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secrets and lies - LiveJournal.com
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Planning a wedding reception is a lot of work. But it's fun. It's sort of like planning the biggest cocktail party I've ever had. Which, essentially, is what it's going to be.
So far we're thinking next August, and definitely here in town. The wedding will be totally private and involve only witnesses and the person marrying us, which I believe will be our parents and possibly our friend, if he's able to do it. The reception will be a big catered buffet-style event with a full bar and live music. At first I wanted Que La Chinga and Dragged by Horses to play, but then I realized DbH might be a bit much for my family, so I'm considering having Ian ask the Lowlights to play. Dress will be totally casual, because I don't want anybody NOT to come because they either don't have fancy clothes or don't like to wear them. I may even wear pajamas.
That's about as far as I've gotten. And I think it'll be a lot of fun. Not having to worry about dresses, a wedding party, flowers, etc., makes it much less stressful.
Everything else is going OK right now too. All of my medications seem to be working well together and I have fewer side effects than I did when I first started taking them, and my doctor said my blood results are improving, so at least I'm on the right track. I should be tip-top by Christmas, which I'll need if I'm seriously going to embark on a holiday trip to my mom's in the Bay Area.
I'm only 3 levels from 60 and I'm MC attuned and getting excited about doing serious raids with my guild. So far, BRD and ST are the extent of what I do on a regular basis. But soon!
That's all.
Hey guess what? I'm getting married! And you're all invited. To the reception, that is. The wedding is going to be private.
OK, I have an appointment in approximately 48 hours to have the big ECG test run to find out if there's anything structurally wrong with my heart. If I drop dead before then, it's obviously fate.
During this time of unbelievable mental stress, missed deadlines and piles of work at the paper, I want to make this little list of Why I Actually Still Love My Job:
-I only work three days a week with stereotypical "office" people (you know, the ones who change into their sneakers to take a walk during lunch and have inspirational desk items such as the kitten on the branch "hangin' in there"), and on those days, it's only four hours. Twelve hours a week total isn't too bad.
-I never get bored. Every other desk-type job I've had has turned me into a clockwatcher and caused me to become unbearably sleepy in the afternoons. Here I'm still a clockwatcher, but of the opposite type: time goes too quickly. I frequently find myself looking at the clock and thinking, 'Oh shit, I only have an hour left to finish this!' It can be stressful, but the time passes quickly.
-Some of the people I work with are really amazingly cool. Some are total morons, but that's a different (nonpublic!) entry. Most of our reporters are good writers who actually give a shit about their work and working with Jen is the only thing that makes some nights bearable. I especially appreciate that if I get pissed off, I can tell her so and we don't have that weird sulking tension friends who work together can get, and she can bitch at me about things without making me feel defensive.
-It's just a block from one of the best bars ever.
-But really, the best thing ever, is that on any given day, such as yesterday for example, I get to bear witness to all kinds of little tidbits of ghetto life. Watching a sobbing semi-retarded man, his (twin?) brother and a crazy woman who simply appeared in the alley do lines off the sidewalk four inches away from the door to our office was truly a Sunday treat.
So that's that. Things are going surprisingly quickly tonight considering I'm the only copy editor and there's only one designer, and I'm going to try my best to get off by 9:30 so I can watch the Sopranos rerun with Ian at 10. And after that, I really want to play World of Warcraft. I've been making a concerted effort to save enough money to be able to by my mount outright in two levels (2.5 really; I'm only halfway to 38) and I somehow managed to save that much and then some, so now I want to buy new armor and check out weapons and, well, play and get to the point where I can ride around on a giant cat. I just joined a new guild yesterday and I'm also interested in seeing how it is playing with them. So far I suspect they're all boys between the ages of 16-25. Nothing new to a girl gamer, I suppose...
I know I shouldn't even read this utter bullshit, but I can't help it. This is one of the 'guestbook' entries on Cathy's obit:
"I was the officiant at the marriage of Ron & Cathy. It was a beautiful morning, Love was in the air. Ron & Cathy knew the path before them was going to be full of kindness, caring & appreciation of their lives together. Clearly, the times were changing in their hearts. They are once again together, we will always feel the JOY they left us. My hope is the family feels some gratitude that Cathy spent the final days with those that loved her. Ron was awaiting her arrival & preparing a heavenly home for Cathy.
Rest in Peace my Sweet Friends."
You have got to be fucking kidding me. This person drove to my dad's house and married my sick, frail father, who couldn't even stand up, to a woman who'd never so much as shared an apartment with him, for purely financial reasons, in front of the required two witnesses. A beautiful morning? Yeah, I'm sure my dad felt that way when he was vomiting after chemo. The photos from the "wedding" are snapshots of my dad leaning on my brother for support, gazing unsmilingly in the direction of the camera. And let me tell you one thing; if he was "awaiting her arrival," it sure as hell wasn't for the purpose of bringing her into a 'heavenly home.' Love was in the air? Yeah, about as much as when people order brides from the internet for $8, only my dad — and my family — ended up paying a hell of a lot more.
And although that all pisses me off because it's inaccurate and is offensive to the memory of who my father really was, I'm trying to simultaneously allow myself to feel anger and resentment while not allowing myself to let it control me. Sadly, it seems that even in light of Cathy's very early, very painful death, my brother can't resolve it in his mind. He called my house last night while I was at work and left a ranting, drunken message that I never even heard, because Ian asked for permission to delete it and I granted it figuring he wouldn't ask unless he thought it would really upset me. It's a shame that even now, my brother doesn't feel any sense of it being over. It's a testament to why the death penalty used as revenge is really hollow, when it all comes down to it. Her death, as awful as it really was to her and her family, can never 'fix' the things she did while she was alive and is ultimately unsatisfying for my brother, and I think that's probably going to be worse for him than having a living target for his hatred.
I know it's been forever and this seems like a bizarre time to suddenly return, but I had to write this down somewhere.
This morning, early, I received an email from my mom with a link to a death notice in the Sacramento Bee. The woman who married my father on his deathbed and then abandoned me and my brother, taking one of the houses and more than $100,000 in cash with her, has died from cancer. She was 45.
I can be very stupid sometimes. I totally spaced the fact that last night was, for all intents and purposes, Halloween. When Halloween falls on a Monday, you can always, always, always expect the bars to be jammed with ridiculous people in stupid, obnoxious costumes the Saturday before. They didn't disappoint. The one funny thing is that I always refer to "Stupid drunk people wearing fairy wings," but you know what? That's what a lot of them were. I took in about $450 at the door (working by myself!), mostly people who had come to see DbH and were pleasantly surprised to find that Que La Chinga had replaced Gargantula on the bill. There were a handful of genuinely interesting and cool costumes, which I acknowledged despite my general loathing of the whole practice, but for the most part it would seem that for men, Halloween is an excuse to dress up like a woman, and for women, Halloween is an excuse to dress up like a hooker. There was actually even one woman wearing a vintage hooker costume, the kind the whores wear on Deadwood. I was terrified at the prospect of working the door at a show like this both alone and with a brand new door person for the bar, but Matt Gann got back into town in the nick of time and worked the front door with one of the new guys. I was exceedingly happy to have him there, and I'm sure the bar was too; it was also pretty good practice and experience for the new guy, whose name I don't know how to spell but is pronounced "Hair-non." Probably Hernon.
Anyway, the show was really great and there were only a few really obnoxious people. I had seen Chris on Friday for physical therapy and told her she and Greg should come out to see the show, and lo and behold they were there eating dinner when we arrived. She left before QLC even started (she just found out she's going to have twins and is growing at an alarming rate), but Greg stayed for most of the show. When I finished taking money I was sort of drunk and found myself immediately swept into drinking more with Nate, Judd, and Brian G. Jervis got there late and I barely remember talking to him, but I'm pretty sure he didn't have the opportunity to buy Ashley (she's a copy editor at the paper too and came to the show as Ian's guest) a belated birthday drink. When DbH finally finished I waited around for a few minutes and then decided I should probably get my ass home, so I sought Ian out and found him not putting gear away, but drinking whiskey with Kyle. I left him there to take a cab and came home, ate some Pringles and chocolates from my big box (next time I'm getting only nuts and chews; I hate those icky creamy fruit ones), and completely passed out. I didn't even hear him come home.
Today we surveyed the house, which is in sore need of major cleaning, and forced ourselves to get some of it done. Ian fixed the washing machine (yay for handy boyfriends!) and I did all the dishes and swept all the floors and the front walk/porch, then we went grocery shopping and stocked up on just about everything. The friendly-bordering-on-creepily-nosy checker made a point of saying, not once but twice, that most people can't afford to buy a cart full of groceries at the end of the month. I should have said, "Not that it's any of your business, but we just harvested." Actually, I've just been exceptionally good with my unemployment/cashed out vacation/etc. money and I still have several thousand in the bank, so groceries are always something I can afford. I splurged a little bit and bought some actual ghee (clarified butter) and all the other ingredients I need to make curried potatoes, usually used as a filling for fried Indian pastries, but which I think we're just going to shove into pitas instead. The dough takes ten thousand years to make anyway, and it isn't that great.
I can hear Ian shuffling things around in the kitchen, so I think it's almost dinner time. We're making burritos with his delicious homemade Spanish rice and tons of fresh cilantro. Well, and other stuff too. I love when we both want the same thing for dinner and eat together. I know it's an inevitable part of having different eating habits (he's mostly vegetarian; I'm not), but it always seems slightly depressing when we cook separate meals. Tomorrow we're both hiding out in the bedroom to avoid the beggars and taking a bunch of vicodin, eating Indian food, and watching movies. He has to work tonight, so after dinner I'm going to hole up in the bedroom (it's really the only place to "hide out" in a house with no window coverings) and play some more Champions of Norrath. I beat the game but my character is only level 23, so I'm going to play through again and get more experience before I play online or import my character to Return to Arms.
Right now I'm going to go pour myself a glass of wine. Happy New Year!
I'm going to try my best not to do the whole "I HATE HALLOWEEN" thing this year, because I know it annoys everyone and I don't want to annoy people OR be annoyed by them rolling their eyes at my "making too big of a deal out of it." But I hate it. And you should all know that. And fortunately, I don't even have to leave my house on Halloween this year, so I can just turn off the porch light (go away, you little beggars!) and hide in my room playing video games. Or, who knows...maybe I'll have a change of heart and dress up like an enchanted fairy and get drunk and throw up in a trash can. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
I'm nearly finished (I think) with Champions of Norrath, and I still haven't bothered to get a network card for the PS2, so I've only played offline. I'm a little shy about playing co-op with people online because I've never done it and I'm not sure how "good" I am at the game. I use cheats sometimes when I'm playing to make it more fun (and to avoid repeating frustrating tasks) and I know there are plenty of people who would rather be impaled on an Dwarf's spear and be fed live African bees than use a cheat because it "ruins the game," so I'm going to have to contend with that too. I've considered just finishing this one and starting Champions of Norrath: Return to Arms, which I bought a couple of weeks ago and have forbidden myself to so much as look at until I complete the first one. I also bought LOTR: The Two Towers, but I'm not sure how much I'll actually play it. I never play Return of the King. But this one was only five bucks, so if I play it once or twice it's worth it.
Nothing exciting planned this weekend. I'm working the door for the Dragged by Horses show tomorrow night, which I'm looking forward to. I'm going to avoid drinking an entire bottle of wine and throwing up at 3am this time and see if that makes the show a bit more enjoyable. Oh, I forgot to mention it in the excitement of the new job, but the show on Ian's birthday was great. Boxcar Satan was really good and super nice; they gave me two (count 'em, two!) free cds just for buying a t-shirt. Of course, I didn't get to spend very much time with Ian because he was running the show and talking to everyone, but it was still a good time. I have a very long list of things I need to do, but right now I need to get my shoes on and go drop off some stuff at the paper and go to a doctor's appointment. Also, I think I need a snack. And I might buy a cake, because I keep dreaming about cakes with fondant icing. And now this is getting a bit rambly, so I'll end it.
Well, I am officially leaving the ranks of the unemployed: the paper hired me. I went in today to fill out the paperwork and then had drinks with Ian, Dave, and Christopher at the Shanty. Ian bought Todd a shot and we had a little celebratory drink, then Ian and I had some dinner at Hurricane Kate's. If I've got to work in Eureka, thank god it's close to the Shanty.
So the saga is over. I can't express how happy I am that I got fired from my last job, and how relieved and pleased I am to be back in the world of writing. Editing is something I could easily see doing as my career, and it's wonderful to know I'm going to be around other people who value writing as much as I do, as opposed to the half-wits at my last job. And it's definitely a bonus that I'm going to be working with several people I know and like; who would have thought all those years ago when Jervis and I were broke and unemployed and miserable every night at the Alibi that we'd end up working together in the future?
And to top off good news with more, they don't need me to start for two more weeks. I can actually enjoy my unemployment and have a two-week vacation without the stress of looking for a job. Overall, I'd have to say things are going my way right now.
Busy week for a girl with no job. Went out last night after Ian's radio show for some early birthday drinks (for him; my birthday is in June, of course) and was pleasantly surprised to see a whole bunch of our friends down there just waiting to buy them. Today is his actual birthday, so we're getting ready to leave for dinner and then go to the Graves Brothers Deluxe/Boxcar Satan/I WILL KILL YOU FUCKER! show. I can't remember if I already mentioned this, but last year we went down to the city on his birthday to see Boxcar Satan (and missed them because we ended up at The Eagle), so I guess he's just seeing them a year late. And this time, they came to him!
Thank god I'm not working the door tonight. I imagine it's going to be rather busy. Tomorrow Ian works a half day, and I'm going to play Champions of Norrath in my pajamas the entire time he's gone.
Things are going well. Chloe is slowly but surely getting better and seems to be content enough that she's playing and biting ferociously again, and eating like a little piglet. I still don't know whether or not the vet is going to reimburse me for the hospitalization costs, but they did get a letter from my attorney demanding that they do so, so we'll see how that goes. (Heh. My attorney. Thanks Xan!)
Been going to lots of shows (read: working the door for Ian) and hanging out at the bar a lot. Annette was up this past weekend and she helped out by stamping wrists while I fumbled with change at both the Lolita/LA Gentlemen Callers show and the Campo Bravo/Lowlights show. My friend Davis fell in love with the Lowlights, so I got Dameon to sign a couple of cds and I'm going to send them to him down south.
Nothing terribly exciting on the job front. I applied half-heartedly for a few jobs that I don't really care about, and I was invited to come for an interview where I want to work (but not for the position I want, so we'll have to see how that goes), but otherwise I'm still floating on unemployment. Tonight I'm helping out at the Orick/Blackfire Revelation show, which I hadn't even planned on attending, but there you go...and Saturday I'm working the Smashed Glass show, which is sure to be fun. I hung out and had way too many drinks with Chris, Jervis, John, and Mig Monday night and I seriously planned to abstain until this Saturday, but what can you do?
Right now Ian's making "brunch," which I find funny because it's 4:30pm. In a few hours I have to get in the shower and start getting ready to go out. I think I'm officially turning into the kind of person who doesn't leave the house during daytime hours.
Too tired to update other than to say I'm home, Chloe's okay (although has to be treated at home for almost a month), and I'm tired and dehydrated and starving. Maybe more later tonight when we're all settled in.
I've been talking about nothing but this for the past four days, so this is going to be something of a synopsis.
-Friday my cat Chloe went into the vet to be sedated and have her teeth cleaned if necessary, and to get a haircut because she's mean and I can't cut her hair without suffering damage. This is the second time she's been sedated for a haircut, and the third time she's been sedated in her life (the first was when she was spayed 9 years ago.)
-The vet called and told me I could pick her up around 3pm. I drove down and got her and came home, and as soon as I let her out of the carrier I noticed she looked enormous, and even commented on this to some friends. Within an hour or so she was even bigger and her skin was "crackly," a sign of air trapped in the subcutaneous tissues.
-I called the vet first thing Saturday morning and told them what was going on, and they had me bring her back for xrays and observation. They sent her home with me the same day saying she needed to reabsorb the air, and to just watch her breathing to make sure she was getting enough oxygen (like I can tell?) and to call the emergency vet line if anything went wrong. By Sunday I had researched this problem enough to know that the air under the skin (subcutaneous emphysema) is most often caused by trauma to the animal's trachea, which happens when a tube is pushed down the throat during sedation. My vet, of course, didn't mention this. I was getting angry and worried because Chloe hadn't eaten or had any liquids since Thursday, so I called the emergency line and my vet very uneasily told me that if she were me, she'd get Chloe to a specialist (in Rohnert Park, about 240 miles from my house) as soon as possible.
-I threw together a few things and raced down to Rohnert Park, getting Chloe checked in by 7pm Sunday night. They did xrays and hooked her up to an IV for fluids and told me her lungs were beginning to collapse due to the pressure from all the air in her system. Their diagnosis? A hole in the trachea. Gee, I wonder what caused it? They haven't given me anything in writing yet, but I plan to approach my vet in Arcata with the expectation that they will pay for all costs associated with this, including the $45 in gas it cost me to get here (and eventually, back.) Chloe has been hospitalized for almost 48 hours now and has not shown significant improvement, but she's hydrated, she ate a bit of food on her own last night, and she doesn't seem to be getting any bigger, which hopefully means the "leak" caused by the tracheal hole has healed or at least is being held together by the tracheal cuff (bandage tape wrapped very snugly around her neck) they put on her.
-Needless to say, I'm absolutely fucking livid. So far, aside from the 24 hour observation, this (VERY EXPENSIVE) vet hasn't done anything that couldn't have been done at my normal vet in Arcata. Several comments by my vet at home have led me to believe this all happened as a result of negligence on their part, and I plan to pursue it in any way necessary to get reimbursed for all the costs. I'm totally stressed out that Chloe may not make it, as she isn't really improving significantly, but I'm trying to be optimistic that because she's not getting worse, there's a good chance she'll get better; it's just a slow process. I need to keep reminding myself that although this is costing several thousand dollars, 1. at least I have the money available, and 2. it's only money. If it saves her, it's worth it.
-I'm staying at my mom's in Pleasanton for the time being. Ian's at home taking care of everything there, so at least I'm not worrying about all three pets. My mom gave me some valium to keep me from totally freaking out (which comes and goes) and I'm trying to think positive and hope that even if it takes all week, this is a better route than exploratory surgery, which is much more expensive and much more dangerous. Anyway, that's all I'm doing this week. Everybody cross your fingers for me...
Just a quick upate before I head out for a doctor's appointment and some errands. It's 1pm and Ian's still sleeping, which probably means he stayed up until 5am watching rock videos or something. We got drunk very early yesterday (I met Jervis at the bar around 5 and Ian joined us when he got off work at 6:30) and I think we were home by 9:30 or so. I'm not sure. I know we were only there a short while after ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
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