(click on image to enlarge)

Yesterday at 6:40pm our dog, Moose, was put out of the pain he had been enduring with the cancer that had invaded his body for the last 6 months. He had anal sac carcinoma, which is one of the deadliest cancers a doggie can get. One of the main ways dogs will get that cancer is when they have not been fixed if they are a male dog. It usually hits around ages 11 or 12 according to the research I did on it. Moose was 11 years and 28 days old as of yesterday, March 28, 2008. To say we are devastated would be an understatement. But we are secure in knowing he is out of pain and in a far better place. If you have a male dog, for Moose's sake please make sure you get him fixed. Thank you.

I took my grandaughter, Jasmine out to dinner tonight. She ordered cheese pizza and a green drink plus the make your own sundae bar at Max and Ermas. I ordered two vodka martinis with extra olivis and grey goose vodka. Oops, I'm not as think as I drunk I am, but maybe I am. Time for sleep now. ZZzzzzzzzz..... I think I'll stay drunk until our house sells. Sounds good to me, and me too. And me as well.

Gawd I love vodka martinis!

shit, I think I have a headache.

Happy Easter ya’ll. In the midst of Easter baskets, chocolate bunnies and marshmallow eggs don’t forget to take the time to remember the real reason for Easter.

Tonight I went to McAllister’s deli/sandwich shoppe for dinner for a not very good, chicken salad sandwich. They have great sweet tea though. I can drink my weight in their sweet tea. It’s a bad good thing they have unlimited refills on sweet tea. After I ate my yukky chicken salad on croissant I went to my favorite Borders bookstore. So after I read 3 gossip magazines and drank a tall no foam latte I had to pee some kinda bad. I mean really bad. Between the latte and the two extra large glasses of sweet tea, I was in urgent mode, if you know what I mean. So I go into the LADIES room and toilet #1 is occupied by someone who is taking a skanky nasty shit. Toilet #2 is small and directly next to the mad shitter in toilet #1. so I opt for the handicap toilet (toilet #3 of 3 toilets total). That turned out to be a no go. T seems that the handicap toilet had red spots all over the seat if you know what I mean. And here is the weird thing; there was a huge black turd on the floor, right in front of the toilet. Looked like a dog had dropped a turd actually. A big dog. A very big dog. So I have no choice, I had to go in toilet #2. I pee real quick as I hold my hand over my nose because the fumes from the skanky shitter are about to make me vomit. I do my business quickly and exit my stall at the same time that the skanky shitter exited their stall and at the same time as an older woman walks into the bathroom. She gives a yelp of surprise upon seeing the mad shitter exit their stall. Turns out the mad shitter was an old man! Yes. An old man had taken a skanky shit in the ladies room. He didn’t seem to be too concerned us. He just tipped his cowboy hat to the both of us and said "good evening ladies" and exited the bathroom. Without washing his hands I might add. What the hell is that store coming to? On Wednesday night I had been in that Borders and there was a balding man with a scraggly mullet wearing a womans purse. Not a man purse but an actual woman's purse from Walmart. WTF? That place is starting to scare me.

Although yesterday’s morning held the promise of spring, today’s held the promise of floods, and lots of them. There has been a steady drizzle falling all day, giving the already chilled air a miserable feeling. No hint of spring in the air today, oh no. The perfect thing to do would have been to stay in bed and sleep the nasty weather away. I forged ahead though and went to the one place in the Midwest that I knew would make the sun shine in my heart. Hobby Lobby. I tell you, I am going to miss that store when I move back to Maryland. Just the act of walking into Hobby Lobby puts a bounce in my step and a song in my heart. I don’t have to buy anything, although I frequently do. Walking through the aisles looking at the brightly colored items would be enough to perk anyone up.



I did manage to find a few items that had to make their way into my cart. A couple for me, a couple for my daughter and even one for my grandpug, Booger.


Click on image to see my neighbors flooded yard

I really needed a perk today, not only because of the weather, but also because the weather has flooded my neighbor’s yards. No one is going to want to buy my house when they see the neighbors yards flooded. They will think we are in a flood zone. Good old Indiana’s monsoon season. Damn it!

This afternoon, when I went to the mailbox to gather the mail, I saw a young dude in an expensive silver sports car sitting in front of the faith healers house, looking over at my house. He drove over to me and asked me how much we were asking for the house. I told him, he thanked me and drove away. I have a couple of problems with this interaction. First of all, why is he looking at a house that costs less than his car? Secondly, why didn’t he get his lazy butt out of his car and grab a flyer from the box in front of him, which has the price emblazed on the front. I wonder if he was a real estate investor looking for a cheap house to rent out or something. Must not have been too impressed though because I haven’t gotten a call for a showing yet.

Late this afternoon I went to a local coffee shop to drink no foam lattes, read gossip magazines and people watch. I wish I had taken my digital camera with me. I saw a woman …man … person that looked very out of place. This woman …man person was carrying a woman’s purse. It wasn’t a “man purse” either. Everyone was staring because, quite frankly, the woman …man … person looked freaky as hell. I would swear it was a man, as he had a severe case of hair loss. The few hairs he had in the back were long and hung down to his shoulders. I’m getting a case of queasy stomach thinking about it, so maybe I’d better change the subject. Or go vomit. Or maybe both.

When the hubster and I came up with this idea that I would stay here in the Midwest to sell our house, while he started our new life on the East Coast, our friends were very supportive. They vied with each other as to which would have me for dinner on which night and which would go to the museums with me, which would be my movie buddies, etc. In fact the last week that the hubster was here they started beating down the door, wanting me to do this or that with them. But the very second his plane hit the skies, they vanished into thin air. It’s been three weeks now and everyone has become invisible. I haven’t had one dinner invitation. And the one friend who vowed to be my movie buddy insists on not only picking the movie, but also leaves me with the popcorn bill even though I don’t eat popcorn in the theater. My (so-called) friends are a disappointment. One even went as far as to tell me how she invited another friend for dinner and then went onto complain about the evening. Meanwhile I sit there wondering why I didn’t get an invitation. This same so-called friend asked me yesterday “Don’t you get lonely?” I felt like telling her I’d rather be a hermit than hang around the likes of selfish rude people like you. But I just smiled and said no.



Really things are not as bad as I make them seem. I rather enjoy my solitude for the most part. There are other friends I could hang around with but for various reasons I don’t. I’d much rather stay home with my stinky dog, sitting in front of the fire, eating strawberry shortcake for dinner. I’ve even stopped going to my writers group meetings. So I guess my solitude is a self imposed one at times. But I like it that way. I have come to the realization that the majority of my friends here in Indy use me for their own personal gain. The ones who have me do free web work, or the ones who have me drive 25 miles to their house to go out for the afternoon or evening with them because their husband has their one car and they are bored, or the ones that want me to cater their movies for free all at my own expense or the ones that only call me when they are having a personal crisis and they need a shoulder to cry on. Screw you all, I say. Screw you all! I think that if I when I move to the East Coast I will have to become pickier about the friends I let into my life.



I had three showings on Saturday. That makes a grand total of 22 showings now. The craziest things happen when people come to look at my house. I know because I hide down the block and watch. Saturday was, of course, no exception. Three minutes before the first showing, a white hearse backs into the faith healer neighbors driveway, and they open the back doors, as if waiting for fresh meat to be inserted into the back, if you know what I mean. Come on, what are the odds? Really people, what are the odds? Then I realize that they are actually taking car parts out of the back of the hearse to work on Debs brakes on her minivan which has the two front wheels taken off and is up on blocks. Would YOU want to move to a house which is across the street from a house with a car up on blocks and a hearse in the driveway? No, I wouldn’t either. Seriously, has someone put bad mojo on me?



I read online that by burying a statue of St Joseph upside down in front of your house, your house will sell almost immediately. I did that Sunday evening and now I am waiting for the offers to pour in. I have total faith that my house will sell within 2 weeks now. I do. Really I do. You’ll see!

Click on image to enlarge (and see the gouge in my purple wall)

This is the house that Jack built. This is the wall in the house that Jack built. This is the gouge in the wall of the house that Jack built. This is the sound of money rapidly draining out of my wallet thanks to the gouge in the wall and the hole in the ceiling and the mud on the new carpet of the house that Jack built. Sounds like Jack should have built a better house, eh? That damned bastard Jack.

So, PFB (pig faced bitch) told my real estate agent that she would make an offer if we addressed the issue of a couple of spongy areas she felt in Jasmine’s room. I talked to my eldest and he offered to put a new floor in that room on Saturday with his friends. What the hell was wrong with me? Has living alone warped my brain so bad that I have no common sense anymore? Obviously. So day one commenced with them having to use my Pathfinder to go to the hardware store to buy the lumber. I guess they figured that even though I am a non-smoker, I would never realize they had smoked in my “never before been smoked in” SUV. I have yet to be able to get the smell out. I find that the smell goes really well with the deep scratches and gouges on the interior of my two year old Pathfinder that they managed to do in one of their many trips to the hardware store. I am not sure if the scratches on the outside of my SUV were done on day one or day two of the project. And then there is the problem with the passenger side front door. Again, I am not sure what they did to cause the door to not be able to shut properly now, but hey, I saved a couple of hundred on the flooring job so it’s all good. Right? So what that I had to buy new ceiling tiles for them to fix the ceiling their fell through, or the fact that I had to paint the entire room because of the path job they did on the gouge they put in the bedroom wall. And why be upset over the stains they got in my new carpet, after all a carpet os going to get wear and tear eventually, right? And surely it wasn’t their fault that they put huge, deep tire ruts in the front yard, because how were they to know that the ground would be so soft from all the melting snow. Shall I go on?


Click on image to enlarge (and see my double chin)

Day two of replacing the floor in Jas’s room is just as annoying as day one. The only difference being that no one fell through the ceiling on day two. One of the people brought some annoying eight-year-old girl with him. Like there wasn’t enough going on here. She was the most loud mouthed, unruly child I have ever had the displeasure to meet. She kept trying to go upstairs and get in the guys way as they were installing the new floor in Jasmine’s room. I flat out told her not to go upstairs and as she was walking upstairs she would tell me “it’s okay, I’m allowed.” I would tell her, “no your not, now get down here now.” She would give me grief and then when I would turn my back, she would walk up the steps again. She needed a good butt whipping if you ask me. It was obvious the girl had never heard the word “no” in her life.

By the time everyone finally left on Sunday night I just broke down and had myself a good cry. After awhile I pulled myself together because after all, I would be getting an offer on the house in the next day or two from PFB. Monday arrives and no offer. Then Tuesday morning I get a call from my agent. PFB wants to come by with her agent that afternoon prior to making an offer. I was excited and relieved. Finally, an offer. Tuesday night I waited for the call from my agent letting me know about the offer. No call. Finally on Wednesday I get a voice mail from my agent. She tells me that PFB said she wants new a new floor put in each of the three bedrooms upstairs, the upstairs hallway, the upstairs bathroom and all of the steps leading to the upstairs to be replaced. All this for two spongy spots in one of the bedrooms. My agent tells PFB’s agent that I had the entire floor replaced over the weekend. PFB’s agent says she doesn’t believe it and that nothing was done to that room. Then she insists that all of the new flooring she mentioned and the new steps be completed before they will submit an offer. I was floored! No pun intended. I was so insulted. I don’t feel a damned thing wrong with the flooring upstairs, nor with the steps. Granted, there is one step that creaks when you step on it, but you don’t put new steps in for one creaky step. I told my agent to tell PFB to piss up a rope, I wasn’t doing any of that. If we bowed to her commands, then she would want a new roof, then a new this or new that, the list would never end. And she would offer us mere pennies, instead of what we are asking. No, PFB can kiss my big fat creaky, spongy butt!

So as you can imagine, I’ve been severely depressed ever since that phone call. I didn’t even want to go out of the house today. This evening I forced myself to get out for a little bit. I’d be just as happy laying in bed all day and all night. I’ve given up. I’ll never get to move to MD with my husband. I don’t even know if I care enough to move anyway. He is so busy with his new life, his new job, his new state, that he didn’t even call me until since Saturday morning until yesterday evening (Wednesday). And that was just to find out if an offer had been made. He hasn’t asked how I am or what I’ve been doing or anything. He just bubbles on about how he loves his new job. I cut my finger so badly this afternoon that I really should have had stitches. I start telling him about it and he cuts me off, telling me about how he took some fella’s out to lunch. So I just stopped talking. I let him ramble on for the rest of the phone call and he didn’t even notice he was the only one talking. And you know what? I don’t even care.

(Click on image to see the destruction)

This is what happens when you have relatives put in your new flooring in an upstairs bedroom. This is also a good reason why you should never buy the last of the discontinued ceiling tiles. I am going to have to pay for an entire new ceiling now because we can't get any ceiling tiles to match. This is a bad day, a bad day. :-(

And when I call Mr. Understanding (the hubster) I get screamed at for allowing this relative to touch a hammer in the first place. It wasn't like I had any options. We will have an offer for the house on Monday or Tuesday if we fix the flooring. So of course I was going to do everything in my power to comply. I should have know better. I should have frigging known.

(click on image to enlarge and see the faith healers boob laying on the table. YUK!)

Last night I did something I swore I would never again do. I went out to dinner with the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor and her annoying loud mouthed daughter. I even invited m y granddaughter Jas to join us. Misery loves company I suppose. Let me start off by saying, the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor only likes to eat at Chinese buffets. Barfette’s as I like to call them. And the one she chose certainly lived up the name of a barfette. It was some of the nastiest, if not the worst, food I have ever tried to eat. I wasn’t able to eat much because it was so bad. But the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor and her daughter made up for the food Jas and I didn’t eat. They really chowed down, let me tell you! And loud! Oh were they loud. People at other tables were turning to look at us because the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor and her eleven year old daughter were so loud.



Jas ended up getting wired up as well by the end of the evening. I mean come on, doesn’t the picture of Jas above look like she is wired out on sugar? She didn’t eat any sweet foods so this is all results of the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor’s daughter’s loud and obnoxious behavior. Quite frankly, looking at the pic of Jas above kind of scares me.

After dinner, (if you want to call it that) the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor pulls into my driveway to let me and Jas out. I see her unbuckling her seatbelt and turning the car off so I realize what she is about to do. She is going to try to come in my house. Now, if you haven’t already figured it out, the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor is like a cockroach; once you get her in your house you can’t get rid of her. So, my survival instinct kicks in and I hop out of her mini-van and grab Jas and run to my car, while hollering over my shoulder “thanks for the ride Deb, see ya later, I have to get Jas home.” And I am backed halfway out of the driveway before she realizes what is going on. It was pretty funny. I waved at her as she stood in my driveway with her mouth open, as I drove away. Jas and I had a real good laugh over that.

Today we are expecting a major snow storm here in the Frozen tundra of Indianapolis. And it seems the city has run out of road salt. So as you can imagine, things are going to get pretty bad road wise. They are shutting schools down early and already advising people to stay off the roads. Now this pisses me off. Why? Because I have two showings of my house this afternoon. And both are seeing the house for the second time. So if the weather would cooperate I could conceivably have an offer on my house by tonight. Damn that Midwest weather! So keep your fingers crossed for me that they don’t let the snow stop them from coming this afternoon and making an offer. And it doesn’t help any that the hubster calls me yesterday afternoon and tells me he is driving with the car window down and he has a sunburn. Bastard!

The first day the hubster was in Maryland, leaving me alone in this house, I was out of sorts. I hadn’t settled into a routine of aloneness by that point. The second day was much better. And by the third day I was kind of liking being alone, well, most of the time. Today is the fifth day and depression is starting to set in now. It’s not so much the fact that I am alone, it’s more the fact that the hubster is embarking on his new life and I feel left out. By the time he gets off of work and back to his brothers in the evening he is too tired to talk to me. Oh he tries, but the cell phone reception is really bad out in the boonies where his brother lives. So most of the time I can only hear every other word he says and even that sounds like it’s coming from a tunnel. I end up with a splitting headache from it. And the hubster seems to get annoyed at me when I complain about the poor reception. He barks at me with things like “what am I supposed to do about the reception? I just won’t call you anymore if the reception annoys you that much.” So now I don’t even comment on the poor reception. He doesn’t ask about my day, even though I ask about his. I try to tell him about my day anyway and he falls asleep on the phone on me. That’s not very good for my ego. I just feel like we are drifting apart. I was afraid this would happen. He’s just so wrapped up in his new life that he has put all thoughts of his old life out of his mind. But on the up side, he loves his new job. He’s putting in long hours so he’s pretty tired at night.



One good thing that has come out of this solitude is that my writers block is finally broken. Yes, I have writing like mad. My new writing group is publishing an anthology and I have submitted two stories and am finishing up a third. Unfortunately you are only allowed to submit 2500 words. I have exceeded that limit so I need to pick and choose what to submit. I wrote two stories that are in poem format. They are cute and funny and totally adorable. But my masterpiece is a story I am finishing up called “Blame it on chicken poop.” It’s cute, I think. It’s sort of a reflective piece. If anyone is interested in being a beta reader for it let me know. I’m looking for someone to give me their honest opinions. You walk a fine line when writing about chicken poop so I have concerns about it as you can imagine.


(Click in image to enlarge)

Yesterday we had a horrible ice storm. Of course it hit while I was in the movies. When I went into see “Definitely Maybe” at noon rain was falling from the sky. When I came out two hours later there was two inches of ice on the Pathfinder. I had a heck of a time chipping it off enough to see out the windshield and getting the car door open. Then I get home and I can’t get the front storm door open because it is iced shut. I had to kick at it to break the ice. The ice storm turned into a mild snow storm at nightfall. It was so cozy being all warm and hunkered down for the evening with a roaring fire blazing away. The only thing I was missing was my Greggy Bear. And then tomorrow we are supposed to get 3 inches of snow. I am pretty sick of this Indiana weather. Greg tells me it was in the high 60’s there today and tomorrow is supposed to be a beautiful day as well. He even has had to wear sunglasses when he drives. Damn it.



I was on the back patio shoveling snow this afternoon when I heard my stinky dog barking up a storm. So I went through the garage and I saw a strange car in the driveway. It was the health inspector from the health dept. I had called her on Monday and left a message about that creepy punk kid next door that doesn’t have trash service and instead just throws his bags of household garbage into his back yard. He’s only been doing that for over a year now. He’s getting quite the collection as you can imagine. She had knocked on the kids door, but Brandon wouldn't open his door to her and they are not allowed to go on someone’s property without the owners permission. She needed to go on his property to see into his back yard to take pictures of the piles of garbage. She told me if I were to give her permission to take pictures of his garbage from my property that would work. So I gave her permission to come into Jasmines room, which overlooks Brandon’s garbage piles and take a picture of the garbage. Did you know it is a law that everyone in this county has to have garbage pickup service? I didn't know that. Looks like the self proclaimed faith healer is a law breaker too since she hasn’t had garbage pickup for two years now! Anyway, she said she will send the punk kid neighbor a letter giving him 30 days in which to pick up the garbage or else he is served with a summons to appear in court. She said you would be surprised at the number of people that DON'T comply and end up being sued by the county. That amazes me.

Today was the hubster’s first day of work at his new job in Maryland. He calls me at 11:00am asking me where his social security card is as he can’t find it and the human resources department insists on having a copy of it. I have no idea where it may be; I’ve never had access to it. He still hasn’t found it. I always thought he carried it in his wallet like most people. When he called me this evening I asked him how his first day went and he said he had more important things on his mind than his new job. It seems his eighty-year-old mother was hospitalized this morning with congestive heart failure. What a bad start to his first day on the job, eh? Please keep her in your prayers. It’s our worst nightmare to move to Maryland only to have her die when we move there. Te whole reason we are moving to Maryland is because Greg misses his mother and wants to spend more time with her. To make matters worse, this is the very thing Greg’s father died of. So as you can imagine, everyone is hitting the panic button right about now. Sometimes I wonder if this move is just not meant to be. Makes you wonder doesn’t it?

It seems that the hubster’s flight to Maryland yesterday was not without incident. If you have known me long (some of you have) then you know that the hubster’s father served in the Navy during WWII and that the hubster and I did extensive research on WWII and the hubster’s father’s naval career. The hubster has hats and shirts from two of the ships the hubster’s father served on. He happened to wear one of those shirts yesterday with one of the hats. When he boarded his flight here in Indy, just after the flight took off the stewardess made an announcement as she stood next to the hubster’s seat. She announced that as Americans we don’t take time to thank the men and women who have served our country. In fact, she continued, we have a member of the service here, so everyone take a moment to applaud him for his service and thank him. As the entire plane broke out into applause (including my hubster) she turns to him and asks him to stand. He said “me? I’m the member of the military?” Then he had to tell the entire plane, who had just applauded him, that he was just a fan of the Navy and had actually never served. He was so embarrassed. I told him if that should happen again he should just say thank you. Because I bet everyone felt like idiots after that. How embarrassing.

(click on image to enlarge)

I am officially a single woman. Well, until the hubster and I are reunited in Maryland atsome point in the distant future. Above is a picture of the hubster and I this morning before he left. Today he flew off into the wild blue yonder to the wilds of coastal Maryland, while I stay behind with a dying stinky dog, trying to sell our house. The plan is that I will move to Maryland when the house sells. I may be in Indiana for the rest of my life. We have had fifteen showings and not even one little nibble. Everyone agrees that the house shows well and it is priced right. But yet no-one is buying it. But they buy houses that are smaller and uglier than ours. I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. I think the universe is against us. Take for instance the showing this afternoon. I am one street over on Vali Drive, in my little hiding place where I can see the people coming into our house and I can see how long they stay. (that gauges my hopefulness or hopelessness as the case may be). Several things happen at once. A red pickup truck pulls into our driveway and at the same time a stray dog (we never get stray dogs in our neighborhood) comes running around the corner and across my yard and up to the passenger door of the pickup truck. The people in the truck start to back out of the driveway as if they are having second thoughts about viewing our house now. (I can’t blame them with a rabid dog running around). But the dog runs across the street to bark at the faith healers dogs who are barking right back at them. So the people do end up coming in the house. They only stayed six minutes though. What are the odds of a stray dog running in my yard at the same time people come to view the house? I tell you, someone has put a curse on me. Does anyone know how to get the evil eye off a person?


(click on image to enlarge)

I have no patience for the whole house crap today because as I said, the hubster moved to Maryland today. I was okay until when we were in the airport. Then he hugs me tightly, kisses my neck and whispers in my ear “I’m going to miss you.” I had to tell him gruffly “we’ll have none of that” and walk away, because my eyes were misting up. I did break into tears however when I saw him going through security at the airport. It suddenly hit me that it could be a month or more before I saw him again. We’ve been apart a few times in the fourteen years we’ve been married, but not very often. And it’s always been when I’ve gone on a business trip or a pleasure trip without him. I’ve never been in our house without him. I am so lonely that I’ve even invited our dying stinky dog to sit in the family room with me. Now that’s desperation! When I got back from the airport I saw that my Greggy bear had left me a note on the side of the fridge. It’s funny because I left a couple of notes in his suitcase for him. One I wrote in blue marker and it said “I’m blue without you”. His note to me was titled “Things to remember”. What little love notes did he leave me? Well, first on the list was “I love you”. Second was telling me about garbage day. Third was reminding me not to forget to regenerate the water softener every other day. Fourth was telling me how to make coffee (he has been in charge of making coffee ever since he first stayed over in 1993). Fifth was making sure I don’t forget to lock the doors at night. Sixth was telling me to be kind to Stinky the dog. And seventh was telling me to stay positive, that this would not last forever (so he thinks). Not the most prolific of love notes, but you would think it was a masterpiece judging by the amount of tears I cried when I read it. Maybe he should have added an eighth reminder. One that said “don’t forget to stop crying.” I hope day two of being single is better than day one.