Hi!

Wow, I haven't posted in a long time! i didn;t have the mental energy.

Things got really, really bad at work. Then they got worse. Then I quit.

I'm working now as the marketing and communications manager for a non-profit that provides before and after-school programming and summer camps. The same program the boy has been going to after school since his first day of kindergarten.

And. I. Love. It.

Everyone is nice and caring and the whole point is to provide quality programming for kids, whereas the whole point of my last job was to make money for an already filthy rich family. People here assume you know what you are doing until proven optherwise, which is the opposite of where I was. And we have a budget and are expected to spend it wisely, and not constantly asked to do more with less, and all profits go into improving services. Unlike...well, you get it.

I'm not sure how often I will post but I can feel my head rising above the water line.

So, HI!

sigh

I had a big, work-related disappointment on Friday and while I was OK all weekend, Monday morning is sitting on my chest like a lead weight. I am sad and angry and disillusioned.

How are you?

Wherein I become a gumpy 85-year-old woman and yell at kids to get off my lawn wiht their fancy "shoes"

OK, I admit haven't gone show shopping in a while and when I have it's been for Danskos and other angry-ankle/arch-friendly footwear.

Well, I might (might, might, just might) need to dress up in a real live business suit in the near future, so I am looking for more appropriate footwear (and clothes that actually fit, but that's another post). And I am shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED!!! by the "choices."

Somehow, while I was getting old, I mean "resting my ankle in bed," someone decided women needed to be wearing platform hooker shoes with 4-inch heels!

Examples:

(these ones are actually named "Promiscucous", yes, really.)

(ooh, look, they rolled these ones in peanuts, like a Dairy Queen cone!)

I'm going back to bed.

Relief

I suck at math.

I suck at money management.

I like to shop, especially when I am depressed.

That combination has been deadly for my family's budget (or lack thereof) over the years. And money is always a source of stress for me. We are never in danger of repossession or foreclosure or anything serious like that, but there are always bills that are 15 or 30 days late, overdraft fees, late fees, forgotten bills, etc.

Several times I have decided (and even told the husband) I was going to hand it all over to him to handle, or we would do it all together, and then for whatever reason (embarrassment over the pickle we were currently in, pride, a new resolve to be better at it) I didn't do it, and continued being the family's horribly bad money handler.

But yesterday I finally did it. I collected it all up, wrote down all the pertinent information, passwords, account numbers etc., and gave it all to the husband.

It's all on him now.

And it feels so good!!!!

Corporate stupidity

The husband changed jobs last sumer and cashed out his 401(k). For the last six months or so he's been getting letters from the old employer and the old 401(k) company telling him there was a discrepancy in his favor and they were auditing his account and likely owed him a small amount of money.

Well, this weekend the check finally arrived.

A check for 1 cent.

YES, seriously.

BRAINS!!!!!!!!

The Johnsons commented that all my new car needs is a vinyl sticker family on the back window. We both hate them and have laughed about them a few times on our blogs.

Well, I just ordered the perfect one! I'm getting these in lime green:

Yay for me!

Turned out it was my alternator that was kaput, so I had the choice of fixing it (for $723) or getting a new vehicle.

Since I already had plans to trade it in for something with better gas mileage, and it was in the shop at the Ford dealership, I decided to get a new car.

And new it was! It had 29 miles on it when I drove it off the lot, and 9 of those were my test drive.

It's pretty and fun.

So my car died this morning...

Yeah, fun times. It's something battery or alternator related (or both).

I got to work OK, and then at lunch, my friend Katie and I decided to try to jump it and then she would follow me to an autoparts store to try installing a new battery. I got as far as the left-turn lane at a major intersection when it died, refused to restart, refused to hold a charge, refused to go into neutral so we could not push it off the road (even if we had wanted to, and we didn't since it's pretty huge).

Standing on the median with my friend, Katie, for half an hour proved quite illuminating. We carried out a bit of an impromptu sociological experiment. Here's what we learned:

- Most people ignored us and just maneuvered on around us.
- 2 people flipped off (yes, really! I guess they take breakdowns a little personally).
- One guy in a BMW gave major attitude, sighing heavily and resting his head on his hands on steering wheel in frustration when we explained the car was not moving because it was disabled (the raised hood, open door and two women standing next to it on the median had apparently not alerted him to the situation).
- Only four people of the dozens of cars that passed us even bothered to ask if we needed help. One was a woman on her own, one was a teenager, one was a young 20-ish guy (who parked his car in a nearby parking lot and ran out to the median to talk to us!), and one was a guy in a truck.
- Many, many men and groups of men that looked like they could have handled pushing the car out of traffic drove by and ignored us.
- Katie is willing to pretend to talk on her cellphone for significant periods of time in order to look like she is doing something proactive in a crisis.
- I, on the other hand, am willing to stand there looking helpless, perhaps even whimpering. My brain stops functioning in this kind of situation and I cannot be relied on to make simple decisions and must therefore have Katie with me at all times.
- And the tow truck driver who eventually showed up to help us (after telling us he was right around the corner then taking 1/2 hour to show up) is a member of the Hells Angel, according to his jacket.

We think we'll write it up as a master's thesis, but first, we need to go out and do it again and see what the results are like if we flash a little boob...

Look at me, posting two days in a row!

The boy is back at his outdoor/science camp and this week his session is called Woodland Wizards.

When I picked him up Monday night he told me in a disappointed voice: "We learned all bout plants and trees and animals but nothing about wizards!"

I haven't had much to say lately. I have mostly recovered from my funk of last month, but the increase in happy pills made me anxious for a while (sad or anxious, your choice, what a deal!).

Last week I was away on business in Southeast Alaska and the weather was phenomenal and the activities were fun. Boats, boats, boats one day, bears, bears, bears, another day.





The boy and I leave on the 31st for two weeks at my mom and dad's and sister's houses, with a camping reunion weekend with the people I was a summer camp counselor with for several summers in the mid-80s in the middle. When I am not having fun, I plan to be pampered and eat lots of fresh-grown veggies and swim in Lake Huron with abandon.