Going Under

Tomorrow’s the big day…I go in hospital for the big “H” surgery. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it. It feels like winning the lottery…sort of…the lottery of Getting Rid of Useless Body Parts. I’ve been so distracted lately that I haven’t posted, or visited your blogs, or even wanted to write. I’ve been nesting. Buying groceries and paper products and cleaning house and talking the guys at work off the ledge (they love me, and don’t know how they’ll get along without me). I’m expecting the first week or two after surgery to be a lovely pain-and-drug fest, bordered with frequent naps and daytime television and wonderful white capsules of relief.

Afterward I will, hopefully, feel more like myself again. I’ll post and visit you and get back some semblance of the Mona you knew. Or thought you knew. Or came by wondering, Did she post a picture of her breasteses again?

In my absence, the lovely, talented, sexy Maggie at Mind Moss has agreed to be my Second in Command for the Poetry Friday Word. Please go to her site this week and next week for The Word, and for her yummy brand of blogishness. (Maggie, I totally owe you!) I’ll be back for the August 3 Poetry Friday, either having emerged from the Fog of Drugs, or still under the influence of some really trippy morphine derivative. Either way…YAY.

Take care, y’all!

Poetry Friday Word for tomorrow, I go off, and I bow and scrape

First off, thanks to all o' y'all for your book recommendations! I'll be haunting my local library with a printout of your comments and a dolly to take them to my car.

I sequestered myself in the bedroom last night and sorted through the piles of books that have been demanding my attention for a while. Poor things, they were dusty and sad, unappreciated and virginally un-dog-earred. I made piles based on type...funny books, hipster books, informational books, classic books, and books I knew wouldn't be 'recovery reading' at all, and which I dusted off and re-shelved. I'll be adding your recommended titles to the piles, and as long as the pain meds don't make me too dizzy, and there's no nuclear disaster that leaves me in a pile of rubble with tons of books and broken glasses, I'll be in book-maven heaven!

M'kay. The Poetry Friday WORD. While it's true that lately I have been either late or absent to the party myself for contributions, things have happened this week that have spoken the WORD loud and clear. Plus, hell, it's a chance for everyone to primal scream and let out all the angst that's been crawling up yer back.

The Poetry Friday Word for tomorrow is...RANT. You may either use this word in a post, or simply rant. About whatever. Rant, cry, shake your fist, condemn and praise, rally and rouse.

Like this.

So, Tuesday night, I'm going through my bills, and realize that the local phone bill I received in the mail from AT&T last Friday (July 6) was due THAT day (July 10). So, like a good consumer, I called their customer service line to make immediate payment by credit card. This exercise in futility was much like the root canals I underwent several years ago, albeit without medication or Kenny G playing in the Muzak overhead.

I lost hours out of my life.

The CS number on my bill led to a phone tree that told me, "Sorry, CS is closed (it was 10 p.m.). You can use our automated system." Which I did. And got to yet another phone tree with a condescending male voice telling me to SPEAK my instructions into the phone. Like, "I'm calling to pay my bill." Trouble was, this guy was from Mars and didn't understand me unless I was shouting like I do during college football season. "I! Want! To! Pay! My! Bill! RAH! RAH! RAH!" I went round and round with the system, getting to deadends and bad neighborhoods, until the guy finally said, "We're all done. Goodbye."

That's when I started swearing.

I decided to use the power of Teh Internets to pay for it online. I logged on, registered, attempted to call up my bill, and was led to the OTHER AT&T bill I get, for regular residential service and long distance. Yes. AT&T sends me TWO bills for phone service...residential every month, and local toll whenever their billing system feels like it (every four months, three months, two months). All I wanted to do was pay the lousy local toll call bill for $6.03.

Six Dollars. Three Cents.
Due that day.
After CS hours.

Their website had nothing regarding my local toll bill. I checked every tab, every link, everywhere to get to nowhere. I logged off in disgust.

Then I called the number on my regular monthly phone bill...and got the condescending man telling me to yell into the phone.

Fack.

I spent nearly an hour trying to get to someone, somewhere, to pay the gdamn $6.03. And got nowhere.

Next morning, I called the CS line again, when they were due to open. I spoke with "Eddie" (finally, a person), at one of those non-helpful CS pits, who said he couldn't help with my local toll bill, BUT he could put me through to the person who could help me.

Thank the jeebus.

He patched me in, and I was connected with...CONDESCENDING MAN and his damn phone tree.

Wha..???

I punched buttons on the phone like it was condescending man's face. Somehow, through some miracle, I was put through to "Julie" in Illinois, who could tell I had local toll...BUT who also couldn't help me because AT&T is in the process of combining my two bills into one. Combining. To avoid hassle. In the meantime, making their entire company unable to see my local toll bill.

Julie's only recommendation...mail the payment in, and the grace period would make it look like it was on time.

All this.

For $6.03.

AT&T, you are officially on my Shit-List. Along with that local ice scream store staffed by college students who routinely ignored me when I was pregnant, hot, and hungry.

Bite me, Phone Boy.

Any good books?

I’m getting ready for this surgery thing next week, wherein I’ll lose several pounds of “previous-womb”, and be off work til after Labor Day. (Can you say AMEN?) The surgery itself I’m not even thinking about. What I AM thinking about is all the stuff I have to do (or feel I have to do) before the surgery…clean and straighten and stock the freezer and clean the garage and clean the basement and clean the yard…something about cleaning out my abdomen is also producing a spring-cleaning of just about everything else in my control. I managed to clear a small space in my bedroom last night, to get to the stacks of books that have been waiting for me to pick them up. I looked them over and, while I’m excited about reading them, they aren’t “fun” books. They’re analytical books, preachy books, books about atomic level composition, and social upheaval, and the makeup of societies. Thought-provoking, yes. But. Not the kind of thing that’ll keep me from reaching for the morphine.

Damn Barnes & Noble sent me an email today and this book caught my eye. Fack. More cerebral reading. But I’ll still buy the book.

I need your help.

What books would you recommend I pick up to while away the recovery hours? Something funny, or light, something that’ll keep my mind off all the physical crap, something that’ll keep me entertained but won’t tax my brain so much that I spend hours marveling at the complexity of the whorls of my thumbprint?

Poetry Friday Word for tomorrow, shhh….

For years now, I’ve had no one in the cube across from me, no one looking over my shoulder, thus enabling me to blog and check blogs with abandon…except, of course, when I hear footsteps in the hallway, then I speedy-quick click on some work project or other and look busy.

Today, a co-worker moved into the empty cube. He’s nice enough, and cool and all, but I’m not 100% sure he isn’t a spy. So I need to be careful about when and how I blog. Bleah.

Anyway.

Poetry Friday Word for tomorrow…ah, there’s the rub. I don’t have one. My brain is a thousand pieces of fluff held together by synaptic goo. Okay. Off the cuff. In light of yesterday’s nationwide celebration of us kicking King George’s British ass several hundred years ago, and the habit we have of touching match to incendiary devices to celebrate that auspicious time, let’s make the Poetry Friday WORD for tomorrow…whatever that brings to mind. Fireworks…or explosion…or sparkler…cherry bomb…bottle rocket…whatever lights your fuse and makes you go BOOM.

Swear jar

This is f***ing awesome.

My Super Sweet

There are some tv shows I won't watch, because the premise is thin, or obtuse, or yukky, or boring.

Last night, for some strange wild-hair reason, right before bed, I happened upon MTV's "My Super Sweet 16". Some kid from Cleveland was bragging about the party he was gonna have, and why didn't his mom buy him a $90K BMW for his big day? I could feel my jaw go slack at the obscenity of money that was then thrown around. Renting out a mall? Getting Mike Jones for your party? Hiring dancers? Designer duds you'll never wear again?

What.
The.
Fack.

Couldn't these rich kids on MTV help out, oh, I dunno, kids with less money? Spend the money on a cure for diabetes? Help the people of Darfur?

Sickening.

My kids might get a party for their 16th birthday. A small party. A few friends, some good food, a few nice gifts. NOT a new BMW, not even a used one. They'll remember the day just fine, thank you. I might let them watch this show, if it's still on in a few years, and laugh and point and mock the spoiled rich kids and their bratty ways, and make sure my kids understand that the behaviour they see on tv is not the behaviour we tolerate in our family.

Pttoey. Still can't get that rotten taste out of my mouth.

Poetry Friday: The Word is CAT/KITTY/...

I've been trying for days to wrap some words around the Poetry Friday theme, and they ain't a-comin'.

All I gots is video. Which is good enough.

Rum Tum Tugger from "Cats" (with Terrence Mann, OMG!):




What's New Pussycat? (with Tom Jones...AAAHHHH!)




"Lovecats"...classic!