Critters

My mom has critters…and we’re not talking dogs and cats. No…my mother has raccoons [plural] in the attic of her house. [I keep telling mom that wild animals do not make good pets, but nonetheless, her house has officially become….Nana Annie’s Raccoon Spa and Nocturnal Feast-aporium]

And how do we discover these little bastards are crawling around up there? Because some daughter takes an exhausting trip home, visits all day and then lays down to sleep in the upstairs bedroom….where she is buffeted by the pitter-patter of a gaggle of coons scurrying above. Did I mention overhead? Aiiiieeeeeeee And the dogs just LOVE it. I had to move downstairs after Molly had a nervous breakdown from hysterically chasing the ceiling from one end of the house to the other.  Not to mention that once embedded, asbestos is easier to remove than those little $^#%@.

Cue…~“the Critter Guy”~

The Critter Guy [these are real jobs, people!] has been out about a dozen times tending to the matter and trying to plug all the places they may be getting in. Turns out that bashing the heads of these little suckers [my suggestion for dealing with them] runs afoul of certain animal welfare laws, so they have to be “resettled”.  As of two weeks ago, the Critter Guy has removed 6 (!) different raccoons from the attic of mom’s house.  Ummmm...for those keeping score at home...that’s 200 lbs of varmint hanging out overhead. After resettling the first 5 raccoons, however, the Critter Guy didn’t charge mom for the last one. Seriously? Buy 5, get 1 free. And I am pretty sure the Critter Guy is my mother’s new BFF. I don’t know if “the Critter Guy” is his real name, but I think that’s how he’s going to show up in the will. He’s even ahead of my brother in the Love Game.  =)

6 raccoons, 1 insulation re-install and a homeowner’s insurance claim later…we THINK they are all gone.

Cannabis Central

I had no idea when I moved out here that it was the Netherlands of the West. That’s right…you can buy pot out here just about any old place you want. [Buying pot is legal, but gay marriage isn’t?? WTF. Gay commitment is below the munchies in the moral hierarchy? Got it.]

Okay – it’s not that you can buy it ANYWHERE, you have to have a prescription, from a whole new breed of doctor that seems to have popped up overnight [Dr. Beingstoned, I presume]. You also have to be a member of a “Cannabis Cooperative” – whose membership standards seem to be slightly below that of Facebook [aliases encouraged].

Cannabis Cooperatives…I am not making this up. And they advertise EVERYWHERE. If you pick up the local newsweekly, there are PAGES of ads desperately trying to attract your pot-buying dollars. The only rule in play seems to be that you must include the words “alternative” or “holistic” in the name of your cooperative. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Holistic Co-op. And from there it gets completely shameless.

Here are honest-to-god, 100%-true excerpts from a single page of adverts this week [with some additional comments added, of course]:

• Free gifts for new members or referrals [I don’t think we’re talking Happy Meal prizes here]
• Senior, military and union discount [Senior discount?! Now I know what we can do during mom’s visit. Seriously though, military and union?? Just the people MOST likely to operate heavy machinery, great.]
• Free joint Sunday [For when church is just too taxing.]
• Free edible for first time patients [ummmm…edible? Nevermind – I don’t wanna know]
• Complementary [sic] coffee, tea & cocoa [Is it true that pot makes you use the wrong word? Or maybe a good cup of cocoa really does complete your cannabis experience.]
• Walk-ins welcome [walk-outs more welcome, at least to those of us sharing the roads]

And it’s all in the name of healthcare! [And here I thought I was being creative with my FSA money. Legal and tax deductible.]

Unofficially Official

Well…it is unofficially official – when my company completes the sale of itself, I will be moving on to greener pastures. [And if I weren’t on the to-be-fired list already, one sure way to end up there is to blog about it.] But don’t cry for me, Argentina…as I am expecting to take a few months off before starting another gig. Right now, I am cruising through a 2 or 3 month wind-down period before retiring my BTB title permanently.

I have high expectations for the upcoming sabbatical – visions of a second language and community involvement and actually answering my phone when it rings. Unfortunately…if this lame-duck interim period (that I like to call my “underemployment” phase) is any indication, I will figure out ways to fill my time with slightly less impressive pursuits:

• Did anyone notice I started blogging again
• After a 2 year hiatus, I am once again caught up on my Law & Order reruns
• I am thoroughly engaged in reward point arbitrage. I now have reward accounts EVERYWHERE…Starbuckies, the grocery store, MyCoke.com. There are spreadsheets involved in the management of this complex network of worthless freebies. [Points for Diet Cokes?? I hope everyone likes them some Coca-Cola shit for Christmas.]
• I am terribly up-to-date on errand-running. Yesterday I made a special trip for pens.
• I am working on a number of techniques for that elusive tan
• I have written 32 letters to the editor of the neighborhood newsletter. “Ill-behaved pets that are not properly leashed may terrorize our mail carriers and neighbors” – indeed!

But at least I haven’t tried that bubble burst game on Facebook…YET

Background Noise

After working from home for so long, I have come to realize that many of my conference calls are accompanied by various forms of odd background noise. It’s bad enough that....thanks to the mailman's daily visits to the front porch....Every. Single. Person. I work with thinks I own a crazed rottweiler. But Molly's hysterical barking is just the start of the suspicious sounding background noise:

• The clinking of the seltzer bottles sounds a lot like a Martini kit in action [No, Boss, but I like the way you think]
• While walking the dog, the sound of neighbors saying hello sounds a lot like somebody new joining the call
• Unloading the dishwasher sounds just like….. unloading the dishwasher [You are all invited to participate in my household chores with me]
• The sound of ice cubes in my afternoon latte sounds like an early start to happy hour [very early, given the time change]
• Julieta’s vacuuming [which seems to ONLY occur when I am on a conference call] sounds like I am calling from the inside of a jet engine
• A game of fetch with Molly and her favorite squeaking toy sounds like I could give a damn about the conference call in progress.

Thank god you can’t hear someone still in their pajama’s at 3 o’clock in the afternoon…

Hand-o-prompter

I honestly thought I was getting over Sarah Palin....but then SP gives a speech in Nashvegas and – in case any of you rely on Fox News for your updates – is caught with crib notes written on the palm of her hand!

Notes on the palm of her hand?? When did Mead notecards get to be so elitist? Listen…I am not so much concerned that she needed some notes for her speech, or even that she thought a nationally broadcast Q&A session was the equivalent of a quiz in Senor Deig’s Spanish class…but I AM concerned by WHAT she needed a cheat sheet to remember:

Energy
Budget Tax cuts
Lift American Spirit

I mean…it wasn’t like she had a cheat sheet to remember critical Supreme Court decisions, the prime minister of Iran or even the Spanish word for shoes. No – she had to have a cheat sheet to remember her basic political tenets. So…What. The. Hell is taking up all the hard drive space that she can’t commit a 3-point outline to memory??? I mean you're at the $%^@ Tea Party convention and you can’t remember “Tax Cuts”? It’s printed on Every.  Single.  T-shirt.  In.  Front of you. My very real fear is that she needs cheat sheets on the big stuff because critical hard drive space is dedicated to Barbie’s first pizza party. The Axis of Evil crowded out by Dora the Explorer.

Look…we all need little notes and reminders sometimes. [Mine personally says “turn out the lights”.] I do NOT however, need a cheat sheet that says “accountant”, “youngest child”, and “fine thank you, and you?”

Oh Sarah….you are still every blogger's muse.

FSA Account

Most of you are probably familiar with an FSA account. It’s an account you fund with deductions from your paycheck, tax-free to spend on healthcare. The drawback is that if you don’t use it by the end of the year, you lose it.

I have no idea how I got this CPA certificate because I am LOUSY with numbers, as evidenced by a slight mis-budgeting of FSA money for 2009.  I must have filled out my FSA registration right after leaving some traumatic dental appointment, because I set aside about $1,100 too much. [If I could have claimed Molly and her 18 tooth extractions, than she wouldn’t be nearly the financial burden she has otherwise become. Oh, KIDDING, people!].

So there I was, at the beginning of December, trying to figure out how to spend $1100 on health care (of all things) in three weeks. [Unfortunately, the healing properties of wine are not government-recognized.]  I started with unusually prompt payments to every dentist, doctor and lab company I have ever visited – without even the THREAT of collection agency involvement [extraordinary times, clearly].

Next up was a trip….wait for it… to COSTCO for reimburseable over-the-counter drugs. We now have 3,000 ibuprofen, a first-aid kit suitable for a M*A*S*H unit and every member of my family’s 2010 Christmas present [who doesn’t want contact solution under the Christmas tree??]. I even bought those Breathe Right strips. Let me tell you why those little suckers make you snore less…because the NASA-grade adhesive pulls your nostrils apart like a nightly nostril-ectomy. It’s so painful you can’t sleep…ergo, no snoring. [And if you do sleep, you dream all night about wearing a scuba mask. Trust me.]

It took some work, but I finally spent the whole FSA nut and I LOVE my new prescription sunglasses. [I didn’t know I wore a prescription either.] Actually, I do have an eyeglass prescription – but it’s for night driving….which doesn’t exactly overlap with sunglasses, but reimburseable nonetheless.

I am sure my normal pace of root canals will resume in 2010 and I won’t have these FSA issues.

Costco

When...exactly...did I super-size my life? Rita and I go to Costco at LEAST twice a month. At last count there was TWO of us in this house – WHY do we need 37 rolls of paper towels?? One trip to Costco and we have enough toothpaste for Obama’s first term. Honestly, I have a hard time reconciling certain aspects of my life…I spend Monday through Friday reducing, reusing and recycling. On SATURDAY I buy a book of stamps wrapped in 3 lbs of cardboard.

During our trips to Costco, Rita’s primary objective is market research [read: wine shopping], while I gravitate to the free samples. [The fact that they sell Diet Cokes by the pallet doesn’t hurt either.] The free samples are where it is AT, though. I don’t even like corned beef (served community style, no less), but I will throw an elbow to keep a little old lady from beating me to it. There’s nothing worse, however, than trampling poor shoppers  working your way to the front of the line only to find a free sample of fruit. Rita has learned to take over grocery-cart duty once we spy free samples, since I will think NOTHING of abandoning our purse-laden cart for a Totina pizza roll (pizza products = the jackpot of samples).

Maybe if they gave food samples at the landscaping store, Rita could get me to go there more often (...but I bet it would be fruit).

McSisters Weekend

For the uninitiated…McSisters’ Weekend occurs on Martin Luther King weekend of each year [celebrating not only our affinity for civil rights, but the first 3-day weekend of the year]. It’s a four-year-old tradition where Anne Louise, Nic and I pick a new, never-before visited town in which to find an ESPNZone and sit and watch the NFL playoffs. [The plan is usually much grander.]

This year, the McSisters visited Walt Disney World [No….NOT the one an hour up the road from me….the other one]. And I have to say, aside from all those annoying children running around – it was awesome. Here are some highlights from The World [as those in the know like to call it]:

• You know what is a Disney buzzkill to an 8 year old “princess”? Going to Lion King the Musical and drawing the seat behind the 5’ 12” “mouseketeer” in the front row. I bet there wasn’t a kid for 8 rows who could see around me. [“it’s MY vacation too, ya little brat”]
• It must suck to be an accountant at WDW – “Do we really need 3 acrobatic monkeys in the 1st Act? Can we not downsize to 2?”
• The Magic Kingdom doesn’t sell beer?? As Nicola said – and they call this the happiest place on earth?! Ha-rumph. Anne Louise lost all 4 cans of beer she was assigned to smuggle in and Nicola managed to get a whole BOTTLE of Sauvignon Blanc in. That’s it – Nicola’s assigned to bring the shampoo through all future TSA checkpoints.
• I have bad news for Rita – we went to Vietnam-land in Epcot and I can’t see what else we could POSSIBLY get from a vacation to Vietnam.
• There is apparently a well-known rule that if you travel together to Disney, you must all wear matching t-shirts. In the most obnoxious neon color possible.  (So as to mitigate the risk of losing Aunt Gladys?) Should I worry that the McSisters dressed me in my earth tones and sent me on my way?
• WDW refers to EVERY employee as a “cast member” and dresses them in costumes, no matter their job. While I applaud the effort, I think your 1776 Liberty Café lost its claim on authenticity when it hired its all-minority cashier staff. I don’t think there were many Asians manning the taverns in 1776. [So do you really need to subject cast members Malcolm & Soon Yi to a uniform of knickers and bonnets?]
• If you are good at stilt-walking, WDW is the promised land for you.
• Nicola didn’t enjoy the “It’s a Small World” ride nearly as much as she did in 1977 when she made my mom ride it endlessly. The ride DID manage to offend Every. Single. Culture I can think of. And there absolutely must have been a surplus of hula girls at the “prop-house” because even the Icelandic portion of “It’s a Small World” featured a grass-skirt-wearin’ hula girl.

Next year’s McSisters’ Weekend is New Orleans…if it survives the riots after the Super Bowl loss.