Obligatory Year-End Wrap Up Post, 2004 Version

Another year, down the drain. The hours of 2004 are drawing to a close, and I'm preparing to bid it a fond farewell. Well, perhaps not so fond. To paraphrase The Simpsons, this year both sucked and blew on many levels. There are more than a few parts of the last twelve months that I would like to erase from my life. (I will also spare my readers from having to listen to me whine about them.)

So what have we learned this year?

- Communication and honesty are the most important things in the world. In their absence, people start to assume. Assumptions are dangerous things, and can wreck months of your life that could have been saved if one person had just spoken up.
- If you poke fun at the Great White Death long enough, it will eventually show up and immobilize your city.
- People get way too freaked out over a bunch of mostly harmless insects just looking to get lucky.
- I had a novel in me after all. Too bad it's a crappy one.
- Safe Auto sucks. Their jingle sucks, their customer service sucks. Heck, one of the forms they sent me to sign even had a typo that read "suck." I kid you not.
- The entire country can be offended by a nipple that most of us didn't see until the news pointed it out and played in slow motion ad nauseum, and it's OK to sanitize the media in order to remove offensive language in the name of moral values, but it's still fine to show violence and gore. In the immortal words of Sheila Broflovski, "Remember what the MPAA says: Horrific, deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don't say any naughty words! That's what this war is all about!"
- Of course, moral values are subjective. Waging unnecessary wars, running up a huge deficit that future generations will have to deal with, screwing up the already faltering educational system, and destoying the environment in the name of big business are fine. Discriminating against two people who love each other is acceptable. After all, the Bible says so! (Of course, as the often forwarded letter to Dr. Laura/President Bush reminds us, so is eating shellfish and wearing poly-cotton blends. Enjoy your shrimp tray! Love your sweater! See you in hell!)
- I would be an awful music critic because I am entirely too concerned about whether the band was nice to me.
- I panic over everything, whether it be simple blood draws (no, I've not heard anything yet... no news is good news, I hope) or class reunions. My self esteem sucks, and I often don't handle it very well.
- It's OK to be intelligent again. (Or at least intelligent on quiz shows.) From the bottom of my useless pop culture trivia-filled heart, thanks, Ken Jennings!
- In the same way that I only seem to be allergic to kittens, I'm allergic to cheetah cubs. If I'm in the room with Bravo and Chance (the new 7 month old cheetahs from the Cat Ambassador Program), my throat closes up and I cough up a lung. However, I have no reaction at all to Sahara or Moya, the adult cheetahs in the program. I know, it's weird.
- I am Rhapsody's bitch. I will go into more detail about this a later date, but any service that allows me to come up with a five hour playlist comprised of nothing but songs used in commercials is OK with me.

I guess now would be as good a time as any to get those pesky resolutions out of the way. In the upcoming year, I resolve to:

- Read a "hard" book and a "fun" book every month. While I do spend a lot of time reading, a lot of it is flipping through the newest issue of Entertainment Weekly or re-reading Why Girls are Weird for the billionth time. I have a stack of unread books that I need to plow through, many of them from past Barrows Lecture Series speakers. So why am I rereading Memoirs of a Geisha?
- Learn to work my digital camera and find someplace to host my photos so I can torture everyone with tons of pictures of my cats. (Well, and other stuff too.) There are several things that I've needed to tweak on my site for a while now, but finding the time and motivation has been difficult.
- Do something cultural every month. I don't remember the last time I went to the Art Museum. I haven't been to a show at Playhouse in the Park since Roger Mexico moved. (I do miss those free tickets.... ) Although I've admired the architecture, I haven't been to the new location of the Contemporary Arts Center. I'm lucky enough to live in a city filled with great museums and arts programs, and I don't take advantage of it. As the song goes, "Culture is something good for you/Like liver, spinach and beets too." (I don't like those foods particularly, but I do like the symphony and the theater. I'll take a helping of the Cincinnati Opera, please, with a side of the Pops.)
- Go see local live music at least once a month. For a city that Forbes ridiculed for being "no fun," we have a vibrant local music scene. Attending the Midpoint Music Festival this past year reminded me how much I missed going out to see a band. MPMF gave me lots of new names to keep an eye out for when reading CityBeat, and hopefully along the way I'll discover more.
- Keep track of what goes on in my life. There are points where I can honestly say that I can't remember the last movie I saw or the last concert I've been to. (Case in point: the other night I rented a DVD from Blockbuster, and realized halfway through that I'd rented it before. No complaints - it was Eddie Izzard, after all - but I didn't remember watching it until I got a strange case of déjà vu about twenty minutes in.) As I get older, life seems to be moving faster. Maybe if I kept some sort of record, like a birder's life list, I would be able to retain some grasp on the universe as it whizzes past me. Hopefully this will help me with my next resolution...
- Post more often. Yeah, I say this every year and post less and less. I'm going with the "finding time and motivation" excuse again, but I hope to improve upon my past track record and write more.
- Exercise/lose weight. Yeah, almost everyone puts this on their list, don't they? But I'm getting old, and the metabolism is slowing down. While I'm comfortable (well, kind of) in my body, I would be a lot more comfortable if it were a little bit smaller. Besides, I have a reunion coming up this year. If I decide to go, I don't want to be in the "look how fat she got!" category.
- Relax. As I stated above, I tend to panic about everything in my life. I'm going to work on not being so high-strung about things. The blood tests will probably be fine. I probably won't wreck my car or get hit by a bus today. My car will probably not fall apart if I drive it outside of the city limits. My office will probably keep functioning if I take a vacation. (Granted, "functioning" is a nice way of saying "we'll pile up all of the work on your desk so you can do it when you get back.")
- Edit the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo so it's actually fit for human consumption. This is something to tackle later, since part of the editing process requires a trip to Hocking Hills State Park for research, and it's too cold to do that right now.
- Pick up the two half-finished manuscripts and try to get the first drafts done. I've proven that I can finish a novel. Now that I have that out of my system, I need to get Alison and Devin out of Nebraska. (Before I can do that, I need to make Alison into a sane and functioning person, since she was in bad shape when I stopped writing on the first novel. It probably would be a good idea to finish the first story before completing the sequel.)
- Wear pajama pants as much as humanly possible. I have a theory that the world would be a happier place if we could all wear pajama pants everywhere. I, for one, am much happier when I'm comfortable. I've also run this theory past JohnnyB, and he agrees wholeheartedly.

In fact, I will probably be ringing in the new year in my favorite blue plaid flannels. And my tiara. No one's going to see me but the cats and Zappagirl (she has no plans either, so she's coming over for my annual ritual of movies, wine, and food that's bad for you), and I doubt that they will mind all that much.

Let It Stop! Let It Stop! Let It Stop!

It's coming down
Snow pains on the motor veins
Keeps your business on the ground
It's coming down
Slow day for the teacher
And her wheels are spinning now
On account of winter, Mrs. Braintree
All the roads are closed
And the stores are loot for vagabonds
It's coming down
Go home!
- Trip Shakespeare, "Snow Day"

A lot of joking goes on about the way Cincinnatians approach snow. Around this time of the year (and during tornado season), every television station tries to one-up each other in their high-tech weather prediction toys. (My personal favorite right now is Channel 5's Power of 5, where they draw their weather information from five strategically placed Doppler systems.) Mass paranoia grips the city as we all brace ourselves for the impending Great White Death.

Occasionally it does happen. I remember the Blizzard of 1977 - 1978. I remember working customer service for a department store credit card where they offered to put people up in the local hotels to assure that they would have a first shift in the morning. (The shoppers in New York and New Jersey would have been ticked if there had been no one on the phone to look up their credit card numbers and explain that their credit limit could not be raised because they hadn't made a payment in 6 months.) I remember the following year when I moved to Clifton to an apartment complex at the bottom of a steep hill with a 90 degree turn halfway down (if you missed the turn, you would go plummeting into the woods); Nature saw fit to dump 18 inches of snow on us. It was ridiculously cold, but my fourth floor apartment was so overheated I kept a window cracked at all times. I couldn't get my car up the hill for two days, and finally hiked up the hill to the hippie market because the cat was out of food.

Since then, I've always joked about the people who rush to Kroger to stock up on food in case the entire city freezes over while they sleep, but yet I always find myself stocking up on soup and peanut butter with the rest of the crazy people. One can never be too sure, right? And it's not like I won't eat the food eventually.

Last night, I finished the last of my holiday shopping, and decided to swing by Kroger to pick up a few things.

Yeah, right. A few things. I had seen the news reports. It was going to snow. The first sighting of the Great White Death was upon our doorstep. My plans to pick up some shampoo, conditioner, sour cream, and oats became an all-out end of the world shopping spree. (Well, to be fair, Diet Coke was on sale. And so was the hard salami. And I was almost out of those two particular types of coffee. And the Banquet Crock Pot Classics sounded kind of good, plus it would make my Mom happy that I was actually using my Crock Pot.)

I awoke this morning to the sound of freezing rain hitting my window. It didn't sound good, but I still had a few hours to sleep. I'd set my alarm early just in case the Power of 5 was correct in its predictions of wintertime hell.

There was already about two inches of snow of the ground when I left for work, allowing myself twice as much time as usual to get there. Combined with the freezing rain, the roads absolutely sucked. It looked as if the main roads had been treated about an hour before I reached them, and they were covered over in snow, mixing in with the slush to make a skating rink out of Dana Avenue. Going up the hill on Rockdale Avenue was an adventure as well. (I chanted "don'tstopdon'tstopdon'tstop" at all of the other cars the entire time.) After almost skidding past the employee entrance at the Zoo (really, folks, whose idea was it to put it halfway down a winding hill?), I settled into my desk and did the small amount of work that I actually needed to get done. I worked ahead a little bit, but spent most of the next few hours checking weather reports and snow emergency announcements on various local news websites.

My supervisor was in as well. She had planned to work half a day, then pick her son up at the airport that afternoon. Her daugher was going to drive from Maryland later that evening. Since all of my family is in town, I had elected not to take any time off for the holidays, saving all of my accumulated hours for time when I actually had something interesting to do.

By 11:00, Boss Lady's son had called to announce his flight had been cancelled. She had called her daughter to advise her of the road conditions. We were all sitting and waiting until we got the "oh this is stupid - go home!" phone call. By noon, our department was released, and several of us went outside to clean off their cars.

Mind you, it had been snowing this entire time. It was snowing hard enough that by the time I had worked my way around with the snow brush and ice scraper, the place where I had started was covered again. I did the best I could, and slowly made my way out of the Zoo.

The hill that I had slid down that morning was covered in even more snow, and had glazed over into a lovely mix of slush and ice. It took me a good few minutes to get up the hill I can usually ascend in less than 30 seconds. I followed a person up Montgomery Road that felt it would be much safer for everyone involved if he went about 2 miles an hour. I made it home half an hour later (it usually takes about ten minutes), started cooking some Herb Chicken and Rice in the Crock Pot, and proceeded to watch the school and business closings that crawled across the bottom of the screen during Days of Our Lives. (And no, I didn't watch the soap.)

It's after 2:00 am. I should be sleeping, but I'm still watching the closings and snow emergency announcements like a hypnotized monkey. There's already 6 inches of snow on the ground in my naighborhood. I haven't seen a single snowplow or salt truck come down my street yet. I've just figured out that the tapping sound I've been hearing for the last two hours is more freezing rain. Eventually the freezing rain is supposed to give way to up to another foot of snow. Several semi trucks have jackknifed on the surrounding highways.

I'm kind of hoping that they city of Cincinnati decides to upgrade the current snow emergency to a level 2. If so, there's a good chance that the Zoo will be closed and I won't have to brave the roads. Today was enough excitement for the year, thanks. But unless they have the good sense to shut us down, I'll have to do it, because I'm the only one manning my office until the new year.

I looked into taking the bus. There used to be a bus stop a few blocks from my house that ran past the Zoo. (Granted the line stopped on the other side of the Zoo, but walking an extra block sounded like a better idea than crashing my tiny blue car.) I say "used to" because apparently they changed the route at the beginning of the month, and the bus now no longer goes past the Zoo, but loops past the other side of the Children's and University Hospital campuses, and I'm still not sure how to do a line transfer on the Metro.

Jim O'Brien, the chief meteorologist on Channel 5, announced in his last update that he might still be at the station in the morning, as he wasn't sure that he could get in, and no one was sure when his shift replacement would arrive. He's been breaking in every half hour all night on top of doing the 5:00 and 11:00 newscasts, plus a full hour of live broadcasts at 7:00. He's starting to get a little punchy. Please, someone, let Jim get a nap. Let Skippy the intern do the next few updates. All he needs to do is read off the teleprompter. Heck, at this point I could do the next update, even without a teleprompter:

The Great White Death has arrived. Stay inside. The entire world has been cancelled due to inclement weather, and will be postponed until a later date.

I feel bad about those who had out-of-town plans or loved ones coming in from other parts of the country, as I know this really screws up their holiday plans. But at this point, part of me wants to wake up to a blanket of white obscuring the street, glistening from the first rays of the sun, and the television proclaiming that the Zoo is closed, the city is closed, and everyone should take a snow day. I don't want to risk my neck driving to work to do nothing but wait for phone calls that aren't going to happen. I want to glance up bleary-eyed at the business closings, then crawl back under The Ugliest Comforter in the World and sleep.

I doubt it will happen, but it will give me something to dream about.

(And by the way, the Herb Chicken and Rice concoction was pretty good. And if I do have to go to work tomorrow, at least I'll have something warm and filling to take for my lunch.)

Nil By Mouth

It never fails. The only time you truly have a desire to do something is when you’re not allowed to do it.

Last night I went in to see Not-Dr. Ruth yesterday for my annual exam, and while I was there, she scheduled me for a couple of blood tests to be done in the morning. Nothing major – a TSH test and T4 test to monitor the multinodal goiter (ewww!) she found a few years ago, a blood glucose test since my father recently developed adult onset diabetes, and a lipid profile because I’ve never had my cholesterol and triglycerides checked. As I am becoming a woman of a certain age (a poetic way of saying I’m getting older), I figured it might be a good idea for me to start paying attention to these things. (I’ve also had a few other symptoms that could be the result of my wacky thyroid, and I thought it would be best to eliminate that possibility before looking into other causes.)

While I was making the appointment with the receptionist, I asked if there was anything I needed to do to prepare for the test. She glanced at the orders that Not-Dr. Ruth had written out. “Nothing by mouth after midnight.”

No big deal, I thought to myself. I would just go home, have dinner, and go to bed early. (Mind you, early for me is before 1:00 am.) It was only a few hours.

Apparently I’d forgotten my last run-in with the words “nothing by mouth after midnight.” The last time was before the surgery on my ankle, where I’d popped my last Percocet at 11:45 pm, hoping that it would last until the anesthesiologist put me under. Fat chance. I woke up around 5:30 in the morning, my ankle screaming with pain, unable to take anything to relieve it. I spent the next few hours watching cable, drifting in and out of sleep, watching VH1. (I learned to despise Kelly Clarkson during my stay at my parents’ house, as “Miss Independent” was playing every minute that Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” and Coldplay’s “The Scientist” wasn’t.)

Last night was no different. After returning last week’s rentals and killing some time at Blockbuster, I headed home to ponder dinner. And that was when I started to worry. Would the cheesy mettwursts in the refrigerator send my LDL levels spiraling upward into the stratosphere? What would a cheese quesadilla do to my triglycerides? I settled on a veggie burger with the super high fiber bread as a makeshift bun, figuring that was the healthiest option, and settled in to watch Mean Girls.

10:30 pm – I’m out of Diet Coke. I elect not to open another one, since I’m going to try to get to sleep early tonight. (Yeah, like a whopping can of Diet Coke is going to affect me. Given my giant coffee mug that holds an entire pot of coffee, a 12 ounce soda is just a drop in the bucket.) I opt for a bottle of water instead.

11:30 pm – Last drag of the day. I have no idea if smoking counts, but since cigarettes lead to dry throat, which leads to more water, I stub out my clove and take another swig from my water bottle.

11:45 pm – The water bottle is almost empty. If I open another one, I’ll still be drinking it after midnight. Time to ration.

11:55 pm – Last drink of water. Sigh.

12:01 am – Dammit. I’m still thirsty.

12:03 am – And I’m not tired in the least, either. One more smoke and I’ll… aw, crap. I hide the cigarettes under a pile of junk mail.

12:11 am – Kismet and Ma Huang come tearing through the living room, displacing all of the junk mail on the coffee table. I hide the cigarettes under the Yellow Pages. Move that, Drunken Master Kitty. I dare you.

12:35 am – I cannot sleep. Maybe I’ll just take a few Tylenol PM and drift off to Conan O’Brien. Oh, wait. NPO MN. (Hey, I did learn something in nursing school!)

12:45 am – Do not think about the fudge on the top of the refrigerator. Repeat, do not think of the fudge.

1:15 am – Um, the Starbucks espresso brownie is off limits too.

I finally managed to sleep, and what did I dream of? Food, of course. I woke up at 7:00 am starving, sleepily thinking of what to prepare for breakfast, only to remember that I couldn’t have breakfast until after they jabbed a needle in my arm. (This was not helped along by the constant mentions of how to create a holiday feast on Today while I was still in the just-awake-enough-to-hit-the-snooze-alarm phase. This Not awake/not asleep phase also resulted in me dreaming that I had ADHD. Damn you, Katie Couric!)

I don’t get it. I used to always skip breakfast. Heck, when I was a corporate drone, I often skipped breakfast and lunch, and would only eat dinner when Roger Mexico force-fed me fake chicken nuggets. Now suddenly, I can’t survive a whole ten hours without eating something? When did this happen?

Even worse, though, was the fact that I still couldn’t have anything to drink. No water, no juice, and no coffee. I am not the most pleasant person in the morning before caffeination, but my Abyss Boy coffee mug would have to stay home. (I did toss a can of Diet Coke in my messenger bag to keep me going for the five minute drive from the doctor’s office to work.)

To top things off, my allergies were acting up and I couldn’t breathe, but antihistamines were out of the question until after my appointment with the phlebotomist. I kept my fingers crossed, hoping that I wouldn’t sneeze, causing my head to explode.

TLong story short (too late!), the appointment went fine. They even managed to get me in earlier than my scheduled time, so I was able to make it to work by 9:30, at which point I filled my coffee mug and my water bottle and grabbed a pack of granola bars out of the cabinet before I even turned on my computer. I am now happily hydrated, caffeinated, and sated. (And my antihistamines kicked in, and I am able to breathe again.) The phlebotomist didn’t blow a vein in the process of doing the blood draw(for once!), and my arm is no longer hurting.

Now I can just concentrate on worrying about my test results. At least I can do it with a full tummy and a drink in my hand.