Tag: frustration

What a Tyrant!

I am married to a tyrant. It just proves the adage, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” or something like that. Anyway, I go and have a little surgery and now Mitch thinks he’s the boss of me. And he is certainly enjoying his new job, a little too much I might add.

“No, you can’t do this’ or “What are you thinking, of course not, you can’t fix breakfast.” “You had major surgery three days ago and was just released from the hospital one day ago, what are you thinking?” Granted I only felt like lying in bed and sleeping until this morning, but it’s MY JOB to take care of him and run the house.

If I start to get out of bed, he almost runs to my side of the bed and asks what I want, then pushes me back and goes to get whatever it is I want. The only thing he can’t do for me is go to the bathroom but if there was a way to accomplish that he would do it for me. He follows me around the house asking what I am doing or what do I need? God forbid I stand in one place too long, then Mitch gets really nervous and makes me go sit down or go back to bed. I think he is afraid I’m going to clean something or start cooking.

The dogs are glad I’m home. They give new meaning to the phrase, “Love me to death”. They were so excited to see me get out of the car, I thought they were going to crash through the door to say, “Hi, glad you finally made it. We missed you soooo much.” Mitch had to put leashes on them and take them for a walk to burn off some energy while my son and brother got me in the house and back into bed.

Now it’s a race to see who can get to the bed first and position himself close enough to be in the best snuggle position and not mow me down as they launch themselves from the living room in a race to be first. I’m telling you, two dogs weighing one hundred eighty pounds combined hurling through the air at you is the true meaning of terror. And then there’s Mitch right behind them trying fruitlessly to get control of the situation before he might have to take me to the emergency room and explain how I got squished.

As much as I complain about him ordering me around, I know it’s because he loves me and the longer I take to heal, the more likely he will starve. It would just be nice if he didn’t take so much pleasure being the boss of me. It is nice knowing that there he is taking care of me for better or for worse. But between you and me I won’t tell him that.

The Walk from Hell

I did not enjoy our walk this afternoon, no not at all. It started off so promising. Mitch was busy putting brakes on my car when I got home from work, so I fed the dogs and changed my clothes. I put their harnesses on them, grabbed my phone, stuffed a couple of poop bags in my pocket and grabbed the leashes off the coat rack. We walked outside, I leashed each one up and told Mitch we would be back shortly and would fix dinner then. It was a beautiful afternoon, mid-seventies and a light breeze, perfect for a dog walk.

Nobody else was around just the dogs and me; we were about halfway to the dam when Charlie stopped to sniff something in the ditch next to the road, took a step and jerked sideways and sort of jumped and limped to the road both at the same time. I looked at him and he was holding his left foot up as if he had stepped on something and cut his paw or had been bitten. I looked down at his elevated paw and saw something sticking out between two of his toes. It looked like a small stick sticking out of a dark brown rock wedged between his toes.

So being the loving caring pet owner I am, I reached down to pull it out. Imagine my surprise and disgust when I discovered it wasn’t a rock wedged between his toes, but instead it was dog poop. I now have dog poop on my left thumb. Gross! Charlie had stepped in some other dog’s feces and was as disgusted about it as I was when I touched it. I walked over and pulled a leaf off of a bush to try and wipe as much off of my thumb as possible. I didn’t have a Kleenex with me and if I did it would have been in my pocket and I certainly wasn’t going to stick my poopy thumb in my pocket to retrieve it.

After wiping as much as I could off of my thumb, I picked a bigger leaf to try and wipe the poop off of Charlie’s toes. Charlie was being his usual uncooperative self and jerked his paw away from me causing me to get dog poop on my right thumb. Now I have dog poop on both thumbs, I am thoroughly disgusted and feel super gross. I can’t touch anything with my thumbs because I don’t want to get the gross icky poop on anything else. I decided to turn around and walk back home. I held the leashes in each palm curling my fingers around them with my thumbs sticking straight out so I wouldn’t accidently touch anything with my thumbs.

Halfway home and so far so good, no other people or dogs show up and both dogs are behaving rather well, when all of a sudden now I have a goddam gnat flying at my face. There was nothing I could do, I couldn’t swat it, just wave my arms around like a crazy woman and jerk my head spasmodically to try and keep it away. I can only imagine what someone thought if anybody looked out of their window at me.

Where is a wet wipe when you need it?

The Bane of My Existence

Once again modern technology is making me insane. I thought computers and the internet are supposed to make our lives easier, but no, not so. Every day we use the internet to shop, do online banking and surf thousands of search engines for things like more shopping. Almost every place you go out there in cyberspace to do business has you set up a username and a password all in the name of security. And of course all of the IT gurus tell us to create a different unique password with capital and lower case letters with numbers and special characters at least a million characters long for each time we create a password. Some tell us to use a phrase such as, “Mary had a little lamb” but change some of the letters like this, “M2ryh#daLIT*&%-098b” to make it even more secure. Good luck remembering that one.

I don’t know about you but I have a bunch of passwords to remember. There is my work password to sign on to my computer, the password to sign on to my payroll, taxes and vacation, password to sign on to my health insurance benefits, retirement account, bank, and multiple shopping websites. Passwords, so many passwords to remember and of course you only get three tries before the web site locks you out. I bet hackers and identity thieves get more than three tries. So what’s a memory challenged internet user to do? Write down all of my different passwords, but then where do you store them, in a file on the computer? What if you get hacked, can the hacker find the password file and now have access to your whole life? Do you write it down on a piece of paper? If so where you hide it so only you know where it’s at and still have easy access? Or do you use one the password managers that come with your firewall protection software?

But I’m not so sure those are the best option either. I used one of those password managers and it forgot the password for the website I tried to use. Can you believe it, I logged on, my username and password populated perfectly, and evidently it was not the correct password. I even tried the “forgot password” button and it took me to a screen that wanted my phone number, are you kidding me, my phone number, what about my email address? I have no idea what phone number I put down, but I always know what email address I use. After trying every phone number I could think of I got the death message, “Too many tries, contact IT support to access your account”. It was nice enough to give the phone number of a live chat, but these people keep bankers hours, I can only call from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm and whatever you do don’t even think about calling from noon to two, everyone will be at lunch. I have things to do today and sitting around waiting until 8:30 to talk to someone about resetting my password is not on my list. Seriously, the internet is open for business twenty-four seven, why is it that we can’t get technical support the same way?

There goes my blood pressure, perfect the doctor will love that.

My Hooligans

What is up with these two?  Orso and Charlie are at it again.  Once again they lulled me into a false sense of security thinking that they could be trusted to have the run of the house while home alone.  I was sure that since AJ was gone that these two hooligans would behave without AJ to instigate raiding the pantry.  And once again I was wrong.  I should be used to being wrong.

I know that with my foot surgery things have been thrown off.  Their routine has changed drastically.  But it’s not like they are getting no exercise.  We have our best friend coming over every day and walking the dogs, giving them lots of work and exercise.  So what happened?

I came home from work and was greeted by Mitch telling me to go check the kitchen and see the gift that the two had left for us.  Knowing that was not a good omen, I hobbled into the kitchen to find a mangled jar of my favorite local honey on the counter.  Evidently someone, my guess, Orso jumped up on the table and snatched the bottle of honey off the table and chewed the top off to enjoy my honey.  There was more than half gone.  I hope he gets sick, but not in the house.  But he won’t, he’s a Labrador retriever.

At dinner though we discovered another surprise.  Mitch went to butter his baked potato and looked at me and asked where the butter was.  Not on the table.  We went on a butter tub hunt throughout the house, kind of like an Easter egg hunt.  We searched under tables and dressers, under the bed and in the corners.  No luck.  The tub of butter has disappeared.  No slimy smears, no bits of plastic about.  Nothing, no clue, just no butter.  It was as though a master cat burglar had come into the house stole the butter and disappeared without a trace.

Now comes the fun part, watching the dogs closely to make sure they don’t get sick.  Poop watch, checking for bits of plastic, is so much fun and something I thought we were beyond now that AJ is not here.  Wrong again.

My Poor Charlie

Poor Charlie, he’s having a bit of a struggle getting used to this total disruption into his world.  Most dogs prefer a routine.  They like a schedule, getting fed at a certain time every day, taking their walks at the same time daily and knowing that you’ll be there for loves are their whole world.  Charlie is the poster dog for routineness.  So these latest events, my surgery, Mitch walking the dogs alone in the evenings and our close friend walking them in the mornings and not at the usual 4:30am pre-surgery routine has thrown Charlie for a real loop.

He’s become clingier, staying very close to me or if I’m not in bed, laying in my spot.  He has started growling at all of us.  Charlie has always been a bit psychotic, but now he’s going round the bend.  He was lying in his bed by the bedroom door when Orso walked in from the living room.  Charlie growled at Orso and wouldn’t let him in the bedroom.  Orso sat in the living room looking very pathetic waiting for me to get out of bed and crutch over to the doorway, blocking Charlie so that he could come into the bedroom.

Last night I came into the bedroom to find Charlie lying in my spot all cozy and had no intention of moving.  I told him to go and nudged him, he responded by growling at me.  I looked down at him and thought, “Are you kidding me?  Not me! Huh uh!”  So I told him “off” in no uncertain terms and gave him another nudge, to which Charlie responded by getting up, giving me a deep open throated growl, jumped off the bed and when to sit in his dog bed looking very unrepentant.  I’m pretty sure that he was thinking, “How dare she make me move.  I was there first.”  I think he was plotting to eat me in the night while I slept.

Charlie doesn’t handle change well and this is clearly apparent with his behavior.  When we brought Orso home for the first time Charlie wanted to kill him and tried a few times.  That took hiring an animal behaviorist to get back to a harmonious house.  I’m not sure how to fix this new wrinkle.  I’m at a total loss.

Short of tranquilizers, for him not me, I am not sure what to do.

My Knee Scooter

My knee scooter was delivered yesterday, a device designed to help me stay mobile without putting any weight on my foot.  I have tried to preplan for everything knowing I wouldn’t be able to walk for three months.  I bought extra skirts to wear, figuring that trying to pull slacks on over this big honking bandage would be a bit of a challenge.  I waited for the weather to warm up before having the surgery so my naked toes wouldn’t get cold in the snow.  I bought a backpack to be able to haul everything so that my purse wouldn’t slip off my shoulder throwing me off balance and causing me to crash and burn.  Or as Mitch describes it, that “Black Hole” I carry around.

I decided not to put in a garden this year because Mitch would be doing most of the work for three months.  I know that the harvest won’t be until August or September, but I figure that he has enough to do without me unnecessarily adding to it.  I have friends coming to walk the dogs in the morning while Mitch is at work so the heathens don’t get short changed.

My doctor had described the scooter as small, lightweight and collapsible so I figured that I would break it down and hook it to my backpack and drag it up the stairs with me while using my crutches.  You see, coming and going in and out of our home involves stairs.  Even though we live in a ranch style house, there are stairs going up to the garage to get in the car.  There are stairs going down to the street to get the mail and daily paper.  There are stairs to go out to the yard, just to enjoy a bit of fresh air.  That’s because our house was built into the side of a hill.  Stairs everywhere.

So much for preplanning, this is the Hemi of scooters.  It’s very nice, don’t get me wrong, sturdy, padded knee pad, hand brakes left and right and pre-adjusted to my height.  But small and lightweight it is not!  This thing is huge.  I am not going to be strapping it onto my back and hauling it around.  Now I have figure out how to get it and me up the stairs to get it in the car, out of the car and up the two flights of stairs at work.

So much for trying to preplan.

April Fool

This is probably the one day of the year I hate.  This is the day that glorifies all infantile people.   I don’t like pranksters and people that can only have fun at the expense of others.  Pranksters either have never had a prank pulled on them or feel that they have to continually one up the previous “joke”.  They don’t understand how humiliating and hurtful practical jokes can and are to the recipient of the practical joke.

I love to have fun as much as the next person, but mostly I only poke fun at myself.  Mitch and the dogs get a small dose of poking, but I would never intentionally hurt someone’s feelings for my pleasure.  I know too many people that have no sense of humor and the consequences of being the butt of the joke could be quote dire to the protagonist.  Now that might be funny.

I am holding out hope that I don’t get caught in an April Fool’s joke today, but I probably will.  Thank goodness it’s only one day long.

April Fool jokesters don’t realize that the biggest Fool is them.

Daylight Savings Time

Daylight Savings Time is going to be the death of me.  This is a government plot to totally screw up everybody’s body clock and thus take over the world.  I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since Friday night, the night before this madness took over.  The dogs are all out of sync, they don’t know whether it’s time to eat, go for a walk or bedtime. 

Mitch’s work schedule mandates that we go to bed very early in the evening in order to be up and bright eyed at 2:30 in the morning.  Now with Daylight Savings Time, I feel like I’m going to bed in the middle of the afternoon and by the time I finally fall asleep, it’s time to get up and start all over again, sans bright eyed.  I know, I’m whining, sorry.

Daylight Savings Time started in World War I in order to conserve energy, but in adding more light to end of the day we sacrifice the early morning light.  In fact most farmers are against Daylight Savings Time and I’m with them.  I get up very early every day, albeit our schedule demands it, but I’m also an early riser naturally.  I figure that if someone wants more daylight hours, get up an hour earlier.  Why can’t the world change just for me?  Now I’m really whining, sorry.  But I’m the one here suffering from massive fatigue and sleep deprivation, so I get to complain.  Mitch is not the least bit out of sync; he can sleep through a nuclear blast.  Notice that now I’m getting cranky on top of the fatigue.

I see a trip to Walmart for some over the counter sleeping pills in my future.

Woof!

Living with Orso is comparable to living with a rebellious teenager.  Every conversation is an argument.  A conversation with a teenager goes something like this, “Honey I need you to clean up your room.”

First you get an explosion of expelled air then, “What’s wrong with my room?  It looks fine to me.”

“There are clothes all over the floor and I’m down to three dishes in the cabinet to eat dinner on, please go clean up your room.”

“I know where everything is.  Besides it’s my room and I like it like it is.”

With Orso I’ll look at him and say, “Sit.”

He looks at me and says, “Woof.”

I repeat my sit command again, and get the same response, “Woof.”

Now my voice is a little louder and sterner, “Sit!”

To which I get, “Woof woof!” 

Now I’m about to lose my temper and the ninety-five pound stinker knows it so he sits and has the audacity to sit there and wag his tail like he’s done something wonderful.  As every parent does, I look skyward for guidance and patience, lots of patience.  Everyday it’s the same, I tell him to do something or pick up my purse to go somewhere and all I get is sass.  Just like a teenager. 

I wonder when and where I lost control and what made this dog start to question and argue with me every time I speak.  Just like a teenager.  According to medical science dogs supposedly age seven years for each 365 day cycle.  That would make Orso forty two, hardly a teenager, so is science wrong or is he just eternally going to be this annoying? 

I must be cursed, I have already raised two sons to adulthood (luckily they survived) and thought I was past teenage attitude.  Evidently not.

One Day Two Countertops and Only Three Meltdowns

One more project down and only a gazillion to go.  I gave Mitch two weeks off from home improvement projects and threw in a weekend hunting trip to boot to relax him before tackling the latest project, new kitchen countertops.  Should have been a cakewalk right, especially since both countertops were only six feet long and no corners.  Wrong, never is in this house. 

First surprise of the day was when I just pulled the one side off by myself, shocking Mitch that the old countertop was not anchored to the cabinets.  Not surprising to me, by now nothing surprises me about this house.  We switched out the old countertop for the new one, done easy peasy.  I thought that the second would be almost as quick, unhook the drains, garbage disposal and faucet, and lift off.  That part went fairly fast so things were looking hopeful. 

Cutting the new hole and fitting the sink was a bit more challenging.  Many measurements with the tape measure were taken, just to be sure that the hole wasn’t cut too big.  You can always make a hole bigger, but you can’t make a hole smaller.  I walked into the kitchen to find Mitch drawing the outline of the sink in permanent marker on the top of the new countertop.  I rubbed the center line he had drawn to the edge of the countertop that would be exposed, it didn’t come off.  I looked at him and said that this will not work having a black line across my new countertop, oh no.  He turned and left to find something that would remove the marker and thus would get to reside on the planet another day.  Luckily, Windex worked like a champ.  Mitch is off the endangered species list for now.

The jigsaw wouldn’t get quite close enough to the back splash to make the back side cut, so that took different blades, cutting angles and eventually a different saw to get a close cut.  Next came the fitting of the sink into the new hole.  It didn’t, surprise.  How can you measure, measure and measure again and then it doesn’t fit?  That caused Meltdown number one.  Out came the rubber mallet, at least it wasn’t the sledgehammer.  Two new dents to the stainless steel sink and it fit.  Woo hoo. 

The container of plumbers putty was dried up and hard, so Mitch had to add water to soften it up.  Meltdown number two came when he asked for my help holding the sink in the hole so he could attach the fasteners that clamp onto the underside of the sink and secure it to the countertop.  I walked to the backside of the countertop which was sitting on blocks in the dining room and waited for direction.  Evidently I had turned off my mental telepathy switch and didn’t know that I was to immediately grab the countertop and sink in a death grip to hold it in place.  Mitch bent down and flipped up the front side causing the sink to slip.  Huge meltdown.  I told him he needed to use his words.  Not very smart on my part, using sarcasm in the face of unmitigated rage.  At least he didn’t toss me across the room, just sent the dust brush flying.  Second attempt and this time I grabbed the sink but it slipped again, causing Mitch to say that he would just secure the sink to the countertop on his back in the kitchen with the countertop supported by the cabinets, among other more colorful words.

We carried the countertop sans sink to the kitchen and placed it on the cabinets.  He set the sink in the hole in the countertop and I thought that maybe it wouldn’t be very long before this would be finished.  Wrong again, I should be used to being wrong a lot.  I made myself scarce when I heard the comment, “If one more thing goes wrong, I’m lighting a match.”

The third meltdown was almost anticlimactic compared to meltdown number two, sort of like an aftershock.  Mitch decided there weren’t enough sink clips to secure the sink to the countertop.  That set off a string of ranting and raving about why nothing is ever simple and easy about the house.  I wisely chose not to remind him that the house was in his family long before I came into the picture.

Ten o’clock at night and the new countertop project was finally finished.  It only took fourteen hours and three meltdowns, a new record somewhere I’m sure.