Happy Owl-o-ween

We got our treat bags (dog biscuits, pressed rawhides, generic version of greenies, toasted pumpkin seeds, candy and flowers) and the prelaunch version of The Diva's site done today.

I just had my first few trick or treaters. It's been years since I felt reasonable and organized enough to turn on the light and have a bowl of candy at the ready on Halloween. One little boy just kept standing there. I dropped some candy in his bag, moved on to the next kid and he kept standing there so I shrugged and dropped another piece of candy in his bag. He didn't move. Not a bad tactic really.

The barbarians are gone! The absence of a negative is a positive.

The client whose dog just died has been talking me up like crazy to her vet who keeps asking if he can give out my name and number to his clients for training. I'm a bit nervous about doing it. My confidence in my ability to deal with dog training clients is still very low. Even despite a very successful year as a pet sitter with the best clients ever. My brother and CPG bullied and badgered me into saying that the vet could give out my name and number. That client has a new rescue dog that she wants me to work with for her. And I am still walking her other dog three days a week. The little white dog got me that job, btw. I guess I'll take the stray dog into that clinic to get shots to touch base with him. But she's the worst behaved off the lot which doesn't reflect so well on my training abilities.

rainy days and sundays...

Except that it's not raining and for a Sunday I'm actually in a pretty good mood. I'm working like mad trying to get a version of the diva's site up by tomorrow. Cute little graphics of her in rain gear or a pith helmet or footed pajamas. Well, it amuses me.

My parents were just here dropping off some shelves my father thought would work well for me for storage which I could desperately use. Normally I don't actually let them come in the house. I don't think my mother has been inside my house in almost ten years. The last time the house was actually neater than it is right at this moment but she was really horrible and snarky about it being messy so I just don't let her come into my space.

It isn't that anything was different today. I've been in a few other people's houses recently that are as bad, if not worse, than mine and mostly I have just decided that I refuse to care about it. If guests can't behave pleasantly under the circumstances they just will not be invited back. At least not for ten years.

never again

I hate the pumpkins. I'm so not happy with how they look. I can't do shit freehand. There's no fucking Ctrl-Z. Life needs a fucking Ctrl-Z dammit! I'm thinking paper bags with the diva logo printed out and glued to them. Maybe crumple the paper and antique it a bit? Then that also gives me tons more time to work on the diva's site which is ultimately what the whole thing was about anyway. I just lost sight of that for a bit. No biggie. A bit of wasted time. And some wasted pumpkins. Spending more time on it would just be absurd at this point. Especially when I could be either spending time on something that will make me money or that I enjoy doing. I know that sounds petulant but seriously, this is not going anywhere I'm going to be happy about, I have a reasonable alternate plan B so everyone gets their treats and I get to get the site up and let people know about it which was the whole plan: give my clients a little thank you for being so great and get the word out about lgd.com. I'm not being petulant. I'm not! People will get their chocolate and pumpkins seeds. I get to sit around and play with Flash instead of dremeling pumpkins. It's all good.

Duh!

I do get an extension! Just because my mental deadline for this was today doesn't mean that I can't wait and distribute the pumpkins on Halloween itself which gives me the whole weekend to get everything finished.



I started this post at like 9:30 this morning but all the sudden my keyboard wouldn't work. I popped a couple of keys out of it to see if I could figure out what was making it stick and you would NOT believe the amount of dog hair caught between and under those keys! Even after I cleaned it out the keyboard still wouldn't work so I went to
Wal Mart and picked up a new one for ten bucks. Works quite well really.

I have had a day though so I am off to take a nap and will elaborate later...maybe.

this was a terrible idea

Terrible. Dreadful. Ridiculous even.

I have now been to two separate Krogers, one Wal-Mart and one Walgreens. I've dremeled 4 pumpkins. None of them are finished. They don't look good. I am not happy with them. I just want to go to bed.

I'm now doing bas-relief and using poster paints on them.

I still haven't started roasting seeds.

Did I mention I just want to go to bed???

the barbarians are at the door

The PH aluminum siding guys have been upgraded (downgraded?) to barbarian status. I will be so happy when they are done. The absence of a negative is a postive.

Mother, however, genuinely redeemed herself last night. My brand new printer, the one I bought to replace the one that didn't work? Well, it isn't working. So I needed their printer to print out copies of the lgd logo to use as templates to carve these pumpkins...the answer to number two from last night's post btw is Home Depot...who woulda thunk? Anyway, I went to print the logos, she fixed steak, oven fries and salad...yum...then I brought one of the pumpkins in to check the size of the printed logo and she said, "this is going to take you forever, bring them in and let us help you." If not for that? I would have been still cleaning out pumpkins at 3 am and undoubtedly in tears. It took t0ok the three of us about an hour to clean out a dozen pumpkins.

And the dremel pumpkin carving?





















It looks okay. Don't worry, it looks a lot better in the dark illuminated from within. I think it will get easier and faster and have better results as I continue doing them. We shall see. Be forewarned that the dremel spits pumpkin goop in a several foot radius.

CPG said something last night that led me to believe he regrets ending things. 'Course he's on big time pain killers for a possibly herniated disc so who knows. Again, we shall see.

I'm off to shower the pumpkin goop out of my hair.

a list of a different sort

1. Sometimes? The fat/ugly/old should just have to get out of the way of the rest of us! Really. Admit it, you feel this way too!
2. Where the fuck do procrastinators buy smallish to medium sized pumpkins????
   
3. Can we please extend the deadline on Halloween? Just by a few days. That would be great, thanks!
4. Is there some reason we had to wait until the first cold snap of the season to put aluminum siding on all the windows?

Mother: Hi, the guys are coming to do the windows today and you have to leave them open about an inch.
Me: It's 40 degrees outside! The bird will die!!!!
Mother: Oh, I guess you should call the guy.
Me: Ok.

Sigh. They just had to be unlocked, not OPEN!

I'm telling you she yearns to destroy anything I care about.

And the aluminum siding guys? Penis heads.

Okay, good stuff has happened this week too. I made a bunch of money that is already earmarked to pay bills which kind of takes the fun out of making a bunch of money. My friend E gave me a 13" color TV for the kitchen. That was very nice. I got a reprieve on the realtors site giving me time to get my pumpkins and littlegreendiva.com done for halloween but...see above. I've got to get the DNS transfers on lgd.com and BTD's sites done tonight before I freakin' forget all about it! I've got to finish reading someone's manuscript - a daunting task!

Sigh.

Current T-shirt ideas:
Your Logo Here
Umm, yeah, I do other stuff like a girl too ;-)
I'd Really Rather Be Napping

Pop...goes the Diva!

I'm having no luck making this simpler. Funny that Debra suggested opacity on the navigation when I had come to the same conclusion! Remember that the site will ultimately be Flash and the navigation is drag and drop: you pop the bubble, drag an item to the diva then she interacts with it, you answer a question and something happens in the mirror. The umbrella is for rainy day activities: paper dolls to print and cut out, make your own magic green diva fairy dust, a coloring book. The binoculars are for a weekly round of "spot the diva" with photos of the bird hiding in a tree and you have to find her. I'm thinking the nav bubbles can float up from the bottom of the screen and constantly be moving. Thoughts?

I know it is terribly fussy/frilly/girly but I'm telling you, this site is designing itself with very little control on my part! The diva is fading a bit with all the other junk but I think once she's animated and has a voice that will be remedied. She is, after all, a terribly small diva!

Random

Very rough. This is kind of my method. I started with only a plain green background then added all this. Now I'll start taking stuff out. Messing with the colors. I think it might be, gasp, too much pink? Flash navigation, drag an object (there are six all together) to The Diva (I decided not to use her real name, just call her The Diva), she holds the binoculars to her eyes and says, "wanna do some bird watching?" or whatever. CPG does a ton of voices and has one for The Diva.

Yeah, I'm still talking to him a bunch. Not exactly sure why. I miss having him as a boyfriend. A lot. But, I think I just miss having a boyfriend more than I miss having him as a boyfriend. Not that he was much of a boyfriend but it was dipping my toe in, ya know?

Other news: one of my client's dogs died yesterday. The one who had the birthday party last weekend. It was, to some extent, traumatic. In a weird way it gave me closure on a dog I lost when I first got sick though. Long story but I didn't get to say goodbye to him and I guess it has always bothered me more than I realized. Both of them were slightly dreadful dogs.

I had to have the mole I got removed excised on Wednesday so now I've got a three inch gash in my back with stitches and everything. Hurts.

Very busy on website stuff for some realtors and for BTD. Emailed back and forth with DTD a bit.

Life persists.

Creative juices are flowing

I want to launch littlegreendiva.com in time for halloween so I can carve the logo in pumpkins and give them to all my clients with green glowsticks in them and treats for their pets. I'm going to get a bunch of those little tiny, adorable pumpkins. Put a bag of dog treats (or bird or cat) with the PS logo and leave them on clients' porches.

This one is just for Pup since I know he has always wanted to buy his own private island!

And finally, how fucking cool is this?

"The images are in color, and can broadcast anything that can be shown on a regular flat screen monitor or TV, although with a slightly lower quality. These could be short film clips or flash animations like those found on the Internet," the spokesman said.

The paper reported that one square meter of the material costs around 30 pounds ($52), and scientists working on the screens said they should be available by 2007.

I think Ms. A.R. might be onto something with penis head yard art! I think you could sell it on ebay!

The truck goes back to PH mechanic tonight for yet another new fuel pump. That will make three in two years.

I had a wonderful time yesterday with a picnic for the bird at a local park where I often take her to fly. This was the first time that the people who gave her to me got to see her fly outside. They deemed her a completely healthy, happy, spoiled brat! And now they want to train her parents to fly outside too :-)

A Fairy Tail

Once upon a time a wicked witch decided that birds should have their wings clipped because if she couldn’t fly why should they? The witch cast a spell on everyone in the kingdom so they believed clipping their birds’ wings was the only solution. But, birds have more powerful magic than witches and the birds remembered that once they had been able to fly and they hated the witch for taking that away from them. They tried to tell the people that the witch was wrong but the spell was just too strong and the people could not hear them. Some birds even forgot that they could fly so even when the people left their feathers unclipped they didn’t use their wings. One day, a magical fairy princess bird was hatched. Her magic was so strong that even when her feathers were clipped she could fly! The fairy princess went to live in her own kingdom where she was adored by her loyal subjects. She flew every day in her little kingdom: she flew up, she flew down but she could not fly outside of her kingdom. This made the fairy princess sad. She wanted to go to other kingdoms and teach the people that birds should fly. The fairy princess found a magical knight and convinced him to help her teach her person how to let her fly outside of her kingdom. Now the fairy princess flies in as many kingdoms as she can and sprinkles her green fairy dust over everyone to erase the witches spell.

---

The dog birthday party was somewhat ghastly. I'll post about it later. Spoke to CPG last night. I'm sorry Ms. A.R., I'm kinda over the mad but it makes me sad to talk to him all the time. I have more thoughts on littlegreendiva.com. I'm thinking a flash thing for the fairy tail, a book via cafepress and a printable pdf coloring book version that people can just download off the site and maybe a couple of t-shirts from it. Well, it amuses me!

Shake yer tailfeather!

Anything else need to be changed?

Final answer...well, for tonight.

Thanks for all the +Rs on my little project! This is the most recently tweaked version and I think perhaps even the one to stick with? My idea is to take the information from the blog and have a section about the training, a section about the flying/meeting people and then a book of Where's Waldo-esque photos with the bird in trees, mixed in with stuffed animals, etc. That last idea is also something Ms. A.R. was also thinking about! I was going in that direction with the Spot the GCC photos but I hadn't thought of turning it into a book. Then products via cafepress...eat my fairydust...respect the beak!...?

In other news: the brown dog, the white dog and I have all been invited to a birthday party for a client's dog tomorrow. Tonight is the first night this week that I haven't talked to CPG - he doesn't have internet access for the next two weeks so I am updating his bird's site for him - there is something so wrong with that! Sunday I am organizing a picnic in the park for the bird and some friends who want to see her fly.

Srew mona lisa's smile!

Should the head be smaller? Thanks Ms. A.R. for giving me the thought to give her a smile! Not quite there yet but I think we're getting closer to ironic fairy princessness ;-)

Another idea

I have this idea for a site: littlegreendiva.com. That's what people on a list call my bird, the little green diva. Cute. I can't get the graphic to look how I want it to look. She looks sad. I want her to look like a fairy princess. But ironic.

Penis Heads!

Fucking world is full of them!

I got in the truck to go walk dogs this morning. Truck wouldn't start. Truck that just got a brand new $600 fuel pump wouldn't start. Call the mechanic. He says that he'll have to replace the fuel pump because it isn't calibrated properly so even though the fuel gauge read between 1/4 and 1/2 full I was out of fucking gas. So yeah, he'll put another fuel pump in it at no charge to me but I've got to get gas in the truck. I've got to call my clients, tell them I'm having car trouble and I'm running late. Call my dad (exempted fron penis-head status) and get him to bring me some gas. Put that gas in the truck. Go to the gas station and put $20 of gas in the truck. Go walk dogs.

Come home and deal with an annoying but non-penis head related web design client issue.

Finally. Finally I get to take a (much needed nap) and yard dude turns up. I hear him poking around in the back yard and walk out to pay him. He's breaking up the pear tree branches that I very carefully selected and hauled home to make presents for some bird people I know.

Me: what are you doing?!?
Him: what were these doing there?
Me: they're for the bird, I brought them home (dragging the now useless and splintered branches the curb.)
Him: when will they come to pick those up?
Me: not until next week.
Him: so now I have to move them to mow?
Me: I didn't ask you to move them at all. They were fine where they were.
Him: you need to try not to be so mad at me.
Me: "..."
Me: ya know, here's your money for this week and I think that next summer I should probably find someone else to mow for me, thanks.
Him: (taking money) so is that starting next summer or today?
Me: seeing as I just paid you for today I'd kinda like you to go ahead and mow.

Why was it a big deal for him to destroy those particular branches? Because they were verified pesitcide free, bird safe wood and the perfect size. That is harder to find than one might think. I had gone to the trouble to find them, put them in the truck and hauled them home leaving them outside in my backyard to cure. And this is the guy who didn't bother to mow my backyard the week before CPG came to visit because he didn't want to have to move the yard furniture out of his way. And he has to be paid in cash but won't let you know what day he is coming to mow. Total penis head behavior.

Well that's that then

We're done. Offically broken up before we ever got started. Pathetic little, passive agressive asswipe got a kickass website and a nifty cafepress shop with t-shirts and such though.

The crazy thing? He doesn't know me at all. The big problem, aside from distance, to him was that he claimed I had said that I didn't enjoy outdoor activities and he was looking for someone who would go to the park and play frisbee. WTF?!? I play frisbee in the goddmaned park every fucking day!! When was the last time that he went to the park to play frisbee? I asked him that, know what he said? Never. NEVER! He better fucking hope he doesn't ever run into me when I happen to have a frisbee in my hand 'cause my aim is getting better.

Yes, I hate tennis. Any halfway rational person hates tennis! It's hot on those stupid courts. I suck at it. I always skipped my tennis lessons at camp to go sailing instead. Sailing. Canoeing. Kayaking. Hiking. Frisbee. Agility. Riding. I have been involved and will continue to be involved in a lot of outdoor activities. I'm the one who wants to live on a goddamned farm!

What a fucking pathetic reason to dump someone.

Pa. Thet. Ic.

And doubly so when it is completely untrue.

He's pathetic. Not me. I'm me and I'm fucking worth putting some time and effort into. Dammit.

His loss 'cause I'm just on the cusp of developing some actual self-confidence and once I really do it is guys like him who won't get the opportunity to prey on me again.

I am not shedding another tear over this.

I even sent his fucking birds little tiny frisbees!

ARGH! What a waste of time, money, energy and emotion. Yeah he's more well adjusted than I am. Right.

I'm starting to think the idea that anyone who doesn't question their own mental wellbeing is in fact crazy might be more true than not.

Not a single fucking tear.

K, I need a rebound onenighter. Who's it gonna be? C'mon boys.

Daily Horoscope:

For October 6: Love continues to catch you by surprise. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, love catches your breath and leaves you feeling like a dizzy neophyte. Your career circumstances, however, are filled with movers and shakers and opportunities that prove your power and influence. So you’re getting life from both sides now: you feel like an absolute beginner in private and a captain of industry in public.

Would that that were so.

An anniversary of sorts

Five years ago today my entire right side was numb. Five years ago today my right arm was so numb and weak I couldn't write out the invoices for the dogs I was taking home that night. Five years ago today was the last day I officially worked for DTD. I damn near forgot about it.

Went to the doctor this morning to follow up on the Lexapro thing. Her thought is just that I am terribly sensitive to SSRIs. Yeah, it would lead one to wonder if perhaps I just don't need one if it effects me that drastically but there is the whole potential for MS benefits thing so we decided to leave it at 5mg for the time being and reevaluate in a few weeks.

I've been communicating with CPG a bit. No decisions. Nothing has changed. I'm still pretty much at I don't know that I have any interest in being with someone who would treat me this way and you're not saying or doing anything to assure me that you wouldn't do it again and he is still not fully accepting that he did this - at least to my way of thinking.

I mean, he apologized but he's still saying things like, "you were being mean and snippy."

Me: You were being weird and distant.
Him: I've been depressed and that's how it effects me.
Me: Well, you being weird and distant effects me by making me a little mean and snippy.

He has some really, really good qualities. But, this was a big deal and I never, ever deserve to be treated this way.

This is probably good.

I finished CPG's bird's site and sent all the instructions on how to manage it. Now I'm quite irritated. He is doing the passive agressive thing again.

Yeah, it's slightly weird that I did his stupid site for him even though he was so dreadful about my coming up there but I feel better for ME that he got his damn site (and sex too dammit!) since that appears like it might have been all he wanted.

Like, if that's all he wanted then it wasn't me being rejected in a way.

I dunno.

Man, I struck out on this money wise! $25/hour for that type of design/coding work, probably about forty hours of work = $800 + $200 for the wasted plane ticket = $1000 + the nice package I sent him a couple of weeks ago + a weekend of lost pet sits at $126 + daytime minutes on my cell package and we're talking like $1500.

And the experience was so not priceless.

I do have a t-shirt to show for it and a fridge full of beer I don't have any desire to drink.

Blah.

Now I'm just torturing myself.

I saved text files of all our IM conversations up until the last week or so and I just read the very first one. It was such a great, sweet conversation. I haven't spent less than an hour on the phone with him any day for the last two months. I don't even know what to do with myself. I hate this. Hatehatehatehateahatehatehatehatehate it.

On with the moping...

...I should be going out to dinner with my brother and my boyfriend by now. I should have spent the day in central park. Intead I spent the day working on my ex's website. Don't ask me why I'm bothering to finish the site. I really don't know myself. At least I haven't cried anymore today.

I took my bird out earlier. I barely spoke to anyone. I feel so bruised and like the rug has been pulled out from under me.

I should be on a plane right now.

I really planned to sleep way, way in this morning but I woke up at my normal eight o'clock and the bird heard me and wanted out of jail. There are tons of things I could/should do this weekend. I would enjoy some of them. I would make money on some of them. Have to say, I'm inclined to go buy some Nyquil so I can truly ignore the entire weekend. I'm not going to but the thought did cross my mind. Crying gives me a headache and makes my nose run. Not to mention making my skin all red and blotchy. I'm not a pretty, Meg Ryan/Demi Moore crier.

---

Fabulous. I have got to get off all these fucking bird lists. I now know that he spent the day in the park hanging out with some little gay boy whose (female) roommate has the hots for him. I needed to know that. Someone shoot me? Please?

I know, I know. I don't want to be with someone who doesn't care about me but oh god I want him to care about me. At the very least I want him to be heartbroken that this didn't work too.

Two weeks ago when the bird list was so dreadful I wanted to do an audiopost to the bird's blog calmly explaining my feelings on the subject and signing off the entire thing. He talked me out of it. I knew that I needed to do something like that. I need closure and that would have been a reasonable way for me to achieve it. By not doing it I continued to expose myself to all this hatred until I just could not handle it and said something very mean to someone on the list. Now, that person totally deserved to have something mean said to him but it leaves me in a bad position because I said it and I think it totally freaked CPG out that I would do it. Moral of the story: I know what I need more than some guy who has only known me, mostly online, for a few months. And I have got to get the fuck away from these fucking bird lists.

I will never date anyone I met online again. Three strikes. No more. Granted I may just never date anyone again but...sigh.

I'm supposed to be on a godamned plane right now flying to NY to see my boyfriend.