… because I think that would really come in handy about now.

I just got back from a class for the business, right? The one that cost me almost $800, plus hotel, food, and gas expenses. The one that I had to take off vacation from my day job that I haven’t even accrued yet.

And I thought I’d stop in and talk to the County guys and see how the status is on that proposal. I talked to the actual guy in charge, who was on vacation last time, when I talked to his boss and a lateral guy. You know, the two knuckleheads who told me it would be going up for bid in the first place, and got me all hooked up with receiving bid requests and everything.

But when I went in and talked to Jim, he was totally surprised to see me. See, he had no idea that I was interested in this work. Not that it would have mattered anyway, because the job was rolled into a general surveying job, and has already been awarded. In fact, I remember seeing the surveyors out the week before I left. If Jim had been around when all of this hit the fan, I would never have wasted the time and money on this class.

He did give me the name and phone number of the surveying contractor at least. But I know damn well that for government work, a contractor pretty much has to have his subcontractors lined up before the job is awarded. I left the guy a voice mail at least; maybe he’ll have another cross-connection survey job come up in the future. I don’t really think that water work is a surveying firm’s strong point.

So, all for nothing. The likelihood that I’ll get even a taste of this work, work that I was counting on, is next to nothing. Big Jeff says the survey is coming up down at the Air Guard Base he works at, and since he’s the backflow guy there and isn?t licensed to do these surveys, he’ll try to get the work thrown my way. And I still have it on my resume in case I ever decide to apply for a job with the County environmental health department. But it’s all gone to smoke rings now. I can see my whole business wafting away in the breeze.

Oh, I’ll still do the testing. In fact, I’ll have to get my butt in gear and get on the lists of those cities that I haven’t applied for yet. But it’s going to take an awful lot of backflow testing to pay for both of those licenses now.

Fuck.

Lessons learned in downtown LA:

A Japanese noodle bowl place staffed entirely by Mexicans was my favorite place to eat. It was just a little incongruous to go in a restaurant labeled in Japanese script and hear only Spanish. It wasn’t the best place to eat when I was dealing with shaky hands though; I flung soup everywhere. After the first day, I chose it for dinner and took it to my hotel room so I could slop in private.

Something called a “beef” bowl at another nearby joint wasn’t good at all though. “Beef” is in quotations for a good reason. Yuck!

I was completely lost the whole time I was down there. Oh, I did get a sense of North and South after a few days, but I was still a fish out of water. I’d go to the class, and go “home” to my lonely cold hotel room, and then what? I couldn’t sleep, so I’d end up just lying awake on that rock-hard, scratchy-sheeted hotel bed for hours. I was only lucky in that the bottom sheets were fitted, so once I did end up falling asleep, I didn’t wake up all mummified.

And I missed Cowboy much more than our usual separation brings. Forty miles is nothing when I’m at home and things are all as they should be, but trapped in a strange place, it’s completely different. I’d got myself so lost getting there in the three-dimensional maze that is to LA freeway system, that for a couple of days, I didn’t even know in which direction to pine.

And that was another ridiculous thing; the freeways. I’m used to a commute that involves tractors and sometimes sheep, not miles after miles of endless “sheep,” zipping in and out of nonexistent spaces. I could not trust my sense of direction with three or four vertical layers of traffic. The one time I thought I saw an earlier exit for the road I was aiming for, I was completely and utterly wrong. I ended up in some little ghetto place, and when I tried to turn around, I ended up in a teeny tiny little neighborhood with streets just wide enough for one driving lane and two lanes of parked cars. How do people live like that?

After the first day, I just walked to my class. It was easier to walk the two blocks than to fight traffic and park in a structure that had maybe two inches of clearance above me. Then I’d walk to lunch, go back to my hotel room to eat and decompress, and walk back to class. Good thing I brought my tennis shoes, because my new boots were killing me.

The class itself was very interesting. I wasn’t the only woman in it this time, but I was the only independent contractor. Everyone else worked for water agencies or health departments. There were two people who’d flown out from a base in Turkey and one from New York. I had no idea that this class was as nationally known as it is; I was really lucky to find it practically in my own backyard. The people teaching it were largely the people who’ve written the manual that most of the country uses in their programs.

I learned a lot, but it was just enough to point out exactly how much I don’t know once I start actually doing the work. This course was geared towards cross-connection control surveys, much broader than just testing the assemblies. I’m going to have to bid on doing a survey for my business now, and I won’t know exactly how much to panic until I see the request for proposal and know exactly what they want.

The good thing is that I now see a job opportunity that I didn’t know about before. Even if my county doesn’t have a formal program in place, the state mandates that they need one, which means a potential job lurking somewhere for someone already trained in it, even if the business doesn’t really take off. This survey work isn’t going to be my bread and butter, but I need it for the one main job. I think I might be able to market myself to processing plants on that note as well.

So now, I get to sit and wait for my formal certification to come in the mail, and then I get to scramble to write a bid for a job that I’ve never done before. I’m confident that I can do a good job of it; the trick will be writing the proposal. But I’ve got a month or so before I have to worry about that. For now, I’m going to play with my kids and do some serious laundry. It’s good to be home.

Well, I guess I’m ready to go.

I’ve had my mail held, and I left the dog at Cowboy’s. I installed his satellite radio into my truck so I won’t be creeping over the Grapevine in silence. Laundry’s going, but I’m not leaving until noon or so tomorrow, so there’s no rush there.

So I’m having a shamefully comfortable day all to myself today. Cowboy’s working overtime on an emergency ditch repair, so there wasn’t any point in my staying over there. I did a little grocery shopping, bought some comfort food to see me over the day, and I’m lounging around in sweats playing the kids’ video games.

No kids, no spouse, no dog to worry about, and if I want to take a three hour nap, by god, I’m going to! It’s really quite nice.

I could have had the kids for the day today, but they have a Cub Scout snow trip, so they weren’t too interested in spending the day with ol’ Mom. John is going to be quite put out that I’ve passed him in the video game, but he’ll get over that. Since I’ve hogged it for the last couple of days, he can play until he catches up with me, as long as he shares with his brother.

What a nice day; if it weren’t for the lingering asthma symptoms and the sinus headache, I’d go to the gym. There’s always an excuse though!

It looks like the Diaryland server burp of ought five has been taken care of—Nanamama, I got your comment in triplicate! Thanks though, I forgot to test it after I uploaded the test entry. I hope you’re doing well—I miss talking to you. When are you going to start up a journal so we can keep up? I’ll help you if you need simple tech questions answered, but if it gets too complicated, we might have to run to Nance’s husband or Fred.

So I’ll be out next week. I’m sure I’ll be having major internet withdrawals; last time I could at least get my email on Grampa’s computer. I guess I should have tried a little harder to get my old laptop fixed, but at the time I deemed it not worth the money. And I guess I should make it for a week. If I were in the mountains, I wouldn’t miss it, but stuck in a hotel room with nothing but homework to do is going to get boring.

Someone online suggested I try Dim Sum while I’m down near a good Chinatown, and I think I will. Anyone have any suggestions on particularly good ones?

Ever since I got the Crud back in December, I’ve had a hard time hearing out of my right ear. I’m a little prone to inner-ear infections anyway, so I assumed this was more of the same. I went to the doc when it started to feel like knitting needles were being jabbed though my head, and he pronounced it an inner-ear AND sinus infection, left over from the unstoppable sinus infection earlier in the month.

Grossness aside, this has been a royal pain in the ass. I’ve been on antibiotics for a couple of weeks now, and the one ear is still having problems. I’ve never had really good hearing anyway, at least with background noises, but now I’ve lost a good third to half of it in that ear. I’ve had to train myself not to use the phone on that side, and I find myself looking at people like a cockeyed dog when they talk to me. I catch myself talking too loud to compensate too, and have to remember that other people don’t need me to shout at them.

The worst part of it is people who really should know better, who know I’m having a hard time hearing, getting annoyed at me when I ask them to repeat themselves. I’ve taken to pulling a Grampa, and just nodding and acting like I heard what they were talking about, but that backfires when it was a question that required an answer, and I smile and say, “uh huh.”

The next time some Cowboy who shall remain nameless gets all smartassy with me because I didn’t catch what he was saying on the Nextel, I’m going to uncork on his ass. There’s no reason to be an ass and speak like I’m a moron; he might try just repeating himself a little more clearly, oh and move the freaking phone further away from his mouth. It’s not my fault he’s mumbling, and if he doesn’t like that, he can just go talk to himself, because I won’t even pretend to listen.

This is not fun, and I hope it’s not permanent.

The American Dialect Society

Lawn mullet: A yard neatly mowed in the front, but unmowed in the back.

So for all of these years, what I thought was just poor horticultural design (and too many damn digging dogs) was really a style choice? Cool!

It’s been a few days, hasn’t it? I almost feel like I’m hibernating; the complete lack of sun does that to me every winter. And it doesn’t help that Cowboy and I spent much of this weekend just camped out on the couch, watching bad westerns.

I did finally get my truck back on Friday though, and it feels so good to be driving it again. The noise must have been creeping up on me for longer than I thought, because the silence when I drive it now is startling. It feels so tall, and the brakes are so responsive compared to the old work truck, that I feel out of place in it. I’m stopping too suddenly, and I’m not used to accelerating in a hurry yet either.

But I’ll be used to it by next week, just in time for my trip down to LA for another business class. I have high hopes that Highway 5 is fixed before I get down there, because I’m really not in the mood to sit in traffic for three hours trying to get over the Grapevine. Going around is about a three-hour proposition too.

I’m not real big on cities; in fact, I avoid them like the plague. Had this class been offered even in a smaller city like Sacramento, I would have gladly paid more, just to avoid the traffic and the people and the smog and the getting lost. But I have to go to USC, and I was spending last week getting myself all up in a tizzy about it.

I’ve relaxed a little, because I did finally get the confirmation package that I was worried about missing, and in that was a decent map and a hotel suggestion. I’m not going to pay $120 a night on my own dime to stay at their pick, but a perfectly nice cheaper motel down the road a bit took some of that budget pressure off. It’s still quite a bit more than mooching off my grandparents like I got to do for the last class.

I was also worried about having to take time off unpaid from my day job to do this. I don’t have enough leave time saved up, but the timing of the class and the upcoming bid won’t let me put it off until I do. So I emailed the company to figure out how to enter unpaid leave on my electronic time card, and they told me that I could go in the hole with my leave. In other words, I get to take it off as paid vacation, and then just owe myself the vacation, which should be caught up by the end of February. That was an unexpected bonus that took pressure off that I didn’t even know was there.

And the little things still get to me too. I get too anxious before any trip, and I like to have everything planned out in my head to a ridiculous degree before I go. My CD player is still broken, and I don’t have the time or the funds to get it fixed before I leave, so I was definitely not looking forward to a long piece of drive in silence. I was grumbling about that just a little bit, and Cowboy pointed out that he hasn’t hooked up the satellite radio system that I bought him for Christmas, so why don’t I just take that? He didn’t want to have to figure out how to install it in his truck anyway, so I’ll use it and then move it to his when I come home. I am just a little afraid that I’ll get hooked on it and have to buy my own, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay. So Eighties music all the way to LA! Woohoo!

And I really think that’s all I had to worry about. I’m not thrilled with the expenses this little expedition is going to incur, but I really am looking forward to the class. It’s a cross-control specialist certification program. Sounds more than a little dry to most of you, I’m sure, but it’s a natural extension of my backflow license and I really need it to bid on the main job I need to keep myself eating in the next few years. My business partner couldn’t take the time off to get that certification, and the County is requiring it, so I’m running the tight rope myself. After the class, I will be waiting on pins and needles for the paperwork to come, which should be right around the same time the proposal package is out. Writing that proposal will be one more completely new thing for me, but that’s something I can stress about later. If I worry about it now I’ll just give myself ulcers.

I swear, I’ve got a freakin’ black thumb lately when it comes to vehicles. My truck is still over at Uncle Lonnie’s due to complicated logistics (or else I just didn’t feel good enough to haul my ass over to Cowboy’s on Monday night to get it, it could be that too), so I’m still driving Cowboy’s old work truck. You know, the one with almost two hundred thousand hard miles on it. The one with the peeling paint and the diesel tank in the back, which hasn’t been washed since the Clinton Administration.

It’s OK; it works, and I really appreciate not having to rent a car for two weeks, but I’m terribly afraid that it’s going to fall completely apart on me. The squealing sound I could ignore, but the smell of radiator water emanating from underneath the hood was a little too ominous to ignore yesterday.

So I cracked the hood and filled up the reservoir with some coolant I had left over from the last truck I borrowed, and topped it off with water. I was hoping that would hold me until Friday, when I hand it back over to the competent.

Not to be, however.

When I dropped the boys off this morning, I could smell the truck when they opened the door, and the temperature gauge was having conniptions. I barely made it to a gas station before it pegged out in the red alert zone, and I put some more water in it. It had sucked out all of the water from yesterday, and it was trickling out the bottom of the engine.

I called Cowboy, and he said to try to make it to my mechanic. He was giving me all these detailed instructions about what to look for to see where the leak was, but I wasn’t parsing, not from behind the wheel and not looking directly at whatever gizmo he was talking about. And, of course, the mechanic doesn’t open until nine, so I limped on in to work. I’m going to have to refill the water before I get it to the shop. If they can patch it up, he said he’d come out today and swap it for mine.

Two trucks down at once is somewhat of a feat for someone who only owns one truck.

But on the brighter side, the boots I ordered in October are finally in. They’re just regular boots, nothing fancy, but I’m quite pleased with them. I’m breaking them in; I could get them on, but they’re tight. I miss my good ol’ riding boots, which felt like feet-gloves, but I put holes in the soles and there are no shoe repair places around. These ones have a spur ledge though, which will be genuinely handy. And rubber soles, but not the kind that will hang up in a stirrup, so they should last longer. I’m supposed to be wearing my steel-toes here at work, but I’m being oh so bad and wearing the (non)fancy new ones. Got to have something positive about the day.

I thought kids didn’t treat you like you were stupid until they hit the teenage years, or at least came close to it.

Boy, was I in denial, because it’s started and he?s only ten.

The three of us spent the rainy weekend camped out in the living room playing video games on a strict rotation schedule to keep it fair. I’ve never felt so dumb in my life; the last time I went head-to-head with the kid, we were on some sort of equal footing. Of course, he was only eight then, and Mom still had two brain cells to rub together.

Somehow, in the intervening two years between the release of Sly Cooper and the Thevius Racoonus and Sly 2, I’ve managed to become the equivalent of a staggering moron who’s not sharp enough to tell my left from my right. Or at least, my son seems to think so.

I had more than my share of exasperated eyerolls, “Oh, Mom,” and “Here, let me do that” this weekend than I’ve ever seen in my life. How did he go from being a Lego-maniacal kid one weekend to a smartass teenager in the next? Fortunately, I can still hold my own in the video game front against the six-year old, so I’m not quite doomed to a lifetime of rocking and knitting at the old folks’ home just yet, but the day is coming. I’m sure next week that one will be doing calculus in his head and patting me softly while I drool and hum to myself in the corner. I’d best learn to knit.

My mom and dad came down for their traditional two-hour visit (I know Mom, you don’t have to spend the night here) and we finally wrapped up Christmas. The boys totally made out; John got that video game that zapped my last functioning thought and Seamus got a drawing set that he loved to death. Also, hoodies! My kids are more in style than I am, but that’s nothing new, since I’m of the doddering oldsters set now. I should find me a zip up cardigan. Young whippersnappers!

Mom also came through with some baby pictures of the kids. See, when I got divorced, I had to get out NOW, and I left some things behind that I really should have taken. He was putting up a fit at splitting the family pictures, and I didn’t have the heart to go through them at the time. I’ve been nagging him for years trying to get them back, but no dice. It’s not like they aren’t mostly doubles, or that I couldn’t scan in the unique ones and make copies; he’s just dragging his feet on the whole issue. In retrospect, I should have just grabbed the box on moving day and let him try to get them back, but I wasn’t thinking all too clearly at the time.

Going through those pictures that I haven’t seen for five years is a little heart-rending. I never thought I would forget the feel of them as babies, but it’s not something that’s in my day-to-day thoughts. Seeing the pictures brings it all rushing back and I can smell their hair and hear their little laughs. I’m glad I have something from then, although I will still eventually get the rest back.

Yeah, I know, I’ve been abnormally quiet all week. Somehow, losing much of my voice and hearing has translated into losing my typing ability as well. I’ve been a zombie, dragging myself in to work each morning only to go home early and take a three-hour nap every day. I didn’t even see Cowboy, who’s also still sick, except that day he helped me juggle vehicles.

My truck is coming along, I guess, but it did make it plain that I have the best boyfriend ever. Besides lending me a truck to get around in, he told Uncle Lonnie to put the parts on his tab at the shop, and he’s not letting me pay him back. I don’t even know if he’ll let me pay Lonnie, because he volunteered to bring my truck out here tomorrow when it’s done, and pick up his. It’s a little awkward feeling, because we’re not in the level of relationship where we share finances, but sometimes he needs a way to show how much he cares for me. He’s not real demonstrative, but he finds ways to make it plain. I do feel a little guilty about it, but I think I can get over that. It’s really nice to be taken care of after all these years of being on my own, married or not.

Mom and Dad are coming down today to do Christmas. We’re notorious for stretching it out, but this is a little much even for us. Although I do remember doing it on the fourteenth of December one year; whatever’s convenient. I had to cancel on them last weekend because of the crud, but I’m probably not contagious any more. I certainly hope not anyway, because I have the kids as of last night. I can muscle through a cold and still go to work (sequestered in my office so I don’t spread it), but they can’t go to school sick. I’m worried about not having enough leave available to go to my next business class later this month as it is; if they get sick, I’ll have to take all that time off unpaid. This business is biting me hard enough without losing a quarter of my regular pay because of it.

So, they’ll stay for their usual hour—maybe longer, since Mom wants me to help her on the computer, and I really need Dad’s help getting my chainsaw started to whack my Christmas tree in half to put out, and then Christmas will finally be over. Well, except for the gift I still need to ship to Grampa and Gramma. I’m not a procrastinator or anything!

I’ve been juggling vehicles like crazy, and it’s making my head spin.

Yesterday morning, I dropped off my truck at the stealership (thanks Tami!) to have that noise checked out, with high hopes of blaming it on them, and I picked up the clown car.

It took driving all the way back to work to get used to seeing the underside of other people’s cars, and then the dealership called before noon. Seems that the noise of doom wasn’t the transmission after all, but was coming from the rear end. Lovely.

So I did a little freaking and panicking about what to do about that. Cowboy said to call Uncle Lonnie and see if he could look at it. Lonnie’s a great mechanic, and he’s been doing work on the side ever since he retired. So my landlord took me back down to town to pick up my truck.

But I couldn’t get a hold of Lonnie, and now I had two vehicles to deal with by myself. By the time I got off work, I still didn’t know what to do with the rental, but I figured I’d be better off putting miles on it instead of my truck, so I left the truck at home and took the car to go drop off Seamus’ lunchbox.

While I was on the way home, Cowboy called, and said he’d got a hold of Lonnie, and offered up his work truck so I didn’t have to pay more rental fees. I turned myself around and spent an hour dropping off the car and getting a ride back home. Good thing I did too, because taxes on a rental are outrageous, and I ended up paying a third more than the rate they quoted me. I would have argued more, but they had the heat up so high in that office that I was weaving, although that might have just been the fever.

So, instead of going home and crawling into my nice bed, I then had to get my truck over to Lonnie’s. Cowboy went over there for dinner and to pick me up, but I didn’t think they’d want my cruddy self in the house too long, since they run a day care, so I choked down some dinner before I left. Then I weaved my way over there just in time for them to start dinner, so I ended up staying too long anyway. The only kids there were family, and I stayed away from them, but they were climbing all over Cowboy, so if they get the crud, they can blame him instead of me.

Lonnie said he’d look at the truck in the next couple of days, and Cowboy took me home. His home, not mine; I spent the night trying not to keep him awake, since the cough has settled in for real.

He was so nice to me this morning; he got up while I was in the shower and cleaned out the work truck and got it all warmed up, and then took me to the card-lock station and fueled me up and washed my windows. It’s very nice to be taken care of. It would have been very much nicer to stay in bed, because I don’t even remember part of the drive; the cold medicine only kicked in once I got here.

So I’m driving an ancient truck with a diesel tank on the back for a couple of days. My neighbors are going to wonder what’s up, except it has Cowboy’s logo on the side. I hope they don’t think he’s three different men with all the trucks that park in front of my house. Really, he’s not. Just one really good one.