I, like many of you, have neighbors. In general, I can get along well with other humans mainly because I can talk the hell out of some small talk, “weather. weather. dogs. weather.” (see, small talk!)
I am currently living near what I am going to call unfortunate neighbors. They are unfortunate because they do not embrace the Live & Let Live attitude of our neighborhood. I’m certain that they would fit into a more regimented neighborhood very well and that they would ensure that everyone (every. one.) followed all of the rules.
Anywhoodle, earlier today I noticed that my back (normal, pleasant, sane(enough)) neighbors were burning leaves (safely, away from any extra fuel, with continuous monitoring) and thought to myself, “mmmm, I love the smell of burnin leaves.”
An hour later I noticed (okay, to be fair Herbert started growling so I looked) the shirtless unfortunate male neighbor exiting the bush next to my fence (weird…) and then walking to the front center of my fence and yelling, “Heather!!!!” repeatedly until I passive-aggressively and with deliberate slowness, meandered my way over to him.  He then started with yelling and gesticulation and pointed over to my back neighbors and I finally made out the words, “burning trash”. I said, “but they aren’t burning trash; they are burning leaves….?” with a frustrated, “WHATEVER!” which I interpreted as, “should have known that hippy bitch wouldn’t take our side” he departed and I headed back to the house.  Which is when I heard the shrill screech of the unfortunate female neighbor’s voice coming from the back neighbors….are you freakin kidding me? So, by the time I reached the back fence the unfortunate neighbor had gotten back in her mini-van and departed back to her unfortunate neighbor compound. I waved for my back neighbor to make sure she understood I have no connection nor affiliation with the unfortunate neighbors and that I didn’t mind the burning and if and when I did, I would be sure to yell at the back fence and not call the police & fire department.
So, looks like it is time to put in a fire pit. *evil grin*

I am not a famous person and I sincerely hope it stays that way. If, by some wicked twist of fate I do become famous I sincerely hope it is for doing something really good and not something really stupid. Because of my lack of drive to ever be famous I have no aspirations for this guide to be read by the masses, but for the love of all of the good in the world if you read it – please teach others.

anywhoodle.

I recently became aware that tipping waitstaff can really trip people up if you had a system such as “double the tax” and then you come to a place, say…the virgin islands for example, and holy crap – there is no tax. I used to work as a waitress and just like everyone else I know who has worked as waitstaff, I always tip 20% for average service. More for better, less for worse – but never less that 15% (if service was truly horrendous I would have already spoken to the manager).  But don’t let the percentages discourage you – my method of tipping is easy enough for the drunkest among us.

Lunch Receipt

big salad            $ 9.95

add chicken       $ 2.00

iced tea              $ 2.50

__________________

Total                      $14.45

So what you do is, take a look at the Total which in this case is $14.45. Now, you see that dot (aka decimal point) located between the 4s? yeah, move it one number to the left. That’s right, with every bill total you have you just hop that little sucker over one spot to the left.

$1.445

Okay, so far so good. you’ve moved the decimal point over one spot to the left and that leaves you with $1.45. Now, multiply it by 2.

$1.45 x 2 = $2.90

And that is it. It will get you 20% every single time.

1. Hop once to the left
2. Multiply by 2
3. You are now tipping like a good person and not a douche and that means that everyone wins.  

The end.

Love,

H.

Okay, so I always wondered if there was a moment in your life when you know, like know down deep in your bones, that you are past your prime and I can now answer….yes, yes there is. It is when you reach below the bed and pull out the “sex toy” box, brush the dust off of it, and reach in for the heavy duty massager….to use on my back.
*sigh*

So, I am clearing off bookshelves and getting rid of some old books that I haven’t re-read in years. In my book of 100 Hair Raising Little Horror Stories I found a copy of my 2002 wedding invitation [divorce was final is 2012]. Why on earth would I have put that there? If my life were a novel that would have been called ‘foreshadowing’; today it is just a lot of funny with a slight tinge of sad that my subconcious was apparently screeching at me to get out a lot sooner than I thought–100 Hair Raising Little Horror Stories indeed.
Remember to listen to yourself.
Okay, back to the cleaning.
*kisses*

So, it turns out that the perfect storm of “too much” is as follows:

1.  Over scheduled myself at work and ended up doing about an 80 hour workweek.
2. That workweek ended with a training that felt rather flat when I gave it and turned out not to be what the client wanted. Yes, they should have given me more than “general safety stuff” as a guideline, but I still felt horribly shitty about it.
3. The damn power was out on the whole island for about 14 hours on Saturday effectively stealing my ability to get anything done. 
4. Sunday was not a fun day.
5. Upcoming week is more over scheduled than last week.

So all of that (of which I am aware can be looked at in a positive way – yes, I am blessed to have a job, I am incredibly lucky to live with electricity most of the time, I got to enjoy reading on Saturday, etc. I’m just whining) has led me to not wanting to get out of bed this morning.
Pillows – good!
Sheets – good!
Snuggly puppies – good!

Up and out? No good.

Snooze? Yes, please.
Wish me luck at the up and out part later please….

Good afternoon everyone,

today I need to share my frustration with the world of painful safety acronyms – you’ve seen them, those annoying safety signs that have tortured a word into a “meaningful” phrase….Gods all help me, these damn things irritate the crap out of me.

Here are two randomly pulled from the internet to get you into my mindset:

• How do you spell Safety? Safety Means Always Remember Teamwork

are you f’ing kidding me? I’m pretty sure you spelled safety wrong and *starts kicking things out of annoyance*

• Safety, a culture to live by: Communication Urge Leadership Teamwork Understanding Recognition Empowerment

just…..no. stop it. stop making words say shit that sort of means something kind of they way you want to say it. just….no.

No-one in existence has said, “damn, we were just one good slogan away from being safe”.  I have denied being in the business of Safety for years because of shit like this – how can you be a professional in a business that seems to excel at making themselves look ridiculous???

so anyway, here I am prepping crap for work and there is one of my loathed acronyms – SHARP. That’s right, Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program (nope, didn’t torture themselves to make that word work…). Okay, things are going along normally until halfway through the report when I stumble upon a new initialism (aka first letter of each word that doesn’t actually spell anything), NCSP, which stands for National Construction SHARP Pilot. Realizing that they are using an acronym IN the initialism immediately broke my brain causing my vision to go a bit wonky and make my left eye twitch.

I’m making tea now.

Have a lovely day,

-H.

*blinks slowly*

ya know, for a monday, there is a ridiculous amount of work in my work today. Things to do, frustrations to fuss about, passive aggressive emails to send, and surprisingly – a completely inane posting at lunchtime.

I attempted to go on a movie date twice this holiday weekend, I say attempt because the sheer volume of people waiting to get tickets to the newest fast n furious (why? why is there so much fury when they get to go so fast?) movie caused us both to pause and say, “nope…to many people”. But we tried and that TOTALLY counts, right?

It was also the weekend of random weird shit, my favorite of which was a tree frog falling out of the tree and landing on the windshield of the car. I was full of the squee! and the wonder while the boyfriend was full of the holy shit, a fucking frog just fell on the car! At his decidedly squicked out face I proceeded to grab the poor startled baseball sized froggie and put him back into the trees.

ooh, my sandwich is here!

*kisses*

Dear Newton, I need an external force please.

When my mother visited she had a few ‘intervention-like’ conversations with me. One of the most memorable was the, “I’m worried because you have only two speeds: all go, and all stop”. It was memorable because all I could think was, “yep, that’s me”.

Lately though I have been more all stop, no go and I fear I am going to merge with the furniture.

Love ya,

H.

So, get ready for the rambling…I am going to a new doctor. One of those, how do you say, ‘real doctors’. Yes, yes…I currently have a doctor. I even presume he went to medical school and everything. Let’s just say that he is better at colds and boo-boos than he is at chonic disease management. This hasn’t really been a problem because *I* am pretty good at chronic disease management – but maybe I need some checks and balances rather than the, “wonder what this will do shot-gun approach” currently being used.
Ugh. The stress of going to a new doctor. *blink* I dislike it. It doesn’t help that the last ‘new’ doctor I ended up meeting looked at my medical records and suggested that we stop everything and ‘see what happens’. 
Well, lady….based on my reading–seizures and potential death if we don’t step down that one.  Extremely high blood sugars and organ/extremity damage if we stop those two. Hair loss, exhaustion, temperature intolerance, and weight gain if we stop that one. But sure, let’s give that a whirl since you aren’t ‘familiar’ with that medicine and are afraid of the internet and your medicine book from the 80s doesn’t have it in there. Okay, so yes that crazy lady was a textbook example of a BAD doctor almost on par to the one time I went to a therapist (back in the day trying to figure out what to do about my then marriage) who gave me the following advice, “you should have a baby, that’ll calm you down.”  I replied with much blinking to the woman, fixed her phone, and never went back.
So, you can see why going to this new doctor fills me with a small amount of….trepidation.  I have to print out my glucose/insulin logs, medication logs, bloodwork, medical history and hope this woman and I mesh well. Wish me luck!