Scrooged or Just Plain ol' Cranky?

I was doing just fine a few weeks ago. I was a busy little bee preparing for the holidays and I can't pinpoint what changed. I just know something has. I'm 95% ready for the holidays so it's not the hustle and bustle getting the best of me. Heck, I'm even almost ready for our New Year's celebration too.

My work is so slow right now that any email gets my immediate attention so I'm not over-worked either. In fact, it's dragging so slow that I'd love to just take vacation time. I have time available, but I also hate to miss the last minute problems that always creep in just before a holiday break. They're always the type of problems that interrupt vacation so much you hate to get started on a break and then get called back into a problem or sent out on one.

I'd like to think the Scrooge hasn't crawled in my ear when I was sleeping, but something has gotten into me.

Maybe it's the confined feeling of being in the office almost 3 full weeks in a row. When I'm in the office, I really don't have much for work. I just handle my emails and instant urgencies; otherwise my job isn't within our walls - it's within those of our suppliers and customers.

Maybe I need a job in accounting again? Just for December every year? It'd be really nice to have a constant flow of work to pass the time. It'd also be really nice to have a constant flow of husband at home when I'm home, but it seems when my year slows his speeds up and vice versa.

UNSCROOGE ME NOW!!!

Solitary Confinement

If you've ever driven the 401 highway alone, it is clearly an enduring trip whether you need to be on it for two hours, six or ten. It's desolate along the edges, lined with farms, fields and more fields; nothing to affix yourself to as a measure of progress. I honestly think the Canadian government puts the multitude of signs along it in two languages so that by the time you reach Toronto you're at a first grade reading level in French.

Now imagine this desolate drive sans sky. It's pouring rain so badly that your wipers don't have an appropriate speed, your satellite radio has a signal and then it doesn't; every two seconds it's out. You decide to shut it off. You're in a tunnel of everlasting corn fields and whisking rain with an occasional vehicle to pass or to pass you leaving you in a more enduring tunnel - no focus.

It's these moments of solitary confinement that I let my brain wander. I know, I work for a safety company, how can I let my brain wonder while I'm behind the wheel? I can't; it just does when it's so bored silly.

In this transfixed state of boredom, I played "what if" by myself for four everlasting hours today. In doing so, I realized several things that are good about my life:

A. If you allow it, solitary travel allows you to learn some happiness with yourself and realize that some things you thought were so wrong of you, may never have been intended in the first place.

B. If I had married my first love, I would have been widow at 31.

C. If I wreck this car because I'm not focused on my driving, it may be a while until the next car comes along.

D. If I had rented a GM vehicle, I would have had OnStar and not had to worry about how long it might be for next car to come along.

E. If I had stayed married to my second love, I would have been a widow at 40.

(Yikes, there's a pattern here!)

F. If I hadn't have lost my job working for a good company I would have never ended up in the cool job I have now.

G. If it's such a cool job, I should probably focus on driving and not wrecking.

H. If I do wreck, I can't possibly be the first person to have to explain that I was busy playing "what if along" this damn road that never ends.

I. If I hadn't married my third love, I would never taken the job that allowed me to meet my real love.

10. If I hadn't met my third love, I would have never met the one girl that made it feel okay for me to love my real love.

11. If I hadn't met my third love, I wouldn't have really known how love fails and I wouldn't have known how to outwit it in my future.

Focus here, focus:

L. If I hadn't have met my real love, I wouldn't have moved back to the great United States. [oh hell yes, we have our problems but I got a Canada refresher this week and would still take the US over other options].

M. If hadn't have lived in Canada, I might never have know how great it is to live in a country that allows me the things I earn, even if I have to pay for things that others don't earn themselves.

N. If I hadn't have moved back to the US when I did, I would never have been able to spend the wonderful days I did get with my mother when she was dying.

O. If I hadn't met my husband, I wouldn't have had the wonderful mother in law that convinced me that if I didn't spend those dying days with my mother, that I would regret forever and ever. (God, love her!)

16. If I didn't have this job that makes me travel all over the damn universe of corn, I wouldn't have time to play "what if" and realize how good life is even when I didn't plan it this way.

Q. If I hadn't realized I didn't plan it this way, than I wouldn't wonder Who did and how He diverted so many of my plans to make who He wants me to be.

18. If I don't pay attention I'm going to rear-end this semi-truck in front of me now that the highway has ended. Hello Windsor!

S. If you haven't played "what if" with yourself and intentionally looked for the bright and sunny side, then you may not know who you are at all. It's also likely that you don't appreciate yourself well enough until you explore all that you could have been and all that you have ended up being. I can almost guarantee that if you spend your solitary confinement wondering these things you will smile at the end of the day. It's easy being happy knowing your best laid plans and efforts were diverted IF you look for the bright side!

World's Best Mother-in-Law

I'll admit it. My first meeting with my Mother-in-law was one that terrified the heck out of me. She wasn't meeting me under the best of circumstances. If I had been in her shoes, I don't know if I'd have been nearly the woman she was to me. It was a camping trip, so I figured the worst case would mean we stayed in the river and didn't come into the camp site until lights out; but I never even thought of that strategy again after our welcomed arrival.

Both my Mother and Father-in-law were welcoming. Regardless of the situation that brought Jerod and I together, they didn't let it interfere with how they treated me. If they had troubled over us, they sure let me have the benefit of doubt and didn't let the doubt show. By the end of the trip, I remember her hugging me and saying "After seeing Jerod as happy he is, I'm happy too". Her kind words slithered into my soul allowing relief within me.

After seeing this emailing, (click this text to link) I'm dually lucky in that I married Jerod and thus have his parents instead of what this woman is about to embark upon.


I don't find this "mom-zilla" too bad either. Most of the things she mentioned are simple manners. Although the times are different, the behavior should have been passed on and displayed on some level. I may not totally agree with the "wake when the house does" as I never want my guests to feel that way. Yet, I understand the courtesy and was taught it just as I quoted it. Vacation or free time is too precious to waste and others should not have to wait on me for their day to start, but sleep is precious too and I'll grant it to anyone whose body tells them they need it.

In any case, I didn't have to fret about my mom-in-law at my wedding. She was the one carrying an assorted tray of drinks into the dressing room housing only my maid of honor and me. She might have wanted to make sure I wasn't going to say no after all the turmoil Jerod and I had created in the families, but I think it's simply that she recognized her son and I for who we are. She was willing to let us play our lives our way. It could also be that she recognized we all have a way of messing up life before we figure out how to do it right; knowing her now she hadn't let hope run off without beckoning it back for us.

Even if Jerod turned out to be a complete jerk of a husband, I might have married him just to have his parents. Instead, I'm just blessed with awesome family all around me.

Oh, and my MIL...she cooks with wine too! Utensil in one hand, wine glass in the other; how could I ever go wrong in that?

My Struggle

I've struggled, and I've struggled and I've struggled, but now I'm feeling pain for something I've shut out so many years ago. I can guess without looking that it was somewhere around 1994 or early 1995, though bits and pieces have resurfaced for many years after. That's hometown for you.

*This blog may offend some, (I'm leaving out names and intentionally chose a back side picture) but it's not meant to offend, only for me to let it out*

If the picture above is something you're not ready for yet, I understand and please quit reading until you are ready to...it's my struggle and I verbalize in type so I am letting it out now before it weighs too heavy on me.

When I was 20, I married for the first time. It was my childhood friend. We played together, we did chores together, my parents picked up where his had decided it was best to leave off. He wasn't an easy guy to take at 21. He had his ways; his parents and many adults couldn't quite understand him, but I and my parents/family honestly tried.

We married pretty suddenly in a the 34th District Court with my big sister setting it up since she worked for a lawyer in the district. My buddy, JJD was at my side being my Maid of Honor and YES, she's still in my life. *Hugs because she doesn't know what I'm springing on her*

I can remember being 21 and buying liquor for the first time on my honeymoon with him. It wasn't much of a honeymoon; just a few days away at our family cabin. After all, between the two of us working (with me already having a child) we made about $800 a week in pay. We weren't taking a Jamaica vacation in a week's notice, that's for sure.

In any case, as quickly to my point as I can be; my first husband took his own life this past Friday. I found out Saturday morning from a friend, and then confirmed a few minutes later from his brother, whom (both of which) I have maintained Facebook contact with.

I may have been cold, I may not have let my heart show and for that I apologize.

I'm just now verbalizing what I feel and I have to do it this way because other ways just aren't appropriate for me.

We divorced in 1994 or early 1995 and it was brutal. Possessions smashed, feelings hurt and loads and loads of financial disasters thrust upon me. Loans, businesses, IRS, State and credit card debt; he'd quit his job and I was left holding the bag. I held the burden and worked my way through a lot of what wasn't mine alone....nine years later I had paid off all debt except the boat. Our biggest fights in divorce were the dog and the boat. I kept the dog, he kept the boat. Zeus didn't outlast the boat, but he was worth everything to me and to Jason for years to come after our divorce. He's still with me in ashes guarding my front door.

Together we had owned a neon sign company, its assets and a trucking company and it's few assets - all of which I paid on until the debt was gone. It's easy for me to remember that pain, because year after year it was a pain, even quite recently it was a pain that was unexpected. Most of the debt was secured by stock my Grandparents had given me, but some was secured by personal loans in my name in which the assets were sold, but the loans remained. If I totalled it up, (just in my head), semi-truck, sign truck, neon equipment and IRS debt, credit cards, tool loans, etc., it was well over $200K.

Inside my head swirls the pain of financial destruction that I slowly climbed my way out of while raising a child on my own (until 1998), but it wasn't unbeatable and for a large part I'm clear of it now. There is one remaining debt that I'm unsure of the status of at this time. Civilly it's not mine, but if the bank decides to be a bank, I'm going to have to cover (for those of you who know how divorce works). A signed contract is a signed contract and there is no reprieve! I likely will, in good faith, settle it with or without the collateral in my hands. Lord knows I never signed the title to sell it and last I knew it still existed when the bank came to my house to repossess "WET DREAM II". Regardless, that's a semi-small factor weighing on my now. Debt is what it is, and I can handle it on most days.

What weighted heaviest on me was whether or not to tell Jason. My first husband had stood in as a good man to him. Despite my financial troubles in the end, he never faltered as good guy to my son. He taught him all there was to know about mechanics...(that a four year old could absorb), and trust me Jason was well advanced in this endeavor. We had to take spark plugs out of everything Jason knew about as a child - from dirt bikes to lawn mowers.

*I'm working at 7:12pm while I type and try to keep my brain the right spot*

So from Saturday to now I've held off telling Jason. How can I tell him that the second important man in his childhood is gone? Gone at his own hand? Even worse in the equation is that his father overdosed (albeit accidentally on drugs) and died when Jason was eleven; but top that with his first mentor in man-life taking his own life? I've struggled. It hurts, like I never thought it would.

I can say tons of "unhappy things" because I've lived them and nobody can take them from me. However, when I reverse it...Jason learned so much from him. The man never ever wronged Jason personally, unless you consider my financial demise for several years Jason's too - - but Jason can't because he never knew the extent of it.

What I'm learning now, is that whatever someone is to you, they are something totally different to someone else.

I told Jason tonight and he is completely saddened. He didn't have much to do with my ex-husband, but they knew each other. They greeted happily in party stores and would stop to chat and catch up; even recently. Though Jason is 20 and a big boy now...he's still got talents he's learned from my ex-husband (whom I find it hard not to mention by name, but I will not for the sake of his family - - his wife and child I do not know personally)

My struggle...here it is, was whether to let Jason know two men significant in his younger life are gone. One at the hands of accidental overdose and one at the hands of himself, though I don't know any details to share.

What would that do my son? I don't know, but the one thing I cannot do is take TRUTH from him. So the truth has been told and I pray my son takes none of it personal and enjoys what he had in both men and finds that life is tough, but when it's super tough, you stick out EVERYTHING for you and yours; no matter how tough a bat life swings...you SWING BACK WITH ALL YOU HAVE and take it, whether shatter the bat for a base hit, or a walk back to home. There will be other at bats!!!

For his daughter, I can't be sure whether suicide a reckoning come early or not, as I'm sure it's not mine to wonder. What I can say is wherever he is; he's surely fixing something and I hope her heart is BIG part of his agenda.

He will be missed; maybe not for what he was to me, but for what he was to others. Everyone has a place and time and just because it's not mine personally doesn't allow me to take from whose it is. Jason was sure saddened and I'm sure many others are too, including me!

REST IN PEACE, MJR!

Panic Mode

Yesterday I went to the doctor for a problem with my ear. As follow-up to a visit with my cardiologist last year, the new doctor ordered a thorax CT with and without contrast for some nodules they had noted on my lungs. Nothing to be scared about, or so he said.

Today, they did the scan without contrast first and then the technician came back in the room and asked me if I have ever had the contrast. I told her yes, but only nuclear contrast because of an iodine allergy that's gotten progressively worse as I've aged. She told me they didn't do nuclear CTs at the Canton location and asked me if by chance I'd be willing to pre-dose with epinephrine and then do the CT with the contrast.

It's a damn good thing I was still laying down on the table or I may have fallen to the floor in immediate anxiety and panic. I couldn't answer her for a second, I was in mid-panic thinking "NOPE, no flipping way, not a chance!".

I was sure my brain was on momentary pause. I tried hard to get my voice to work, but my throat felt clogged, my brain was running through spells of crazy. I had even conjured the above image in my head, in what seemed like several minutes before I could speak. Finally amidst my panic, I squeaked out "I'd be terrified to try it, not to mention if something did go extremely wrong, my husband is out of the country right now."

She spent several minutes discussing successes and failures with her previous attempts doing the same thing. My body let me have some control over my mouth again, which may very well have been standing wide open while she spoke and I wouldn't even know it. I was seconds from all out tearful bawling, thinking I had kept the panic inside when finally my big girl voice came out. It even bellowed quite loudly through my own head, "No, I can't do it! I'd rather cut my wrists than know you are injecting me with something that may very well kill me. You'd simply have to knock me out to even get near me with a needle delivering iodine!"

She stepped back from me noticing she had moved me from panic to terror and in a comforting voice (as if she was speaking to a child) said, "Alright then, we'll stop at no contrast and see if that's enough for your doctor. Don't panic, we won't make you do it".

It was her reaction to me that made me realize I was in fully body sweats and my heart was beating so hard it hurt in my ears. She helped me sit up from the scanner, but I was so dizzy I felt like I was going to faint so she laid me back down and called for assistance. Another woman brought in a cold towel and cup of chipped ice.

I don't know if she's never seen someone react like that before or not, but I really did not mean to behave like a two year old throwing a temper tantrum. It was totally beyond my control.

When I left the office, I sat in my car for a few minutes letting the black dots of dizzied panic disappear before I could think about driving.

Fear is the mind killer. My fear certainly made me react outside of myself.

Dreams or my own personal hell?

On this last business trip, I was requested by a buyer to do an audit of a supplier in Matamoros, Mexico. I set up my trip last minute on my return trip from vacation in the mountains of Tennessee. What I didn't know was the hell the buyer was waging on my psyche' on this trip.

Last night I was more than happy to fall asleep next to Jerod in the comfort of our own bedroom; something we haven't done much recently, yet I was comforted to do so, even though the power of Monday-return-to-work was weighing on me.

The buyer I was with on this last trip is a Mexican National and he too was "timid" to be in this business area with me. The company I work for has a plant in the same city that was evacuated by the Federal Government of Mexico earlier this year because of the cartel terror strikes locally. The entire city is currently working a schedule from 8am-5pm only Monday to Thursday so that everyone is home by dark and not working on Fridays. (Yet Gringa and Mexican drive in with a Texas plated car and think very little about it until we are leaving and everyone inside the state of Nuevo Leon has questioned our absurdity - WTF???)

So to continue on my story, I fell asleep sound and happy last night; not a bad thought on my conscience that I knew of.

I woke scared enough to have to pee, literally. In my dream, I had been at the supplier and wanted to go out and have a smoke break. The quality manager told me smoking was only allowed off premise. He had the quality engineer and metrologist take me out the back gate to the train tracks. We walked the train tracks for moments while I had a cigarette. I noticed police sirens on a truck at the end of the track. When we walked by, there was a police officer shot in the head leaning on the truck bumper. My colleagues took off running forward off the end of the tracks, I turned left. I turned right into the arms of a really hefty woman, that spoke to me. She said (in plain English) "Vikki, are you scared?". As I tried to run from her some very large, furry faced Mexican stuffed a pill into my mouth and tried to force it down my throat. I was able to stop it from going down and started trying to cough it out while caught in the grasp of the two of them; unable to free myself. I awoke in a full sweat and couldn't go back to sleep for hours.

I'm not sure, but I think I need to avoid doing business and driving into Mexico for awhile. I want to come home to my kids and family and not worry about being one of the 22 dismembered bodies that the federal government of Mexico cannot identify in shallow, sandy graves.

~ and I wonder where the grey hairs come from

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if I couldn't negotiate as if a million of my own money was on the line, I'd be useless in my job.

Being centralized at technical center, it's common knowledge that manufacturing plants want the world and the suppliers want to supply a state. I have make both sides move to agree that a country is the logical conclusion. Everyday it's the same routine with different scenery.

Today I found that a state was okay, logical, and in fact the only choice on the table... since the plant didn't even know how big the world they were asking for was.

All I can say is IDIOTS they hide in all different kinds of places!

If you know anything about statistical process control that you know there is NOOOOOOOO such thing as 100% SPC. If you use the title quality engineer and you don't know how stupid requesting 100% SPC would be than you'd need to quickly find another career or some real education somewhere.

It's as dumb an idea as marketing melted ice at a mid-August Texas Rangers game!

....and now back to my regularly scheduled program of insanity.