I Might Be Typing This in My Sleep, But Probably Not

Thursday was an odd day. First and foremost, it would have been my father’s 67th birthday, if he were alive.

The annual big Relay for Life event was in my hometown over the weekend, and the paper has been publishing the list of donations for luminarias as they come in for about the past month – donations made in memory of those who died from cancer or related illnesses, in honor of cancer survivors, and this year, in honor of caretakers. Well, Thursday was also the day that my father’s name appeared as one of those donated in memory of (by a relative of mine). Not so surprising, though somewhat ironic as far as what day it was.

The paper also publishes snippets of news from bygone days frequently – 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago, and sometimes earlier. What was really kind of odd was that 50 years ago, on that same day, the paper showed him and a group of other young men from the county preparing to leave for Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon to attend that year’s Boys State session.

I don’t know. It was just kind of an odd day all around.

I want to thank everyone for the kind notes they’ve been leaving; I could never put into words how very much they are appreciated. There are several of you I have been meaning to e-mail personally for days now, but the kinds of hours I’ve been keeping, and time I’ve been spending lately scrambling around as I have trying to slow down this impending disaster – I sleep at weird times, and when I’m not asleep I’m usually snowed under, and my actual working schedule is usually overnights, so I’m usually awake when everyone else is not and vice versa. Except I also will just (when I’m not doing shift work) go for several hours, pass out for two or three or four hours, get up and go some more trying to get stuff done. But many of you will hear from me personally soon, I promise (and KathyT, I did e-mail you and hope you got it, sorry it took five days before I heard the voice mail, oops).

And thanks to many especially for the kind words about Dobie. He was here for so long, and still my “baby puppy” even when he was old and his health failing, and it’s still very hard to believe that he’s really gone. I have a very nice picture to share that my mom took at Christmas when I had to take him with me because of his failing condition, which has wound up being the last taken of so very many that were taken of him over fifteen years. But I can’t really look at it much yet, so I’ll save it for a day when I can.

I probably need to write some more about all the horrible stuff that’s going on and why things have disintegrated to the disastrous point they have, but I’m not really sure how to put it into words here because there’s really only so much I can say publicly – and for good reasons. But it sucks, because for those same reasons, I’ve sort of been stuck fighting this battle on my own almost, and with no one I could really be open with about the details other than my very closest family and friends.

But I will do all of that soon. Unfortunately a good bit of this week is going to be focused on probably selling what little I have left that is worth anything at all (not much, but a little) that is truly just mine – a few things that would have been, I guess you’d say, family heirloom-type stuff if I were leaving anything behind one day. Not that I’m likely going to have children or anything like that at this point, but you know – stuff I never dreamed I’d ever be forced to part with, not like this. I guess if I outlive my mom (doubtful), there’s still a houseful of family things – but nothing that’s just mine, except these few things it looks like I’m going to have to part with.

It’s not much – I guess that’s the worst joke of all about all this stuff, I’m not dealing with thousands upon thousands here and it’d probably be a whole lot easier to swallow if that were the case – but no, there’s only about a grand or two standing between me and complete disaster. Much less than 2K, really, more like about 1.5. That’s the part that really stinks, that in the grand scheme of things, it’s not really all that much. But the problem is now I’ve run out of time is all.

In trying to think things through – and coming to the conclusion there were really no more options anymore but the one thing I have tried for over a year now NOT to have to do – it’s occurred to me that no matter how tough things might be right now, that really doesn’t bother me nearly as much as thinking about how I’m going to feel about it all a year from now, or two years from now, or five or ten years from now – when presumably things will probably be better, but stuff that meant something to me – things bought with me in mind and given to me for very specific reasons – will be gone. And I just can’t even let myself think about all that right now.

Anyway, this week will be busy busy – and I need to get going now as it is, much to do and much to finish – but I’m going to try and keep at the blog again, even if it’s just stupid stuff. Aside from all the awfulness of late, there’s also some really funny stuff I’ve been saving up to share. And I’ll be trying to get some personal e-mailing done this week and next too, some of you I’d been meaning to touch base with anyway and either the constant need-to-do-this or constant passing out cold from exhaustion kept waylaying. So will speak to many of you soon, and will definitely be back here shortly, as soon as I wrap up one big project that has tied me up for months. ’til then…

The Miracle of Malwarebytes

Well, that’s seven hours of my life I will never get back.  I have spent most of the day since I woke up again (after working late last night) trying to rid my newish computer of a particularly nasty strain of malware/trojan/etc. that I’ve acquired before, but the last time I had it, that strain was more easily eradicated.

This one refused to be killed.  As many know, I have a pretty large stable of protection programs of various kinds, and generally my computer is usually probably locked up tighter than Ft. Knox.  None of my usual stable of stuff was working this time – all of which are generally excellent – nor about a half dozen more things I tried in the process.  This thing just wasn’t going away.

Doubly sucks that I wound up with because of a stupid web page.  I suppose I have a little bit of respect for the hackers that come up with executable virii & trojans, the ones you actually have to open up or DO something to get infected.  I even have a friend who was one of those folks in his younger and stupider days.  These drive-by web page weenies are just cowards and ought to be prosecutable to the fullest extent of the law.

Well, anyway, to make a long story short, after hours and hours and going through virtually every other program in my stable ‘o stuff which are all generally excellent and reliable, without a single one working to rid myself of this nasty piece of coward-created work -

Folks, I hereby present to you Malwarebytes.  It was the ONLY one out of about twenty attempts with other programs to rid myself of this thing, and hours and hours of trying, that worked.  I’m a believer now, and am probably going to be replacing one of my usual standards of protection with it, most likely.

I’m not much for commercial endorsements of any kind, but given the circumstances and the outcome, seemed like I ought to share.

On another note, apologies for the lack of anything much since Christmas.  I’ve really been much too busy trying to stay afloat and not homeless and totally starving (as opposed to starving three or four days out of the week in general) and all that fun stuff.  More soon, I hope.

The Usual, Unfortunately

Here’s yet another example of how rotten my luck is (and notably has been for some time).  I was getting ready to work on a project a couple of days ago that I badly needed to work on and finish before Christmas got much closer, and as I sat down at the computer all motivated and ready to get productive – the power went out.  Because at the house next door, they were chopping limbs off a tree… but had to get the utility company to kill my power line to do it.

The power was out for, I don’t know, seven or eight, maybe nine hours.  Just mine.  Not the house where the tree is.

In fact, the worker chopping the tree got through about 3:45, and had made several calls, but over two hours later, the utility company had yet to come back and put the (live) line back up.  So I called them too.  They finally showed up after 7 p.m., and by then it was really too late to do anything.

There’s something else I need to get done, but I need a large shipment of (free) Priority Mail boxes from the postal service to be able to do it.  I’ve been waiting a while.  I realize it’s the Christmas season and all with the mail, but just yet another monkey wrench thrown my way.  At this point, even though I badly need to get this done, I’m thinking maybe I’m better off waiting until after Christmas anyway.  Maybe people will have more money to spend on stuff they want but don’t necessarily need (which is what this project mainly consists of) by then.

In any case, I just can’t really catch a break lately.  There’s always something somewhere throwing a monkey wrench into everything.

I applied for a couple of jobs recently.  The very next week, both organizations announced major layoffs and a hiring freeze.

I’m very tired of things like having to choose between buying groceries or putting gas in the car.  Or whether to buy food to eat, or buy paper towels and toilet tissue.

It’s too bad I have to buy groceries at all, since it seems like nearly all the things I have to buy that are necessities have gone up 75-100% practically in the last few months.  Some of them have even gone up that much – yet the packaging has gotten smaller, there’s less of whatever it is in the package.  Other stuff is the same price but now, like, 11 ounces of whatever instead of 16.

Seems like I’ve been saying for months when will this all end?  Seems like it’s not going to.

People close to me will help, but by the time I’ve gotten another round or two of groceries and other necessities or bills paid, there’s nothing left and I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to make $1.49 or so stretch out for weeks again.  I need to put gas in the car again later this week and I’m thinking, OK, now how am I going to do that?

I eat maybe three, four times a week.  I know that’s not good.  But I do things like last week when I made the mistake, after having craved it for days and being hungry as heck anyway, of spending a little extra (less than ten bucks) on a spaghetti dinner from a fave joint around here.  Now I’m wishing I hadn’t and had that ten bucks back.

I have cut back virtually everything, pretty much, until there is no more.  The utilities are almost two months behind again, as that’s pretty much stayed for months now – it’ll get paid somehow.  I wouldn’t have Internet anymore I suppose, except since that’s my sole source of income I can’t very well not have that – of course if the utilities get cut off – well, you know.

Christmas?  I don’t get to participate in Christmas for the second year in a row.  I mean, we’ll have it, and it’ll be fine and nice and all that.  But I can’t buy anything for anyone, and just be opening presents I’ll wish nobody would have bought me since I can’t do anything myself.  I do have one thing for my sister that I just happened to wind up with, but I didn’t really intentionally go out and get it as a Christmas gift.  That’ll be it.

I’ve built up some residual recurring income.  It’s small now, but it will get better.  It’s just stuff that takes some time to grow and is going to continue to.  But it’s not going to solve any big problems right away, that’s for sure.

I do some work but there are issues with that too.  Always issues.  I’m actually constantly working, almost around the clock, sleep here and there when I finally crash, get up and get to work on something else again.  It’s some income, but not enough.  Working on other things too but again, more stuff that’s going to take time for anything to come of it.

I’m just really, really tired of it all.  Sorry.  I probably wouldn’t read here anymore for all the repetitive doom and gloom there’s been either.

Dobie is in such decline that I don’t really think we have much longer.  He is so frail and skinny now, it just breaks my heart.  And that in itself – him getting so frail and thin and pitiful, as well as blind – has posed all kinds of new problems, like today when he got stuck somewhere I wasn’t sure for a while I was going to be able to get him out of.  Last week he got a foot and claw stuck in the old furnace grill and I wasn’t sure I was going to get him loose from that either.  I keep thinking what if he does something like that sometime when I’m (rarely as I am) away from home and is stuck like that for hours?

He and the only other extremely elderly pet left are really throwing me for a loop.  Neither of them are eating as much as they should, although the cat is really doing all right otherwise for her 17 or so years.  It takes her hours to eat when she does eat, though, and she spends most of her time in there talking to her food.  Which is kind of funny, yes, but she’s always had this habit of talking to inanimate objects, starting with a roll of duct tape that was on the floor once years ago.

I always was big into Christmas.  I was thinking the other day of how nice it always used to be between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We’d have the tree up and on every night, and my parents had all this Christmas music on a couple of reel-to-reel tapes that were usually playing every night, and I’d just hang out laying with my head under the Christmas tree listening to music and looking at the lights and ornaments most every night.

Back when people used to have time to enjoy stuff like that, anyway.

I’d do the same at my grandmother’s house.  I remember what all the Christmas decorations she used to pull out every year looked like – probably because I was always helping get them out and put them up – even though I haven’t seen most of them in 25 years.  I guess my aunt still has most of them, I don’t know.  I don’t think there’s really anything I wish I had of all that stuff, except for maybe the little lighted Christmas trees that probably actually originally belonged to my great-grandmother.  There were two of them – one was silver and one was green – they weren’t anything special, just aluminum or tin with a light inside, and colored cellophane or something that made them look like they had lights on them.  Probably from the Fifties or Forties, maybe earlier.  They always sat on the end tables in my grandmother’s living room which, before that, was my great-grandmother’s living room.

I’m older now than my mother was when I left home for college.  Have I already written that here before?  I can’t remember.

So, enough joy and good will to men from me for now.  Maybe sometime I’ll have something better or funny to write about, there just isn’t lately or I’m too busy anyway.

I was about to write that at least Tojo has been staying mostly out of trouble lately, but I just reached over to move him as he was standing over Maggie looking like he was about to jump on her (again), and he bit me (not hard).  So there’s that, too.

Sometimes It Just Doesn’t Pay to Do the Right Thing

So, the IRS is holding my money hostage.

See, I filed my taxes late (we all know why), and when I did, I (of course) paid what I knew I owed. Knowing that they would also be billing me for the penalty later.

Well, it turns out that they deducted what I owed AND the penalty from – you guessed it – my economic stimulus payment. So now what I paid them that it seems I didn’t HAVE to is floating around somewhere in the bowels of the IRS for nearly two months now and strangled in bureaucratic red tape, I suppose, because it would be too EASY apparently to turn around and send me the money I didn’t have to pay them back anytime soon.

Of course, if there had not been an economic stimulus hooha this year, and I hadn’t paid them what I owed them when I filed – well, we all know how that would have turned out.

It just doesn’t pay to do the right thing sometimes.

UPDATE: Since I originally wrote the above, I have since learned that I will be getting my refund on August 18th.  But still – grrr.

After Waiting in Line Almost An Hour, Too

Remember this?

Guess who failed inspection and can’t get her car registered right now? (Even with the most expensive registration rates in the whole danged state, which is still beyond my comprehension.) That stupid crack is not even in my line of vision.

I hate this city more every day. Having just waded thru posts from ten and eleven years ago when I still loved it here, it’s even more surreal to me how much I hate it.

PS Murphy Just Loves Me

Oh, I forgot the best parts/slash/salt in the wound about that last post about me being short $1.16.

1. I had to spend $2.68 on a flea collar today, which was the first flea collar I’ve had to buy in at least 10 years, maybe 15. I’ll spare you the yucky details, but (of course) it involves Tojo the Psycho Cat.
2. I actually did receive a check in the mail for $9.50 today. Unfortunately, my wonderful mailman I’ve had for years (and always came in the morning) has apparently either retired, quit, or is on an extended vacation, and in his place is a creature who it would seem does the route in reverse – therefore being late as all get out, sometimes after business hours no less. And is about the unfriendliest sourpuss of a postal worker I’ve ever seen, though that’s beside the point. Anyway, the check arrived too late to get it in today’s deposit at the bank.

The hits just keep on coming and my luck continues to suck. But again – California!

Bits & Pieces, Or Just Bits ‘Cos I Don’t Have Time for the Pieces Right Now

There’s just really no time to be spared, so pardon me for this hit & run update.

1. A little while ago, I ate a cheese Krystal – because I was badly in need of food that I could get quick and didn’t have to cook and it was 3 in the morning – and it was unbelievably, horribly, terribly, awfully & ungodly bad. I have never had a Krystal that tasted that disgustingly, putridly bad in my life. Yes, I realize that Krystals are not haute cuisine, but come on – it’s a Krystal. How can you screw up a Krystal that bad?? If I die in my sleep here in a little bit, you’ll know what happened. Blech. A shoe sole would have tasted better I think.

2. I’ve been eating entirely too much fast food lately anyway, which is kind of okay because I never eat anyway and all I ever get is, like, one little McDonald’s cheeseburger, and they’re all of a dollar and I DO NOT HAVE TIME to cook. But let’s not talk about the fact that in the past two weeks I’ve been served (A) a cheeseburger that was between two top buns, and (B) got home one day and opened the bag to discover I had a top & bottom bun with cheese in the middle – and no burger. Wake up, people! I know it’s just an unimportant $1.00 cheeseburger, but it might just be someone’s only meal of the day that you totally screw up.

3. I know I shouldn’t have laughed because they’re both elderly and one’s a little sickly and might be a bit senile, but watching not just one but two of my cats fall off the desk a few minutes ago, within a few minutes of each other, with an empty chip bag (the small 99-cent Big Grab size) on their heads was almost as funny as a few years ago when my elderly then-16-year old cat got his head stuck inside an empty Krystal Chik box.

4. On a not-as-amusing note, Maggie’s (same Maggie as in the pic above) new favorite place to nap is with her head on the edge of my keyboard, which usually eventually occurs to me at some point after being puzzled as to why I’m typing in all caps or ““““` is appearing on the screen again.

5. I am apparently now completely and totally assimilated into the electronic communications world at this point, because now that my fax AND my printer are both borked, and a fax that I needed to get where it needed to go so I could start getting some commission payments didn’t go through because that dinosaur of a mid-’90s era fax that I inherited from my old office is totally dead now… it took about a month for it to finally occur to me that I could just put a stamp on an envelope and MAIL it.

6. Besides the petered out fax and printer, now my desktop is apparently on its last legs too – I’ve known it was coming, was hoping to hold it off a little longer, seeing as how that’s pretty distressing since I do 100% of my work on this computer these days – but it spit out a frightening serious error at me the other day and threatened to not start (but it eventually did). In the course of seeing what I could afford to ditch in an effort to get it speeded up a little and prepare to defragment the drive for the first time in I dunno how long, after going through some other directories, I took note of the millions of Notepad files I’ve got saved to the desktop – and had a bit of a chuckle over the title of some of those files, such as: CLC Links Widget, WP Tutorial, Moved Blogs, kathyt, kathyt Links Widget, More Moved Blogs, B Blogger Template, one simply titled B, B Tutorial (yes, I don’t remember why I felt I needed to make her her own instead of giving her the one I gave everyone else), and Sarcastro Stuff (which reminds me yet again that I STILL need to repost all his old photos one of these days, ugh). Anyway, giggle – yeah, I’m a blog geek.

7. There are angels in the blogosphere and in my MySpacesphere too. Angels, I tell you.

8. I’m so tired I don’t have time to BREATHE, and I don’t have time anyway because I have way too much work and projects to do. This staying up for a day and a half at a time, sleeping a few hours and starting all over again is getting a little old. I’ve been up again for about 38 or 39 hours now and worked straight through for about 22 well, really about 29 or 30, of those, so yeah – ‘scuse me if I’m a little loopy right now.

That is all. But seriously, if I don’t at least show up for a minute on Twitter by tonight? Food poisoning. Ugh, a nasty, dirty, filthy shoe sole would have no doubt tasted better. Yuck.

9. (Yes, Lesley and Brittney, I know I shouldn’t eat meat anyway.)

10. (But still – it’s a Krystal! How can anyone screw up a Krystal??)

11. Zzzzzz…

Waiting & Seeing

The Twitterites know this already, but I have a most interesting working prospect on the line today.  I’m not really sure yet whether it’s sorta-permanent or not, but it’s something along the lines of what I would love to do and never thought I would actually have the opportunity to do and get paid a cent for it, nope; and believe me, at this point something would be better than nothing, nada, zilch.  Anyway, keep fingers crossed and send good karma.  Even if it’s not forever, it might be a little bit better than what lately has amounted to putting a Band-Aid on a gaping and gushing wound (and might at least open the door for some other opportunities in the same vein).

In other news, the two boy dogs that can barely stand each other got in a big fight a while ago – which I despise because it scares me to death when they do that – and one brother is limping while the other one mostly just has his feelings hurt about me getting so mad at them.  Since their last big run-in with the dog next door – which, granted, has been a pretty long while ago now, it’s not like this stuff happens all the time – and after some investigation of pet advice pros, I have figured out that if I grab the one that’s likely to do more damage by his back legs, that usually settles it.  The other one and the third brother who wasn’t involved this time are really pretty incapable of inflicting much damage, though getting him to leave his bigger brother alone was a little problematic, but finally everybody calmed down.  Well, except me, who was still pumping adrenalin for another hour or so.

Apologies about the lack of anything besides LOLdogz last week.  It was kind of a really sucky week.

So hello, my name is Lynnster and I’m a music junkie.  Or music geek, I suppose, though I favor the former more myself.  Oh, you knew that already, huh?

Hello, It’s Me

Dobie & His Cat, Rocky… or Vice Versa

Originally uploaded by LynnsterZone.

Well, time for my once a month post again, I guess. Except I have kinda sorta made up my mind I’m going to start blogging daily or almost again, even if it’s not much of nothing but a couple of sentences or even if it’s just – whatever.

As for me & what all’s going on with me, things could not possibly be much worse than they are right now and have been for a few months now. I guess there’s a few things that could be worse but really, comparatively, at this point most of those wouldn’t make much of a difference. I’ll spare you and me both the gory details for now because it’s just too icky to all get into, and since I live with it day after crummy day after crummy day, I’d just as soon not infect my blog with it the way it has everything else in my life. So for now, let’s just say it’s pretty bad and just move on from there.

In other news, Rocky left our happy little zoo a few weeks ago. He was ten years old and this more often affects older cats, but he had been in old-age kidney failure for some time and when a respiratory bug hit most of the felines in the house in January, he was unable to withstand it. I have another older one also in declining health who is still struggling a bit with the bug (she’s 16), but she’s improved and back to her usual grumpy and neurotic self now.

Anyway, here is one my favorite pictures of Rocky with his dog, Dobie. I never really knew whether Dobie was Rocky’s cat or Rocky was Dobie’s dog. The night Rocky passed, two of the other cats (“little sister” Missy, and Schuyler) and Dobie stayed right by his side until he was gone.

Huh…

So, in recent weeks/months, I have somehow gotten myself (by way of my usual sucky horrid luck, I’m sure) in the middle of two VERY separate and very distinct situations that I can say in all certainty that I have never, ever, EVER been even really remotely in the slightest bit at all ever before. Ever. Not even close.

I guess it just goes to show you that anything can happen and life really is full of surprises, shocking discoveries, and stuff that makes you want to pull your hair out and bang your head against a wall, huh.

OK, I can’t believe I just typed that (my mom knows why). But also, make that THREE very separate and very distinct situations, matter of fact and come to think of it.

Really I’m just completely puzzled and dumbfounded and how things turn out is really anybody’s guess, but wow.

OK, now my head hurts… don’t mind me, I’ll just sit here with my head cocked to one side, playing with my fingernails, and going, “Huh,” some more.