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My daughter has been living in Nashville for most of the summer. She's there job hunting and living with relatives while she looks. We went to Nashville yesterday to visit where I learned that my SiL has been trying to find my daughter a boyfriend.

My daughter is trying to find a job/career and my SiL thinks she needs to have a boyfriend.

WTF? My daughter is 23 and to the best of my knowledge never dated anyone. She has friends, both male and female, that she hangs with to go to bars, movies, etc. Why does she need to have a boyfriend? Hell, what if she'd rather have a girlfriend? Or maybe she's just not that interested.

I just don't understand why every female in the family seems to think the status of my daughter's relationship is so bloody important. My son always got, "what are you studying in school?" or "what do you plan to do after graduation?" My daughter has always gotten "do you have a boyfriend?"

I can't tell you how much that pisses me off. So am I the oddity that believe girls/women don't need a man or a relationship to be a whole person? Am I missing some girl gene that prevents me from thinking my daughter having a relationship is important?

I decided to pick up some lunch this afternoon and went to a local fast-food place. Now it was apparent that the cashier was fairly new, by the way she kept searching for the right key to press and the couple of clear and start over moments. Luckily I was the only person in line at the moment and in no real rush. She told me my total and I gave her a twenty. She pressed a few more buttons then froze. Whatever she did, the purchase must have rung up as exact change, because she looked at the register and then at my twenty and she was lost. Oh so woefully lost. She finally looked at her co-workers and asked if anyone had a calculator.

This is one of those times I hate being a slow thinker, because I'm just kicking myself for not telling the cashier she doesn't need a calculator just count the change back. It might have ended up being one of those "well duh" moments (because your brain just freezes and the common sense approach fails to make it to the working part of your brain) or maybe it would have been a teaching moment. Either way, it would have been better than me watching as the cashier scrambles for a calculator. I'm really hoping she just had a brain-lock because I would had to think that we, as a society, have become so dependent on technology we can't even do the simple things any more.

Being woefully behind the times (because that seems to be the way I run), I recently started watching Supernatural on Netflix. It is the type of show I have to watch when I'm home alone because DH doesn't like spooky/creepy shows like this. Hell he can generate his on nightmares without help from some TV show/movie. So watching it is a bit sporadic at best, but I have managed to make it through the 4th season. And my overriding thought?

How the HFIL is this showing going into its 10th season?

I mean really, the story line is meh at best and pretty ridiculous most of the time. And I'm having a very hard time finding any interest in the two main characters. Personally I find them incredibly annoying. I seem to have more interest in the secondary characters and either they don't show up much or they end up getting killed off. I'm also not sure if their nods to fandom are acknowledgement or mocking.
But I've made it through season 4 and I have come up with an idea of how season 5 should have started. I say should have because I'm going to be 100% positive it did not begin this way.

Lucifer should be a woman, in a business suit and quite annoyed at the entire apocalypse idea. I mean she's trying to manage Hell here; she doesn't have time to play tit-for-tat with the angels who must be bored and have nothing better to do than taunt the humans.

Like I said, I can say pretty safely that I doubt season 5 stated this way, but it might have made for an interesting story line.

For the first time in, well forever, I have decided to take losing weight seriously. ( Read more... )
*GRRRRRR*

Damn it, I try to be healthy and of all things I catch grief from nature?!

Today will be a short day no matter what I do. The loss of that one hour is always an adjustment. An adjustment that some years I just never make. I think the worse part of this is the fact that it will be dark at 6AM in the morning. I like waking up with a lighter sky in the mornings. Overall, I'm just not a fan of daylight savings time. Maybe it's because I live in the southern US where it was already light out until 7PM. Now that's going to be 8PM and just get later. And why is it called daylight savings time any way? I mean we aren't saving any daylight we're just moving light from the morning to the evening. Where is the savings.

What really irks me is the fact that our illustrious state government has proposed a bill to keep the state on DST all the time. Seriously? DST ALL YEAR LONG! Ah, no not a good idea. Now I'm old enough to remember when this was tried nationally one year and school kids got hit by cars because it was so dark early in the mornings during the middle of winter. But just think, if we stay on DST all year long we'll be the first state to celebrate the new year in the US. Wait...what?

*headdesk*

This is such a grand idea, what other important and useful legislation have you brought up this year? Or wait, I know you are trying to find a way to prevent the university from allowing students to use student activity fees to hold sex week. Because you know college students having a discussion about sex is just...well...dirty. I'm so glad there is nothing more important going on in the state that this is the time of legislation you are creating. Whee! Thanks for looking after us guys.
I really wish someone would create a sarcasm font.

Yesterday morning when I got up I discovered a stain on the rug in front of the kitchen. Now this really annoyed me since we just had our carpets cleaned 2 weeks ago. I noticed the stain was still wet so I put a bar towel over the stain and stacked some hardback books on top then went to work. When I came home, I decided to see how much of the stained wicked up. Well may bar towel was saturated so much, the bottom book jacket was wet and moisture was seeping into the book. YIKES!

That's when I realized the stain was not a stain, but water that was leaking from...somewhere. After searching walls and ceiling and everything else, I finally pulled the refrigerator out from the wall and and soon discovered that the hose that leads from the water to the refrigerator for the water dispenser and ice maker had a very tiny microscopic hole that was shooting a thin (think strand of hair) stream of water. Not only did I discover the leak, but I also found a lovely (said oh so sarcastically) collection of mold growing under the refrigerator and up the back wall. As best as we can figure the water must have been working its way under the baseboards and under the wall until it finally worked its way under the wall and into the carpet padding. That's when we finally discovered the problem. When the pad was saturated enough the water was in the carpet. Who the HFIL knows how long this has been going on.

We've gotten the baseboards pulled up and things cleaned and dried as best as we can, but we need to have it checked to see if there is mold or rot anywhere in the flooring. I know we'll have to get the lower 1/3 of the sheet rock replaced, but there is the chance the kitchen flooring will have to be replaced as well. The carpet we may be able to pull up and dry out without too much issue.

*sob*

I turn 55 today. Sometimes you have to wonder where the hell did all the time go? There's still so much I want to do, but time just slips through your fingers. With everyone out of college, I'm hoping there will be more time for personal things since we no longer have to worry about where tuition is going to come from any longer. We'll see. I did take this week off from work just so I'd have my birthday off for a change. Whee!

I've spent most of today attempting to help my daughter pack. The child that complained she had too much stuff when she left for Wales only to come home and buy more stuff. Ah materialism, ain't it swell?

She leaves tomorrow for Luxembourg where she will be an Au Pair for a family for the next 8 months. There is an option in her contract to up that to 1 year if they like her and she wants to stay.

Yep, four years of college with a BS in Communications (advertising) and she's going to Europe to be a baby sitter. Go figure. Don't get me wrong, this is a wonder experience for her and an opportunity to go places she's never been, it's just well....I don't know disappointing? She didn't even attempt to look for a job in her field before or after graduation. She is going to take some of her time while in Europe and look at possible internships for ad agencies in places like Belgium. Or she may decide to remain an Au Pair (which she can do until she's 30) and go to another country for another family. Hard to say, but the year should prove interesting.

It's odd and a little unsettling to realize that when she gets on that plane tomorrow she may not be back home for a long time. For the first time since my kids graduated high school I feel like I will be in that empty nest stage of life.

Someone broke out my daughter's taillight - again. On the up side, only the glass was broken this time. The vandal did not break the bulb or mess up the interior casing like last time. And her tires were not slashed. More of an annoyance than anything else. Still....

*sigh*

She parks at the end of the driveway so we can get the other car out of the garage. I guess being that close to the street is just too much temptation for the asshat(s) who likes to vandalize cars. We've moved her car to the grass closer to the house in hopes of saving the rest of the vehicle.

It is one of those times I really hope karma works. You know the idea of the person(s) responsible growing up to own a nice vehicle that must be parked outside only to have it vandalized for another person's enjoyment. Simple payback for current actions. That's all I ask.

To keep my camera from spending most of its time in my closet, I have given myself a challenge for 2014; a picture a day for the year. I'm hoping this will improve my camera skills and push my creativity. I'm lucky enough to live in a part of the country where winter weather doesn't mean days of snow, ice and extremely cold temperatures so I shouldn't be trapped by bad weather. Naturally, every time I'm out and about I'm looking for potential subjects to photograph and I've noticed something. I see some of the best views of the mountains, prettiest sunsets and interesting subjects while driving down the interstate.

*sigh*

I want to work on my photography and creativity, not add to my list of frustrations.

I work on a college campus and sometimes what I see makes me worry about the future. This morning about 10AM it was probably 7° outside plus wind chill. So as I'm walking to one of my labs bundled to the max, I witness a girl coming out of her dorm in running shorts, sneakers and a heavy jacket probably heading over to the sports recreation center to exercise. I realize her walk was less than 1/4 of a mile, but these are dangerously cold temperatures and every news cast and radio station has been warning people about the freezing temperatures. I also understand some people run warm, but when she squeals like a piglet you know she's not one of them. Did we lose common sense somewhere?

Today I've been married 31 years and par for the course one of us is sick. It's so nice to have a family tradition.

-_-

I guess I can think of maybe 5 years where someone in the family hasn't been sick on this date. It is one of the reasons I never plan anything for my anniversary; the chance of the plan falling through is very high. At least I'm not taking anyone to the hosptial. I had that pleasure on our first anniversary when my husband came down with a stomach flu.

If I go do it all over again, I think I would choose the late June to early August time frame to marry. We don't have any other celebrations, the weather is better for travel and there's less of a chance of one of use being ill. Alas we were young and impatient so I'm stuck with a poorly timed anniversary. Ah such is life and the difficulty we all must endure. (Why yes, that was sarcasm).

~~~

I love my minions. I have 8 of them at work, though only 2 to 4 on a given day. Still they have been working their butts off for me. We're upgrading our student computer labs to Adobe Creative Cloud for next semester, which means I have about 750 machines that have to be re-imaged before the beginning of spring semester on January 8. Luckily we can do a large portion of this imaging over the network, but it is still very time consuming work; a single build can take anywhere from 1.5 hours to 4 hours depending on the age of the network equipment in the building. As of this afternoon we've managed to re-image about 600 machines since last Friday when classes ended. And we still have 2 days to work before the university closes for a week. Wheee! I can't tell you how happy that makes me. Semester breaks are always such a drain on me and so far this one has gone very smoothly.

~~~

Conversation with my daughter this afternoon
DD: "did you get your hair cut today?"
me: "yes"
Pause
DD: "well it's short"

*snort* I don't know what he has against short hair, but she really doesn't like it when I get my hair cut short. Not that I plan on keeping it this short for long, I've decided to let the color grow out of my hair. I'm trying to cut unnecessary expenses and getting my hair dyed every two months because I don't want to accept the fact I'm gray is an easy cut. I'm hoping the short hair will make the growing out process quicker and hopefully look a little better in the process. Once all the color grows out I'll let it grow out again. In the meantime, my daughter will just have to deal with my short hair. Considering she’s going to Luxembourg in January she won’t have to deal with it for long.

Wednesday and Thursday we had highs in the 70's, much to warm for December. Saturday we'll only make the mid 40's. We're lucky compared to part of the country, all our precipitation is rain. Granted we may end up with flooding especially when the second round comes through Sunday into Monday, but we aren't dealing with the freezing rain and sleet like many other areas. I'm glad to see the cold weather come back in, I just hope we can avoid the ice.

The change in weather has screwed with my sinuses. The left side of my face feels like its been stuffed with cotton and if I lay down I can no longer breathe. I may be sleeping on the couch again tonight just to keep my head elevated. Whee!

Tomorrow will be Christmas at Fort Loudoun fortloudoun.com and the first round of rain has pushed through and it looks like the second round won't be in until Sunday. WIth any luck tomorrow may be cloudy but rain free. Oh and cold. Well relatively cold considering this week has been in the 60s and 70s all week. Dear hubby and I are hoping to head over tomorrow afternoon to check things out. My biggest concern is how squishy with the ground be after the rain we've had for the past 24 hours.

How is it we are at the last week in November? How did this happen? And what do you mean Hanukkah starts Wednesday night? Didn't we just do the High Holy Days thing? Wasn't Halloween like just a few days ago? Shouldn't we still be enjoying the wonderful change of season that is Autumn and not worrying about the holidays just yet? You do realize I am not ready. No where near ready. How can one be ready for the holidays when one is stuck in the oh crap, it's the end of the semester rush, OMG we have tons of work to do during break mentality to sit back and think about Thanksgiving, much less Hanukkah. Why is it a day filled with meetings and minor annoyances can feel like an eternity and yet here we are with less than 6 weeks to a new year? How did this happen and why do you keep slipping away from me so easily? So much I wanted to do this year and you, Time, must have decided those things were not important/necessary for here I sit watching you slip away. At least this work week will be a short one.

*sigh*

Guess I should at least make plans for having food in the house.

Went to visit my insurance agent today because she said she could write a new home owners/car insurance policy that would save money. And I'm all about saving me some money right now. So I stopped by the office to take a look at the new policy. One of the things I noticed on the new policy was that the vehicles for my husband and I had been swapped. I told her I should be listed as the primary driver for the newer Nissan and my husband should be listed as the primary driver for the older Saturn. She made the correction and the premium went up.

. . . . .

The only thing different between us is gender. We're four months apart in age and we both have clean driving records, but when I was made the primary driver of the newer car the premium went up. -__- Granted it was only a few dollars, but still the price is higher. The best I can figure is a woman driving a new car means more chance of an accident, because we all know men are better drivers.

*headdesk*

Still the policy is going to save me some $$$s so I'm going with this policy, I'm just...it's just...yeah, I don't know.

~~~

It's the last day of October and I've been waiting all month for the color to change in the trees. Last week we had a couple of nights where the temperatures dipped below 30° and today was the first day you could really see some nice color in the trees. Sadly, tonight we've got rain and wind with gusts up to 25 mph. meaning tomorrow there won't be any leaves left on the trees. I'm just disappointed I didn't think to take my camera to work so I could have snapped some pictures of the foliage.

My daughter's car was vandalized last night while sitting in our driveway. Two tires slashed and a tail light smashed. So far this morning I've contacted the police, contacted the insurance, purchased a new bulb for the tail light and hope it works until we can get the unit replaced while DH has removed the tires. He's currently gone out in search of replacements.

If the week starts out this bad, surely it can only improve, right?

Who the HFIL designs women's clothes? At the moment I am wearing a pair of jeans that the front pockets are so shallow I cannot put my keys in my pockets. What is the point of putting pockets into pants at all if you can't use the bloody things? And this is a pair of jeans. I have resigned myself to the idea that dress pants will never have a useable pocket, but this is a pair of jean damn it!

What moron designer(s) decided women don't go anywhere without a frickin' purse? And can we lash this person/these people with a wet noodle? Obviously women are more interested in looking stylist and sleek and we'd never need to carry anything more than a tube of lipstick. -_-
( more complaining inside )

Why can't someone design practical clothing for women with pockets that are functional instead of forcing us into skinny jeans that show every ounce of extra fat we really don't want to reveal to the rest of the world?

This article showed up on my Facebook Page yesterday - A Boy's Camp to Redefine Gender
www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2013/07/15/_you_are_you_looks_at_a_gender_nonconforming_camp_for_boys_photos.html
While I don't really agree with the title, I have no problem with the idea of boys dressing up in girls clothing. But honestly reading the comments you'd think this is the worst thing that could happen to the boys. I also feel most people are making a bigger issue of this than really exists.

News Flash!! Kids like to play dress-up. And yes that included boys wanting to experiment with things like makeup, high-heels and nail polish. ( TL:DR on boys dressing as girls )

Besides, the little boy dressed as Merida is just too cute.

Slowly my daughter is returning to normal.
( Read more... )
Another good note, the ad agency she's interning with this summer has asked her to stay on through the fall.

I need to find a psychologist for my daughter. I know she's been dealing with depression since she came home from school in early May. And not just the I feel out of sorts, blah type of depression. No, this is the type of depression where she will break into tears for no apparent reason. A simple conversation with her and the tears will start.
( Read more... )
*sigh*

I've had such horrible luck finding a decent general doctor I'm mortified at trying to help her find a psychologist.

In 1992 Fox Kids started running X-Men: The Animated Series on Saturdays, which ran for 5 seasons. Around 1994, my then 6-year old son discovered the series and,being the horrible parent I must have been, I allowed him to watch the show every Saturday morning. As the case with most kids show, there was merchandising available mainly in the form of action figures. Naturally, my son wanted said action figures. Which is all fine and good, except his younger sister also wanted actions figures. So if my son wanted say a Cyclops action figure, my daughter wanted a Storm action figure. I really had no problem doing this except for one tiny little problem, in 1994 female action figures were in limited supply.

Very limited supply.

As in
1) many figure series released did not include a female character and
2) if the figure series did include a female character, they came packed one or two figures to a case.

Needless to say, I was soon on a quest for female action figures for my daughter. Unfortunately, that quest quickly became an obsession as I continued to purchase female action figures long after my daughter lost interest. Most of my collecting occurred between 1994 and 2001. By 2002, the quest became the occasional "oh look I like that figure" type of purchase as opposed to "oh a female figure, MUST PURCHASE."

Now, I told you that story to tell you this one. As I've mentioned before, my son and daughter are moving back home for at least the summer. I've spent the past few weeks, shifting things around in drawers and closets to make room for all the clothes and furniture that will be moving back in with them. In the process of cleaning out, I've been discovering various parts to said action figure in various locations. You know a gun and spear in a box in dresser drawer or a lightning bolt and piece of armor in a baggy in a desk. So a bright idea came to mind, why not collect all my figures and accessories and box them up together.

Oh, better yet, let's get OCD and make a complete list of figure names, associated series, release date and production company. Whee!

271 entries later, I now have a list. Yes I said 271. o.O I told you the quest became a bit of an obsession. I have a handful of figures I can't identify because I no longer remember the character, but I have managed to identify most of my girls, bag them up with the proper accessories and place them in one location. Now if I can just figure out who the extra pieces I have bagged up go to.

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rdk

August 2014

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Page generated Aug. 28th, 2025 03:54 am

cleverly disguised as a responsible adult

musings, rants and thoughts of a middle-aged woman

Recent Entries

Am I missing some girl gene?

Is society overly dependent on technology?

Netflix and Supernatural

Curse you Mother Nature

Daylight Savings Time

The joys of owning a home

Another year older

And the asshats are still around

Why are all the best pictures views from the interstate?

In which I wonder about people

Family Traditions and other musings

Weather Commentary like so much of the U.S.

Dear Time

Things that make me say wha....?

Well Hell

In which I rant about women's clothing

I've got to quit reading the comments

Just a short update

Heading into unknown territory

In which I confess an obsession