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Monday, November 3, 2008

Early Edition: Free Range Whining

Election Whining continues below.

W/AW: Adventures in administering pills to cats led to some tensions in the household. Beloved learned that cats may not cooperate just because you lovingly cook chicken liver and tuck the pill inside. Cats conferred and decided humans bearing chicken liver are untrustworthy, although 3 of 4 cats ate the liver anyway when the pill was crushed up.

What's up with you?

33 comments:

Anonymous said...

*reposted from election thread*
original post 12:46 a.m.
~~~~~~~~

Much later... I know it's not an election whine but I have to get this out or I'm gonna explode. Daughter just got taken away in ambulance after 3 different police visits tonight. I'm ready to just give up with this one. So this is what happened.

Remember the pipes I found and took away from her? Well today she searched my room, found them, and took them back. Then she went into her brother's room with a stolen Ipod Touch (32 gig) and told him this big story about who it belongs to, and when she went to work, he took it from her, erased all the music and contacts on it, and decided he would take it. He showed it me after he did this, I told him to give it to me and I'd get to the bottom of this.

When she got home I asked her about the Ipod and she gave me a totally different story than she had given him. DING DING DING. She's lying, which means that there is something really nefarious going on.

I tell her I want it and I was going to call the parents of the boy she claimed it belonged to. She went BALLISTIC on me, screaming and throwing the remote at me (breaking it) and telling me how she wants to give me a heart attack so I will die... generally lovely patter from her mouth.

So I call the police because I want to know WHO the stolen Ipod Touch belongs to. They come, talk to her, she tells them a 3rd version of the story, claiming that the ONLY girl poorer than us and who is such a huge thief that I will not allow her in my house is the owner and that she borrowed the Ipod overnight. Which makes no sense since daughter has her own Ipod Nano. But anyhow....

Police call the girl who doesn't even KNOW what the Ipod looks like, but the mother swears that she bought the Ipod for Xmas for her daughter. Mother is a drunk, crack addict, and whore. And I am NOT making any of this up. Father is dead, having fallen down their back stairs in a drunken stupor in front of this girl. They are serious SCUM and I don't allow Daughter to be around her, but....

So Mother claims that the Ipod is sticky fingers, and the police let daughter have it swearing that she must return it. But they tell me that they know it's stolen property and they'll look out for complaints from school. OK.

So the police tell me that they're filing a 51A with DSS (fuck!) and we have to go to court, etc. And then they leave.

After they go, I go upstairs to daughter's room and tell her I want the pipes back, and take her cell phone away. She went apeshit. I mean, she was beyond angry and all the way up to rabid. But all she had to do was give me back the pipes (3 of them) and I'd give her back her cell phone. But nope, she refused. And she kept escalating the anger, spitting in my face, throwing a wooden chinese yoyo at me, screaming bloody murder right in my face and threatening to hit me and kill me several times.

So I called 911 and she grabbed the phone out of my hands. But the police came anyhow, and I told them to take her to the hospital. They called an ambulance and took her outside to talk to her, then took her away to the hospital. I told her that I would come and pick her up once she calmed down, but she was really nasty and the police gave her a dressdown over that.

Then they left and the police came back a third time to talk to me. Meanwhile her brother tells me he's so upset he wants to file a restraining order on her, and he's scared that her scummy friends would get him.

Shit. What a fricking mess. She's NOT getting her cell phone back anytime soon, and she's totally and completely grounded when and if she comes back. My guess.... she's going to spend a month to 6 weeks in residential ART working through the anger issues. It will be her third such visit. Not that she learns anything, but...

Anonymous said...

* reposted from election thread*
original post 9:35 a.m.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

margalit . . . . what a sucky tale of woe. I hope third time's the charm for your daughter and teh anger issues.

esperanza said...

Thank you for a non-election whining thread.

Days 1-4 of Non-Chocolate: progressively better sleeping at night by Sweet Baboo, and therefore, Mama.

Day 5: one chocolate chip cookie. Horrible night.

Coincidental correlation? (please, please) or definite Chocolate Causation? Because there is the whole changing the clocks in there too.

esperanza said...

Oh, and margalit--that's awful.

kathy a. said...

margalit, thinking of you. what a terrible situation. xoxo

esperanza -- yeah, the time change, she is a bear.

Madeleine said...

esperanza, that, sadly, was my experience also. Tragically, it doesn't matter if the occasional slip actually *does* cause the worse sleep or if it is a coincidence, because you are awake in the night and you (if like me) are blaming yourself for the slip-up. Sigh.

Nuzzle her soft cheeks, cry a few tears, and keep on keepin' on.

And eight years from now, do not under any circumstances let her drink brazilian guarana soda. That stuff is pure caffeine. We had two terrible nights this summer before we figured that out.

Elizabeth said...

((margalit))

(the parentheses are a hugging gesture -- I can't remember if we've done that here.)

Anonymous said...

Spider update: no news. This is very, very good. And I have purchased a BUGZOOKA to enable me to catch them alive, without resorting to a water glass and a piece of cardboard. It isn't here yet, but the idea of it just cracks me up.

The dog is off steroids, just taking antibiotics, and her face remains healed over.

I am overwhelmed and getting my ass kicked by the time change, but this too shall pass.

esperanza, I am so sorry to hear about the chocolate. I'm afraid I have nothing useful to offer, but if you need me to, I will eat some chocolate on your behalf :)

margalit, good luck.

purple_kangaroo said...

Oh, I'm so glad the thread is open already. I had a phone call from my doctor, the wonderful PA, today.

Let's just say you never want to hear a doctor tell you that your test results were "very interesting" and and that he's flummoxed by them.

Or that he's going to have to consult with an infectious disease specialist.

I posted about it in more detail on my blog, but the most relevant result is that my monospot test was STILL positive, 7 months after the first one was positive and 8-9 months or more after I came down with mono (if that was indeed my first episode of it, which I'm not at all sure of).

So I think that more tests and some biopsies are in my future. And, though this does give us some answers, it's still not curable. And now it looks likely that I have a chronic, potentially severe, and CONTAGIOUS condition.

It appears that the chronic active form of Epstein-Barr Virus (infectious mononucleousis), or CAEBV, is a whole different ballgame than even the relatively uncommon weeks-long version of infectious mononucleosis. I had to stop googling it because I was scaring myself. Much less googling SCAEBV.

Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome aren't curable either, but at least they aren't likely to kill you or make other people sick.

At least mono or EBV is not particularly dangerous to the general population, just to immune-compromised people. It's just that much of my family and quite a few of my friends happen to be immune compromised.

*Sob*

purple_kangaroo said...

Margalit, big hugs. I hope something helps your daughter.

Liz Miller said...

Oh, PK and Margalit. Many hugs.

esperanza said...

Oh, PK, you're so right. The doctor's office is where you want to be utterly predictable, bland, and boring. I'm sorry he said "interesting." But all I can do is hope this is the first step of finding something that might make you able to feel better. Hugs here too.

Madeleine said...

{{{PK}}}

Sending you peaceful vibes while you wait for more information.

kathy a. said...

(((( PK ))))

purple_kangaroo said...

Thanks, everyone. Now that I'm searching with different terms, I've found a few pages that say the monospot test can stay positive for up to 12 months after infection in up to 30-40% of patients.

Of course, it's not nearly as common for someone to still be feeling sick by that point, so I'll have to wait and see what the doctor says.

But at least the test results alone don't necessarily mean chronic EBV.

Madeleine said...

And this afternoon the other shoe dropped. I might have told you guys I thought this was coming.

As of December 1 my hours are being reduced because I'm not fully funded by grants at the moment. I work at a non-profit, and we raise some non-grant funds to fill in the gaps, but this year the higher ups aren't accepting promises of future money. Cash on the table or reduce your expenses.

So I'm dropping from 70% to 50% for at least a few months. Not the end of the world, but not conducive to the "save up a cushion" project success either.

Anti-whine: Paid in US dollars, living on Canadian dollars, and the exchange is back where it was a few years ago. About a year ago my salary was coming out much smaller than it had been but now the exchange is back in my favor.

Elizabeth said...

sorry, Madeleine

Whine: need to interview web-site design firms tomorrow morning. Thus need to get out of bed and into the office in the morning.

Unknown said...

PK, the one bright light I can shine in your direction is that when a doctor says a case is "interesting" it means that they are interested in it, and will not dismiss you or your symptoms. Interesting is GOOD in the medical world.

Now, on to her High Ness, my bitch of a daughter. She still isn't speaking to me. We have a court date tomorrow that she may or may not show up for. If she doesn't, jail is in her immediate future. She is not allowed phone or internet but that doesn't mean she hasn't tried. I've had to disconnect our land line several times when she's home.

Meanwhile, the meetup with boyfriend's parents went well, they were horrified that he threatened to kill my son (which I didn't even tell you), that he was smoking dope in my house and asking daughter to hang onto his pot and pipe, and about several other things he's done that I've kept to myself for months and months. Remember that porn text message when we were in Chicago? They loved that one!

So no contact, both kids totally grounded, kid who says that the Ipod touch is his has called me several times and I told him that if he wants it back he must have a parent call me to determine if it is really his, and guess what? No parental call. His scummy girlfriend told me to 'fuck off' when I told her that she was not allowed ANY contact with my daughter per court order. She's a real darling, that one.

Life continues to suck, but hell, Barak Obama is going to be our next president. That makes EVERYTHING better!

esperanza said...

Antiwhine: well, the sleep issues are not chocolate-related. A double blind, carefully controlled study has been conducted. Bad nights occur with and without chocolate influence. Good nights do too, though much fewer and farther between. This is good news, pixies. Mama can function again. Bring on the Halloween leftovers.

Whine: uh. My sweet baboo, she's still not sleeping so well. Better, but not great. Let's keep hoping for the developmental spurt.

Antiwhine: oh, but is she getting even cuter.

Whine: but the separation anxiety is wearying my little introverted self a bit. That or the lack of sleep.

I guess that's enough of the Baboo related whines. It's not her fault I stayed up too late watching election coverage.

Elizabeth said...

Whine: I can't decide if my head needs caffeine more than my stomach needs to avoid it.

JenR said...

PK... mono sucks. I had episodes of symptoms for about a year and a half after the initial one. Yuck.

Today is a crappy work day... I Accidentally deleted a couple hundred thousand records from our database this morning. Oops. It is recoverable and the data isn't often used anyway. I just feel stupid.

Madeleine said...

JenR, ARRRRGH. Data deletion whines get me in the gut. I'm so glad to hear it is recoverable. That is a really stinky feeling.

Anonymous said...

I just took the dog back to the vet, to follow up on a suspicious bump, and they kept her...

Canine surgery this afternoon, then a biopsy, then... I dont know.

My BUGZOOKA arrived, but its amusement value isn't canceling out the fear and anxiety for my dog...

Madeleine said...

Oh, no, redzils! I'm so sorry to hear your dog is back at the vet. Sending hugs and sympathy.

kathy a. said...

oh, jenr. "recoverable" is a glorious word, no?

redzils, much love for you and the pup. even the cats are crossing their claws.

Sue said...

Hugs and Mega-Votes for both margalit (holy moly!) and PK - mono does indeed sucketh.

Today was supposed to be my half day at the office as part of my so-called "graduated return" to work. I worked about 7 hours.

I'm supposed to go from a 20 hour week to a 30 hour week as of Monday - this according to the regional church powers-that-be, who, last time I checked had no medical degrees.

Anti-whine: Saw my doc on Monday who signed a note saying I'm not to work more than 20 hours/wk until further notice. He called the church's plan for my return a "shot-gun return." I couldn't agree more. Way too much. Way too soon.

Anti-whine: Doc and I are on the same page. And he has the final word here, not the, ahem, Staff in another province who thinks she runs the freakin' planet.

My congregation, who are usually very cool, are having some difficulty with the concept of gradual return.

They seem to want all the same work done in my 20 hours that I used to do in a 60 hours/wk (which likely played a part in my med leave in the first place - and yes, I know I played a part in that.)

Whine: What part of 'limited duties' are they finding so difficult to understand? Boundaries people, boundaries.

Whine: I can't blog any of this b/c big brother from last week's whine is still watching. My blog now has to be 100% positive, 100% of the time, whether I like it or not.

Anti-whine: Obama!!!

Madeleine said...

Sue, I'm sorry the church folks at all levels are making this harder than it needs to be. Boundaries and a doctor's note will see you through, I hope.

My day just got a whole lot suckier. I just got my first ever moving violation in 22 years of driving. I took a right (on green) at a corner where you aren't supposed to turn at rush hour. I drive through there probably 3 times a week and never noticed the rush hour signs. The two cops were just waving over every car that made the turn. Which was lots and lots of cars, of course. Sigh. The cop told me, basically, go to court and plead not guilty and you won't get the points on your insurance. But I was guilty, clearly, so I'm not sure what I'll do.

Besides whine about it, of course. Plenty of that.

Sue said...

Aw Madeleine, that sucks.

Also, Kathy a. - we have to pill one of our cats nightly now also. Not. Fun.

kathy a. said...

oh, sue -- the boundary problem sucks indeed.

so does pilling cats.

we are having some dogbrain v. catbrain issues around here, which led in part to the pilling angst of the weekend. but seriously, does anyone think a big net on a sturdy pole is an informed way to deal with cats who might benefit from flea meds? my beloved bought one. i believe his idea was for ME to use it on the younger, feralish cats -- the ones i'm trying to get to trust me enough that i can pet them. but anyway, the net is hanging quite decoratively on a closet door, and if we ever get a wilderness cabin, it can serve a useful purpose AND be decorative.

kathy a. said...

madeleine, yuck on the moving violation.

Sue said...

Hmmmm.....any cat and a net does not sound like a good combination. My guess is there would be blood, and it wouldn't be the cat's.

kathy a. said...

i knew you'd understand, sue!

Liz Miller said...

The cat will say, as my sister used to, "Someone's going to end up crying...and it's not going to be me."