know.......I suppose all of you have  been wondering where in the hell I have been since falling to  my knees and gasping with relief after the election.  Well, I am going to tell you but you may not like it.

The amazing truth is that once I was relieved of the terror and able to relax, my body wrought vindictive punishment upon me for subjecting it to so many months of misery.  "Take that, you faithless coward!", it spat at me.  Whereupon I immediately broke  out in a case of the most humungous hives a person ever experienced.

I spent the next few weeks groaning, griping and scratching wildly at places impossible to reach like a flea ridden gopher.    And, since so may of these hideous itchy bumps arose on my posterior, it was an ugly sight to behold me scratching, take my word for it.  Thankfully, the condition departed leaving me relatively unmarred (rumpwise) just in time for me to shed my mangy gopher skin and don the crisp White Cap of Cat Nursie.   

Many of you know how it begins.  There you lie sleeping peacefully when a loathesome sound intrudes on your dreams......the dreadful urking announcement of a hairball throw-up.  Only this was more dire and developed into a serious case of both a urinary and an intestinal infection...........no, no,......the cat not me.  

Many days and thousands of dollars poorer I brought Gussie home from the hospital clutching 3 bottles of medication.  Now, I do not know how you other animal lovers manage, but I know my own (and Gussie's) limitations.  For the first 3 or 4 days I managed to somehow get two of the meds partly down her gullet at least once a day  (one dose out of 2 ain't  bad)  .......the ones with droppers so I could squirt the stuff into her mouth between her clenched teeth.  After that, it got a bit dicey......she became more and more wily and clever and elusive and I became weaker and tireder and increasingly incapable of crawling under the furniture.  There was also a great deal of crawling under furniture pushing little plates of cat delicacies under same in order tempt the little beastie to eat something and not die of starvation there by negating all my efforts not to mention the waste of those huge medical expenses.   Sigh.
 

All I can say is, tenks gott the diarrhea stopped and the normal peeing resumed and the eating urge returned so I did not have to feel guilty about not administering  the 3rd of the medications which was a pill to stimulate her appetite.  I can report that Gussie  is fine now.........I cannot say the same for her Nursie.  It takes a while for me to snap back (ha, that implies an elasticity which I have not been aware of having for the past 15 or so years).

That's OK.......I managed to accomplish something this year that I've never done before in my whole entire gonsa life......and that is to prepare and roast not one, but TWO turkeys for Thanksgiving!   

I always make a turkey on Thanksgiving for me and Gussie. Usually she eats two bites while it's warm  and I gobble down some lovely morsels while I'm stripping the meat from the carcass in order to package it up for sandwiches later and for the freezer for future turkey delights.   Generally, after tending to and inhaling turkey all day, I seldom have much appetite for turkey till the next day.

All you ladies know the process.....You take the damned rock-hard bird out of the freezer about three days before the time is due and begin the process of defrosting. For me that includes immersing the bird in a sink full of water for a few hours, drying it off, finding/making room for it in the fridge, shoving it in before the space disappears, and repeating this process for three days till oven time arrives, all the while praying that the defrosting has proceeded nicely so that I can get the blasted bag of giblets out of the inside of the carcass. The actual preparation and roasting is relatively simple from this point forward but it still requires hourly checking, basting and all that tenting with foil to keep it from getting too brown on the outside while the inside still needs to roast a little longer...........(Oy, I hate pink turkey, don't you?)  Consequently, I need to hoist my body out of my comfy chair half a dozen times or more and schlep into the kitchen to peer into the oven and do my magic.  Many urghs, umphs and shitpissfucks escape my ruby lips during this activity. You know the drill.

Well this year I had a friend who lives alone and wasn't going to have any turkey so in a mad moment, I offered to do a turkey for her so she could have some on Thanksgiving and then enjoy the joy of leftovers. There's nothing wrong with this idea except for the fact that I can only thaw one turkey at a time and roast one turkey at a time. I should've thought of that much earlier, wouldn't you say?

Anyway, my plan was to start on Sunday with Turkey number one and roast on Wednesday when my friend would be here and could take it home. Then beginning around Tuesday, I could begin the defrost process for my own Turkey which I would cope with on Thursday in the normal fashion. And believe it or not, the plan worked to perfection. I was tickled pink, my friend was tickled pink and we decided that symbiosis was the greatest thing in the world.

I was going to posBobGod dammit lowlyt it up to your thesis up up up up up up upbelated what the hell are you doing  stop it, for chrissake......what do you mean please say that again….Okay

...in case  you are wondering what the hell that's all about, it is NOT Lo losing her mind in the middle of a blog.  It is actually the Dragon speech recognition program which I have been attempting to use to write this blog and which caught me unawares momentarily while I cursed some errors I detected in the previous paragraph.  I decided not to delete it, but to leave it for comic effect so to speak. This is how I amuse myself sometimes when I am bored with nothing to do……  I turn on speech recognition and dictate merrily, laugh uproariously over what it thinks I said  and thereby brighten  my whole day.    (the up up up up is how it interprets my laughing).  Actually I still have hopes for the program… I guess I am just a cockeyed optimist.    But, I digress.

Where in the hell was I? Yes, I remember, I was about to say that I intended to post a belated list of things for which I am supremely grateful, but I gave the idea up because there isn't enough room anywhere for my list.

Let me just say that I am thankful 24/7 for my wonderful family of cousins, for you dear friends and for having conceived the idea of making two turkeys this Thanksgiving and having had the strength to carry out my cockamamie plan.  That'll do for now.

up up up up up up up!