This week's installment of the Whiner's Ball is brought to you by the cat formerly known as Anonymous, now positively identified as Psychotic Kitty, whose apparent new mission in life is to make sure I never for one tiny little second ever think I have an "empty nest." Because she needs me! Desperately! So badly she'll eat the packing tape off of boxes and barf in a very decorative manner, if she can't sit on my keyboard or my head -- while maintaining her daily expressions in the tub. Is it evil to feed her catnip, just to chill her out for a little while?In Anti-Whines: Daughter has been off at her university for a couple of weeks, and is actually enjoying her classes! Her band performed at her first big football game, and she had a blast! The game wasn't televised here, so her dad and I have become pathetic but proud old people, getting excited about a webcam shot [refreshed every 30 seconds] of a giant stadium video screen shot [random] of something involving our baby. Woo Hoo!
Bonus Question: If you are asked to recite the last 4 digits of your SS number, do you have to recite the whole thing in your head before you answer [like singing the ABC's to do filing]? Or is it just me?
Bonus seasonal whine: Don't get me started on seeing Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas stuff all over the stores. These people are pathetic, or they would have New Year's and Groundhog Day and Valentine's Day stuff out, too. And Arbor Day, what ever happened to that?
So, we are definitely in an Old Skewl mood over here at this week's Whining Central. How are things for you? Bring on your whines, big and small!
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Edited to add some Breaking Pixie News! Our friend Moreena, mom to the fabulous Annika and Frankie, is helping sponsor a fundraiser for the American Liver Foundation! She and TEAM ANNIKA will be walking, running, and riding in the wagon to raise money to support liver research and medical advances! Please help Moreena and TEAM ANNIKA reach their fundraising goal of $5,000; every little bit helps, and with her typical humility, Moreena will be thrilled with each $5.00 donation. (Ed. Note: Please dig deeper if you can.)
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Annika is 6 years old and awaiting a liver transplant. See the site to learn more:
* Donations can be made anonymously. There is a message section in the donation form, so if you want to send pseudononymous greetings, you can.
33 comments:
Some guy in my neighborhood has festooned his house with Halloween lights. What IS that? I move we banish Halloween. Is there a second?
No no no no!!!! No banishing Halloween! [smiling] It's my very favorite holiday. But that's just cos I like creating really weird looking costumes (sort of like all my craft projects and it's not really like I set out to make weird-looking ones, it just turns out that way)....and I have no bad family associations with it (don't get me started on Christmas...ay yay ay! anyone who wants to banish that one has my consent). Halloween is fantabulous in my book.
That said, I don't have any Halloween decorations up. I don't do that until 1 week before, max, and some years it's just the day itself. Sooner than that is a) silly and b) diminishes the wonderfulness of the day itself. I'm not a big believer in trick-or-treating on alternate days, either, though. So call me old school.
But I do believe that last year I was in the minority opinion on Halloween...
stringing pumpkin lights nearly a month in advance is cheating and pathetic. a made-up halloween costume is cool. that's my final answer.
Your bonus question made me think of a whine... why do the stupid customers that I work with/for insist on being dumb? When I say, "What is your account number?" you should say, "blah blah blah whatever it is" or "The last five digits are yadda yadda yadda" You should NOT say, "XXX XX XXXyadda yadda" Do you really think that your account number is X's? Even if you preface your abbreviated account number with "Well, most of it is blocked out but the last few digits are..."
I know, I'm really reaching this week.
And as an anthiwhine - (cruel as it is) I saw a woman try to leave my lovely place of employment by pushing on a pane of glass (more than once) that is right next to the actual door that she had just entered 15 seconds before.
Seriously. What's wrong with people? When they go out in public do they just leave all their marbles in the car?
Please do not feel the need to remind me that I am also included in the "people" category when I go out in public.
diane -- it's early in a long whining day, but "When they go out in public do they just leave all their marbles in the car?" is surely a contender for a prize this week!
We love Halloween here. We are currently trying to convince Mason to be Luke Skywalker so Bert can be Darth Vader and say "Luke, I am your father."
Mason wants to be Thomas.
MM wants to be Ang the Avatar. Unfortunately, there is no opportunity in that costume to incorporate a silky red cloth.
I totally have to say my whole SSN to get to the last 4 digits. And I have to say my whole address to get to the zip code.
OTOH, I can still recite the phone number I had at my dad's house in high school, and the phone number of my best friend from then, and every address I've ever lived at. And the Oscar Meyer Weiner song.
ANTIWHINE! There are 4 pictures of me smilingsmilingsmiling on the website of a national newspaper!
It's after 1:00 AM, why am I still up?
I will have missed 3 weeks of class before I even start school!
(begin: panic)
I'm not talking a string of pumpkin, this guy had orange lights outlining his roof. To mix holiday metaphors here, Bah Humbug!
I don't make good costumes, either, so I don't even have that to fall back on. Although, I love taking the kids trick or treating, I could do without the other hoopla surrounding the adults.
I can do the last four off my SSN but only because I needed the last four to sign in at the mess hall when I was in the army once upon a time.
Jenevieve - Three weeks? I've got sympathy stress just thinking about that.
My whine of substance: So-called father figure sent me a Howler. He and his sibs live out of state. Their mother has been deteriorating physically for quite some time. I had, at one point, run her life for her from afar. However, SCFF and his sibs are horrible people and being with Grandma puts me in their line of fire w/o them doing any of the work. Grandma really needs to move out of her ramshackle home in the dodgy inner-city neighborhood ( and into some kind of assisted living because she is blind from diabetes. Alas, that costs money and she doesn't have that.
Oh, and seeing how my father has been largely absent from my entire life and runs from responsibility every chance he gets, for him to tell *me* of all people to be more responsible, well, it's just too fireplacing rich. My brothers and I are not the only grandchildren in the area but we are the only ones with a conscience. However, we all have our own families to provide for right now.
Sorry, I just needed to dump this somewhere while I decide how to handle my father on this one.
I am 36 weeks pregnant. It is still hitting in the 80's here, with high dew points. October 26 is too far away for me to contemplate right now. Miss M's selfish, jealous, control-freak "mother" won't let Miss M fly up to see her newborn sister, which is just cruel, and I want to take out all of my frustrations on the idiot woman with a baseball bat (good thing she's a state removed and I'm in no condition to travel anywhere, huh?). Mr. Mac is still a 2L, which means I never see him.
Antiwhine: Mr. Mac got a summer associateship offer over the weekend with an awesome law firm, located in a small city near where I grew up. I'm not saying we're going there after law school, but there's a possibility I can get back Home. :)
I recite my whole SSN to get the last 4 digits. And I sing the ABCs in my head for alphabetical order on a regular basis.
My early-halloween whine is this: Snuggly Girl has requested the Official World's Easiest Costume. Seriously, she wants to be a ghost. But I am managing to make it difficult.
And my non-halloween whine is this: Dental work. Today is supposed to be easier than last week -- let's hope my new crown is stickier than all the ones Scrivener went through.
I can just recite the last 4 digits without doing the whole thing in my head, but I don't have any good explanation as to why. I never knew that was even something to think about before.
I have an update/whine/antiwhine something. My friend with breast cancer had her liver biopsy and she does have tumors on the liver, so it is still stage 4. She has a friend (actually someone I'm friends with too) whose fiance had an aunt who died of cancer and left a huge chunk of money to the Sloan-Kettering Center in New York. He contact his uncle or somebody, who called the center and pulled some strings and my friend had a consultation with one of the top doctors at one of the top cancer centers in the country. (Yes, she is that kind of amazing person who just draws cool, smart, interesting people to her and becomes important in all their lives, so it's not surprising to me that she's got people pulling these kinds of strings.) That doctor said the plan her Florida doctor outlined is the best treatment plan right now and has joined her team of physicians--she'll be kept updated on her progress and she's enrolled my friend in some sort of clinical trial where they will pay to fly her up to New York regularly to monitor her progress. The NY doctor told her that if she doesn't respond to this treatment, there are a plan B and a plan C available at Sloan but not available in Miami, so if it comes to that, Sloan might take over her treatment. The Sloan doctor was also very optimistic and said that, even though it's stage 4, with this particular type of cancer, she has had success with treatments and has patients who have gone on to have long healthy lives. She said that 5 years ago, this diagnosis was probably a death sentence, but that the drugs have progressed such that my friend has a real shot at beating it.
So my friend does have serious, terrible stage 4 cancer. However, it is clear that she is getting the best treatment possible and there is some real hope.
My own personal whine in all of this: It is so difficult to be so far away from her as she goes through all of this. There's an email list for sending out information, but for the most part the people who are getting information are all local and I think they talk to each other regularly and often forget that there are others who don't live locally and aren't hearing the news. I wish I could be of more help to her and I wish I was more in the loop. I am thinking about her and worrying about her every day.
hugs to jenevieve and miranda and DMD and madeliene.
scrivener, i'm so sorry about the diagnosis, but that is awesome news about the treatment your friend is getting! it's really hard to be long-distance when someone is seriously ill. xoxo
My Doctor’s Ode to My Mystery Malady
It wasn’t ovarian cancer.
It can’t be because of the cyst.
Your “samples” are coming back perfect.
What could it be that we’ve missed?
The ultrasound, it showed us nothing.
The symptoms, they intensify.
We’re stumped by your mystery illness.
How ‘bout Friday a nice MRI?
Nice poem KathyR!
My whine falls into the "Famous Last Words" category: Just a week ago, I was heard to say "It seems like everyone gets sick this time of year. There are so many headcolds going around, but not me. Nuh-uh. I never catch anything."
I hab a code in my node. Sit.
A whine to my managers:
While I do understand the importance of open communication in the workplace, I would like to point out that if you fill our entire workday with meeting after meeting, it leaves no time to actually do the work you are discussing in the aforementioned meetings.
If you truly wished to facilitate the facilitation of the utilization of this facility, leadership needs to touch base with those of us in the trenches, which would help them recognize that best practices suggest the need to begin transitioning to a paradigm where we employees are empowered to implement the operationalizing of a quality organization, leverage our areas of expertise, and retain our core competencies.
Please. Before I talk like this all the time. Or gouge my eyes out with a pen.
My anti-whine today: I love sue's "sit"!!! It's a lovely thing when the whining ball means I laugh. (even though I am sorry that sue has a cold!!!) In my quest to be less of a foul-mouthed human, I'm going to try saying this instead, since it usually isn't just said but yelped, regardless of where I am. My dogs may be confused but hey, their sitting more, that's not a BAD thing, is it now?
I'm just skipping the whining part this week. Trust me on that one.
Antiwhine: money in the bank! Okay, not for long, but I am finally paying some vendors and so freeing up credit for 1) the massive bookfair that a nearby school just dumped in our lap and 2) oh, yeah, the retail season.
It will good to be ordering from publishers again. This summer was a little on the lean side, what with one of my managers out on maternity leave and all.
--Sheila
Whine: I just got home from therapy. I think I finally began to figure something out that I really don't to figure out. I want to crawl in a hole and die.
I'm just going to paste another whine in the box here straight from the post I just wrote on my own blog:
I just picked Ella up from her bus stop and as we walked home she talked about her library books and her P.E. class, but then as walked in the front door and she began to take off her sneakers she told me, "Oh, I have a new friend. Z_____. He's cute," but with "cute" drawn out into three syllables. "What do you mean, 'cute?'" I asked.
"Well, he's only five years old and he's got almost no hair, like it's really short like Papa's [her grandfather, who is bald], and he's soooo nice. I like him," she told me, while wringing her hands together and glancing first at the floor and then at the ceiling.
"You like him?"
"Yes, I like him. He's really nice. He draws me pictures and I draw him pictures. And this one time he was really, really nice. He gave me a present."
"A present?"
"He gave me a ring."
"What ring?"
"I don't know where it is anymore."
"Lost his ring already, huh?"
"He's so cute."
"Wow. You want to call Mommy and tell her about your friend?"
Ella actually blushed and said, "No, I couldn't tell her about it" and went to fix herself a snack. I called my wife at the office and went into the next room to tell her about this major milestone. About two sentences in, I hear from the other room, "Are you telling Mom about my boyfriend?"
"Boyfriend?" I asked. Ella giggled and then yelled. I asked her if she'd like to talk to her mommy and she snatched the phone away from me and repeated what she'd told me, then handed the phone back to me. "Can you believe it?" I asked.
"But she's only six-and-a-half," came the reply. "Suddenly I feel so ancient. Already?"
oooh, sara -- i'm breaking out in hives from way over here, just thinking about hour upon hour of management-speak.
poor sue! but "sit" is the funniest swear word i've heard since "fireplace."
very poetic, kathy r.! nothing like a friendly MRI to bring the spirits up.
Hurray for Sheila's money in the bank, even if not for long. I know that feeling.
Mixed emotions for Scrivener . . .
Whine update: dental cement tastes like ick.
Anti-whine: excellent excuse for chocolate before noon.
Public service announcement: Easting in public while one side of your mouth is Novocain-ed is highly discouraged.
Hugs to Scrivener, Jeni, and all.
Whine/ Antiwhine: I saw my sister.
Whine/ Antiwhine: I met my nephew. Then he spit up on my favorite shirt.
Whine: I saw my brother-in-law.
more hugs to scrivener. ella, she is too cute for words! if it is any consolation, my daughter *married* her sweetie eric in kindergarten, on the playground. the romance faded, but we still know eric and he's still a sweet guy.
madeleine: i'm so glad i'm not the only one who goes directly from the dreaded dental office to the chocolate source!
jenny: you are aware that spitup is a sign of deep affection, aren't you? [babywipes work well for cleanup.]
Scrivener: boatloads of your choice:
1. tequila
2. brownies
3. blankets and pillows for building the perfect hideout
4. all of the above (I mean, what good's a hideout without provisions)
Thank you, kathy a!
I do believe that my mass email was definitely in the "whine" category. (As in, "Boo-hoo! I agreed to do a fundraiser and then didn't get around to doing much organizing and why don't things just work out magically?")
So, yes, I emailed everyone who I ever wrote an email to (that is, everyone in my google contacts). So perhaps my whine is that I'm wondering if fundraising, even for very good causes, is the gateway drug to full-blown spamming?
Or "I emailed everyone to whom I ever wrote an email..."
I do know how to do some grammar sometimes.
Also, Scrivener. Gosh. I'm sorry.
And a follow-up to the Ella story, but less cute and more confusing:
Today the kindergarten teacher told us that a boy in her class stuck his hand in her underwear while they were standing in line. What? I don't even know what to do with that information. I guess we have to have the private/public parts of the body talk again. Although I haven't had much luck convincing Annika of this notion. Obviously. Sheesh.
moreena, we don't care so much about no stinkin' grammar here at the palace of whines!
i'm a mess of memories today. my worst moment in kindergarten was the day something happened in the rest room involving a boy, and a bunch of us crowded in to see while the teacher was busy, and we all had to put our heads on the table for a while. boundaries are still being sorted out in kindergarten. i think the teacher needs to know so she can talk about private bodily space, including [specifically] underwear.
which leads me to a most profound memory: "you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose." truer words were never spoken.
Taking a cookie sheet with garlic bread out of the oven this evening. The pan slid through my oven mitt and back onto my bare bicep.
I have fireplacin' branded myself.
It fireplacin' hurts.
Hugest of huge hugs to Scriv.
I have no whines.
{{huge hugs}} to Scriv- it's so hard to be far away, and doesn't it always seem like you're farthest away from someone who might need you the most? Maybe one of her local friends can start an email list to keep everyone informed and in the loop. You can tell your friend that this pixie is pulling and praying for her! Also, that New York bagels are highly therapeutic ;)
Whine: Seph took a Sharpie marker to our freshly-painted walls (flat, of course, it's the hardest to clean!)and demonstrated her ability to draw "Buh-boos!" (W's) on every available surface.
Antiwhine: It finally hit me what to dress her up as for Halloween...Zorro!!
Antiwhine #2: Maybe if I get high enough on marker fumes, I'll forget that I leave for my dad's house in two weeks and this place has to be on the market by then. Aack!
I'm up for banishing Halloween, but NOT the candy sales. I need candy to keep me alive. Please, leave the candy alone.
Votes for Sara for enduring meeting after bloody meeting. Been there. Sucks.
Whine: since I've been home from the hospital I have been unable to do anything. ANY fireplacing thing. I'm too tired and feeling like total crap and my heart is overloading again even though I've doubled my Lasix again.
Whine: Ink from my printer got all over my hands and it will not come out from under my fingernails. Black ink. I look like a car repairman.
Whine: My son is starting to balk at taking meds. This is BAD BAD news. He'll have to be hospitalized again if he doesn't take his meds.
Whine: Said son was suspended from school for telling a teacher to F off. I am SO not happy with him.
AntiWhine: Son actually wants to take his PSATs. Miraculous.
Whine: downstairs toilet blocked for 3rd time in 2 weeks. Plumber is now my best buddy.
Antiwhine: tomorrow is big huge meeting to get Dept of Mental Health to take over care of my son. This includes respite care, so I can get the hell out of this house.
Whine: remember that wedding dilemma I had months ago? Well, it's settled for us. We never got an invitation. To my nephew's wedding. Nice!
AntiWhine: for first time in many many months I didn't run out of money last month. Which makes THIS month more viable. I'm finally catching up.
Whine: Where are the freaking Junior Mints? And the Charleston Chews? My two favorite Halloween candies are not to be found. I am not happy.
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