FIRST UP: TODAY AT WORK----

***It wasn't a bad day....in fact, some parts of it were rather amusing. Remember Sally Stupid? She's the lady who drove me bonkers during a training class a while back...I could literally walk her step by step through a VERY simple process (such as turning on the computer) and she'd STILL do it wrong! How freaking hard is it to PUSH A BUTTON??!! Well, anyway...I got word today that she got DAS BOOT yesterday. Get this....she put in for two weeks of vacation time that was to begin next week. The day after she did that, she handed in her two week notice. Now, honestly folks....if you're planning to use your vacation time and then quit, what do you think your employer is going to say? All together now: "YOU CAN LEAVE NOW." I knew something was up this morning when I arrived and saw half of the employees on my floor doing cartwheels! Even our BIG boss was skipping along the hallways and handing out daisies to everyone!

***Speaking of vacation....at the beginning of December, I put in for and was approved to have this Friday and next Monday as vacation time. Well...while I was gone, it somehow got DISapproved. So I asked about it to the lovely lady who does that stuff for us and it turns out she made a slight boo-boo and my time off was reinstated within a few minutes. Gee, I guess being polite DOES have its advantages after all! Had it not been for the fact that I desperately NEED some "BryTime", I would have just let it stay cancelled since I was out Friday and yesterday.

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NEXT TOPIC: IT'S STORY TIME!    

***I'm happy that you all are getting a kick out of my "Official Blogstream Party" stories! I figure since my "customer from hell" stories have gone by the wayside since I quit the home improvement store, I may as well write (or is that victimize?!) about my fellow bloggers!    It's all done in fun, so I hope that none of these stories will offend anyone....believe me, I'd be crushed if I thought that I'd hurt someone's feelings or insulted them!
      So that having been said.....I want to let everyone know I'm working on ANOTHER story with the Blogstream characters!    Since the next few holidays we have aren't of the same calibur of Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year's they aren't really "story" worthy.....so the next one will be one with a completely different theme. I can't give away too many details right now because I've just now started working on the details....but here's a hint:

"Once upon a time, there were three little girls who went to Nelverna's Hair, Nails, & Fishing Bait located in sunny Cesspool, Florida where they each reaped the rewards of their exciting careers as pig sloppers. But I took them away from all of that, and now they work for me. MY name:

Yeah, I know I'm a few days late in posting all the details about the official Blogstream party for the New Year, but I've only just gotten the official release from the Ohio State Police to mention said details. This year's bash was held at the home of Heather Scot. The original idea was to have the festivities over at che Bella but she couldn't get the waiver in enough time from the authorities in her hometown. I'm guessing they are a bit skittish since the "Cinco de Mayo" celebration back in 2006? Hey..if a court of law found us all innocent, why can't everyone else??!! It's not like we MEANT to kill all of those potted plants with chicken feathers!!

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---> The festivities were to begin promptly at 7pm, but had to be moved at the last minute to 8pm because of the fact that Heather was nursing her rabbit back to health. The poor little creature had a tummy ache from all of the carrots Heather's been feeding him!

---> Randy was the first to arrive. Now this was a rare thing in itself because he's normally LATE to these functions because he pulls off the side of the road to take pictures of the scenery along the way. Yes, pictures of mountains and trees and sunsets is all well and good, but do we REALLY need a close up shot of the gigantic fat kid statue over at the "Shake-N-Steak" out on route 12?? One would think he learned his lesson after the experience he had while photographing a family of bears relieving themselves behind a bush alongside the interstate!

---> ValAnne, kktaylorcc, & Miss Lou decided to ride down together to save on gas. That would have been a LOT easier of a trip though if Val hadn't eaten that bag of pinto beans she bought at the gas station vending machine!! We eventually had to lock her in the basement because of the after effects of that bag of beans!!

---> Not long after things got underway, we heard a loud crash coming from the driveway. Secret:Victoria's First had pulled in and smashed right into the back of Bella's prize pink & green 1976 Chrysler Cordoba!! We all rushed out to make sure she was ok and found her lumped over the steering wheel, bawling her eyes out. On the seat beside her was a bill from her auto insurance company with her new rates. Apparently they found out that she's got TWO brand new drivers in her home!! We consoled her as best we could, but had to abandon her when we were summoned back inside for drinks......

---> Once back inside, we were served those drinks by Heather's house guest (a friend of her son TJ's)....she's actually made remarkable progress with him. He now comes running with TWO snaps of the finger instead of THREE!! As is the case with all household help though, the poor guy did spill one drink on a guest. Luckily the martini that ended up on the front of gjwleg's dress came out easily enough.....although I'm still not convinced that battery acid and peanut butter is a good thing to put on fabric. But hey....if AZRON says that it is, then I'll take his word for it!!

---> I've always been very pleased with the way that everyone on Blogstream gets along, but every now and then you WILL see a little argument...such as the ongoing dispute between n.lynn and Miss Lou. It's quite silly actually, and I really think that lynn got what she deserved when she tried to get revenge. lynn had snuck out onto the patio with a bunch of balloons filled with cream cheese....her intent was to pelt Lou with them. Unfortunately, one of them landed just shy of its intended target and made quite the SPLAT when it hit the patio. Well, Lou heard it, looked over, and saw lynn hiding in the bushes. lynn decided to go for the gusto and leapt out of the shrubbery and ran like a mad woman towards Lou, balloons in hand. WELL.....poor lynn was running so fast that she didn't even see the cream cheese splattered on the patio. She hit the stuff and slid about 11 feet before she went head first into.....yep, you guessed it.....the POOL!!

---> Hearing the huge splash outside, Heather snapped for her houseboy and told him to go and fetch lynn from the pool, and then come back and serve the cheese and crackers. Along the way, he passed by Buffy, who was looking for her cat. Little did she know that Heather's squirrel had chased it up a tree in the neighbor's yard. We'd ALL find that out soon enough though!!

---> Once the excitement at the pool was over, we headed back inside where we found quite an interesting picture. Poor Bella had jumped so high when Randy goosed her that she got her hair stuck in the light fixture!! It didn't help matters that Blogstream newcomer deeej thought that the theme of the party had changed, grabbed a stick, and started swatting at Bella as though she were a pinata! The fact that various types of hard candy spilled out from Bella's nylons didn't help our case when we tried to explain that the theme of the party had NOT changed!!

---> It wasn't until kktaylorcc came out with a pair of scissors and freed Bella from the fixture that we were able to get back to the partying. Thankfully there was no serious damage done to Bella's hair...she'd opted to wear her prized beehive wig this year! She says it matches the crazy fake fur she has her car seats covered with!

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As midnight drew closer, Heather broke out the holiday gear. She wanted us all to have hats and noisemakers when 2008 arrived....I think her feelings were hurt when we all refused to wear as hats the sections of a certain gingerbread house gone wrong! And those noisemakers looked suspiciously like undercooked hard candy wrapped up in a paper bag!!

So as Heather's cuckoo clock started striking midnight, all hell broke loose. Remember the cat that the squirrel had chased up the tree? Well, kitty got revenge by rigging a series of wires to an electrical outlet designed to capture the squirrel and give him one hell of a jolt! Well, before the squirrel could stumble into the trap, kktaylorcc accidentally set it off while demonstrating her takedown moves on a person when they fling bits of celery at her. When taylor tripped the wire, the placement of the explosives combined with the sturdiness of Heather's house caused the house to become airborne instead of simply blowing apart. As we skyrocketed into the heavens, you would know that it was Bella who stuck her head out the window and started saying, "WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!" It took five of us to get her back inside, which was about the same time that it occurred to everyone that what goes UP must come DOWN at some point!! We frantically looked around for something that would help our landing when we started to plummet to the ground, but the only thing we could find was parts of that confounded gingerbread house and thirty three editions of Reader's Digest in the bathroom!!

THANFULLY, all of the women at the party got together and came up with a plan. Within 3 minutes after the women's discussion, we were tying together all of their brasierres and attaching them to the top of the house as it continued to soar into the night sky. Would anyone care to guess who wore the one with holes cut out of the front area??!! And I'll give a nickel to the first one of you who can tell me which lady was sporting the aqua bra that had the goldfish swimming around in it!! Anyway, Randy, AZRON, & myself had JUST finished securing the last of the makeshift parachute when the house suddenly came to a stop and then started its descent back to the earth.

As we were racing towards the ground below, we all tried to stay calm. Staying calm wasn't an easy thing to do when we kept having to ask Randy to get away from the window....he wanted some more pictures to post in his gallery. It wasn't until Secret came up and gave him a small shiny object that he was distracted away from the window. She tried the same trick with Bella, who had gone back to the window to stick her head out, but it didn't work. She simply replied, "Honey, haven't you heard that DIAMONDS are a girl's best friend??!!"

Our parachute (we dubbed it " The Boobachute 2000") was holding up pretty well, althought the whistling coming from the one with the holes cut out of the cups was QUITE annoying! We did slow down quite a bit before we landed with a THUD back on the house's foundation. Thanfully, no one was hurt, but Heather was quite annoyed about the fact that during our flight, a hole had gotten made into one of the walls. Her anger subsided though when AZRON and I covered the hole with a side of the gingerbread house. A little paint and the wall was as good as new!!

As the party came to a close, we all started out the front door when we saw headlights pulling into the driveway...it was our long lost ANNIE----she was dreadfully late and missed all the excitement, but explained to us that she'd gotten on the wrong bus in her hometown. She said that after 10 hours of riding in circles, she finally overpowered the driver, threw him out onto the street and commondered (sp?) the bus.

We were wondering why she pulled up in a big gray bus with a dog painted on the side of it!!

P.S. No animals were harmed in the making of this story!

Today was a typical one on the ol' cul-de-sac......

Neighbor Todd came over to chat and "borrow" a "couple" of smokes. As soon as he asked, I had to start laughing..he and his wife Christi vowed to quit smoking for their new year's resolution. They made the resolution on New Year's Eve....which as you know was only a mere 6 days ago....for the last FIVE of those days, they've been "borrowing" them from Chris and me. I think their REAL resolution was to stop BUYING cigarettes!!      It's not that I necessarily mind giving them to him, but it's like I pointed out to Todd today...they smoke more when they QUIT smoking than they do when they ARE smoking!

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Cindy and I finished up putting all the Christmas decorations today. Most of it did end up going into the attic...there were 11 good sized boxes, so there was NO way we were carrying ALL of that stuff out to the shed in back!! Afterwards, we talked for a bit and I had a suspicion confirmed during our conversation. I had known that she was sliding backwards as far as dealing with the loss of Kevin, and that led me to wonder if perhaps some thoughts of doing herself in were popping into her head. It turns out that I am 100% correct. So now I'm REALLY worried...remember that was just earlier this past week! She realizes that she is in dire need of some professional help, but says that she just can't bring herself to go and get that help yet. I told her that she needs to make a conscious effort before things get any worse....but I'm not sure if she was listening. She's just so desperately lonely without Kevin. Even though she knows that she has a whole network of friends to lean on, it's just not enough at this point.

I hate to say it, but I completely understand where she's at right now. After watching my mother die a slow and very painful death when I was 23 years old, I found myself contemplating those thoughts. The only thing that saved me back then was my grandmother (I called her Nannie)....she insisted that I come and stay with her for awhile so that I could pull myself together and try to get on with my life. It worked, but it took awhile for me to re-enter the land of the living. Four years later, just as things had started to calm down, Nannie up and died on me! When THAT happened, I was so shattered that I didn't care what happened to me. I knew I was too chicken to do it myself, so I was intentionally doing stupid things like the drugs & aclochol in the hope that THEY would take care of the situation for me.

Cindy's situation is the same as mine back then....no matter HOW many friends & family that I had to support me through Nannie's death, it still didn't help a bit, and when people talked to me about things, they'd have gotten better comprehension from a brick wall. Cindy is displaying the same attitude. It doesn't matter to her whether she has 1 friend or 1,000 friends.....none of them are KEVIN. Period.

My theory is that the only thing that's keeping her around right now is that she's waiting to pay for the porch that she's putting on Chris and my house. I'm worried that as soon as that is done, she'll do the deed....or at least attempt it, and there's not a damn thing that I can do about it.

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I went to my nephew Eli's birthday gig today. It's the third time this week that he's had a "party"....the first was actully ON his birthday this past Thursday, the next was yesterday, and then today's. Apparently there was some issue with Ben (my brother in law) being sick for the first one, and then a lot of invitees couldn't make it yesterday, so she did something again today. That poor child is going to turn into a birthday cake before it's all over with!

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Well, that's about all I've got for now! Hope everyone has a good week coming up!

            So far my Saturday has been a little uneventful. I just came in from helping Cindy get some of her Christmas stuff put up into the loft of her shed out back....the rest is going to be done tomorrow...the other stuff has to go into her attic, which is a task that NEITHER of us is looking forward to!! I suspect that we'll end up probably putting the rest of it in the shed because it's just so much easier to manuever around in there then it is her attic. Besides, the shed is brand new and she really wants to keep everything more easily accessible since Kevin isn't around anymore to go and fetch stuff for her.

             I don't know if I've talked much about the porch thing lately....Cindy is putting a porch on our house to thank us for all that we did for her and Kevin. We tried our best to say NO, but Cindy isn't one to take NO for an answer so she finally beat us into submission! Anyway, we've had several different people come out and give estimates, but they were all RIDCIULOUSLY high....one guy was talking in the neighborhood of $30,000!!! There's NO way that we were going to let Cindy spend THAT kind of money....well, FINALLY we found a guy that can do it all for less than $10,000....which is more along the lines of what we were expecting it should be. So in the next few weeks, my posts will probably be "Adventures in Porch Building".....you just KNOW that someone during that time is going to end up with a hammer falling on their head or a nail taking flight into one of the tires on Christine the Truck.        

             Well, I'm off on my next adventure for the day. Tomorrow is my brother's birthday AND my niece's birthday, so we're having a party for them at the bowling alley in Sanford where I grew up. Ironically, the bowling alley was the 'hang out' for all the teenagers when I was coming up and I used to laugh at all the "old people" who were there to actually BOWL. Gadzooks...now **I** am the old person going there to BOWL!!

I was originally going to post about the stream of bullshit we're being handed again about the ever increasing gas prices imposed by Comrade Bush & his mini-me, but I found something MUCH better....this is a story from WRAL, the CBS affiliate in Raleigh, NC. Anyone not familiar with Cary, let me briefly explain about these folks. They are people who moved to the area from "up north" and proceeded to turn Cary into Stepford. The general attitude (which has been documented publicly) of the residents is that they are "superior" to residents of neighboring towns because they paid more for their houses. I could go on and on, but I wouldn't have enough room to post all this. Just read it..it's freakin' hilarious! The first part is the story as it appeared on the website..the other part(s) are the comments posted to the story:

'Rank' Smell Haunts Cary, Officials Struggle to Stop Stench

Posted: Today at 5:37 p.m.
Updated: Today at 6:39 p.m.

• Reporter: Renee Chou
• Photographer: Terry Cantrell
• Web Editor: Kelly Hinchcliffe

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