Stop the ride! I want to get off!

I have no idea how this was downloaded and placed on my desktop, I swear! #dopey2027

Holy shit, has it been a crazy few months.

The day job was sold on the 30th of September, but the high level conversations started back in July.

In my role as Controller, I was called on constantly to provide financial statements, proofread legal documents, and literally carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. I had scared coworkers calling me non-stop, some crying, some digging for details I wanted to provide, but couldn’t. The stress got so bad that the owner freaked out on me during a meeting with the CPAs and basically told me I didn’t know what I was talking about.

I threatened to quit. And I meant it. Even though I didn’t have a backup plan.

I’d given the owner so much grace and let so much roll off my back, but to be talked to like that in front of my peers… It literally took two people to talk me into staying.

And through all of this, I’d been terrified that I was getting fired, too. The purchasers don’t need another accountant; they already have a huge staff (although one did quit just as the sale was going through.)

Apparently, I’m keeping my job - for now - because they think I’m ‘capable’. What a glowing commentary on my 20 years of experience.

I’m also being micromanaged. A meeting every Friday that can LITERALLY be emails.

I fucking hate meetings.

So yeah, there’s been a lot and putting it into writing like that definitely downplays the amount of stress and the absolute mess that the sale was.

In happier news, I finally moved into my home office. I still have a box of two in here that needs to be sorted. I’m so happy I pulled the carpet in here. Yeah, the floor is damaged in some spots to the point where I was ready to grab my sander and refinish it myself. I decided to wait until I pull the remaining carpet in the house. 

My living room is set up (including a honking huge treadmill to replace the one that got STOLEN BY THE MOVERS.) The bathroom is a bathroom. The kitchen / dining room is a shitshow because I emptied out all the cabinets and drawers and still can’t figure out where everything should live. The room that was supposed to be my craft room is still full of boxes and needs to be painted. My bedroom is finally emptied of all the shit, I have curtains, and a closet!

And what a fucking adventure that closet was.

It absolutely stunk like smoke and the shelf / closet rod were sticky with nicotine. There was wood paneling on the walls that seem to absorb it all, too. 

I ended up covering all the seams in the paneling and giving it SEVERAL coats of a shellac based primer. Then, once I finally couldn’t smell smoke and the nicotine stopped bleeding through, I gave it several coats of a boring white paint. I even installed a closet kit. I mostly did it right. The one rod wasn’t cut short enough, so it’s really wedged in there. The other one is a little slanted, despite being measured three different times. I also checked that it was level. It’s a later problem. I just needed the closet to be functional.

All of my appliances have finally been installed, which was also an adventure. Despite measuring the fridge several times, the damn door kept getting stuck on the wall trim. If we pulled the fridge out, it blocked the doorway. I decided that I needed a smaller, back ordered fridge. (Because, of course, it’s back ordered.) The kitchen was installed in June. The fridge came after Labor Day. I *barely* got my rebate because of the delay and the fact that I screwed up the rebate form because I already filled out the form with the old fridge’s information, with the exception of the fridge serial number. The new serial number didn’t match the old fridge’s model number, so there were a couple of conversations with the rebate support team.

I had to replace the garage door and opener, which was $2,500 I wasn’t expecting to pay out of pocket. The one-size-fits-all door opener I picked up is not one-size-fits-all and I really wanted an opener. Once I started using the garage door more frequently, I realised that the door was popping out of the track and was really damaged. Like backed into it several times and possibly dropped on the hood of a car damaged. With winter coming, there was no way I was leaving the car on the driveway. So… yeah. Merry fucking Christmas, Wendell.

All this to say, HOLY FUCK DO I LOVE TECHNOLOGY.

My fridge beeps at me if I leave the door open too long. The microwave tells me when it’s done. The stove tells me when it’s preheated. The washer and dryer alert me when the cycles end. And the coolest thing of all? I can open the garage door from my phone!!! (Now if only I could get a remote car starter… the one downside of driving a stick shift.)

Speaking of Christmas, my house is half ass decorated. I put up a nekkid tree BEFORE THANKSGIVING and I’ve putting shit around the house as it comes from Amazon and Etsy. (The tree will continue to be nekkid until the cats stop climbing it… so probably until I take it down. At least it’s a cheap ass fake tree.)

This is noteworthy because

1) I’ve never liked Christmas. The whole gift giving thing makes me uncomfortable - like, here! I barely know you, but society says I have to buy you something. Or, thanks for the scarf. I’ve only knitted fourteen thousand of them for myself. 

2) Empty chairs at empty tables.

So yeah, no Christmas music, no Christmas decorations, until long after Thanksgiving. And that only happened because of the ex.

However, we used to go to Universal for Grinchmas and the Christmas parade every year - and the fucking story resonated with me so much that now, my first Non-Grinchmas Christmas, I have Grinch shit EVERYWHERE.

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?
It came without ribbons. It came without tags.
It came without packages, boxes or bags.
And he puzzled and puzzled ‘till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store.
What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.

So yeah. Happy Turkey Day - or if you’re like me, happy first day of a much needed four day vacation where some turkey may or may not be consumed.

The Amazing Adventures of BeFri and StEnds

for the longest time there were two of us and we were inseparable

Ya’ll know I hold on to shit.

So, let’s visit some ancient history, shall we?

Back in preschool, I met this girl. We stayed friends all the way through until a stupid argument in our freshman year of college. I didn’t like her girlfriend and didn’t want to hang out with her (and the girlfriend) the one night we were able to hang out. She thought it was because I didn’t like that she was gay. Me? Have a problem with gay people? Haaaaaaave you met me? Thanks, T, for the 30-ish year disruption in our bestie-ness.

Asshole.

We reconnected over MySpace and moved it over to FB but we don’t live in each other’s orbits any more and well… we just never made an effort to see each other after we cleared the air.

Why am I friends with so many introverts who never want to hang out?

That’s rhetorical. Like calls to like.

N’s mother died after a long illness. I was so far out of the loop that I didn’t even know she’d been sick. When I saw the obit, I gave it a day or two before I popped into her DMs and was like, I know we haven’t been friends since college, but if you need to talk about losing a parent, I’m here.

The floodgates didn’t open. It wasn’t like we started partying like it was 1993. But it opened a line of conversation we hadn’t had in years.

The wake and service were three hours south, but this is a woman I would have flown back to honour. No matter what cost.

Yeah.

I decided to go to the wake and the service and the burial.

It was amazing to see N again, even if the situation was uncomfortable. We made plans to hang out, but who knows. It was enough just to see her and be there for her.

Plus, the wife? I want someone to love me as much as E loves N. No shovel talk necessary. She’s good people. I approve.

I was talking to one of our mutual friends and we were talking about how we had distilled our high school clique into two long lasting friendships. N had S and Soulmate Boy (!), I have two ex-boyfriends as my high school era besties.

God, that is soooo weird to say.

My First Boy (that means exactly what you think it means) and Mr. We’re Better As Friends With Benefits Than We Are Boyfriend and Girlfriend.

But, I still love both dearly. Although not with that heart eyed teenage love nonsense. More like the we have lived through hell and survived, I couldn’t do it without you, sort of love. Platonic-ish? I have no idea… Gratitude + respect + familiarity. Whatever that equals. Platonic love is probably the best description, but there is something more to how I feel about them.

And I’m definitely not interested in falling back into bed with either of them.

Everyone tells me how weird it is that I’m friends with both of them. I don’t know why everyone thinks it’s so strange. Friends are friends are friends. It doesn’t matter how they enter your life, only that they stay around when the shit hits the fan. Both of them stayed.

Mr. FNFTF and I got together a bazillion years ago at our old stomping grounds and it WAS weird to think that we were able to get past our rough breakup and then screw around and then remain friends when it fizzled out. (That’s a sentence I never want an English teacher to see.)

I think some people are really meant to fulfill a certain purpose in your life… and sometimes, that purpose changes. FNFTF was a halfway decent boyfriend and then scratched an itch when it needed to be scratched and then he became someone to lean on. 

The First Boy was a great boyfriend the first time. Kind of OK the second time. Friendzoned since before my father died.

It’s my understanding that I’m the reason he reconnected with his father and that side of the family.

Yup.

Besties for life.

My ride or dies.

But I don’t describe them as ex-boyfriends often. It’s just that S and I were in the same clique as the two boys and she knew both of them. She knew I slept with both of them… it wasn’t like I could reshape the narrative.

Anywhoo…

It’s a thousand fucking degrees up in northern Maine and it’s impossible to find fans any where. I could get a window unit (Air Con), but those are a pain in the ass.

It’s even humid enough that I had to buy a dehumidifier.

I even slept on the couch last night so I didn’t have to try and hit the fan into my over crowded bedroom.

Side note: that cheap little couch is comfy as fuck.

Definitely doing that again tonight.

It’s too hot to think and it’s definitely too hot to sit in front of the computer… I have more to say (don’t I always?) but that’s a post for a later date.

The war on… Choose Your Own Adventure

At this rate, I’ve cared about more people that I can count…

I’ve struggled with the idea that I’m running out of time on this Earth. I’ve outlived my mother by four years, and in six, I will have outlived my father.

So, hearing the news that Chicken Taco (is that redundant?) decided to bomb Iran put that fear into overtime.

We can’t help Ukraine, but we can get involved in the Middle East? Wait, the orange turd has business deals over there so this will probably help his business prospects. You know, using his public office for personal gain. Which is, of course, illegal. But when you’re surrounded by psychopaths and sycophants it’s a lot easier to do whatever the hell you want. God, the amount of lies he and his staff have told alone would have gotten a Democrat removed from office in their first week… but the people who voted for him fell for every single lie on the campaign trail and every lie since then. It honestly makes me sick that people are that fucking stupid.

I didn’t like Harris, but I voted for her (and would have voted for Biden who I liked even less) because I didn’t want the tangerine twatwaffle’s Project 2025 plans to come into fruition.

And we’re watching them cross off every single item on that list.

But, he didn’t know anything about P2025.

BULLSHIT.

And then there’s the war on women - pick your flavour: trans, cis, masc facing cis, pregnant, infertile, dead.

Let’s talk about that last one, shall we?

ADRIANA SMITH

The story goes that this woman was having headaches and went to the hospital. She sought care and instead she was sent home with meds. That’s it.

No CT scans, no overnight observations.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t run to the hospital for just a headache. They had to be pretty severe, no?

The next morning, she was finally admitted to the hospital, got her CT scans, got her diagnosis, and died. She was declared brain dead. In FEBRUARY.

And this is where the story goes all Handmaid’s Tale.

Apparently, there was some “confusion” in interpreting Georgia’s anti-abortion laws.

So… The family says that doctors told them they had to keep Smith on life support until the fetus was viable. The family did not have a choice in that matter. They won’t say what they would have chosen as a family, but the end result is that the hospital kept this dead woman on life support so that she could serve as an incubator. They just performed a C-Section (abortion, autopsy… it’s been described a dozen ways.) to remove the baby from her. It is June 22nd. Do you know why they had to remove the baby?  Because after four months and three days on life support, her body was starting to decompose. Supposedly, but I wouldn’t doubt it. Also… how can that be good for the baby? It’s getting pumped full of chemicals and shit.

The reason the doctors kept the corpse as an incubator: Georgia abortion law. Specifically the LIFE Act. You cannot have an abortion after the heartbeats become detectable. That’s around six weeks. She was eight or nine weeks pregnant when she died. There’s also the small matter of 2007’s law that doctors can’t remove life support from a pregnant woman unless the child isn’t viable or there was the pregnancy equivalent of a DNR…

We need to get rid of the fetal personhood laws at a fucking minimum. A fetus is a fucking parasite. (Vocab lesson: Parasites are organisms that depend on a host to survive.) Until that baby comes out it has absolutely zero fucking rights. I’m sorry. Taking her off of life support would not have been an abortion… like, what would have happened if she didn’t make it to the hospital and died at home? If the host dies, the parasite dies, too. That’s the way it should be. That’s the way nature works.

But no.

Now we have a one pound baby in the NICU who may or may not make it. And if they make it, what’s that going to look like in terms of care required? You can’t tell me that this kid is going to be 100% OK. There has to be some sort of issues. They already thought the kid might have fluid on the brain and might be blind, assuming that the baby was even viable.

In the meantime, do you know who’s paying all these hospital bills? Not the state. Not the hospital. The fucking family. Again, nobody knows what they would have done, given the choice. Especially them, but they deserved the right to choose.

It’s absolutely ridiculous how the hospital and the state handled this. It’s cruel. It’s unfathomable. It’s immoral. It’s a law written by men for men.

Nobody fucking cares about the women involved.

And the kicker in all of this?

She was black. Black women already have less access to health care… if she were white, would the hospital have taken her concerns seriously during her first trip? Honestly? I think so.

The end result out of all of this:

Who would have thought you need to declare that you don’t want to be kept alive as an incubator if you should die while pregnant? (Apparently, that was the way out of this mess. Again, it had to be declared ahead of time, like a DNR or organ donation.) WHO THE FUCK WOULD THINK ABOUT THAT?

(Also, this exact situation was an episode of the Handmaid’s Tale. If you really want to understand how little women are valued in the US today, just watch that. It’s on Hulu. I’ll gift you a subscription.)

So yeah. I’m all worked up and pissed off. It’s also pouring so I can’t take all my trash outside… I can’t even go to the garage and get the ceiling fan without getting soaked. I guess I’ll tear up the carpet and worry about the electrical later? I have to call someone in about the closet in that room anyway. Since I’m hiring a handy man, maybe they can finish swapping out the fixtures, switches, and outlets???

Well, I’m starving and I still haven’t found a pizza place, so I guess the frozen one in the fridge will have to do.

I got a line on the new America

You know what? The punchlines write themselves.

It’s very clear you’re being unfair, King. No matter what you say, we won’t obey.
Gonna hold a revolution now, King. And we’re gonna run it all our way.

I wish I went to No Kings Day, but there were a couple of reasons why I chose not to, and the biggest one is where I live.

I’m brand new here and one of the cashiers at Hannaford already knows me. Some random guy asked me if I bought [somebody’s] house.

Like what the actual fuck?

Life in tiny town America, right? This is exactly what I signed up for, but damn… the realities are a little much some times. Did you know Amazon delivers in about four business days? That I’ve been reduced to shopping at fucking WALMART because everything else is an hour away? Yeah. I don’t even know where I can get a pizza. The two local places that I can find online closed during covid. There’s one Chinese place, but every time I drive by it, it looks closed.  Guess it’s a good thing I’ve finally learned how to cook.

My town has a Tractor Supply, a Hannaford, a McDonald’s, a Subway, and a Dunks.

That’s it for the big time brand names. Everything else is locally owned and operated.

Like I said. Life in tiny town America.

At any rate, strange things are afoot at the Circle K and I need to get the bookkeeping business rocking and rolling yesterday. It’s bad enough that I’m the new girl. It’s bad enough that I’m From Away. I don’t need to have my political affiliation out there just yet. And I’m not at all happy I felt that way, but in a crowd of 25-ish? I definitely would have stood out and since there are things happening that I absolutely cannot talk about, I didn’t want to take the risk of pissing off potential customers just because I lean blue.

Instead, I went to the Whoopie Pie Festival. You read that right. A WHOOPIE PIE FESTIVAL. I have died and gone to New England heaven. I love a good whoopie pie and I have missed them. Oddly enough, a New England treat cannot be found anywhere in South Florida despite the large number of snowbirds.

It was about an hour away, but it was a great drive through some of the prettiest backroads I have ever driven. It didn’t hurt that the entry fee was super cheap and that samples were a quarter each. There were about 20 bakeries and I stopped at every. single. one. The only one I wanted to sample but didn’t was Moxie flavoured.  Mind you, Moxie is one of those things you either absolutely love or hate beyond belief. There’s pretty much no in between and I am on the yuk side of the spectrum, but I bought a full sized one because I wanted to try it so badly. You can’t go to Maine and not sample a Moxie something, even if you don’t like the soda.

There was a cotton candy one at the same bakery that had the Moxie one and that? That was absolutely orgasmic. It was just sweet enough and I swear it melted in my mouth like real cotton candy. It was so good, I went back and bought a full sized one… and a Moxie one. That one is still sitting on my counter. I’m afraid to eat it.

Because Moxie.

At any rate… my 26 hour drive (assuming non-stop) was actually 37. (THIRTY SEVEN) I napped a couple of times at rest stops and the cats were relatively well behaved. I couldn’t get them to eat, sleep, or use the litter box, but they did at least eat some of their sticks and pee in their carriers. The soft ones because, of course, I got rid of the hard plastic ones. It was too hard to put the cats in them by myself. I’ve washed my car a few times and used a ton of febreeze, but the great thing about cat pee smell is that it doesn’t go away.

Oh, well. That was the worst thing that happened the entire trip, so I’m OK with it.

Got here in plenty of time to meet the furniture guys. I have all new appliances. And a bunch of things the movers broke - like my brand new TV stand AND the TV. I ended up having to order a TV because a) I can’t carry one that big by myself and 2) it wouldn’t fit in my car. When it finally arrived, I was so excited to set it up and… the screen was shattered.

I started to paint my office, and I was supposed to finish it today, but I fell asleep on the couch last night and didn’t take one of my bipolar meds. I woke up feeling pretty sick, headachy and feverish, in a way I only do when I forget to take that particular pill. Probably not a good idea to play with electricity and inhale paint fumes. Instead, I’m blogging and about to take a nap. In my defense, I did go grocery shopping and made brunch and that was more than enough for the way I feel right now.

Fun fact: I used to be able to forecast rain about a half hour to an hour before it actually started, and if I woke up gross and sinusy, it was going to rain. Sinus migraine? We were in for a serious downpour. Hurricane season almost killed me. I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO FORECAST RAIN ONCE SINCE I MOVED HERE. I am broken… but in a good way?

I don’t know… I have a lot of stuff going on.

I’m very happy here, though, so that’s enough.

Now, if I could only find a fucking pizza place.

Not So Berry Challenge, Gen 1

Am I the only one that gets that reference?

Fun facts about buying a house in a dying small town an hour from civilization:

1) Furniture only gets delivered there every two weeks. I either move heaven and earth to get there Friday or wait until July because all the June slots are booked. I had been planning on keeping my IKEA furniture, but I have two pieces that are so old that they are not interested in moving AGAIN. Plus, they’re heavy-ish and at the end of the day, they’re at least 10 years old and I don’t feel like paying to move them to Maine as temporary furniture. So, because I decided to chuck everything and furnish the whole house with new things, I leave Wednesday, as soon as the movers do. 26 hour drive with 2 cats. Fun times.

2) UMaine Hockey has a waiting list. I just dropped $50 to put my name on a waiting list for hockey tickets. They had a really good season, so my timing totally sucks. Plus, it’s MAINE. They’ve always had a good team and I’m not surprised that they’re sold out, but damn.

3) New Englander’s have long memories. I signed up for internet and cable. When I gave the girl my address, she says, “Oh you’re in the new development.”

The. NEW. Development.

My house was built in 1962.

This doesn’t surprise me - I’m used to hearing directions like take the left at Yoken’s. Yoken’s went out of business in 2004 and the building had been torn down forever ago. The sign, however, lived at it’s spot for years after that. When the ex and I lived in New Hampshire, I once told him to turn left at Yoken’s. He looked at me like I was insane. The sign was no longer there and he had no idea what I was talking about. Also, in a different small town in Maine, my dad was getting directions to a church, and his aunt told him to take the right at the old [whatever the hell their name was] place. You know, the white house. Well, dad had no idea who the fuck they were talking about and the house was no longer white. It’s hard to get lost in a town with one traffic light, but we did.

The movers come Wednesday and I am this very strange mixture of nervous, scared, and feeling settled. I still have a few things to finish packing, so I’m going to do that as soon as I finish lunch. I’ll be living on take out until then because I want everything packed before the work week starts again.

Next I post, I’ll be out of here!!! Wooooo!!