Mar 09

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This is me after a really long day of work (edited here: I had to remove the work bitching so I don’t get fired).  By the way, I took the photo from this angle for two reasons (hide the double chin and hide the major roots). I don’t even wanna talk about the limp hair or shiny face, okay?

Do I look like I want to bake a cake? Trey does not eat cake (neither of my kids do, the freaks). But a couple of years ago he was at a friend’s house and the friend had a HoHo cake made for his birthday. Well. I never heard the end of this stupid cake because Trey LOVES crap food. The cheaper the better in his world. He would much rather have a Twinkie over a real cake any day. Twinkies, HoHo’s, etc., He loves them all. Blech. So, of course, he wanted a HoHo cake for his 16th birthday.

Bastard.

Normally I would tell him to go fuck himself, but he’s a good kid and you only turn 16 once so I figure I would give it a shot. I surfed around and it seemed pretty easy and I decided to whip one out. Except when I went to make it at 6:30 at night I realized that I had no chocolate cake mixes in the cupboard. So I decided to really investigate the situation and find a complete homemade HoHo cake. No such a beast.

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I found 3 separate recipes. One was for the cake part of it (no links because I didn’t save them – hell, I didn’t even print them – I just propped the MacBook up on the microwave and went to town). It involved a lot of eggs and a very little bit of flour.

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Looks kinda rough, huh? I didn’t even bother to follow a recipe for the “filling”. I used Crisco, butter, sugar, vanilla, salt and a cooked cornstarch/milk paste mixture. Then I beat the hell out of it. It tasted pretty fucking good for someone who decided to wing it.

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I rolled that bitch up and snapped a picture while holding it because I was in a hurry and was also in the middle of ironing clothes (I am woman, hear me roar!).

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So then I made some half-assed chocolate glaze and took a picture of it before it “hardened” like a real HoHo. It was at this point that I realized the half X@nax that I took to help me sleep was kicking in and I had a helluva mess to clean up before I fell into bed.

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Voila! A homemade HoHo cake that tastes way more better than the real thing and made a 16 year old happy.

I’m all that and not such a bad mom after all.

I’m outta here.

Mar 07

Our only goal for Saturday was to get out of the house.  Rick was wanting to leave early, but I stalled around and did pretty much nothing so that we ended up with a late start (after 12 sometime). We didn’t exactly have a plan. We just knew we were headed towards Pittsburgh with one destination being Mineo’s pizza (BEST pizza in Town!). I have been all happy with my latest purse (pictures coming one of these days), but an offhand comment from someone made me think maybe I should look for something else (they asked if it was luggage or my purse – hahaha…bitch). I suggested we do the thrift store thing while we were out (thinking that maybe thrift stores closer to the city would have nicer items). I had a list of names and addresses of a few in my purse (shut-up) so we tried a couple places out. The first one was in Swissvale and I found absolutely nothing. They have an a little designer section, but there was nothing that interested me. They also had a woman that invaded my personal space while I was looking at belts and another woman across the rack that was in desperate need of an inhaler (people, mouth breathing is so unseemly) so we pretty much fled the scene.

We got in the wrong lane and ended driving up to Mount Washington. Mount Washington overlooks the city of Pittsburgh and it’s fabulous…if you’re not afraid of heights.

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An older photo of Lars (I miss the knucklehead), Rick and another German dude (I can’t remember his name) standing on the platform that overlooks the city. You will never see a picture of me standing on that ledge (I didn’t take this one either). I don’t go near that look-out platform because, “OH.HELL.NO!”

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I snapped a picture from underneath the platform yesterday and was appalled by what I thought were cracks in the cement. Turns out that it was just tree branches. Hee!

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I also caught this building. I have no idea what it is, but part of me is secretly wishing that it is someone’s house because that would be fabulous. I need a life.

We found the other thrift store and I was kinda put off by the sales staff of all people. They were loud and trashy (as am I, but they were not loud and trashy in the good way). I found a couple of tops and a black velvet pair of Dansko clogs in my size. I only bought the tops because seriously, I didn’t need the clogs and I’m trying to be good about buying crap. And also, where the hell would I wear black velvet Dansko clogs?

I was starving and since we were on the south side we decided to try Fat Head’s Saloon. We had been talking about eating there forever, but never managed to get there. Today was going to be the day! Except not, because apparently there was some kind of Leprechaun lap there. It basically boiled down to a shit-ton of drunk people hitting all the bars in the south side. After realizing it was going to be an hour wait for a seat and my low tolerance for people in general, we bolted and headed over to Mineo’s (our original plan). And I realized that I am much too old to tolerate young men spitting on sidewalks. That shit is gross and rude.

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After dinner we went up to Little’s and I scored a pair of shiny red shoes (currently on sale online for $83) for the low, low price of $29. I was looking for Doc Martens. Don’t ask. I can tell you that Avalon’s in Squirrel Hill had THREE pair of brand-new looking Doc Martens – all of which did not fit and I was sad. Hence, the purchase of the red shoes. Which made me happy and I will not think of the fact that Rick found a pair of brand new Doc Martens for $40. Bastard!

We spent the rest of the evening dwaddling around at The Waterworks Mall where I saw the manager throw out two young women with their toddlers because they were attempting to shoplift (the women, not the toddlers). I am not a big fan of public displays so you can imagine how uncomfortable I was when the one young woman decided to mouth about how she has $1,000 on her credit card (hee!) and then declared she was getting her lawyer involved. The F word was flying too. “Hello, white trash, you don’t have a lawyer. VERY FEW people really have a lawyer on retainer so just shut the fuck up already!” The women left before the police came.

Sunday was spent just lazing around. Rick did the Sam’s Club run for me and I had 20 whole minutes to myself before my mother and Trey came back from their little mini shopping trip. It was a beautiful 20 minutes that I wasted by going on Facebook and announcing that I was totally alone in the house and how happy I was.

My life sucks sometimes.

I ended up doing laundry and organizing my closet. I put away the Super winter clothes, left out the “it might snow” clothes, and started going through my spring/summer clothing. I’m pretty much stuck in a weird situation with clothing. I dress for the weather and it’s starting to become a problem at my office. This year the heat was jacked up and I found that my dressing for the weather was resulting in my sweating. I Hate to sweat. Seriously. Anybody with light, linus-type (tm Shelleyness) hair will never be happy when they sweat. And I automatically feel dirty if I feel any type of wetness in my body. Thank Christ, I don’t sweat heavily as some people do. But still. Yeah, I’m particular. Blech.

I’m outta here.

Mar 03

I went back to work on Monday expecting a horrifying day.  Coming back to a medical office after a week off could be a real bitch.  Lots of things to accomplish quickly and lots of patients that need to be seen…NOW.

Imagine my surprise when it wasn’t bad at all.

Things ran smoothly (for the most part) and I went home not hating my life and having NO headache.  I didn’t even have to take aspirin while I was there!  I’m starting to think that the constant headache problem may have been a side effect from my previous medications.  A smart thing to have done was maybe wait and try the new meds out over the weekend before work (in case of reactions), but I like to live dangerously and started them on Monday.  I was surprised at how good I felt and how easy it was to accomplish the things that I had to get done.

It’s that time of year where everyone starts losing their shit over insurance and their deductibles.  I am amazed at how many people automatically get on the phone ready to fight.  Maybe it’s this specific area or maybe it’s everywhere, but I absolutely hate when people lose their shit before they even know what they’re talking about.  Someone called yesterday flipping out because they got an overdue notice for when their kid was at the office and he knows that his wife paid on that day because he has the credit card receipt to prove it.  Turns out that she did indeed pay her copay, but the bill that he has been receiving is for his deductible. I’ve reached the point where I’m getting fed up with basic human ignorance.  Nah, I need to word that different.  There is nothing wrong with not being knowledgeable about something (especially insurance) – just don’t be rude and find out the answers before you start losing your shit.

A co-worker got slammed by a couple and I had to leave the area because it was making me so upset.  This couple was hell-bent on being argumentative and not wanting to pay the copay (let alone the deductible balance)  and I have never in my life seen such a spectacle.  To my co-workers credit she held her own quite well, being as polite as she could be and explaining over and over again – but this couple was treating my co-worker like she was a incompetent thief.  Arguing over top of each other and just acting ridiculous.  Even arguing on the dates of the visit when the medical treatment records are right there.  20 minutes of blahblahblah, loud talking, snarky, pissy comments (not from my co-worker) and major discomfort to everyone in the office and they finally left.  I HOPE they never come back.  Seriously.

We ended up seeing 48 patients and I was exhausted when I got home.  I stopped at Walmart to pick up some groceries and yapped with the family for a little bit (I also picked up the Zombieland DVD for Trey).  Rick brought me some kind of technical doo-hickey that allows me to press a button and switch from my PC to Mac (magic box!).  He tried to explain how it works to me, but my brain wasn’t accepting anything and it doesn’t matter anyway because he needs some kind of extended cord (he’s getting it today).  All I know is that I’ll be able to do my thing by pressing a button and that  makes me HAPPY.

Now I have to go get a shower and get on the whole CYBER SCHOOL schedule horseshit that is Trey’s life.

I’m outta here.

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