havocandmayhem.com

I’ve had 2.5 years nearly entirely free from pain caused by the endometriosis that has taken up residence in the left side of my pelvis around my ovary. But the good times seem to be at an end unfortunately. The pain has returned, in full, long lasting force. At least I assume it is long lasting because it started 5 days ago & is still here. Oh sure, I’ve had the occasional uncomfortable twinge, a brief bout of discomfort that rarely lasts an hour or so. You know, cramps, but not really. The ghosts of cramps past or the specter of cramps to come. You know what I am talking about ladies. But this is different. This is a continual discomfort, interrupted by moments of sharp pain whenever I do something silly, like stand up or sit down or….wear pants & underwear. The sort of pain that makes wearing anything the slightest bit constricting (like underwear) uncomfortable. The sort of pain that is accompanied by bloating & swelling guaranteeing that your loose pajama...

The fun thing about Google maps, or the really freaking annoying thing about Google maps, depending on how you look at it, is they never seem to send us the same way twice. I make the drive from our house to my hometown once a year. I’ve been making it since 1992, and from this area specifically since 1996. So I know how to get to Wheeling. I66,to I81, to I68, to I79, to I70, with a few assorted cut offs here & there to shave a little time off the trip. It takes 5.5 to 6 hours depending on tractors, coal trucks and general traffic conditions. But my new phone has Google maps supported navigation & just because I could I put in my start & end point & asked it to tell me how to get there. It cut out 3 of the interstates and had us on US40 for most of the drive. Before there were interstates there was US40. Interstates were built to remove most of the traffic from the often 2 lane road that winds through the mountains and a bunch of tiny towns, which saves trav...

So the stove…. The ick factor of the stove Tuesday morning cannot be overstated. I cleaned up the pee. Pulled out the burner pans & burners, scrubbed them with Lysol disinfectant & surface cleaner, scrubbed the stove top and the stove wells with disinfectant then wiped it all down with vinegar & water. I still felt the ick though so I hit it all again with Clorox kitchen cleaner & another rinse of vinegar & water. That lasted about 30 minutes before the ick got to me again It had been cleaned & disinfected but I was thinking it needed more. So I loaded the burner pans in the dishwasher & ran it on sanitize. Then I scrubbed the burners and the stove with bleach. Lots of bleach. And rinsed again with vinegar & water. I need to buy more white vinegar When the dishwasher cycle was completed I reassembled the stove and contemplated dinner. But I could not bring myself to cook on the stove. It had been cleaned, disinfected and sanitized but...

Disclaimer – this is not about snow or school or parenting Monday night I was making chicken positano which requires all of my stove burners to be in use, even the back left one, which never gets used. I put a pot of water on it to boil and turned it on high boil then moved on to pounding the chicken breasts out flat. Soon the burner was smoking a bit. No biggie, my burners sometimes smoke a bit from a bit of food that smeared on them that I didn’t notice & wipe up. Turn the vent on, let it burn off & keep going. Then the smell started. OMG! THE SMELL!! Gagging in it’s awfulness. I rush over, turn the burner off, move the pot to another one and begin fanning the air with my dishtowel. It smelled like burning cat pee. No lie. BURNING CAT PEE SMELL. My first thought is ammonia in the stove cleaner. I don’t use that back burner much and it’s possible that last time I cleaned the stove I got some cleaner on the burner & failed to wipe it off and that was causing t...

They have school today!!!! For the first time in all of February! Saturday there was a bio diesel spill near the high school & the emergency warning system said the area would be blocked off for clean up but I guess they got it all cleaned yesterday. It might snow today but the chances of it are diminishing, so maybe there might be school TOMORROW as well!!! Dare I even hope that there might a …a….FULL WEEK of school?!?! The first FULL WEEK of school in all of 2010 so far?? The make up days for the two weeks off are today, March 12 and June 9. Yes, they missed 10 days of school  and they only have to make up 3 of them. This is because days 1-2 were ‘built in’. Days 3-5 are what I have mentioned and days 6-10 are ‘banked days’. I don’t know what banked days are but apparently the school system has figured out a way to actually save time from one year to another. The next time we miss school we lose a day of Spring break, then add another day to the end of the year, r...

Look.  I like snow. I still feel the same way about snow now that I felt when I was 7. Problem is, when I was 7 I lived in West Virginia. It was the 1970s. They expected snow. Snow fell so often in the winter that climatologists spoke of Global Cooling. (which is why I have never been able to get 100% behind the idea of Global Warming). 1-3 inches of snow was nothing when I was kid. You didn’t get a delay, let alone a whole day off from school for 1-3 inches. 4-6 inches would get you a delay. It might get you a day off depending on how much snow was already on the ground and whether it was still snowing at 6am.  I remember a couple times in high school where we had a delay and then an early dismissal because of storm conditions. But those were serious storm conditions. The sort of conditions that buses with chains can’t drive in. But now I apparently live in a sub-tropical zone because the mere threat of flurries can be enough to cancel some schools.  It’s not as i...

The laptop is reaching the end of it’s life. It’s had the buzzing problem for a bit & the new HD failed to help. It over heats. It clicks and groans. It takes forever to load anything. every program freezes at some point. Two days ago it started just shutting down at random, generally when the CPU is running a bit. I’ve found a new one & hopefully tomorrow I will be able to get it. Supposedly it is in stock at a Best Buy an hour away, not the easy to get to one south of us, but the one in traffic hell to the east. It has Vista, with free upgrade to Windows 7. It also has 1Gb of virtual memory (I have 128MB now) and 500GB HD (I have 160 now, recently replacing the 80GB one the laptop came with). It has 6GB of RAM (I have 4). It has a build in webcam. I’ve never used a webcam. I have this vague worry videos of me looking at the screen unaware I’m being filmed will end up on You Tube. I’ll have to reload EVERYTHING.  Just the list of Firefox add ons is daunting, never mi...

I suppose it is just as well that there was a confluence of doom rather than having the various doom occur consecutively.  Saves time. The pole went down at 6:30pm Wednesday taking with it all outside forms of communication. We live in a fringy cell zone & have a cell signal enhancer on that pole along with our internet antenna, so the cell went out too. Thursday morning the new HD arrived & the laptop was so hot I was shocked the keys weren’t melting & it was useless after about 11am. The plan was for DH to take the laptop in Friday & have the Clonezilla copy the existing HD onto the new HD. But the guy that knows that software was at the dentist with an abscessed tooth, so DH had to wing it with occasional calls to that guy who was naturally whacked out on pain meds. He is also the guy that drives the bucket truck & who we were going to pay to come out over the weekend to help put the pole back. Five tries later, at 6pm, DH calls and says “It says it...

Perhaps you may remember this photo from Feb when the pole with my internet receiver collapsed in the high winds and this had to come out 3 days later to fix it Look what I found at 7pm last night I had internet before dinner and 90 minutes later when I got back on the computer I didn’t. I went out to see if maybe the antenna had moved maybe and there was no antenna to be seen. There has been no wind & it is tied down now with steel cables. What could have happened? Rain. I found this That is the spike that was screwed in the ground that had the cables tied to it. Apparently a month of nearly non-stop rain saturated the ground enough that the weight of the antenna & receiver pulling against it, pulled it out. So to recap 1. hard drive is dying & must be replaced 2. most of the software has to be downloaded 3. I have no internet at home 4. Library internet filter views every single page on the web as spam & unpleasant, pissy library la...

{scary thundery voice} DOOOOOOOMMM My computer hard drive has a terminal condition. It’s dying slowly as we speak. The buzzing comes more often. It gets so hot I am surprised the keys are not melting.  Or maybe its the fan. Either way, the thing is dying. A borrowed hard drive did not create a buzzing sound so those who know these things feel 95% sure its the hard drive. It is a 3-4 year old laptop. It has a certain type of hard drive style they stopped using about 50 seconds after my Visa payment went through (which is the story of my life) So the various computer docs I consulted did not give me much hope that a replacement hard drive could be found. But one has been found! A  160GB Seagate of appropriate style has been located. The current drive is only 80GB and is a Seagate as well. It has been ordered & will be here by the end of the week. Which is why I have this cloud of doom hanging over me. I have to load a hard drive from the ground up. Operating s...

On the other side of your computer screen there sits a real person typing these words. A real person, with real live feelings, hopes, dreams, a past that stretches back into the mists of times (it was 1967, perhaps it was the smoky marijuana haze of time) and hopefully a long and glorious future. This real person does not exist online. Not even a vague reference. I was reminded of this other day when I read something about people googling themselves and had an idea I'd done it once but couldn't recall the results. That would be because there aren't any. Lots of people with the same name as me do exist online with Facebook & MySpace pages and Flickr albums and job resumes. They appear in newspaper stories, or lists of swim meet winners or tags on other people's photos. But none of them are me. Anyone googling me without meeting me first (for a job interview for example or because I'm the mom of one of their kid's friends) is going to be in for a bit o...

On the plus side this weekend DH & the boys got to go camping & swimming in the river with friends I got to spend 24 hours alone I set the pool up I scrubbed the kitchen floor I mowed the lawn On the minus side The a/c fan started making an ominous, expensive sounding, squeaking noise at 10pm on Friday night (because nothing requiring service ever breaks at 8am on a Tuesday) My hands were raw & pretty much unusable yesterday. It hurt to just turn a door knob The dog got out of her kennel while we were at dinner. Making the 4th time so far. She stays in the yard but we don’t know how she did it this time. First time she broke the gate latch. Second time she dug under the fence. Third time we found and area that we assumed she had scooted herself under (if dog ribs squish flat).We fixed all those. This time we have no clue. Gate still bungee corded shut, hole still filled in and pavered over. Area she went under blocked off with another paver. All pavers sti...

The Windy defeats me again! At least it didn't wreck my car this time, like it did last year, but look at my internet receiver It's not supposed to be on the ground!!! The winds were gusting so strongly Wednesday evening that they bent the pole so much it pulled the guy wires out of the ground and toppled over. See that 30 degree bend in the pole? This pole is not going back up. It has to be replaced. Which means my receiver will remain on the ground for awhile. Rumors of a bucket truck coming to my house Saturday have been mooted but it's supposed to rain tomorrow and you can't erect metal poles in the rain. (not that we haven't but this would be people under company insurance doing it so it won't happen) I'm used to the weather playing merry hell with my internet. The ISP has equipment hanging on towers all over the place and sometimes they get hit with freak lightening strikes or power outages or the wind knocks things askew and someone goes out & rep...