Holidays are sort of null and void over here. Being unemployed puts a damper on things much like Alzheimer’s. Just like Thanksgiving ends up just being a regular thursday with gravy, the Fourth of July ends up being a saturday with more traffic. Well that and all of the rednecks come out in style. And your dog has to go on xanax because your fucking neighbors decide to do fireworks all night, every night, starting on July 2nd. Wanks.

(remind me to never again live in a state where fireworks can be purchased in the grocery store as an impulse buy)

Before you get the idea that if Mother had a job we would be out running around town with sparklers in our fists and patriotic potato salad in our bellies- we wouldn’t be. But it sure is nice to use it as an excuse for wanting to stay inside and shut the world out.

We will spend the day keeping cool (or trying to) and visiting with GM. Although come to think of it we may need to map out our visit as I think downtown is going to be jam packed and traffic logged.

For your enjoyment here is a (taken in advance) holiday photo of some people you may know. Once of us is planning world domination. heh

Now tell me what you are doing this weekend. & yes, you may select more than one answer.

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p.s. want to read something briliant? You must check out this post from Bri’s Unwellness. You can thank me later.

So there is a bit of a continuing saga regarding the air conditioner in my room. To explain (as I am not sure I really have before), my bedroom suite is upstairs. Above the garage. It is a room that is sometimes referred to as a “bonus” room, and in some southern states a FROG (full room over garage). I live in Florida. It is hot here. This hotness necessitates that a separate A/C unit be employed for the upstairs living quarters.

And when that unit dies (where was the CNN coverage on that, Anderson Cooper?!) things get beyond just hot. They get funky and steamy and you can pretty much see the hot air sizzling in front of you.

In other words it is unfit for sleeping & W and I have been sleeping on a twin mattress on the floor of GM’s room since last week. Let me rephrase that, W has been sleeping. I have not. And at this point I am just cranky as hell.

I have been calling the A/C repair place* every day since the repair man left things a hot mess last friday. He actually left things worse as before he futzed with things at least I could get the fan to work. So I call and check on the status of things. And because I am nice and was raised well I call with a sort of apologetic tone to my voice. You know that, “I’m so sorry to have to call again, but…” girl? She is me.

Until today. Until I called and was placed on hold and bounced around from one clueless tech to the other until I finally got on the horn with some lady that is Queen of Parts. Turns out that they haven’t even ORDERED the part that my unit needs. Someone wrote a number down wrong and they had to track down the technician or some such excuse and it all boiled down to a giant delay.

And I might have just hung up and pouted a bit more, might have felt a bit more pathetic and lame for being the girl in a heat wave with no cool air above her bed. But then the lady says that she is walking out the door and will have to order the part on monday. Making giant delay a SUPER SIZED delay.

Excuuuuuuuuse me? Um. No. You are calling now.

She then tells me that she was supposed to leave at 4pm today and it is a holiday weekend and she needs to GO. Well, dear internets, you would have been proud. I went off. Monday would not do. Not at ALL. NO. You will call now. I even sufficiently raised my voice at her when her response to my reminding her that I have a 12 week old baby (yes. I milked it.) was that I “could just have him in a pamper to keep cool.”

I get that I am lucky enough to have cool air downstairs, but my sleep is all janked up because I can not sleep in my bed and it has been an epic wait and parts haven’t been ordered and rather than just put me on hold and make the fricken call you are going to get snippy with me?I’m trying to get snippy with YOU. Don’t infringe on my snippy with yours. Uncool. (literally)

Of course I bet as soon as she got off the phone with me she peed all over my file and lit it on fire and sang God Bless America.

*reminder that we are renters and at the mercy of our property managers as to where we can get repairs done.

I ebb and flow around feelings of hope and optimism. Most days and weeks I can get my perky on and cheerfully surf the internets for possible job opportunities for our family. I can be kind and supportive of Mother. I can try and keep the house as nice and pleasant as possible.

And then some days I feel crushed or empty. I feel like a fool or a failure. And I completely feel lost within my own little journey of life. I feel angry and annoyed and I look for fights.

What I don’t understand is how I am supposed to make it through this time. And I get so sad and depressed watching the news and seeing that my family’s struggles are not unique. But what the hell are we supposed to do to fix things when all attempts at finding a new job situation fall through? If no one is hiring then how do we crawl out of this?

While I know that I don’t have to be upbeat all of the time, I try. I try to be buoyant for myself and also to help prop Mother up. But right now I am tired of it. I am tired of being cheerleader and seeing no results. It is exhausting.

So that is why I have been kind of quiet over here. I am just sitting within the reality that just because I ask the Universe, or just because we apply for every job (well over 300 now, people), or just because we blanket company’s with resumes and well written cover letters, just because we have people making calls on our behalf- well it doesn’t make it so.

In a few weeks we are going to the state where Mother took her bar exam so that she can do some continuing education type classes to keep her license up to date. That means an 8-10 hour car trip for us.

Any advice or suggestions for making this trip semi pleasant with a 3 month old that HATES his car seat?

Or any advice on keeping optimistic in general?

We discovered something a week or so ago and up until this morning I refrained from goggling it as I was too terrified I would find out it was BAD. Couldn’t really find anything that said it was horrible, so I can now confess that the W is obsessed/in love/and in total awe of the visualizer on itunes.

It also turns out that we are not the only house experiencing such extreme joy.

——————Thought Break————————

My mind is kind of jumbled at the moment. Still recovering from the news of the nonjob. I really had hopes there and I feel a bit the fool for it now. But honestly what else can keep us adrift if it isn’t foolish optimism. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, I am just so fucking ready to be out of this funky chapter. I feel like there is just this haze of gray covering everything and until we have stability nothing will be in living color.

————–Thought Break——————–

We took the W to see GM today. We stayed with her while she ate her lunch with everyone in the day room, but she was having a bit of an agitated day. Some odd health issues are surfacing. The edema continues, but now she has this very hard spot on her tummy. The nurses did a scan of the area and it didn’t reveal what the problem was. Could it just be another manifestation of the edema? She is to begin lasix to help get rid of the extra fluid.

The other health thing is this cough that she has had for a while now. She had it the day we took her to get her hair cut. It is such an un-GM sort of cough. It sounds, well, to be frank, it sounds masculine. Like the sort of cough my Grandfather had. A deep cough. She gets Robitussin for it, but like the edema, it has just become this new thing that is almost shrugged off from the nurses and doctors at the nursing home. Not in a way that seems like they are ignoring it- but like it is her normal.

So today we found GM in the day room, actually in the hall near the day room as she does not like to be with the other people. “Those people are nuts,” is what she says. Or if she is feeling really cranky she will lean in to us and spell out that “those people are b-i-t-c…” and she stops herself.

She was thrilled to see the W, but when she saw him she exclaimed, “Hello A____!” And instead of being hurt or whatever that she did not now W’s name this day I was touched because the name she called him is the name of one of her grandsons. Sadly this is not really someone that she usually knows. She has lost so many people and family to Alzheimer’s. But that she had A___’s name available to her, today of all days, was sweet. He will be ten years old tomorrow and I often feel so sad that he missed out on the good Grandmother years that I got.

—————Thought Break—————

I am worried that big stuff is happening out in the world and we will never know as the 24 hour news stations are only covering one thing (with a little Ed and Farrah thrown in). And while it is sad, tragic, and mysterious, I also feel like it is obsessive to spend so much coverage on this person’s death. Don’t get me wrong- I do think the death is newsworthy, but I just don’t think that it is all day long worthy. And I don’t think that interviewing random people about how they feel about the death is newsworthy. I just get a bit ill at how much media loves to smack their lips over this stuff. It seems disrespectful.

—————Thought Break—————

The air conditioner in my room above the garage has broken. It began to leak and then it stopped. When the repair man came out to investigate on Friday (the 1st available day) he declared it kaput. And so there has been no cold air in my room since wednesday and W and I have been sleeping on a twin mattress that I put on the floor of GM’s room. Being six feet and amazon does not mix well with a twin bed. I also have weird as hell dreams sleeping in GM’s old room. And it makes me miss her so much to smell bits of White Linen wafting about.

Hopefully a new machine is coming soon.

Over 200 resumes and cover letters ready for the post. Nobody puts Mother in the corner…

Did you enter the giveaway here? Check to see who the winner is AND a cool bonus.

I had a lot of fun on the most recent project that I have been writing about in my review blog. It was nice to have a different space that was totally dedicated to, well, dishing about a product.

And while the name of the review blog is 3 Women and a Blog- I would like to open it up to all of you guys. This summer let’s get dishy with our reviews. So here is where I ask all of you to guest post.

What does that mean? Well it means if you have just watched a movie and have an opinion with a capital O I want to hear it. If you have just finished a book that made you weep or made you laugh or made you want to punch someone in the gut- I want to know. If you have just discovered the BEST summer recipe ever- spill it!

I am looking for posts on the following topics:

Food, books, movies, television, products for your house, products for your family, and products just for your fine self.

They do not need to be fancy posts- just tell me what you think. I will compile them and try to post within theme and link back to your site (if you are of the blogging persuasion). You can cross post on your own blog as well.

If you are interested in participating (oh I hope you are, I will feel like a GIANT loser if you don’t. There. I said it.) leave me a comment and let me know what topic or topics you want to write about. I’d like to have a new guest post once a week.

Sound interesting? (please say yes)

Bring out the extra meds, Mother didn’t get the job that she was perfect for. As a consolation she found out that the people thought she was just right for the job, but thanks to our shit economy they have decided to not hire anyone for the moment. To add extra flavor to the ouch she heard that if she had applied for the job about a month ago she would have been a shoe in.

Oh well. Right? Only five more days for June to rock our world. You hear that, June? Mother seems to be taking the news in stride. (but I know she is super upset) Damn hope. At least I harnessed my sadness today into cleaning the house.

Here is what is keeping us going:

Captain Adorable at 11 weeks

Adventures in pants with bubble butt

Only 6 more months to shop for my perfect birthday gift. A girl can dream…

I am a total half birthday celebrating kind of gal. Um, when I remember. Used to be that June 24th was the ONLY day that I could get a proper party going on. Because, let’s be real, who wants to pin the tail on the donkey on Christmas Eve?

My favorite half birthday party was to celebrate the fantastic age of 6 1/2. Mother and I were living in Tampa at the time. (Oh Florida, how you repeat on me…) I had some awesome friends and our town had a Future Skate. Jealous? Of course I couldn’t really skate, but I loved the idea of having a private booth and a stack of presents.

Ok really I loved the idea of getting to open my presents in front of other children. When your real birthday falls on a holiday you never get to really experience the thrill of present opening in front of peers. AND you have to be one of those peers and totally have present-opening envy for every other kid’s birthday party. Or was that just me?

So to celebrate my turning 6.5 I had a proper party at Future Skate and invited loads of people (because loads of people = loads of gifts.) And oh the gifts were off the hook that year. Smurfette Bank! Roach clips for my hair (what else were they meant for?). ET toys. Knock off Cabbage Patch kids…But really I got to have the brilliant and wonderful moment of being in a sea of 6 year olds and being the complete center of attention. And you know I took my time opening each gift, pausing for Mother to take a photo of me with each gift, and then slowly moved to the next one.

Me in an awesome circle of gift opening:

After gift opening it was time for my crowning glory- a solo skate (JUST ME!) to my favorite song. This is where I tell you that my favorite song was Jesse by Carly Simon. I had no idea what the song was really about, but I loved it. I loved it so much that I even named my first cat Jesse. I knew all the words and I was looking forward to belting them out as I inched around the rink.

Except a song like Jesse wasn’t exactly in the roster at a Future Skate that catered to tweens and teens. The DJ thought he was doing me a solid because clearly he knew my musical taste better than I did and he made a last minute substitution: Jessie’s Girl. Damn was I pissed. I think I actually cried and pouted for my entire solo skate. It sucked.

So sad:

But it was still the best half birthday I have ever had. For real.

This morning I woke up and decided that I needed a cake. I tanked up the W, loaded us up in the car, and set off to the local Publix in search of one of their 1/2 cakes. (because what is more appropriate for a 1/2 birthday than 1/2 a cake?) Sadly the Publix I opted to go to only had 1/2 cakes that did not rock my boat (lemon glazed sour cream numbers- while possibly good they did nothing in terms of a celebratory vibe).

W was being Captain Adorable and flirting with all of the fluorescent lights so I figured I had some time to cruise the make a cake aisle and get my Betty Crocker on. As soon as I saw that it was buy one get one free red velvet cake mixes I knew things were going my way. That is until I heard a woman clack towards me in some serious eff me pumps. She saw the car seat locked into the grocery buggy and declared that she just HAD to have a look.

And this woman leapt in front of W’s face and SHRILLED, “Hello Baby!!!!” in the loudest voice ever. Jesus hell, woman! And immediately I saw W’s bottom lip begin to quiver (a trait that is 100% inherited from his Grandmother) and I knew the wails were coming. To her credit the woman realized instantly that it was a stupid thing to do and began to apologize profusely. I took time to let her know that it was ok, because the last thing I would want is for some woman to begin her day thinking she was a baby attacker. But in my head I was pissed.

(& being that lady with the wailing baby in the grocery store is all kinds of hell. You tend to get loads of advice and looks. I hate it.)

The good news is that I have red velvet cake cooling on a wire rack in my kitchen. Oh yes. Come on over for a slice!

I’ve been a bit in denial about BG Talula.  I look at the calendar and realize that with W turning 11 weeks it now makes it 10 weeks that she has been missing. Ten.

A few days ago I returned the safe trap back to the neighbor that had lent it to me. This is the neighbor that is basically the go-to person for all things animal in our community. If there is a hurt or killed cat or dog she is the one that is called. As I returned the trap I felt so empty and like such a failure. But this is beyond just opening the back door and calling, “kitty”, every night. Ten weeks is a lot of missing.

The neighbor said that she really felt like BG T had been adopted by someone that found her (she bases this feeling on the fact that no one has called her otherwise). It is a nice thought to think that she is ok and that maybe she is being loved and taken care of. But realistically it doesn’t feel possible.

I have accepted that I will never see her again. It breaks my heart in a million slivers. She was the best friend in the worst of times and the best friend in the best. She saw me through crazy days in Hollywood, moving to the south,  learning how to take care of GM, and was the only source of comfort during all the years of trying for a baby. That she barely met W makes me incredibly sad, and then it makes me feel guilty. Maybe W is the reason why she left in the first place.

I will miss her always. And I will always hold onto this pocket sized bit of hope that she will come back.

BG T in the beginning- she would come to work with me

In a sea of Grovers

I will never stop missing you.

Ah…nothing like father’s day to make you think about genetics. Am I right? Feel like learning more about what makes you, well, YOU?

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Sunday cuteness