Yeah! The Lair!

I could hardly be more excited about going to the Lair of the Golden Bear next week. Every time I think about it, my heart starts to race. I'm already packing the week full of things to do--or not do! I'm bringing 3 paperbacks (and my Itty Bitty Book Light) so I can sit on my ass and read for hours. I'm bringing my fins & kickboard (and goggles, can't forget those) so I can do lap swims in their huge pool. I'm bringing hiking boots to do hikes. I'm bringing a warm jacket so we can sit around the big campfire and hear the guest speakers (and see the inevitably stupid skits). I'm bringing wine and cards so my sister & mom can whup my ass in whatever we play (I really do think I'm smart but cardgames are not my forte) while we sip out of dining-hall coffee cups.

I'm bringing cash to buy clay for throwing pots (omg, I love pottery) and white t-shirts for tie-dying (I was mad I hadn't brought more last time).

YEAH! or as Liz would say, FUCK YEAH!

Rant: "Thank you for calling [insert company name here]."

So I discover a small snafu with our Kaiser prescriptions, esp. my son's, since our pediatrician (boo hoo!) has left Kaiser. I refilled one that she wrote and they charged me full price instead of the Kaiser 'prescription benefit' price ($75 versus $5). Called the pharmacy and straightened that part out, then called the new pediatrician's office and asked that she re-generate all of his prescriptions (for asthma) with her name on them so this doesn't happen again.

The advice nurse calls back to confirm some stuff and is very nice, then ends the call with, "Thank you for calling Kaiser." WTF? Who else am I going to call to straighten out my son's prescriptions with Kaiser, done by our pediatrician, who is a Kaiser pediatrician? I'd rather they just not say it, or morph it to something like Southwest says at the end of a flight: "We realize you have a choice of airlines to fly, and appreciate that you have chosen us."

And just now, I was calling Albertson's about my missing ATM card. "Thank you for calling Albertson's." Well, I'm not about to freaking call Safeway when I was not there the last time I saw my ATM card! And I called the tiny, freakish in-grocery-store BofA branch to see if they have it and hung up before they could say, "Thank you for calling Bank of America"... or maybe they wouldn't have said it, since they had just told me that if you lose a non-BofA ATM card, well, fuck you, because we don't even KEEP A RECORD of cards that we retrieve from the ATMs if they're not BofA cards. Nice.

OK, rant over. Dang, I had a QotD. What was it?

I found Graham's loft bed

I don't know why, but I've been obsessed with finding photos of Graham's loft bed online for a while now. Some very sweet gals in Newark (or San Leandro?) gave it to us, with the mattress & box spring. Yes, gave it to us, for free. And the mattress set was not just pristine but really nice quality.

At first, I just set up a twin bed my sister had given us & put the mattress set on it. I have a cute photo I need to post of Graham grinning like crazy on that bed.

Then, one time when my dad was visiting, we put the bed together. Not a simple matter! But we succeeded. Here it is with the bed at the lowest position, but we set it up with the bed at the middle position, about shoulder height for me. You can set it up with the bed pretty much at the top of the supports (so you can fit a desk underneath) but he'll have to be like 30 for me to be comfortable with that.

Anyway, if those sweet dyke moms are reading, once again, THANK YOU for this terrific bed & mattress. We are still enjoying it.

Ranty rant rant

I guess I feel ranty today. Just had a perfectly pleasant conversation with a gal at Fed Ex about a package that is due to be delivered at my house today (unlikely to happen while I'm home for lunch), and how I could coordinate picking it up at their local office (which I'd already realized I'd have to do), and she ends the call with "Thank you for calling Fed Ex."

Um, you're welcome, but... who the hell else am I going to call about my package that was shipped Fed Ex? It's not like I chose that carrier; Tracfone did.

OK, ranty rant rant, and I'm done.

Graduation?!?

My kid graduates today. For those of you counting on your fingers, he's graduating from preschool. "Graduation?" you say. Yeah, yeah, I know; I feel like the step from K to 1st grade is bigger. But they had us buy (uck, barf!) yellow graduation gowns w/mortarboards and silly "2005 Graduate" sashes, and will hold a graduation ceremony today.

And I'll cry my freakin' eyes out. That's a given. (viz. the waterproof mascara.)

I'm very proud of my kid. He's still doing word searches (it wasn't a fluke, Andrea!). And still does crazy math in his head ("10 and 10 is.... twenty. Right, Mom?"). And is mostly not hitting his classmates when they cause him dismay (oy vey, my son). Mostly, he's gone from Tiny Baby to Big Kid at this school. And will transition to Summer School on July 5, wow.

Gotta get ready to go and save 3 seats and set up my video camera. Hey, just because I think it's a little silly doesn't mean I take a break from SuperMom!

Yeah! Word of mouth ROCKS!

Just dropped Maddy off at my ex's for the weekend, while we go camping in the dog-unfriendly CA State Park system. The guy who painted the exterior of my house was now painting hers, after having done some interior work last winter. I had also referred a former coworker to him to do some interior painting.

So he says to me, "Pick a room and I'll paint it for you for free next winter." OMG! This guy is SO good. He mixed up about 10 colors till we found THE green I wanted, and he knew exactly how to make the matching green. I have referred him to so many people just because he is so good.

Graham's room? Living room? I think I'm going to have him do the dining room. Yippee!! How fast can I tear out that fake wainscoting and install beadboard? I'm so happy!

Customer service is so weird

I bought a very cheap canopy on Memorial Day Weekend at Fred Meyer in Medford. $20 with all the tubes you slip together. Since I'm way too cheap to buy the spendy ones, I figured it could work. And it would be nice to have sun protection on camping trips.

So I start putting it together in my dining room (because I'm weird that way and it made me laugh to set up our garage-sale tent indoors when I was checking it out), and I bloody can't make the top part--the pyramid--go together. I push the last tube into place, and a part pops out from the other side. I push that into place and another piece pops apart. I got out masking tape and started taping together the segments. I must have taped 10 joints before I gave up.

The directions say, "Don't return to the store--call customer service." So I call at noon today, when I'm home for lunch. 8 customers ahead of me. I put it on speaker phone, and load up the dishwasher while I'm waiting. Finally, it's my turn. I get a very nice gal on the phone who says they don't have replacement parts for that model (not that I asked for replacement parts, but I just couldn't get the damned thing together, as if some tube is too short) and she quickly suggests they send me a new one. "With netting or without?" Mine is without, and I tell her so. Start giving her my info, and finally ask, "So will I be shipping this one back?" and she says no, I can keep it for replacement parts or whatever I want. "Um, in that case, can I say 'with netting' now?" (cause that would be nice) Sure, she says, and changes the notation in a jiffy.

OK, the thing only cost $20 (no tax! Doncha love Oregon) but is it really worth their while to ship a new one out & not ask for the old one back? I'm glad we'll have the netting, though; freaking yellow jackets drove us insane at Lake Siskiyou last year.

Last weekend

I've been toying with the idea of treating this like an online diary, as Andrea often does. So here's last weekend:

Friday, June 3: was a Night Care night--the last one for Graham at his preschool. For $20, they feed them, give them some fancy dessert (like make-your-own sundaes), and keep 'em from 6-9PM. I had planned to shop for clothes for Saturday with my friend Samantha but then woke up and realized that traffic from Alameda to Berkeley would be murder, and 511.org confirmed it: traffic was moving at 26 mph along the freeway. What did I do instead? Oh, right, I planned to shop here in town at the SA, but called after dinner at 6:45 and was told they were closed (that they closed at 7; interesting math, there). Oops. Stayed home & organized... something. Watched Cheapo Tivo till time to pick my guy up.

Saturday, June 4: met Sami to shop at Out of the Closet in Berkeley. Seemed like no great shakes at first glance, but I ended up finding some nice lined slacks, a great purple blazer, white blouse, belt, and matching narrow tie for not a lot of money. Wore them with my bowler (a genuine Stetson, from Disneyland, no less!) and my ska-type black buckle shoes, which I polished up. Was completely ready to get to our Spaghetti Dinner dress rehearsal, Graham dressed & ready, when I remembered that the choir always provides desserts for the dinner. Dammit! Ran off to Albertson's and could only find a coconut cream pie. Got Graham dropped off at a friend's (God bless Lynn & Terri!), went to the rehearsal... only to find that the choir was NOT providing desserts this year. Stashed pie on a high shelf.

Spaghetti dinner went very well. We sang "A 20th Century Celebration," music from the 20th century (except 70s & up because the songs were stupid). Lots of our older church folks were singing along with every song and it seemed like everyone enjoyed it. The bell choir didn't screw up mightily; actually, we did very, very well. ("The Rose" by Bette Midler and "Memory" from CATS.) Several of our youth did songs to cover the 70s and up, including "I'm Just a Girl" by No Doubt. Oy, lots of my choir friends had never even heard the song! And the choir did the music from Sister Act, as we did the year-before-last. Always popular.

Sunday, we went to church as usual. I nabbed the pie as we left and we went straight to the store to return it and buy a bunch of fruit. I hosted a meeting about finding someone to do the childcare for choir and adult ed. book studies. Graham ate like half a melon. I'm glad he didn't get diarrhea. We kept the meeting to an hour and a half, which was good because we were all tanked from having done the Spaghetti Dinner the night before (all of us singing except the Rev.)!

Graham and I ended the day with a hike in Redwood Regional Park. We didn't get as far as I'd hoped before dark, but it was fun and refreshing. I hope to complete our hike some day soon. I do have to remember to plan hikes that go downhill at the end, as Graham was running on the way out but poking along on the way back. Maddy enjoyed it, though, that's for sure!

Bad flashback

I was reading hiking descriptions from Mt. Diablo, where we'll go this weekend. Came across this hike, and once I got to the description, I had a bad flashback. It sounded a lot like when I used to play rogue, an entirely text-based computer game. It would say something like

"You are standing in front of an old house. There is a rock here."

Generally, if you found something, it was worth having, so you'd type "get rock." and your character would pick it up, or you'd see something like

"The rock is too heavy to pick up." and you'd have to figure out that you'd need the pickaxe or to look behind it--and how to phrase those activities.

Like all computer-based games, I sucked royally at it. Hopefully, the actual hike will be more fun.

(And yes, I'm painfully aware that most of my readers will have no idea what I'm talking about, except probably R.)

OMG, brainstorm

I should offer my dad some liver and onions. I rather like it, while he forbade my mother from ever cooking it while he was in the house.

bwah hah hah hah hah hah!

What is up with dads?

What is up with dads always trying to get you to eat stuff? Viv's dad is intent on making her eat shrimp when she doesn't want to. My dad drove me (and himself) insane once, trying to make me try some clams. I have tried them, I don't like them, and yes, I'm sure; don't ask me to try them again!

Last weekend, my sister cooked some frozen salmon. There wasn't quite enough for all of us (me, sister, dad, stepmom, stepsister, stepsister's fiance), so we cooked a few hamburgers too. Yum, the burger was good; I haven't been eating a lot of beef. But my dad starts getting on my case to eat some salmon. "Have you ever tried it?" "Yes." "Have some!" "The only time I liked it was when it was really, really fresh." (said while my sister was out of the room so as not to hurt her feelings.) "This is really good; you should try it!" I did have a tiny sliver and it was not pleasant. (The pesto on it was, though--yum!) I just don't care for salmon. I adore trout and most other fish.

AGH! Will that man ever leave me alone? He can't rest until I try food he thinks is tasty. (sigh)

Men's nipples have a purpose, as do female orgasms

Dang, I'm peeved. I read this story from a link from Mark Morford's latest column. In the story, the researcher says that men's nipples are vestigial. Just last weekend, Graham and I were reading a book from the library that said the same thing--women can feed babies with their nipples, but men's don't do anything.

WTF? I've known plenty of men who have feeling in their nipples and enjoy them being played with as part of sex. I'd say they serve a purpose, then!

And as for women's orgasms having not purpose... ay yi yi. I would bet they serve a purpose in getting women to want to have sex (with men) again to pursue that elusive sensation.... This may not make sense, but suffice it to say that I'm steamed.

And anyway, how can something that awesome (experienced with any sex of partner, or no partner at all) not be purposeful?