happy halloween?

well, the last week has been, probably the worst i have ever experienced. i am surprisingly calm about the whole thing though. it started with a certain someone calling me for advice on how to break up with my friend, and then not taking that advice. i feel guilty about it because i wanted to introduce them in the first place, which turns out to have been a bad idea.
following that, i found out that my grandma got really sick, and several people were called and told to come see her one last time because she was dying. then even more people were told when she died. more people were told before the funeral. i imagine even more people were told after that. was i any of these many, many people? no i was not. so now that i have made it known that nobody told me, the relatives are playing the blame game. understandably, most people think my mom should have told me, and assumed that she had. she claims that she asked one of my sisters to call "all her siblings" to tell them (only two of us were not either there with grandma or in japan with my dad). the sister she asked being karen, the only sister who NEVER calls me unless i mail her a phonecard and tell her to use it to call me with, and since it takes a while to purchase and mail a phonecard, i haven't yet heard her excuse. yes, i was out of town for a few days, but i got home 2 days before the funeral, and there weren't any messages to call someone, or emails to call someone... so. that happened, and is still happening.
then shaggy's credit card number was stolen (we think off the internet when he was made to "verify" information to have our faulty firewall turned back on...) and whoever it was had some fun, went to walmart.com and fandango and a bunch of porn sites... so we are disputing with the bank, but some charges haven't posted yet, so he has to go back to the bank tomorrow.
then the work halloween party i had been looking forward to (and planning) was cancelled the day before, and i am still not quite clear as to the reason.
and i was given the sunday off, so i went to church. i opted to help out with the kids in sunday school (sit with the rowdy ones and hush them as necessary). the day's topic was supposed to be about how kids can do good for others... so they talked about how a kid can... write a letter to a grandparent to make them happy. yep. then they handed out paper and pencils and crayons, and thirty-odd kids needed to be told how to spell "grandma" over and over again. no, that was not fun.
after all that, i resolved to stay home, in bed all day monday, only getting up if i felt like making food. i found a good, informative, boring book to keep myself nodding off throughout the day, and settled in to... the phone rang. my boss has bronchitis and can i please fill in for her. in an hour. so i rush to work. and it is boring and lame and i am not quite awake.
i don't think i could invent a worse week. anyone?

family relations

here's an almost verbatim quote from a conversation i just had with my sister. (i called her)

"amy: and then after the funeral, we went...
me: what funeral?
amy: grandma's
me: WHAT?!?!
amy: grandma died a week ago last sunday ..."

so you see how closely connected my relatives and i are.

we're baaaack

wow. that was a very... condensed trip. we saw almost everyone we wanted to see (missed one bro-in-law), drove practically all over western washington, and had a pretty good time too. day one, friday, we flew in, went up to stanwood to get a car, visited with the dad for a while, then drove down to everett, hooked up with seth and melinda to go over to joel's... where enoch and some buddies were. we took those who were not severely intoxicated out for pie. poor joel informed us that he probably should not be in public in his present state, and we were forced to agree with him. seth showed us a slideshow-video he made of enoch's adventures in iraq over the past year. the video is set to a music track lifted from ... dun dun duuunnnnnnn ... twisted metal! yep, the video game has been immortalized, with stryker vehicles instead of mr. slam and all the rest. quite a cool movie. after the pie shenanigans, we crashed at seth & melinda's place.
saturday morning we saw john dougherty and trinity and rascal (trinity is shadow and twilight's mom; rascal is their brother). i am envious of his place, which is way bigger than ours, way cheaper, only one level, plus he has cool neighbors, and a YARD!! like i said, i am envious. after john, we saw adam & his place. he's the resident manager (that sounds sooooo responsible for adam) of this big cool house in seattle that's been converted into apartments. adam has the whole top floor and collects rent from a bunch of students that live below him. they all have "separate" apartments, but nobody closes doors, and adam has the big tv with cable, so his place is the hangout spot. adam just bought a balance ball, and shaggy coached him for a while on how to use it. then we headed to mara & darren's house, where we were introduced to "the baby". notice the lack of a moniker. (added context - no last name either! he'll get thornton or miller, whichever goes best with the first name that hasn't been picked yet.) he's a cute enough baby, but i'm guessing he'll grow up one confused kid if they don't think of something soon. from the strange (yet happy) home, we went back to joel's to meet up with ethan, say hi to the boys again, and head up to cousin wil's house in lake stevens. there was lots of food at wil's house, as well as several people, more food, and a game of rummikub. fun stuff. eventually adam dozed off, and ethan drove him home, while the rest of us meandered to the basement to watch recorded tv shows (and make fun of ghost whisperer). talk about non-original screenplays! this episode had some guy die, he was an organ donor, and he left a brokenhearted fiance behind him... he wanted jennifer love hewitt's character to find out who got his donated heart. can anyone see where this is going? (return to me, 21 grams...). around 3am we fell asleep, knowing we would be woken up by the alarm shaggy had "set" for 5:00. one wonders why the difference between "am" and "pm" should be so great. so wil (who doesn't sleep) woke us up at 5:39.
we got up so early because dad came and got us at 5:45 to drive us out to mom's place in ocean shores - and we had to get there in time for church. we made it in just about 3 hours, in time to hustle into church clothes, then pile sweaters, jackets etc. on top of those church clothes to stay warm, then wonder why the heck we bothered to change, then go to church for a televised broadcast meeting. it was an experimental thing, and i'm not sure if they'll do it again. shaggy fell asleep. i had slept in the car most of the way there, so i was able to stay awake for a while.
after church, i hugged and snuggled with olaf (shaggy's "little brother" cat) he was nuzzling my neck and face, which is normally great, except this time i broke out in HIVES!!! this has never happened to me before. i knew i was allergic to, say, nine cats at once, or one very big cat (like a lion), but i had no idea that this would happen. poor oafie - i dropped him and ran to wash off my neck. he followed me around for a while, begging to be picked up again. i distracted myself by making japanese food for lunch. then we went out to dad's newest fixer-upper house. it is the total party house! when it is done being fixed-up, i want it! it's right on the ocean, with picture window after picture window, a deck, a balcony, and a bar built into the wall in the living room. not that i have much use for a bar, but it's pretty cool. so after the tour we headed back to mom's, where she had some apple crisp and vanilla ice cream waiting for us. yum! then she took us and baxter (the border collie) out to the beach. keep in mind that this is washington. it was freezing outside, raining, windy, and absolutely fabulous. we ran and yelled and got horribly soaked and frozen and had a great time. poor baxter tried to keep us all together (those herding instincts) and got worried when we didn't walk in a straight-across line of three. this caused us endless amusement as we took turns being "strays" - wandering off and baaa-ing until baxter came and drove us back to the herd. fun times. so then we went back and thawed out and had hot cider in front of the fire to warm up.
monday started with sleeping in and then washing the wet clothes we had left on the floor from the day before. once they were dried, we said our goodbyes and headed back to wil's to pick up the car. we hung out there for a while. wil - formerly a licensed massage therapist - worked on shaggy's back, and showed me what to do when it acts up. after the massage, we went out to everett to see natasha (quasi-sister) her husband russ, her parents, nephews, neice, etc. i played something along the lines of "swing the kids around until they're dizzy and you're dizzy and you both fall over, then grab a different kid and repeat" for quite some time. the workout led to my taking off a sweater, which i ended up leaving there... but we had a great time. that night, we drove back up to stanwood.
tuesday morning, dad took us out for breakfast, then drove us to the airport, where i called the person from work who was going to pick us up... she answered the phone, i told her when/where we were landing, and she said, "wait, you weren't kidding?" i explained that, no, i had actually meant it when i asked for a ride home from the airport, which it turns out she couldn't really give, so i called work and asked doris if she was free that evening. let me say that doris is THE COOLEST PERSON IN THE WORLD!!! she drove downtown, picked us up, and fought traffic home. and she doesn't want me to give her money for gas. i'm trying to think of some gift certificate or something she won't be able to turn down. so that was the trip. i'm sure i left out some stuff though - like what kind of pie...

new house

we are moved... at least all out of the old place. there is still some stuff in the car that neither of us had the energy to move into the new place. moving the cats was an adventure. shaggy was at work and i had the young'uns in their giant two-cat carrier, balloon in the brie bag (by far the coolest cat carrier around - it's a duffel bag made of mesh and reinforced so the cat can see out) of course, balloon is terrified of everything, so he flailed around in the bag until he was under the furry bottom lining... and i had hobbes on the leash. for once, he behaved, stayed close to me, and didn't seem to mind that i was slowly and awkwardly lunging along with the bag and carrier... he went straight past another cat, trotted right up to the new door, and sat down. the other cat turns out to be shadow's (and rascal's, and possibly twilight's) dad. i can tell where shadow gets his personality. basil (the dad) looks like shadow - same fur, same walk, same "huh?" expression. twilight is fascinated with him and watches him through the window. hobbes basically ignores him. shadow hasn't come out from under the bed yet, so i don't know if he's noticed. and balloon... well, surprisingly enough, balloon doesn't seem to be scared of him. maybe we'll have to have him come over and play sometime.
and we are going to washington in two days! and i still haven't arranged us a ride to the airport, let alone figured out what we're going to do once we get there... someone from work is going to come over and feed the kitties... and about four other people at work are jealous because i didn't ask them to. hobbes is very popular among the people with whom i bum rides home. speaking of bumming rides, we now have to decide between borrowing a crappy car (with the offer of a gas card), or having an actually decent car rented for us (with no gas card) once we get to washington. having previously driven several of these crappy cars, i'm not sure if the gas card will be worth it... why weren't we this popular when we lived there?

moving day...?

Officially, we sign our lease tomorrow. Actually, we signed this afternoon, dated the thing tomorrow, and were handed keys. now we are sitting around our old apartment full of boxes waiting for paint to dry. yup. they just finished painting the doors in the new place this afternoon... and silly old us had been under the assumption that once we had keys to the place we could begin bringing stuff in. of course, we were informed of the paint situation AFTER we had signed the lease and dated it tomorrow, so no complaints or anything, because legally we don't have rights until after midnight... blah blah. i don't think the door painting was an intentionally malicious thing, but man. i'd rather have ugly doors and be moved in.
on the other hand, i am recovering from one of the more severe flu-like attacks i've ever experienced (i'd rate it second-worst), so a night of sitting around watching robocop and sipping tea probably won't hurt. really, i actually considered going to a doctor (this happens... well, never) i went home sick from work on monday, which i haven't done in over a year. it's incredibly frustrating to be ill and unable to function at my normal rate when there are projects to be done, that need to be done before i can do other things, which, if i didn't have to walk slowly to avoid painful coughing fits, i could have finished by today. they mostly involved organizing my newly near-emptied warehouse to better use the space (giant, manual, 3-D tetris is involved) and sorting out what furniture is not selling so we can send it back, but i am having trouble moving myself around, let alone sofas and such... sigh. but i did find some lemon zinger in the back of a cupboard, so i'm a little comforted.
as for the kitties, twilight is still not fixed (i'm really going to get it done at some point)... and she goes in heat about every two weeks. and she has the HUGEST crush on balloon, who has no idea why she suddenly stops hissing at/hitting him, and now rolls around "brrrowwl"-ing all around him and follows him from room to room. at first he was worried, even scared, but now when she starts rolling he pounces, which of course, she takes as foreplay and assumes the position and all, while he chews up her neck and shoulders, rabbit kicks her and pulls a half-nelson to get her on her back so he can savage her tummy - i wouldn't be surprised if she gets some scars from this - he is very annoyed and tired of her. of course, the second he lets her up, she rubs her face all over him and he flees, bewildered as to why she could want the crap beaten out of her again. and again. and again.
i think the whole getting to beat up twilight thing has given balloon an ego boost though. also, he slaughtered a fly that all the other three had been chasing all day. he had kind of watched it, but that night, he saw his opportunity, swatted, bit, and dropped an unmarked dead fly for us to admire. we couldn't even tell what he did to it, but it was dead, and he was soooooo proud of himself. so then yesterday i bummed a ride home from work with priscilla (yet another cat lover - work is full of us) who i invited in to meet hobbes - innocently supposing that he was the only cat she would see. lo and behold, the newly-brave balloon meets us at the door, sniffs her and then begs to be petted. he hung out with her for almost a half hour, while she admired and petted and tried to get a decent picture of him with her cell phone. hobbes came out to join the fun after he realized that balloon was getting HIS attention. after all, strangers are only allowed to pet hobbes - and he made sure i knew he didn't like it. he snubbed me, posed beautifully for priscilla's phone pictures, and lay down beside her and purred. cats. i think what i love most about them is that they have a sense of humor. oh well.
robocop...