i survived thanksgiving..at least i look better than the turkey does. now i am sitting here in mourning. i am watching the MONK marathon and i can hardly believe that this friday is the series finale. i have been a faithful watcher from the very beginning, in fact MONK is the only show i have on dvd..and i have all 7 seasons. i guess i will have to spend all my friday evenings watching dvds and hoping for a monk reunion show in 10 years. all these years i had hoped he would find out his wife trudy was not really dead, but in the witness protection program or something like that, but i don't think that will happen. i suppose i will just have to settle for him finding out who killed her.
the diet isn't going so well. i keep exercising but nothing seems to be happening (except my sore foot just gets sorer). what do i have left now, 24 days? not even enough days to count it in weeks anymore. i don't suppose there will be a snowstorm either. time to shop for bigger clothes.
i am off work til next tuesday, then we go in probably for one day and then will be laid off. normally i look forward to this time of year. i get to collect unemployment for a while ...sort of a poor mans vacation. but this year, with the economy being what it is, we aren't sure how long we will be laid off for. when we do go back it will just be key people that have a job, of which i am one. but several of my friends will be out of work for a long time. truthfully, i am not sure how long any of us will be working. only time will tell.
but, on an up note, with it being so slow they finally got rid of some of the dead weight (namely kathleen..the nasty old bat). i am not sure i have ever been happier to see anyone go. did i mention she was a nasty old bat?
oh, i have been saving monies up every payday for christmas ever since october, yeah!!! for once i am not waiting til the last moment and wondering how i can afford anything. i ordered several things off amazon yesterday, and tomorrow i will put some more in the bank and order a few more things. about the only thing i need to buy at a store is a new jacket for mike. he told me today to take some of his money and buy what i want for christmas, when i told him i wanted a new vacuum cleaner he said no vacuum for christmas. what kind of a deal is that? i have my eye on the pet eliminator, i think it just does pet hair and not the whole pet, but its a chance i am willing to take. Just kidding, for any PETA people out there. mike is sort of a jewelry kind of guy. he thinks it makes a good gift. as a matter of fact, he tells me for any old girlfriends or even his ex wife, all he had to do was walk into a jewelry store and buy something and they would be happy. maybe if i could find a vacuum with rhinestones and rubies on the handle he would buy it for me.
last week i brought in the avacado mike(?) planted. i was afraid it would freeze. it's now about 4 feet tall. i was thinking about just decorating it for christmas then i wouldn't even have to bring in my tree. a few lights and some tinsel and it will rival charlie browns tree.

ahh.. Thanksgiving morning..8 a.m. and already tired. We had to work last night..all night. you would think for a holiday we might get an early out, wouldn't you? but it was the usual bear creek fiasco. it all began 2 weeks ago when we made some new cookies for an experimental project. it seems the merchandising folks had the idea for a "create your own cookie book". so we made like 6 or 7 or 8 different kinds of cookies ...ALL HAND FROSTED!!! there is pumpkin, chocolate with frosting and sprinkles, peppermint (also with sprinkles) peanut butter (with..you guessed it, sprinkles)..the list is endless, or so it seems when you are frosting them. but a funny thing happened between the planning and the carrying out of the plan. it clearly said in the procedure "DO NOT FLIP COOKIES"...well, someone on our crew said "flip the cookies", so we frosted 1000's of cookies on the bottom. we therefore had 1000's of cookies that sort of rocked around like weebles. merchandising didn't find this to amusing so it was a total do over, at what i hear was a cost of $13,000. (and that isn't counting the labor). i tell you this, in order to explain the rest of this story. mike wanted a really big turkey so he had the butcher at winco find us a 29.8 pounder. i have never cooked one this big, so when i calculated 20 minutes per pound it was 600 minutes!!! isn't that like 10 hours?? so, i figured i would put it in at 2 a.m. when i got home from work. well, all went according to plan..except for trying to put the turkey in my roasting pan was like trying to stuff a pterydactyl into a crockpot. no matter which way i put the thing, it just wasn't going to fit. tim was up and watching me (kind of with the same look he had once when i got the lawnmower stuck inside my windmill). so, i finally just left the legs sticking out the end of the pan and shoved the thing in the oven (i swear the things was hanging on to the oven sides with its big old pterydactyl wings..it was quite the struggle). then i went to bed, but didn't sleep much, worried about the turkey, you know. got up at 6 with a headache, walked into the kitchen all smokey from drippings falling in the oven..opened door and windows (friggin cold outside), then got dressed (with no shower ..eeww), and went to the store to buy a disposable roasting pan, plus a cheese ball and crackers that i forgot when i went grocery shopping. i got back home at 6:30, cleaned the oven bottom and changed pans and now the turkey is all happy and warm again.
other than all this, life is boring. tim has been raking a few leaves a day, which i greatly appreciate. today is cold and foggy so probably none will get raked. emily is still upset over her old boyfriend, even though she appears to be interested in a new one (who lives in florida). she doesn't seem to think anyone around here is nice enough. why she would believe someone in florida that she never met is nice is beyond me. i have a vision of some nasty old (50) guy sitting around playing on xbox live and luring young girls into his lair. maybe it's just that with age ( a lot of age) comes an incredible amount of cynicism. and michael..well, he ran out of vicadins and seemed to be doing fine, much to my amazement. but, just yesterday he hurt his back moving one of the ez shoppers. you know, the shopping wheelchairs that seem to be almost exclusively used by fat people at winco. whenever the batteries die people just leave them in the aisle, and they are really hard to push. anyway, they sent him to the urgent care and he got 20 more vics. will that be all? one can only hope he won't start building it back up again.
now, i suppose i had better get back to the kitchen, still have some rolls to cook, (store bought this year since my bread maker went kablooey), and stuffing (from a box) mashed potatoes (instant) and gravy (canned), corn (frozen)...damn, maybe next year i will just buy a can of spam and shape it like a turkey for all the work i put into this anymore. i also have a small ham to cook and i did the pies yesterday (all sara lee or marie callender).

not much going on around here lately. i did have a 3 day weekend. pretty slow at winco so no demos for me. i spent all day yesterday cleaning the mobil home. now there is a ton of leaves to rake...but it's cold out there. i really need to invest in a leaf blower, i think it would be so much easier than raking, but they are so loud. everytime the neighbors use theirs it almost drives me crazy. i thought i could listen to my ipod, but in order to hear it over the leaf blower i would have to turn it up very loud..thereby defeating the whole purpose. of course, the easiest thing to do would be to make the kids go out and rake them. maybe they could just pretend the rake is an xbox controller and the leaves are little army men or whatever. tim is almost beside himself, the new call of duty modern warfare comes out tuesday. he has had it reserved for at least a month now. i have never played a game on the xbox. i used to play all the time on the playstation 2, but now i just pogo and play jewel quest (stuck on level 5-8 for a very long time now). the other day one of the guys at work was talking about the old atari game and said you can buy them for $20 or something, and play all the old games, like the ones i know...i used to love playing frogger, just the hop on the logs and miss the cars version..not the whole 3D game.
i do have news of the nasty old lady at work..she is still there. she did another thing that pissed me off. it seems her car broke down and she needed a ride home, she lives in ashland. she asked my friend sharyl for a ride (who lives in yreka CALIFORNIA!!) it takes sharyl almost an hour to get home already, so sharyl said no. her husband waits up for her to make sure she gets over the mountains and home ok and he didn't want her to do it. so another friend, sharon, gives kathleen (the old lady) sharyls home phone number and kathleen calls sharyl at home 2 times the next morning to ask for a ride home. then when sharyl gets to work kathleen is waiting for her outside, and starts boohooing about how she really needs the job and has to walk 1 mile to the bus stop. wait..did i mention the best part..up until this time kathleen, the snootty old bitch, has never even talked to sharyl, and she has brought treats at lunch and offered them to other people at the table..but never to sharyl. so i told sharyl to stick to her guns, and i told her my hilda story. the same thing happened to me a few years ago, and i ended up giving this gal a ride for months and she even called me on weekends for rides to walmart and the bank...it rarely ever pays to be nice. anyway, here is the part that irritated me..kathleen totally hounded sharyl at work and laid this massive guilt trip on her until sharyl caved in and gave her a ride, supposedly for just 2 weeks. well, then of course, it turned into picking her up too, after all, it was a long walk to the bus stop. so by the time poor sharyl leaves early to pick her up, then drops her off and gets back to the freeway she has added another 30 minutes or so to her drive everyday. i was just furious with the old bat. sharyl is a very nice person, and to stand there and see this old lady play her like a fiddle was more than i could stand. i told sharyl she was making a mistake. but finally this week sharyl told her she wasn't giving her a ride anymore. it has been over 3 weeks and now kathleen says she needs $1200 to fix her car, not $200. i suspect it was always $1200 and she was just going to lead sharyl on and on and on. so now sharon gives her a ride home every night and gets gas money and treats and the old bat never speaks to sharyl anymore. talk about using people. thursday night we were all getting off work at the same time and i was just standing by the wall waiting to go when kathleen walks up to me all smiles and says "do they make you saty til the ovens are done?"..and i just stood there looking at her. so she says "do they make you stay?"..i just stand there..she says "aren't you going to answer me?" ..and i say "no". so she finally walks away. i told mike i only have to answer work related questions..i don't have to stand and shoot the shit with her. in a way this is fairly unusual behavior for me. i try to get along with most people i work with, and if i don't like them, i just avoid them....but this old lady has really gotten on my nerves.
enough of that. you may be wondering about the vicadin situation. well, mike got another refill last friday. i figure it should be all gone by his days off this week..yeah!!! 2 days of having him here with no pills....let the good times roll. i did tell him the other day that the next time he runs out he will not be taking it out on me. i really don't need this shit. so, guess we will find out if he believes me or not. mr. "i just don't have an addictive personality". gees, i still can't get over that one. actually, i am truly serious about this. i have even been calculating finances to make sure i can pay all my bills on my own again..which i can..just like i did before. it isn't that i don't love him, you understand. it's just that i won't have him dragging me down this path with him. the drinking is one thing, he keeps it controlled and you can buy alcohol. you can't just walk in a store and buy narcotics, once the dr. says no more he will be reduced to getting them from people at work or anyplace else he can. i worked with people like that. if you go to a dentist for a root canal and they find out they will say "how are you? got any pain pills left over"? not to mention, our sex life is nonexistant now. when he has pills he isn't in the mood, and when he doesn't have them he isn't in the mood (plus he is an ass..so i'm not in the mood either). i can hardly wait to see how this plays out.
as for my exercise regime. i am still doing it almost every day..but i still don't see any difference. my jeans are still tight, my butt is still big and i still can't bend over to tie my shoes. i think i have about 7 weeks left. it's not looking good. maybe i will just go buy some super big clothes and make it look like i have lost a lot of weight. that's not me in the picture...can you believe this is advertised as a "slinky dress"? what women weighing 400 pounds would even think about buying a slinky dress? might as well just glue 2 real slinkys to your ass and bounce down the street if you want people to stare and laugh.
guess that's all my earth shaking thoughts for today. still waiting to hear from sheri on the big move to georgia, so if you are out there sheri, someone is thinking of you and wondering how things are going.

geee, i guess it's been awhile. i could say that (thanks to sheri) i found my jewel quest game again, and got hooked on it. now i remember why i stopped playing it. i have been on the same level for these two weeks that i was on months ago when i gave up. now i am way behind on my pogo badges and life is falling apart.
had a fight with mike last night. we rarely fight so every time we do i have to remind myself that it's all cool. if he leaves my life goes on just like it has before. to make it sort of short, i fixed chicken for dinner and we were just getting ready to have one of our few meals a week together when emily brought the phone out and she was crying. it seems her boyfriend in mass. broke up with her. which i thought happened a couple of weeks ago and she was fine. but they had still been talking until last night. so i went in her room with her for quite a while, there really wasn't much i could say, just hold her and let her cry. i honestly didn't know she was so serious about him. they had discussed getting married!!! she is only 17..how can you make her see that this will pass and unfortunately she will probably go through it a few more times before she finds someone for her. so i didn't even try to talk much, just sat there with her. but then when i came back out, mike was all bent out of shape because i didn't eat with him. he went to bed pissed off..oh wait..did i mention he ran out of his last vicadin 2 days ago? anyone see a connection there? so then when booboo and i went to bed he kept petting her but to do that he had to sit up, and in so doing he pulled all my covers off. so after about 10 minutes of that shit i said "can i have some blanket please?" and he just sat there petting booboo so i said "i guess not"..so he jumps up says "you talk to f#@$%n much" and i said "excuse me" and he says "did i f%^$#ing stutter?" any way, it progressed to him sleeping on the couch til about 4 am and me calling him an asshole (which he is)..wait..let me digress. i left out the funny part. while i was fixing dinner he told me he was out of vicadin but he was ok, he didn't go around zombie like asking anyone at work if they had some. because (here is the good part, and i quote him "i just don't have an addictive personality" i have mentioned that he is an alcoholic and smokes a pack a day, haven't i? so what do the psychologist call this? oh i know DENIAL!!! shit, i have a weight problem and a food compulsion, but at least i admit it. i don't try to pass it off as a thyroid problem (hello oprah) or some metabolic malfunction. so, needless to say, it was very quiet here this morning. i got his clothes ready and his thermos of coffe then i took the dogs for a walk, came home and worked in the kitchen til he left. so know i have a text on my cell telling me he" is sorry will he ever quit being so stupid" what can i say to that. first thing i think is sure, maybe some day if he finds someone he respects he will quit being a jerk.
so, what else has been occupying my time? well, i have a mouse problem. i could hear them scampering around under the stove, so i put poison traps under there. i used to worry about the cats getting the mice filled with poison, but then i figured if i have four cats and a mouse problem, then my cats aren't eating the mice anyway. so this morning i looked and found a dehyrated mouse (not as in thirsty..as in all dried out). and tim dumped the corn in the trash for me, so that might also help. my brother works on a farm and got some corn on the cob. when my mom asked if i wanted some i said just a few..so she gives me 2 big bags full. of course we couldn't eat it all and i don't have time to fix it up to freeze so it just sat on the porch getting micified. i bet those mice thought they had it made for the winter, a nice warm spot by the pilot light , 2 bags of corn on the cob,and 3 dogs to keep the cats away (like there was any real threat there).
as far as the tae-bo..well, i have been working out almost every day since i started. just maybe 5 days when i had other things to get done early so i skipped it. i don't see any change yet, except for the fact that my bad foot hurts more. and i really am trying to watch what i eat (wouldn't want anyone to sneak some nasty healthy thing in on me while my eyes are closed). what do i have left now?maybe 8 weeks? i can almost feel that last minute panic already, praying for a massive snow storm so i don't have to go. or maybe i won't even be married by then..after last night, who knows?

day 4 of my quest to go to the other side. i have tae-boed 3 days in a row, but i took today off. emily had a girlfriend spend the night, and i didn't want to wake them by jumping all around the living room. (does that sound like a good excuse?) i am not hardly sore at all, which i guess means i am not working hard enough. tomorrow i will try for 35 minutes. i also have another incentive to lose weight now. i read on the internet (what did we do before the www.com world arrived?) , that obese people are going to cause the demise of the mitten industry!!! it seems fat peoples extremeties stay warm longer so they don't need to cover them up, now the mitten industry is going to die because of obesity. however, there was no mention of the glove industry....i couldn't figure that out, but i think now i have it. fat people have fat fingers..so they don't wear gloves (to constricting.)so the glove industry can continue to cater to paris hilton and all her anorexic friends.
on another note,mike got a part time job at bear creek. he worked there before but quit to go to winco, now he asked his old boss if he could just work 4 hours a night til the season is over, to earn the money for our trip and to buy me something nice for christmas. so now he is full time winco/part time bear creek and i am full time bear creek/part time winco. i told him it's ok, as long as he doesn't start getting all crabby. every time in the past he has worked two jobs, he gets impossible to be around. he is just nothing without his 10 hours of beauty sleep every night. he has mentioned getting me a piece of jewelry, but he doesn't know what. i guess thats nice, but i am not a jewelry person. he already gave me an engraved ankle bracelet that i can wear all the time (once every six months i take it off to shave under it, otherwise i have to start braiding the hair around my ankles).and we have matching wedding bands. the thing about jewelry is that i can't wear it to work. the only thing allowed in the bakery is a plain wedding ring, nothing with stones, and no necklaces, earrings, nose rings, tongue rings, belly button rings or rings in places i don't want to think about...no watches or bracelets. so besides the anklet that no one knows i wear, what else is there? i wonder if i could convince him to buy me a 32" lcd tv, that i will wear around my neck.

boy, did i do a dumb thing. mike asked me the other day if we could go down to his parents just for christmas eve dinner, and the family portrait they take every year. he said he wanted me in it before i die (which i will get to later), and i said "sure". well, what the hell was i thinking? when i first met his family i weighed about 130 (and still thought i was fat)..then a year or so ago we went down for his moms 80th birthday and i was a little heavier. now i am a lot heavier..and i don't want to go and have people thinking "god, what happened to her?" so now what do i do? if i start seriously now, it is 12 weeks til i have to go, how much could i lose in 3 months? or do i do what i normally do, which is start next week..then the next week..then the next week..til i am down to "OH MY GOD...I NEED TO LOSE 30 POUNDS IN 4 DAYS". so, this morning i got up and did 30 minutes of tae-bo..and you know what? it felt really good. that's how i lost all my weight before, i was 220 pounds after i had emily in 1992, and at 5'2" i was pretty round. i didn't walk anywhere, i just tucked my legs in and rolled. then i started taebo. i worked out one hour every day of the week and lost 90 pounds. for some reason once mike and i got married it all started going down hill. but in fairness to me, and this isn't just making up excuses, we also started doing 4/10s at work. 8 hours on concrete floors is bad enough, but 10 hours is a killer..and i walk all night long. the line people get to pick a spot to work and they have mats to stand on, but doing ovens means i am back and forth constantly. so now i get home at almost 2am, get to bed by 2:30 and wake up about 4 hours later (i think my mind just automatically wakes up after years of getting the kids up before 7 for the school bus). it all makes getting up to work out very difficult. anyways, i did 30 minutes this morning, and tomorrow i will go for 31. but, what really started the whole thing was the other night i got home and there was a newspaper article on my desk...you don't need to read it all, the title is enough. mike left it for me. he has always said he loves me whatever way i am, but when he read this it apparently opened his eyes. now he thinks i am going to die from fat. actually the whole article pissed me off..correct me if i am wrong, but doesn't being overweight cut EVERYONES life expectancy? don't fat men die sooner? fat kids? fat dogs? fat cats?who pays for a stupid study like this, where the outcome is obvious before it even begins? you might as well spend 20 million dollars on a study to conclude that most deaths in an airplane crash are the result of hitting the ground. and further more, i don't clip articles out on the dangers of smoking and leave them on his desk. oh well, i will keep you posted on my progress..be prepared for a blog on december 23rd wherein i beg god for a humongous snow storm to block the pass until march. you know the really ironic thing? i think mike is truly more interested in getting booboo into the family picture than he is in getting me in it.and she doesn't care how big her hips are, i should just let them go. he already emailed his mom to ask if it was ok to bring her. she said it was.
last night at work i had a bad moment, that this morning i can laugh about. there is this really nasty old lady that started a few weeks ago, and i really don't like her, so i just stay away from her as much as i can. last night she was racking on the cookie machine and when the depanners went to lunch i knew she would run out of racks close to her. so in order to be half-assed kind, i went clear to the other side of the bakery and brought two racks over, then i went clear to the other side of the bakery and brought two more. i parked them on the opposite side of the roller from her so they would be out of the way. then she said something that i didn't hear, so i said "what?" (thinking perhaps she was thanking me) HA! what she said was "could you bring those around to this side so they will be closer?" i just looked at her, took the full rack of cookies and walked off with it. of course, once i was in my oven room i let loose..if anyone had walked through i would have gotten a write up for my language. i wanted to go tell her "do you know how many f@#$ times i walk across this f@#$% building every f@#$ night?" and i also wanted to tell her "those 4 f@#$ racks are closer than the others f@#$ racks over in the corner that you can go get yourself, you nasty old b***h"... pardon my bleeps, but one of my pet peeves is working with lazy people while i am working my ass off. and the fact that this old lady seems to think everyone owes her something doesn't help...and she whines all the time too. but today i have a whole new attitude..if she comes anywhere near me i am just going to calmly look at her and tell her to back off because i have dr. kervorkian on speed dial.

monday morning..9:28..i will be going back to bed for the rest of the week now. i already knew work was going to suck because we are doing the dreaded cinnamon swirls for two days and if that isn't bad enough there is more. i had the kids fold the laundry while i was at work yesterday and they had my clothes all nicely folded in the basket. when i went to get some out to take my shower i found that emilys cat was apparently locked in all night..and she left me a present. a cat that never shits in the house decides to do it her one and only time in my clothes (i guess that should be ON my clothes, she wasn't actually wearing my clothes). so now everything is in the washer..and you know my panty situation..i will be here waiting for all to get washed (at least once) and then dried. i ask you, if this is how the week starts, is there really any point in going on? or maybe should i be the optimist and say, what worse thing than this could go wrong? it could only get better, right?
this kind of brings up a point i tried to make to mike. booboo is a very picky eater, but every day when i take her to my car to go for our walk, she runs over to my dirt pile and digs around for a cat turd to eat. well, mike always worries about her not eating, so i suggested..and i will let you out there be the judge of this idea..why not just feed the dog food to the cats, let them shit it out, then let her dig in the dirt pile for her dinner. shoot, the cats get fed, the dog gets fed and she gets some exercise too. seems like a no brainer to me.