Sugar Free Ice Cream and Other Stuff

I love ice cream (who doesn't). But, I'm not supposed to eat ice cream because it's full of sugar, so...when I saw some new sugar free ice cream in the freezers at Vons, I'm all like YESSSS! It's a brand called Clemmy's and it's totally sugar free and natural and kosher and all that and comes in the usual chocolate, vanilla, butter pecan, and a chocolate chip peanut butter. I tried the chocolate a week or so ago and it was good, not too chemical sweetener tasting, but I woke up in the middle of the night with some bad gas pains after eating it. I didn't really connect the two at the time. But I should have. I had some of the chocolate chip peanut butter yesterday after lunch, and yes, I ate too much of it because for me eating ice cream is like potato chips, you can't just stop at one. It's more like uh-oh, I can see the bottom of the carton so I'd really better stop.

Well, a few hours later my stomach started to really hurt and I was having REALLY BAD gas, not just REALLY BAD gas but REALLY STINKY REALLY BAD gas and I'm finally realizing that the sugar free ice cream is giving me the REALLY STINKY REALLY BAD gas. Because it's sweetened with zylitol, the same sweetener in sugar free candy which I don't eat because it gives me REALLY STINKY REALLY BAD gas.

So, no more sugar free ice cream for me because the pain (AND STINKY BAD GAS) was so not worth it.

We are still waiting to hear from Savage if Keith has a job or not. He went over there on Monday and talked to them and they say they are waiting for the go ahead from corporate headquarters and there is a lot of work piling up and they really need him back, but we are starting to think that they are just jerking him around and hoping he will go ahead and find another job. He hasn't heard from the cement plant yet either so that prospect isn't looking so good either. He's going to give them the rest of the week and then if no phone calls give up on them and get out there Monday with resume in hand. I am getting a little worried.

He's been keeping busy with working on the unfinished kitchen, putting up the shelf he wanted above the window over the sink, and getting the doors out to put back on the pantry and laundry closet. He hung the pantry door up although it's not painted yet and has no handle on it, and the kitchen looks really strange with a door back up and not being able to see the messy pantry closet and the trash cans. You get so used to how something looks, even if it looks bad.

He got distracted, though, and started pulling out the wood he's been saving for the back patio cover that he's been wanting to build for the past 3 or 4 years and was messing around with that stuff, so I fully expect the kitchen to not get finished but at least we'll have a door on the pantry even if it's not painted.

He even put up a couple of platforms in the tree out front for Lucy to sit in.

Unemployed

Well, Keith will be the first one to admit that he made a really really big mistake leaving his job at Savage. The last few months that he was there he had heard whispers of discontent, rumors about how their department wasn't making enough money doing some of the work that they do, and the headquarters in Salt Lake City were looking quite closely at the books. The work that Keith was doing was about the only money maker in the department and they were very happy with his numbers, but not so happy with the new wheel changing operation that they had started. They contracted with the railroads to send crews out to change the big wheels on the railcars out and kind of underbid themselves and aren't getting paid and are like $300,000 dollars in the hole for the quarter. The crews also would go out into the field and search out railcars on side tracks and in yards and inspect them to see if repairs were needed. One or two guys would spend all day driving up and down the central valley just kind of messing around all day, fixing what they could find, and sometimes finding nothing to fix. It always sounded like a silly way to do business to me, but that's how they did it. In the meantime Keith would be in the yard doing all the real work all by himself. And bringing in the money all by himself.

Anyway, when Keith called his supervisor Bob on Monday to let him know he was back in town and ready to go, Bob said something about having to get some paperwork together and he would call Keith back. Keith said he did sound kind of weird on the phone, like something was wrong. Well, no phone call back, so Keith called him again yesterday, left him a message, and when Bob called back he told Keith that they didn't know if they could still hire him back because of headquarters looking at the books and deciding whether or not to keep the department going. If Keith were still an actual employee, he might have lost his job anyway but at least he could get unemployment or possibly be offered a position in another department in the company.

Bob is supposed to call back next week and let Keith know for sure, but we certainly aren't going to hold our breaths hoping that by some miracle Savage will decide to keep a money losing department going. There had always been rumors that the company was going to get out of the railcar repair business so it looks like the rumors may have been true.

So, as Keith puts it, he really screwed up by leaving in the first place.

I had misgivings about him going to work for the railroad, but when they promise you better pay and benefits and Keith had been trying for the past few years to get a job with the railroad, you don't want to discourage his dream.

I asked him if he would have stuck it out if his mom being sick had not been in the back of his mind and he hadn't been worried about her, but he says it was mostly the travel and staying in motels that was the deciding factor in leaving the job, but her being on his mind didn't help. And then when Savage appeared to be welcoming him back with open arms, the decision was made.

So, he is out pounding the pavement this morning getting applications and seeing if there is even anything out there for him. You can get a welder's job pretty much anywhere here but most of them start out at like $10.00 an hour. That would just barely pay the house payment.

I'm going to put my applications in at Walmart and Target yet again, I think I've tried Target 3 times now, and Walmart 5 times now and nothing. I am convinced that they are only hiring people that have been on unemployment or welfare because they get tax breaks if they do. Unemployment is still at 12% here, and about the only jobs you ever see open are in health care. Which I'm not hardly qualified for.

So, after a good start to the year and things looking up and having survived the worst of the recession, we're kind of back starting out again.

So, come buy my sh*t, cause I really need the money.

Stressful Week for Keith

I'm here and Keith is in Vegas going back and forth to the hospital. His mom is scared and panicked and combative with the therapists who are trying to give her breathing treatments and drain fluid from her lungs. She had one session of radiation to try and shrink the tumor that is blocking her breathing and then they found that she has a bacteria that lives in people's stomachs but when the body is stressed it flares up and gives you diarrhea and is highly contagious. She is in isolation and everyone has to dress up in a hazmat suit to visit her. He's on his way back to the hospital this morning to go with her to get her lung drained and she is totally freaked out about it, even though they've drained it once before and she doesn't even remember. It's heartbreaking for him and his brothers to see her so frail and sick.

He had to fill out an application for his old job and will have to go through the whole hiring process again. He really liked the new job but after realizing he would have to live out of motel rooms for years while he built up seniority decided that the traveling life just wasn't for him, called his old boss to see if he could come back, and they said he could. They called the main headquarters to see if they could just reinstate him, but no, he has to start all over again. We are hoping that nothing goes wrong there and he won't end up with no job at all. So, right now we feel like we are kind of in limbo.

After a few weeks of Lucy calming down and all the cats going back to normal, she went crazy again last night. I'm at the table eating dinner all nice and peaceful and all of a sudden she went off on Buddy and tore into him, chasing him all over the house biting and scratching, me right behind spraying her with the water bottle. Buddy hid under the covers growling and whining, Pepper hid in the garage, growling and whining, and all the rest of the cats hid under the bed. Keith had told me that if she went nuts again to throw her out of the house, so I opened up the back door, waited until she got curious enough to go outside, and then shut the door. She sat on the back porch and I put a blanket and some food out there, and then she and Pepper tried to kill each other through the glass door, Buddy kept looking out and whining, and finally I just shut the blinds and tried to ignore the fact that she was outside. I heard three separate cat fights out there last night and knew she was tearing into any stray cat that crossed the yard. After a kind of restless night, I went outside to look for her and give her some food and didn't see her anywhere. I'm kind of hoping she has run off and won't be able to find her way back, cruel as that may be. If she does find her way back we are going to have to take her to the pound. I can't deal with a cat that goes off like that and makes all the other cats so upset and scared.

Ugh, what a week this is turning out to be.

Cats and Stuff

Three more days and Keith is officially unemployed for a week. He decided to take a week's break before starting at BNSF on the 28th and Friday is his last day at Savage. I have a feeling that after having him underfoot for a week I will be really glad to have him start the new job. He will probably drive me nuts and make huge messes that I will have to clean up. I'm just hoping that he will finish some of the projects that have been unfinished for so very long. But I won't hold my breath.

Like the bathroom cabinet project. Years ago he decided to build a cabinet above the toilet since there is no storage in the shower/toilet part of the bathroom. He got the shelves and the basic cabinet built but it has no doors on it. The rest of the bathroom has been waiting for a paint job ever since, too. The weekend before last he did some work on it and the ladder that he was using has been in our bedroom ever since. I've only tripped on it twice now.

Poor old Harri was so traumatized by wild Lucy chasing her around last week that she has been hiding under our bed ever since, only venturing out a few times a day to eat, looking over her shoulder the entire time she is eating. We put a little litter box in the bedroom just for her and put some food and water out, which of course every other cat in the house had to go get a snack from. It was like a bonus for them, an unexpected treasure spot of food. We've been letting her stay in the bedroom with us at night so she has a few un-paranoid hours out of her day.

I was walking by the bed yesterday and see these paws sticking out from inside the folded up comforter on the end of the bed.


Buddy had crawled up inside the comforter for one of his many daily naps. He sleeps most of each afternoon, then comes out at feeding time, and then right back to a nap. So exhausted after the strenuous eating activity I guess.