My heart is destroyed

What.

A.

Week.

And not a good one.

Do y'all remember just last week I told you Bailey seemed to be doing much better and had started using her litter box and all that good stuff?  She was climbing up in the dishwasher, acted interested in stuff, etc.  In fact 3 nights in a row last week she was waiting at the door when I got home from work and bolted outside to sniff stuff.  She was acting all perky and sassy and for the first time in forever she actually didn't stink so I could stand to have her near me.

When I left for work last Friday morning, she was peppy, eating, running around and seeming like she was fine.  Friday night when I got home, she wasn't waiting at the door.  I went in, turned the alarm off, I was about to pee my pants so I ran to the bathroom and she never came to greet me as she had done for almost 14.5 years.

I looked around and found her on the heat vent in my dining room.  She looked at me pitifully.  And a few minutes later she got up to come in the kitchen for some food and water and she seemed to have a slight limp and it appeared to be her right rear leg.  I checked it out and didn't feel anything out of the ordinary.  She was walking on it and she liked to drink out of the toilets (even though I gave her nice fresh water in a bowl) and she was able to jump up on the toilet seat so I didn't feel like it was broken or anything.  She wasn't crying in pain when walking, jumping or when I touched it.  So I assumed she had just bruised it or pulled a muscle or something.  And I decided to just watch her over the weekend.

At some point on Sunday night she tried to jump up on an ottoman and she fell.  But she walked off, still with only the slightest limp and wasn't moaning or crying in pain.  She later was able to jump up on the toilet seat with no problem.

On Monday, I talked to a friend/co-worker of mine who has a farm and has approximately 20 cats.  I told her the symptoms and she agreed - she said I would definitely know if it was broken because she would have been crying in pain and would not put any weight on it and probably wouldn't have let me touch her.  She suggested I just keep watching her, try to make her rest as much as possible and if it went on for a while I should probably take her to the vet and have it checked.

I came home from work Monday night and Bailey did not greet me at the door.

And she never will again.

I found her dead in the middle of my kitchen floor.

Oh, y'all.  It was just awful.  It looked like she had been standing there and just fell over on her side.  All four legs were straight out in front of her, her beautiful eyes were still open and my heart broke right in half.  I've never had an indoor pet before and so I've never been through the death of a pet that I was this attached to and spent so much time with.  I can't stand it.

When I told my co-worker/friend, she said that at least it sounds like it was instantaneous and that she would suspect it was a heart attack and I should believe that Bailey did not suffer.  I didn't even know cats could have a heart attack.  Maybe that sounds dumb, but I really didn't.  But based on the position of her body, the fact that her eyes were still open, and that she didn't crawl off somewhere and hide, she said it sounds like it was instantaneous and even Bailey didn't know it was coming.

Y'all, I am so sad.  I'm so heartbroken.  I miss her so much.

It was pitch dark when I got home Monday night so I couldn't see in my backyard to dig her a grave.  And as y'all know by now, we had that ridiculous snow/ice storm coming on Tuesday.  I placed her in a box and I went out early Tuesday morning to bury her before I went to work.

Of course this didn't go smoothly.

I was going to bury her behind my detached garage because I knew I would never do any landscaping back there and she would be undisturbed.  I started digging a hole with the shovel my dad had given me only a month or two before he died of a heart attack a year and a half ago.  And let me tell you that is the first time I've used his shovel (it was an extra so he had used it for years probably) and the tears were flowing.  I was using my dead dad's shovel to bury my dead cat.  Oh it was awful.

I dug a decently deep hole and then I ran into plumbing stuff.

I filled that hole back in and moved down a few feet and started digging again.  And I ran into plumbing stuff again.  Yes.  Seriously.

So I filled the second hole back in and moved out from behind my garage and found a special spot in my back yard and started digging a third hole.  Finally I found the right spot.  I guess Bailey didn't want to be stuck behind the garage for eternity.  I can't blame her.

Since it was the third hole I had dug and it was 7:30 a.m. and about 18 degrees outside, my back was hurting, the shoulder and elbow of the arm I broke in 4 places was killing me, and I was crying like crazy.  Honestly, I was just exhausted and I couldn't dig a very deep hole by that point.  I dug enough to get her covered and then I went in the garage and got a giant bag of soil conditioner that was left from last spring, and I poured the entire thing over her grave and I then went to work hoping like hell that nothing would come along and dig her up.

By the time I got home from work with the ice and snow and fiasco that was Atlanta that afternoon and evening (which I will blog about another time), my driveway was a solid sheet of ice so I had to park my car up at the front of my house.  I haven't even been back there to check on her since I buried her because I haven't been able to get down my driveway yet.  Hopefully it should all be melted today.

At this point, I don't feel like I can ever have another cat.  Because I never want to feel like this again.

Bailey

July, 1999 - January, 2014

Aging. It sucks.

There was a tiny bit of drama in the 'hood on Sunday night.  My cat has suddenly decided to poop in her box again.  My cousin's autistic son has a girlfriend.  And I got all felt up today.

Now you're all caught up on my life since I last blogged.

I wish I had something exciting to tell y'all about Friday and Saturday but I don't.  Oh wait a minute.  Friday night after work I went to the art supply store to buy some materials for the two large commission paintings I have to do for the partner here at my office.  The guy working in the store said straight to my face that I am crazy. 

I told him I had seen a certain type of canvas on their website (it was a particular gallery style canvas with 2.25" sides) in the size I needed (24" x 48" - yes I have to paint TWO paintings that are each four feet long and two feet wide).  I found the brand and type of canvas but could not find them in 24x48 so I asked this cute young thing for help.  He looked around the store with me and couldn't find it and then he looked it up in their system and said they don't carry that type of canvas in that size so he could not even order it for me.  I insisted I had seen it on their website 3 hours earlier and he told me I am crazy.  I agreed with him and then I bought a different canvas.  He was very nice about telling me I am crazy and then he helped me carry all of my supplies to my car.  Sadly, that was the most exciting part of my Friday.

Saturday was even less exciting.

Sunday I cleaned my house for 6 hours straight and then I was on the sofa and suddenly sirens were coming from everywhere.  I looked out the window and there were 3 cop cars parked right in front of my house.  And there were two more cops at the corner blocking the cross street right by my house.  "Hmmmmm," I thought.  Because I think deep and profound kinds of thoughts.

A minute or two later, a fire truck arrived.  They honked a lot and moved their truck around to a few different places and it was all very confusing.  Then I saw 3 firefighters open the hood of a pick up truck parked in front of my next door neighbors' house and they were just shining a flashlight in it and looking at it for about 10 minutes.  I don't know if they were cute or not because I had just taken a shower, had wet hair, no make-up on, and was wearing a white t-shirt with horrible paint stains all over it.  And no bra.  Not exactly the appropriate look for going outside and flirting with some potentially hot guys in uniform.  And then I had a horrid thought that if they had to evacuate our 'hood for some crazy reason I would be mortified to open the door for them.

Eventually they left the scene and that was about as exciting as my Sunday got.  The next day the pick-up truck was gone so I have no idea what was going on.

This post is absolutely riveting so far, isn't it.  It's just like my life.

On Monday our office was closed for MLK Day so I went to my cousin's house and we played games all day.  She has 3 boys and the 12-year-old is autistic.  I found out he has a girlfriend at school.  He's fairly severe on the autism spectrum and says very few words.  But he kept saying her name and had a giant grin on his face.  He is SUCH a sweetheart and it made my heart happy to see him all excited about her.  He kept trying to sit in my lap but he had on slippery nylon style sweat pants and kept sliding off into the floor.  Then my aunt made hamburgers and I asked for mine to be well-done.  I could barely bite into it when she gave it to me because it was more burnt to a shoe leather consistency instead of just being well-done.  But I just said, "YUM!  This is SO good," because I'm a nice polite southern girl and that's what we do.

Last night after work I went to June Gardens' favorite place:  Ulta.  I've been using Bare Minerals for many years and I have loved it.  Suddenly in the past 6 months or so I have stopped loving it so much.  It's been very cakey looking and orange/yellow-ish looking even though I'm using the same shade.  I decided to go find myself a new foundation last night. 

Did y'all know Calvin Klein has a make-up line?  I did not.  Anyway, that's what one of the girls in Ulta recommended for me.  This is a link to what I got and after using it this morning, I think I'm going to love it.  When I was paying for my stuff, she gave me a bunch of free samples of day moisturizer, night cream, conditioner for my hair, a face spritzer, a little make-up bag, etc. 

As I got back in my car, I managed to get my purse strap all tangled up around the rear view mirror and I do not even know how that happened.  But it was dumb.

This morning I went the specialist to get my girls checked out.  And y'all, my girl parts are going to be the most well checked out girl parts in all of the United States before this year is over.  I've already had my pap smear and ultrasound all up in my hoo-ha which resulted in a visit to the oncologist for another physical exam and then the MRI last week.  Which I loved so much.

This morning I was at the specialist for 3 hours.  Oh, it was fun.  I had a mammogram.  And then they did an ultrasound on my girls.  And then I had a regular physical exam of my girls.  And then I finally met the doctor.  And do you know what I have to do now???

Do you????

I have to have ANOTHER FREAKING MRI.  They saw nothing on the mammogram or the ultrasound but because of my horrid and insane family history of breast cancer, she wants me to do a 6-month follow-up in the form of an MRI to get a really thorough check of them.  So in July, it's back in that stupid tube again.  This place I went to this morning enters a bunch of data about you into some sort of formula and it calculates your risk of getting breast cancer and my risk is twice that of the normal population.  And she said they only factor in your mother so mine is really much higher than that because of all of my other family members with breast cancer and other types of cancer. 

And, guess what else?

She wants me to have genetic testing and counseling done. 

And guess what else?

When I go back in 3 months to have my hoo-ha ultrasound again to follow-up on the fibroid I have to meet with the oncologist again.  The doctor from this morning said to check with the oncologist about possibly starting on Tamoxifen and getting all of my other organs scanned for different types of cancer and I should ask her what order they should be scanned in.

Holy crap y'all.  Now I understand that quote about growing old not being for sissies.

And why does my family have to be the crazy cancer family?

What's up doc?

The fact that this is what my desk looks like at this moment should show you why I haven't blogged in a couple of days and why I really should not be blogging right now:

And honestly, why don't I have an oven in my cubicle to throw all of this crap in?  Isn't that what people do when their house is a mess and people are coming over on short notice?  They throw everything in the oven.  I don't do that because my house is always spotless and visitor ready.  Bah!  That's a total lie, y'all.  I have a cat who craps everywhere.

I once had a boss who was a neat FREAK.  He got upset if I had a post-it and a pen sitting on my desk if I wasn't actually using them when he walked by.  His wife was a housewife and she had weekly bridge parties and luncheons so sometimes she would set the table the night before for a luncheon and it would burn his butt.  He told me one day when he came in that he took all of the plates and stuck them under the sofa cushions because he didn't like it when she set the table the night before because then there was, you know, stuff where it shouldn't be.  Another day he told me that she left her shoes in the living room floor so he took them and hid them in the oven.  And how he has been married for about 60 years I have no idea because I would not last with him.

Also, my desk does not dip and curve in the middle.  I used the panorama feature on my iPhone camera and guess what I'm not good at?

Anyway, MY POINT IS that I have been busy and that's why I haven't blogged for a couple of days.

The nurse from the oncologist's office called me yesterday and asked when I was having my MRI and I told her I had it on Monday and they told me it would take 48 hours or so for the results.  "That's what they always tell y'all," she said as she laughed.  "I'll find out what's going on and call you back."

She called me back a couple of hours later and said my doctor had looked at the MRI and at this point she just wants to keep monitoring my toooommmah so I have to go back for an ultrasound in 3 months.  So yay!  I think that means I'm going to keep all of my womenses parts for now.

But the oncologist's office does not have an ultrasound machine onsite so I have to go back to my regular OB/GYN doctor for that and then go back to the oncologist to discuss the results of everything in person.  I called my regular doctor to make an appointment and they don't have their schedules out for even 2 months from now.

Next week I go to another specialist to get my boobs totally checked out really good and more closely than a regular mammogram because I have a really bad family history so my doctor is being extra careful.  I've also had cysts up in that area twice and now I have the fibroid tumor trying to grow like the Jolly Green Giant down below and maybe it would be better to get all my parts taken out and be done with all of this.

So now I have my boobs to worry me and stew about and fret over.

I've had all of this medical stuff on my mind and there is another situation I've been fretting over which I don't want to discuss on here and all I do is work, go home, eat dinner, go to bed and watch TV because I just haven't felt all fun and happy for the past few weeks.  And do you know what?  It's hard to blog every day when you aren't doing anything worth blogging about.

But one of our managing partners has asked me to do a commission art piece for him so I may give it a go and see if painting will snap me out of this funk I am in.  Painting usually cures all that ails me.

Deb was asking about my cat's poop in the comments the other day so I guess I do have that to blog about.  Just what y'all come here for, right?

I ordered the powder stuff Deb told me about and when I had Bailey on the raw food diet that had to be shipped in on angel's wings from the other side of the country and was costing me more than people food which does not add up when you are trying to budget your life, I was sprinkling that powder and mixing it in to the disgusting raw food that looks like slimy raw ground beef and trying to not to hurl as I did it.  Even though she was still having explosive and disgusting diarrhea all over my house, I faithfully mixed up that disgusting food twice a day.

For about 3 weeks, Bailey inhaled the stuff.  It was as though she had been deprived for 14 years of decent food and I was finally treating her right.  And then one morning she turned her nose up at it.  So I gave her the raw food without the powder sprinkled on it.  She still turned her nose up at it.  I thought she was taking a turn for the worse and that she was going to stop eating.  She was lethargic, losing more weight, making messes all over my house, and now not eating.  I was getting prepared to have to put her down.  I could feel every bone in her itty bitty self when I picked her up.  Her ribs were poking out and she looked like she is all legs.

One night I was at Disco Kroger near my office getting groceries and I decided to check out their dry foods and canned foods to see if there was anything else I could possibly try before I threw in the towel and had to say goodbye to her.

I found a grain free dry cat food that says it's good for digestion.  If you think about it, all of that stuff they put in cat food is not stuff cats ever eat in the wild.  Have you ever seen a cat in the jungle eating a bowl of rice, a baked potato, a slice of toast, or a corn cob?  No.  They eat meat and grass.  Probably a few other things, but not rice, potatoes, bread and corn.

I looked online later and it seems they've had a dog food out for a while but this cat food just came out last summer.  It was only $13.99 a bag as opposed to $110 for the raw food (YES, Y'ALL - ONE HUNDRED AND TEN DOLLARS FOR CAT FOOD) so I figured it was worth a shot.  I slowly mixed it in with the raw food until I transitioned her to this new stuff.  And then I gave all of the raw food I had left to a lady in my office who has a farm with over 20 cats.

I've had Bailey on it since the week of Christmas and she loves it. We now have fully formed turds all over my house instead of puddles of watery diarrhea.  Trust me, it is a blessing to be cleaning up turds after a year and a half of the other.  But I really have to figure out how to get her back to using her litter box because I AM OVER THIS.  She seems to be getting her spunk back.  She's developed a new fascination with climbing in my dishwasher every single time I open the door which is kind of making me insane but I'm glad to have her acting like she's interested in something.  She's talking a lot to me again.  And last night when I picked her up (which I've hardly been able to do because she has smelled so awful for so long I can't stand to be close to her) it felt like she is possibly starting to put some weight back on.  Her ribs didn't seem to be quite as pokey.

She still smells like ass though.

Em RRRRRR Eye

I had my MRI this morning to get my toomah checked out. 

Um, y'all.  Having an MRI is not at all fun.  I'm not claustrophobic, but I think if I ever have to have one again I will lie and tell them I am so they can sedate me for the whole blasted thing.

For those of you who have never had one, they are very concerned about whether you have any metal in your body or if your kidneys aren't any good.  They asked me at the oncologist's office before they called the hospital to schedule my MRI.  The hospital called and asked me.  An MRI tech called me and asked me.  They had me fill out a buttload of forms this morning and asked me multiple times.  The tech doing the MRI asked me several more times.  And miraculously with all of my falls and broken bones, I have no metal parts.  And I didn't get stuck in the machine (it's a magnet, y'all) so I guess no one has managed to sneak anything metal in me that I didn't know about.

Anyway, they sent me in a dressing room and had me put on two hospital gowns because just one isn't awful enough and told me to walk down the hall a little ways and put my stuff in a locker and have a seat.

I suppose it's because the MRI place is in the same office I normally go every year for my mammogram or something, but I just stupidly assumed that it would be all women back in the waiting area.

So I pranced down the hall to the lockers with my humongous bra (I'm a 44DD) hanging over my arm and there was an older man I would guess was in his 70s sitting there staring with his mouth hanging open.  His wife sitting next to him gave me a major stink eye.  And you know it couldn't have been a boring old white bra that I decided to put on this morning.  Or a tan bra.  Or even a black bra with a little lace.  Red would have even been okay.  Oh no!  This is the bra I was wearing today and I am not kidding. 

Nope, it was a HUGE bright orange bra with giant bright purple polka dots and purple stripes and I was just walking down the hall with it like I was cool. I quickly stuffed everything in a locker and luckily there was a half-wall separating the area where the older couple was sitting and another waiting area and I sat away from them.  I didn't want to get the stink eye from that lady for even one more second.

As I waited for my tech to come back, another tech brought a jar of something for the man to drink.  The tech told him as soon as he drank it they would take him back.  He took a couple of swigs and then I heard him ask his wife, "Hey!  Do you wanna drink part of this for me so I can get started sooner?  This crap is terrible!"  I then had a horrid feeling that I was going to have to drink a jar of nasty stuff too.

Thankfully, I did not have to drink a jar of nasty stuff.

My tech took me back and got me set up on the table and explained that I had to not move a muscle for 45 minutes while I was in a tiny tunnel with something that sounded like two jack hammers and a bunch of buzzing and beeping going on around me.  That sounded like a ton of fun, and I'm here to tell you that she described it to an absolute tee.  I had a pad thing with a velcro strap secured TIGHTLY around my stomach/pelvis area, a rolled up towel under my knees, my hands were straight up in the air over my head, I had towels over both arms, a blanket on me and earplugs stuck in each ear.  And I was wearing two hospital gowns and black socks.  I've never felt sexier in my life.

They raise the table and then you go sliding into the tunnel and when you are a bigger person like me, let's just say there isn't much spare room around you.  They put you through a series of scans.  Some are a minute and a half and some are five minutes and those five minutes feel like they last five days.  There is buzzing and clunking and beeping, and there is a part where the tech comes over the loudspeaker and says you have to hold your breath for 30 seconds because all of the other stuff you're going through isn't bad enough.

After about 30 minutes of that which seemed like 30 years, she brought me back out of the machine.  Then she tied a really tight rubber band around each arm looking for a good vein because I had to have an MRI with contrast dye and they give it to you through an IV.  My left shoulder still gets really stiff when I have it in one position for any length of time from when I broke my humerus and got a rotator cuff impingement from being immobile for 3 months.  So it felt really good to get to move my arm again.  But as soon as she gave me the contrast dye and then a flush of saline, it was back into the machine.

She told me I only had one more scan to get through and that I was doing a terrific job of not moving and not freaking the hell out from being in that tube for so long.  So obviously as soon as the scan started the worst tickle in my throat started at the same time.  Y'all, I tried so hard not to cough but I couldn't hold it in and I started coughing my fool head off.  The scan kept going and I kept on coughing.

I kept apologizing and she kept telling me I was doing great.  She then came running in, quickly got the table out of the tube, yanked on my arm to sit me up and was afraid I was having an allergic reaction to the contrast dye.  She kept checking the IV site and my neck to see if I was turning red, asking me if my throat was closing up, etc.  I told her I simply had a tickle in my throat but she made me sit there with her for 15 minutes and drink a bunch of water to make sure I was okay.  She told me that even with all of the coughing I did, I managed to not move my stomach and pelvic area too much so the scan was okay and she didn't have to do it again.  Thank you, God!

Anyway, the radiologist will read the MRI, send a report to my doctor and hopefully I will know something in the next 48 - 72 hours.

I will not freak out.  I will not freak out.  I will not freak out.  I will not freak out.

If I didn't have to work for "the man"

Hey, I'm not sure if y'all have heard or not, but it's been cold this week.

Today I have been printing my little heart out at work.  Seriously.  For the past 3.5 hours I've been hitting print, rolling back across my cubicle to the printer, pulling crap off the printer.  Repeat approximately 843045843594359 times.  I've been listening to music for a lot of the time and, because I try hard not to be an asshole, I've been using headphones since I am surrounded by other people in cubicles and they may not want to listen to Run DMC, James Brown, Michael Franti, Donovan Frankenreiter, Deee-Lite, Citizen Cope, Paolo Nutini, etc.  It got very scary for a moment when Lily Allen's "F**k You" was blasting and I pulled a little too far backwards and I pulled the headphone wire out of my computer.  And it happened again when James Brown was wanting to  "Get Up Offa That Thing."

And as I sat here printing and printing and printing, I thought to myself a few times that this is not at all what I thought I'd be doing with my life when I was struggling through completely unnecessary college classes such as Geology (because I have never needed to know what rocks are made of while working here at my law firm) or Algebra or that horrid Biology lab I had to take dealing with fruit flies.  And don't even get me started on the Animal Psychology lab I took when I had to decide if horses have best friends and go to the bookstore and buy a sheep brain and keep it in my refrigerator at home with a note on it for my roommates that said "DO NOT EAT.  THIS IS A SHEEP BRAIN IN HERE" and study whether worms give off pheromones to try and get sexy time with other worms.  I mean, I didn't think I'd ever do anything dealing with rocks, math, fruit flies or dissecting brains either, but I certainly didn't think I was suffering through that crap so that 20+ years later I could sit in a cubicle and print 4 reams of paper in an afternoon on a regular basis.

So then I started daydreaming about what I would do if I won a bazillion dollars in the lottery.

First of all, I wouldn't sit in a cubicle and print crap all day anymore.

And this is where y'all are going to realize what a selfish person I am when I tell you the kind of stuff I would do if I had an almost unlimited supply of money.

I would hire a doctor to give me drugs every night to help me sleep.  But not Propofol like Michael Jackson.  I am tired all of the time.  I want to sleep. And I would sleep late every single day. 

I would hire a personal assistant to do all of the crap I hate doing - grocery shopping, filling out forms, laundry, sorting my mail, making appointments, etc.  (If I ever win the lottery I would advise none of you to apply because you would hate everything I asked you to do.)

I would travel all over the world:  Iceland (yes, I've always wanted to go there), Holland, France, Spain, England, South Africa, New Zealand, and on and on.

I would try to bribe some government officials to let Hot Brazilian get around the pesky Visa issues he's dealing with so he can get back here and then travel all over with me.  I think I would.  I'm a little perturbed with him right now and I don't want to talk about it.  But if I get over being perturbed with him I would do this.

Okay, I just took a potty break and saw myself in the mirror so I need to add that I would hire a makeup artist and hair stylist to make me look at least half-way presentable each day.

I would loan some money to my family and friends but I'm sorry, I'm not going to completely support you.  Go win your own lottery, okay?

I would give quite a bit of money to my cousin with an autistic son to pay for intense therapy he needs but which they cannot afford.

I would do a good bit of volunteer work - soup kitchens, homeless shelters, etc.  I would love to say I'd help out at animal shelters, but I'm deathly allergic to dogs.  I'll give them some money though.

I'd spend a lot of time painting and I'd buy a huge studio instead of the bedroom I use now.  Yes, I do feel blessed that I even have a bedroom devoted to art, but I'd love to have a space I can get all messy in and drip paint on the floor and not worry about it.

I'd probably stay in my current house.  But I'd add a covered area on my back deck because it is way to hot and sunny in the summer out there, I'd put screens on all of my windows so that I can open them and enjoy cool fall days and evenings, and I'd have all of my plumbing and electric replaced so I could cut down on the ongoing repairs I deal with.

I think I'd also buy a place in New York City.

I WOULD HIRE A FULL-TIME CHEF.  Oh, how I don't cook.

So basically, I want to live like I'm pretty sure the Kardashians live although I've never watched their show and I could be really wrong.  Except I do not want a camera following me around like them.

What would y'all do if you had unlimited money?  I'm guessing it would probably be way less selfish stuff than me.

Deb in Denver, I will answer your question about Bailey and her poop tomorrow.  I ran out of time today!

And I know this is a stupid post, but I'm writing this in a huge rush, y'all.  If I won the lottery I wouldn't have to do that.

My neighbors are the best neighbors of all the neighbors.

I told y'all I was going to write about Christmas Day with my neighbors.

Since we celebrated with my family on Christmas Eve, my mom, her husband and I accepted an invitation for Christmas Day to hang out with my awesome neighbors.  Everyone brought a dish or two, a bottle of wine or two, and my mom said she was fine with going down there for just a little while. I didn't tell her that once you get to their house you never want to leave because it is always a blast.  So we were there from 3:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m.

When we first got there, the 7-year-old was just getting home from some of our other neighbors' where she had been playing with their daughter.  She was still in her pajamas and her parents didn't make her get dressed because she said she just wanted to keep wearing her pajamas while we ate Christmas dinner.  And that is only one reason her parents are awesome.

She did want to show us her new bike she got for Christmas.  So we went out in the driveway and watched her ride her bike in her pj's while their dog ran beside her with a big ball in his mouth.  Coco is a pretty awesome dog.  He also regularly steals beer and cigarettes from everyone.

We ate a wonderful meal and then as we were sitting around the dining room table, their daughter asked us if we would play some games with her.  And that is how my mom and I came to look like this on Christmas night.  And hello there, I'm apparently packing for a long international trip with those bags under my eyes:

After my mom figured out she was milk and I figured out I was a duck, and we played several more rounds of Hedbandz, we moved on and played another game.  We played Boom Boom Balloon and I am here to tell you that I now want my own Boom Boom Balloon to play at my house.  I think the adults had more fun than the 7-year-old.

But I also have to tell you about the funniest instructions I have ever seen in my life.  Ikea needs to take note so I will say less curse words when I'm assembling their products.

Santa had given the daughter a Barbie Dreamhouse.  It is gigantic.  I think it's 3 stories tall, has two or three elevators in it, etc.  And here are some instructions that were included with it (those white sticks go with the Boom Boom Balloon game - they have nothing to do with Barbie and her ridiculous house):

I know you can't read the instructions in that little picture, so Imma type 'em out for y'all nicely right now:

1.  Congratulations!  You are the lucky owner of a genuine Barbie Dreamhouse!

2.  Follow these simple instructions for hours....that is, hours of fun!

3.  Don't get discouraged.  Tell yourself you can do this?  [Yes, it has a question mark.]  Focus, focus, focus.

4.  Keep breathing.  It's just a few pieces....

5.  Now apply 1,000 stickers.

Piece of cake!  Wasn't that fun?

And that right there is why I'm simultaneously very sad and ecstatic that I have no kids and thus no reason to assemble gigantic toys for Christmas each year.

The daughter bonded with my mom in a major way over Hedbandz and Boom Boom Balloon and then she invited my mom to come back from Texas in March to attend her 8th birthday party.  They then decided it should be a Texas themed party and no one will be allowed in unless they are wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat.  I have a hat but no boots and I'm a giant and it's very hard to find boots for big calved people so I may have to paint boots on the bottom of my pants or something.

This all inspired the daughter to run to her room and change into jeans, a shirt, a denim vest, cowboy boots, and a hat.

And that's when the dancing started.  She danced with her mom.  She danced with my mom.  She danced with her dad.  She danced with an annoying guy who hangs out with us a lot.  She danced alone. 

And that's what made me ask my neighbors to put on their Billy Joel CD so they could sing their duet for us.  Because they love to sing a duet to this song:

They play piano together while they sing their duet.  And sometimes they play a horn:

And sometimes they just sing their hearts out with balloon people and chocolate chip cookies from a pizza restaurant on the table:

And then their daughter went and grabbed a guitar and joined them:

And then she played a guitar solo for all of us:

And this is the story of why I adore my neighbors more than a person should adore their neighbors.

Try not to fall asleep reading this.

Do y'all remember how I've mentioned more than once that two years ago was my first time hosting our family Christmas because I'm now the only one with a house in Atlanta large enough to have everyone over and that year due to crazy schedules of people I had to cook two Christmas meals in the same day and I swore that was never going to happen again in the history of time?

Guess what I did this year for Christmas? 

We had everyone's schedules all coordinated and everything was going along all wonderfully and smoothly and everyone was planning to come to my house all day long on Christmas Eve (about 11 people).  Until 5 days before that when my brother, the police officer, called me and said, "Hey, you know I told you I was off work on Christmas Eve and I don't have to work until the night shift on Christmas Day?  Yeah, I screwed up.  I forgot I still have to work one of my extra police jobs during the day on Christmas Eve and I don't get off until 5:30 or 6:00."  And then he told me he wasn't sure when his daughter (my 16-year-old-full-of-the-drama-because-of-a-break-up-during-the-holidays-which-ruined-her-life-plans niece) was coming over but it would be sometime in the middle of the day.

And then my aunt called the very next day and said my cousin's husband had to work on Christmas Eve so they could come from 11:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. but then they would have to leave so they could get back home to spend the evening with the husband and get 3 young kids settled down and in bed at a decent hour before Christmas morning/Santa stuff.

And that is the story of how I had to prepare two freaking Christmas dinners in the same day again even though I swore I never would.

We also had one child who is autistic and basically only eats Italian types of food (canned ravioli or pizza) and another child who will only eat chicken nuggets from McDonalds (gross).  And then they found out the McDonalds by my house was closed for renovations but luckily I had some frozen chicken strips on hand and so we told him it was my very special chicken that I made especially for him and he thought it was the best chicken he'd ever eaten.

Do y'all remember when I told you I had ordered two new televisions on Cyber Monday?  I hooked the one up in my bedroom the week before Christmas and it would not work no matter what I did.  So I called AT&T and a tech came out the Saturday before Christmas.   She could not get it to work either.  She said either the walls are too thick in my house or the wireless signal from downstairs on the hardwired box wasn't strong enough or something, but she couldn't get my TV to work upstairs.  We moved stuff all over trying to get the wireless components closer to each other so they would talk and get along and stuff.  Then she said she could drill a hole through my dining room floor and run a wire into my dining room and I would have a wireless access thingie sitting in the floor next to my stairs and she wasn't sure that would even work.  I told her that was an awful idea to even try.  So she left saying she would have another tech come back out on the Friday after Christmas because that was the first day I would be available due to family stuff.

She then called me the next day and said she had to cancel my appointment on Friday that she had scheduled because of some reason or another but she would get it rescheduled and would call me back.

She called me back on Christmas Eve while I was in the middle of cooking my first big family meal of the day, and said she wanted to make sure I understood they were going to have to hard wire a completely separate setup for my upstairs TV and run new wiring from outside, etc.  I told her I understood and she said she would get it rescheduled for Friday morning and I would be contacted to confirm everything.

During all of this, my internet was still working fine although my lap top is seriously screwed up and it sounds like a jet is about to take off so I couldn't use it to blog while I was on vacation.  And I had hooked up my new TV downstairs and it was working fine.

After the majority of family had left on Christmas Eve, my mom, her husband, my brother and I were playing hand and foot because we are all addicted even though my mom's husband is quite possibly the most annoying person on earth to play games with.  At one point I looked at my mom and said right in front of him because I honestly could not take him anymore, "Mom, I will pray for you that you can stay married to him." 

We were listening to a music channel on the living room TV while we sat at the dining room table playing cards.  Around 11:30 p.m. my signal went out.  My brother left around 12:30 a.m. and then we all went to bed, the neighbor's car got crashed into, etc.  The next day the signal was still out.  And my internet was dead.

My mom's husband and I both tried everything we could think of to try and get it back on but then we gave up and played hand and foot some more and we played Scrabble some and he about drove me insane again.  Honest to goodness he was annoying the crap out of me.  Christmas afternoon we had been invited down to my neighbors' house for another big meal so I had to make some more food for that and for a person who doesn't cook I did a whole lot of cooking last week.

The Christmas celebration with my neighbors needs to be a post of its own which I will get to sometime but not today.  It involves annoying people, drunk people, singing, playing kids games, the most hilarious instructions for something I've ever seen in my life, and dancing.

The day after Christmas my mom had promised my dramatic niece that we would take her to the mall.  Let that sink in for a minute.  And she wanted us to go to one of the largest malls in the Southeast.  For those of you familiar with Atlanta, you will understand how much I enjoyed this day:

At 8:30 a.m. we left my house downtown and drove all the way out to Douglasville in west metro Atlanta to meet my aunt for breakfast because they had left a bunch of important stuff at my house when they left on Christmas Eve.

We then drove ALLLLLL the way  to Oxford which is about as far east as you can get in metro Atlanta (it's past Conyers and Covington) to pick up my niece because she had had a drama-filled-Christmas-Day complete with her romantic breakup and her mom called us and said she had been crying all night and had not slept so she would not allow her to drive anywhere.

We then drove ALLLLLLL the way to Buford to The Mall of Georgia which is an hour from Oxford.

We then walked around the freaking packed as crap mall all day long with my plantar fasciitis, my mom's bad hip, and my niece having text conversations with her ex all day. 

We then drove ALLLLLLL the way back to Oxford to drop my niece off at home.

We then drove ALLLLLL the way back downtown to my house and we were so bone tired we just wanted to go to bed even though it was only 6:30. 

Except we couldn't because my mom's husband had hung out all day at a local pub with my neighbor and then they had all come back to my house and were there waiting when we got home.  So then I had to put together snacks, wine, etc. and we played games with their 7-year-old daughter and by the time they left around 8:30 or 9:00 I was about to drop.

By Friday morning when I woke up, I was sick with a horrible cold, my mom and her husband left around 10:00 a.m. to head back to Texas and I still had no television signal and no internet.  And no energy to go do anything so I wanted to lay around and watch TV.

I called AT&T again and told them what all was going on.  They set up an expedited service call and I hung up the phone with them around 10:45 a.m.  At 11:55 a.m. a tech pulled up to my house.  Awesome!

While he was there working, my neighbor who owns the house next door where the renters' cars got smashed was over at the house because they are having a bathroom renovated.  She saw that I was home so she came by for a little while to chat.

It turns out my router had gone bad and my DVR was going bad so he had to replace them both.  And that means I lost over 100 movies I had recorded.  Bummer.  But after he replaced those things, the signal worked on the TV upstairs, my internet was back, and I could not have been happier.

Because the cold I woke up with continued to kick my butt and got worse and worse.  And my sick self did not get off the sofa for the rest of the day.

On Saturday I did not get off the sofa because I was so sick.

On Sunday I had to drive back to Conyers and pick up my brother, then to Oxford to pick up my niece, then we drove up to Athens for another family Christmas gathering (thankfully I didn't have to cook a damn thing), then I drove back to Oxford to drop off my niece, then to Conyers to drop off my brother, and I got home around 10:00 p.m.

I felt horrid.

On Monday I did not get off the sofa because I was so sick.

On Tuesday I did not get off the sofa because I was so sick.  I was supposed to go out with my neighbors for New Year's Eve, but instead I stayed home and went to bed around 9:00.  Because I know how to have a great time.

And I know how to write such an exciting blog post.  (I didn't get off my sofa.  I didn't get off my sofa.  I didn't get off my sofa.)

But I think I'm past the worst of it now.

Oh!  I went to the oncologist this morning about my monster fibroid.  I now have to have an MRI.  She wants to get a very pretty picture of it before she makes any decisions about what the best course of treatment is.  Since it's not giving me any trouble she's inclined to just keep watching it but she wants to make sure my little 7cm friend doesn't look wonky or scary in the MRI.  And you know when she told me that I needed an MRI my immediate thought was, "Awesome!  More blog material!"  And I don't think it will involve the words "I didn't get off of my sofa" even once.

Just another crazy night in the 'hood.

I'm still alive.  I think.  IT HAS BEEN A CRAZY TWO WEEKS THOUGH, Y'ALL.

I was on vacation the week of Christmas through today.  I had internet issues and my laptop seems to be fried so I didn't blog.  Now I'm back at work, trying to get caught up and I hope my life regains some semblance of normalcy again. 

The past couple of weeks has involved gobs of family drama and gobs of 16-year-old-my-life-sucks-even-though-I-thought-I-was-in-love-and-already-had-my-entire-life-planned-out-drama (from my niece) which I can't talk about on here even though it took up about 464975613168797846431 hours of my life and aged me by many years.  And now I am having a I-thought-I-knew-more-about-life-and-was-smarter-and-more-mature-than-this drama filled morning because of a stupid thing someone posted on Facebook earlier which I also don't want to talk about but I have sent a very pissy email to someone this morning already.  And gawd, isn't it time for my lunch break yet?  Because then I will be away from my computer and can't send any more emails I might later regret.  My neighbor saw it too and sent me a private message and invited me over to drink wine at 11:45 a.m.  But damn it, I'm at work.

My mom and her husband were at my house for a week.  He did some of this:

I don't think Bailey was happy about having to share her sofa.  But she didn't poop or pee on him thankfully.  She just glared with her laser eyes.

On the Monday night before Christmas, I decided to make a nice dinner for my family since I don't cook.  It was a pork tenderloin from Trader Joe's which is already seasoned and I just had to stick it in the oven.  And I made some sauteed vegetables and I kind of burned them.  And we had frozen mashed potatoes from Trader Joe's which actually tasted good but my mom made them and added too much liquid so they were runny.  It was an awesome dinner as you can tell.  My brother drove about 30 minutes from his house for this delicious meal.

They were all drinking wine and my brother broke the cork so we put a coffee filter down on the counter to catch spills, and strained the wine through a colander and this is what it looked like when we were pouring fancy glasses of wine at my house:

It was a fine dining sort of evening is what it was.  We might as well have been at the Ritz Carlton or the local uppity country club we were so classy that night.  Wine through a colander, runny frozen mashed potatoes, and burned vegetables.  Don't be jealous we didn't have enough to share, y'all.

After we made it through all of that, we played hand and foot for hours.  My brother left my house around 12:30 a.m. and my mom's husband debated moving their car back in my driveway off of the street.  I strongly advised him to do so, he still debated, my mom advised him to do so, he still debated, and finally he decided to wise up and listen to us and he moved their car back in my driveway.

Turns out it's a good thing he listened to us because something crazy happened in my 'hood about an hour later.  Only we were all in bedrooms on the back of my house and never heard a thing.

The next morning my mom's husband was going to run up to the grocery store to pick up a couple of things we had forgotten and he came back inside after only a couple of minutes and said, "Um, girls.  You were right.  It's a good thing I moved the car last night.  I was parked right behind your neighbor's car and their car got smashed.  It's destroyed front and back.  The entire back windshield is gone."

We walked outside and this is what it looked like:

 That bluish stuff all over the street is the remains of his back window.

OMG.  There are three people renting the house next door.  It's a super long story as to why they are temporarily without a driveway and have to park on the street right now.  I am friends with the owners of the house so I texted the wife to let her know what had happened as I was sure she would hear about it.  A little while later I walked back outside to take these photos so I could show her how bad it was.  There are two guys and a girl who are renting the house and the girl happened to be walking outside when I went back out.  Their names start with J, A, and M so I'm going to call them my jam neighbors from now on.  The black car belongs to A.  He was in California when this happened.

M, the girl was outside so I asked her what in the world had happened.  She asked if we had heard anything and I told her I wasn't sure how, but no, we didn't hear a thing. She went on to tell me that J had come home from work around 1:00 a.m. and he was awake but his room is on the back of the house like my bedroom is and he had not heard it either. 

Her bedroom is on the front of their house and she heard a huge crash and A's car alarm went off so she screamed to J since A was out of town and told him someone had just hit A's car.  They ran downstairs and out the front door and the girl was still on the scene but trying to pull away so they got her tag number, then jumped in M's car and followed her.  The girl who did this lives right down the street somewhere so they followed her into her driveway and she jumped out of the car and ran inside her house.

M and J called the cops, obviously.

The reason they jumped in M's car is because J's car had also been smashed to smithereens.  He had moved it to a street around the corner by the time I was out there the next morning so I haven't seen his car, but apparently his axle is cracked, his tires are all pigeon-toed, and his car is not able to be driven either.  They said the girl's car was in really bad shape too and they were shocked she was able to drive down the street.

My immediate assumption was that she was drunk.

She wasn't.

Y'all, this is so crazy.  The girl had caught her husband with another woman.  She attacked the other woman.  The other woman pepper sprayed the girl, she then jumped in her car and drove off with pepper spray in her eyes so she couldn't see anything and tried to drive home.  She rammed into the back of A's car (the one in the photos), it shoved his car forward about 10 feet she hit it so hard, it whacked into the back of J's car, and then she drove home.

The cops had already been called by the husband and the other woman and they were looking for this girl because they knew she was a danger.  So then my jam neighbors called them to tell them what she had done and when they arrived at the girl's house she was standing at her kitchen sink washing out her eyes.  And she was arrested.  Amen.  That girl's Christmas and New Year had to suck though.

Later that day, A's mom came over and she and J borrowed my broom and dustpan and swept up all of the glass so I talked to them about it some but they really had nothing new to add to the story.  I'm just glad my car was in my garage and my mom's husband wised up and moved their car off the street.

The owner of the house texted me a couple of days later and she said she drove by to see the car and she couldn't believe how much worse it is in person than in the photos. 

Okay y'all, it's time for me to go eat lunch.  You will just have to wait to hear the rest of the crazy of my week (hosting my family Christmas and having to make two different Christmas meals even though I swore I would never do that again, the mall the day after Christmas, my internet and television debacle, a trip to Athens, etc.).  I was sick for the past 5 days and have hardly eaten.  But today I'm starving.  Oh, it was a peaceful vacation as you can tell.