/squee Friiiiiiiday!!!

This has been one of those weeks where each day just marched by with no real excitement.  Long boring days where everything was routine. Wake up, take shower, make Kyle’s breakfast, make up, get Kyle up, watch him eat, get Jason up, go to work.  Work, work work.  Pick Kyle up, make dinner, play with Kyle, eat dinner, play with Kyle, bath, Yardagains, book bed.  Mommy’s dead to the world. 

 

But when I start to whine that my days are boring I remember the Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times.”  Anytime I start to wish for something more does God ever give it to me in the form of some crisis.  My gall bladder, mom’s surgery, dad’s being ill, my infection.  Ok, so this year has sucked when it comes to health in my family. 

 

There is nothing exciting I have going on this weekend I’m just excited by the idea of spending time with my son making memories with him.  I’m going to make his zucchini carrot muffins this weekend, and he loves helping mommy do laundry.  I also want to watch the Star Wars movies with him this weekend.  No, not all of them but Episode 4 maybe. 

 

In the mean time, I need more coffee to get through the rest of my work day.

The Crossroads

It has begun to weigh on me that Jason and I are at a crossroads in our financial well being.

I don’t normally discuss money here because, well, it’s personal. But now with my mothers knee totally blown out and her knee replacement scheduled in October we’ve had to put Kyle in daycare and right now I’m stressing about how we’ll pay for next week.

We aren’t so far behind on anything I’m afraid to answer the door, but with the cost of everything going up and up we aren’t able to save or do anything “fun”.

And so, I’m at a crossroads. I currently have a job that really is family friendly and where time off is weighed against the quality of my body of work. But the pay isn’t as much as some other places.

I can find another job that pays more and may even have short term leave so that we could consider another child, but I’d probably have to give up a good part of the flexibility I currently have. Between having a small child and parents who often need my help it’s not an easy decision.

Of course liking my boss and the owner of the clinics also makes it hard. But of the two of us it makes far more sense for me to look. Jason has outstanding insurance and tons of seniority. Me, not so much.

09/11/2001

I was 23 and working at a bank downtown in the tallest building in Milwaukee.  It had been a normal Tuesday morning so far I’d had half of my cup of coffee and fought rush hour traffic listening to Bob and Brian.  They had Steve Czaben to do sports and Ted Perry that morning because Kerry was off.  Steve innocently asked the guys if they had CNN on while they were talking because The World Trade Center was on fire.

The guys in classic Bob and Brian started making jokes about how they don’t watch the news and giving Steve a hard time, but they switched the channel and then I suddenly heard silence.  After a pause Ted got on the mic and stated in a classic news anchor voice, that they had just witnessed a plane hitting the other tower.  He emphasized that at this time they didn’t know what was going on and described what they had seen.  Bob, Brian and Steve all stated it looked like a commercial jet to them, but Ted again stated that at this time they did not know.

Ted did a wonderful job that morning, looking back I am amazed at how cool and professional he was from the moment they witnessed the plane, United Airlines Flight 175, slamming in to the south tower.  Generally when he’s on with the boys he’s silly and less buttoned up than he is on the evening news.  That day he wasn’t.

Ted talked me through what was going on until I arrived at work.  There was a calm surface to the chaos that we felt that day.  Most other businesses in the tower sent everyone home.  There was still a plane missing, United Airlines Flight 93 , and while the Firstar building isn’t a high priority the local FBI office was concerned that it would become a secondary target if primary targets were empty.  It was confusion, no one knew who’d done this (though in my car I kept saying “Osama, Osama” over and over) or what their targets were.  Were they going for finical centers?  Government buildings?  Were there more planes?

The bank stated we’d be open for business as usual and a security guard, seeing I was scared told me not to worry, the FBI was on the roof, my response was something along the lines of would the FBI be spitting on the planes.  My bosses boss wandered downstairs from the 3rd floor executive offices (where the CEO and the CFO and other big wigs had decided to “work from home”) saw me crying and wanted to know what was wrong.  What was wrong?  People were flying planes into buildings full of people to prove a point.

By 10am people were finally being sent home from the bank.  I understood then, and now, that there is an obligation to keep banks open in times like that but I still resented being made to stay when the world had gone mad.

I don’t think we turned the TV off for weeks afterward.  Jason and I moved that weekend to our own apartment after living in the DHH for 5 months.  I packed watching people placing victims on stretchers, covering them with the flag and slowly carrying then up to waiting ambulances to go to the morgue.  In between loads of our things being hauled from the DHH to the new place I light a candle that Friday night.  Every year on 9/11 I light another one.

As each generation moves from actual memories of that day to learning about it from parents, grandparents and teachers the horror, the feeling of being lost, the sheer fact the world we’d known had been thrown not only upside down but inside out, will be lost.  It will be come an objective lesson, much like Pearl Harbor is for myself and my generation.  I do hope, though, in this digital age we’ll have more people’s memories of the events, from the news footage, raw and uncut, to blogs like this; that my son and his peers will be able to remember too each year on 9/11.

My wish list

I want few things in life that can be bought. But I’m no Luddite.

I wish I had:

A kitchen aid stand mixer
A Blizzard authenticator
A headset that A) fit and B) didn’t smash my hair
A larger hard drive
A detailed cleaning for my car
A pastry brush
Another Starbucks travel mug. And hell a gift card to go with it would be nice.
More clear totes to store stuff in.
More scrapbooking money!
A good shovel
Canned air

See, most of my wishes are pretty mellow. What odd things do you wish for?

Sen Ted Kennedy RIP

While I would never say he and I agreed on how to solve most issues, Sen. Kennedy will be missed.

Sen. Ted Kennedy dead at 77.

Dear Logtech

Dear Logtech and other manufactures of computer head sets,

On behalf of other female gamers and anyone else without a pumpkin head, I am requesting that to either make your behind the head set either adjustable or in a smaller size.

Yes, I’m a gamer but I don’t like the smashed hair line on the top of my head. The traditional adjustable ones also make me feel like I’m working in a call center. I don’t, BTW.

And for the love of goodness, please don’t make and market a “gamer girls” version in pink and sparkles. I am a gamer not a 12 year old girl.

Dear Drug Rep

Dear Drug Rep for a major pharmaceutical company,

I realize the game has changed since the first of the year. I also realize that a free lunch is a perk that I’m not entitled to.

I must respond to an explanation you gave about why you’ll buy lunch for therapists, PHD’s and the clerical staff but not billing. Or as you said “my boss would ask me what book keeping does for me/us”.

I am not an accountant nor do I work in book keeping. Never have. I work for the billing department. I realize that all those Kaplin college ad’s make you think anyone can just spend a few weeks learning the ropes then have a rewarding and lucrative career but most days the job can’t be done by anyone who walks through the door.

As for what we do for you? Well we keep those doctors who prescribe your meds employed. You see, we not only bill claims, we fix them, post them, get people to pay bills and credential the providers. This includes the MD’s. In fact we make sure their DEA number is valid year after year. Without that the Doc’s can’t prescribe Ambian, Adderall and other meds.

I realize the girls in the office are the gate keepers and that you know them on a first name basis, but the ladies that are kept in the basement are just as important to your relationship with the MD’s as they are. Without us they’d go out of business.

I resent the implication that we are somehow less important simply because we can’t get you through the door.

Memories of yesterday.

My old high school theater teacher is now on Facebook!  Diana Hegel, or DH as we always called her, was one of those teachers that you just liked.  It could have been that she always expected us to rise to the level of how things were done in the professional theater, it may have been that she actually respected us.   Or possibly it was her knack of making us all see ourselves as a group, a team.  No matter the reason she was a teacher all the kids, not just the drama jocks, adored.

DH has been a busy bee, posting all her cast photos going back to her first year teaching, including some pictures I’m sure Eric Szmanda would rather her burn.

Looking back on those old cast photos has been a lot of fun, seeing those old faces that now look so young I realize just what kids we were.

I wish I could say the trip down memory lane has been all fun for me, but some old insecurities loom after all these years.  When I look at the cast photos I’m there with the girls, but I can see I’m not a part of them.  I realize, I never really was.  Sure, we all hung out but often times I was excluded from  the parties.  At the time I always acted like I didn’t much care, but of course I did.

What still sticks the worst though, is my senior year.  I never got on stage, or really in the crew.  I wasn’t cast or crewed in the One Act that went to Steven’s Point that year.  I didn’t get into the fall play and for the spring I was the house manager.  That mean I showed up on read through and opening night.  I never asked DH why, still won’t for that matter.  I knew then it was because I didn’t fit.  I hate to say it, but after that year I stopped auditioning except one last shot in college when I tried out for the student one acts.  Once again I wasn’t cast in one role.  I’ve not been on the stage since then.

I realized, yeah I might not be a terrible actress/singer.  I may have some modicum of talent but what I lacked was the heart to keep pushing through all the no’s.  I’m not laying my feelings on my Senior year but I can say that was the beginning of the end for my theater days.  I miss it sometimes with all my heart.  Looking at those photos I can smell the make up, slightly musty odor and heavy cake feel.  I feel the shot of adrenalin on opening night and the swell of pride for curtain call.  Those things just don’t make up for the sense that I was still an outsider at something I loved.  That feeling of looking in has been with me my whole life, even before high school.  Of course as an adult I don’t get angsty or maudlin over it, just the same though, sometimes I just wish I could pick up a script one last time.

Like I needed this

So, I now have an app that allows me to post from my Blackberry. Like I really needed that freedom. I’m not saying I don’t like it, just that I don’t need it.

It was a week while Jason was gone. On Monday at work I had a misquote bit on my shin driving me up a wall. By Monday night a large red patch was painful and swollen.

So off to the doc where I got some antibiotics.

Wednesday, ok. Thursday, painful but those meds! Friday, a check up and change in meds. Saturday I paged my doc because I was getting a little worried. I’ve paged her one other time in all the years I’ve been seeing her.

Sunday morning the redness was spreading and my ankle was swollen. I paged my doc and her words were “shit Dana, I’ve gotta admit you”.

So my parents took Kyle and then drove me to the hospital. Can I say it was a blast? No, because it wasn’t. I mean, Dr. Sukowaty rocks and but having to see her teathered to an IV is so beyond not fun.

The IV worked and she was able to send me home Monday. The leg looks ages better but it still looks gross. Of course if I could shave that area it might look nicer.

He can high five

Kyle has learned the high five.  He’s happily doing it now when ever you say “Hi five!”  He loves the cheering he gets when he does it.  The boy is all about us cheering him on.

He’s also figured out how to get to daddy’s VHS tapes.  Yes, VHS tapes.  Among the last things in what is now Kyle’s room from our pre-baby days is a shelf full of tapes of Jason’s.  He thinks they are great fun, I’m just happy he didn’t destroy any of them.

I’m very tired and I’m pretty sure I have a UTI/Bladder infection.  Isn’t that just dandy?

I never, ever thought I’d get into Twitter.  It just didn’t seem like there was much point.  Now I’m following friends, family and celebrities.  And you can tell who tweets themselves and who has people do it for them.  Some fun stuff is shots from the Hero’s set, photos of CA Gov and legislators hashing out the budget and random crap from people I know.  I love the random  crap.  Just like this blog.