chatter

it is such a social holiday and we aren’t sociable people and it bugs me. First of all it was just me and Hollace trick or treating. Last year her best friend Kayla went with us. This year Kayla is ignoring Hollace. We even ran into Kayla and the large gang of kids with her and she didn’t say a thing even when a little kid said, Kayla, isn’t that your friend? It just breaks my heart. Hollace doesn’t seem too upset about it.

Everywhere the kids were in groups while Hollace T or T’ed alone. On the adult side, all the adults in my neighborhood seemed to know each other and I know no one. I have lived here for 15 years. Across the street is the king and queen of the neighborhood. The woman will say hi to Hollace but not to me. Tonight she said hi to neither of us because she was too busy socializing with all of her friends.

I know this is my issue. I know there is nothing wrong with those people. I am missing that part that connects with people and it bugs the shit out of me. Halloween somehow brings it up. I am in a funk over this. Actually I am nearly in tears on how unconnected I feel and it isn’t just Halloween either. Maybe I better put that extra $$$ in the FSA next year for a good therapist 😉

I also don’t like kids coming to the door for candy either…bah humbug

Today the weather was beautiful in the 60s. I promised Hollace that we would go for a walk at the forrest preserve but then it got cold and yucky. Today I determined was the best day to do this. Tomorrow’s weather is promising to be just as nice but it is Halloween. Next week at this time it will be dark as we change the clocks on Saturday. I guess we could of went on Saturday or Sunday (which is still promising to be nice) but I was looking for a specific hour and really today was the day.

I picked Hollace home from art class. A katydid hitched a ride on the roof of my car all the way to the preserve.

We walked the 2 mile loop but got nervous we missed our out back to the parking lot that we kind of went off the path and into some desserted parking lot. It wsa getting dark.

We finally found the car. We then went to our favorite Mexican restaurant. We decided to hit the little Mexican grocery store connected to the restaurant for some chihuahua cheese. Then RAW had a sweet tooth so we stopped in the Mexican bakery on the other side. I had never been in this bakery. You grab a tray and some tongs and buy your sweets. I picked up a simple cake doughnut with chocolate frosting.

When I ate it at home later I became obsessed. The doughnut was so creamy. I couldn’t figure out what about that doughnut was so good but it just was. I got to hit that place tomorrow to get some more. Yum.

Sherry was horrified that my Aunt Bobbie (79) hadn’t met her first grandchild yet (who is 4 months old now). Donna and Steve only live 3 hours away and yet haven’t managed to get down so Bobbie could see the baby.

Anyway Sherry was planning on coming up for a visit and had the great idea to bring Bobbie up to my house and then we continue up an hour to Donna’s.

On the trip up Sherry was very quiet in the back seat. I just figured she was tired. When we were about a mile from Donna’s I pulled over to look up her house number. The moment I stopped Sherry didn’t waste any time opening the door to hurl. She apparently gets car sick. She didn’t know since she is never in a back seat.

The baby was adorable. I took 148 photos of Larkin. Sherry found it odd that Bobbie wasn’t all over that baby when we got there. That is how my family is, both sides. We aren’t fawners. Sherry couldn’t fathom. I did fawn over the baby but later realized I never did ask to pick her up.

After a proper visit, we left Bobbie up there and headed back to my house.

I told Sherry I wanted to make over my office and gung ho as she is said, lets get to it. Not so easy girl.

We watched a marathon of Mad Men that I had saved on the DVR. She had never heard of the show and was now hooked. Sunday night was the season finale. We were anxious for RAW to get home (he went to Indiana) so we could watch it.

Monday morning, I went to work and Sherry headed back up to Donna’s to pick up Bobbie.

For Sherry’s generousity I bought her a copy of Mad Men season 1 on DVD.

I am not a phone person but so far this week I talked 90+ minutes with Sherry (I suppose that is normal) and 90 minutes with Paula. I have had it on my list to call aunt Bobbie about the weekend since she won’t answer my emails so I talked to her for 40 minutes today. When I couldn’t reach her at lunch when I originally tried I decided to call grama and talked to her for 30 minutes. And I called Rosie who I haven’t talked to in years. I talked to her for 30 minutes. And it is only Tuesday.

It was nice to catch up with everyone but there was other communications changes that took place this week. One was that I unblocked text messages on my cell phone so now I have been going back and forth with the texts with Sherry today. The biggest change was that I finally signed on with Facebook. OMG, that place is nuts all the stuff going on with everyone. I have reconnected with a few online friends and within a day after signing up I heard from LInda from the old photo lab days. Then I heard from Nikki’s daughter (Linda’s niece) They were both asking if I heard from Rosie which prompted my call today.

Signing on Facebook and adding all my buds from both BYB and MM has been interesting to say the least. I feel like there has been this party going on that I just figured out was happening. It is fun and I am addicted of course.

My fingernails are too long to type and it is past my bedtime so this post isn’t as articulate as I was hoping but there you have it.

Oh, I got my haircut today–shoulder length bob. RAW liked it –wink-wink

When talking to grama I was shocked to find out that my Republican (and sometimes racists) grama likes Obama and would vote for him. Someone somewhere told her she doesn’t have to vote anymore. Like she was forced to before and now that she is old (89) she is retired with this voting business. I will have to tell my mom to get grama to the polls especially in light that she is voting for my guy 😉

We went camping with the camping club this weekend and it was trick or treat weekend.

Hollace got dressed up in her fennec fox costume. I thought maybe everyone would think she was a chihuahua but I was wrong. Everyone thought she was a bunny! She was horrified and after the first person said it she got upset and wanted to back to our site. It took awhile talking to her and told her it was up to us to tell them otherwise. She eventually got over it (she was really upset) and we went around and collected candy.

Yes everyone kept calling her a bunny but we would show them her tail and tell them that she was a fennec fox. Even if they didn’t ask LOL.

One guy walking past us guessed that she was either a bunny or a chinchilla. We gave him brownie points.

One person we came across knew someone who had a fennec fox as a pet. Later at the group campfire he was talking to her so he grabbed Hollace to talk to her about it.

Now we are home, we got back home earlier then usual because Deb has a little party today. We are getting ready to go right now.

I am a homebody, I just am and so is RAW. For a homebody we seem to go away for the weekend a lot. It drives me nuts cause a weekend at home really centers me for the upcoming week.

Last weekend was a weekend at home but really on Sunday we spent the day in Chicago and I guess that means it wasn’t a weekend at home cause I still felt out of sorts.

This weekend was a weekend at home. Our one out and about was on Friday evening at the gallery opening at the community college where my photo was accepted (56 selected out of 266 entries)

It was nice, lots of food and a live jazz band.

I feel bad though because of a snarky moment I had. I have no idea why I got like that. There was a photo that got in of the underside of Cloud Gate (aka the bean). RAW said, he liked that shot and I snarked back that I have taken so many photos just like that that weren’t worthy of me even uploading to Flickr. There was a guy standing near by who probably heard me. Then I secretly freaked, what if he was the photographer. I felt awful and pondered that the rest of the night.

In my snarky response I was trying to minimize or cut down RAW’s positive comment about the photo. While writing this right now it occurred to me that I did that was because RAW barely pays attention to my photography or rarely ever says anything about it. It isn’t because he is mean or doesn’t really care it just isn’t his nature or something. When he said something positive about that other a bland cliched photo when my original photos go mostly unnoticed by him, I just snapped.

Early Saturday RAW went off to Indiana so it was just me and the kid. I found it to be a very beneficial weekend as far as being a homebody and getting things around the house done.

Didn’t leave the house at all today, yesterday went grocery shopping, out to eat, to Kohls and to Hobby Lobby to buy stuff for Hollace’s Halloween costume (she is going as a Fennec Fox).

(isn’t he cute, I printed this out and named him Sparky— ok, so I share this new animal obsession with Hollace ;-))

It occured to me tonight that everyone is going to think she is a chihuahua with Beverly Hills Chihuahua coming out this week. I won’t tell her or she might change her mind on the costume.

This weekend, I finally finished up Sandy’s Pax photos. They are now ready to print and frame. I also finished the restoration of my great-grandparents portrait that my mom wanted to redone.

On the kitchen front, it occurred to me my procrastination on ordering the counter wasn’t just RAW worried about getting it measured properely (ok, it is mainly that) but also I wasn’t as set as I thought I was with my choice. I found another chip that I think will work much better. The color and pattern is toned down. Hopefully this week we will get it finally ordered.

Tonight while I was in the shower and RAW was only moments away from walking in the door, I told Hollace to answer the phone. It was RAW’s mom trying to reach RAW. Hollace answered it after the answering machine picked up so I have the conversation recorded. I was shocked how impatient and rude Hollace was to her grama. Dorothy asks if RAW is there. Hollace says no, Dorothy not understanding asks again. Hollace goes rudely, “I said no, he isn’t here!”. Then Dorothy still not getting it asks if she can talk to him. Hollace tells her we expect him in a few minutes. Sure enough, 1 minute later he shows up and his cell phone is ringing, it is his mom.

I will have to talk to Hollace about talking to her grama like that.

Both shippers dropped the ball on us lately.

There were four items we have been waiting for over a month for. When I realized how much time went past I called John and Home Depot and asked what is up. An hour later we get a call from Home Depot saying there are still things waiting for us to pick up. Uh, a phone call would of been nice when they first got there. The only thing we got in a timely fashion was the cabinet knobs. They said the cabinet pull outs were backordered. That was what was waiting for us.

When RAW got there to pick it up they told him the glass doors we were waiting for were in too (John ordered the wrong ones in the first place). But before we could take those home, we had to bring back the wrong ones. That would of been nice to mention in their first phone call that those were waiting too (ug). So RAW makes a 2nd trip.

On Monday, John followed up on the 2 things that Thomasville was suppose to send to us directly. One of them was a replacement cabinet door that had a crack. He said they show that UPS delievered that on Sept 3 and a Kathy signed for it. We don’t know any Kathy and no of no neighbor with that name. John orders us another door. In the meantime RAW installs the cabinet pull out shelves and is pissed to find out they are cheap rails as opposed to the nice ones in our other cabinets.

Today, two days later, a woman named Nancy called and said FedEx delivered a package to her that belongs to us. She lives a couple blocks away. Interesting that she took the time to look up our phone number since both of our cell phone numbers were on the package. It is the higher quality rails that RAW complained about 2 days ago. Nice to see that got here fast even though it didn’t get to us originally.

We are still waiting for one thing from Thomasville that John said is still coming (even thought it has been over a month). Wonder where that is going to end up if it hadn’t already.

Never before did I ever have problems getting packages from FedEx or UPS and to have it happen with both is odd.

Today I met with the school about Hollace and Aspergers. This past summer I had her in therapy to get a diagnosis or not so I could take it back to school and hopefully let her continue on seeing the social worker.

The therapist did diagnosis as Aspergers even though she acknowledged that it probably more apparent in a school situation.

Halfway through our sessions, she added on Anxiety Disorder mostly because of how she handles too much noise (ala Aspergers sensitivities) Honestly she is much improved over that sensitivity.

Anyway, at this meeting with the school today it has become more apparent that anxiety is more her issue then the Aspergers.

Why I call this a chip off the old block isn’t so much the anxiety in the sence of my anxiety posts of late but because she internally freaks out because she doesn’t get something and refuses to accept help.

An example the teacher gave was one day there was an announcement at the end of the day that anyone riding bus 6 needed to report to the gym because of a problem with busses. The teacher found Hollace in the hall looking flustered and crying. She asked what was wrong and Hollace kept saying nothing. It then clicked and the teacher asked Hollace if she was on bus 6. She admited she was and didn’t know what to do or where to go. The teacher escorted her to the gym and she was fine when she seen her friends on the bus.

Hollace is afraid to look stupid if she doesn’t know and tries to figure it out instead of asking someone.

Chip off the old block. My poor baby.

The photo I submitted to the College of Lake County’s juried art show got in.

Not the one at home, my Mac Book Pro, it rocks but my Dell at work. It has a gazillion gigs of RAM (I think 6 actually) but only recognizes 2 or 3. All the anxiety at work I have been experiencing has been compounded by my dumb ass computer. I have been getting some nutty errors and crashes that has made my intense timelines worse.

Adobe Encore (DVD authoring) is stupid too. I can’t believe that Adobe would put out such a buggy software. Just when I think I have figured out a problem I was having with my project, Encore would just crash.

Hopefully tomorrow the client will say what I finally got done is perfect and we can put that project to bed. I started it in July after all, I am sick of it.

I don’t know what I came on here to say, I don’t feel very articulate cause everything is either dumb or stupid, duh.

I think I need to get rid of my sewing machine. If I don’t have it then i won’t get the hairbrained idea that I can sew. I can not. Hollace wanted a black dress as a costume for her pretend band. I say hey, I can sew one! No I can’t, why do I keep forgetting that.

They got  10.5 inches of rain by mom’s house last weekend (I think we got a measly 4″). RAW was trying to get home throught that which proved to be a challenge no doubt.

I just put my PJs on and I keep catching a whif of perfume. I don’t have or wear perfume. I sniff the shirt and don’t smell it then eventually I catch it again. It only happened when I changed into it so I don’t know where it is coming from.

Today I dropped off a framed photo for the juried art show at the community college. It probably won’t get in. For some reason I felt like trying anyway. I should find out next week if it got accepted.

My boss was really impressed with the job that was giving me grief last week. He watched it 3 times. He said he was going to show it off. Cool. No one has heard if it worked out for the client yet. He was showing it in a trade show in Italy over the weekend.

I haven’t taken a single photo in the month of September and the month is half over.

I guess I am not done yet, I keep coming back to add more to this. On Sunday me and Hollace got to church (two Sunday’s in a row, wow ;-)) Anyway, we both wore bright yellow shirts and had rainbow umbrellas. Several people made mention of that. I said, yes, we are all sunshine and rainbows over here.

I guess that is enough blahblah from me tonight.