My life for the last two weeks
Last post was when my uncle died. My mom, sister & nephew drove to Georgia for the funeral. On Monday morning I get a call from my sister who is at the funeral home. The flowers aren't there. She meant the $186 arrangements that said 'Dear Brother' and 'Dear Uncle'. I call company I ordered from. They can't give me any useful information. I call funeral home. He says he will check, does, and says there are no flowers with our names on them. Go home from work and call florist again. They tell me that the florist who was supposed to deliver them was closed (it was now nearly 7:00 in Georgia) so they couldn't help me. I exploded at the woman. I admit, it wasn't pretty. Then I call my sister again who informs me "Oh, the flowers are here. They were in the wrong room at the funeral home." Now I wanted to scream at her for not calling me back as soon as the flowers were found. I did call the florist back and apologize for yelling at them. But I'm never again ordering from Abbots. Their webpage made it look like they were a local Albany, Georgia company when, in fact, they are just a company like 1-800-flowers. It pissed me off when I discovered that. On the bright side, my mom enjoyed the trip in spite of the reason. It was good for her to go someplace different for a change and she enjoyed seeing the niece and nephews and their children.
One funny story from the funeral home visit. Evidently my cousin 'Ditzy Doris' has a daughter who is following in her footsteps. When Kelley saw the "Dear Brother" flower arrangement she thought it said "Dead Brother" and that she thought it was inappropriate. I could just picture Doris doing something like that.
Storytelling festival went well. My story was well received and Annette was extremely supportive as were the festival volunteers. I never did get my written invitation to the banquet but they knew I was coming since I got my award certificate that night. It was an entertaining evening and I met a lot of people in the local storytelling community. The rest of the week was spent dealing with Mwoman's botched scheduling at work. The schedule is usually fine when LaRita does it but you-know-who just can't keep from messing with it. Not a month goes by without some kind of schedule snafu.
By Saturday I had 'hit the wall' and felt like crap. I had two different events I wanted to go to but just didn't feel up to it. So I missed the reception for the "Marriage Equality Bus" folks who had traveled to Iowa to get married. And I missed the Charis concert that involved Growing American Youth--the group for GLBT under-21s that I'm going to be volunteering with.
New week, new hassles. Mwoman insists that we use Harry Chapin's "Flowers are Red" song in our skit. We are going to be pantomiming to the song. My argument was that the Summer Reading Program theme is 'Creativity' not 'Indoctrination of children through fear'. We're using the song anyway. And since my computer station died it made all the things I had to do 10 times more difficult. I had to reformat several documents because the fonts I'd originally used weren't on the other machines--even some standard Microsoft fonts. Whatever. Everytime the desk computers had to be in use for book stuff I got bumped to the kids' homework machines and had to work from my flashdrive then transfer stuff to the server later.
My schedule this week rearranged to allow for a department meeting last night. Yes, on a Friday night. Mwoman is evil. It was planned that way so everyone could be there, but everyone could not be there since one staffer was in New York for her daughter's college graduation. Why it wasn't rescheduled, I don't know. So I not only had to work two evenings this week, I am also working Saturday.
In other news, the monster-in-law had surgery on Thursday. Dennis was the dutiful son who took her to the hospital (about 40 miles one way by the time he picked her up and drove out to the hospital at Lake St. Louis) and waited with her until she went to surgery. Then he went off to get one more signature for his Professional Engineer certification paperwork and came back to the hospital to wait. He didn't leave the hospital until after 8:00 Thursday night. I called her yesterday and on the third attempt, finally got to talk to her. She complained that her mouth was too dry to talk. But it wasn't too dry for her to make another slap disguised as gratitude. She thanked me for calling so at least it looked like she was cared about. I pointed out to her that I tried to call 3 times. It's comments like that that make us not want to deal with her. I'm sure she's pissed because Dennis didn't go see her yesterday but the man's been running all over the state getting signatures and paperwork for his PE and just didn't have the chance.
On Monday we start the killer two weeks when we perform at 8 schools and I have a paying storytelling gig for an evening program at another school. After that is over I'm taking a 4 day weekend for Memorial Day / our anniversary. Of course, we may spend part of it setting patio blocks at my mom's but at least that work won't be at work.
And on the good side, a friend and former co-worker of Dennis' finally got a settlement from the city of St. Louis. He was run down by a city van while out walking his dog about two years ago. He had a badly broken arm and ended up having a plate put in his wrist and the dog ultimately died from its injuries. I don't know how big the settlement was but at least he got something.
At least I have a new computer at work now.
One funny story from the funeral home visit. Evidently my cousin 'Ditzy Doris' has a daughter who is following in her footsteps. When Kelley saw the "Dear Brother" flower arrangement she thought it said "Dead Brother" and that she thought it was inappropriate. I could just picture Doris doing something like that.
Storytelling festival went well. My story was well received and Annette was extremely supportive as were the festival volunteers. I never did get my written invitation to the banquet but they knew I was coming since I got my award certificate that night. It was an entertaining evening and I met a lot of people in the local storytelling community. The rest of the week was spent dealing with Mwoman's botched scheduling at work. The schedule is usually fine when LaRita does it but you-know-who just can't keep from messing with it. Not a month goes by without some kind of schedule snafu.
By Saturday I had 'hit the wall' and felt like crap. I had two different events I wanted to go to but just didn't feel up to it. So I missed the reception for the "Marriage Equality Bus" folks who had traveled to Iowa to get married. And I missed the Charis concert that involved Growing American Youth--the group for GLBT under-21s that I'm going to be volunteering with.
New week, new hassles. Mwoman insists that we use Harry Chapin's "Flowers are Red" song in our skit. We are going to be pantomiming to the song. My argument was that the Summer Reading Program theme is 'Creativity' not 'Indoctrination of children through fear'. We're using the song anyway. And since my computer station died it made all the things I had to do 10 times more difficult. I had to reformat several documents because the fonts I'd originally used weren't on the other machines--even some standard Microsoft fonts. Whatever. Everytime the desk computers had to be in use for book stuff I got bumped to the kids' homework machines and had to work from my flashdrive then transfer stuff to the server later.
My schedule this week rearranged to allow for a department meeting last night. Yes, on a Friday night. Mwoman is evil. It was planned that way so everyone could be there, but everyone could not be there since one staffer was in New York for her daughter's college graduation. Why it wasn't rescheduled, I don't know. So I not only had to work two evenings this week, I am also working Saturday.
In other news, the monster-in-law had surgery on Thursday. Dennis was the dutiful son who took her to the hospital (about 40 miles one way by the time he picked her up and drove out to the hospital at Lake St. Louis) and waited with her until she went to surgery. Then he went off to get one more signature for his Professional Engineer certification paperwork and came back to the hospital to wait. He didn't leave the hospital until after 8:00 Thursday night. I called her yesterday and on the third attempt, finally got to talk to her. She complained that her mouth was too dry to talk. But it wasn't too dry for her to make another slap disguised as gratitude. She thanked me for calling so at least it looked like she was cared about. I pointed out to her that I tried to call 3 times. It's comments like that that make us not want to deal with her. I'm sure she's pissed because Dennis didn't go see her yesterday but the man's been running all over the state getting signatures and paperwork for his PE and just didn't have the chance.
On Monday we start the killer two weeks when we perform at 8 schools and I have a paying storytelling gig for an evening program at another school. After that is over I'm taking a 4 day weekend for Memorial Day / our anniversary. Of course, we may spend part of it setting patio blocks at my mom's but at least that work won't be at work.
And on the good side, a friend and former co-worker of Dennis' finally got a settlement from the city of St. Louis. He was run down by a city van while out walking his dog about two years ago. He had a badly broken arm and ended up having a plate put in his wrist and the dog ultimately died from its injuries. I don't know how big the settlement was but at least he got something.
At least I have a new computer at work now.