Mama Always Said I Was Special...

Back in December, I and another girl here at work were informed that we were going to “get” to become “Special” Kentucky Notaries. Neither of us live in Kentucky and generally, you are only a notary for the state in which you live. But our firm has been doing more work in Kentucky and none of the employees here live in Kentucky, so something had to be done.

Low and behold, Kentucky has this “Special Commission” notary thing. So Julie and I were off, like a herd of turtles in our quest to become “Special.” So, you ask, what is the difference between becoming a “regular” notary and a “special” notary? Well, to become a regular notary, as with most states, you fill out the form, send a check for the bond and mail it to the secretary of state and a couple of weeks later you receive your certificate and your squeezie thingee.

To become “special,” there was still the lovely form, but instead of just mailing it with a check, this thing had some travelling to do. First, we had to take it to a clerk’s office in Kentucky and have them sign off on it. Henderson County is right across the bridge, about 20 miles round trip from the office, so one crisp day in December, we hopped into my little red wagon to take our forms to the Henderson County Clerk’s office.

Our first observation upon arriving at the Courthouse in Henderson is that there is absolutely NO security. You just walk right in. Not that I’m advocating such a thing, but if someone had it in their mind to do something malicious in a government building, this is the place to go… Anyway, we walk into the clerk’s office and a nice lady at the front looks at us and, without anyone saying a word, points us to the right. Julie and I happen to notice the sign that says “Marriage License” and points to the right. We looked at each other and decided that Henderson must be a more progressive county than we thought!

The lady behind this counter took our forms and wandered off in search of the clerk. After a couple of aborted attempts, she was finally successful and came back with the signed forms. She asked us if we were over the age of 18 and of sound mind – to which I responded, “as far as you know.” She returned the forms to us and we made our escape from Kentucky as quickly and orderly as we could before someone realized we didn’t belong there.

Then came the Christmas holidays and like a lot of people, our forms did some travelling. They were mailed to the KY Secretary of State in Frankfort. After the first of the year, another form came back from the Secretary of State and Jules and I zoomed back off to Henderson to pay the fee and be sworn in. Now here’s the fun part. We’d heard and joked about how when attorneys go to be sworn in for the Kentucky Bar, they have to swear that they haven’t participated in any duels. And I’ll be darned, if we didn’t have to do the same thing. The language that made us giggle a bit was basically that we “…have not fought a duel with deadly weapons within this state, nor out of it, nor have [we] sent or accepted a challenge to fight a duel with deadly weapons, nor have [we] acted as second in carrying a challenge, nor aided or assisted any person…”


One would think that after being sworn in it would be over and we would be official, but no, the form made one final trip to Frankfort.

Today, we got our certificates, they even have a gold seal on them, and our squeezie thingees. So our quest has been successful and we are now Special Commission Notaries for Kentucky. Rose has another thing to put on her resume! Now I just need something to notarize….

Anyone Want to Go See a Movie?

The votes are in and the following have been nominated for Best Picture: "Avatar," "The Blind Side," "District 9," "An Education," "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds," "Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire," "A Serious Man," "Up," "Up in the Air."

As my long time followers know, the only time I’m game to go see a "serious" movie is at Oscar time and any other time I’m more into explosions and fart jokes. But this year, with the expansion of the field from five movies to ten, I’m happy to say that there are several in the list that I’m half-way interested in going to go see. Although I will say that I was sort of hoping that Julie and Julia would be nominated since I’d already reviewed it. J

What follows here will be my movie-by-movie inner-waffling of which movies to spend my hard-earned fundage on. The actual reviews will be contained in separate blog entries.

"Avatar" – I’ve been told by various people that this is a great movie. And of course it’s already surpassed James Cameron’s previous behemoth, Titantic, in money. But I was holding out to see if it was nominated before spending the money to go see it. I’ve also been told that if I’m going to go, go for broke and spend the money to see it in 3-D at the IMAX. I think this is a definite.

"The Blind Side" – I wanted to see this movie after I saw the first preview of it last summer/fall. The only reason I didn’t immediately go see it was that I didn’t have the time, what with moving, and Christmas shopping, and holiday travel. Another definite.

"District 9" – I know almost nothing about this movie other than I think it involves aliens coming to Earth and being herded into the eponymous "District 9," a containment area of some sort (hilarity, no doubt, ensues). This one might be a possibility, but I’m flexible. We’ll see what my schedule is like.

"An Education" – I know absolutely nothing about this movie, but from the name, it sounds educational, so it is not on my "must see" list.

"The Hurt Locker" – ditto, only from the name, I’m guessing that not much hilarity ensues.

"Inglourious Basterds" – Looks good, involves killing Nazis and Brad Pitt (although he’s almost another one of those actors who, if he did nothing but read from the Dictionary for two hours, they’d nominate him for an Oscar!) From the commercials, hilarity definitely ensues… so a good possibility.

"Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire" – I know next to nothing about this movie – I think it involved a poor, black pregnant teenager. Sounds "deep" and therefore it is not high on my "must see" list.

"A Serious Man" – I know absolutely nothing about this movie.

"Up" – An animated picture, so there’s a plus on its side. There’s a talking dog ("Squirrel!"), so another plus. I would consider this to be a definite go see.

"Up in the Air" – Well, see now here’s my problem. First, this movie has George Clooney in it. And as I’m pointed out before, I just don’t "get" George Clooney. It’s like almost everything he’s ever been in (post the "Facts of Life" era) automatically gets the "Oscar-buzz." Is the man so faboo that anything he puts his name to is award-worthy? I just don’t think so. On the other hand, I’ve been told this is a great movie… but that was by a woman who has the hots for George Clooney… so how much of her opinion of the movie is based on her hots for him? I’m not going to put this one on a list, either the "Most Likely See" list or the "Eww" list. We’ll see how things work out with my time and money as to whether or not I go see this one.

So, to sum up:

Most Likely See: Avatar, The Blind Side, Inglourious Basterds, and Up

Eww: An Education, The Hurt Locker, Precious, and A Serious Man

Like, Either Way, Man: District 9 and Up in the Air

Let the movie-going begin!! Where’s my popcorn?

Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water... I Will Comfort You...

As I think I’ve discussed previously, for the past year and almost a half, since October 2008, I’ve been doing my job as well as a goodly amount of the subrogation responsibilities. I was given these responsibilities as a stop-gap measure until other arrangements could be made for this work. However, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and I find it hard to squeak. And frankly, the OT bucks were very nice, coming in handy to pay off my Discover card bill. But things couldn’t continue in this vein forever.

So beginning a month or so ago, the cracks began to show. I should have recognized the signs. I’ve been struggling with Kelly Bundy Syndrome for a couple of months, but I just chalked that up to extended senior moments and vitamin D deficiency. But last week, I lost it. There was this big project that I was working on for Steve, even working 9 hours on a Sunday. He was being very needy, and I found myself not being myself anymore, snarking at him, or anyone, really, and crying at the drop of a hat. Fortunately it would appear that even when I think I’m being a completely unreasonable bitch, other people just think I’m "off" from my usual. So obviously it’s not as bad to others as it appears to me. Which I suppose is good. That week I drove home more than one night in tears.

Then a week ago Monday, I lost it. I was working on an Excel spreadsheet (another project of Steve’s) and had a question about it, so I went to Shawn (our HR person)’s office. I know, I know, we have an IT Department, but don’t get me started on that or we’ll never get to the end of this story. In the process of discussing my question in Excel, I broke down in tears and blubbered out my story. It hadn’t come as a shock, as she’d been watching it slowly happen. Ok, that sounds bad, but I don’t think she was waiting with glee or anything, just she expected it sometime. Plus she’d been helping with the big project for Steve.

As it turned out, Steve was in the office next to her office talking to the attorney in there and she saw him leaving and asked me if I wanted her to get him. In a moment of weakness, I nodded my head yes. Now, if I had not been blind with snot and tears, I probably would have laughed at what I can only imagine Steve’s reaction to walking into a room and seeing me there blubbering was. He gets this uneasy grin on his face when he’s not sure what’s going on – I can see it in my head now.

Anyway, I managed to blubber my woes out again. Basically everyone - Steve, Carrie (who was not in the meeting, but would have been happy that it happened, as I’d broken down in her office the previous week), and Shawn – all agreed that I’d been doing the work of at least 2, if not 3, people for a year and more, and it was time to remove some of that responsibility from my shoulders. Now I, being a control freak, hate the idea of not being able to do something, and I just know that if the job goes from me to someone else (it doesn’t matter who), that person will NOT be able to do it as well as I did it, so the client’ll suffer and the whole world will go to heck in a handbasket. Now, rationally, I realize that isn’t the case, but I’m saying what my irrational self goes through.

Steve, Lord love him, jumps at the chance to remove subro from my life (with, according to my mother, more than just a little self-interest). Subro is a beast and it needs continual feeding. There were several parts of subro that I was responsible for: the filing of suits, monthly reports and disbursal to the client, and dealing with the files in settlement status. After all of the fallout, the parts of subro that I was doing are being doled out to three different people. Something that makes me feel sort of proud that I was doing so much, but also sort of pisses me off that it’s so much work that it gets divided amongst three people, but that while I was doing it all and not complaining, "we" didn’t have a problem letting me do it all. Sigh. I guess that’s why I earn the big bucks…. and the OT was nice.

Long story short, the pain in my lower back disappeared THE DAY that I broke down in Shawn’s office, it was obviously psychosomatic, and I’m not dreading coming to work like I had been. I’ve planned my vacation… but that’ll be another blog. And I’m going through separation anxiety while doling out the subro work I was doing. Not all of it, mind you. I had really got to the point where I was hating having to file the suits.. mostly, though, because I was having to obtain copies of the forms that each piddly county in Indiana uses for their small claims cases and then make that document into a merge form. Note to our elected officials: couldn’t you find one form and make it the official small claims form for the entire state??

New Years Resolutions - 2010

Never being one for either making or keeping resolutions, I'm taking this opportunity to list area in my life which need serious consideration and at the end, I'll think about picking one to work on. Ok?

1) McDonalds - According to my mother, there was a time, in my youth, when we didn't have enough money to go to McDonalds all that often - it was more of a 'special' thing. Now, when I look at my bank statement each month, I see a third to half of all my debit card charges going to McDonalds. I've already sort of tamed the Sweet Tea demon in my life and at least 9 out of every 10 visits to McD's I get regular tea instead of the diabetic-coma inducing liquid which I would prefer. Since moving to Wadesville, the only McD's on my way in always has 15 cars in the drive-thru in the mornings, so I need to work on taming the McD's Sausage Burrito demon so I don't waste 10 minutes each morning in the drive thru.

2) Weight Watchers - No, I'm not suggesting the ubiquitous resolution to 'diet and lose weight.' What I need to do is either resume going to the damn meetings or stop paying the $40 a month to them. The actual weight loss is not my main concern. It's the $40!

3) Walking - As you may or may not know, depending on whether I'm imaging that I blogged about it, I bought myself good walking shoes and a pretty purple iPod earlier this year for the sole (hahaha! shoes? sole?) purpose of getting out and walking for exercise. When I lived in town, I lived near the University of Evansville and had good sidewalks and nice neighborhoods and a campus that I could walk around. Did I do it? Um.. about 5 times in the 4 years I lived there, yes. I know why, well, other than the obvious fact that I'm lazy. I grew up in the country and am used to wide open spaces. I could take a walk down the road with my Walkman and sing along to the music at the top of my voice and no one could hear me but the residents of the cemetary (and they were not complaining.) I couldn't really do that in town. Might've gotten arrested. So, now that I live back in the country, and I have the shoes, and I have the pretty purple iPod, Rose needs to get her footies in gear and start walking up and down the road.

4) Facebook - Again, as you know, I have a serious addiction to Facebook. Not to the friendship aspect. I don't really like people. But to the games. I have a farm in both Farm Town and FarmVille. I grow and sell crops on an island in Island Paradise. I desperately dig for relics in Treasure Madness f/k/a Mania. And I am currently maintaining both a clan and mafia in Vampire Wars and Mafia Wars, respectively. I'm exhausted. So, I need to decide on one, that's all I'm asking for, just one, FB application and drop it. I was going cold turkey on Treasure Madness this past week, as I'd finished all the maps. But then they drag me back in with more maps! Vampire Wars, well, I'd gotten bored with that, but then they started this special New York thing and I've almost mastered all the New York jobs. Mafia? Well pretty soon after New Year's they'll open the Hong Kong part... and I am on level 200 or so, it seems a waste to give up now.

Yikes! This looks difficult, doesn't it? Well, as promised, I'm going to think about this, and I'll let you know next New Year's which one I picked. Sound good? For now, though, I need to run by McDonalds and get me some tea so I can have something to drink when I get home because I have a lot to do... I have crops to harvest on FarmVille and I'm almost done on that last Christmas island on Treasure Madness. And I'm listening to this great book on my iPod...

Oh, well, Happy New Year's to all!

E.T. Where's the #*@& Phone!?

So, my sister Haley, who is infamous for her rather bizarre gifts to me... exhibit A: the Golden Poop ... got me the Alien Gnome Bandits for Christmas. Actually, I opened it over Thanksgiving, because she wanted to be able to see my face when I opened it. I was easily persuaded to not have to wait until Christmas. I found them charming and learned that their names were Eldon and Tarak, or "E.T." collectively. Unfortunately, due to all the Christmas craziness, the little dudes were pretty much left to entertain themselves. I didn't have time to deal with them over the holidays, so I put them up on the piano until after Christmas.

But then it started happening... things started disappearing and reappearing in different areas of the house. The cats professed innocence.. at least I think that's what they were saying. My skills in speaking feline are still growing. So we set up the ol'nanny cam.

Lo and behold, we were not prepared for what we saw. The pictures that follow are explicit, but for anyone who is contemplating inviting Alien Gnome Bandits into their home, well, you need to be prepared, it's shocking.

This photo was found the morning after I herd (haha) a strange moo'ing sound in the middle of the night. Turns out Moontgomery the cow was being abducted. He later reappeared in the dining room in a bowl of fruit.

E.T. played it cool for a couple of days before nabbing their next victim - a member of our considerable collection of snowmen. From the photo, it doesn't appear that the snowman had an snowball's chance in hell of avoiding the horror in store for him. About a week later, the snowman's hat and scarf were found floating in the cat's water bowl.

From the next photo, it would appear that E.T. had been taking advantage of our three months of free HBO and had found a new hero. The Scream duck disappeared one night and was not seen again until he reappeared floating in the seat of honor in the pink bathroom.

As the days drew closer to Christmas, E.T. must have needed some decorations for their lair. A Christmas tree was absconded with... not yet to reappear. It'll probably show up on the curbside for the first trash day after the New Year.The most threatening photo was the last straw. It would appear that the cats, Sophie, Gizmo and Winifred, had made vain attempts to prevent E.T. from making off with their ill-gotten booty (or ill-booten gotty) because this photo can be interpreted as nothing short of a threat to them to leave the Aliens to their thievery.

It was shortly after this photo was taken that I had to make the hard decision to remove E.T. from our household. After all, Sophie, Gizmo and Winifred don't have opposable thumbs and thus aren't able to defend themselves from this deviltry.

E.T. are now at my office where my co-workers naively call them "cute" and "adorable". But already a strange stapler has appeared on my desk and one co-worker continually roams around the office in a daze always saying the same thing...

... Where Shall I Go, What Shall I Do? - Scarlett O'Hara

My aunt drives me crazy! She travels all over the world as a part of her job and feels free to email me pics of her travels when she daw-gone knows that I want to travel too. My current goal in life is to get a stamp in my new (but as of yet not used) passport!

The other day, she e-mailed me pictures from her current vacation on the beach in Florida. She tried to downplay how wonderful it was by saying it was cold and damp, but I could tell she was having a good time. And since it was 32 degrees here, I'm pretty sure I'd have swapped with her in a heartbeat despite how "cold" it was there.

Sometime this spring, she and mom are contemplating going out to San Diego to visit one of their sisters. I've been invited along, but I don't think I'll go because 1) Been there, done that (refer to my as of yet mental blog regarding the infamous train trip with Grandma Hollis out to San Diego); second, someone really ought to hang at home and take care of the livestock; and C) I have my own vacation plans in mind. (mwa-ah-ah-ah!)

I, Rosemary, am going to go somewhere this year. I have suggested to my fiend Jennifer who has not really had a vacation in several years, that she leave her hubby for a week or so and go on a Thelma and Louise-style trip with me (only without the driving off a cliff part - unless we get a rental... hmm.. mental note: investigate car rental rates) preferrably to the beach because we're both in need of some rest and relaxation. I don't know if she'll actually do it, but I've decided that since I'm now living rent-free and putting considerable bucks in my savings account, either way, Rose is going to take a vacation.

So where would I like to go? Well, the following list is my list of ideal vacations:

1) Egypt. Somewhere in the middle of reading Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody series, I decided that if I had to do it all again, I'd become an archeologist. Now, I readily admit that I don't like bugs, dirt, sweat, heat, mud, snakes, spiders, or the idea of working in a country where there are those who might be ideologically opposed to me, but I'm pretty sure that I'd have been a great archeologist. Probably would have found a tomb that would put ol'King Tut's to shame by now. But I digress. Since I can't do it all over and since I don't like bugs, dirt, sweat, etc, I'll have to go as a tourist. I'd love to see the Pyramids at Giza and the Sphinx. Just think of the blogs about that trip! Holly has told me she'd go with me, as she enjoys those books, too. Ah, excuse me while I Google the price of pith helmets!

2) The Beach. I came to the epiphany a while ago that I was meant to be born to sea-faring folk, or at a minimum to folk who live by the sea. Not that I'm saying the good Lord messed up by giving me to my current fam, but I'm just saying that somewhere along the line my ancestors moved west when they should have stayed closer to the water. There is nothing more wonderful to me than slowly wandering up and down the beach, with the water coming in and wabbling over my footies. I can't swim and I don't like seafood, except for Captain D's or Long John Sliver's, but I just need to return to the beach every so often. After certain amount of time passes, something deep in my soul starts yearning to sit in the sand and listen to the waves as then crash in and then go back out. Sigh...

3) England. I want to go to Europe, but I only speak English. I took French my freshman year in high school, but then the teacher quit and they hired a Spanish teacher and I cheesed, so I was NOT going to take Spanish even if it killed me! Humpf! So then in college, I took two semesters of Italian with my roommate Janna. But I didn't take anymore because 1) that's all DePauw offered and B) I transferred to University of Evansville, which didn't offer it at all. Unfortunately now, 26 and 21 years later, respectively, I can't speak either French or Italian... although I can generally hold my own with a menu at the Olive Garden. So I guess my point is that for my first trek to Europe, I think I ought to go to a country where we speak the same language, relatively speaking. That and I do love history, so I would enjoy going to the Tower of London and go see where the Battle of Hastings was fought! If I went in August, I could go see the island where Princess Diana is buried! (Do they still open it up for tours in August?) Oh, and I could go to Mrs. Miggins' coffee shop! And of course, since I'd be that close, I'd have to run over to see Scotland (the birth place of my beloved Gerard Butler) and Ireland.

Christmas Time is Here

Well, really Christmas time is over, and we’re patiently waiting for the New Year! It was another success and here is the wrap (hahahaha!) up of the events... After Thanksgiving, we got the tree and other decorations up. I’m happy to say that Sophie and Gizmo (especially Gizmo) weren’t even remotely interested in the tree. I say this because a couple of years ago I had to take my tree down 5 days after putting it up because my handsome guy was terrorizing it. This year, the tree (yup, same tree) was terrorized by someone else…

Winifred enjoyed her first Christmas tree despite the soakings she got from the evil purple spray bottle. Hardly a day went by without her crawling up the tree, knocking off and playing with ornaments, and just generally bothering the tree limbs. By Saturday, December 19th, when mom’s sisters’ families came over, I had to redecorate the tree with all the ornaments the little Turd had knocked off!

So come Christmas Eve, mom and I packed our toys into our little red (actually it’s tan-ish) wagon and prepared to go up to Indy to spend the holiday with the Sibs and what did we have to do BEFORE we could leave? Yup, we had to take down the tree. Sort of a bummer, but it was nice to come home and not have to worry about doing it afterwards.

As usual, I think my gifts were hits. I got each of the Sibs’ families the The Office Clue game. We played a couple of rounds – I won both, thank you very much, mostly due to my perspicacity (look it up). Hollian’s belated 21st birthday gift, a bottle of Bailey’s :), was a hit, too! I’ve already received a request from Natalie that I get her the same thing next year for her 21st!

Of the gifts I received, I got money for clothes from mom (BTW, the new bras fit great!), some gift cards, some DVD’s. But the prize for best present from this season goes to Haley. This adorable set of aliens making off with a gnome! I actually found the bigger yard version of this in a catalog a year or so ago, and I thought about getting it for Dad. But it was too expensive for me to get and I guess I never got around to suggesting a group gift from the three of us, so… Anyway, Haley found a smaller version and it’s perfect! It is currently sitting on the ledge of my desk at work. I had it at home, but the little critters kept making off with various things around the house. I figure they can run amok at work for a while.

The runner up in the fun gift category is Phil (see pic) from my Secret Santa, Shawn. The best part is when I opened it up and read the directions to add water to the dirt pellet and “fluff the dirt with a fork”! I loved it. Less than a week later, I come in to work and Phil has sprouted a head of hair, ur.. grass! I’m not sure how long the thrill of watching grass grow will entertain me, but for now, Phil is hanging with Bob, Ted, and Jareth the African violets.

Christmas did end up with a big uh-oh, though. Mom got sick and instead of getting better up in Indy, she got worse. I brought her back home and took her to the convenient care center and she was diagnosed with pneumonia. The doctor shot her up with some high-powered antibiotics and gave her an Rx for a Z-pac, but she wasn’t bad enough off to have to be hospitalized (I said ‘refrigerated’ at one point when I was talking to Boss #2 at work about it, don’t know where that came from). Unfortunately, I don’t have any paid time off until the new year due to my having sprained my neck muscles while hanging up my coat (don’t ask, it’s a short, un-interesting, and very painful story) earlier this month. And my aunt who lives less than a football field length down the road, well, let's just say it would never occur to her to volunteer to come over and hang with mom, her sister, while I was at work. Fortunately, Holly, who is off work until next week sometime, came down to nurse the sickee.