Feb. 23: Logic? What’s that?

Do you ever find yourself getting angry at really, really stupid things? Yeah, me neither. But if I wasn’t so calm and even-keeled all the time (cough!) and DID let myself get mad at anything, it wouldn’t be jerk-ass politicians or anti-vaxxers, it’d probably just be stuff like this:

• Side-by-side cabinet doors that don’t align properly. I think it’s due to house-settling, but it’s also possible we live right on top of a fault line. I know our crawl space is pretty deep…
• The possum that just moved into the neighborhood and likes to walk on our fence. Thanks to our beagle’s twilight “aroooooo”-ing, everyone knows about the possum from here to the next county over.
• Things I’ve misplaced and searched for and still can’t find.
• Sinuses. I’ve had it with mine and would like them removed, thank you.
• Over-enthusiastic parents that sit next to me for youth sports. The other day the score was something like 54-7, and some dork kept saying to other parents of the loser team, “Well, they got heart! You can’t deny they got heart!” If I’d known whose kid belonged to them, I’d have wanted to yell out, “Hey YOU. Your dad thinks you suck and you do! And bee-tee-dubs, your jersey’s tucked into your underwear.”
• Also sports-related: I don’t know the first thing about coaching a basketball team, but somewhere in the rec league coaches’ manual there are apparently instructions to leave rebounds to the professionals. Here’s my play-by-play of every single game so far: A kid tries to make a basket and EVERY OTHER KID ON THE COURT stops to see if it goes in (it doesn’t), and then a kid from the opposing team catches it and dribbles down the court. Repeat 7,398 times. Hear Jen scream. I know, rec league players are rec league players because they aren’t good enough to play in a real league, but COME ON. Even *I* know that rebounds are… things… you should try to… get.
• Kanye West. Seriously, people need to stop letting him do stuff. He is not the artistic force he thinks he is.
• People who drive under the speed limit. People like my husband.
• People who don’t obey traffic signs. “No turn on red” means WAIT, idiot. (That is NOT my husband. He obeys all the traffic signs that don’t have big numbers on them.)
• Broken stuff in my house.
• Broken stuff in my body.
• Madonna, trying way too hard. Sure, she looks good for being 85 years old, but WOMAN, PUT ON SOME FRIGGIN’ PANTS.
• And speaking of trying way too hard… Lady Gaga. My tune changed—slightly—when I realized she can play the piano and therefore might actually have some talent, but generally speaking, she is close to Kardashian-level overrated. And while her performance on the Oscars last night wasn’t the worst thing ever, by far, if you ask me, she had no business imitating Dame Julie.
• Dog hair everywhere.
• Text-speak. Well, text-spell, anyway. C U L8R, really? Is it really that hard to spell out “see you later,” especially with auto-complete on your phone??? Answer: it isn’t. So stop. I can’t read it.
• People who don’t proofread their texts before tapping “send,” making them impossible to understand. (Although sometimes that ends up being hilariously make-fun-of-able, amirite, Theresa???)
• Emoticons that don’t exist: the rolling eyes, the puking face…
• Those blue-ish headlights. They make my eyes scream.
• Muscle cars. Also antique cars—I just don’t understand the point. When I was a kid my dad bought an old car, and I would watch him night after night in the garage, restoring it. I remember asking “why?” an awful lot.
• Bananas that turn brown the second you bring them home.
• Weeds. Not weed. Weeds. Especially when they really ugly-up the yard but it’s too muddy to go out and dig them up.
• How my kid thinks I’m the meanest mom EVER because I remind him to do two things every day: practice piano and brush his teeth. Even with my nagging, he still manages to get out of doing one or both. At least he doesn’t tuck his jersey into his underwear.

Anything driving you crazy? Feel free to share. This is a safe place.

Jan. 7: Puzzling

Someone gave us a somewhat complex puzzle a few years ago. We love it because it’s The Simpsons (duh) and it’s challenging but not in the every-piece-is-a-different-color way. It’s 1,000 pieces and usually takes a few days for us to put it together.

Jack got a puzzle for Christmas this year and it got me in the mood. Puzzles are nerdily relaxing to me—maybe because they are such a quiet activity? Certainly not because assembling them is stress-free. When we got home from my mom’s I dug this out of our game closet, and eventually realized, after hours of work, that since the last time we did this puzzle it became a 999-piece puzzle.

…and in the garbage it goes.

I’m almost over being mad about this. Almost.

Aug. 10: Gardening woes

I’m mad at my yard.

We redid the front yard a few years ago—with a few wins, a few losses—but this year a lot of the stuff is really looking rotten. Whatever do you mean? Is that what you’re asking? I’m sure it is, because I know y’all care sooo much about my yard.

Here’s one of my favorite plants we put in, Euphorbia Tiny Tim, because it’s unique and quite beautiful. Here’s how it looked about a year ago:

That’s an extreme close-up. Cool, huh? Here’s how it looks right now:

Yup. All that cool-lookin’ red and pincer-y stuff is dead dead dead, and I’m pissed pissed pissed.

Bellflowers: so pretty. Last year they looked like this:

…and now they look like this:

Stoopid Bellflowers.

The Sea Thrifts, so cheery!

But this year they make me grouchy-faced:

This one’s even worse:

Note the Bellflowers on the right above—that particular batch is still growing well this year. In fact, it’s all bunched up with the Black-eyed Susans, which you would think would make them each grow less full, but they’re both looking quite good. We thinned the Susans down this year and they’re doing alright…

…except for the bunch we transplanted to the side yard:

Nothing seems to do well over in the side yard, even though it gets plenty of sun. For two years, our Daphne has bloomed for a week and then dropped its flowers. The Periwinkle doesn’t spread nearly as fast as in other parts of the yard. Even arborvitae has died there, and DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO KILL ARBORVITAE??? I think the soil is just full of poison or somethin’. So frustrating. We’ve lost a LOT of plants over yonder. (Yonder = side yard. Duh.)

Okay, it’s not a complete disappointment. The Asiatic lilies are quite pretty, as long as the neighbor kids can keep from running over them. We planted them closer to the sidewalk than we should have. The boxwoods are perfect, the dogwood is doing well, the hebes are so-so. 

And behind the lilies, growing around the path stones, you can see the little Blue Star Creepers, which are doing better this year than ever. Of course, we don’t really give a crap about the Blue Star Creepers. Isn’t that the way it always goes?

On our front porch we have the Dusty Miller that’s on its third year. Annual, my butt. We cut it and cut it, and it just keeps growing.

This mini-rant all started because we just noticed the aspen in the backyard is getting the ugly, sticky fungus-y thing it’s gotten every year since we planted it. Victor wants to cut down the aspen. Victor is crazy. I will not cut down that tree. I Googled “black sticky aspen” and found that our tree either has Marssonina Blight or Septoria (you probably knew that, right?)—whatever it is, there’s no fix. It’s fungus and will keep coming back and that’s that and that makes me angry. It makes me want to kill things, but just about everything I see is already dead. Grrr.

For you gardener folk, is it possible for plants to have an “off” year? Is that why everything in my yard is pissing me off? Or did I anger the gods somehow? Is there anything I can do to make it all pretty again? I’m totally open to voodoo…

Feb. 17: Roadus rageus maximus

OK, so I was driving home from work today, on a 35-mph hour street leading up to Division, and a car stopped in front of me with its turn signal on. This usually means the person is going to turn, correct? This person did not turn. This person stayed right there in the street, where I could not get around him. I waited for a bit before I honked a little tiny honk, like “ahem!” He stuck his hand out and waved to the side like I should go around him. I could not go around him, though; besides there being no room, there was also a bike lane and the only time I’ve ever been stopped by a cop was when I once went in a bike lane to pass a turning car. Even if there had been room to pass this guy, I probably wouldn’t have.

So, I sit there, waiting and waiting while this jackass is pretty much parked in the middle of the road, and finally I lay on the horn. This time I really gave it my all. It was a big ol’ HOOOOONK! and didn’t do a bit of good. The driver waved me on again. I’m all, I CAN’T GET AROUND YOU, EFFER! (Should I mention that the car had California plates? It seems like that is a detail that should not be left out. California plates. Yes.)

Another guy walks over from the side of the road, where the car would have turned had it done what its blinker said it was going to do, and gets in the back seat of the car. I think, OK, NOW he’s going to go. But did the car move? No. So I lay on the horn again, and this time three hands come out from the windows to wave me around them. Hands of JACKASSES, all three. Idiot jackasses, in fact. Because only idiots do what these guys were doing.

Cars are starting to line up behind me when another guy comes over and gets in the other side of the  car. Finally, the blinker turns off and the car moves forward. Of course, even though they’re moving, by now I’m completely pissed at their rude behavior—we don’t drive that way in Oregon, idiot jackass from California!—and can feel my blood start to boil. It’s right about now that I think it’s probably a good thing I don’t keep a gun in my car, because I would have totally used it on them. I’m thinking I might have to start carrying one just for situations like this. My gun would not shoot bullets, though; I’m a peace-loving person. Instead, I think I’d make it shoot staples or nails or maybe live piranha. That would get my point across just fine, and I wouldn’t go to prison. Not for life, anyway.

Jul. 27: Dr. Nick/Spaceman/Effer

I have a doctor appointment tomorrow. It’s with a doctor I vowed I’d never go to again—the one who wouldn’t order any kind of scan to see what was causing my back pain last year. I have to see him, though, because I need a refill on a prescription that (apparently) only he can prescribe. It’s a medication I’ve been on for years, and my refills have run out. I really can’t be off it—it’s one of those that makes me all dizzy and sick if I suddenly stop taking it. I was hoping to quietly renew the prescription online, but it’s been too long since the original prescription, and the other doctors I’m seeing now—the rheumatologist and oncologist—say it’s a primary care physician thing.

I know, I know. I need to find a new primary care physician. I haven’t been in a big hurry to do that, because any health issues I’ve had lately are directly related to chemotherapy and my oncologist has been able to handle them. In fact, even if they weren’t specifically cancer-related, it made more sense that she handle them than a doctor who is not only not an oncologist, but completely unfamiliar with my medical history.

Soooo…

Over the past eight months I’ve considered writing a strongly worded letter to my primary care physician, but ultimately it just seemed like a waste. It’s not like he’s going to respond. Several people have asked if he’s contacted me since my lymphoma diagnosis, being that he gets the results of every test I’ve had in the last eight months. But no, I haven’t heard from him, nor did I expect to. What’s he going to do, apologize? For being a bad doctor? And kind of a major asshole? Unlikely.

There’s a big part of me that wants to go in tomorrow and play all nice at first and then scream bloody hell at him. Maybe I should take my mom in with me—I bet she’d work up a good hollerin’ in his honor. There’s another part of me that thinks it would be more mature to go in and just get what I need and get out. This is not a doctor visit I ever planned to have, and I don’t know what to do. Here are my options:

1. “Hello, Dr. A-hole. Why yes, I do have cancer. If you had ordered a scan at the beginning, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be going through this hell right now. What do you have to say about that?”
2. “Hello, Dr. A-hole. Why yes, I do have cancer. If you had ordered a scan at the beginning, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be going through this hell right now. I would like you to sign this piece of paper that says I AM A VERY BAD DOCTOR AND ALSO KIND OF A MAJOR ASSHOLE. Thanks!”
3. “Hello, Dr. A-hole. Why yes, I do have cancer. If you had ordered a scan at the beginning, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be going through this hell right now. To make up for your ineptitude, I think the very least you could do is throw in a prescription for medicinal marijuana. Maybe one for all my friends, too. And enough Xanax to keep me from going home and taking my extreme frustration with you out on my family.”
4. “Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Uh-huh. OK. Yes. Thank you. Bye.”
5. “I’m sure you asked me to bring in a stool sample. Here’s my dog’s. No, really, please take it. I insist. I’ll just mash it into your hand to make sure you have a good grip on it. I’d hate for you to drop it.”
6. Cry, just to make him feel rotten.

Please offer your advice, friends. I need to figure this out before 11:30 tomorrow morning.

Dec. 9: Rules for Mother Mary and Jen

OK, so my mom’s coming this weekend, and she’s staying for kind of a long time. Yesterday she asked if I’m alright with it, and I told her that as long as she behaves, she can stay forever. And then she laughed, as though I was kidding. She’s a funny woman, thinking I joke about everything.

(I joke not.)

Mom is coming to help me out with the kids before and after my chemo treatment on Dec. 22, as well as help us prepare for Christmas. I appreciate this in ways I can almost not express—seriously, I feel like this is a huge sacrifice on her part, and am so glad she’s willing to be here to share this challenging time in our family. I know the repercussions of staying away from her own mother are going to be great—I mean, the abuse Grandma will think she has the right to heap on Mom!

It wouldn’t be nice of me to have, say, a list of rules posted throughout the house while she’s here. Necessary, sure. But nice? Not really. So I call upon you, my vast audience of four, to help me come up with guidelines for BOTH of us to follow during Mom’s visit. Have you ever shared a visit with your mom for an extended period of time? If so, you probably have suggestions for making sure we don’t kill each other before Mom’s due to go home. Please share any and all advice in a comment below, I beg of you.

We will not post these rules, but we will commit them to memorization (right, Mom?). For example, here’s a rule for Mother Mary:

1. Mom must remember that Jen is not a morning person and takes a while to become chatty every day. Mom needs to not make Jen feel bad when Jen snaps at her to shut the hell up before 9 a.m. (Jen would only do that if absolutely necessary, of course, because Jen is the good daughter her mother raised her to be. [cough cough])

Let’s make that rules 1-10, mmkay?

And here’s a rule for Jen:

1. Jen needs to return phone calls when she says she will or Mom will worry and worry and turn into her own mother, and that’s not good for anyone.

And, to encourage you to help me with these commandments: if I can’t come up with a satisfactory list, I will resort to outfitting Mom with a shock collar. It’s on you, folks. So if you care at all about Mother Mary…

Oct. 6: I’d love a nap, thank you

Sheesh, I just started writing another bulleted list. What’s worse, one post after another of bulleted lists, or meme after meme after meme? I don’t know.

There’s just all this stuff going on right now. It’s too boring to share every single thing, so you’re just gonna have to trust me that it’s a lot. And it’s getting a little overwhelming. I’m doing my best to keep my head above water, to not be consumed by the weight of it all, the daily-ness of it all, and if going through the motions is what it’s going to take, I’ll do it. For now, anyway.

The sucky part of feeling like this is finding the tiniest little thing setting me off. Example? Katie’s homework today was European geography; she had a list of quiz questions she was to answer using a map that was almost 20 friggin’ years old. Seriously—this map clearly had West Germany and East Germany drawn as separate countries. One of the questions was “how many countries are in Europe?” How exactly is a kid supposed to answer that with a shitty, outdated map that doesn’t even identify all its countries? GAH! It wasn’t just Katie’s doubt in my ability to answer geography questions on a fourth grade worksheet, the whole thing really made my blood boil.

See? Not a huge thing, but I reacted as though it was. I scared myself a little.

The kids have been after us for days to put up Halloween decorations. Finally (FINALLY!), tonight we all went out front and hung our candy corn lights and bat garland, banged the decorative stakes into the yard, and tried to stretch one of those fake spiderweb things across the posts on the porch. Did that work? Ha. Have you ever tried to do one of those fake spiderweb things? You know it’s impossible to make them look realistic, don’t you? But ours didn’t even look like a bad fake spiderweb. It looked like we tried to stretch a big wad of cotton from one porch post to the other, which is, well, exactly what we did. We gave up and tried to pull it all down again, which took as much effort as trying to get it to look like a decorative spiderweb. It kept getting stuck in my rings, and I cursed.

My Internet connection has been dropping unexpectedly. I suspect it’s my wireless card and I just don’t want to deal with trying to figure it out right now.

Plus, so far Saturday Night Live has totally sucked this season.

I could really, really use a good night’s rest. All I need is one. I think it would make a world of difference. I wouldn’t mind a handful of Xanax to go with it. Just enough to make Jen feel like Jen again.

Sep. 23: And now I need more Xanax

Warning: I’m going to complain about my back pain again.

I saw my doctor again after he did some chiropractic adjustments a couple weeks ago and said adjustments helped not even a little tiny bit. He told me to see my rheumatologist about my back, because he’s “certain” (his word) that my back trouble has something to do with my connective tissue problems. (‘Member, I have that weird not-quite-lupus, not-quite-rheumatoid-arthritis thing.)

I’m “certain” (my word) that my rheumatologist will not have the answer. I’m quite certain, in fact, that my back pain is from an injury, and has little or nothing to do with my connective tissue disease. However, I’ll see my rheumatologist because he’s not going to throw up his hands and push me off to someone else like my primary care physician seems to have been happy to do. My rheumatologist is a good guy and will refer me to specialists, if necessary, until this pain is treated. He also knows that while my connective tissue problems may be contributing to the back pain, they are not necessarily the cause.

Dr. Good Guy’s first available appointment, I found out this morning, is in November. Grrr.

I’ve been living with this pain for much of the year now, but in the last three months it’s gotten progressively worse. And in the last week it’s gone from being unbearable only when lying down to being nearly unbearable at all times.

My smile, if you’ve seen one on me? Fakeity fake fake fake.

While I’m on the subject of medical frustrations and general pissed-off-ed-ness, can I tell you how much I hate mail-order pharmacies? I swear, they go out of their way to make their service as inconvenient as possible. You mean I have to physically MAIL written prescriptions? (Is that required for anything else these days? I don’t think so.) I’m pretty sure when they receive these snail-mailed written prescriptions that they sit on them (along with their thumbs) for days before processing them. I would wonder if they played computer games all day, but these companies are obviously run by abacus, not computers. And when they finally ship orders, they send them by tortoises. In rowboats. “Oh, these are going from New Jersey to Oregon, so the fastest way is through the Panama Canal.” Of course, our prescription insurance coverage—yes, the one provided by the friggin’ hospital where we work!—won’t let us fill orders at local pharmacies so we are left pissed off AND unmedicated. Grrr again.

It would be wise for me to stop blogging now. I don’t think y’all need to dirty up your thoughts with the things I am so very tempted to write, unless you have some good drugs that can make you wipe the filth away from your brain afterward, in which case can I be your very best friend?

June 23: Measure twice? Ha.

Eleven years ago at this time, the house in which we currently live was being built. We had made all our color/carpet/vinyl/lighting selections, signed the papers, and sold our other house. We came by every few days to check on its progress. Puppy Scout even took a big poo in what was eventually the master bedroom. We were all very excited about moving into our new home.

Little did we know that something sinister was occurring in the house at that time. No, it wasn’t being haunted. It was much worse. Apparently the (finger quotes) builders (close finger quotes) spent most of their workdays sitting on their thumbs instead of building our house according to the blueprints. These evildoers were either blind or very inexperienced or four-year-olds or idiots; generally, their construction credo was “Meh.” Every time we have done something Home Depot-y to our house that requires even a small amount of precision, we have found more and more evidence of this.

Studs are typically 16 inches apart, are they not? There are areas in this house where there are no studs for several feet. I wish I was kidding or being even a little bit sarcastic; I am not. If there was ever a bar fight in here, people thrown against the walls would go right through them like cartoon characters. I think the only thing holding the roof up is the paint and what we now realize are load-bearing posters.

When we had our floors redone the contractor told us there was no ductwork behind one of our vents. Who knows, we’re probably heating our crawl space all winter long. When we replaced all the base trim after the floors were done, there were places where the walls went inward a good half inch away from the trim. Three tubs of putty later, I think it finally looks alright.

Once upon a time we wanted to hang shelves. A three-day-long flood of cursing ensued. Now the only thing holding up that wall is the spackle from all the “oops” holes. Oh, and the shelves. And the books on those shelves.

After today’s fiasco, I am more sure than ever that these (finger quotes) builders (close finger quotes) may not have even had a measuring tape in their possession at the time they were pretending to build our house. We tried for the fourth time to hang curtains in our family room windows. We’ve never been very successful because the windows are large, which means the curtains must be plentiful, which means they are heavy, which means they require extra-strong brackets. It seems that the area surrounding the family room windows is one of those with few to no studs, so getting the brackets to stay in the wall is a challenge. My solution (this time) was this: buy a big ol’ piece of wood and nail the hell out of it into the studs, then screw the brackets into that. Sounds brilliant, right? Thank you! I thought so too. But finding the elusive studs and determining a straight line in which to nail the hell out of them proved to be our biggest challenge yet. And this simple little task—nailing a straight board into what should be a straight wall—that turned into a day of cursing at those jackasses from 11 years ago really just made me hate our house more than ever.

Don’t give me any of that “at least you have a roof over your head!” stuff. Because I’m pretty sure we live in a 4-bedroom, 2½ bath structure of cleverly arranged sheetrock and we’re but a blustery day away from it being a pile of rubble.

June 15: I will mess you up

Before the school year closed, both Katie and Jack brought home backpackfuls of papers and projects every day (can we all say “tomorrow’s garbage”?). The kindergarteners had even more stuff; earlier in the week we were asked to send in grocery bags in which they’d bring the rest of it home. The most important thing was their reading notebook, which shows their progress in learning words throughout the school year. We’ve been impressed with the reading skills Jack acquired in kindergarten so I was eager to see this item, especially.

On Wednesday Jack took quite a while walking home from the bus stop. The yearbooks had been distributed and I figured he was asking his bus friends to sign his (he was). But when he finally rounded the corner and got closer to the house I could see he was upset. He was trying to be a big boy but his chin was quivering and I could see his eyes were about to spill over with tears. I asked what was wrong and he said, “I lost my bag. I put it down and it’s gone. I looked everywhere.” He had his backpack on so I didn’t know what bag he was talking about. This upset him even more, that he had to explain it further to me.

Then I remembered the all-important kindergarten bag and what a big deal it was when Katie brought hers home two years ago. I said, “Well, let’s go look for it,” and Jack brightened—I think he expected me to say it didn’t matter. Hey kid, I’m not pure evil.

We hopped in the car and drove up to the bus stop. He pointed to where he had left the bag when his friends were signing each other’s yearbooks, and just like he said, there was no bag. We walked around and looked behind trees and plants. The brick bench thingie. A small fence. Nothing.

And that’s when I turned into Mama Bear. The sadder Jack got, the angrier I got. I thought, “How DARE some little $#!+-head kid steal Jack’s stuff!” There are about 30 kids at that bus stop, so I knew there wasn’t much chance I’d find the guilty little Goldilocked bastard and be able to hurt him. (Notice, I assume it’s a boy. Girls don’t do that stuff, right?)

I hoped maybe a parent saw the bag, recognized its importance, and picked it up to deliver to us. Maybe they would even thoughtfully frame each item.

I was just about to comfort Jack and tell him there was nothing we could do when I noticed some stuff piled up around someone’s garbage can at the curb. I told him to check it even though it looked like recycling. He ran over and said, “No…” and then screamed, “Wait, here it is! I found my bag! Someone thought it was garbage and put it by the garbage but I found it!”

And that’s when I transformed from Big Bitchy Bear™ back into Jen.

There hasn’t been a lot of opportunity for our kids to be hurt by other kids. Part of this is simply because their friends are nice, and part is because they’re young. I’m thankful for this but know there is probably plenty of this kind of intervention in our future. I hope when the time comes that I’m able to deal with it as a rational parent, somewhere between the Mama Bear and the mom who wants her kids to just leave her alone until the drugs start taking effect.

Wish me luck, won’t you?

June 19: You are hereby damned

When you're really, truly angry for a perfectly justifiable reason ... when there are so few people who know how to properly punctuate their writing no matter how much you complain and mock ... when the Xanax bottle is empty ... when that bitch keeps taking the good parking spot ... when you're ready to sic a ninja on anyone who dares speak to you ... when you just don't want to take it out on the dog again ... when you think you'll die if you have to hear the "High School Musical" soundtrack one more time ... when your Internet connection is so @^#$*#% slow ... when sending a dead possum in the mail again just seems a bit too much ... when people continue to put two spaces between sentences ... when you have to push "mute" every time you hear that jackass of a president try to speak ... when flames are shooting out your ears because the phone won't stop ringing ... when Taco Bell just can't get your order right ...

Don't just sit there. Do something. Visit You Are Damned to damn a soul or twelve. It's one of the most valuable services available on the web, it's free, and you'll feel better.

Your dog will thank you.

--Jen
P.S. By having shared this brilliant web site with you, I am immune from all damning. Don't even think about it.