I’d have something to say about the debate tonight, except by my definition, there was no debate. The rules for this particular get together did not in any way allow for any amount of debate. Doesn’t anyone else on the planet know what a damn debate is? Back and forth commentary, follow-ups, looking your opponent in the face and asking him questions? And to the candidates: just because you have two minutes doesn’t mean you have to use them all plus some. Clear, concise, brief, and to the point. I may babble on my blog, but in a debate or negotiation, I am actually a woman of very few and quite pointed words. I wish politicians would do the same.

Anyway, both candidates behaved and said exactly as I expected. Nothing new learned, but then I am what I would call overly-informed. I didn’t expect to learn anything new.

Glad I took that nap before it started though. I am beat! It’s entirely possible I will not be washing down the whole kitchen tomorrow. I think I will lower my goal to cleaning the stove and fridge.

I’m looking forward to November 4, so I can sleep for about a month straight to make up for all the lost sleep I have had during this incredibly long election cycle. I love the politics, but this one election has gone on for so long. I am ready for it to be over and done with.

Wow. When I get going, I really get going. I got so much done around the house today, I am actually ahead of my list! I owe it all to the power of coffee, which I have been drinking way too much of today. That and the mindlessness caused by allergy medications. I hoping to do this again tomorrow and go crazy on the kitchen. It needs a good scrubbing down, walls and all, and then there’s that unopened cabinet that may be harboring large families of who-knows-what that I really need to open and inspect. I almost got started on the kitchen today, but I’ve been at it full-speed for quite a while now, and I don’t want to wear myself out entirely. There is a debate to watch tonight, and I would like to stay awake through it. This one might be exciting.

I suppose I should make that one last phone call I keep putting off, and then I probably should call my mother too. By the time I get done with all that, it’ll be time to start dinner.

Today has been much better than yesterday. I knew it would be!

Next dental appointment is next Tuesday at 2 pm. I can’t wait, and I am serious about that. None of this has been moving as quickly as I would like. Some of that has been financial, and some of that has been that it takes forever to get appointments. No idea what they’ll be doing this time. I’ll probably be going back again about two weeks after that as well. I’m really pushing them and the budget to get this all done before the holidays, so I’ll have perfect teeth to show off. I can’t wait for that either.

I can’t believe I am excited about a dental appointment. How far I have come with that phobia! Still a little nervous about it, but probably no more than a normal person. Feels good to be nervous about something in a normal way.

September 30th, Country-of-Origin labeling got underway in the USA. Sort of. Doesn’t apply to a host of items, most notably anything processed (i.e. canned) or containing more than one ingredient. That means 99% of foodstuffs will still not inform us of whence it came.

Charles Hill installed five surveillance cameras around his McMansion after vandals destroyed a bunch of pricey windows. Nothing notable about that. Lots of people install cameras on their property for a variety of reasons. What is notable is he is the first private homeowner taking Chicago up on their offer “to connect privately owned exterior surveillance cameras to Chicago’s 911 emergency center.”

Orthodox Jewish “modesty patrols” are on a campaign to “stamp out behavior they consider unchaste,” and while they are not government sponsored or endorsed outright, it doesn’t seem like anyone is really doing anything to stop them. In my opinion, this sort of vigilante behavior places Israel on the same list as their Middle Eastern neighbors they complain so loudly about.

That economy-saving bailout bill that was passed contained the usual amount of fatty pork. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but just the bits and pieces others have been highlighting verges on ridiculous. A tax break for the manufacturers of children’s wooden arrows? Really?!

Yet another person sitting in prison for decades saying he didn’t commit the crime was set free last month when DNA evidence found him to be innocent. He makes twenty in Dallas County alone since 2001.

Pakistan’s military has ordered its forces to open fire if U.S. troops launch another air or ground raid across the Afghan border, an army spokesman said Tuesday.

“The orders are clear,” Abbas said in an interview. “In case it happens again in this form, that there is a very significant detection, which is very definite, no ambiguity, across the border, on ground or in the air: open fire.”

I did mention recently that Pakistan isn’t very happy with us right now, didn’t I? I wasn’t kidding.

The EPA has decided there’s no point in ridding public drinking water supplies of perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket fuel, even though it is present in at least 395 sites at levels high enough to “interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks” particularly for children and babies. No real surprise there, as every government agency designed to protect Americans from health hazards don’t seem to be bothering with that task anymore.

PETA wants Ben & Jerry’s to start using human breast milk in their products to “lessen the suffering of dairy cows” and “benefit human health.”

Homeland Security has a new system called MALINTENT, which they are just certain will determine who is thinking bad thoughts and is a terrorist by reading peoples’ nonverbal cues. More security theater and who-knows-what-number reason to never fly anywhere again.

Ah, a mostly clean desktop. I have saved the politics links for later, as I may have something more I want to say about them. Now on to the housework.

Yesterday was a Monday all day long. I haven’t always gotten out of bed on Monday mornings expecting the day to suck, but it can no longer be denied that lately, my Mondays have been sucking worse than usual. I am not even going to dwell on it and tell you about it. It’s over, and good riddance.

But today is Tuesday, and it’s going to be better! We got some nice rain last night, and it looks like it’s going to be a mild and pleasant day. I’m going to open the windows and let some fresh air in. My allergies are still killing me, but not having the windows open hasn’t been helping, so I want some fresh air. I like having fresh air coming in when I am doing housework, and there’s a lot of housework to be done today. I also have to make two phone calls I should have made yesterday. One I decided to put off, because I’m a procrastinator that way, and the other one I completely forgot about until it was too late. Oops.

The only news around Casa de Orb at the moment is that it has been decided the microwave must be replaced, and the small ones won’t do. I am not altogether happy to admit that and am even more loathe to have to give up the newly found counter space in the kitchen, but it seems I use it more than I realized … reheating coffee and pizza and leftovers … thawing meat for meals … and making tea. I have decided I will probably put the new on on the kitchen table and leave it there. It’s not like we eat at the kitchen table anyway, and I really like having all that counter space by the sink. We’ll be muddling through sans microwave until the weekend. If I can remember to get the meat out of the freezer every day for dinner, we’ll manage just fine. I think we could manage just fine forever without one, after a period of adjustment, but Lin is disturbed by the fact we do not have a microwave. I guess if I didn’t know how to use any of the other appliances in the kitchen, I’d be concerned too.

Time to walk Lin out to the truck and see him off. Then more coffee for me and a mad dash to get all the housework and phone calls done early so I can work on my knitting projects. I’ve fallen behind, and there are going to be people with chilly hands and heads in a few weeks, if I don’t get caught up. Can’t have that!

It would seem the Latinos next door are getting rid of their junk cars. On Saturday, there was a guy with a trailer picking one up. He asked if we could move our trucks so he would have more room to maneuver. We moved Lin’s truck, and we took mine to the farmers market. It took us about an hour to get back, and they were still there fussing around with it.

Well, that guy is back with his trailer picking up their old pickup truck. I went outside about 90 minutes ago to move my truck as far as possible from the action, because my Stupidity Alert was blasting away loudly. He’s still out there trying to get the truck onto the trailer.

Yes, getting a non-functioning vehicle onto a flatbed trailer isn’t exactly easy. Lin and I have done it. It isn’t any fun. But … it didn’t take us hours to accomplish the task. This guy has the trailer backed up to the front of the old truck. He removed the trailer from his trailer hitch, and he’s been trying to drag the old truck onto the trailer with his truck … using a very, very slender chain. Much too slender for the job. Additionally, the trailer keeps moving forward as soon as the old truck’s mostly flat wheels touch it. I can’t imagine why. Duh.

It’s a good thing I moved my truck. I don’t want someone with trailers, old trucks, and very slender chains under intense pressure anywhere near it. Who knows what mayhem could have happened!

I think I’ll go to the bedroom and have a nap. I at least need to get to the other side of the house where it may be more quiet. I say “may be” because the Insane Neighbors are moving like crazy these days, and they have been loading up trucks and trailers full of their junk all morning.

And I guess we will now be peer pressured into getting rid of our junk car collection too. Dammit, yuppies haven’t even moved in and started gentrifying the place yet, and already everyone is getting rid of their dead cars. Next thing you know, everyone is going to be working to achieve perfectly green lawns.

Ingredients:

one cranky Windows 98 SE computer - homebuilt 13 years ago
every file I created for ten years, most of which have never been backed up anywhere
one husband who isn’t always careful with my things
one memory of said husband removing his storage drive from ancient computer

Process:

1. Boot up ancient computer to reacquaint self with Paintshop Pro.

2. Reboot said computer, because it’s being cranky.

3. Reacquaint self with Paintshop Pro.

4. Realize a gray morning is a great time to move more files to the iMac.

5. Open Windows Explorer.

6. See one, and only one, hard drive where there should be at least three.

7. Call husband to verify he did not take all the extra drives and wipe them without looking at them.

8. Get voicemail.

9. Repeat steps 7 and 8 three more times.

10. Fall onto floor, begin crying hysterically, and PANIC!!!!!

I think I almost just died. Ten years of creative data missing? Yes, I was having a full-blown panic attack. I still feel like my heart and head are going to explode, and the crisis has passed. The old machine, it’s very cranky. While I was having a panic attack about the missing drives and data, it decided to reboot itself. Upon reboot, there were the missing drives. Phew.

I have got to get my stuff off that computer, or I have to move those extra drives to mom’s old computer and use it for data transfer. The old machine is going to go any old time now, and I’d like to not lose any precious data when that happens.

I don’t know what I was more upset about: losing every photo I took, every piece of digital art I created, and ever mad rambling for ten-ish years, or the fact I was seriously going to have to consider killing my husband.

For about a week now, the cats have been showing an especially high level of interest in one specific spot in the house, usually late at night. The spot in question is the area between the stove and the kitchen cabinets, a space I use for the trash can and a stashing spot for glass to be sent for recycling. Not exactly the sort of spot one wants cats getting boisterous and rowdy. All the same, almost every night for a week, they have been hovering in the area, and a few nights ago they started getting boisterous and rowdy about it. Last night, one of them went all out, knocked over all the bottles and jars, and nearly dumped the trash can over. Very late last night, of course. More like really early this morning.

Lin slept through it, as he always does. The world could end while that man sleeps, and he’d never notice. I was awake and in the kitchen in a heartbeat, ready to kill some cats. Well, not just that. I also hoped they had gotten whatever it was they wanted to get, which I had begun to suspect was a mouse. Not that I’d seen any mouse-like evidence anywhere, but I did hear a slight scratching noise in that area one of the nights I was chasing the cats out of the kitchen. Due to the fact there is a cabinet there which has not been opened since I stashed a bunch of old, unused small appliances in it five years ago, I had begun to imagine all kinds of things living the high life in there and slipping out to dine on our refuse every night. Naturally, this didn’t inspire me to move the trash and recycling and open the cabinet, because … I really didn’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss.

Seeing as the cats made a royal mess of things last night, I went ahead and moved all the jars and bottles out of the area, swept up coffee grounds that had apparently missed their target, and pulled out the trash can to give the cats full access to the spot that drew their most sincere and rapt attention. Then I turned off the light and sat at my computer. Yes, I send the cats in where I fear to tread! It’s not like they needed any convincing. They very urgently wanted to get in that corner.

It didn’t take longer than a couple of minutes until I heard the sounds of Ronin playing with something under the kitchen table. I didn’t really want to go look, but I also didn’t want him eating a mouse — or whatever it was — or worse, killing it and hiding it somewhere for me to step or sit on later. He does this, and I swear he does it on purpose.

So I crept into the kitchen and turned on the light. Sure enough, Ronin is under the table losing his mind, and Myu is sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor watching from a safe distance. I stoop down to get the view from her vantage point, and even without my glasses on, I can tell it is not a mouse. It is, in fact, a very, very large bug. Since Ronin seemed to have incapacitated it enough for me to safely get within focused viewing distance, I moved in closer.

Remember recently I reported having seen and killed the largest freaking roach I had ever seen before? Well, I have now topped even that monster. Except, it didn’t look like any roach I had ever seen. It reminded me altogether too much of these bugs they used in a stupid horror movie I saw as a kid, in which these large, brown and somewhat-armored, wingless bugs were overrunning civilization, and when they landed on people, their skin started sizzling and everyone died horrible and gruesome deaths. It was at least two inches long, and it was not yet dead. My fight-or-flight instinct was telling me to RUN! But of course, I can’t allow myself to be run out of my home by a bug, now can I?

Well, it was too big for me to feel comfortable squashing in any way, and it was too large to let Ronin have his way with, so I grabbed a paper towel and went to pick it up for the formal trip to the toilet. Instead of picking it up, which I didn’t really want to do, it grabbed a hold of the paper towel and just hung there. I quickly and smoothly walked down the hall to the bathroom, prepared at any moment to drop it and scream had it made any menacing movements. I most certainly wasn’t going to allow it to touch me, and there were two cats hot on my heels making grumpy noises who would have been more than delighted to incapacitate it again.

It just hung there on the paper towel calmly, not realizing its fate. I opened the toilet, tossed the paper towel into the bowl bug side down, and flushed … all in one quick movement. Normally, the wet paper towel drags the poor critter into the watery depths and out into the sewer. Not this time. No, this creature from hell got out from under the swirling paper towel and swam against the rotating current. I kid you not! I have never seen such a thing! Then it got out of the water and crawled up somewhere under the rim of the toilet bowl — somewhere I could not see. I flushed the toilet a few times to see if I could wash it out. It didn’t work. Just wonderful.

I didn’t want to leave the room to find something to do battle with the beast, for fear that as soon as I did so, it would crawl out and go who knows where, so I grabbed the bottle of bleach I keep in the bathroom and just started splashing it up under the rim of the bowl. Finally, the monster slipped just enough for me to see where he was. I grabbed a good wad of toilet paper and kept brushing against the damn creature until it slipped into the water, I dropped the toilet paper on top of it and flushed again.

It tried it’s best to avoid going down the drain, but this time I watched it disappear from sight. I repeated the toilet paper and flushing a few more times, just to be damn sure it was gone, gone, gone.

Of course, at that very moment my bladder realized I was awake, and I really, really had to pee. Like hell was I putting my butt on that seat at this particular moment! So I waited as long as I possibly could, and then … I hovered over the toilet as though it was in some scummy nightclub rather than my personal bathroom. Even then, I had to keep watch, because I didn’t want any surprises. That kind of surprise could put me off toilets forever. As it is, I’m going to be all weird about sitting on the toilet until I forget about the giant whatever-it-was I flushed to its doom there. This will, I imagine, take weeks. I may even need therapy.

By the time all this excitement was over, it was too late to go back to bed just to wait a little while for the alarm to go off. Oh how I would love to go back to bed, but it’s Monday, and there’s a long, long list of things I have to get done today. It’s going to suck to be so tired, but after a week of not getting anything done due to my allergies, I am more than a little backlogged on required life activities.

Please don’t remind me that I was apparently sharing a kitchen with the damn giant-assed bug for about a week. I don’t want to think about it. I also don’t want to think about the fact it may have brothers, sisters, and offspring living in that long-unopened cabinet. I will certainly not be investigating that situation until after this week’s grocery shopping trip during which I intend to buy the most powerful bug poison I can find. I hate to use the stuff, but who knows what’s in there, and as they say … don’t take a knife to a gunfight.

Why do my Mondays always start with a crisis or some other form of insanity? Why?!

“[I think] there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”
– former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

Thought I would post the actual quote, seeing as an imperfect mutation of this quote was read on a Starbuck’s cup yesterday and has become a soundbite today.

It’s “help” not “support” … dear Sarah, and yes, they do mean different things.

“As we send our young men and women overseas in a war zone to fight for democracy and freedoms, including freedom of the press, we’ve really got to have a mutually beneficial relationship here with those fighting the freedom of the press, and then the press, though not taking advantage and exploiting a situation, perhaps they would want to capture and abuse the privilege. We just want truth, we want fairness, we want balance.”
–Sarah Palin

Every time I hear or read something this woman has said, I have to sit down and mentally diagram the sentence. Sometimes, it’s so bad I have to use paper and pen to sort out what she is trying to say. My analysis of the above statement and just about everything else she says? She’s not saying anything, at least not anything that makes any sense.