Monday Blues (or Bitchy?)

Anyone here ever get "the blues" -and I'm not referring to the music and "getting" that?

Anyone here get depressed -and if I don't get some "yes" replies to that then I'll know several people right off the top who apparently aren't reading my blog or are telling fibs then along the way?

Now, is anyone here willing to admit to getting bitchy and really, for no real reason either?

I think, at my age, I am beyond the PMS thing. One would hope that being post-menopausal would bring something besides not having to purchase sanitary products every month, don't 'cha think? Or maybe I was expecting too much from menopause and instead I got hot flashes which never showed up when it was cold and/or I was freezing.

I woke up this morning anticipating that we (Mandy, the kids and I) were gonna go to either State College or to Dubois to do a little shopping. For me, it was mainly so I could go to Joann Fabrics and get some embroidery floss I need in order to complete the "Cardinal" tabletopper that I ran out of one particular color I needed to complete it and then, when I opened another kit -identical kit, that is -thinking I could "borrow" that color I needed from that kit, don't you just know that color was missing completely. I called the manufacturer of the kits and complained, asked them to please replace the missing floss -which by that time really called for them to replace two skeins of floss because the first kit was missing a particular color too but I just happened to have that color skein in my stash boxes so I had used my own floss there.

Well that was two weeks ago today since I placed that call and the lady I spoke to said they would be happy to send those two skeins out to me -to replace what had been missing in each kit and I still haven't received that floss. How long does it take to send something that small from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania anyway? Sheesh, I could darned near have walked to Wisconsin and be well on my way back to get the damned floss if I'd known it was gonna take this long. (I had even told the lady I really needed the stuff too as I wanted to finish this project by last Wednesday in order to give it to a friend for her birthday that day.

But here it is now April 5th and the piece is still unfinished and I still have two birthday cards (one for my good friend and the other for her husband too -their birthdays are a day apart) sitting in my china cabinet waiting for me to get the damned floss, finish the tabletopper and then, deliver it and the cards to my friend and her husband -almost a week late now, but well, better late than never, or so they say anyway.

I thought I had this dilemma resolved Saturday though as I had asked older daughter, since she was going over to State College (where there is a Joann Fabrics Store) to pick up the two colors I needed and bring them up with her and her fiance and her son when they came up for supper Saturday evening. She had called me from the store and I gave her instructions or rather, directions, as to where the embroidery products are located in the store and then, step-by-step instructions as to where and how to find the two colors I needed. However, you know what "they" say about the best laid plans of mice and men, don't you? And now you can also figure out that something happened to those two skeins of floss along the way that they didn't quite make it to my house.

Seems her fiance -who is a bit of a neat freak and obsessed with everything being totally neat and tidy, had -in his rush to clear out the little bitty things (like small bags and such) that had come into their house, that he gathered up papers and burned them -not realizing that in the midst of that stuff was this little bag from Joann Fabrics with those two darned skeins of floss I needed!

Crap! Actions like that tend to make me think maybe there is a good side to being a hoarder after all. At least things that are needed don't get pitched into the garbage then anyway. Okay, I know -nothing gets tossed if one is a hoarder but well, that's beside the point here, isn't it?

I really don't know what to blame my current frame of mind or mood on today though.

Is it that I am just kind of ticked off because last night the SIL "borrowed" my jeep to go to my son's place (so he and some of his buds could have a "jam" session of their so-called band they think is gonna be the rage in the near future) and didn't come home until almost 2 a.m? Or that I had just put gas in the gas-hog jeep on Saturday and he burned off a quarter of a tank using my little buggy all day yesterday? (To that idea I say dream on but then I think too oh shoot, everyone has to have a dream of some kind, don't they? And just because I don't particularly care for heavy metal crapola doesn't mean they aren't half-decent at playing it either, does it? How the hell would I know anyway if they were decent or half-decent or maybe, indecent at playing that kind of music since it all pretty much sounds alike to me. Sheesh -I'm sounding like my mother there in her interpretation of everything rock'n'roll, 40 to 50 years ago!

"Noise, just noise, that's all it sounds like to me" is what she always said. And although I try, really I do, to be fair about all types of music as much as possible, I really do not like the heavy metal stuff and I don't care to listen to the rap stuff either as they both tend to hit my ears as being just "noise" ya see.

Or am I just having a bit of a snit because last nite, Mandy decided she wanted to go down to the bar where she works to spend a little fun time with a few of the patrons there and before leaving, she had mentioned to me she had hoped the SIL would have been home before she left so that way, I could have gone along with her, could have gotten out of the house and around some real live adults for a little bit of beer guzzling perhaps and some supposedly scintillating conversation too in the process?

Instead, she didn't come home then till almost 2 a.m. too as they both (her and her husband) were camped out then at my son's place, have great rapport with him. More of that scintillating conversation I missed ya know.

Or was my mood today coming from the fact that Mandy announced shortly after I got up that if I gave her the information of the stuff I wanted/needed, she would pick it up for me as she and the kids were going over to State College to visit a friend of hers there and she could stop by Joann Fabrics then and get the stuff for me. No word about US going over there together and getting a chance to look around a bit, do a little shopping maybe. No. What I heard there was "You stay home Mom and I'll pick up what you need." No, she didn't say that, but that's what my inner hearing picked up on then.

Granted, most of the time when she goes out -to Clearfield, State College, Dubois, etc. -I tend to just stay home and give her a little note where I have written things I may need her to pick up for me. Much of the time I really am not that gung ho about getting out of the house and going places and shopping isn't really a pasttime I am totally interested in -just when the mood hits me, pretty much. So I suppose it's understandable that she didn't think I was interested in going any place today cause I usually don't want to be bothered, to have my time to embroider interrupted like that.

So why did these things all of a sudden decide to annoy me anyway?

Why did so many other things suddenly really piss me off today too? (Or why do somethings regularly tick me off and nothing ever gets changed even when I make mention of these piddling things too?)

Things like no one seems able to clean up the sugar they spill -daily -on the kitchen counter while spooning some sugar into their coffee but they leave it for me to have to wipe it up, after it gets sticky then too from some other itty-bitty spill near by that region.

Why is putting a new roll of toilet paper seemingly a task of rocket science caliber that no one can do that?

Why, with one litter box in the bathroom, very closely parked near the commode, can't anyone just scoop out the crap when you see there is a little bit in there instead of leaving it accumulate for someone else -usually me -to sift it and dump it in the commode and then have to plunge and re-plunge the commode afterwards in order for the damned thing to flush it away?

Why, now that all nine of these damned kittens here have learned how to climb up the mesh netting of the pac'n'play where they are supposed to be -contained - and they are also now eating cat food too (which means too that they are pushing that stuff out the other end about as quickly as they ingest it too) and since of course, they are not yet litter-trained, there are little trails of their gifts being left hither, thither and yon and yet, no one else seems able to grab some paper towels and gather that crap up and then, spray a little cleaner on the area of the floor and wipe up a little after these little beasts? ARRGH!

I just remopped the kitchen floor late last night -prior to going to bed -because of some of their lovely little packages having been left behind and this morning, when I got up, I damned near had to re-mop the stinking floor all over again.

Fake grass -the "Easter basket grass" ya know -all over the living room floor last night as well as in the dining room and kitchen and who got to clean that mess up? Don't even have to wonder, do ya?

And the thing is, those who know me will probably wonder why this stuff is bugging me so much because I don't have the reputation of being a total neat freak -not in the least. I've always been more of the demeanor of waiting for my fairy godmother to show up and clean for me or whatever needed done could and would wait until I got in the mood to do it.

And now, the things that are irritating me -little bitty things -many of them tend to be about cleaning things up. Why all of a sudden this turn-around in my methodology anyway?

I never wanted to become my mother!

The first time I heard myself yelling at my older daughter to put some slippers or shoes on because I had a hard enough time getting socks to come clean without her grinding more dirt into them set me back a notch then as I had this thought of "where have I heard that before?" And that's when it came to me that OMG, I was turning into my mother! Heaven forbid and perish that thought!

And yet, all too often, it seems the things that annoy me, niggle away at my inner being, are all these petty little things that yes, make me think I am my mother now, aren't I?

Oh please, don't let that be so. Please, please, please!

I get annoyed at being left alone and yet, when I can't get a minute's peace and quiet some days, then I get annoyed because I can't be left alone.

Honestly, I hate being alone! Always have disliked that immensely and I attribute that to my having been an only child and hating that aspect of my life when I was a kid, a teen, and yes, all through my adult life and now, as a senior citizen -I still don't like it any better now than I did at all those other stages, long past now in my life.

I used to enjoy cooking but any more, it hits me as drudgery. Unless I know that I am cooking a meal that has been requested by specific item or for a specific occasion, then I am back to liking doing that for a little bit anyway.

I used to love to experiment, to try new recipes -especially cookies or cakes, pies and stuff like that -but sheesh, now it seems anything I cook or think I'd like to cook is all stuff I am supposed to be staying clear of because of high cholesterol or sugar or too many carbs and too much weight of the few pounds I did manage to lose (all 8 of 'em ya know) come flying right back to me then. Just takes all the damned fun out of the kitchen for sure then!

Then there's my bedroom which is so bloody small one barely has room to turn around in it and it looks pretty much, because of all the important stuff I have stashed in there -clothes plus all kinds of craft stuff (necessities, ya know) and books and you name it, that there's barely enough room there for my sewing machine and not really enough room there to actually use it comfortably.

I think about just dragging the sewing machine out and putting it in a corner in the dining room -where at least, it would be semi-accessible but to do that would mean moving the kids toy box to some other place and that would lead to more toys being strewn all over the dining room and living room instead of most of them being a tad more contained in the dining room. An untenable issue for sure and the only solution I can see would be to build a nice, medium-sized bedroom on to the back of the house where I could have my bed, a big enough closet for my OWN clothes only, enough space to be able to store my craft stuff in a semi-organized fashion plus put my computer in there, along with my sewing machine (of course) and heck, while I'm at it, why not make room to move the Hammond organ that I got from my late aunt's estate in there too, since I'm really the only one who knows anything about playing it (and not all that much either, for that matter.)

What's wrong with that idea anyway? Well, for openers, there definitely isn't enough money in this household available to build even an outhouse -a very rough one at that -much less add on a nice sized room too!

What the hell is it with this stupid money factor anyway that it appears that it is gonna follow me to the grave of never having an adequate amount of the stuff, much less any extra, to be able to do anything, ever!???

Oh and to go back a notch here in my rantings and ramblings, let's address the lonely factor again.

A couple weeks back, when I had finally decided to call it a day (or a night) and crawled into bed, it was a night that was a bit on the nippy side and my room isn't known to be a warm room -except in the summer when it becomes stifling hot there -so when I laid my fat behind down, the sheets were cold as were my feet. And I found myself kind of wishing that I had a bed partner ya know. That was one thing nice about my ex-husband in that his body was always pretty much like a furnace and as a result, the bed was always warm. (Not hot the way he would have preferred but at least to me, it was a warm place) And anyway, that was the last thing on my mind that night as I drifted off to sleep.

Imagine my surprise then when, a couple hours later I woke up feeling something -a body no less -laying beside me, by my backside and it was a bit of a jolt at first to my system. What the heck was this anyway? And then I realized it was just silly little Sammy, who normally hops up on the foot of the bed when I go to sleep but for some reason or other, there he was, laying beside me, snuggled up against my back.

Maybe that was God's answer to my dilemma about not like to sleep alone, huh? What's your take on that idea anyway?

So now that I have addressed some of these little things that annoy me I'm thinking, since I have some meatballs in the crockpot cooking now for supper, and by bitching about this stupid stuff here (plus, having dug out a little celexa tablet that I took about an hour ago to maybe alleviate my blues today a tad) that I'll do something else now that might solve some of these issues.

I'm gonna put my shoes on and take Sam out for our walk first off.

Then, I'm gonna gather up my purse and a little list of what things I think I absolutely have to get, put a little more gas in the jeep (which will then deplete how much extra cash I have to spend, of course) and I'm gonna head on over to Dubois then to hit the Joann Fabrics store there and get the floss I have to have (plus maybe a few more skeins of some other colors too) and when I come back home after having been out among the public for a little while even though odds are I won't see anyone I know over there so no chance for scintillating conversation then ya know) perhaps when I get back home and finish getting supper ready, I won't be quite as inclined then to hurry up and gather up 9 kittens, one almost fully grown Tom-kitten plus two Mama cats and take the whole lot of 'em to the pound!

Cause right now, the frame of mind I'm in, that is one thing I am sorely tempted to do!

Well, it would eliminate one form of crapola here anyway, wouldn't it?

But then, maybe, just maybe, that Joann Fabrics store will have some nice scents there in one corner with the candles and potpourri and such that it will take over my senses and make me all calm, quiet, relaxed and ready to face the nit-picky things that have me enduring a case of the Monday Blues Bitchings today!

It could happen that way, ya know!