I sent Erica a text asking her to call me real quick to go over some last minute packing details.  30 seconds later she called.  Over the course of our call it came up that she never received my text.  It was a total coincidence that she called.  Or is it?  LOL.  I prefer to believe in Mother/ Daughter (let's say child to be inclusive of our sons) psychic connections.  

Anyway, I am getting really excited.  I will be taking pics although probably those will be posted on Facebook.  Now I have to go finish packing.....have a great week!

I am in the heat of battle against advertising email.  I get so many advertisements that it has become unmanageable.  I cleaned out my inbox yesterday morning before I left for work, and still....I had 183 emails waiting for me when I got home around 4pm.  Some are unsolicited spam.  But most are places that I shop.  Stephen and Hannia came by for a visit last night, and Hannia and I agreed that Loft is one of the biggest offenders.  Like 4 or 5 a day sometimes.  It is insane!

Anyway, I am considering abandoning my email and opening a new account.  Just let the junk mail multiply exponentially in my gmail inbox.  If I do, I will send out a notice to friends and family from my new address.  But first, I aim to stand and fight.  I am waging a war.  Which means lots of tedious clicking on unsubscribe links in each and every email that I receive for a while.  I may not be able to win.  But I am going to try......

I am so happy to see this week come to an end.  It's been hard dealing with Shingles.  It is quite painful, and even though I am so much better than I was on Monday....I still have it.  Working with it was hard.

But not only is it Friday, the most blessed of ALL days of the week, it is also the start of my vacation!!  Shingles or not, I was floating when I walked...make that RAN out of my office this afternoon.  LOL!

I vow not to let that office even cross my mind for an entire week.  It does not exist!  I am a FREE woman.  At least for this little while.

 Bruce is currently engaged in an activity that just teases me mercilessly....he is browsing the web for our perfect retirement home.  No, we are nowhere near ready yet, but it is wonderful to dream sometimes....right?  Our perfect place would be a riverfront home in the mountains.  Western NC, northern Georgia....mountains in Virginia...we both agree we would prefer the southeast.  In an out of the way place.  I used to think lake front, but most of that is too crowded and residential.  

He just showed me a gorgeous property with amazing views, porches to take advantage of those views, it was breath taking.  It was also just under 3,000,000.  That price broke my heart.  Stop teasing me....LOL!

At work on Friday, I started to feel some pain on my left side, from my shoulder blade to under my arm.  I just thought I had pulled a muscle because seriously in my line of work it happens.  On Saturday I felt a prickly, burning pain that felt somewhat like a bad rug burn....UNDER my arm!  LOL!  Explain that one to me.  By Sunday I had a rash...not huge, but really painful and the tender pulled muscle pain was getting worse instead of better.  I hadn't said much about it, but I finally got Bruce to check it out.  The first thing he said was SHINGLES!  Ugh!  

I thought about trying to work with it and hope for the best, but it was more painful than your average sore muscle.  I started thinking about our upcoming trip to see Erica in a week.  So, I broke down and went to the Doc today.  It's definitely shingles.  But hopefully I caught it before it got too bad and spread much.  It's still this one little rash-like area under my arm.  I'm on an anti-viral which should help speed things up.  It's the same one they prescribe for herpes.  Awesome.  I just hope it works really fast.  And once this is gone I plan to check into the new shingles vaccine.  I don't want a repeat of this again if I can help it.  

The Dr said that stress usually causes a flare up.  I can honestly say this whole thing with my sister and Sydney's wedding that I am not invited to upset the hell out of me.  Oh well....hopefully it will clear up in time to have fun in Boston.  Have a great week everybody.  Mine is not off to the greatest start, but it's going to get better.  I insist on it!  :)

Let's start with the good things.....I had a wonderful birthday.  I got to celebrate with my girlfriends early, and my family on the actual day.  Erica Skyped me, Hannia made me an indescribably delicious birthday FLAN!  So much better than cake!  We had a lovely dinner out with Stephen and Hannia where I had not one, but 2 (!!!) black cherry/peach Mojitos.  Those were amazing!  I had so much love and so many happy wishes on Facebook!  And every single card that I got this year had a CAT theme....thank you all.  I feel very blessed.  I have awesome friends and family!

But what's that saying about how in every life a little rain must fall?  I can't remember it verbatim.  I found out my niece, my sister's daughter is getting married.  Next weekend!  It was last minute...I get that.  It is a very small civil service.  I get that, too.  But I am not invited.  And that?  I do not get.  It hurt me so much.  I flipped out a little.  I said harsh things.  My sister said harsh things.  It's been awful and sad.  I'm not even sure if we are speaking now??  I assume we will both get over it eventually.  But still...it hurt.  Oh well, I assume most families have occasional unpleasant drama.  It just hurts.

Our electricity went out tonight.  The whole incident lasted maybe 45 minutes, but it's funny how antsy we got in that short amount of time.  It is also funny how quiet it gets with no electrical gadgets on.  I don't think any of us actually realize just how much background noise we hear all of the time.  The television is obvious.  But the sound of the ceiling fans, the AC units, the refrigerator ...when it all goes off it is unnerving.  Bruce started speculating that if it was a solar flare, then power could be off all over the world and we might not even know it...LOL.  We called Stephen on the other side of town who had electricity so that disproved Bruce's prediction of doom.  Thank God!  I still had 3G on my phone but I was planning to recharge it overnight so my battery was kind of low.  Our WiFi was out!  I started wanting coffee which I never drink in the evenings because it keeps me awake. Just knowing I had no way of making coffee brought on instant cravings.  Insane!  Then we began panicking that this mini-series we have been following was coming on later tonight and we might have to miss an episode (Under The Dome, by Stephen King).  Luckily we should be able to see it and the minute all of the electricity came back on again my craving for coffee completely disappeared.

Anyway, no idea what was going on.  There was no storm, or wind, or anything like that....but life has gone back to normal.  The house is cooling down again.  It got really stuffy really quickly, but then temps were in the low 90's today.  Everything is fine again.....yay!

Dear Summer,

Please leave me the hell alone.  I broke up with you years ago when I realized that "real life" didn't give me 3 months off to celebrate you like it did when I was a kid in school.  We are OVER!  Stop relentlessly stalking me.  I have found somebody new.  His name is Fall and he is sweet and gentle.  Never harsh!  He woos me with sweaters as cuddly as a baby's blanket, and boots in buttery soft leather.  Fall understands me.  He would never ask me to appear in public in a bathing suit.  He never allows loathsome mosquitoes to suck my blood.  He keeps those abhorrent snakes at bay.  Fall is cooler than you could ever hope to be.  He makes me happy.

You can never win me back so please stop trying.  It's September already, so pack up your disgusting heat and your tiresome humidity and go away already!  Seriously! I am on the verge of taking out a restraining order.  I hate you and that is never going to change.  

Sincerely,

Me. 

Today just wasn't my best day ever.  I felt tired before I even left the house this morning.  Just out of sorts for no particular reason.  Work was a challenge (re: exhausting, annoying, frustrating...the usual).  No one thing went wrong, at least.  I can't pinpoint anything that was upsetting.  I slept fine last night.  I wasn't sick or in pain.....I was just very apathetic and slow.  I felt like I was wading through waist deep molasses all day long.  What the heck? 

Oh well, I'm fine.  Tomorrow is a brand new day.  I guess everybody has an off day occasionally.

Also?  The cherry on top of my blue, blah kind of day?  Bruce and I were in the kitchen late this afternoon discussing the fact that he needs new dress shirts.  Something caught our eye out of the window......a big ugly snake right in our backyard.  INSIDE the fence!  Snakes apparently have no respect for private property.  Oh God, I HATE those things.  It made me cringe to think that Penny Lane (our dog) had just come inside.  Anyway, Bruce went out with leather gardening gloves to inspect it.  Apparently it was a non-venomous Rat snake....still....eeewwwww!  But he picked it up by the tail and hauled it off to some other more appropriate place.  Another planet would have been nice, but he didn't carry it quite that far.  I dunno but seeing that snake just kind of summed up the day for me.

Ok, I'm going to shake it off, go to bed early and wake up to FRIDAY!  Fridays are just more friendly than Thursdays anyway.  And this one I'm declaring "NO SNAKE FRIDAY!!!".

Dear Amazon,

I love you.  I really and truly do.  The convenience of one click shopping for almost anything my mind can imagine,all at great and competitive prices makes you invaluable.  Priceless even.  I can get anything from cheap refill bags for our litter lockers (a diaper genie for cat boxes), to some obscure movie that only 3 people on the planet have heard of, to the Rieker German-made shoes that never ever hurt my feet in more styles than any shop in NYC could ever carry.  But....and you knew there was a "but" coming, didn't you?  Your packaging drives me insane.  

I checked your packaging policies on your website.  There is even a link to provide customer feedback....WHICH I DID!!! The problem is not safe shipping.  All of my items have arrived perfectly intact.  It's not even environmental....exactly.  All of your packing materials are recycled AND recyclable, which I seriously appreciate.  But the size!?!?!?  OMG, does it have to be so freaking HUGE?  

Ok, so my daughter asked me to bring her a pair of running insoles when we meet up in Boston later this month.  She lives in the UK and certain items are not that easy to find. I opted to go the easy route of ordering on Amazon instead of fighting traffic to find a running store here in our town  They came yesterday.  A pair of running insoles in a package that could have fit 20 times over in my mailbox were in a box that could have fit 2 large sized laptop computers.  Our mailman left it on our front porch because there was no way it could go in a mailbox.  How aggravating for both me AND him.  Also?  We ordered a large sports net (we use it to corral our cats into the courtyard for a safe cat-friendly outdoor space for them).  These are hard to find but Amazon has them available for a great price.  The folded net was approximately the size of a medium sized clutch handbag.  But it came in a box large enough to fit one of those old- fashioned, oversized microwave ovens.  You know, the ones that take up ALL of your counter space?  

Anyway, I  adore your website.  I puffy pink heart freaking LOVE it!  But I (and my Mailman), would so appreciate it if you could package items in an appropriately sized box.  I am tired of hauling cardboard to our recycle center.....

Sincerely,

Your Biggest Fan

Rebecca