Because your signature says so much about you

Not blob-worthy

I have nothing to blob about. The Trop family is back to the school and work routine after a two-week break (though I had plenty of work to keep me busy). I'm readjusting to being home alone all day.

Not that any of this is blob-worthy.


So instead, I'm going to blob about something unblobbable. I'm going to blob about how the Trop family is going paperless.

We took our first paperless baby steps two years ago and eliminated easy things, like paper plates, to-go cups, etc. Then we gave up paper towels. Then we started carrying reusable sacks to the grocery.

Now we are taking a big, bold step. Our bathroom is going paperless. That's right. We're giving up toilet paper. Court installed the bidet today.

I love it.

Not that any of THAT is blob-worthy.

Blog tag milestone

It's official

Court, of course, discovered this about me a long time ago.
Besides, who can resist a good apple?

I have a thing for pencils

I can't ever be without a pencil.




I just caught Courtney doing an unspeakable thing with one of my pencils.

You've heard of morning, noon, and night...

How about 10:45pm, 4:00am, 7:30am, 1:00pm, and 9:30pm?

Obviously, we aren't doing a lot of talking. However, this was overheard at Trop's:

Court: I think we should buy that dog collar we saw at the toy store this evening. You can wear it to work on your last day at the college.

Trop: Hahahaha... And why would I do that?

Court: So people will assume you have totally succumbed to my dominatrix spell. That you'll be home all day, making sure the house is perfect and dinner is cooked. And if you do well you get a reward: you get to give me head.

Trop: What happens if I fail?

Court: Then I have to get out the whips.

Trop [perplexed]: Good god woman, what web sites have you been visiting lately?

In response to

I understand Sassy. I was that way all my early life. But when my sister K was pregnant and had Nick, everything changed. He was the first baby I ever LOVED. I was 20 and from that time forward I knew I'd have a baby. Twelve years later, I delivered Amanda.

I hated being pregnant. I was sick for nine months. There is a reason Amanda is an only child... a sibling would require another pregnancy and I have never wanted to go through that again.

Until now.

WTF? I'm six months away from 48. Forty. fucking. eight. Yet, I am having this overwhelming urge to be pregnant and have a child. I even have a man-crush forgoodnesssakes.

I think my last remaining eggs are having a really fun "everything but the girl" party, and I am feeling the buzz (my mojo).

The hormones are in their last throes. I'm ready for the passage. I am ready to let go.

[and Court gave me a cure]

I will be more than happy, however, to hold onto my resurgent mojo thankyouverymuch. I think my wife will appreciate that as well.

My weekend in a cliché

The thrill of victory,
and the agony of defeat.

Thursday musings

Let's see... what's new.

I've been working, hard. That is new. There are so many big projects to wrap up before I end my tenure at the college. It keeps me awake at night. This week I prepared a 55-page report for an all-day meeting I have tomorrow.

I hate it. Every bit of it. I am so ready to be done with the college.

Then there is the consulting. At the beginning of this project cycle the consultants hired an analyst to help with the load. They flew me to CO to train her. The plan was for me to manage four schools, and she would manage four schools. In the end, she decided she couldn't manage any, so I got all hers plus another for good measure. So, I am juggling nine colleges right now. It's a full time job and then some. But I LOVE the work.

Even so, it's really starting to wear me down.

~~~~~~~

Amanda got two birthday cards from her father, who now resides in Calcutta, India. He sent them via my parents in PA. With her permission, I decided to write to him. I sent recent pictures of her and told him things that would make him happy, like how she's excelling in math, and that she's playing soccer.

As for him, he's still fixated on Miss World 1994, pictured here. He wrote that she is Amanda's biological mother.

He also thinks he's Jesus Christ.

It is so sad. It really is. The man is the gentlest person I know, and he was so smart and so funny. What a fucking waste. I wish Amanda could know him as he was when I first met him.

It wasn't an easy letter to write. I wanted to ask him "Where the hell is the Volvo!" since I'm still paying for it. But I didn't. I was also tempted to ask, "Is there any chance you might send one of the court ordered child support payments you're supposed to send every month until Amanda is 18?" But there's really no point in asking, so I didn't.


~~~~~~
I called my mother today. The poor woman had several teeth pulled on Tuesday. She was really dreading it and is relieved to have it over with. She's 78 and is in otherwise fairly good health, except that she is becoming frail. She has to inject herself every day with a bone building drug to fend off osteoporosis. The cost of that drug is $2,000/month and she's about to hit the Medicare D donut hole. She and my father live on an annual fixed income of about $20k, so I don't know how they will make up the hole.

My older sister (K, 54) had a precancerous polyp removed from her cervix, and she'll most likely have a hysterectomy. Her husband just completed treatment for prostate cancer. He's doing well, but has discomfort from the radioactive seeds planted in his prostate.

Things aren't all bad. My younger sister (A, 43) is about to graduate with an MBA. I am so proud of her. We'll be going to PA in May for her graduation. I love graduations.

~~~~~
Finally, I am hoping for nice weather this weekend. We (Amanda and I) have a lot of yard work to do and it's been raining for weekends on end. I need to hose down the house as it is covered in clay dust from road construction (and grave digging).

Performance anxiety?

I have all the markers for overactive bladder; a hereditary problem made worse when I gave birth to Amanda. I am always one sneeze away from disaster.

So why then, when I had to provide a urine sample at the hospital today, was I suddenly unable to pee?

TMI

Six months after we sold all the furniture and moved into our wee little house, we finally have our new bed. It was delivered today, along with new sheets, a comforter, and... this:

I don't know which is more embarrassing: that my wife ordered a waterproof mattress pad, or that the dog in the picture appears to be humping the boy.

I wish I had said it, because it's how I felt

"Have you ever buried your nose in a mountain of curls... just wanted to go to sleep forever? Or lips... and when they touched, yours were like... that first swallow of wine... after you just crossed the desert."

Pissy in Pleasantville

I'm still not sleeping right. And I am totally burned out.

I work for a small consulting firm that two major consulting firms hire for analytic number crunching upon which they provide a very expensive array of services. The firms cultivate the business, sign clients, and provide a lot of warm-fuzzy hand holding. We are a quasi-silent partner, providing analysis from the background.

There has been a turn of events with one of the firms my company deals with. Their primary analyst, "J," is leaving. J is brilliant and I have loved working with him. I've learned much from him. He's a gifted analyst. Gifted analysts are rare.

I was the last to know that he's leaving. My company was told weeks before I found out. I was not happy.

That was months ago. In the interim, the parent firm brought in a part-time enrollment expert to take over for J. And they've hired a math teacher with no higher ed consulting experience, a full-time replacement, who only started last week.

Friday is the J's last day, and just today I was told by the client that *I* would serve a primary role in transitioning projects from J to the new analyst. It means that I become the interim project manager for THEIR clients while they get their footing, while still doing all the background stuff.

WTF? This is their transition plan and I am the last to know?

My boss at my company was just as surprised. He emailed for my reaction and I told him I was upset to be the last to know. Had I been brought into the decision-making months ago, I could have told our client their transition plan won't work.

There is a lot I do for my company and their clients during business hours. I cannot do it at my day job. As a state agency everything is monitored, information security is being tightened and everything is being audited. I can't spend hours of state time conducting LiveMeeting conference calls with clients unless I take annual leave to do it. And I can't use state equipment or state internet access for these purposes. But that's how the business is conducted; on the phone and over the Internet. It's just not possible to meet the obligation of transitioning clients from one analyst to another in this context.

Secondly, it's not in the agreement I have with my company. I'm paid to run the numbers, build the tool, answer questions, and offer advice. Our client is charging, by the $10Ks, a lot more per project than I get paid to do my part of each project.

And then there's Amanda. I think she's crashing again. It's been a bad week for her (and me). I'm not available to take on additional responsibility right now. Had we discussed the transition plan before now, I would have told the client this. The client is aware that Amanda was hospitalized and that I am needed at home.

So there. I'm annoyed about consulting and I'm worried about Amanda. But then there's Court.

Two weeks ago Court and I had the closest thing, for us, to a fight. I'm not going to get into it except to say it was a situation where we both wanted the same thing, but in the offering we managed to hurt each other deeply. I made Court cry and she so rarely cries. We were "off" for quite a few days, but were able to talk and finally resolve things on Monday. It's sort of like we fought and made up, but without any nastiness.

Oh. My. God.

The making up has been so good that it can't be good for a woman my age. Court and I are having our best couple time EVER. It's like a whole new world has opened up... like I've been living in Pleasantville all my adult life and I'm just now seeing things in color.

Rating performance

I started the night a milkmaid,
and ended it a cowgirl.

How to get your wife to have her way with you

Come to bed after the big game wearing THIS.

Dave Ramsey: Aphrodisiac?

You may recall that Court and I manage our finances according to Dave Ramsey's cash envelope system. I highly recommend it.

Today while lunching together, we got to talking about our finances. Court has an elaborate spreadsheet that maps out our month-to-month spending, plus some big-ticket expenses (like Christmas, travel, and some one-time purchases), through 2008.

After lunch, when I walked Court back to her office, she totally groped me in the elevator. It turns out my wife gets really turned on when discussing her spreadsheet and our finances. Hubba hubba.

They say that family finances are a major cause of divorce. In our case, they are a major source of foreplay. Who knew Dave Ramsey's method could be an aphrodisiac?

Yep, I highly recommend it.

She's trying to poison me

I came home from work today feeling stuffy, achy and feverish. Doting on me as she does ('cause I'm a big puss when I'm sick), Court offered me a dose of assorted supplements with strict instructions on how often to repeat the dose.

"Do this until you reach bowel tolerance," she said.

Whatever THAT means.

How many points?

According to an unnamed expert, style points are earned for using the whole mat.

How many points do we get for falling OFF the mat?



Oh yes we did.
[Note to self: I should have written yesterday's post a long time ago.]

I dare you to blog that

Trop, wearing only a T-shirt, returning to the bedroom from the bathroom, brushing the inside of her thigh with her hand...


"I think I found a cobweb."

Q&A

During a commercial break this evening, Court looked over at me and asked, "Do you worry about your pipes leaking?"

"Only when I sneeze."