As I woke up this Thanksgiving morning, with one cat on my bladder and one cat pawing my face because she was hungry, I started contemplating what all I had to be thankful for.
In no particular order of importance,...
I'm thankful that my precious fluffy baby girl has recovered from near death, potential liver failure, and a life of diabetes. She is one healthy fluffy baby and I praise God for the joy these four-footed critters have brought into my life in the past several years.
I'm thankful for my job. I do not enjoy having to work for a living, but then who does? :) But in this economy, not only do I have a well paying job, but a job working with people I like and respect -- for the most part, that is!
I'm thankful that I have a warm happy home to come home to every evening. Each morning on the way to work, I pass homeless-looking men wandering around downtown Evansville, and I am reminded how fortunate we are.
Speaking of our warm happy home, I'm so very thankful for the wonderful family and friends who have helped mom and me both move into our new condo and get the house in Wadesville prepared for sale. My sisters and parts of their familys have been down several weekends in the past couple of months to help pack, paint, clean, transport stuff, put stuff away (Holly, we're still looking for stuff!) and my aunt Chris and her family came up and painted, cleaned, and worked on the plumbing, and a whole crew of people from our church came out to the house at 4pm on a Friday, packed all the furniture, including a piano, 3 filing cabinets, 6 dressers, three beds and trekked it all out to the condo, caravan-style and then carted it all up to our second floor condo. I'm pretty sure the piano almost made a few of them lose their religion! :)
I'm thankful for mom. I come home from work each evening to her smiling face and, usually, a home-cooked meal. Having lived by myself for 14 years, I truly appreciate what she does for me. I probably take her for granted, but hopefully not too often. I know that someday I will live alone again, and I will miss her twice as much.
I'm thankful for my general good health. Yes, I'm too heavy and yes, I have high blood pressure and cholesterol, and I have this weird wooshing in my right ear, but generally, I'm pretty good. Or at least things could be worse. I'm also thankful that mom is in pretty good health. I worry about her, with her rhuematoid arthritis and she's almost 70, and she's exhausted herself throughout this whole move. But now that we've moved, she can just spend the winter in our lovely new home resting and taking care of herself.
I'm also very thankful for elevators. The elevator worked through the evening of the actual move, but pooped out the next day. Since then, we've had to cart boxes up the stairs, along with groceries and other stuff. Meanwhile, we've been collecting trash like no one's business, and we've been having to trek to all down. But praise God, the elevator man came and got the elevator working yesterday. This morning, we rode the trash downstairs in the elevator and mom was singing "Praise the Lord!" the entire trip!
I'm also thankful for hot chocolate with tiny marshmellows. This afternoon, mom and I went to the house in Wadeville to clean out the garage. Of course it was 40 degrees and pouring rain, but we did it. I forced mom to stay in the garage and just bring me things while I, wearing my bright yellow rain poncho from when we went to Disney World with Mickey Mouse on the back, drug all the trash over into the trash dumpster. We worked about an hour until we filled the dumpster - my clothes were soaked down to my undies, and my fingers and toes were frozen. When we got back home, I changed into my warm fuzzies, mom made hot cocoa, and I sat here on the couch with my big fluffy girl and drank my cocoa and we watched Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on HBO (for some reason we have it for free at the moment - but I figure the cable company will figure it out and turn it off soon, so...) We discussed turning on the fireplace, but we'd have had to move the stuff sitting on the hearth in front of it, so we ixnayed that idea.
Long story short, Rose has a lot to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Road Trip!
About a six weeks ago, shortly after Glen Beck's rally in Washington DC, there was an uprising on the internets that Steven Colbert should have a rally. I thought that sounded fabulous and decided that if it were to truly come about, I should see about going. When Colbert and Jon Stewart returned from their Labor Day vacations, they eluded to an announcement that would be coming shortly. My hopes jumped. After two weeks of hints, they finally announced Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity and Colbert's March to Keep Fear Alive. I immediately emailed my sister, Haley, the only person I thought I might be able to convince to join me in attending a crazy event such as these, and she was game! So we are off! The rally is this coming Saturday, Oct. 30th, on the National Mall in Washington DC. We have a hotel room in Arlington, VA, just a couple of blocks from the Metro station. I am going up to Indianapolis this afternoon. Haley and I will jump in her buggy on Friday morning and be D.C. Bound! I've never done anything as crazy as this, and I'm sure I'll never have the opportunity, let alone the nerve, to do it again. Frankly, I'm sort of nervous – I'm not good with crowds, you know, and they're expecting a whopper! Today, I found the preliminary schedule for the event online: 10:00 a.m.: The pre-pre-show begins with videos and music on the jumbotron to keep the gathering crowd friendly and entertained. So after I get off work, all I have to do is hit a gas station for fuel and munchies, and I'll be off! I have the iPhone available for pics and status updates on Facebook. I can also blog from the road, although typing on that thing isn't convenient, so any blog entries will be short and to the point. I've got my camera and almost no hopes whatsoever of getting very close to my heroes, but maybe I'll have pics. Wish me luck! |
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Merle - A True Man
I have come to the conclusion that Merle, although some parts may be missing or nonfunctional, is a true man. His appointment for his calendar photograph was Saturday, the 16th. The last time I saw him was Monday, the 11th. I went outside each morning, lovingly carrying his bowl of Meow Mix and called in my not-quite-so-dulcet-it's-7-AM-voice for him to come to breakfast. I would place it on the porch and call him until my voice cracked or the cold concrete made my feet run inside on their own volition due to frostbite. Nothing. But that was ok. I knew that he would show up on Saturday morning, like a normal man, all "what!?" Looking innocent and handsome and making me want to punt him to Poseyville and give him loving scritches at the same time. Each morning, the tone of my voice grew more frantic and my feet were able to withstand higher levels of hypothermia because I knew that this was an important mission. Saturday morning. His appointment is at 8:15. I've timed the trip and I know it will take 30 minutes to get there. I wake up at 6:00 - I SET THE ALARM FOR A SATURDAY! I don't do this often and generally it's for important things like meeting the Pope! Not that I've met the Pope, or am even Catholic, that is not the point. Not only did I set the alarm for 6, but I actually got up at 6. I got ready and did a little farming, because a girl has her priorities, and at 6:45 I went outside just knowing that the handsome devil would be there. He was not. I called. And called. Nothing. I went back inside and played solitare on my iPhone. (Have I blogged that I went ahead and got my iPhone? - more on that later, I'm sure.) 7:00 - I went outside and called. Nothing. Have I mentioned that I woke up with a sore throat and aching head? I would have given anything to say screw it and go back to bed. But I KNEW this was important, damn it! Back inside. The indoor bunch think I've gone mad... and I'm not sure they are wrong. 7:15 -- outside - nothing. 7:30 -- ditto. 7:45 -- I call the photographers and reschedule the diva's (is there a male diva?) appointment. Now he has an appointment for tomorrow morning. But I'm not overly concerned because I've talked to the paper and if he doesn't get his picture taken, they will print the picture we submitted. And frankly, I don't care how good Bob Straub is, I've met Merle. I've taken Merle's picture. I don't see Bob Straub getting a better picture than the one Haley took. So we'll see what happens. Now that we have a contingency plan, I'm guessing he'll be sitting on the front porch looking at me all handsome like tonight when I get home. Sigh. |
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
We're Movin' on Up!
Things have been busy for Rose the past couple of weeks. I can't recall if I've mentioned this before, but I made a comment to mom at one point over the summer, while we were working out in the yard, that at some point she was going to have to accept that she's almost 70 and isn't/ won't be able to maintain the place and I'm lazy and I have no desire to. I pointed out that if she wasn't ready yet, it was fine, but surely it would be better to make the decision to move/sell the place on her own terms rather than out of necessity. She nodded and said "yep," and I went on trimming the forsythia bush. Like a week or so later, she brings home a "for sale by owner" magazine from the grocery store just to see what is out there. Says she thinks we can aim to put the house on the market come springtime. A Sunday about a week later, we see that the condo association across the road from our church has an open house that afternoon, so we go. I LOVED it. Hard wood floors, three nice bedrooms, a 2-car garage. But mom said, probably correctly, that it was too much – money and room – for us. Besides, we need to wait until the spring. So we drove home. A couple of weeks later, she comes home from a Tuesday morning bible study telling me that there's another, smaller condo, in the same place having an open house Sunday. So we go. This condo is in a building containing eight units, and is on the second floor with a "bonus" room (i.e. 3rd bedroom) on the third floor. It has a balcony overlooking the woods and the lake. It is marvelous! I LOVED it on sight. I figure the cats will fully enjoy chasing each other up and down the stairs to the 3rd floor. The price is better, but… Also, in that Sunday's paper, there's a condo for sale by owner listed... we go. It had its niceties, but I preferred the first one of the day. By the end of the evening, mom is having a "heavy feeling" in her chest and thinks we should wait until spring. Ok. The next weekend, Haley comes down ready to look at condos. But we're waiting, so all she gets to see is the outside of both of them. Mom has me print off all the info from the county assessor and treasurer websites about the condo, but she still has questions about buying real estate that I can't answer, so I hook her up with Jennifer, my mentor in all things legal, and she has a nice phone conversation while I watch Glee on Tuesday. After she's done talking to Jennifer, she tells me to contact the bank about getting pre-approval on a loan and Mom'll make an appointment for the weekend to see the condo. We be back on! So I called Holly, (Haley having just been down I didn't figure she'd want to come back the next weekend), to see if she (Holly) might be interested in coming down to see the condo on Saturday. Saturday, Mom, Holly and I pack up the party van and go to town to see the condo. Holly LOVES it and tells us to go for it. By the time we leave it, we have an appointment to come back in the next afternoon to fill out the papers for an official offer. Sunday, after church and lunch, we go and make the "official" offer and my headache starts. (And the headache didn't go away until much drugs, both Rx and OTC, and a good night's sleep later.) But just a few hours later, we receive the news that the offer was accepted as written! Monday, my instructions were to find a home inspector and arrange for an inspection AND to call the woman at the bank…. Not OUR bank, mind you, because that woman NEVER (and still has not as of this writing) returned my initial phone call. I talked to Steve about his recommending an inspector and he tells me to call the guy on the other side of the big arbitration case we had a couple summers ago. We ended up with an appointment for Friday morning for the inspection and Friday afternoon for the bank to fill out the loan papers. Saturday, mom and I met with the realtor about asking the sellers to fix the few minor issues the inspector came up with. So, here it is, Tuesday. Mom is out of town, gone to San Diego with Aunt Chris to visit their other sister Bonnie for 10 days. I'm left here herding cats, preparing for our office's bosses day luncheon/celebration, and waiting for word from the bank (re: the pre-approval of the loan) and the realtor (re: sellers' response to inspection). Home/property ownership seems to be the final hurdle for me to jump before I land squarely in "adulthood." And I'm not keen on that jump. I've been happy being a (relatively) obligation free, child-like soul all these years… I figure it's what kept me young at heart. But now I'm going to have a MORTGAGE! Yikes! I can foresee future blogs regarding the property tax issues and zoning questions and filing the LONG form for taxes! I shudder at the whole idea! I need a nap and am really missing kindergarten right now. Sigh.. |
Monday, October 11, 2010
Merle - The Rest of the Story
As promised, I'm letting my "out of town" followers know the outcome of the "election"/calendar contest. Merle got 968 votes and placed #12 (top 14 go in the calendar), so he's in! We are all very excited for Merle. Merle, however, remains stoic on the subject. So the beautiful picture that Haley took that shows off his beautiful eyes will be in the calendar, right? Wrong. Friday, as Mom and I are driving to the bank (more on that later) I get a call from a woman at the Courier congratulating me and Merle on his getting in the calendar and telling me that I need to call Bob Straub Photography to make an appointment for Merle to get his picture taken for the calendar! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? I haven't had the heart yet to tell Haley as I know it'll break her heart that the picture she worked so hard to get and is so, rightfully, proud of will not be in the calendar. But take heart! My thoughts are there is still hope. Frankly, Merle is an outdoor cat. Merle isn't fond of strangers. Merle is not the easiest subject to work with. Merle likes to go on walkabouts, so it isn't even guaranteed that he'll be around on Saturday (the day of his appointment) for me to even attempt to nab him (by myself, as mom is in San Diego this week) to get him there. So in my mind, there is still a possibility that they'll (have to) use Haley's picture… so I haven't told her yet. Sigh. |
Friday, September 17, 2010
Vote for Merle!
The Evansville Courier Press is having its annual “Pet Idol” calendar contest to benefit the Tri-State Newspaper in Education Foundation. I’m not sure what this is or what they do, but…a couple of weeks ago, Haley was down and she took a picture, at my request, of Merle. I had tried, because he is so handsome and those eyes are so incredible. But it wasn’t a one person job. Every time I’d get ready to snap the pic, he’d walk toward me or walk away. I thought with Haley handling the camera, I could herd Merle. The result is photographic history.
So, I entered the picture of Merle into this contest. The top 13 vote getters will have their pic in a calendar (sold for donations to this foundation) for 2011. The official pictures came out for the first time in Sunday’s paper – in black and white. WHAT!? How can his adoring fans get the true feel of those eyes in BLACK AND WHITE!?
As I’ve written before, Merle has got to the point in a young male (mostly) cat’s life when he roams. Probably since spring, he’s spent more time away then he’s spent at home. But since his picture was in the paper, he’s been there every morning when I open the door. Frankly, I think he’s keeping it close to home to avoid his groupies. Not that he could do much with said groupies… or could he? Do the parts still work? Hmm… In retrospect, it’s too bad we “fixed” him, he could have passed those eyes on to another generation (or six.)
I got to work Monday and promptly emailed Merle’s picture (in color) to everyone in my email address book… whether I’ve spoken to them in the past 10 years or not!... and asked them to vote for Merle. I’ve received a variety of emails back from people, it’s been fun. My cousin Sara asked me if he was named after Merle Hazel (a little old man who is somehow related to us, or at least he always comes to the Barger Family Reunions in July). I wrote her back with the following story of how Merle got his name:
He was one of three boy kittens and I drove out to Wadesville early one morning before work to help corral them because Mom and Dad had an appointment for them with the vet to be fixed. They still had not decided on names for the kittens, so I tried one last time and pointed out that the vet was going to want names. So Dad say, “Ok, Willie Nelson”. And I was like, “Uh for all three of them??” And then he said “Willie, Waylon, and the boys.” I said, “You’re going to name this one, ‘The Boys’?” (Especially since ‘the boys’ were the reason for the visit to the vet!) So finally, we ended up with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Merle Haggard. Of course, none of us are country music fans, but that was beside the point. (Willie just disappeared as male cats of a certain age tend to do in the country. Waylon was run over in the road -although I think it would have been more fitting for Willie to be run over so I could say he was playing “on the road
again.”)
Merle is entry #17 in the contest, and as of Thursday (the last time they updated the stats on the website) he’s in 2nd place!! I think it’s a wasted opportunity that you can’t vote online (and wrote the paper and told them so), so I set up “Vote 4 Merle” Headquarters at my desk at work.
I’m collecting fundage and will take care of turning the money in for Merle. Greg even donated the contents of the “Curse Jar” into the fund for Merle. (Since most of the money in said jar was FROM Greg, this was nice.)
Voting runs until Friday, October 1st. And the winners will be announced on Sunday, October 3rd. For all of my many fabulous readers everywhere, IF you are interested in voting for Merle, he would appreciate your vote. You can call in your vote to 1-866-683-1724 and pay by credit card – votes are $.25 per vote. Either way, you KNOW I’ll let you know the election results after October 3rd.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Inherit the Wind
I am my father’s daughter. I impressed Mom the other night when, about 9:00 pm, I opened up the box that my new Dish receiver came in (the old one had been having problems and what with the new TV Season coming up, I had to get it fixed), hooked it up, and got it working correctly in about 30-40 minutes. It wouldn’t have taken that long, but it involved me getting down on the floor and unplugging the old one, while removing the cats from the area where I was trying to work, then getting up and dusting, then getting back down, removing the cats again, and plugging the new receiver back in, all while continuously fighting to keep the cats, specifically Gizmo and Cleo, out of my way. I’m pleased to say the problems have been resolved. Cats aside, Dad had his way with electronic equipment. He worked for 25 years as a TV repairman. Now, I’m not one to open up something and work on the innards – Haley inherited that trait – but I do seem to be able to get things to work without having to read much, if any, of the instruction manuals! (This bodes well for the advent of my iPhone!)
I inherited another trait from my father. No matter where he went, he liked to back the car/van/truck/whatever into his parking spot. At home, at church, at the mall. The man loved to back the car into parking spots. I seem to have got this from him. The other morning, I was getting out of my car, in the “big boy” parking lot, and the partner beside whom I park happened to be arriving at the same time and he noted that I always seem to be backed into my spot. I responded that it aids in making a quick getaway. He looked at me oddly… they never seem to know how to respond to me. And then I said that I inherited it from Dad and how it always drove Mom nuts (in a good way) and now I continue his legacy (in both ways – parking and driving Mom nuts!)
I wrote a couple of blogs ago about my having inherited from Grandpa Hollis the quirk of getting up and going to bed 15 minutes before the show is over. There are a few other things I seem to have inherited from my ancestors.
Granny Barger had a way with African Violets, or so I’ve been told. I only vaguely remember, but mom tells me that she had a window with lots of African Violets (does that need to be capitalized?) growing in her kitchen. Mom has a black thumb where indoor plants are concerned and I sort of assumed I got it from her. But several years ago, at the Secretary’s Day lunch, there were African violets on each table and after the lunch, I ended up with one. I named it Bob. Nowadays, Bob is big. He blooms about every three months (I assume that’s normal), and I have to repot him periodically. I also have Jeffrey, who was a part of one of the floral arrangements we received for Dad’s funeral. Jeffrey should be a nice big, blooming dude, but when I moved in with Mom, Jeffrey moved in with us and after about two weeks, someone (I’m assuming said someone has four legs, as Mom disavows all knowledge) ate all but one of his leaves. So I took Jeffrey to work. He is slowly recuperating, but so far, no blooms. I think poor Jeffrey is still in shock – but come on, it’s almost been a year, dude! Get over it! Then there was Ted. I rescued Ted from one of the attorneys here (Ted, as the case may be) and brought him back to health and repotted him. But he kept growing weird and I think there was something wrong with the potting soil I repotted him in last time because it started molding, so I cut off some good looking leaves and stuck them in some water to grow roots. After a couple of months now, they’ve grown roots, been potted, and so far so good. I assume they are continuing to grow good strong roots because they aren’t doing anything above ground, but they appear to still be healthy.
Finally, one of my odder quirks, I got from Great-Grandpa Hindman (Grandma Hollis’s father). According to Mom, he, like me, did not like to co-mingle his food on his plate. Which I don’t find weird at all. Who wants their baked beans oozing onto their potato salad? I would much rather have several small plates or bowls. Of course I tend to take it a step further and generally eat all of one item before moving onto another items, saving the best (the meat) for last.
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