One of my favorite things about Christmas is seeing a tree completely loaded with gorgeously wrapped presents underneath. And wow, am I on top of things this year. I’ve finished my holiday shopping! I’ve wrapped everything! I’m mailing stuff out today! There is, however, one problem. You see, all those lovely presents under my little pink tree are for other people. Not one present is for me! So what gives, homies? Where are my presents??? Let’s get with it, people! Time to show me some love…
I love my life soooo much sometimes. In the past month or so, I’ve shelled out $700 for Teddy’s medical bills, $550 for a new alternator for my car, and now this. Here’s what I came home to on Friday:
Supposedly, the drywall guys will be in Monday to repair the ceiling and wall and paint. Hopefully they can get it done in one day and I’ll be through with this mess!
P.S. – On Saturday, my apartment complex informed me that they’ll be raising my rent $60-$100 per month in February. Can you believe that they have the nerve to raise my rent when my ceiling isn’t even fixed??? They clearly have not seen my needlepoint skills (see several blogs previous). I don’t need to be paying nearly $1000 per month for this ghetto. I think I’ll be outta here in February…
I totally live in the ghetto, where your ceiling leaks, collapses, and the “emergency maintenance” person never returns your pages that you’ve been sending him for the past 48 hours. Take a look at the fun fun fun progression of events!
Wednesday morning – after a small rain, my ceiling started looking ugly and began dripping. I tried paging maintenance two times the evening prior, and once in the morning.
Wednesday evening – supposedly, the plumber fixed a leaky pipe in the attic. The ceiling was still leaking when I got home, but later stopped. A nice crack developed. The office attendant said it would “take a while” to get the ceiling repaired and painted.
Thursday evening – the cracks are getting bigger! I’ve heard nothing about the status of the ceiling repair.
Thursday evening, five minutes later – holy ghetto, batman! My ceiling collapsed, and there’s crap everywhere. I tried paging the maintenance person again (nothing), then called the security company, who said they would contact the apartment manager. That was at least an hour ago and I’ve heard nothing.
Just a fraction of the rubble I get to clean up – soggy drywall, paint, cardboard, insulation, solder shards from the pipe, a valve handle, and a wet rag, all of which fell out of the ceiling. Teddy Bear is having a blast sniffing various bits and pieces and dragging them around the apartment.
Sigh…
I love Halloween – it’s undoubtedly one of my favorite holidays. Unfortunately for Teddy Bear, it’s one of his least favorite holidays because 1) he’s not allowed to eat any candy, and 2) I get to dress him up in fun costumes. This year, he participated as Darth Teddy. It was either that, or I cover up his cone and the rest of his body with aluminum foil so that he could enjoy the holiday as a satellite dish. I figured he’d disagree with the former idea a little less, so we went with that one (by the way, Teddy just got his stitches out and is now cone-free). I managed to cobble together a pretty decent pirate costume together at the last minute, mostly from pieces gathered from my closet (hmmmm…). I wore it to work – about ten or so people dressed up for Halloween, and everyone else just laughed and pointed fingers. Oh well – I had fun. We also got a TON of trick-or-treaters – hardly any candy left at all!!! Which means that I won’t feel *too* guilty finishing off the leftovers. I hope you had a great All Hallows too!
Yes, my dog is wearing a cone. He feels humiliated, shamed, less than canine. The tragedy of it all! It started a few days ago when I took Teddy to the groomer. He’s an older pup – 13 1/2 years old – so he has a few lumps and bumps and assorted nuggets as older dogs tend to have. I highlighted these for the groomer (literally, in bright blue) so that she could avoid them when she shaved him, but alas – I think she nicked the cantankerous growth that has existed like a second head on Teddy’s ear. Last night it was all pussed up and a complete mess – yuck! So, today I took him to the vet (he loved it, oh yes, loved the muzzle they put on him – what fun!) who said that the angry nugget should be removed – in surgery – tomorrow! Boo hoo! So, like a car going in for a tune-up, Teddy will be going in for surgery to get the growth removed and his teeth cleaned (let us not forget the deworming medication for his tapeworm infestation, too). All for a pretty penny, which I will be charging, of course. The good thing is that I get to make fun of him for having to wear a cone for the next two weeks. The cats are kind of scared of it, and Teddy is having a hard time not banging in to things when he’s wearing it. Anyway, here are some pictures for you to enjoy!
Yes, it does actually get cool at the Wild Animal Park. I went there today with Mark, where we visited Lion Camp and saw two of the lion cubs (cute!), saw a tiger, walked around Mombasa Lagoon, visited the deer in the petting kraal, and fed the rainbow lorikeets. Here are some of the pictures!
Yes, Roseanne would be so proud. Clearly I still need to iron this little treasure, and pop it into a nice little frame to sit on my desk. It’s my first domestic project in a while – I don’t know what’s wrong with me! Last week I even listed a sewing machine on my Amazon wishlist (see link to the right!!!). And this weekend I baked banana bread and jambalaya. This may not be a big deal to most of you, but when you’re the type of person whose cooking skills mostly include being able to preheat a toaster oven to 450 F and open the box that contains your frozen pizza, cooking jambalaya is a bit of a stretch. But I’m not dead yet from food poisoning, so I guess it came out ok.
It’s good that I can get outside every once in a while. You know, away from my desk, my computer, my office without a window…
Today I got to hike around Lake Calavera in reviewing the City’s trails program. It was such a nice day out – sunny, not too hot, a nice breeze. There were about ten of us on the hike and about eight of us walked over this poor little guy without realizing that he was even there (and to tell you the truth, there were so many dog and coyote turds all over the trail, my eye probably dismissed this baby rattler as a dog dump. But don’t tell him that!).
Hhhiiiisssssssssssssssss!!! (Translation: don’t tread on me!)
…or else he’d probably be living in Tijuana as a dog scrounging around for scraps of crack or whatever he could find. Yes, TB is very cute. These pictures were taken by a friend of my mom’s during a recent visit to the dog park. Aside from being cute, TB can be pretty annoying – but I’ve been told that it’s probably because of his breed and not simply a personality defect that makes him incredibly needy, whiney, insistent, and demanding, not to mention having bad breath.
I’m just joking around (kind of!). I love the little guy, personality defects and all. He’s loyal, a great watch dog, and does a great job of cleaning up any little bits of food that might fall on the floor, saving me the trouble from having to do it myself.
Fuzzy Undertones 
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