Li'l Momma's Rant-O-Rama

i've been thinking a lot recently about some groups out there in the world that i'm not a part of. i can't put my finger on the name for it, but just people who fall into a certain common category. (not very caffeinated yet today.)

( they include but aren't limited to: )

okay, i'm going to stop complaining about being locked in a classroom for 9 hours a day this week, because my friend P has it worse. a few days ago he left for a business trip to shanghai... and the other day the authorities tracked him down at his hotel because there a woman on his flight came down with swine flu. they've moved him to a separate hotel full of quarantined people, and come in daily to take his temperature and make sure he's not showing symptoms. there's no english-language TV, a sporadic internet connection, and little else to do... i'd go completely batshit crazy.

dude, if you're reading this, chin up. i feel for you.

jack headed out early to pick up the "rumble bee" (his '55 bel air) from his dad's house down the street... so i decided to tackle the mulching that i had to set aside when i hurt my back. (i can't believe that was 2 weeks ago, time flies.) i started off using the technique that jack had suggested: fill a giant lawn and leaf bag with mulch, drag it up the hill to the flowerbed, dump it out, rake it smooth, repeat. that lasted 2 bags' full before i gave up... the bag was already ripping, and dragging that heavy thing uphill was not a very smart idea. plus it didn't hold that much.

so, off to search for a wheelbarrow. wal-mart didn't have any, but the sears hardware had "lawn carts" that would do the trick. stuff it in the back of the car, back home... fill it with the first load of mulch.. aaahhhhhh. SO much better. i was able to do twice the work in half the time.

my back, however, gave me a nudge after about 1/2 hour and said "let's talk, shall we? i'm not really pleased at this whole 'bending over and raking mulch' thing.". yeah, so i decided to save the second half of the flowerbed for tomorrow. i'm not tempting fate. but wow, the half that's finished? looks awesome compared to before. i love mulch. :)

i'm feeling so much better than last night. i was in a mood yesterday evening, not sure why. jack and i went out for our monthly "indian food friday" date, and all day i'd been looking forward to a nice meal topped off with some masala tea and sharing our favorite dessert. instead, the restaurant was packed, it was hot as hell and i sat there with a sweaty wet neck and back, with my sweaty wet butt sticking to the seat... and then after an almost 45-minute wait to order dessert, instead the owner came by and said "good night" as he plopped down our check and walked away. um, i guess no dessert. i got in the car and burst into tears. yes, the dessert is good enough to cry over, but i'm guessing it was just an emotional floodgate after a stressful week at work and getting over the last of the back issues. a cold shower and long night's sleep last night seems to have helped. :)

off to rally... 2 car shows to hit today, if the weather behaves. fingers crossed!

this morning my group is doing a team-building activity... we're putting together kids' snacks for a local food pantry. i'm glad we're helping out, but guess what the snacks are? dirt pudding and PB&J. considering i'm sugar-deprived and PMSing, it's going to take all my willpower to not stick my face in a tub of chocolate pudding. *chuckle*

speaking of snacks, last night i made maple frozen yogurt in the little ice cream maker. it was INSANE. fat-free greek yogurt, a blurt of sugar-free maple syrup, and some fat-free half and half... and somehow that turned into absolute heaven. and because i used the greek yogurt, it didn't taste fat-free at all... soooo good. forget ice cream, frozen yogurt is it for me now!

got through a full day of work without incident, although the back started to go "helloooooo!" around 2pm and kept saying hi for the rest of the day. so the rest of the evening will be spent on my back on the couch. great. at least there's a cool spring "is it or isn't it going to rain" breeze coming through the windows, which is one of my favorite smells ever. now i just have to find something decent on TV to pass the time... last night it was "religulous" via on demand, maybe i'll finally break out the "eyes of tammy faye" netflix DVD i've had for about 6 months now.

in other news: veggie recipes. i needz them. do you have any good veg side dish recipes i could steal? i'm getting sick of "raw" and "steamed".

the back is about 85% there... woo-hoo! i almost felt like i was on vacation this weekend, feeling a bit better opened up a whole world of possibilities. of course all the possibilities had to be close to home in case the back crapped out, but i did well. :) jack and i enjoyed a late lunch outdoors yesterday, and although my restaurant chair made my back a bit ouchy, i was able to sit through a matinee of star trek afterwards (awesome, btw) without problem.

which meant that today i pushed things a little bit more, and had a blast. it went from "hey! i can do my grocery shopping without a back spasm!" to "let's run a bunch of errands!" to "woo-hoo, MULCH!" the mulching might have pushed it a teeny bit, but i only did a small area and lifted with my legs so i'm feeling fine. it's so funny how much joy i got from chores that would have pissed me off a week ago. but to be out in the fresh air and sunshine, driving around and working in the yard, was glorious compared to being inside in the rain for the past week.

another few days and i'll see if i can brave some light workouts at the gym... next week i'll start dance classes and hooping again. whee!

what could angus mean by his behavior in the video below? there are a couple of outdoor cats in the neighborhood who come through my backyard once a day or so... and every time angus sees one of them, he smacks the window. he doesn't yowl or hiss, so it doesn't seem super-aggressive to me... and the cat outside just sits there and stares at him, so he doesn't seem to feel threatened.

so, is this more "hey, you miserable kids, get off my lawn!", or is it "hi! spring me out of here so i can play with you!"??

my friend's family business was just the victim of a hostile takeover. no lie. i'm shocked that something like this could happen, but i guess when you become a publicly traded company you open yourself to that kind of risk. but whoa.

C's dad was always an entrepreneur when we were growing up. for most of our high school and college years, he ran a perfume company that sold those "impostor" fragrances, and we'd earn extra money on the weekends by licking labels and helping with sample packaging. towards the end of college, he met a researcher who was developing a cold lozenge that worked in a new way, by using zinc to shorten the duration of cold symptoms... and Cold Eeze was born. i was one of the first people to take it, a couple of months before it hit the market, when i developed a cold the day of C's wedding.

recently, an investor of some sort pulled together a stable of business guys (don't know what their expertise is), and started an aggressive campaign to unseat the company's board. and damn if they didn't succeed last week. so there is a good chance that this corporation, that bears their family name, will soon not have a single one of their family members in it. the dad, C's husband, her sister, her mom, her uncle... all of these family members who moved to the states and became american citizens, who built this company from the ground up in a country they love, are now going to be given the boot.

i wonder, what does this mean for all of them? do they get bought out? or just booted? what do you get when someone comes in and snatches your life's work out from under you?

if i can just get through this morning, the next 2 and 1/2 days will be awesome. this evening i'm dropping off a hoop for the fundraiser auction for City Kitties, then dinner with B, then pre-wedding karaoke shindig with all the peeps. then the big jeremym wedding tomorrow. w00t! i'm so excited about this wedding, my stomach's actually wonky... i feel like i'm going to the prom. wheeeee!

i really need to get some hooping in this afternoon. not only have i had a brand-new hooping DVD sitting untouched for several weeks, i need the exercise -- i checked the WW website and if i eat a slice of wedding cake tomorrow, that's 7 extra points i'll use. *choke*

...homemade strawberry ice cream is the SHIZZLE.

wow is this stuff good. and easy to make! and even better is the fact that using lower-fat and lower-cal ingredients didn't ruin the texture like i'd thought... it made perfectly awesome strawberry-y goodness, with only 1 WW POINT for an entire cup of it! woo-hoo!!!!