Scared

I had lots of dreams last night. Oddly enough, I think they all included my cousin. And one of them had to do with a prostitution ring. Yeah, that kind of weird.

Things are very crazy right now. Dad has been having what he calls "episodes". From what I gather, he gets dizzy and feels like he might fall down. He had a stroke in 2003 (or a series of them, actually), and went to the neurologist yesterday to see if they could tell him what was the matter with him. They were concerned, and took him in for an MRI. They noticed a blockage in his brain and scheduled an angioplasty, probably adding some stents. And then they'll go and shoot him full of dye to see if the blood is flowing freely.

And last week, I was all worried about Mom.

Sick-Oh

I am sick. I don't know the exact moment that it happened (mostly because I was sleeping), but I know that I woke up with a pretty wicked cough. A cough is a cough, though, and unless it's of the -ing-up-blood variety, I can usually handle myself at work. So in I went this morning.

After work, I went to Green Bay to figure out my size for the bridesmaid's dress I'm scheduled to wear in August. I'm a size bigger on top than on bottom. Thanks, boobs. You really enjoy making things difficult, don't you?

(Although, I talked to Lisa today and asked her to please tell me I wasn't going to be seen as the fat bridesmaid. No, she says, I will be the bridesmaid with boobs. Score. Also, the dress is somehow slimming, making this perhaps the only flattering bridesmaid dress in the history of marriage.)

After lunch (thanks Lisa!) and wandering around the mall some, I started to feel a little off. When I pulled out of my parking spot, I pulled directly into another parking spot to call my supervisor and call in sick to my second house. I drove home, feeling pretty loopy the whole way, and went directly to bed. I am doubtful about tomorrow, but we'll see. It's not like I can afford too many sick days.

Day 6

I knew I almost forgot something.

Last week, I forgot to call in my hours in the automated system. Which is not a huge problem, because I will get paid for them. What I need to do in order to be paid is to email one of the people higher on the totem pole my hours so that she may enter them into the system manually. This means admitting my own incompetence, and I hate it very much. I'm avoiding it because I hate it. If I avoid it much longer, I might have problems getting paid. What am I, an ostrich?

In other news, I have to pack up Bruce's things in two 30lb. boxes and send them off with UPS to his new house. Which, as you might imagine, previous to a few months ago, was not something I ever pictured myself doing. Ever.

Update on the Cow (and Other Things)

Me: Howdy, neighbor!

Him: Good morning! How are you?

Me: Good. Say, I have a question for you...

Him: Shoot.

Me: What do you make of the cow?

Him: ...[Looks at me like I might be crazy]... Hmmm, what cow?

Me: ...

Cow: mmmMOOOOOOO!

Does that cow have timing, or does that cow have timing?

(We decided that what the neighbor makes of the cow is that I should call the person in charge of neighborhood cows. I called yesterday morning, the fella said he'd send someone down, and as of tonight, there is still a cow. I can tell from the mmmMOOOOOOO!ing.)

In other news, I partially ran over the kitten with my office chair today. He cried, I panicked. I couldn't find anything overtly wrong with him and he didn't flinch when I prodded him all over, so I assumed he was fine. I monkeyed around online, took the dog outside, got a glass of wine, etc. Then realized I hadn't seen the kitten in a while. Called for him all over the house (Stiiiiinky, Stiiiiiiiiiiiiiinky! STINKY!!!) to no avail. Kept calling and searching for 15 minutes or more before losing all of my shit. Kept picturing poor kitten hiding in a closet somewhere dying from internal injuries from desk chair, too weak to meow a response. Wanted to call Bruce, but he's working and can do very very little from 750 miles away. Called best friend instead, and best friend talked me down. Three minutes after hanging up with her, I found him in the bottom drawer of my desk, sleeping. I called her back to tell her he hadn't died of internal smooshing and heard her boyfriend in the background, feigning great distress and generally mocking me. Now I'm not sure what to do. I understand on a fundamental level why it was very funny for me to be freaking out, because it was highly unlikely that the kitten would be dying in a closet, but at the same time? It wasn't very funny to me. Also, I feel like he could have waited until she hung up to make fun of me. Am I wrong?

I've been reading another book by one of my very favorite authors, Anna Maxted. When we were camping, I read Behaving Like Adults, and it was possibly the best novel I've read in a long time. (Except for Goodbye, Lemon, by Adam Davies, another one of my very favorite authors.) After finishing the Anna Maxted, I came home and borrowed another one straight away from the library. Halfway through Being Committed, I found the most amusing passage about an old song, one that echos my own feelings:

Oh, Susanna, don't you cry for me,
I'm off to Alabama with a banjo on my knee!

I heard the tune on one of Jude's plastic toys and recalled the words out of nowhere. And wondered why Susanna would waste her time moping after a man who was so plainly a conceited idiot--moseying off to Alabama with a banjo, daring to imagine her distraught?! She was probably glad to see the back of him--him, his silly banjo, and his unrealistic view of job opportunities in the music business. Susanna--I imagined her demure and blond, in a checked pinafore, baby blue and white--was probably too well brought up to tell him she loathed his banjo playing and him.

Fixing

So, I cleaned the fridge. It was more of an undertaking than usual, because I haven't exactly been on top of the 'smell & pitch' method I usually use, and it's been a while since the last time I cleaned. I had leftovers in there from before Bruce went to Missouri. He's been gone for almost a month.

Completely unrelated Fun Fact!: Lemons sometimes get mouldy and turn into vaguely lemon-shaped (but shrunken) balls of green dust that will rise up in a toxic cloud when you try to pick them up and throw them away. I'm only guessing, but I don't think it's a good idea to inhale the cloud.