So now that I’ve got all the other out of the way, a little post about things good and bad, but neither of which have anything to do with how poor I am or Michael Jackson.

Bad - the heat. My car registered 107 degrees the other day. I think it got down to 105 by the time I got from Kroger back to the house. The heat index was 113 that same day. It’s been like this for about a week and is not supposed to break at all until after Tuesday – there’s two spots of rain in the forecast between then and now, but I don’t have much hope it’s really going to happen (it’s rained in Nashville and Knoxville a couple of times the past week or so, but not a drop here). I have been in discussions online on and off with friends from all over the country (and the world, for that matter) this past week and I don’t care how cold you are or how sick of rain you are – I’ll trade. Immediately.

More Bad – Little has had another bout of old age vestibular disease this week, which some may recall this time last year I was dealing with that with both her and Dobie at almost the same time. Dobie’s was much more pronounced and took a much longer time for recovery; with her, once again by the next day she was better and is continuing to do better. She’s a 17 or 18 year old cat (I can never remember which year she arrived as a baby) so these things are to be expected, but it’s like a stroke and it’s so frightening and unnerving – I think even more so with cats, since they like to get in higher places and the first couple of days she flatly tossed herself off her perch and scared me to death. But she is much better now. I am starting to wonder if this is heat-related, though I read a pretty voluminous amount of information on the syndrome last year (both canine and feline related) and don’t recall any mention of that.

Good - my Rite Aid box fan. I’d forgotten about that thing. I bought it a few years ago when the AC went out and was having to be replaced. After several days of the above heat already come this past Tuesday, and then reading that it wasn’t going to break at all until maybe next Wednesday, I thought I was probably going to be suicidal come the weekend. I have air, but my window unit that usually does a pretty decent job in the summertime just can’t handle this kind of heat and for this extended a period.

Then I remembered the box fan. I would have NEVER guessed it would make the difference it has, but it has. Granted, really over here in my one little corner in the room with the computer and Internet, but that’s where I am almost all the time anyway. In the afternoon after noon or 1:00 or so, it’s still getting a little stuffy in here – but NOTHING like the completely intolerable horrific awful heat it was before I got the fan out. Much, MUCH better. And I’ve even been COLD sometimes in the early mornings or middle of the night this week and had to turn it off. Rock!!!

Even More Good – In their old age, and especially as Dobie’s health went into the serious decline it did the last year or so of his life, Dobie and Lulu both developed some incontinence problems – especially Dobie. Though it’s still very hard to believe he’s gone and makes me sad, one kind of unexpected plus has popped up since his passing – even though they turned five years old last month, I really had no idea that the young’ns are as well house trained as they apparently are! They’re not perfect – with me living alone and my sleeping schedule being all out of whack and not really a schedule, on the off chance I actually do sleep a whole lot and probably more than I should instead of my usual three or four hour catnaps here and there, occasionally there’s an accident, but rarely. They are, for all practical purposes, beautifully housetrained! Daisy doesn’t surprise me because she’s perfect anyway (heh), but it is kind of shocking to me just how well her brothers are.

On the one hand, it’s a pleasant surprise to discover just how really well trained that way they are when, with them, I never really did even try all that hard when they were very young because I was still working out of the house and not here a lot.  On the other hand, that makes Dobie’s frequent accidents (even long before he ever got sick) a little frustrating seeing as how I DID make an effort with him when he was young. Go figure.

In any case, hope everyone has a great weekend! I have been so pitifully socially deprived working around the clock so much, I’m really looking forward to meeting up with KathyT and Melissa on Sunday, so more on that later in the weekend or Monday, I’m sure.

So one of the things I’d been meaning to write about this week was sort of a little clarification to what my situation is/has been. I know (especially after talking with KathyT this morning, and talking with her and Aunt B. and Kat Coble in recent weeks, though I can kind of tell from what Kathy said today that I probably don’t really understand the full scope of all this just yet) – anyway, I know there’s been some stuff going on on my behalf, more or less, and I really don’t have words to express the gratitude and appreciation I feel about that, no matter what Kathy is bringing to me Sunday. When it comes to things like that I pretty much just dissolve into tears and sniffles, I’m worthless that way.

Anyway, that said – even though I know anyone and everyone involved would probably insist I don’t owe anyone any explanations – I feel like I still need to sort of clarify some things and attempt to explain a little, or at least some of what I possibly can publicly, about how and why things got this bad. Unfortunately there’s not a whole lot I can really go into here on the blog, for several reasons.

As many of you will remember, things were already kind of bad and shaky prior to last fall, though looking back NOW, those struggles look like a piece of cake compared to what I’ve been dealing with the last many months.

The best way I really know how to explain what’s happened now is for those of you that have traditional jobs, or have had them up until recently, to imagine not getting paid since, say, October or November. Or imagine only getting paid enough every month to pay your rent or house payment.

That’s pretty much exactly what I’ve been dealing with, more or less. I can’t really say more publicly – not because of anything illegal, or anything of that sort – just out of respect for other people’s feelings due to the circumstances, I am choosing not to talk about it at length publicly. I have shared more of the details with a few, and if I know you, I’m happy to forward a copy of the e-mail I sent in those cases, or they can, or whatever, or we’ll talk about it over a meal sometime if I ever get to Nashville again or whatever. I don’t mind my friends knowing more about the situation, I’m just not going to blog about it on that public level.

But that’s pretty much what happened, and I’ve been scrambling ever since trying not to drown under what’s been a flood of never-ending stress and anxiety and I suppose terror, even, because of all the behind-ness that situation has wrought. All that behind-ness usually made even worse because, for a while there, every month would roll around and something still wouldn’t have been taken care of, so now there was an urgent need to get this paid or that paid – which has meant ongoing late fees and, on several occasions, overdraft fees trying to keep something or another from getting canceled or cut off. I’ve probably paid another year’s worth or more of car payments alone just in late fees all these months, but there was nothing else that could be done about it.

In all the cutting back and cutting out, somewhat fortunately I guess there were a few things that weren’t an issue when things grew so dire. I actually cut out cable a few years ago, when I still had a regular paycheck coming in, because I was spending so much more time online anyway and everything I watched much was available online, I just really couldn’t justify shelling out that kind of money every month anymore.

Same thing with my cell service. I’ve never been a big cell phone user and mainly carry mine for emergency purposes more than anything else. I couldn’t justify all that contract money anymore so I went to cheap and prepaid ages ago, and not only have been all the better for it but have more coverage than I did with my previous provider anyway and rarely any of the problems I had before with dropped calls and such. My mom has used the same prepaid service for years so now that’s just part of my birthday present every year, air time, and I never use a whole year’s worth in a year anyway.

So those were not issues – everything else has been, in any case. My mom wasn’t going to let me starve or anything, and has gone far and beyond the call of duty again and again and again all these months trying to help save me from disaster, to the point where she really has no extra to keep sparing. What I hate the most is that, for months and months, she believed everything was going to be okay the next month because I thought it was going to be – only for that month to come around and nope, and there we’d be scrambling to keep my utilities from getting turned off or this paid or that paid. She didn’t go on her usual vacation last year because of me, and if it weren’t for Social Security kicking in this year, I’d probably already be homeless and she would not be on vacation right now. Then there’s the boyfriend who is unable to work right now and wants nothing more than to be able to provide for me/us, and maybe in a couple of years we will be a two-income family and all of this current stuff will just be a bad memory – but that’s then, and this is now, and now sucks.

Anyway, as I wrote before, after this many months of struggling like this, it had gotten to be end of the rope time, there was nothing left. Have sold almost everything I had left to sell other than the one thing(s) that are the only “family heirloom” type thing that is just mine, no one else’s, that I have left, stuff I mentioned in a recent post – and that may well still go, and is not worth all that much anyway. Well, there is one other thing, but I’ve got to get up home to be able to do that and haven’t really been looking forward to dealing with that anyway (i.e., potentially shipping some things that are very, very breakable) and am actually probably going to make a blog post about it next week – this is something that is not only a pain to think about selling and shipping via eBay or something, but is also something really only a small percentage of people would be interested in owning. I’m thinking with the power of the Internet, I might find that person between now and Christmas and solve this problem; otherwise, it’ll be going up on eBay probably about the time people start Christmas shopping.

But yeah, really, like I said – think about your job, if you have one. And then think about not getting paid or only getting paid one bill’s worth every month since last fall, and that’s pretty much right where I am, and have been.

Other possibilities – there’s so many people going for every job that comes up, and a friend of mine here in town who is in charge of hiring where she is told me lately it’s nothing like it has ever been. Instead of 25 or 50 resumes coming in for every job she posts, she’s getting 200. Then there’s the other ones – the ones I’m way overqualified for and so is most everyone else – someone I know who hires for a place like that put it this way: why would he hire anyone that’s likely to leave as soon as the economy gets better or something else comes up? He, too, is seeing hundreds of applications for every position that opens, and in the case of his business, he says about 90% of them are overqualified, or maybe qualified to have HIS job – but not the position that’s open.

But the other thing is – and I think maybe there are some others out there that missed this, because Kathy didn’t realize it, though I know not everyone missed it because several, including The Awesomest Squirrel Queen in the World, commented on it when I mentioned it before – I actually AM working, besides what I have not been paid for. I actually really like my new gig doing QA work, it doesn’t pay much but it’s steady, but at least it does pay SOMETHING. I also do some other freelance work to bring in a little, and then there’s my other venture, which many of you have been aware of for a while, which is still continuing to steadily grow, though penny by penny, and that’s pretty much literally. It is growing, however, and I’ve built a foundation of what should (unless the whole industry hoses) continue to be residual income that grows. As it is, what started out as a little venture with big plans brought in over a year’s time what would have been nice “extra” money… if it hadn’t almost been my ONLY money.

I really do almost nothing BUT work to bring in what little I do – if I’m not working on one thing, it’s something else, or something else, or doing QA work, all day every day. Sleep for three or four hours, get up and scramble to bring in some money some more. Just been a constant ongoing thing and probably needless to say, I stay exhausted.

But I am, much like I said before, finally at a point where if I can just get a grip on the backlog, getting by month to month again is within my reach. It may require 80 hours a week of doing QA reviews, but I’m finally to a point where being able to get by every month, even if it’s just barely squeaking by, is possible.

But that’s what’s so frustrating about all this backlog that has just been stacking up and stacking up all these months struggling through this and staying perpetually behind – two months behind on this bill, a month behind on that bill, every once in a while three months behind and barely saving myself before cutoff/cancellations or losing everything. That much stress and anxiety is not good for anyone and it’s just consumed me daily for months and been downright frightening plenty – I probably need to be on medication at this point but much like my glasses that have needed to be replaced for a couple of years now, teeth that need to be fixed, my stupid broken windshield that got broken while sitting in my driveway during a storm (yep, that’s my luck) and some other stuff that I have just had to put on hold (including stuff people normally absolutely do not NOT pay every year – read into that what you want and you’re probably right) – well, anything extraneous is just out of the question completely right now. My glasses may be all scratched up and my prescription’s probably long since changed again, but as long as I can see out of them, whatever, and I still have a partial supply of contacts left from a few years ago that probably also need a prescription change, but for going out of the house purposes, they’ll do just fine until I can actually do something about it all again.

Anyway, so there you have it, what I can say publicly anyway, and I don’t want to keep going on about it here but it’s sort of my understanding that several people have been involved in trying to help and even though I really don’t know the full scope of it all yet, I just wanted to clarify and better outline a little more than I did before, maybe. Especially in trying to give an example of what it really is I’ve been dealing with, and also – especially after realizing that Kathy didn’t realize I am working at all – to clarify that I am doing work, and doing other things to try and fix all this. It’s just not much money, but at least it’s a little.

I’m also going to do something that I never intended to do, but it was suggested to me by someone else that maybe I ought to put a donation button on the blog in case there were those that wanted to help but didn’t want to take a chance on embarrassing me by asking, or whatever. Believe me, at this point with things as bad as they’ve gotten and after months and months of struggling and dealing with this stuff, I’m beyond any embarrassment or anything of the sort about accepting any help and stuff. I know some have already done plenty and they’ve done enough, and I’m not going to think anything negative about anyone who doesn’t, but for anyone else who just happens along and wants to, or has, I’m humbled and beyond words when it comes to appreciation and gratitude of those who do or have. So there it is and I’ll be putting it in the sidebar to stay, I guess.

I just can’t really put into words how not only depressing but just plain frightening it’s all been. My anxiety and stress levels have been so high and so constantly for so long, and with a pretty huge family history of both stroke and heart disease, even all the more frightening to be that stressed out all the time. There was a very scary couple or three days in December that I really don’t ever want to relive again, and I’d like to think I’m handling all that anxiety and depression a little better than I was at that particular time, but then there’s weeks like last week, when ’round about Wednesday evening, it occurred to me that the reason I was feeling sick and dizzy was probably because I hadn’t really realized it, but I had spent most of the last three days holding my breath repeatedly because I was so worried about how I was going to take care of what needed to be paid that week. That kind of anxiety.

I just want to be able to breathe again, and not be in a constant state like that almost 24/7 for weeks and months at a time. And be able to sleep more than a fitful three or four hours waking up worrying some more. And maybe only spend, say, 18 hours a day desperately trying to make some income instead of 20 or 22. That would be an improvement.

I do know this. I may not have much else left at this point, but my family and loved ones, and friends blogger and non-blogger alike, and an awful lot of acquaintances as well – you’re all just treasures. I wish I had the right words to fully express how grateful I am and how much I appreciate and heart all of you, but as I said above, times like that, words just start failing me and I just start getting teary-eyed and sniffly instead. So please just know I do. If you’re reading this, then you are most likely one of those treasures and you’re just so fabulous I have no words left to say but that I’m proud to know you and that you crossed my path, wherever and however you did. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

There were several things I wanted to write about and get out of my head before what’s to be a long work weekend (except for Sunday when I get to hang out with KathyT, yay) gets cranked up. One of the things I was planning to write about was NOT Michael Jackson.

And even yesterday after the news hit that he’d died, I still wasn’t planning to write about it. But after 24 hours of reading various convos of all kinds in many places, this getting brought up and that getting brought up, the wheels kept turning in my head and, next thing I knew, I was writing about Michael Jackson.

Since it’s music-related, I posted it on my music blog instead of here – and I know not everyone that follows the Zone follows that one as well – but if you wanna read it, it’s here.

So, here I sit on the western side of the state, where there hasn’t been a raindrop all day, once yet again witnessing on Twitter while all my friends in Nashville are Tweeting about the tornadoes/storms/whatever coming through there once yet again. Deja vu.

Of course, we just had our own little dance with straight line winds last Friday that took out a good bit of Memphis greenery, and again on Sunday. I had not gotten out of the house since before the weekend, and was quite shocked yesterday to discover a tree about the size of my house fully uprooted and laying in the yard of someone’s home around the corner from me and about six or seven houses down, not to mention the landscape dotted with trees through roofs of various houses on my route to the grocery store. There wasn’t, like, this massive and constant scene of destruction like with Hurricane Elvis or the infamous ice storm of ‘94, but there was at least one house on every street between my house and Kroger that had (or had had) a tree stuck in its roof.

As for Middle Tennessee, the wrath of Mother Nature is still winding its way through and I’m watching various friends Tweeting and checking in either to say everything’s okay, or they’re headed for cover, or it’s passed and look at this poor demolished tree in Aunt B.’s yard. (She’s more upset about the power being out, though, as would I be – it’s frickin’ hot down here for June right now.)

I don’t know what’s worse – being smack in the middle of one, or watching like this from afar when people you care about could be in danger. Well, I do know what’s worse, but they’re both pretty bad. My mom can probably relate to the latter – I’m sure the 15-20 minutes or so between the first call and my second call to her wasn’t fun the night I got stuck in one of Tennessee’s most severe tornadoes of all time. First I called her from the interstate to ask if they were saying on TV there was a tornado warning; 20 minutes or so later, I was calling back to report I was okay, save for my tornado-pummeled and totaled car with the completely cracked windshield.

I did agree with a commenter somewhere or another on one of the Memphis media sites that it was rather laughable how the tornado sirens in the center city went off AFTER the storm had passed through on Friday.

Glancing at Twitter again. Aunt B. reporting that her neighbor’s car is under a tree. Fun, fun.

Quote that made me giggle of the day: @jimreams (the entity formerly known as the Nashville Knucklehead): I’m glad I live in South Nashville. Tornadoes don’t speak Spanish.

LeBlanc has baby kittens that need a home and are as cute as can be. He and the Missus wound up with eleven and successfully found homes for most, but two cute little tabby girls are still in need of a home. They are somewhat inexplicably named Clint Eastwood and Paul Stanley at present (heh), but I feel certain he won’t mind if they receive new feminine names upon adoption, if one so desires.

Most likely if you are anywhere in the Middle Tennessee area and in need of kittenage, he’ll be happy to work something out. Get in touch with him if interested.

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…

Well, I hemmed and hawed and sighed a while over it, and then I decided I really couldn’t go posting over there without posting over here, too, so… here I am. Just saying hi.

Things are… well, as bad as ever, to be honest. Worse, really. I’m sort of at the end of my rope phase, though I don’t really know what that means because, you know, what’s next? Been drowning a while, just not underwater completely yet, I guess.

I haven’t been writing for a while, really, because (A) there really hasn’t been that much interesting to write about; (B) I’m depressed enough as it is without having to read the hows and whys in black & white; and (C) out of respect for some of the members of my family who do occasionally visit here, I just don’t really want to hash out the gory details of it all on the blog. No parent really wants to know their child (no matter how old they are) is hungry, or frightened, or a lot of other things that are really much worse and it’s really just all better left in the unknown. As unpleasant as the last year and a half has been for me, it’s probably been a lot harder on those who care about me, especially one.

I’ve learned that I can eat on about a dollar a day, or less – that’s just luck, though, since I’ve never been much of an eater and rarely eat more than one meal a day anyway. I’m very tired of repeatedly being in the position of having absolutely no idea how anything’s getting paid this month – where I am again right now – other than rent, which is the one thing I do manage to make every month. For now.

It’s sort of a sick twist that I’m actually in a position where I could at least regain control of monthly living expenses again – if I wasn’t already so very far behind. I got bumped up to QA reviewer for one of the services I’ve been working for for a while now, which is a little more like a “real” job and is steady work, better pay, and something I can possibly eke out a living on – maybe not a great one, but enough – along with the little bits I bring here and there from this or that.

But again, unfortunately I’m so horrifically behind (and have probably paid for a couple of years’ worth of car payments and insurance payments in late fees, overdrafts, etc. just trying to get everything paid but never able to make it on time for months and months) – yeah, that’s still good news, the new work. But it really doesn’t make much of a difference right now when I’m so behind to begin with. If I could just get ahead, or on top of it all at least, for just one month – that would probably make all the difference in the world and I would actually be able to breathe again month to month, maybe. But that’s not likely going to happen, so I just struggle on.

I’m eligible for nothing, for this reason or that reason, whatever. I’ve appreciated well-meant suggestions from well-meaning folks about this or that over the last many months, but one thing I’ve learned in all this is I think there’s some that just don’t get it, it’s beyond a lot of people’s comprehension that one might have nothing.

Like this one suggestion I got about something that was “only $25 or so a week”. Well, that’s nice and all… if you have $25 a week to spare.

Cut off the Internet? Sure, for most that’s an “extra”. For me, it would mean zero income as opposed to the little I do bring in. Though I’ve come dangerously close a few times to losing that, too.

So yeah, I wish I could say things are better, but they’re not, and now you see why I don’t write much lately. It’s crappy enough living it, much less reading about it. I kind have avoided writing much about it (here or elsewhere) too because I’ve seen more of my friends losing jobs, or already bad situations getting worse, lately – and I don’t want to be more of a downer. But most of them will be fine. Especially one – I just know whatever’s next on the horizon there is gonna be great.

Me, I’m just here. That’s about all I know to say for now. See ya again soon.

P.S. Dobie, my 15 year old dog, left us on Good Friday. Not really ready to write about that yet, either, but probably will before too long.

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.

I was going to post this on Feel Good Friday last week after Aunt B. posted her favorite Monkees song, but since I always miss the boat on Feel Good Friday (not that I’ve felt good enough on a Friday or any other day lately), I decided to save this for this week and Christmas.  This is The Monkees singing an a cappella rendition of the old Spanish Christmas carol “Riu, Chiu”, originally broadcast at Christmas in The Monkees’ (I believe) second season.  This clip also includes a Christmas message from the cast and crew that was really sweet.  I bet some of the older people (and probably some of the others) in the clip aren’t around anymore, I bet it’s kind of nice for their families that this was saved for posterity.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I think this is the first time in my life I have ever been alone on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  It won’t last – my sister couldn’t leave Nebraska until after work Wednesday, so Christmas for us is pushed back a day, my Christmas Eve will technically be tonight and Christmas Day tomorrow.  In fact, I’m on my way out of town shortly today to get that ball rolling.

Several days ago, I wrote about my frustration and sadness about not really being able to “participate” in Christmas for the second year in a row.  After I’d posted that, my godmother, who I love dearly, commented that it didn’t matter how many presents we had or did not have and that we would all still have a good Christmas and enjoy being with each other and laughing and having fun like usual, and well, she’s right, that’s all true.  But I still can’t help but be frustrated and sad that I couldn’t do much, and what Newscoma wrote the other day about her own Christmas pretty much hit the nail on the head for me too when it comes to Christmas:

This year is a lean, mean Christmas but I’ve gotten into the spirit to a degree. No, there isn’t any big ticket items. People are getting small gifts that I tried to put some meaning into. I’m a gifty person. I like seeing people’s faces when they open their presents. I’m weird.

That’s always been the fun for me as well, at least ever since I was old enough to do my own Christmas shopping.  You won’t find socks and underwear under the tree in our family – well, you will, but they’re the least important – we do gifts that others would probably think silly and certainly unconventional, but everybody gets stuff they really wanted (and some stuff they didn’t but are resigned to getting every year, like my brother-in-law getting sheep in various forms – a family in-joke) and we have a blast.  I like getting just the perfect things for people and seeing their faces when they open their presents, that’s the big thing for me.

And ever since my parents got divorced, my main priority has always been making sure my Mom gets the stuff she wanted.  And I couldn’t do much of either this year, and it depressed me.

As it turned out, I actually was a little better off than I thought I was.  I thought I only had one thing to give one person, and as I was getting things together getting ready to go out of town and kept finding things I’d forgotten about – including something my mother was supposed to have gotten for Christmas probably two or three years ago – I actually wound up with one gift for each person that will be at our family Christmas.  So I guess that’s better, but I’m still pretty frustrated and depressed about it all.

Really when it comes down to it, I’m about at the end of my rope in general.  Last week I spent three days in such depression, fear, and panic about just everything in general that when things improved just a little bit and I felt a little bit better, it was really concerning to me just how bad it had gotten.  It’s a little bit scary to get that far down.  A lot of those things that people will say things like, “I don’t know how he/she could have done that”, things I used to be able to say – I know why people do those things now.  I can tell you for a fact that if you get knocked down and desperate enough, things that may cross your mind, if only for a fleeting moment, are the kinds of things you never would have thought would do so.

But I don’t know, for some reason I’m still here, although sometimes I wonder if the only reason I haven’t just thrown up my hands and given up yet is because somebody’s got to take care of the pets, and if I weren’t here… well, the cats would probably be taken care of, but I know what would happen to my dogs, and it wouldn’t be what I would want.

So I just keep going, but I’m so tired of all the panic and anxiety and not knowing anything every month – how is this going to get paid, how is that going to get paid, how am I going to be able to eat next week, etc.  The car insurance and phone/Internet miraculously got paid this month – which the latter, you know, I’d probably do without too, but without Internet, then there’s NO income at all.

I still don’t know how the car payment’s getting made this month or catching up on the utility bill, and then January will come and all the panic just start’s all over again.  Right now I only have one for sure, every month, monthly check coming in and it will only cover either rent, car insurance, or car payment, so that’s what I consider my rent check.  The rest is pretty much all up in the air every month right now, which is just… yeah, panic-inducing, frustrating, and depressing.

But for a couple of days anyway, I’m just going to attempt to enjoy what there is of Christmas this year and put the rest behind me for a little while.  There will be plenty of time after Saturday for the panic and worrying again, so I’m going to see what little bit of Christmas spirit I can muster up and go with it.

Dobie is not doing very well at all and just had a bath today – which just made him all the more furious with me – my Mom doesn’t know it yet, but he’s coming to visit for Christmas too (thus the bath).  I’m hoping hanging out in a warm house with carpet and a bed to sleep in all by himself with me for a couple of nights, and some turkey and who knows what all else there will be, will perk him up a little bit, or at least make what I am fairly certain now are his last days a little nicer.  He hasn’t shown much interest in food lately, but I kind of expect he will be thrilled about the turkey and whatever scraps.  Sure, table scraps aren’t really good for dogs, but he’s old and he’s dying, as far as I’m concerned he can eat whatever he wants (and whatever he WILL eat).

It seems like this year has just been a never-ending cycle of bad news.  Times have been so tough lately and not just for me, seems like half of nearly everyone I know has been going through something or other – friends losing jobs recently, another recently finding out hers will be terminated at the end of the year, others losing family members here right at Christmas.  It’s just all got to get better sometime, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I hope everyone who stops by here had a really super nice Christmas.  Some of you I miss so much and hope to see in the coming months.  In the meantime, I am on my way in a couple of hours for my own Christmasing, scanty though it is this year.  See you again soon.

I love this.

It would be sort of the same at my house if I had a mattress on the living room floor, except there would be four more dogs there and a smattering of felines.  B’s cats were apparently fairly uninterested, though.

Heh.  I just read my last post again and I should really clarify something.

I wrote:

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.

Paper towels normally wouldn’t be a necessity.  In fact, I went many years hardly buying paper towels at all and could usually live without them just fine.

Paper towels, however, are a necessity when you have a 14-year-old dog that has recently developed a rather extreme incontinence problem.

Yeah, it just gets better all the time.  ’til later…

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.

If you have recently lost a dog in Memphis (today is 12/12/2008), it may be running around my neighborhood.  It’s a largish, dark brown dog that might be a German Shepherd mix or something close to that, but with pretty long hair and a lot of it.  The face reminds me of a German Shepherd anyway.  I think it’s a she, but I’m not sure – it could be a male.

I’ve been seeing it around for about three days now and on different streets.  Seems to be very friendly and playful from a distance anyway – I can’t get too close because the majority of my brood is generally rather rude to other dogs.

Anyway, it’s running around the Central/Buntyn area a few blocks from the Liberty Bowl, among the streets just past the S-curve on Central when you’re going east towards the university (and away from the Liberty Bowl).  Once you go through the light at Hollywood and then through the light at Central & Buntyn that’s past the S-curve, any of those first several streets to the right – the dog’s been in yards and driveways in all of them.

I saw a guy yesterday apparently find his dog over here, having stopped his car and ran all over with a leash trying to get it and finally succeeded – oddly that one was black & white and looked a lot like my Petey – so I hope maybe whoever’s lost this one will be successful as well.  He/she seems like a nice dog from afar anyway, I wish I could take him/her in until an owner pops up but I can’t.

On another note – my domain map may run out this week – depending on how you’ve linked me, I may disappear for a few days but you can always find me at thelynnsterzone.wordpress.com – I’ll fix it as soon as I’m able to, should it run out.  Things are a little, um, well, not good right now.

I don’t remember where I’m stealing the idea behind this post from – I think I read and responded to someone talking about it in someone’s comments somewhere last week – but I was in total agreement with it.

Why couldn’t the Pilgrims have looked to the sea, instead of the land, for their Thanksgiving feast?

I know, I know – I KNOW the answer to the question and the Indians and the harvest and being thankful and land and blah blah blah and all that.  I’m just saying I really, really wish the Pilgrims had done that instead.

They were right there by the danged sea.  There must have been lakes and rivers (and heck, ponds!) nearby.    Couldn’t the Indians have taught them how to fish instead?

I am not, and never have been, a big fan of turkey.  Most of the rest of the usual Thanksgiving fare, I like just fine, but the turkey is usually the least eaten thing on my plate.  Most of my favorite Thanksgiving dinners have been the ones where there was ham as well as the turkey.

And then there’s the dark meat thing.  Put any branch of my entire family together – there was only one person who liked the dark meat.  My father – who’s been gone many years now, and really, even before that, pretty much since my parents divorced twenty years ago, and I usually spent holidays with my Mom and family – there’s nobody to eat the dark meat.  It’s useless, except to give to the cats and dogs (obviously they like that idea).

Post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches (with lots of mayo) are fine – for about a day, maybe two, then I’m over it.  When I was a kid, I refused to eat the after Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches at all.

The turkey was fun the one year when dinner was over, and my Dad put the carcass and scraps out on the deck for all the then-outside cats we had at the time.

A few minutes later, we were a bit shocked to see the carcass appearing to walk by itself across the yard.  The female cat who was, over the years, often referred to as “The Turkey Monster” was a great deal smaller than the carcass, so that was a pretty hilarious sight.

But turkey – for me anyway – just sucks.  I know the difference between good turkey and mediocre turkey and bad turkey – but I could almost just about eat cardboard instead, really.

On the other hand, seafood – now THAT’S a Thanksgiving feast I could love.  Lobster, crab, salmon, scallops – yum.  There’s really no seafood I don’t adore, except clams.  I’m a little picky about fish, but most fish is okay.  Heck, give me a Thanksgiving catfish or a Christmas catfish!  That would be A-OK with me.  Thanksgiving catfish, Christmas lobster, Easter salmon – oh, yes!

So, I think that one day – if I ever evolve out of extended adolescence and actually become the kind of matriarch that is the cooker of all Thanksgiving (and Christmas and Easter) feasts – I will begin the tradition of the Thanksgiving crab.

In more ways than one, I’m sure.

(Although I really would have been even happier if the Mayflower had drifted down to the Gulf of Mexico and landed in far south Texas near the border instead.  Thanksgiving fajitas, Christmas quesadillas, and Easter tamales – that’s what I’m talkin’ about!)

(And no, I don’t know why I included Easter in the above.  Every good white Anglo-Saxon Protestant knows you have ham on Easter instead of turkey.)

In my back bedroom: a very scared and (was anyway) still shaking black & white cat, who presumably thought he would never eat again during his 24+ hours away from home, as he has now in the last three hours eaten a can of Fancy Feast, a can of tuna, and a significant amount of dry cat food.

I really thought he was probably gone for good, after having been out looking around for him dozens of times in this unbelievably cold and freezing weather we’re having since last night.

I know I talk about the cats AND the dogs like they’re babies, and talk about them to an eye-rolling, sighing, “she’s talking about the damned cats again” point and often – but this was not quite like when my Mom’s 20 year old cat went on a two-week vacation in her neighborhood.  As worried as we were, that was mainly because she was old and had been sickly – but Snow had lived outdoors many years before I rescued her and sent her home with my Mom.

I’ve long suspected Tojo to be one of those cats who was taken away from his mother too early as a kitten (they tend to exhibit certain signs), and based on what I knew of his past history – other than the night of my car wreck when I found him again and brought him to my house, I don’t really think that cat has ever been outdoors in his life.

AND though I live on a quiet, dead end street, I live just a few steps away from one of the busiest streets in the city.

Anyway, I had pretty much given up and resigned myself to never seeing him again.  He’s never been outdoors, he doesn’t know the neighborhood, it’s freezing, busy street – etc.  Kept telling myself that maybe he had found another place with nice people petting him and feeding him – he may be psycho, but he’s also very, very friendly – etc.

So I went out one last time tonight, shortly after midnight and taking the dogs out for the last round before morning, and walked around a little bit.  Saw nothing, was freezing, turned around to head back in the house.

Then there was this flash of white up the way, zooming across a neighbor’s driveway.  So I went in that direction until I saw what I knew was a cat, but really couldn’t see it in the dark, huddled against the front of their house.  But I was pretty sure it was him, even though I couldn’t really see him.

The first time he came to me and I tried to grab him, I was unsuccessful and off he went again – though not far.

So I just sat down on the ground and talked to him until he came back, and petted him until he was a little bit more calm – and finally grabbed him and took him home.  Thank goodness, because I probably would still be out there sitting in their yard in the dark and turning into an icicle waiting for him to come to me, because there was just no way I was going back to the house without him this time.

He really was scared to death, apparently (a situation probably not helped by the neighbor’s dog wandering around the last two nights).  After giving him some food and some time on his own in his room to chill, two hours later when I let him back out in the house among the rest of us and picked him up and held him for a while, he was very uptight and rigid, and still shaking like a leaf.

Which is just so NOT Tojo.  Tojo is afraid of NOTHING, not even Petey, who is ten times his size.  Before tonight, the thought of him scared and shaking like a leaf would have just been preposterous.

Anyway, he’s a little dirty, but he’s okay and he’s home.  Pretty soon, I’m going to go crawl in the bed like I always do back there, with him under the covers when it’s cold, and hopefully we will BOTH get a good night’s sleep this time.

I couldn’t bring myself to go to sleep back there last night, and slept out here at the desk in the chair instead.  I suspect he either didn’t sleep at all, or didn’t sleep very well last night, either.

Tojo, who my friend Rachel refers to as “the OCD cat”, slipped out the door last night when I was trying to get the dogs back inside and has gone missing.

This year has been particularly bad for the Zoo, as you all know.  Good thoughts, if you will.

So I’m not going to talk about the election anymore because really, again, I’m sick to death of it.  And I’m trying to lighten up the mood around here a little, or else Mack is gonna start calling me “Debbie Downer” instead of Rachel.

So I’m going to share with you some new discoveries on one of my FAVORITE subjects today – hard candy.  And when I say hard candy, I don’t mean Sarah Palin, nope.

I haven’t had any trick-or-treaters for years, but I wasn’t about to get caught on Halloween without candy just in case there were some this year.  I almost made the mistake of picking up some nasty cheap yucky stuff I would have hated for $1 a bag, but decided to wait until the next store or two that day.  Because, you know, if I don’t have trick-or-treaters and I buy candy, it might as well be something I like that I will consume eventually.

The next store saved the day with a $2 bag of Dum-Dums – 80 of them.  Yay.

If you’ve read here much, you are well aware that while I don’t much care for chocolate and am not big on sweets as a rule, I have a serious thing for hard candy, mostly on the sour side but a few others.  Jolly Ranchers, Icebreakers Sours, those old Charms Sweet & Sour pops you can barely find anymore – those are the best.  But Dum-Dums have always come a close second.  I just like lollipops period – the Jolly Ranchers suckers are some kinda awesome.

But wow, it must have been a long time since I bought any, because I started pulling suckers out of that bag and was just amazed.  Where did all these new flavors come from?  Coconut, mango, cherry cola, bubble gum, cotton candy – I am in hard candy taste heaven!  (Except for the cherry cola.  I don’t care for that one so much.)  Mom said it sounded like they are trying to match some of the Jelly Belly flavors (which I like as well); probably so.  There along with all the old standards like root beer and tangerine and cherry, and the (slightly newer but I’d had it before) blue raspberry, were all these marvelous new flavors.

I was about to get upset there for a few minutes, though – and was concerned they had stopped making it – but finally fished a cream soda Dum-Dum out of the bag.  Yay!

So there ya go.  I might be basically penniless and destitute and barely able to afford to buy real groceries in the current economy of this Presidential election year, but if I can manage to keep a $2 bag of Dum-Dums on hand, I won’t really even notice if I’m starving.  Ha!  OK, I AM Debbie Downer, sue me – I don’t have anything anyway!

I told myself I wasn’t going to talk about the election because I’m tired of it all, but since I had to stand in line for nearly an hour and 45 minutes this morning to vote, I must say I am VERY grateful to the nice young lady in front of me in line who filled me in on the 411 on the charter referendums we had here to vote on that were AS BIG AND LONG AS THE ENTIRE STATE OF TENNESSEE (!!!).  Since I have my head stuck in the ground most of the time and don’t have time to read much but hometown newspapers anymore.

And the conversation throughout our wait also distracted me from the nerve injury in my leg, which all of a sudden decided to start acting up bigtime FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MONTHS about ten minutes into standing in line, so I was even more grateful.

This will no doubt disappoint many to hear, but I have it on good authority that always-close-to-100% Democrat Benton County looks to be majority voting for McCain this year, including some of the biggest lifelong Democrats in the county.  Shocking to me but, given that, I suspect I know how most of the numbers in West Tennessee are going to turn out outside of Shelby and Madison Counties.

I noted Newscoma’s Political Boyfriend on the ballot and hope he wins (I’m sure he will).  That’s one person I wouldn’t care if he were a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or Martian.  He’s a damn fine statesman.

And the one time I had a major issue that bugged me enough to get off my lazy butt and write my local legislators about, now quite some years ago, he was the ONLY one who responded and wrote back.  Little things like that go a long way, and that’s why he’s still actively in office, and the rest of those folks’ names are long forgotten in this town.  Thanks, Steve.

PS – And no, they were not handing out “I Voted” stickers for free donuts or whatever here today.  Boo.

It’s been raining for hours and I’m beginning to wonder if it’s ever going to stop.

I got nothing else today.  Maybe tomorrow.