Sam Hill: Carpenter

What came through our ceiling? After several calls back and forth with the leasing office, we learned that it is leveling compound from the bathroom floor upstairs seeping through our bathroom fan.



Apparently our man Sam Hill "knew that it would happen" and will "be by Monday to clean it up." Ain't it loverly? That is certainly not the way I would have handled the situation, if I were being paid to remodel the bathroom. Also, we just have self-stick vinyl tiles in the bathrooms, so I don't know why a hard, level, poured substrate would be necessary anyway. I guess that's why our man Sam makes the big bucks.

Who the Hell is Sam Hill Anyway?

I walked into Chris's bathroom last evening to find this:


Of course my first thought was, "What in the Sam Hill did that kid do now?"

Followed by, "Look up."



The question has now become, "What in the Sam Hill happened upstairs?"

Cross Training

I've been covering for someone at work every other day. She is gone until the end of next month on maternity leave. My department is starting to get busy, and I feel very disloyal leaving them all day to do this simple work. However, I know that the other department I'm helping needs the extra person, and I know that we're all one big team.

I don't like the work. It is half phone work, but at least the people on the other end of the line are our customers who have active orders, and I am not selling anything. The other half is mind-numbingly boring and repetitive. I honestly don't know why it isn't automated. I'm sure Microsoft Access is smart enough to do it on its own.

Mantra for the week: I can do anything on a temporary basis.

While the cat's away...

Dennis and I got to have an adults only weekend out of town. (Yeah, a date, I think it is getting serious!) We went to Springfield Illinois to see the sights.

Saturday:

Lincoln's Home:


View of the Old State Capital from Lincoln's Law Office:


We also saw the new Lincoln Presidential Library / Museum. It was incredible! Standing in front of one of the copies of the Gettysburg Address brought me to tears. Very neat!

We had dinner at Jolly Tamale, which was a nice trip down memory lane for me. I am not sure how impressed Dennis was with it, but you know, it wasn't bad food. Then we caught up with my family at Springfield High School. My sister had a Highland Dance program. It was a little disorganized, but fun anyway. I didn't feel well overnight, but I was fine again in the morning. Go figure!

Sunday:

Lincoln's Tomb:


Frank Lloyd Wright's Dana-Thomas House:

Check. Check.

My neighbors are doing their weekly bass check. They have to pray at the church of annoyingly loud Sunday morning club jam. Every once in a while they'll spin the new NIN CD, but mostly it is "bom BOM BOM BOM do do BOM." Right now, it is "BOM BOM BOM. do do do dodo. BOM BOM BOM."

I think he likes rock, and she likes booty music. Oh hell, maybe I should give her a break. She could be practicing her new pole routine. It is, after all, all about the benjamins.

Besides, they've got to hear me singing in the shower :o

Who Are You, and What Have You Done with my Son?

Chris was good all week. He filled out his planner, he did his homework with a minimum amount of fuss, he cleaned up after himself, he passed out extra hugs, and he was even less sassy than usual. All of his grades were great, there weren't any notes from the teacher, he worked on extra projects for Cub Scouts.

Huh. I hope this means we've turned a corner. He seems to be maturing in "giant steps" now, instead of staying in one place or doing one step forward, two steps back. Unless, of course, this is just the giant step forward that preceeds the two giant steps back!!!

Little Me

I have been scanning some old pictures, and I just like this one.

Easter 1987

I Smell Bitchy People

Apparently I missed the memo that today is International Be a Great Big Bitchy Bitch Day. Everyone else at work got it. Possibly in triplicate.

Whoo-hoo, nothing beats a good old fashioned random bitching out over nothing in the middle of the morning for no apparent reason!

Crosseyed

Blech.

I spent almost all day messing around with the formatting and post order of my other Blog. I know, I know, this is "The Other Blog"... I'm confused too!

I love reading those old love letters. They make me sentimental. Unfortunately, reading them, and rearranging them, and fighting with Blogger for the past five and a half hours has A) wasted an entire Sunday, and B) given me an enormous headache. I'd forgotten how painful it is to stare at the internet all day. Thank goodness for gainful employment!

But what if it isn't a shotgun wedding?

This week we found out that you can't schedule a courthouse wedding in St. Charles county until you are within ninety days if you want an afternoon spot, or sixty days if you want an elusive morning one. Of course travel planning for something as important as a honeymoon needs more lead time than that, at least the way I prefer to do it.

I'm frustrated. I've already seen that getting certain hotels in Memphis might be difficult the weekend I'm looking at, and I really did want to get married at 9:00 A.M. and hit the road for the day earlier rather than later. I'm afraid it will be too late and we'll be too tired if we don't leave town until 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon. I have hit a snag, and I have stopped thinking about it again.

I realized that I really don't want a wedding. I want to be married. (I already knew this, since I already had my wedding, and now I want a marriage...) I want the actual "ceremony" to be as unfussy and quick as possible. I really do want a courthouse wedding for no other reason than it is done and over with in three to five minutes. I am very excited about going away on a trip with Dennis though. I wonder if that means I am focused on the wrong thing, or the right thing?

A Passing Fad

I feel much better this evening about all of my old flames and old feelings. I really needed to talk it all out with Dennis. He's right, without all of the combined experiences of my life, I would not have known what to do when I met him.

I printed out pictures of Kit and Jamie, and they're hanging up at work. I also forwarded the picture of my old crush to a friend at work, and she said, "Aw, what a cutie! I can totally see you two together..." Tee hee!

(Very Old) Friends and Lovers

One of my oldest and dearest friends is back in our hometown for the week. I spent the better part of the day with him and his wife yesterday. It was nice to see the old haunts. His parents' house is the same. We looked at yearbooks and spent a lot of time refreshing each others' memories. I guess it has been about twenty years or so that we've been friends. I haven't seen him for about seven or eight years, but we do manage to keep a rough idea of what is going on via email.



Yesterday was the first time it hit me that I had impacted other people in High School. I ran with a fairly tight group, and the few people I was close with were extremely important to me. I always felt that I was not a significant portion of the group, that I was struggling to fit in even among those closest friends. I guess we all felt that way sometimes. It makes me wonder if I cross their minds anymore, because I know how much I think about them.

I came away from the whole experience a bit confused and a bit tormented. I love Kit, and I was extremely happy to see him. I also hated that period in my life a lot, and I apparently still have a few demons to drive out. I was very glad to be back home with Dennis. I know I belong here. I am very glad to see Kit happier and more stable than he ever was, and he didn't seem to be struggling too much with the experience of coming home.



I also found that I have my very own real life trick candle of an old flame. Here's the back story, which I wrote to Dennis in 2002:

We've actually got quite a long history. He moved to Litchfield in 7th grade. I had a big huge Junior High crush on him - he probably owes me $50 worth of soda! He's one of the reasons I learned so much about punk rock - I wanted to impress him, and the punk attitude was working for me at the time. Haha, I don't know if he has a clue how much he's impacted my life over the years :) He was one of the first "real people" I though about waaay back when I was just starting to figure out how my parts all worked - but he certainly doesn't know that! LOL - so through the years we'd make out off and on - we always hung out here and there. He lived right down the street from Kit, and they were buddies, so I saw him a lot over the summers. I would never let him have me though, cause I knew his game - which pissed him off to no end - I loved it :) When I was sad about breaking up with Ray, he gave me the sweetest kiss of my life - that was the first time I actually felt anything but pure lust for him or from him. He just held me for a while - which I really did NOT expect from him - it opened my eyes to the fact that he was a real person, not just a hormone collection area :) After Jim, we hung a lot, worked out great as friends with benefits. I raped him a few times, once that he can't even remember :-D We never got attached - just had sex and hung and chilled and were just buddies - oh, and smoked huge quantities of weed... He's a great friend - I still love him like that. I'll always love him like that.

I still have dreams about that boy. The place where I got the best kiss of my life is Kit's driveway. I stood there yesterday. I stopped at the grain bin where he spray painted his name. I feel like I'm back in junior high over him all over again. I thought about him for most of the drive home last night. It's blowing my mind a little - ok, a LOT!

I just had to dig up old pictures, and here's one of him, the last day of our senior year of High School:

Christmas #4

We had our final installment of Christmas 2005 yesterday, at my parents' house.