Good help is hard to find

I’ve been a supervisor before in my career. I supervised a small office staff. I never had any trouble motivating anyone to work or get things done on a timeline.

Why can’t I get my teens to do some fall cleaning around the house? It’s not like there is no incentive for them to do a little work. Rake some leaves, clean out the garage. I’m going to pay them extra cash, its not like I expect them to do it just for enjoying my company for an afternoon.

I can only supervise because of my disability. Really! My son once said that I’m just saying that to ‘get out of it’. Oh no you didn’t!

It’s way overdue and I can’t do it. It’s time to pull the snow blower out from the nether regions of the garage, gas it up and try starting it before everyone and their brother is bringing theirs in for repairs. The weather Friday said that we could get our first snowfall on Halloween this year.

After the snow blower comes out of hiding the lawnmower has to have the gas run out of it and be moved to the spot the snow blower was. Sounds simple right? Wrong!

Every time one of my kids takes something out of the garage, they put it back near the side door, instead of the spot where it belongs. You can’t even walk 1 foot past the side door without feeling like you should have trained with the Wallendas.

It's raining shoes?

Have you seen this commercial for the Chevy Traverse?


We were watching television Friday night and this commercial comes on. My 13 year old son says “Oh yeah that’s good, the economy is tanking and this woman is wishing for it to rain shoes.”

I couldn't have said it better myself!

P.S. Call me if it starts raining Manolo Blahniks. I'll bring my SUV and we can split the sales on Ebay.

Do you Google?

Have you ever googled yourself? Have you ever googled an old friend that you lost touch with?

Sometimes as the holidays draw near I get to reminiscing and have a yearning to reach out to those in my life who I’ve lost track of. Friends who I've lost touch with who still live near my hometown, a whole state away. I hadn’t seen or spoken with this friend in almost 10 years. I didn’t really expect to find anything at all. This friend was never computer savvy, so I didn’t expect to find a myspace or facebook address.

I found out that her father is still living. He works as a security guard and for some reason the state that he lives in publishes on the internet the names and employer of persons holding a particular type of license. I was very happy to find out he’s doing ok. He must be if he is still able to work. The last we were in touch he was having some serious health problems.

Now for the part that shames me. I want to wash my eyes out with soap for viewing this. Something came up under my old friend’s name. It seems she defaulted on a credit card and that company sued to garnish her wages. The state she lives in posts all the gory details of small claims court activities for anyone to see. It posts her current address and current employer. Both were the same as the last time I was in touch with her, so I know this is her information.

Who would have thought?

My friend was always fastidious about paying her bills and although I wasn’t privy to her finances, she had to have immaculate credit to buy a home on her own 15 years ago. Something had to have happened for her to have a credit card go to small claims. Perhaps she was a victim of identity theft? I don’t know.

I googled her employer’s website, then searched for her name. A newsletter from over a year ago came up with her photo on it.

Ok, now my internet skills are starting to creep even me out.

What will I do with this information? Nothing. Will I contact her? Doubtful.

Have you Googled yourself? Don't you want to know what Google has on you?

Speaking of Freak Shows - "House"

Speaking of freak shows, what about “House” last night? AfterEllen.com showed a promotional clip of the opening sequence which was at least 20 seconds longer than the sequence that aired at the beginning of the show. The shortening of that sequence aside, the whole storyline just really angered me.

The show starts out with a steamy make-out sequence with Thirteen and an anonymous woman. (The sequence was very reminecent of those in an "L Word"episode.) Afterward, the woman has a seizure, Thirteen dials 911 and the investigation of her illness begins, but not until House makes a number of smarmy, really insulting remarks. House's "Another life saved by girl-on-girl action," was just a bit much. This goes on throughout the show. House even accuses her of a downward spiral of partying and anonymous sex with women.

Is he jealous?

Who is he to judge?

And why is Thirteen’s experience with her bi-side a “downward spiral”?

Would anonymous sex with men not be a “downward spiral”?

I've seen a handful of episodes of "House" and I have to say I've usually enjoyed them. I don't know if I could bring myself to watch again after this episode. After all the really negative stuff spewing out of House’s mouth, I thought for a moment, maybe this will end well.

When Thirteen and the woman discover they have the same terminal illness, they bond and you see them comforting each other in the hospital bed. Not in the kinky, smarmy way both my partner I thought the scene was going. We both looked at each other wide eyed when the sequence began with Thirteen getting into Spencer's hospital bed. We thought, oh no, they are not doing some gratitous sex scene in a hospital bed! They were comforting each other in the way a spouse or good friend would, when one finds out some terrible news. That made me think, wow, they are showing lesbians & bi-sexuals as human. But then the last sequence of the episode is Thirteen making out with an anonymous blonde. Way to burst my bubble.

Once I got beyond my anger about House, it made me think for a moment, what if I were in that situation? What if I discovered I had a terminal illness?

Would I go out and “live life to it’s fullest” and start some self destructive behaviors like partying hard and having anonymous sex? Or maybe daredevil type behavior?

In a word, NO!

I can’t imagine anyone else who I would rather spend my final time with.

It would be with my partner and my children. And we would make the best of it.

What about you?

If you discovered you had a terminal illness, what would you do?

AMC - Bianca is back!

I’m finding it hard to find a coherent topic to blog about. I’m a bit discombobulated this week I guess. My schedule is off this week because my physical therapist could not see me on my usual days, so I’m Monday and Thursday this week. I was feeling sort of blue, so I got my butt out to Starbucks and got my favorite, Green Tea Frappacino. I don't do Starbucks that often because I have my own Expresso/Cappucino machine, and frankly my homemade is better. But the Green Tea Frappacino really can't be duplicated at home, so when I want a treat, that's it.

I was REALLY looking forward to "All My Children" (AMC) on Monday because Bianca is back and I’m anxious to see how her storyline is going to flow. I began watching AMC last fall when I became ill. About that time Bianca had befriended Zarf/Zoe. Zoe did the “secret admirer” thing which is always creepy, no matter who the secret admirer is. Please people, if you’re crushing on someone, just suck it up and ask them out for coffee! Doing the “secret admirer” notes and gifts is just too stalker like in today’s world.

Anyway, I digress. Pregnant Bianca was found amongst the rubble from the tornado by Zach who, weirdly enough is her baby daddy. Bianca then proceeds to give birth after the packed ambulance leaves with the injured.

This is at least the 2^nd week now of the AMC tornado storyline. I’ve had enough. It’s not just JR’s bad acting, being distraught over Babe’s possibly eminent death. It’s the tornado storyline itself. Last year, late August we had an F1 tornado touch down on our block. Six houses, mine included, were in the path of destruction. Fortunately, our home fared the best. Our next door neighbor who hunkered down with us in our basement, had a huge tree uprooted and deposited onto the side of their house. We had tree debris all over our property, even though our 3 trees were left intact. We had other damage, but in comparison, it was minimal. The worst of it was the power outage that lasted 4 days and the flooded basement. Our tornado was also the precursor of a chain of events that my partner and I believe led to my daughter’s psychotic break.

According to a post on AfterEllen.com, Bianca’s character is going to be in a long-term relationship. I felt they did a really good job of treating Zarf/Zoe’s transgender issues. It will be interesting to see how AMC treats the relationship.

Will it be treated similar to a traditional heterosexual relationship, maybe with a few nods to some of the discrimination same sex couples deal with?

Or will it be a freak show?

Caribou Barbie?

Can anyone tell my why Sarah Palin appeared on SNL yesterday?

My partner, my son and I watched SNL as we do every Saturday night. My partner just could not believe that Sarah Palin would subject herself to that rap sequence during “Weekend Update”.

Honestly, the only reasons I could think of were that Sarah Palin wanted to show “Joe sixpack” that she could take a joke, that she’s one of them, and that she can sit down and have a beer with ya and laugh at herself.

But tell me, are any of those things the qualities we want in a VP?