It's Much Easier To Buy Plants Than Pants

Went into Jacksonville yesterday to pay the cable bill and buy some pants. I'm starting a new job at the bookstore today, as sort of an acting Merchandising Manager. The current one will be on maternity leave during Christmas, so they want me to fill in whilst she's gone. I'm starting my training now, and I'll be doing this for about the next 5 or 6 months.

When I'm working a shift, I'll be in charge of the entire bookstore. Which is pretty cool! I'm very excited, and very happy to be receiving the training.

I feel like I'm only 3 degrees of separation away from the Executive Washroom!



But...

Or should I say Butt?

I really need to buy some new work pants. I'll be much more visible, and therefore I'd like to look more professional than usual.

I. Hate. Buying. Pants.

If you're English/British/Whatever The Heck You Like To Be Called, I'm sure you've guessed that I mean trousers and not underwear. Because why would customers care what my underwear looks like? I understand that's what you call 'pants' there.



A couple of days ago I devoted two hours to trying on pants. Two hours of misery and discouragement. Two hours standing under the harsh fluorescent lighting of tiny dressing rooms with funhouse mirrors. Two hours of insensitive clothing store clerks asking, 'None of them worked for you?'



My body is, shall we say...voluptuous? Rubenesque? Zaftig even?

Like Marilyn Monroe in this photo, but with red hair and a much less famous face (I'm working on that).



Very hard for me to find pants that fit and look good.

So what's a girl to do?



Make myself REALLY happy and buy plants instead!!

Why would I spend another two hours wasting my time? Might as well watch paint dry.




Most of my container plantings look really really sad. And I thought I'd take advantage of my last stress free day off until after Hell-mas, and plant some stuff :)

Speaking of other purchases....

I also went into town to buy a baby shower gift for the aforementioned pregnant Merch Manager.

As a rule, I don't do baby showers. Or bridal showers. Or any other sort of party that involves squealing women.

But I decided to stop being a baby pooper and celebrate a friend's pregnancy. Which turned into two. Which turned into three. (I feel like The Count on Sesame Street)

Three of my friends are pregnant at the same time. Due at the same time. How's that for coordination??



Luckily two of them are best friends and are having a joint baby shower.

I'm just so AWKWARD when it comes to these things. I don't feel at all squealy. My biological clock must have a short in it. I feel weird playing all the baby shower games.

When I walked into Babies R Us yesterday, I know I looked like a deer in the headlights. I didn't know where to start! When you walk in and the first thing you see are breast pumps, that's a little intimidating.



(btw, who looks lovingly at a breast pump? That woman's looking at it like it's her baby O_O)


I took a tentative few steps like I was walking into the Coliseum to fight a tiger. At least gladiators were given swords.

I hear, 'Kyna!!' from over to the right.

It was my friend Abby! (who is one of the Pregnant Three) She was also shopping for this particular baby shower, and was on the phone with the third woman of the Pregnant Three. 'Jenn, I gotta go, Kyna just walked in and she looks really freaked out!'



Abby was nice enough to help me through the process. I didn't even know how to use the gift registry thingy. I can't believe I've almost made it to 30 without doing any of this.

Actually I can. I work very hard in avoiding all-female gatherings.



Anyway, wish me luck in my new (albeit temporary) job! :)

Blog Feature Friday ~ "Here On The Prairies"

Over the last couple of weeks, I took some time to check out new blogs on Blotanical.

Most of the blogs I like have something in common with the way I write my own blog (duh, right?)

Be sure to follow Here On the Prairies by Prairie Chicken.

She's a hilarious and opinionated Canadian blogger, based out of Winnipeg. You've got to have a sense of humour to live in Winnpeg during the winter.

I've been there. In the winter. I got frostbite just thinking about it.



She has the ability to be funny with a single photo or single sentence. I'm convinced that Prairie Chicken is my sista from anotha mista.

This crafty lady's got balls. Figuratively and literally...she's had some crocheted! Check out her online embroidery shop on Etsy.

I totally want to order a "Make Me A Pie Bitch" tea towel.

She blogs about any subject. Gardening, her various projects, music, weird shit, life, etc. She peppers it with random photos and YouTube videos, which you know I enjoy. It's also peppered with Tales of rrrrrrrrrRibaldry!...



...so be warned if you're sensitive to profanity. But you're not sensitive, are you Dear Readers? Or you wouldn't be reading my blog. :)

If you have the time, it's worth it to skim through her past posts to get a picture of what I'm talking about. On my last day off, that's what I did. And I wasn't disappointed!

Speaking of great YouTube videos, I found a series of awesome ones yesterday that I'm sure lot of people have already seen. But I'm always late to the viral video party. So here's one of them (there are four). Almost spit some coffee out.



"No way!"

"Yaweh."

:D

Dear Mr. Fantasy, Play Us A Tune

The cotton in the field behind my backyard is flowering.






I've never seen cotton flowers before. I think they're very pretty. Wayne's World dream sequence style, my thoughts swirl into a whirlpool of pink...

Pink ladies. This one looks like she runs a cult O_O


And this one is me. Really. *cough*.


Pink Barbie Corvettes. I always wanted to grow up and drive a pink corvette.


Pink cotton candy clouds chasing a scared woman down a country (oops, just about left the 'o' out of country, good thing I looked) road.



Pink ballerinas. I also wanted to grow up and be one of these. That dream crashed and died when I turned 13. Most girls lose their baby fat when they turn 13. I reclaimed mine. Plus some huge knockers. Of which I got made fun of for every single day. Of which led to a sense of humour. Of which I am thankful. For both knockers and sense of humour.


Pink mohawks with leopard spots and braids. Wow. That actually looks really heavy. And super-awesome :D


Pretty in Pink. Oh Molly, it's weird to see you playing a grandmother on your new-ish TV show.


Pink martinis!! I was going to post a picture I have of myself with a pink martini. But I thought that would be crass. Pip pip.


Pink Drag Queens. I love you Pink Drag Queens! There aren't enough of you in Jacksonville to give this place some LIFE. :)


Pink cherry blossoms.


Cats in pink wigs. Um, pardon me for a minute. I have to go and make a quick phone call to the authorities...


Pink bra planters! I think this may be my favourite. I do have a bra exactly this colour, except it's a lot bigger. Well, not 'circus freak' big. More like...'interferes with my golf swing a little' big.

And it's getting kinda old, so I could totally plant petunias in it, hang it on my mailbox and shock my plethora of Republican neighbours. I have an idea now, thank you to whomever gave it to me!



I'm so happy that there are people out there on the internet who posted photographs of the EXACT things I was dreaming about. I would be lost without you.

Little Boxes, On The Hillside...

Weeds.



Remember a few posts back, I said that I had lost my garden Mojo?

The weeds were bad then, but they got even worse, as you can see from the photos.



I've discovered that my Mojo has been kidnapped.

Whoever's got my Mojo held hostage is one mean bastard. Do know what they did the other day?

Mailed me one of my Mojo's fingers!!



In the ransom note, they said that if I didn't weed my garden, they'd cut off the rest of my Mojo's fingers one by one.

And if I still didn't weed my garden?

You don't even want to know what they said they'd start cutting off my Mojo next!



So I got down down to business. It was super hot out, nasty humidity. When I came out the door, garden gloves in hand, it felt like I was stepping into someone's mouth.



That one behemoth of a weed you can see in the center of the above photos of my garden had literally become a TREE. When I pulled it out, it uprooted like 5 other plants next to it, including one of my oriental lilies.

My azalea had some sort of weird spiky tumour growing out of it. These kind of weeds gave it up more easily than the one above, though.


Hopefully I've done enough that my Mojo will be returned [mostly] intact.

I have a nasty feeling of who might have my garden Mojo...



And if she does, I'm screwed. She's one tough cookie. With a mean set of clippers. And she knows I'm anti-drug.

My Mojo is doomed. :(

Blog Feature Friday~ Hyperbole and a Half

I will never, ever in a million years be as funny as this person.

Allie @ Hyperbole and a Half




Because I base my whole existence on being funny, I would be very depressed at this prospect...

...if I only wasn't laughing so hard. It's impossible to be melancholic when there are tears streaming out of my eyes and I'm snorting because I can't breathe.

Examples of posts you should not miss:

Dog

This Is Why I'll Never Be An Adult

Sneaky Hate Spiral

And my personal favourite, the post which inspired me to share my love/envy of this blogger...

Things That Can Make You Feel Like An Idiot Almost Instantly


Currently the blog as 15,534 follwers, and counting. Allie obviously doesn't need anyone's help in promoting her blog. She has no idea who I am. Chances are that many of you are one of the 15,534.

And she's hot in real-life. DAMMIT!



If you aren't one of the 15,534 followers, RUN, do not walk to read her blog. Her animations are worth the trip alone.

If you need me, I'll be standing on the Emerald Isle bridge holding a big rock tied around my waist, struggling to think of reasons to live. And most likely I'll be struggling with the rock as well. Because I have the upper arm strength of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.



*sniff*

Whew!

Thank the little baby Jesus!


Turns out they didn't run out of BBQ pork before we got to B's after all!




Oh, and Chuck's CT scan was all clean. No cancer :D



What a long day we had. A long day of waiting in two different cities with nothing to do in between the couple of things we were waiting for.

The appointment for the CT scan was at 9:30, so we left here about 7. I expected a long wait at the hospital in Greenville, because the waiting room in Radiology was packed. Normally he gets his CT scan here in Jacksonville, and they send the results up there where Chuck gets checked out by the doctor at a later date.

This time we decided to do it all same day. Chuck was in for his test and out in record time. Those people really run a tight ship! Best hospital I've ever had to deal with. If you're going to get sick, go to Pitt Memorial in Greenville.

Chuck came out of the test kind of loopy though. Have any of you ever had a CT scan with contrast dye? You can taste a really strong metallic taste in your mouth and feel it in your nose, and your crotch gets really really really warm. Your balls feel like a hot teabag.



Since we got out of there in record time, we raced on over to B's BBQ. We had beat the rush! I felt triumphant.

Which wouldn't last long. Because although their pulled pork is delicious and succulent and I thoroughly enjoyed it, there is one problem with the place. No air conditioning. It looks like a hole-in-the wall dive from a movie about the South. There's a smoke shack out behind it. Which gives it a great ambience!

If only it wasn't 100F/37C outside. And even hotter inside, of course. Dear God, I felt like a roasted pig myself!

We actually killed most of the day by eating, which I hate to admit. The appointment to see the doctor was in the afternoon at 2:30. There's nothing to do in Greenville, so we stopped and got ice cream. Then we stopped and visited with my old boss who now manages the Barnes & Noble bookstore there. Then we got coffee. Lots of thumb-twiddling.

Boring enough for you yet? There's not even any way to turn this into something funny!



Finally the appointment came nigh. We did have to sit in the waiting room at the cancer center for quite awhile. That is one of the most depressing things you can ever do. People are there waiting for their chemo. Everyone looks so sad. A lot of people are bald and skinny. I applaud the people that work in that clinic, but man, I don't know how they do it without Prozac.

I remember the first time we came into that clinic, when Chuck started his chemo. I even remember where we sat while we were waiting. Chuck was very silent. That was....I think 'ominous' is the descriptive feeling I'm looking for. Chuck is never silent.

This the the Leo W. Jenkins Cancer Center from the outside. The Brody School of Medicine looms in the background.


We did see one of his chemo nurses this time, who totally remembered us. She even remembered the year we were there...she didn't know we got married, and was very happy to see us still together. Chuck is as big a ham as I am (and an even bigger charmer of the ladies), so he kept all the nurses laughing every time he went into the chemo bay. Tough to forget Chuckles. He copes with difficult things through making other people laugh, just like I do.

We weren't expecting the results from the morning CT scan to come back so quickly, but they did. The doctor told us Chuck's lung was clean as soon as he walked in the door. Dr. Walker is AWESOME. We were shuttled around to a couple of different oncologists over the last five years. Even though they were good at what they do, they weren't specialized in thoracic cancers (which lung cancer counts as). This guy is. And he CARES about his patients, I can tell. Sometimes doctors get a bit desensitized and mechanical, but this one isn't. You can't teach that in medical school.

Anyway, I mis-spoke last post. I meant to say we actually went back for bi-yearly check-ups, not yearly. They're every six months. Turns out, Chuck does have to come back one more time in 6 months. And we thought it would be done. Or at least Chuck would only have to come back to be checked out every couple of years.

The doctor got all Dennis Downer on us. Chuck still will have to come back every year. For like the next 20 years. After 5 years, it's unlikely the SAME cancer will return to Chuck's lung. But after 5 years, there's a 20-30% chance a different lung cancer will attack him.

That kind of depressed him. More correctly, that kind of depressed his wallet.



We were cheered up later on though, we did end up going to that baseball game in Kinston. Ate some bad-for-you-but-delicious stadium food (I stayed away from the hot dogs, IG....but I may have had a chip or twelve O_O). Drank a couple of beers. The game got cancelled near the end, on account of a nasty thunderstorm.

And it STAYED nasty. The hour drive home through the rural countryside was a white-knuckle affair. We could barely see out the windshield a couple of times. And a crack of lightning struck something quite near us and seared the image on our vision for about 10 minutes afterwards...scared the crap out of me.

But we finally made it home. 13 hours out on the road. Glad that's over for another six months :)

Thank you everyone for your well-wishes and good thoughts. Not to get all mushy, I truly believe that they help. :)

Four Years Gone

Chuck has a cancer check-up tomorrow. We're not sure if it's #4 or #5. He has to have a CT scan and a doctor's appointment every year for 5 years. But we don't know if that 5 years started in 2006 or what. I'm thinkin' we've got one more year left. After the 5 years are up? Then it looks real good for the cancer not reappearing.

If you're totally confused, and have no idea what I'm on about, please refer to this post.

We're going up to Greenville, and we're going to make a day of it. First the CT scan at 9:30. Then we'll be waiting around for a few hours, and hopefully getting some delicious BBQ pork at B's BBQ. You've got to get there early, or else they're out of BBQ and they close. THAT'S BAD. Then it's off to see Chuck's oncologist in the afternoon. He'll let us know if they saw anything funny (not funny ha-ha...funny-bad) on the scan.

And then off to Kinston to see an Indians' baseball game! Hotdogs and beer. Mmm.

I'm determined to turn a scary day into a date. Because then it doesn't feel so scary. My husband Chuckles is awesome, by the way. If you knew him, you'd love him too.