Reclassifying The Disease

So you know about my "rain pain". Come on now... I KNOW I told you. Don't say you don't remember. I don't think I can call it that any more. Maybe just PAIN. All caps included.

I was so happy on Friday. I was pain free for the first time in weeks. It lasted for less than 24 hours.

And then I was excited to tell you about my new best friend, but it hasn't worked out between us. Well... not entirely. I think some experimentation still needs to be done before I can say for sure. It's called Voltaren Gel. And it is a prescription gel used to apply to places of arthritic pain. It worked on one of my little toes. I think. One of the weird things with this pain is that it likes to travel. My wrist can hurt now, but three hours from now it may be fine and my toe will then hurt. Then my toe pain goes away after a day and I wake up and now it's in a thumb. Then it will move to the tip of a finger or two. Sometimes it arrives and stays in one place until it goes away again. Sometimes... like now... it can't make up it's mind (and I know it has one) and hits me in several different places at once. So I really can't say for sure if my little toe has been made to feel better by the gel, or if the pain has just moved on, because I used the gel on the back of my heel and on my wrist and they still hurt. In fact... my freaking foot hurts so bad I'd like to cut it off right now.

All of this pain started about three weeks ago with only a couple of days of reprieve. We've had a few small rain showers but it's not going away. I think last month I had a small episode and no rain. We have no rain in the forecast now. But the no forecast for rain has happened before and sure enough a stray shower will pop in and when it pops out, so has the pain. It has become a sort of joke in our family. I would talk to my mom and tell her, it's going to rain soon, and she would be all, but the weatherman said nothing, and the next day, rain. Hence... my reason's for calling it rain pain. Which I guess, if I have to have a painful 'disease', I'm lucky it's one where I don't hurt all the time.

I'm sure I've talked about this before and if you have read something that you've read previously, then I apologize. When the pain has been as bad as it's been the last couple of weeks, it's hard for me to think of much else. It can become all consuming. I think of my mother who just recently went through hip surgery and the pain she endured before. Constant, excruciating, never ending. At least I know there's an ending, eventually, to the pain. And I am very well aware of how blessed I am by that fact.
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In other news... I think Kitty Cam time is coming around the corner. Last week the kitties finally started their morning ritual of running as fast as they can where ever they can and God help anyone that gets in their way phase. I thought at the time that this was probably a signal for the changing season. Yesterday was beautiful, this morning is so gorgeous I endured the pain of opening ALL of my windows, even knowing it's probably going to get too hot to leave them open and I'm going to have to close them all again. THAT'S how pretty this morning is! Before too long, I'll be complaining about the cold again. Fun!

Poor Lonely Little Old Mexican Guy

So my neighbors across the street of the FRONT of my house... the ones with the humongous yard that had the older couple who lived there and the husband's lawnmower that went about 50mph and got his yard mowed in 15.3 seconds, the ones that moved out... do not mow their lawn like the older couple did. He'd be out every third day and I swear I never saw his lawn get over an inch. Well now their lawn gets to looking as bad as mine, which is horrible for me because it just encourages me to avoid mine longer so's I can win the crappiest yard award (given graciously by the NRH Code Enforcement Guy)... Yeah, I know, I'm SO rebellious.

Their first mow session was done with about 20 "lawn-workers" out there mowing and edging all at once. (Did you like the clever placement of the quotations?) But the last few times... about once a month... I've seen a small green truck sitting in the front yard and the sound of mowing from that direction. I figured the mex... uhhh I mean Lawn Technicians charged them too much so they hired some poor fool who's having to do it all by himself.

The lonely little old Mexican guy arrived around 0930 hours. It's a pretty nice day today. Should have mowed my own lawn. It's almost 1230 now and he's edged everything and is about 1/4 of the way done with the mowing. He's by himself. He's using a push mower on a whole lotta yard. I don't judge size well as far as acreage goes, but it's about 5 times or more of my yard and I use a riding lawn mower. Mostly because I'm lazy, but still. Plus, their yard should have been mowed two weeks ago so the grass is high and thick. I can see him from whence I sit and he's struggling to get the mower through it without it dying on him. Poor guy. I wonder if he'll do mine when he's done over there? I'll chip in 20 bucks a month. We're PRACTICALLY the same yard. There's just a road that separates the two. Come ON!

A Funny Work Story

Working midnights affords me quite a bit of anonymity when it comes to other employees of our city. I think I know, or have at least met, one or two of our volunteer firefighters. Other than that... I don't have a clue as to who anybody is over there... nor they, me.

Waaaay back in the olden days when I first started dispatching and things were still new and hopeful in the world because I was young and still somewhat innocent from the vile ways of the people, I would occasionally get a call on what we call our inner cities radio channel. This is/was an open channel that other agencies used to call other agencies while they were in the field... you know... back before cell phones and all. We used it frequently back then. There was a period of time, after I had been here just a year or so, where I was getting requests for time checks, being asked if anything was going on in our city, other small silly things. These were not requests from my officers, but from other agency's officers out in their cars, usually during the 2 to 4am time frame. It wasn't until one of them came to our department, out of sheer curiosity as to what I looked like, that he told me that all these radio requests started after some incident where I had to use this radio frequency for some reason or another related to real work. He told me that they loved hearing my voice and would, on occasion, just want to hear it. He told me it was a nice voice.

I learned over the years many other discriptions of my "nice voice". Let me just say, I could have had a nice career in radio, or a phone sex worker. Or so I've been told.

So tonight I get in to work after having a very quiet two days off. I sit down, grab a pen and a notepad and basically get ready for what the night will bring. One of my officers runs a license plate. I give him his return via radio. The direct line to our fire department rings. I answer it.
Me: "Hello"
Him: "Who's dispatching tonight?"
Me: "Me."
Him: "Who is this?"
Me: "Who is THIS?"
Him: (he tells me his name which escapes me now)
Me: "This is Laura"
Him: "Okay. Thanks." 'click'

I don't think much about the call. They do that from time to time. Again, being midnights I have about as much of a clue who he is as he does about me.

I seriously don't think it was even 10 minutes before my front door was buzzing. I look in the camera and don't recognize the guy. I get on my speaker and ask if I can help them. He tells me he's so-and-so from the fire department. I let him in.
He said that so-and-so next door was studying (have you caught on that I have totally failed to remember anyone's name, yet?) and that he was going to watch a movie and didn't want to disturb study guy so he came over to the PD to give him some peace. I think my reply was, "cool".

He asked me where the cops were and I told him they were all on a call. He walks into dispatch and sets two bottles of ice cold water on the counter and tells me, "I brought these over 'cause I didn't know if ya'll had any water over here." I tell him thanks, and that no we usually don't stock up on water, but I usually bring my own. Then he proceeds to make a quick exit and tells me he guesses he's given what's-his-name enough time to study. I don't think the kid (maybe mid 20's) was in here a total of 2 complete minutes and that's being generous.

If not for his quick exit, I don't think I would have even suspected anything. I've had several of the fire guys over the years come over and sit and talk with me. But this was obviously, hilariously, a case of coming over to check me out, not expecting the old, gray, fat lady he saw when he walked in, and making a hasty, yet polite, departure.

I would have loved to have heard what he told the one "studying" when he got back over there. I think I giggled to myself the rest of the night about that.

Good to know at least my voice still has it!

Rain Pain Ramblings

It is a shame that the intensity of the pain I get during an "episode" does not determine the amount of rain we get. If so... last week we would have been in a hurricane. Instead, the sky spit on us, pointed, laughed, and then ran away. But the pain went away, too, and that's all that really matters.

Today it's back. Sigh.

After I got home from work yesterday morning, I stepped onto the back porch to look about the neighborhood and I heard something rustling in my trash can. I was able to get out of the door without the herd following me and when I looked in, there was a sad opossum looking up at me. I had a very small sack of trash in the really big trash can so there was nothing for him to climb back out once he got in, I guess. The REALLY sad part is that I heard this same rustling the day before yet I failed to go outside and look. Which means... the little guy spent a whole day in the awful heat and two nights in a trash can. ALL of the trash had been chewed on. The trash sack that the garbage was in was completely gone. I don't know if that thing ate it or what. There is a Diet Pepsi can that is full of teeth marks. Half of a styro-foam cup, size large, was gone. I tipped the can over and stepped away and he scuttled out and into my garage. I might water this evening and fill up a pan or something with water and leave it out.
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I did not take the following picture. This was swiped from the outside internets.

Curious...

I wonder how much THIS guy makes?

New Blog To Enjoy

Well... new to me. Just found it. Thought I'd share it. Hope you enjoy it, too.

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

My FarmTown, My Obsession

This is how a farm starts out.

This is my very first farm as it looks now. On FaceBook. I'm furthest along on this one.

This is the second farm I started. Also on FaceBook

This is the third farm I got going. MySpace.

And this one, my last (I promise!... maybe) also on MySpace.

Because I know you really wanted to see.

A New Simon's Cat Video YaY!

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1qHVVbYG8Y

This video made me think of my friend Christy who died almost a year ago. She would have laughed SO hard at this. I miss her still.

Spazz Says "Meow"

It never fails to make me smile when I pull into my drive and see a kitty watching out for me. One of my co-workers said that they do this because they are the look-out for the others that are inside having a party. I tried to explain to him that they have parties while I'm there so there would be no reason for them to hide it. Then we both got a little weirded out by the conversation and we went back to work.

It never fails to break my heart when I pull out of my drive and see a kitty watching me leave... even if I'm just going to the store.

I had a dream yesterday that I was pulling out kitty litter clumps from the catbox with my hands. Not sure what that one is trying to tell me.

I took an impulse day off of work last night. The night before that I rode out with one of my officers. Supervisorally suggested. I think the new guy is going to work out just fine. A couple of hours ago, he and I played Texas Hold'em on Facebook together. He's a crazy fake gambler.

I think this is the first time in my department's history that the guys outnumber the girls 3 to 2... but only if you count the supervisor who does fill in when needed. I can remember a time when I was always the youngest dispatcher. It's a sobering thought to know I will never fill that seat again.

I just put in a new pair of contacts. Life is crisp again.

I've had the same NetFlix movie DVDs at my home for two weeks now. Still haven't watched them. But I regularly use the Watch Instantly feature.

My weather forecast calls for showers in our area in the next day or so.

But I'm NOT Catty!

I mowed my own lawn on Thursday. I noticed as I mowed over the pile of debris left by an unknown party that the pile has turned into a nice fertilized wonder, with St. Augustine grass that has rooted and started to grow, what with all the rain we had last week. Hence... you can always find something good if you look hard enough or wait long enough.

I've been completely sucked in by Face Book. Not only that, but I have spent countless hours, hours that would have been spent blogging about nothing, on a game called Farm Town. My addiction is so bad, I have a second Face Book account now so I can play Farm Town on that, too. And if that wasn't bad enough, my MySpace account that I haven't used since I started Face Book, I'm using for the sole purpose of playing, you guessed it, Farm Town. I've even thought of posting pictures of my "farms"... because seriously... that's all I can think about.

I got an email from someone and it really seemed more of an advertisement than a real email, but they added certain things about my blog that kind of made me think it was a real email. I'm skeptical of most everything, but I decided to take the bait anyway. The email was from Jenna Walsh, on behalf of Tidy Cats. For all I know, you got one, too. Anyway... old Jenna there, was inviting me to participate in a contest by writing a 175 words or less essay on why, just because I have more than one cat, that I shouldn't be lumped into the "negative" stereotypes that people who do NOT own cats have of those of us who do. Things like, being a homebody, a recluse and unsocialable. If I won, I got a years supply of Tidy Cats, $5000 and I would get to appear in a Webisode. Their slogan... “Tidy Cats Campaign to End Cattiness.” There's only one problem. I am a stereotypical crazy cat lady. I thought about writing something sarcastic about how they were not doing the crazy cat people justice by proclaiming the traits of a crazy cat person were negative and I was going to use the word discrimination for 170 of my 175 words... but I had been away from my Farm Town games for more than 15 minutes by this point and I had to get back.

In Training

So I'm training again. Well... not really. He's pretty much been whipped into shape already and we're just tying up some loose ends before we cut the chains and push him into the water to fend for himself. It's often a beautiful tragedy.

The hardest part of training, for me, is filling up the dead air time, which on my shift is 95 percent of the time. So I talk. And talk and talk and talk. Till I can't talk any more and I go into the other room to pass the last hour of the shift playing video games or watching YouTube.

He seems like he's a nice kid, though. He's 20. Both of my children are older than him. Man I'm getting old.

We've had some pretty good rain this past week. Now my lawn needs to be mowed again. I'm going to make an extra special effort to do it on my weekend so's not to feel intensely guilty just in case my neighbor takes it upon himself to mow my yard again. Not that that wouldn't be cool. But I think I would feel obligated to pay him money or something. At least for his gas. And no... I haven't gone and gotten a plant and a thank you card yet, although I have already written a nice note to send along.

I think I'm going to make an early to bed day today. Didn't sleep real well yesterday so I'm hoping for better luck today.

You just go out there and have yourself a wonderful day now... ya hear!?