Mer hasn't even touched down yet, and already Mother is making this a giant headache for me. Sigh.

The party was lovely: Tons of food, former co-workers I haven't seen in a few months with their lovely children, plenty of beer, the whole deal. And I got to spend a whole 15 minutes with everyone before I had to go back to my boss' crib to file my two stories. By the time I got done, everyone was gone. There was cake still left out when I came back, though, and beer, of which I pounded two cans before I left.

(...)

Does it end there? Of course it doesn't: I look at my story on the cop shooting this morning, and the reporter who took my dictation (because I never really did figure out how to work my boss' computer; they had so much spyware and anti-virus stuff on it) made it all wordy and weird, which annoys me to no end, especially since he's a good writer otherwise.

And today's story? A woman who saved two starving kittens abandoned on the side of a highway and how police in three different munis laughed at her for wanting them to help her figure out what to do. I think I'll just go slit my wrists now.

You know how I said I was going to a party today? Yeah. Guess who got called up to work a cop shooting and be on call the rest of the day?

Sigh.

I told the poor editor who had to inflict this upon me that I promise to remain sober enough to work.

I did spend a good portion of the day trying to force myself to come up with something about him, though, and that's not the way you're supposed to commemorate someone, at least in my mind.

Also, I'm cranky because I had all these plans for Mer and Snidge coming in this weekend (as it is MY High Holiday), and there was going to be much laughter and merriment. But Mer's in the Dominican Republic with her mom as a gift for earning her Master's, and Snidge is out in DC at an Aimee Mann show tonight which, I mean, c'mon, Punta Cana and Aimee Mann vs. NWI? Yeah, that's not rocket science there. But I had PLANS, y'all, and now I'm stuck working all weekend with few plans and no friends* with which to share them.

[/wehwehweh]

I have one of those allergy headaches that feels like someone's stabbing you in the temple/ear. And it sucks.

Going to go drown in my own snot now. Good night.

Stupid allegies

that not only do I have hillbillies and an overabundance of screaming brats pollutingpulating the cul-de-sac, I forgot about the Cougher, who spends his nights coughing and hacking up his lungs as well as the lungs of everyone within a square mile of Chez Broad. It's really unpleasant, I have to say.

Another year, another having to sort through my receipts to see how much I'm going to get butt-raped by the guvmint. Thankfully, Greta's going to help me through it, but still, Gah.

and due to a fuck-up with Medicare Part D, Mother can't take her Prozac until Sunday.

Pray she doesn't end up underneath my car, please.

Remember how I was all excited about my new bag? Yeah. All of a sudden, I'm kinda sorta bugged out, because it's a bag that was a new style for Fall 2004. I mean, I still love it and all, but dude, Fall 2004.

Is that shallow?

I need it to go with my new shower curtain, which I bought earlier:




Total departure from what I was originally attracted to, but it works. But I can't find a plain black and white striped towel to save my damn life, though. What is UP with this!?? Sheesh.

about the whole exchange with TOG? I'M the one who's feeling bad about it, as if I did something horribly wrong to upset the balance of the universe, and so I totally want to apologize and make sure everything's all right. I SHOULDN'T, however, because then I risk making things worse.

The fabric softener that smells like vanilla and lavender? Ohmigod, I'm in LOVE. Don't know how soft it makes my clothes, but it smells really good.

In the meantime, I should've realized the low-grade headache I had in my face the other day was a sign of things to come; my throat's sore and I'm sneezing like crazy. Crap. Because I needed to get some sort of creeping crud.

And for the curious, TOG is in fact alive and well, as is his libido, of which I REALLY hope to be taking advantage soonest ...

Someone in the paper either really hated me today, or else they decided to feed my sick sense of humor, because guess what my assignment is?

The first-ever Republican fucking convention in NWI.

You better beLIEVE I'm going during lunchtime so I can snag a good meal.

I'm covering the freakin' AI tryouts at Soldier Field tomorrow, and my ride is picking me up at 5. a.m.

I'd rather poke my own eyes out.

Got the verdict from the IRS yesterday. The good news? I don't owe them the $700+ they figured I would if I didn't provide them with the other stuff they needed.

The bad news is that after providing them the stuff they needed, I owe them $395, or approximately half.

Sigh.

No, it's not a ton of money, and it's not $700+, so I should be relieved, of course. Except right now, I don't have money for my plates which are now past due, I've got creditors calling me 15, 20 times a day for these little niggling bills that I haven't had the money to pay off, and I need to scrape up the $25 I owe my doctor's office so I won't feel like a total dick asking him for free Cipro because I've been pissing fire for the past two weeks (yeah, Ok, too much info, and no, I have NOT contracted anything creepy; it's a run-of-the-mill UTI, is all, but it still hurts like a whore). And yeah, I'm acutely aware that my shit could be eleventy billion times worse like the people down south, so don't go there with me. I'm just frustrated.

Speaking of the hurricane, I started writing a post about it Friday night, but then I scratched it because it was a lot of blowhard ranting. Truth is, as much as I would love to blame Shrub and will still do out of principle, after talking with a Red Cross coordinator for the story I worked on yesterday, I'm not sure he can be blamed entirely. Yeah, Katrina is considered a Category 6 disaster, which I'm told requires the Fed to get involved from the get-go. And yeah, FEMA has been dismantled terribly, etc. etc. But the thing is, until the water receded, no one was getting in there at all. For example, the Astrodome wasn't flooded, but everything around it was. Also, why didn't Nagin force those people out? Well, he can't force anyone to do anything, naturally, but the coordinator was telling me that there was talk that they were going to go around and have people sign waivers saying that if they weren't going to leave, then the waiver would be used to identify their bodies. That never happened, so whether it would've done any good, I don't know. I do know that we should probably wait to play the blame game until after things are reasonably calm, though.

Yeah, so the front passenger tire that had broken belts in it? Blew on the highway Friday night. (No, no catastrophic explosion or anything, just a car that couldn't pick up speed.) Well, that's not bad part. The bad part is, the rim that I thought could be pounded back into shape is literally torn apart where I hit the pothole (and thus breaking the bands in the first place), so now, the garage has to find me a new rim.

Sigh.

Granted, my disaster isn't quite the magnitude of hers, but still ...

You might've noticed that the awesomely fabulous eyeball skin created for me by the awesomely fabulous Christina has mysteriously disappeared. Well, nothing mysterious about it: Some twatconcerned party with a hard-onconcerns toward the Bonafide girls ratted on us contacted the author about Snidgey's and my sites, and he asked us to take them down, which is fine, because neither of us asked him permission, and we should've. Still, I really dug that skin. But Chrissytina is going to whip me up another little sum'in sum'in, so look forward to that soon.

It's fucking 95 out there with, like, a heat index of eleventy billion degrees. I mean, if I'm wearing shorts? You KNOW it's bad, because I'm wearing shorts with my big ol' sallow yellow turkey legs.

Waaaaaaaaaaaah.

The extreme sleepiness, the scratchy throat, the bloody sputum I hacked from my throat this morning, the welling up with tears during Griffith High School's rendition of "The Incredibles"* at commencement last night? Oh. Yeah. It's a fucking sinus infection, and I'm getting it as I need to be cleaning the crib and preparing for the lovely Snidge's arrival next weekend. And here, I was all excited that I'd gotten through most of the winter without succumbing to some mucous-laden travesty. Son of a bitch, man.

This time, at a local hospital for a surgical procedure. Should be interesting.

Back later.