The Dino-Aspie Ex-Café (for Those 40+... or feeling creaky)

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eh. going. like the energizer bunny. just going and going. just got turned down for another job because i just didn't have that outgoing spark they were looking for. in an aspie. right. i guess if i wanted to spend a whole lot of money i could scream discrimination, and that speaking "cheerily" on the phone is not an essential duty of the job, but why bother? there's no winning.

got my testing results back. so apparently i'm an aspie. (gasp)
of course, i can't get a proper (meaning one i can really follow) explanation of precisely what the scores mean, but i'm official now. (gasp) it's all written down on paper.
still makes no difference at work. thankfully my skills set is relatively obscure and i'm a little harder to replace than most. i only need to last a few more years and i'll have a state pension.

the Kid is waiting to hear if she got into the university - she's done everything she should have and has worked her tail off last semester (17 hours of courses with a 3.8 out of 4 grade point). they make them apply by november, but don't tell them until mid- to late april if they get in or not. nerve-wracking doesn't come close to it.

her health is holding. no more scares since the doctors accidently stopped her heart. (no, really, they did. as in "ohmyfreaking god you did WHAT!! !???") so now she's got a formal diagnosis of "dysautonomia", which we've been telling them about for ...oh, 15 years now? but since her surgery she's been well, much more energy. funny how not worrying that you'll drop dead at any moment will free up some emotional resources. my own health is acceptable. that blown disc still causes my leg muscles to spasm, but i see an accupuncturist and now can go a couple of weeks before it gets bad enough to need a treatment to get them to relax. so i can't complain too much. the lungs haven't rotted out any further, either, so there's that. so much about those commercials i saw for "old people stuff" as a kid and laughed at are coming back to haunt me now....

we lost our place a year ago this july, but we are in a much nicer rental and life is good. i have access to a garden plot at the "community garden" (we're the only ones still there, aside from the gophers, squirrels, and bunnies - sooo many bunnies this year!) and i spend a lot of my free time out there. it's on the top of a mesa overlooking the pacific ocean. the soil isn't worth a damn, but i've been pouring bags of amendments into it and it's producing ok now. our plot looks like the guantanamo bay of garden plots, with all the fencing, but we actually do get lots of onions, garlic, carrots, etc, out of it. my latest experiment was to put two kiddie wading pools out there (bought for about $6 each at a used stuff store) and filled 'em up with gardening soil. planted garlic. we have a ~lot~ of garlic plants up this year, hoping some of them will bulb. should know in another couple of months if one can actually grow garlic successfully in kiddie wading pools. had to put a better fence up a couple of weeks ago around them. mr. bunny was caught eating the carrots i'd inter-planted with the garlic. enterprising little guy. he had got past the bird netting and everything.

still tending to the very old cat (she'll be 20 October 1). she's suprisingly well for a cat that old. arnold schwartzenhamster died of very old age several months ago. he was a sweety up to the end. all boney and blind, and he would still toddle over when we'd call his name to be petted. finally got a replacement - another winter white hamster - and it's like arnie rebooted. the personality is identical. so we named him arnold 2.0. we haven't quite gotten to the "comes when called" stage yet, but he's only been here a month. he does ask to be picked up now, which is a big step. cute little thing. but, really, it's like the same flipping animal, reincarnated. weird!

other than that, doing the laundry, walking in the neighborhood a lot, have been making jam from scratch and putting up soup and stuff - it's a lot cheaper than what you pay in the store and so rediculously easy to do. the kid had her friends over on saturday (same batch as from the "hide in the bedroom" days, they're just all grown up now!). i still hid in the bedroom. because there's nothing like having someone's mother hanging around to put a wet blanket on a conversation!

in short, life has gone on as it pretty much has for the last ten years or so, only it's a bit better and i'm a bit older.

Hey Nan. It's good to see you again.

hey lelia.

how you?

Hello Nan, Gromit and Everyone
I am up to my eyeballs in end of term papers, finals and dealing with student finance this week. I've been trying to get back to the Cafe for a quick tea and muffin and I keep getting sucked back into the post-secondary vortex. Hoping all is well. I'll be back to respond to your "How are you?" Nan. I'm off to buy rubber boots for the kindergarten field trip by the river.

Looks like I might get a job pretty soon. I got a lead on a third shift position that is close to where I live.

That's fantastic, Richie! I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

This is heartening to hear. Keep posting; I am hoping to get a job in the coming year. Appreciate any details you can/want to share.

oh, SO not fair! there are baby bunnies in my garden. they can't get to anything, it's all fenced off. but i can't do anything to them because they are so very cute.

however, if the damned things keep going out in the open like that one of the hawks from above will make short work of them! i had mowed the weeds around the perimeter of my space, and back about 10 feet from my garden plot (which is in a large, open space) so i probably destroyed their nest last weekend. so they've moved in.

why is it that small verminous furry animals have to be cute??? so it makes it harder to whack 'em with a shovel or something. i caught myself thinking i could just pull a nice carrot for the baby bunny....

nooooooooooooo!

ok, forget the complaining about baby bunnies.
there are now baby rattlesnakes in with my onions.
Good Lord, it's amazing what adrenaline does to ya!

Something I found on facebook.....Didn't know where else to stash this except in the Dino-Cafe....

SYLVIA: Hi! Wanda.
WANDA: Hi! Sylvia.
How'd you die?
SYLVIA: I froze to death.
WANDA: How horrible!
SYLVIA: It wasn't so bad. After I quit shaking from the cold, I began to get warm & sleepy, and finally died a peaceful death.
What about you?
WANDA: I died of a massive heart attack. I suspected that my husband was cheating, so I came home early to catch him in the act. But instead, I found him all by himself in the den watching TV.
SYLVIA: So, what happened?
WANDA: I was so sure there was another woman there somewhere that I started running all over the house looking.
I ran up into the attic and searched, and down into the basement. Then I went through every closet and checked under all the beds.
I kept this up until I had looked everywhere, and finally I became so exhausted that I just keeled over with a heart attack and died.
SYLVIA: Too bad you didn't look in the freezer -- we'd both still be alive.


Still looking for a job.....

Otherwise just lurking and stimming.....

hahahahahaha.

Aside from putting the window screen around my raised beds, I don't guess anybody knows how to keep rattlesnakes out of one's garden?

Good one, Richie!

Nan, I hope the rattlesnakes didn't eat the bunnies, even though it would solve your bunny problem. The trick would then be to find a natural predator for the rattlesnake which could mean introducing bull snakes. I don't know about there, but where I live rattlers are a protected species as most of their habitat has been ruined but urban sprawl and farming. We even have a rattlesnake crossing sign on the road that winds down into a coulee. On the westside of the river where I live, we have rattlers. On the east side of the river, where the rest of our city is, we have bull snakes. They keep the rattlers at bay. They also keep water moccasins from coming out of the water on that side of the river. The only people on my side of town who seem to get bit are the silly rich people who have built a golf course down in the coulees. They have huge houses and immaculate rock gardens, right in the middle of rattler territory. What better for a hibernaculum than a rock garden with nooks and crannies. They get bit and it actually ends up in the newspaper. Some of us get some satisfaction from the snakes being smart and knowing who to bite.

I'm glad to read that the Kid is doing so much better now and that you're holding up okay. I'm in the same boat, the crohn's, fibro, migraines, Raynaud's are all staying at a steady state of "Yes, we are still here, but no, we aren't getting worse." I can live with that and I find if I stay busy I can ignore most of it. I don't have a very good sit still button.

The uni wait times are nerve wracking. In fact, I'm finding everything but the actual course work to nerve wracking. I've had moments where I've looked up that the Universe and asked out loud if they were kidding or testing me. Between stress from that and the stress from all of the kids issues, I wonder why I don't drink. Or hide in a corner. Soccerdude is no longer Soccerdude after an elbow to the nose and eyesocket during a game caused his worst concussion so far (personality changes, anger issues, short term memory loss, suicidal thoughts and extreme fatigue), hairline fractures around his eye socket and a broken nose. The concussion was so bad that they couldn't fix his broken nose without putting him into a coma so we had to wait 2 weeks for that. That was followed by emergency CT scans, and MRI, lumbar punctures to make sure his brain hadn't started bleeding, and an emergency psych appt. when I heard about the suicidal thoughts. That was when he went from "concussed" to brain injured. So, that was the end of his soccer career. It took him a while to get over it but he is also in school training to be a hairstylist, and a darn good one he is. He's been invited to work as a stylist for Joico(?) in a bigger city when he's done in July. I don't like the idea of him moving 200km away but he will do well.

I'm working with the kindergarten class tomorrow morn so I'd best get to bed. I'll come back and update on the rest of the kiddos.

Glad I don't have to deal with rattlesnakes in my garden. I import garter snakes hoping they will eat the slugs.

Well, I can't really get any snakes to turn loose. I mean, the rattlers are where they belong, in the canyon. It's just that one of them chose to come into my garden to give birth! Since there are usually anywhere from 6 to 10 babies, and I only have seen two of 'em (one deceased) and the place is riddled with gopher holes and burrows... you know, I haven't seen the gopher in a while.

I guess as long as I don't run into mama under my tomato plants, I'll manage.

Yow. Maybe I do want a rattler to pour down a mole hole or two.