I need a bitch walk.

In college, J and I would go on a "bitch walk" when we were upset or frustrated and needed to vent. We would walk around the apartment complex, go around the pool and end up on the roof of the rec center, venting our frustrated out into the world. I could sure use a bitch walk today.

What a day. A client, for whom I've always bent over backward, calls and is unhappy with the level of customer service I've been providing in certain areas. Actually, they stressed it was not ME, it was my programmer, who I have to rely on to handle certain technical issues. And yes, this is one of the top clients I called every day from Estes Park. While she was on vacation, her CEO called me to tell me a piece of their web site had not been working since August 1. He didn't call until August 8th. He did not indicate this was a serious issue and indeed, he waited a week to even alert me about it. Long story short, I find out today it was indeed a VERY important issue and we had yet to solve it, even though I told him we'd get to it as soon as we could...but he did not then say it was critical. So, I get reamed out for that. Then I'm told, as a result, the bid for next year's web site, that I had been told I had wrapped up, is suddenly going out in an RFP to other designers. Sigh. So, this is potentially a huge amount of business for 2008 I thought I had sewn up. I'm very bummed about it.

I was on the phone for 4 hours dealing with this today. But at the same time, I get three requests for proposals this week but ALL of them have super fast deadlines. And I just booked 6 days in Ouray for late September. Couldn't have been worse timing. I book them Sunday, thinking I had a couple of projects to finish up before then and now I have all these RUSH web sites coming in the door. When it rains it pours. I couldn't get arrested in this town two years ago and now everyone wants me. Everyone but today's client. LOL

So tonight I went, at a client's invitation, to a baseball game tonight and got to sit on the picnic terrace and have free food right on the first base line. After the day I had it was a lot of fun to kick back and meet the spouses and kids of the people I've been working with. So, that was a nice way to end the day. A foul ball came right to us and hit the poor woman next to me on her inner thigh and bounced over my head into the waiting glove of 8-year old girl. The woman that got hit did not make a big deal over it but limped out to the parking lot, so I know it hurt pretty bad. What is it about foul balls finding me when I attend ballgames? It's just weird.

And now, because I'm so stressed over losing this client (and right when I'm house hunting) I decided to take a Xanax to try to sleep. But so far it hasn't kicked i

This summed up my week....

So I've had one of those weeks where everything goes wrong. The new HD video camera I bought has a weird distortion problem when tracking moving objects, completely obliterating the entire reason I purchased it. The Forest Service is going to make me pay a commercial fee to video tape in Pike National Forest to make my DVD and I'm awaiting the verdict of how much. Photoshop repeatedly crashes. I've washed the same load of towels three, count 'em, THREE times because I forget I've washed them and then two days later open the washer and smell the mildewy towels. So I wash them again and forget AGAIN to put them in the dryer and have to wash AGAIN. Today, I was weed wacking the grass in my little back yard and since I had accidentally hit and sliced open the rubber hose that carries water to my Swamp Cooler LAST time I weed eated and created a huge leak and had to go to Home Depot and repair the entire set up, I was very careful today when weedeating around it but managed to cut it open AGAIN, creating once again, a leak and a trip to Home Depot. And then -- I got stuck in a compost toilet.

No, sadly, I'm not kidding.

J, Scooter and I take a drive up the Pass to see a house for sale in Green Mountain Falls, which is a sleepy little town near where the Pikes Peak Highway begins. There's a great little lake with a gazebo in the middle. By the time I got there, I had to usse the restroom. So, I go to the toilet while J takes Scooter over to the water. I do my business, try to open the door...and nothing. The dead-bolt is not engaged, the handle lock is popped out...but I can't open it. I kick the bottom, throw my shoulder into the door...and nothing.

Sigh. This is seriously how my week has gone.

After 10 minutes, I'm hoping someone will see the door being jerked and hear the noise and come running to help, but no such luck. I remembered my cell phone and figured I didn't have a signal in the mountains, but I did and I called J, figuring she wouldn't have a signal either, but she did. So I explain my predicament, and after she finished laughing, she came over to the toilet and we kicked and jerked the door for another 5 minutes, but to no avail. I had visions of the Green Mountain Falls Fire Department pulling up, sirens blazing, to rescue me. Finally, Jan smacked the top of the door from the outside and it popped open.

This sort of thing can only happen to me.

We're an American Band

So, did anyone but me catch the English bros on a commercial last night for "American Band" during "So You Think You Can Dance?" And yes, I admit it, I'm a reality show junkie. Say it to my face.

So I'm watching a commercial and it's from the producers of American Idol and they have a new show where bands can compete, called "American Band." And halfway through the commercial they show W singing by himself and I grabbed the remote and rewound and sure enough, it was him! Then 15 seconds later it showed all the brothers singing "Tumblin' Tumbleweed" and I freaked out! LOL. I called W today and they were actually invited to send in an audition tape and they finally decided, after talking to the show, that it was too much of a commitment should they make it on the show and have to fly to LA. They are having success with their new venture and didn't want to put a crimp in that....but, anyway, it was quite a shock to see them on TV!

On the topic of realty TV, I thought I would share something stupid I did this week. I was watching "America's Got Talent," which is a show I swore I would not watch because I can't stand David Hasselhoff, but it's actually pretty entertaining and I have a favorite singer, Cas Haley, that's from Arlington, TX, and I'm hoping he wins.

Well, I vote for American Idol all the time and had never voted for this show, but decided on the final performance night I would call to vote for Cas. So I have a system I've used with American Idol. I just dial the number, wait a few seconds until I'm sure it connected, hang up and hit redial. I can make a lot of calls in an hour with this system and I don't have to sit with the phone to my ear. I just wait until I figure it's been connected and then hang up.

So, I decide to vote for Cas, and after about an hour of voting, while watching another show, I actually listened to the message that was playing each time I dialed and it said, "Thank you for voting for Talent #3. Only your first ten votes count."

I sat there an hour. Voting. For nothing. I'm an idiot.

Sigh.

The Wonder of You

It’s almost been one month since Mom passed away and every day I miss her a bit more. It’s the little things that get to me. Tonight I pulled green beans (Kentucky Wonders were the only ones Mom would buy) out of the refrigerator to cook for dinner and immediately put them in a strainer in the sink to snap them. It would be just as easy to leave the ends on and cook them, but Mom taught me to snap them, and then soak them. So that’s what I do. And as I leaned over the sink, participating in that age-old culinary ritual, I missed my mom.

I miss standing next to her at the sink snapping green beans, or sitting across the dinner table from her. I miss the “old” version of mom -- the mom I had when I was a kid. The mom that would give me a row in the garden to plant whatever I wanted, and since I hated vegetables when I was 8, I planted marigolds. The mom that mopped the kitchen floor and sang along to “Michelle” by the Beatles on the radio.

In 1969, when I was in love with Elvis, she bought me the 45 record to Jailhouse Rock and marked my initials on the “A” side of the record so I would know which side to play, since I wasn’t old enough to read. And later, she never complained when I played “Kentucky Rain” over and over in my room. She sat through four seasons of Starsky and Hutch, four years of band concerts, and listened to me practice my “Pegasus” trumpet solo every night for an entire marching season. She was a mom that would usher me into our walk-in pantry to hide when Mr. Horn came knocking during his Amway years, and later, when the preacher and his wife would come to the front door. Mom and I would stand in silence in the pantry until they went away and she would use that time to take stock of what groceries she needed. When I went off to college, she wrote every week, and included stamps and coupons. When I came home for the weekend, she stocked me up on groceries (and Jen up on Vienna Sausages).

I have always been a bit envious of people who could quote wise things their parents or grandparents told them, such as “when things don’t go your way, jiggle the handle a little bit.” I always thought it was cool to have these neat sound bites of wisdom to share…but I never got anything like that from my mom. In fact, Mom never once offered her advice or opinion, unless I asked for it. She never interfered in my life, never told me what to do, never ONCE started a sentence with “I think you should…” So, as a result, I missed out on those pearls of wisdom most people get from their parents. But, I guess what she gave me instead was freedom, responsibility and the ability to think for myself. She never told me about those things, but she taught me about them.

So tonight I was flipping through the channels and an Elvis special was on PBS, and so after cooking Kentucky Wonders for dinner, I heard Elvis sing “Kentucky Rain.” And the sound of his voice singing that song and the memories that came with it made me miss her so much I had to cry. In the end, I guess having pearls of wisdom to hold on to aren’t important. It’s the marigolds and the green beans that you’re going to remember.

“When no one else can understand me,
When everything I do is wrong,
You give me hope and consolation,
You give me strength to carry on.

And you’re always there to lend a hand,
In everything I do,
That’s the wonder,
The wonder of you,

I’ll guess I’ll never know the reason why,
You love me like you do,
That’s the wonder,
The wonder of you.”

Charming, loads of character. But really damn old.

No, I'm not describing myself, except maybe the old part. I'm describing the majority of houses I looked at this past week, which was my first week of house hunting. House hunting is really fun. House hunting would be a lot MORE fun if I could afford what I really wanted. I don't even want that much, just something maybe built in this century that isn't all wonky and crooked.

The houses I looked at this week put the "old" in Old Colorado City. Having a house in the historic district of town is very cool. There are Victorian bungalows, Arts and Craft styles, cape cod styles, and many, many other architectural wonders in Old Colorado City. Please note the use of the word "old" in the town name. In the name of all things holy, some of these houses should be condemned. Seriously.

So I see one such house online and it looks "charming." It's a "bungalow" with the awesome big covered porch on the front with the enormous brick pillars out front and the porch swing on one end. Very Norman Rockwell-ish. Until you get inside. The first house I looked at had one such porch, a beautifully manicured yard with privacy fence and a mailbox on the porch, which means the mailman actually WALKS around the neighborhood and delivers the mail. You can't get any more Norman Rockwell than that. And besides, there's something just very cool about stepping out on your cute bungalowy porch to retrieve your mail. Or maybe I'm just lazy. But I think it would be cool. So you step inside the house and everything at first glance, is still quite nice. Nice-sized living room, nice dining room...then you walk into the kitchen and things start to go downhill. No, I mean, ACTUALLY go downhill, as in the entire house slopes. Not good. The kitchen had the old fashioned white metal cabinets, which are cool, except they don't open at ALL because the roof is sagging so the tops of the cabinets scrape against the ceiling. That's a bit of a problem. The sink appeared to have been installed during the Harding administration and the refrigerator was not full size. Next to the kitchen, the basement stairs beckoned and we descended into the fiery depths of basement hell.

The house was built in 1904 and the basement walls consisted of enormous chunks of rocks...which were crumbling and caving in. A fairly recent (I'm talking last 50 years) beam had been added above the basement to support the sagging floor. Huge cracks snaked up the basement walls and disappeared onto the first floor level. Not good at all. Too bad. The house was cute from the outside, had a nice yard, but the Norman Rockwell part was shattered once you step inside.

The second Victorian house I looked at was built in 1899 and looked a little rough from the outside but was better on the inside...except that the previous owner must have smoked like a freight train...and had cats with incontinence issues. It smelled so bad in the house the back of your throat closed up upon entering. But because I find old houses fascinating, I bravely entered the basement, where the smell was increasingly worse with every step of descent. The basement had concrete floors, and one huge room could have been used as a bedroom or something, had you finished out the walls and floor.

The curious thing was the little rooms. Four little rooms, all with concrete walls and floors, none of which were bigger than 4x6 feet or so. It was pitch black down there, but each room had a single interrogation-room style light bulb hanging with a little chain. Upon illumination, you found yourself in nothing more than a little concrete room. Nothing else in there. But there were four of them. It was cool and creepy at the same time. Cool, because I imagined one of the rooms was where coal was kept to be shoveled into the furnace. Creepy, because it was just as likely that the rooms were used by a serial killer to hide and torture his victims. It could have gone either way.

Needless to say, I did not make an offer on those houses and I'm no longer positive I want an old Victorian house in Old Colorado City. Sometimes, old is not charming at all. Sometimes, old is just old.

I'll keep you posted....

Where's Mare?

So, I've been away from my blog for quite a while. I have lots to write about but nothing to say, it seems. I need to write a tribute to my Mom someday soon. I miss her so much; I keep finding myself looking at the clock to determine if it's a good time to call her based on her social and dining schedule...and then I remember. I think it's going to take a while to get over that. I've called her, Madge and Aunt Sis and Uncle William pretty much every single weekend since I left for college and in the past few years, I would call Mom 2-3 times a week...so it is hard not to make that phone call to somebody on the weekends. Sigh.

Business is ridiculously good. I'm so busy I'm a little panicky. But in a good way. No complaints.

The other major thing happening right now is that I've decided FINALLY to start looking for a house to buy. I looked at some houses yesterday and today and got the news that I qualify for a much nicer house than I was expecting at the monthly mortgage I wanted to stay under. So, that is exciting and means I can look at some nicer places, because, let's face it, the ones I've looked at in the past 24 hours were bad. More on that soon. Some humorous stories in that arena.

I had a fantastic time with my second family in Estes Park last month. I hope we can do it again next year!

I'm working out more and trying to eat better. I've loss 6 pounds the first week, so I'm encouraged, at least. I'm pretty sure I'll gain all that back in a week or so. LOL

Anyway, just wanted to make a post to say...more to come...