why women have a soft spot for firefighters

"It was just luck that Oklahoma City fire Cpl. Craig Herrin found the kitten when he returned to Pine Ridge Apartments...to retrieve some of his equipment hours after the deadly blaze Friday. The kitten had suffered smoke inhalation and burned eyes."

There's video here here. Mostly facts and a few 'so cute and sweet' moments.

Then at work I heard it was on another channel. This one has more of the awwww factor.

This has got to be the cutest, most adorable creature ever...oh, and the kitty is cute too.

~~~

Tuesday morning, was it, that a tv crew was out at Yukon along the interstate. Talk about having a story land in your lap. Just sit out there, aim the camera toward the highway and watch the idiots slide off the road and down the embankment.

Fatality on I-35 and Hefner that morning too. I drive that service road to work, it was wierd seeing the turned up dirt on the embankment. Reminded me of the fatality wrecks I covered when I worked for the newspaper back home.

I was more concerned with my own safety going to work so I forgot about that wreck until I came up to Wilshire. Did that person know they only had a few more minutes to live? Were they worried about the road conditions? Were they driving too fast and talking on their cell? A car slid off just moments before, did the doomed driver see that and freak out sealing their own fate? Or as it sometimes happens, just simply caught off guard?

Very sad.

Seems to be more house and apt fires lately now too. Maybe not any more than usual, just the media jumping on the sadness factor so they can tsk tsk and make the public feel fortunate for the gluttony and greed they have now. Although there have been, what? 6 or 7 deaths due to fires in the last few weeks around here (mostly kids), it's just as sad now as if it would have happened in August.


reading: Quiltmaking by Hand by Jenny Beyer
Whiskey is: outside sunning his belly

ohh, a tv, just what I need?

Scott's birthday was Friday. Since my office Christmas party was yesterday and they always cater in a cold fajita bar from Ted's, I took him out to Red Lobster last night before going to the party.

Anyway, after thinking this would be my 7th Christmas party with this company and no winning anything bigger than an alarm clock radio or $25 cash, my number was drawn and I won a 27" flat screen tv.

Wonderful.

I sit back down and said to J, "now I have 2 tvs and no house to put them in".

Called my brother to see if he needed a new tv for Christmas or just wants a second one. He called me back a bit ago. Said he can't afford cable so he only gets the whatever he can pick up on the rabbit ears. He lives with his girlfriend and said they don't watch tv much anyway. If he does watch it's when she's at work or asleep.

He's trying to get into Occupational Therapy school right now so he's more worried about that now than anything.

So the new tv is in the spare bedroom, not far from my other tv, a measly little 20" that isn't fit to grace scott's living room.

Scott's mom called him on his birthday. Then suddenly he thrust the phone at me. "hello?"

"You know that Whiskey is always welcome at my house ANY TIME. Don't worry if he gets excited and pees. It's an accident, I have carpet cleaner, we'll just clean it up and go on. This isn't a fussy house. One day I came home and Rusty just couldn't wait for me to come in from the garage and he dribbled by the door, but it is no big deal. When Molly was a puppy she had her accidents. Life goes on. You don't have to leave him there just because you're worried that he might pee in the house." and on and on and on.

I think she's taking it personally that I'm going to board Whiskey at daycare while we're over there for Christmas. I love my dog. But I'd like to have a 3 day weekend without having to worry about him trashing someone elses house. If they didn't have dogs, I think he'd be ok. But his mom has 2 dogs and 3 cats, his sister has 3 dogs and 2 cats. With them all playing (or Whiskey chasing the cats) it can get a bit stressful.

My parents are the opposite. When I mentioned boarding him for a weekend, they were like, "ok, he's welcome here, ya know. How much will it cost, I'll pay for the boarding."

square fish

My dream life has been very very active lately. I know I dream, but don't remember any of it. I've read that you should keep a pen and paper by the bed and when you wake up out of a dream to write it down, or sketch it. Sounds good in theory. But, honestly, who wants to roll over out of a comfy position, feel around for the paper, knock the pen off the nightstand, fish around under the bed for it, turn on the lamp, get blinded, hang upside down to look under the bed for the pen when it actually just landed at the base of the nightstand and you didn't really need to inhale dust bunnies at 3 AM. Then you wake up read what you wrote and can't make sense of it because you've either written a page full of adverbs or can't read your own writing.

One night I tried to imagine myself writing down a dream thinking it would help me remember it. Didn't work.

I have over the years noticed that if I awake out of a dream and it sorta made sense at the time, I won't remember it in the morning.

The other night I had a dream I was swimming with the fishes. Not like a mobster would have you swim with the fishes. I had no flippers, no oxygen tank, nothing, I'm able to breathe water.

I don't swim. Barely know how. Other than a former Red Cross lifeguard, everyone else who has tried to teach me thinks it is damn funny to get me out there, get me trusting them, then dunk me.

Anyway, I was swiming with at least one of every fish in this reef area. The school was not just a random group, but in a square, about 10 wide, 10, high, 10 deep. Each fish lined up and no one breaking ranks. As the only human, I felt a bit out of place.

Then a shark starts circling, we stay in formation, each fish facing a different direction to be on the look out. A manata ray swims by, since mantas are my favorite fish in the world, I thought we would be safe. The shark bites the manata, I get pissed and after watching the manata swim away injured, I get super angry, break ranks and swim toward the shark. Don't know what else happened because the alarm goes of. Why does the alarm go off just as the dream gets better?








reading: Me by Katherine Hepburne
Whiskey is: sleeping behind the couch

Is it illegal cable if you get it by accident?

Scott had a tv which was touchy. He bought the floor demo model because it was $200 off. I never buy the floor model. It's kinda like buying a rental or finding your wife in a whorehouse. Not a wise choice.

He wanted a new tv. My parents bought me a new tv for Christmas the year before I moved in with Scott. Brand new. It's been sitting unused in the back room since I moved in. I suggested we bring it out and use it. Nope. It's too small he said. Not good enough you mean. It's good enough, just to small. After having a 13" tv for 11 years, I think a 20" is wonderful. But I must be alone in this thinking.

Everytime he brought up wanting a new tv, I reminded him that I had a perfectly fine tv in the other room.

One weekend his sister and her husband come down. The three of them go to Best Buy. I decide to stay home. He comes home with a tv. I wasn't too happy about that. It was one of those HDTVs.

They hook it up as I take my book and sit outside reading. Well, sulking really, but that's beside the point.

The next day after they leave he's channel surfing and happier than a pig in mud and he comes up to the higher channels. Not regular channels. These are numbered 74-25, 74-26, etc. These were on demand movie channels. The problem is we don't subscribe to these channels, nor do we have any control over them. Someone somewhere is scrolling through the different movies and genres as we watch, helpless to make suggestings and wagering bets on what the legitimate subscriber will end up watching.

We realized this as someone was watching a Wesley Snipes movie. It was the end and 5 times they rewound to watch the last 90 seconds. We couldn't figure out why. The dialog was clear, the back ground unremarkable, what where they looking for?

There's hundreds of these channels. I've kept a watch on many of these and deleted them out of the line-up if there was nothing on them when I checked at scheduled and random times. Yes, I know, I need a life, I keep checking ebay, but there's nothing available in my size.

So when there is nothing else on, we'll scan the illegal channels to see what someone else is watching. People watch cartoons at midnight on a school night and porn at 7.30 AM on Sunday.

Last night all the illegal channels were busy. Everyone was watching movies. This weekend The Longest Yard was popular. Right now I'm typing this as someone somewhere is treating themselves to a Sex in the City marathon.

guilt trip, now boarding

listening to: CSI Las Vegas
Whiskey is:passed out

Scott is on his way to Arkansas to see his mom if he isn't there already. He has tomorrow off. He called me at work and ask if I wanted to go with him. If I did, he was going to wait until tomorrow after I got off work. If not, then he would be gone before I got home. He was packing when he called. I like his family and all, but since I don't have much in common with him, they are hard to talk to. Plus since we take Whiskey with us, I have to watch and worry about him. His mom has two dogs, one is timid around dogs she doesn't really know, and the other is a hyper male that gets a bit territoral and starts to pee in the house. Then Whiskey starts to do it too for what ever dog reason even though he is very well house trained. At his sister's new place in the country, I'm not comfortable with their fence. It's fine for their 3 older dogs, but I'm not sure I trust Whiskey around it. So when we're up there I have to worry about him. Then Scott gets upset if he's running out of control or I'm having a hard time controling him. I offered to board him for the weekend but Scott didn't seem thrilled with that. Even though he bitches about the dog hair in his truck, he didn't see the point in boarding him.

His family is a go-go-go type and everyone goes everywhere together and sometimes I just want to be alone, sit and read. Scott makes me feel like a killjoy because of it. And that's another thing. He's always wanting me to go with him places. Sometimes I go even though I could care less about jeep parts and electronics. Sometimes I want to stay home. If I don't want to go, then he stays home and mopes and sighs and says he's restless. And oh, heavens, if I go somewhere by myself, I come home to a hurt little boy who is pouting because he was left behind. Either that or he thinks I'm out with my friends he doesn't like doing things he doesn't approve of and I get the silent treatmet.

And I haven't wrote any more on the nanowrimo novel.

back?

listening to: the breeze through the window
reading: Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd
Whiskey is: outside sleeping in the sun

I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. I tried to do it a few years ago, but didn't get very far, like 2,000 words or so. I didn't start until yesterday while Scott was out bowling, got 1,070 words out.

Yesterday I also surfed blogs of other NaNo'ers and found a couple of cute counters.
I'll try to figure out how to put one in the margin later.

I'm on vacation this week. It's been nice and quiet around here. Just me, Whiskey (the dog) and Cotton, the cat. Been a long time since I have updated. After my last post life has been pretty much, well, boring. Go to work, come home, go to bed and repeat.

Occassionally me and Scott will have a blowup, he'll give me the silent treatment for a few days or weeks and I'll go on like things are normal between us until he either starts talking to me again, or we have another fight.

Over the weekend we went to my parents house. Scott is in a 4x4 club and they were doing a run not far from where they live. Scott wanted to go and take me with him. I'm not much into that sort of thing so my brother went with him instead. Me and mom ran around a bit then worked in the back yard Sat afternoon and Sun morning until we left.

We got in Friday night. I turned the dog loose in the backyard while we unloaded the truck. Didn't think anything of it. He comes in and about 30 min later wants to go back out. My brother goes to the door to open in and tells Whiskey to 'beware of those skunks'. As he opens the door he looks up and there in spotlight of the light is a skunk. Before he could stop him, Whiskey was out the door and around the corner of the deck. I ran out there and started yelling for Whiskey. I could see the dog but the skunk was just out of sight around th corner of the deck. After the third time calling him, he came and I grabbed his collar and hauled him off to the other side of the yard. My parents were standing at the door, "did he get sprayed?" they were yelling.

I could smell skunk, but it was faint and I couldn't tell if Whiskey was sprayed or not. Dad brought out his leash and Mom came out for a smell. He did get hit but it was a light misting. You could only smell it on him if you got down close to him. We didn't have tomato juice so mom made a mixture of peroxide and dish soap and I sponged down his head, chest and forelegs. That seemed to help and after much debate and dog sniffing decided to bring him back in the house. There was a slight oder of skunk, but we didn't know if it was embedded in our sinus, coming from outside, or from the dog.

He hasn't been skinking much and only if you buried your nose in the scruff of his neck were you able to smell skunk. I soaked his collar in peroxide and dish soap and that took care of most of the smell in that. Scott can't smell anything but Whiskey got a bath yesterday and I turned him out back to sun dry while I cleaned out the bathtub and took a bath myself.

An hour later he was pretty well dried off, soft and damn shiny.

In other news, I got bored with my job (if you want to call it that) working in graphics. I would ask in the morning when my supervisor (if you want to call him that) if there was any thing I could do. No, he said but he'll look for something. Then I would ask after lunch and get the same answer. 'I only have enough to keep us (the other 3 designers) busy, sorry. So I started to think about some of the other depts I wouldn't mind working in. And started going to them asking if they had anything I could help them out on. I wrote a few press releases and asked about an opening in education. They were getting ready to hire someone, I was told. (Six months later and they still are getting ready to hire someone).

So I wandered over to marketing and told the Kay, the Director of Marketing, about my bordom. She said she needed to go through our licensing contracts to see what is about to expire, what has expired and create a database for it all since the spreadsheet she made was not working out. So I trot myself down to the IT dept and ask someone to help me make a database. Then I went through a shit load of contracts and got them put in the database. Then Kay had me call some of the licensors who were about to expire and ask them if they wanted an extension and draw up an addendum for the extension. I was working in licensing as well as graphics. Since graphics took only a few hours a week to keep up with, I didn't mind.

Then as I started taking over licensing it was taking more and more time and I started asking Kay to take me out of graphics and put me in marketing. I could still handle graphics but it was getting old. Then Kay calls me into her office first thing one morning and tells me a new big project is starting up and it needs a mommy and she recommended to the CEO that I be the mommy. She said that of all the people in marketing, I'm the only one she doesn't need to baby sit and knows I can get it done. She has high hopes for this project, a sewing club of sorts. I wouldn't join this club as I don't think it's worth it, but she has high hopes for it. It launched in Aug and we only have 10 people signed up so far. She's blaming our dealers for not promoting it and I'm secretly blaming whoever thought this would be a good idea.

So finally an intern was hired a few weeks ago and I've handed him all of my graphics work, (what little there was to begin with) and trained him on how to do it. I don't think the graphics supervisor is very happy about it, because he kinda had an attitude that it was uncreative grunt work and he didn't want his creative people to get bogged down with it. Now it is his responsibilty and as of Nov 1 I don't consider myself as a part time graphics person anymore. And to make it official, before I left for vacation, I sent out an email to the necessary people saying I am no longer doing that and if you have any questions, ask him, not me.

I'm happier in licensing. Kay has trusted me to negotiate contracts up to 10% and $5,000 advance. Anything over that has to go through her and she won't go over 10% and if they want over $5,000 advance then it better be a damn hot property that we can't live without.

I go through submitted artwork as well and have the icky job of sending some of it back with sterile rejection letters. But on the other hand I get to call some of them and tell them we love their stuff and offer them a contract. Some are so happy that they will take the straight 7% no advance contract I send them. Others are prima donnas who want $15,000 per collection with at least 3 collections a year. I don't think so. "That's what your cometitor has been paying me for my art" And why are you leaving them again? "Because they aren't releasing as many collections a year as I want." I can see why, your art is ugly, probably doesn't sell well and they don't have the budget for your sorry ass. That was one rejection letter I enjoyed sending out.

gone, never forgotten

I hope this letter finds you well; however I have sad news. Rex is no longer with us and I thought you should know. I don't know if anyone else would know to contact you but I am. The funeral is in Alva on Friday at 2 at the First Baptist Church. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.He will be missed deeply.
Sincerely,
G

Rex is dead.

Killed him self late Tue/early Wed in his office.

The first man I ever truely loved, lumps and all.

Gone.

A friend of his emailed me this morning. It was the only way she knew to get in touch. Funeral is this afternoon at 2 in Alva. I can't go. I don't want to go. I can't bear to see him in a casket. He will always be smiling in my memories.

He went to Cuba illegally in Nov. Got re-married in Dec. Asked if I wanted to see the wedding pictures. I polietly said no. I couldn't bear it. He said he understood, more than I knew, he understood.

Now I don't understand.

His yahoo messanger icon is active, has been all week as far as I know. But he won't reply now.

I've never known anyone that killed themself. One minute i'm sad, then angry, then shock, then angry again.

iced in

I don't watch the weather forcasts. What weather news I get is that day's weather from the radio as I argue with myself to hit snooze or get up. The only way I knew it was going to be raining ice, sleet and possible snow is because Scott left yesterday for San Diego. He left at 10.30 and I took the morning off so I could see him off. It was raining yesterday morning so every few hours I'd call him, find out where he was and give him the weather forcast for that area. In the process I saw that we were in for some ice storms.

Put a tarp over the windshield of the car even though I knew I wasn't going to work if the roads were the least bit icky. At 6.30A it was 33F, by 7.30 it was 26F. The rain was turning to ice and the weather was going to keep droping. I called the dog daycare and told them I wouldn't bring Whiskey in for his weekly play date. Still didn't know if I was going to work, but if I did, the last thing I'd want in the car is an excited dog. Decided to blow off work. Not like there's much to do anyway.

Inventory is finishing today. Then shipping will have 3 days worth of orders to get caught up on. Figured I'd work in shipping for a few hours tomorrow and Friday that way I'll have my hours and not have to worry about getting paid for the snowday.

Scott starts school next Monday. He'll be gone a month and wants me to fly out there on his last day and then we'll drive back together. Decemeber was a hectic month for me. The first week of Dec there was a family that stayed here because they had to be out of base housing on the 1st, but his transfer date wasn't until the 6th. Then the day after they left, Scott started ripping up carpet in the dining area and the old tile in the kitchen getting the floor ready to be re-tiled. His sister and brother-in-law came that weekend to help since they had just redone their bathroom. I got sent to the hardware store just as Scott started and the dining room was pretty much done when I got back. The kitchen is just big enough for 1 person so I only got to lay 8 square feet of tile in the dining area. The next morning they showed us how to grout and went on their merry way. Scott did the grouting and I came along behind and sponged smooth the grout and fetched endless buckets of fresh water.

The kitchen looks nice now.

For Christmas we went to his mom's in Arkansas. Then last week his mom and her husband came by on their way to Bob's daughter's house nearby. Thankfully they only stayed a couple of hours. They are nice people and all, but I'm worn out.

That pretty much sums up my life since the last time you were here. Next weekend I hope to go home and have Christmas with my parents and find out if my brother proposed to his girlfriend. Weird, I may become a sister-in-law soon. Weirder still, he's been with her off and on since just after high school graduation and I don't know her last name.

listening to: Cotton purr as I sing "Rocky Road to Dublin" to her
smelling: the stewmeat simmering
Whiskey is: asleep by the window