Miss Liss: Peace, love and all that other bullshit

The Missing Link

Boy have I been MIA!  As you all know, I was laid off in January.  I got a new job and headed to sunny Florida for training for a week, then stayed for an extra week of fun.  After I returned, unfortunately my 11 year old doggie started having seizures.  He was in ICU for a few days.  We decided not to pursue extensive diagnostic tests or treatments and are now just treating his seizures.  I have had Dog since I graduated college.  He is an integral part of my life and has been through all of my "growing up" years with me.  I know his time is nearing, but for now he is stable and not in pain, so we will enjoy our time together.  It's very hard to accept that I have his destiny in my hands and to know when is the right time to say goodbye.

I have started my new job and am muy busy!  I will start posting more regularly, and with more detail, but for now I just wanted to let you all know I am still kicking around!

Peace, love and all that other bullshit,

Liss

For the Love of Meme

My favorite blog author, Linda from All & Sundry (sundrymorning.com), posted a fine set of questions to review just how crappy your 2006 really was...or if you are one of those annoying perfect life type people, how completely wonderful and fulfilling your 2006 was.  I am posting my answers here and I guess we shall find out which category I fit into...if I were a gambling woman, I'd go with the former.  Ok, I'll stop being so pessimistic.

1. What did you do in 2006 that you’d never done before?

In 2006, I traveled to Key West and Turks & Caicos, two places I had not been to before.  I began authoring a blog, much to the chagrin of all of you.  I campaigned for Deval Patrick in the Governor's race in Massachusetts (I have campaigned for local elections before, but not the Governor's position).  I became a delegate for the Democratic Party.  I managed to hold a newborn baby without making faces like "Ick.  Children," which is a big step for me.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I do not make New Year's resolutions and will be resolving to keep the same one this year.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

My cousin had a baby in October, and although he lives in Virginia and I do not get to see him often, we have a close relationship.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Thankfully, no.

5. What countries did you visit?

Turks and Caicos

6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?

A new addition on our house.

7. What dates from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

July 31st, I got laid off from my employer of 5 and a half years (even though I continue to work for a subsidiary of them until January 12th, it was still the beginning of the end).

November 22nd.  We flew home from Turks & Caicos with our new puppy, Utley.

November 27th, my husband got laid off from his job.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I was pretty successful this year in my real estate business considering I only do it part time.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not spending enough time with my friends.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Nothing to complain about.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

My iPod docking station.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

My husband's behavior during his separation from his job.  Deval Patrick, who did not succumb to candidate bashing during his campaign.  My mother, who took a chance and is now dating someone after many, many years of being alone.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, George Allen...oh, I could go on all day.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Citibank Mortgage.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Our new puppy. 

16. What song will always remind you of 2006?

Supply and Demand by Amos Lee

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? 
b) thinner or fatter? 
c) richer or poorer?

A little sadder, a little fatter and soon to be poorer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Exercise.  Tried harder to quit smoking.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Smoking.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

Oops.  Missed the timing on this one!

21. Did you fall in love in 2006?

Every day, with my husband.

22. How many one-night stands?

Zero.

23. What was your favorite TV program?

24 and Project Runway

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Nope

25. What was the best book you read?

Time Traveler's Wife

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

My iPod

27. What did you want and get?

New ski boots.

28. What did you want and not get?

New skis.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

United 93

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

My birthday was on Labor Day this year, so we had a big bbq.  I turned 32 (shhhh.)

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Not getting laid off.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?

Very casual.  Embarrassingly so.

33. What kept you sane?

Not much.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I swore off celebrity watching this year.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?

Gay rights.  I can't believe in this day and age it is even an issue.

36. Who did you miss?

I miss our friend's Pete and Martina.  We used to live in the same building and don't see each other now that we all moved.

37. Who was the best new person you met?

Hmmm.  I'm not sure I met any new people in 2006!

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006.

No matter how hard you plan, you can't always control what happens in your life.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

"Somethin' gotta give with the way I'm living, seems I'm getting down everyday.  The more I strive the less I'm alive and it seems I'm getting further away."

Feel free to post your own answers in the comments section.

Peace, love and all that other bullshit,

Liss

The New Year, the New Fear

2007 is inching closer to us.  3 more days until the new year.  Now call me crazy (ok, you didn't all have to shout at once!) but I have a thing about odd and even numbers.  I seem to have better years on the even numbers.  Given all of the upheaval in my life of late, the number 2007 is making me leery.  I am concerned about starting a new job, since I have loved my job for the last 6 years.  I am concerned about my husband not starting a new job...hopefully odd numbers work better for him and the phone starts ringing for some interviews.  I am concerned that I am turning 33 this year and we still can't make up our minds about having children.  I guess I just have to keep plugging along see how everything falls into place.

Funny Christmas story:

My mother called me in a panic Saturday night.  "I am FREAKING out," she cried into the phone.  "Get over here now!"  My mother can be dramatic, but this was even over the top for her.  Husband and I quickly gathered our dogs and went to her house. 

She was carrying groceries into her house and had the front door open.  Suddenly two birds flew into her house and went right for her Christmas tree.  They perched up there nervously and wouldn't budge. 

I found my mother pacing in her driveway.  She wouldn't go in until we got the offending feathered cretins out of her house.  She has a fear of birds, to put it mildly.  Husband and I sprang into action.  He grabbed a trash bag and I grabbed the broom.  Once we went for them they started flying all around from the living room to the kitchen, back and forth.  My mother was really hysterical at this point.  Husband and I were peeing ourselves with laughter.  We were like the Three Stooges trying to catch these damn birds. 

After trying relentlessly to trap them into the trash bag by swiping at them with the broom, we geniuses finally decided to try to catch them in a blanket and carry them outside.  My mother wouldn't let us open any doors into the rest of her house.  We couldn't retrieve a blanket so we had to improvise.  We swiped the Christmas tree skirt and started a slow and steady approach towards the birds.  After about 15 minutes Husband managed to snatch one of them and get it outside.  When we tried to retrieve the second bird we couldn't find it.  After thorough searching, we figured the other bird had flown out on its own. 

I promised my mother I would bring her back some dinner after her harrowing experience.  We ran back to our house and upon our return, my mother's front door was locked.  I knocked and knocked and she didn't answer.  I was a little peeved thinking, "what part about 'I'll be back in 5 minutes' didn't you understand?" 

I then walked over to her kitchen window and peered in...at that moment a bird goes flying across my plane of view.  I didn't see my mother anywhere.  I rush to dig out my keys to her house and get the door open.  When we enter the house, I find my mother in the fetal position in her kitchen.  This really sent me over the edge into laughter. 

Husband ended up trapping the second bird in a utility closet and then swaddling it in the Christmas tree skirt.  This was definitely one of the funniest things I have experienced in a while.  If we had only remembered the video camera!

Another side note:

I'm sure you've all seen the Justin Timberlake SNL skit by now (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dmVU08zVpA ) Christmas morning we couldn't stop singing this song and saying to each other, "thank you for my dick in a box!  I love it!"

Happy New Year's everyone!

Peace, love and all that other bullshit,

Liss

Moments of Insanity

Seeing as how my husband is out of work and I will be as well shortly, I have been keeping a relatively good outlook on things.  Yes, we probably won't be able to pay our mortgage a few months down the road, but I have been going about my business as usual and handling things a day at a time.  With Christmas 7 days away I have been keeping busy with holiday this and that as well.  Every once in a while, though, I get a momentary bout of breathlessness and chest pains.  My head starts to spin and I have to stop myself from trying to see too far into the future.  Today I find this is exacerbated by holiday things instead of keeping my paranoid thoughts at bay.  Today my mother-in-law (whom I love deeply) decided to freak out on my husband that we were not coming to their house for Christmas.  She laid the guilt on thick, as only a Catholic mother could do.  We have never spent Christmas with them.  They previously lived in Florida and then moved to Maine to take care of Husband's very eldery and very cantankerous grandmother.  Husband's parents didn't want us spending Christmas with the grandmother so we started a tradition with my family.  Every year we have invited his parents to join us and they do not.  I don't know what brought this on by his mother so suddenly but it shot my stress level through the goddamn roof.  I do see her point.  Yes, it is only fair that we share one year with my family and the next with his and so on and so forth, but I personally feel the time to have brought this up was somewhere around Thanksgiving.  Not 7 fahnerkin days before Christmas (see how I just made up that word to avoid using a derivative of the word fuck?  Oops, I guess I did anyway).  The crisis has been resolved in the end, but it was just added stress I don't really need and it reminds me just how close to the surface reality is lurking.

Speaking of insanity...Husband and I spent a good portion of Saturday hanging garland and lights outside, then we hit the nog and started decorating our Christmas tree.  It culminated somewhere around midnight when the tree topper was ready for placement.  Husband donned his mullet wig, put something in the heavy metal department on the stereo, did an air guitar concert and put the glittery star atop the tree.  Nothing says Christmas like Judas Priest.

The new pup has not attempted to pee on the tree so far, but he does sit and stare at it with a slightly wild look in his eye.  I did catch him barking at it yesterday.  Bark all you want, put if you hike that leg or make off with an ornament, Santa will be notified and you will be getting coal in your stocking!

Peace, love and all that other bullshit,

Liss

A little Ho Ho Ho (and a bottle of rum)

OK, OK!  I give.  The relentless pounding of holiday imagery, music and good cheer of those around me has made me succumb.  I will get an effing tree, alright?  Now get off my back.

Actually, I have been debating using these lit up ficus trees I have been storing in our basement since our wedding.  This would eliminate the pupster from messing with it...hopefully.  However, I feel they might be too top heavy once I put ornaments on them and one little bump into one of them and all my beautiful glass ornaments would be in ruins.  On the other hand, bringing the great outdoors indoors may be too tempting for Utley to alleviate himself upon said decoration.  Oh the great decisions we must make in life!

Either way, it appears I will be dragging all of the Christmas storage bins from the attic to unwrap ornament after ornament this weekend.  Of course, this is always made slightly more appealing by the nice steaming hot toddies we down while slurp down while untangling the damn lights.  Why is it every year I carefully wrap the lights up at the end of the season, but then when I retrieve them from storage they have somehow become a tangled mess?  It's one of life's great mysteries, like the socks disappearing in the dryer.

Anyhoo - as a reward for decorating a tree, I am going to torture the dogs by putting one in a santa hat and one in antlers and make them pose in front of the tree.  If I must suffer, everyone must suffer!

It could be worse, I could've been planning something like this (or even worse yet, my neighbors could've been planning something like this!!!):

Peace, love and all that bullshit,

Liss

Have My Cake and Eat it Too

As you all are sick of hearing me say by now, I am getting laid off shortly.  January 12th to be exact.  I am getting a severence package and I had grandiose visions of taking a month or two off, then landing my dream job that paid me lots o' money, gave me a few months vacation time every year, a nice corner office and a big fat pension that allowed me to retire at age 45. 

What?  No, I am not smoking crack, but thank you for asking. 

OK, in reality, I thought perhaps I could take a month off and then find a job hopefully making a little more than I make now and still have my own office and get to work from home from time to time, which are the things I love most about my current job.  Life has a funny way of unfolding, however. 

Upon our return from vacation, Husband had a "mutual separation" from his company.  He was basically laid off as his company was going in a new direction.  They are rat bastards, but that is besides the point.  The point is now that Husband is no longer employed, my slightly hallucenogenic vision has been hit by a SAM and has exploded into a million bits of shrapnel never to be dreamt again.  He and I apparently need to find another job asap.

I happened to mention we were being laid off to a former vendor in Indiana and lo and behold she hooked me up with a good friend of hers that has recently relocated to Massachusetts from Colorado for a company that does exactly what I do now.  Within 20 minutes of our conversation, I had an interview scheduled with said company for last Friday.  Today is my second interview.  They are desperate for people with my experience.  They have given me the distinct impression an offer is looming and they want me in there yesterday.  This means that if I were to accept, I would have to start at the new company on January 15th, which gives me exactly one weekend being laid off.  Not even 1 extra day off.  I haven't gotten to the juicy details with this new company yet...what my title would be, would I have an office, do they do flex time or work from home, what would my vacation time be, what are their benefits, and oh yes, the small issue of salary.  They could be so off base I couldn't even consider working for them, but then again, they could make me an offer I can't refuse. 

I should be counting my blessings that I was put in contact with a potential employer so easily, but instead I am dwelling.  And feeling a little sorry for myself.  And a little resentful of my husband.  And wondering for the bazillionth time why I wasn't born blue-blood rich.  Then I could spend my days sailing aboard my yacht, with nary a care in the world.

I guess it doesn't hurt to dream!

Peace, love and all that other bullshit,

Liss

How the Liss Stole Christmas

Bahhhhhhhh - Humbug.  That's how I feel this year.  I'm out of sorts.  I don't feel like getting a Christmas tree and dealing with the hassle of untangling lights, digging out tupperware storage bins from the attic, unwrapping all of the delicate ornaments, putting phoofy little knicknacks around the house, telling the new puppy a million times not to pee on the tree, watering the tree night after night, sopping up spilled water from watering the tree night after night, writing out 50 Christmas cards, standing in line at the post office to find the perfect stamp, dealing with the throngs of pushy shoppers and the never-ending one day sales, finding the right size, the right color, the right batteries, the right wrapping paper, spending hours on the living room floor wrapping in the right wrapping paper, dealing with half-hearted smiles over the gift you agonized finding, cleaning up the mess from the ripped up wrapping paper, eating too much holiday food and desserts, cleaning dish after dish from holiday dinner, lugging gifts home, trying to find places to put them, putting away all the phoofy little knicknacks, taking down all the ornaments, trying to figure out which box which ornament goes back into, retangling the lights, struggling to get the tree out of the stand and out of the house and cleaning up 1 googleplex of Christmas needles.

I think someone needs to bring some Nog, STAT!

Peace, Feliz Navidad and all that shit,

Liss

Mr. Mom

So...did I mention my husband is no longer employed as of this week?  Well, he isn't.  He is now a stay-at-home dad tending to our little flock o' sheep, er dogs, whatever.  He has been spending his hours chasing around an 11 week old pup, cleaning up potty messes, leash training, crate training, doing laundry, dishes and vacuuming (with our 11 year old dog sitting in the corner smirking like, "I told you not to bring a runt puppy into this house.  Didn't I say things were good the way they were, when it was only me, the TC Top Dog!").  Last night Husband said to me, "Can we PLEASE go out this weekend.  Just please take me out.  I'm not asking for much, even if only for two hours.  I feel so trapped in this house.  It's hard work chasing this little guy around."  It all became so clear to me in those three seconds it took him to whine.  We absolutely should have kids.  And he should be a stay-at-home dad.  I can go off to work everyday, work hard to earn the bread, come home to a nice sparkling house with the baby all happy and excited to see Mama and Daddy can hand me my martini and give me the rundown on the days Oprah show.  Wouldn't that be the life?  I wouldn't even complain if he wanted to grow a beard and wear the same flannel shirt for a week straight.

Peace, love and all that other bullshit,

Liss

We're back, Mon!

We are back from TCI, browned, boozed and bummed!  It was a great vacation.  The water at Grace Bay Beach is unlike anything I have ever seen before.  There really is no word to describe the color and pictures do not do it justice.  We rented a "buggy" (what they like to call jeep-type vehicles down there) and explored the island, which was so much fun as they drive on the left-hand side of the road down there...and we didn't even kill anybody!  We explored private beaches, off the beaten path restaurants, including one place called "Da Conch Shack" where they pull the conch right out of the water in front of you and crack it open, we saw the "good people" - those who tool around on their yachts and whatnot...in other words, not us!  We went to an island inhabited only by big effing iguanas...Sammy the iguana preserve's keeper said, "Don't touch Mon!  They gots razor sharp teeth and claws."  Nuff said, Sammy.  Me no touchy.  We had great meals, great drinks, great laughs, and yes, great sex ;-)  We also adopted a potcake, the native island dog, while there.  He's a sweetie little 10 week old pup.  Meet Mr. Utley:

Oh yes, and here are some pictures of paradise...at least it was for us for 8 days!

Life Comes at You Fast

Since last we left our diligent heroine she was counting down the days to vacation.  I believe the last countdown number was 6 days.  Well, here we are, the eve before the great trip.  At this time tomorrow I will be flying the friendly skies.  Meanwhile our heroine has been blind-sided by a life-changing event.  Actually, it is more like the Hero a/k/a Husband has been blind-sided by a life-changing event.  On Friday major happenings occured at his workplace and his job has been threatened.  It is to the point we have actually had to seek out legal advice and are now in a battle of wills with his workplace.  The gauntlet has been thrown down.  Long story short, Husband will most likely be returning from vacation to the termination of his employment.  And with any luck, a nice separation package *fingers crossed*.  Of course this could not occur at a worse time as you all know I will be laid off at the end of December.  It is times like these when the definition of marriage really hits home, the symbiotic nature of marriage truly becomes clear.  We are in this together, no matter what, for the good, the bad and the ugly.  Life really comes at you fast, but I guess it's the twists and turns and how you handle them that build your character.  This episode shall continue upon our return!

I have laid down a strict mandate, however.  Absolutely no talking, thinking or even sub-consciously dreaming about work.  No thoughts or talking about anything but what drink we shall have, what phoofy food do we want, what adventure we seek out and sex.  Lots of sex.  Is that tmi?  Exsqueeze me if it is, but this is our anniversary trip people.  What do you expect?!

So, please do think of me these next 8 days, lying beachside, sun beating down on me, cool water running through my hair, aaaaaahhhhhhhh, vacation.

Peace, love, bon voyage and all that other bullshit,

Liss