No Celery Please

Without a Prayer

Pete opened his eyes within eyes and searched the battlefield for soldiers calling out to god. It was important to find ones looking for god with a small g – ones who didn’t believe in any specific god and were calling out in the end of their lives for anyone to comfort them.

Their prayers were fair game… Pete knew from bitter experience not to mess with the prayers of anyone looking for a big-G God. Those guys were rough if you tried to siphon anything off the top of their cut.

The battlefield was a nasty place. It saddened Pete to have to resort to picking up prayers from poor bastards who had gotten themselves blown apart. But… he needed the prayers. Needed them bad right now. He hadn’t had any in quite a while and he was starting to feel it.

Some of the Hindu gods would sometimes let him hang around in their temples and pick up some of the less devout offerings; rotten fruit and such from people who were really just going through the motions. Ganesh was always generous that way, but second-hand prayer doesn’t have much power to it, and he needed something stronger now. He was weak.

He was always weak… had been since the universe brought him into existence because random mutterings of “for Pete’s sake” and “for the love of Pete” seemed prayer-like enough to require a god to answer them. What did the universe know? It just did these things as the circumstances warranted.

But nobody really meant those prayers. They didn’t do much good for Pete. They weren’t worship, after all, just substitutes for people who were too afraid to say “God” when they meant it.

So Pete was a god without a following; no worshippers, but just enough cosmic force out there to maintain his existence in a constant state of needing the prayers. Just a little prayer.

So, the battlefield.

Ah, there was one. He was calling out to god – any god – to help him. He hurt, but wasn’t on the edge. Not yet.

Pete went over to the man who was lying, his leg mostly hanging off, in mud made from dirt and his own blood. He was praying. The power was pouring out of him. Pete took a deep draught of it. Ah, man, that was some high quality prayer. It filled Pete, took him up and dusted him off and made him feel, well, like a god.

With the power of the man’s prayer in him, Pete could help him. The soldier needed to move to the other side; Pete knew a few small cracks in the wall that the big guys hadn’t locked up with their rules and laws. He could smuggle a guy through now and again without getting noticed.

The last of the man’s life and prayer died away. Pete slipped him through to heaven.

Pete opened his eyes within eyes to search the battlefield once again.

1. I am 33 years old and have never had the chicken pox. I am sure this is going to catch up to me one day.

2. I plan to never, ever, ever visit any country run by zealots. I have very little sympathy for people who go to countries run by zealots and then act all shocked when they end up getting their limbs cut off for offending the locals.

3. I have to go to King of Prussia, PA on Monday and Tuesday for some training. Monday was going to be a vacation day. Oh well… someone in the department REALLY NEEDS to learn this program.

4. I am not passionate. You know… Sunsets? Yeah, they are fine. I do not get all worked up over them. Same with sunrises (although I don’t see a lot of them), cute bunnies, babies, etc. I do not get deleriously happy about much of anything. Neither do I experience crushing lows of sadness. If you ask me how I am, the answer will be “fine” if things are good and “ok” if things are not good. That’s about the extent of my mood swings. Well, unless it involves cheesecake.

5. I am making scarfs for a couple-few people for Christmas. I am crocheting them. I think they are turning out nice. But you never know with home-made stuff like this. That’s OK. It’s the thought and all that, right?

6. I have an outline for my Wordsmith’s story for November, but darned if I can make myself sit down and write the thing.

7. Happily, I did not gain any weight despite my enormous turkey intake over Thanksgiving. The SB and I did hours of extra-curricular hiking and walking over the weekend, so it all worked out. Hopefully I can keep this up. But I WILL be having a cheese steak while in Philly, so we’ll see.

8. Sheesh, who’s idea was this whole “thirteen” thing? You know what also is alliterative with “Thursday”? Three… yeah, how about the “Thursday Three”?

9. I like the word alliterative. Also, Onomatopoeia.

10. Crap. I have just gotten on a 2 hour conference call and realized my water bottle is empty. Maybe we’ll get a break in here somewhere.

11. What the heck am I going to get my mother-in-law for Christmas?

12. Our new neighbors turned out to be Perfectly Normal People (as they appeared to be). Not crack-heads at all. This is nice as I can now stop looking for new houses.

13. I am off work tomorrow. I plan to sleep.

Ya’ll have been some productive little bloggers out there in blog-land over the holidy.

I pretty much didn’t touch a computer over the weekend. Yay! But that meant I had a mighty big blog-pile to read up on this lunch hour (but I made it). I sacrificed commenting for getting through the back-log. These are the trade-offs one must make, I suppose.

So, Thanksgiving was fairly uneventful. Most people behaved themselves. Others, well, we don’t expect it of them as they are usually drunk and annoying at EVERY FAMILY FUNCTION.

The situation with S seems resolved. The company, after doing back-research, came to the conclusion that she had taken $31,000. There is some contention here, as S thinks they were adding in legitimate things like travel reimbursements and such, but my feeling on that is once you open the door where they can charge you, you gots no room to complain.

So anyway, since the first number had been $20K, and that’s all my M and D could afford to borrow, my D told the company they could have $20K or nothing and charge her. They chose to take the $$… they are going to 1099 her for the rest, as though they had paid her that. This way, at least they get to claim it on their taxes. Of course, this means S will also owe a big fat tax bill next year, but this is the least of the problems. She needs to get a new job ASAP so she can make the payments on the loan M and D took out. Still, at least she isn’t going to jail. Sheesh.

In other news… those of you who have been around for a while will remember the spring pond-building extravaganza.

Friday, the SB comes back from a trip out of the house and says to me… did you drain the pond?

Did I what?

Yeah, so, in the hour he was gone, all the water left the pond. The plastic liner must’ve sprung a leak or something. The thing was empty, but kind of floating on top of about 20 gallons that hadn’t soaked into the soil. Bad.

So, taking this as a lesson, I have decided to add ponds to the list of things that sound like a good idea but are really just a giant pain in the ass. (the old 50 gallon fish tank was the first item on this list).

I filled in the pond hole with the dirt that was previously the hill for the waterfall.

I am now back to having just a little rock garden with a couple of plants in that space.

Oh well, didn’t even last a year.

So I have been tagged by Monsieur Ron with this 6 things meme that’s going around.

I am way too lazy to play properly, so I am not listing the rules (egad – you mean you haven’t seen them somewhere else?) and I’m not tagging anyone (because I don’t think there’s anyone left who hasn’t done this) and I don’t have anything I can really call a “secret” because, hey, you know, this is an anonymous blog and what kind of secrets do I have anyway… all I do is work and exercise anyway.

So really, I am just going to list the numbers 1 to 6 and type some stuff after them and call it good to go.

But don’t say I didn’t play along!

1 – I am lazy (as you may have noticed from this post) but I am also a perfectionist in many ways. This duality causes no end of conflict in my psyche where I am too lazy to do something (oh, let’s say, sweep the floor), but I am constantly berating myself for the state that whatever it is I am not doing is in. I already feel guilty that I am not playing along right with this meme.

2 – I want a lot of stuff. I have a huge list of things I want. On the other hand, I hate debt. I love to have money in the bank. I simultaneously want to pay off my mortgage as quickly as possible and own my house free and clear AND want to buy my dream house (which, incidentally, does not actually exist anywhere).

3 – I do not now, nor will I ever, want kids. Well, except when I do. You know when I want kids? When I am in the mall or Target and I see these ADORABLE little outfits for boys with slacks and sweater vests and little ties – stuff I cannot buy for my sister’s kids because she would DIE before allowing them to dress like tiny college professors. Lucky for me, I am aware that dressing kids in adorable (to me) outfits is an exceedingly bad reason to breed and so I am able to resist. I would be an appalling mother. I am barely willing to feed the dog when I get home at the end of the day (see #1) and I don’t want to see to anyone’s needs but my own. Plus – kids are expensive (see #2).

4 – I had extremely low self esteem in high school. It kind of followed me through college. I thought it was just a part of me. Yet, I cannot pin-point it, but somewhere in the last 5 to 10 years, I have somehow come to see myself in a different light. I like me. I am a good person. Snarky, amusing, polite to strangers (although I will totally make fun of them where they cannot hear me and be hurt) I have a job and a life that I enjoy. I wouldn’t have expected it, but I am glad I have come to this. I am not “hot” or “gorgeous” and I never will be, but I have come to see what I could not in HS – I am pretty cute, fine just the way I am, and clean up OK when I have to and people are not going to puke walking down the street and looking at me. I think that’s enough.

5 – I have a rockin‘ outfit on today. Boot cut jeans and chunky black shoes. Burgundy shirt and a velour jacket that comes just down over my waist. Stacey and Clinton would not have ANYTHING bad to say about this in the 360 mirror. This does not happen very often. I mostly dress like a boy in cargo shorts and t’s / sweats unless I am at work and wearing khakis and some random shirt. I felt like I should share.

These listy things are harder than one might expect.

6 – Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I will be at a big family do with turkey and stuffing etc. I wish I could just go to my favorite Mexican restaurant instead (they are open!) because it’s gonna be awkward with everyone NOT TALKING ABOUT my sister and the whole embezzlement thing. But I am a dutiful daughter and I will do this because I love my mother and nothing makes her happier than being able to get us all together in the house and yell at us for hours about snacking and ruining our appetites before dinner.

Phew.

Ack. I am forcing myself to shut down IE after reading only 1/4 of my blogs. No reading yesterday at all.

Blog withdrawal… imminent.

But… I save up a lot of my vacation until the end of the year.

Now, with the two new free days, I won’t be working a five day week again until the second week of January.

3 days
4 days
3 days
4 days
4 days
2 days
3 days

Then back to the real world.

But what does this mean?

Oh, yeah, I guess I actually have to work while I’m on the working days… have to get something done, after all.

I had originally planned to take vacation days on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve because both days fall on a Monday before a holiday.

But my company just sent out an email…

They decided to give us those days as holidays!!!

So now, I have two free vacation days to take.

I b’lieve I’ll have a long weekend the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Hmmmm, maybe we’ll take a little trip… The couple of weeks after thanksgiving are cheap to travel because no one is going anywhere until christmas.

Yay!!

First – thanks so much for the comments. It’s nice to be able to fall back on the sympathy of blogging friends when it’s impossible to scream about these things in the real world.

So. M and D are going to take out a home equity loan to pay off the $$ that S stole.

They love her too much to let her swing. Although it’s unlikely she’d get anything more than probation, M is frantic, and wants to help.

This is putting them in a bind, though. It’s pushing the amount of $$ they pay in mortgage related stuff to about the limit banks will reasonably allow. This means that if THEY run into an emergency, they would have to sell investments or something else… they would not be able to go to the bank.

In this case, though, at least if they run into trouble, I could feel a little better about putting some money toward helping them rather than someone who STOLE MONEY!

I am still a little dazed. Last weekend, if you had asked me if S would ever do anything like this, I would have said no way! If you had asked me if she would even take $100 from someone I’d have said you were crazy. Now this. It’s absolutely beyond me. I mean, it’s not like she’s some stupid kid. She’s 50 years old. How do you do something this dumb (not to mention unethical and morally wrong) when you’ve been around and seen what can happen?

My other worry is what if they pay this guy the $$ she took, and he prosecutes anyway. Paying it back doesn’t mitigate the crime, but if she’s convicted, her chances of getting a job where she’s able to pay M and D back decrease dramatically.

He says he won’t turn her in, but there’s no guarantee there. He just wants his money right now, but there’s nothing to stop him having her arrested in a couple of weeks if he decides getting the $$ back isn’t enough. Then where is she? Ack – that’s probably my imagination running away with me. I do that sometimes.

I have not been able to really muster up any anger with S over this… it’s more like dismay. If she screws M and D over this, though, I’ll probably be able to get to anger.

Thanksgiving should be suitably weird.

I knew there was a reason that I wanted a blog that couldn’t be conected with my name. It’s totally so I can blog crazy stuff like this without getting caught.

So… couple hours ago, my M called me. Tells me my S is in trouble.

Trouble? What kind of trouble could my S be in? She’s a sensible person.

Well… turns out that over the last year, maybe two, my S has managed to EMBEZZLE TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS from her company.

WHAT

THE

FUCK?

This is just the craziest thing ever. I mean, I know that otherwise smart people will sometimes do some stupid things.

TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!

How does this happen?

Yeah… a tiny bit at a time. Don’t get caught at first when it’s an emergency.. get’s easier and whatnot.

but

WTF?

I truly do not understand human beings sometimes. Crap… I feel bad when a pad of post-its comes home with me in my briefcase.

Oh for the love of…

So now, S is, of course, fired. But also, if she doesn’t put the $$ back by a certain day very soon, they are going to have her arrested.

So now, M is trying to figure out how to get the $$ to keep her out of jail.

And who does she call? Yeah, me.

Let me start by saying that I IN NO WAY have $20K sitting around.

But over the last 5 years or so, we HAVE managed to sock away a tidy little sum in the bank… you know.. in case of emergencies.

Mind you, the emergency I was thinking of was a busted water heater or flooded bathroom. NOT bailing S out of EMBEZZELING TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!

There’s a part of me that wants to just let her take what’s coming to her.

The other part, the part that’s gonna give up half my savings account to assist the bailing effort, knows how VERY HARD it would be on my M if my S went to prison.

I don’t want my M to go through that stress. she’s not young. She has high blood pressure. This would be bad for her. bad. bad.

This is just so damn crazy. CRAZY!

Pretty much every year around this time, I start to get depressed.

I mean, not “real” depression. I read plenty of blogs where folks struggle with real and debilitating emotional issues, and I am not comparing this to that.

I suppose it’s more of what you would call the holiday blahs.

Presents must be bought. Dinners must be attended. Family must be familied.

Now, I like most of my family well enough on their own… but getting everyone together, it’s just crowded and painful, and I don’t like crowds. There’s a lot of drinking, and several of my family members get annoying when they are drunk (not all, some are funny).

There’s always kids running around and yelling and then adults yelling at them for being too loud.

Some years, when everyone is in town, it’s easier, because we can do half a day with my family and half a day with the SBs family and nothing gets too overwhelming.

But this year, the SB’s family is going out of town for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. So, we have the whole thanksgiving with my family.

Then, we either have to do it again at christmas or go to Florida with the SB’s family.

I wish I could just go off somewhere for vacation for the holidays and say to heck with everyone else. But, I am a dutiful daughter, and I show up where I am supposed to go and attend what I am supposed to attend and drag the SB along with me.

The blahs seem to seep over into everything in my life at this time of year… so I start getting sick of my job, co-workers, house, car, clothes, life, everything.

It’s a 2 month malaise that lifts almost as soon as I am allowed to leave the final festivity.

I need to just suck it up and deal with it, I suppose.

When it comes right down to it, I am probably just depressed because it’s not fun like it was when I was a kid. And what is anymore, really?

Christmas has gone from being a festival of joy, presents, doting parents and relatives, big dinners, excitement, etc. to being a worrisome time of figuring out how to get all the presents I need to buy for a rapidly extending family, trying to get through the holiday months without gaining ten pounds, figuring out how to get any work done when the whole world is on vacation, and still having to do all the normal stuff of day to day life.

Blah.