I’ve been going back and forth on what I wanted to write today. It was supposed to be my last day at my former employer, but I ended up leaving earlier, because I’d done everything they asked me to do and I was just kinda killing time – something I could do at home.

So, I am comfortably unemployed – at least until Monday.

I celebrated today by going and getting my hair cut and colored. I deserved it.

I also might have taken a two hour nap.  At 8 AM. I can neither confirm nor deny.

I thought I’d feel different. I thought I’d be sadder. I was really sad for the two weeks and two days that lead up to leaving, but all I felt when I finally left was relief. Enormous amounts of weight lifting relief.

So, Monday starts a new chapter and I am super-freaking-excited about this new chapter.

I can’t seem to put how I’m feeling into words just yet, so I think I’ll stop trying.

In non-job related news – I ended up getting an iPhone 4 a few weeks ago, because my old iPhone 3 crapped itself and here are my thoughts on that:

• I shoulder talk because I think those bluetooth things are quite possibly the most ridiculous looking thing you can wear on your head and I have yet to find one that I can activate and get on my face when I need it – and I refuse to wear it ALL-THE-EVER-LOVING-TIME in the event that a call comes through where I need to use my hands – so if you can get that shoulder talking thing fixed, so I don’t hang up on people, that’d be grand.
• Hi. I’m fat. When I put the phone up to my face to talk – I routinely A) Hang up B) Dial random numbers C) Scroll through my Contacts and manage to some how cheek conference call in random people – like, my Dr.’s office – not cool. I never had this problem with my old phone – it seems like the screen would go inactive on my iPhone 3 when I had it up against my fat chipmunk cheeks – so if you can make that happen on the iPhone 4 so I can stop conferencing in my Dr.’s office while on the phone with my husband giving him a grocery list – that’d be grand, also.
• There is some random glitch with the OS on the phone that makes my email inbox have eleventy hundred empty emails. See screen shot below. This is, by far, the most annoying complaint I have because it simultaneously makes my unread message indicator show that I have unread messages, which I do not – and when you have unread message OCD, like I do, this is NOT a fun or neat trick.

Unacceptable "Feature" of my iPhone4

Here’s a helpful hint: (No Sender) (No Subject) This message has no content – DO NOT SHOW IT – THERE IS NOTHING TO SEE HERE!

/rant

Moving on…

My current favorite person’s (formally known as, my coworker, Chuck) husband worries about me when he doesn’t see me online on Facebook – how cute is that? CFP is pretty freakin awesome – and the fact that her husband worries about me when I’m not on Facebook is either pathetic (on my part – because holy crap, how much time do you have to spend on Facebook for people to worry about you when you’re not online) or enormously touching – right now, I’m going with touching – because I’m not prepared to call myself pathetic. Yet.

Mr. CFP: You are almost as awesome as your beautiful bride. Almost

[I feel like I need to elaborate on my Facebook usage, before the folks from Intervention show up at my house. I use a 3rd party IM chat client called Digsby. I am usually signed into some type of IM chat throughout the day, by virtue of my job (working with off-site contractors) - this also allows me to stay signed into Facebook Chat without actually being *on* Facebook. So, yes, I am /on/ Facebook Chat all day - but I am not generally *on* Facebook all day - I realize this explination makes me seem even more guilty than if I'd not tried to explain at all.

Ok fine...I have issues - send the men in white coats.]

Earlier this week, a coworker and I were talking about some things we could do that to ‘keep in touch’ after I left and started my new job. I like her, she’s good people – so I was game.

We decided, after spouting off random ideas for like 3 seconds, that we’d take a knitting class.

Yay!

Have I ever mentioned that I’m not crafty? In the event that I haven’t, I’ll go ahead and do that now. I’m not crafty. Shifty? Yes. Crafty? Not-so-much.

Anyway, Yay!

First, I pride myself on my ability to pick up things really quickly. I. Learn. Good.

But for the life of me, I could not grasp this knitting stuff.

Now I should say, the lady teaching the class probably shouldn’t be teaching. She starts with, “Ok, well, I don’t knit pretty. I’m self taught and I do it differently than any of the standard methods.” – Fine, I can deal with some randomly modified stitchery or whatever – my goal is to knit and I don’t figure it’s going to matter a whole lot how I get to the end, as long as I get there.

Yeah – uh…I felt like a complete and total freakin idiot. She would show us a step, and let me be clear, when I say show, she would cast off like it was a race and she had to first place or die and I’d just be sitting there, mouth agape wondering what in the crap just happened.

She did this a number of times. It was frustrating.

But not nearly as frustrating as learning that three of the six participants in the class were actually seasoned knitters. They had like blankets and stuff…they yank them out and start asking questions – and I’m sitting there thinking, “uh…beginner class, hello!?”

Towards the end of class, she shares with us that we can learn to knit by watching YouTube.com videos.

Wait…what? What’s the $56 for then? *sigh*

I came home, watched the same ‘casting off’ video eight times and finally got it – if all I had to do was cast off, I’d be in good shape…but I can’t ‘get’ the stitch.

It’s not clicking for me, but I’m going to keep trying. I have to, I have home work this week…but don’t ask me how I’m going to do it, because I’ll be danged if I can figure out how to do a stitch – much less enough of them to equal a 4X4 square.

Yeah…I think I might have to cheat and pay someone to do my homework for me…

It went something like this:

The alarm goes of at 4:09 here – sometimes I get up, sometimes I don’t. This morning, I decided to go ahead and get up so I could get some stuff done this morning before work.

Then, as the old man opens the door to leave, a cat runs in the house.

(Some back story – I’m a cat lover. I have two cats. With encouragement from my Dr. we decided to make them outside cats, because he was worried I’d get a scratch that could turn bad. They’re altered and they stay in the backyard – plus they have shelter. I’m not heartless)

Anyway – the old man opens the door and in runs this cat. I freak out. He freaks out. The cat darts into our bedroom and under our bed like s/he’d been studying blueprints all night and knew exactly where to go.

So, what do we do? We try to get it. J’s on one side of the bed with a broom, trying to ‘push’ him/her out and I’m on the other side, holding a towel so I can ‘direct’ him/her into the carrier beside my bed.

What happens? Oh, the cat comes screaming out from under the bed, jumps into my arms, starts shredding at the air with its claws like in the cartoons – then proceeds to CHOMP DOWN ON MY LEFT INDEX FINGER.

Top of my finger

Bottom of my finger

S/he then jumps out of my hands and starts running down the hall. At that point, I’m holding out my hand in front of me as it dripping blood, not quite sure what to think.

Right now, I’m waiting for the Dr. open in an hour. I did wash (scrub) my finger and my wrist with soap and water, then peroxide, but because I take steroids, its better to go ahead and get on antibiotics.

Already, its pretty swollen and warm and I can hardly bend it…fun times. (That stuff keeps oozing out of the bite…)

S/he also scratched my wrist pretty good:

Ugh.

Unbelievable!

**Also, no comments about my nails…I can’t type if they’re any longer than that…and its hard to type with 9 fingers – so deal with the typos/missinf words…this sux!

Sorry about the short post last night. It was sort of an afterthought. You guys have rocked this journey with me for so long, I’m sorry that I didn’t think about posting sooner.

So, a new job…pretty nifty, huh?

I should recap some:

• The pay isn’t exactly what I wanted, but it’s more than what I’m making now. I should add, however, salary was less of a factor than other issues when making my decision to move on.
• The commute is longer, but I don’t think it’s going to be a huge deal
• The benefits are interesting…the insurance is actually a bit more expensive (which I thought was a little odd) but there are other ‘perks’ that make up for it. They do a lot for employee morale, it seems.

Overall, I’ll be making a little more, but I will also get more in the way of benefits – like vacation, floating holidays, holiday time and other perks.

I’ve got some paperwork to sign this morning and get back to them, so I am going to do that then it’ll be all official-and-in-writing. I did put my notice in yesterday, so the ball is rolling now with my current employer. I’m still not sure what to expect on that end. I don’t know if they’ll want me to honor my 3 weeks notice (I gave 3 weeks, by the way) or if they’ll walk me out after they’ve had time to discuss matters.

Anyway, more about the job:

The position is with a large web company that focuses on women’s issues. I will be working in their “Parenting” department which focuses on all things parenting related. It’s less seriousness and emotion (like adoption) and more every day parenting type stuff.  It seems like a really fun and inviting place to work – I spent some time there last week (during their last interview) and it was refreshing to see them all kind of pull together on a small project and make it happen…less working against each other for personal gain and more working with each other for company gain…something I’m excited to be a part of again.

So, it seems like a really great step for us (the family), but I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t scared to death. When we made the decision to move to Arizona for my current job, I recall feeling much of the same. It was such a leap for us, but I knew it was good.

I know this is good – but I’m still scared.

As for the Dr. visit yesterday – that was fairly uneventful. Because stress can have such a huge impact on your health, he’s actually encouraged me to find a new job for some time, so he was pretty excited that I was reporting that I had done just that and would be starting my new job on the 16th of August.  We went over my numbers, which are still not where he wants them, but not as high as they were back at the beginning of the month. We talked about my meds (which he raised, again) and we talked about the plan for the next few months, since most everything will have to be put on hold until the insurance is all squared away and then we just BS’d, because he’s great like that. We talked about the iPhone4 (neither of us have it, but we both pre-ordered it and declined it upon delivery due to reported problems) and we talked about the iPad (he has one, I don’t) and then he told me to come back in October, once the insurance was all squared away.

That’s really it. I’m closing a chapter on the last 5 years and looking forward to what the future holds.

I needed to find something to wear for something I have going on this week, so I headed out for a little shopping yesterday.

Shopping isn’t fun for me. I’m tall, I’m fat and I’m female.

Clothes for tall girls are generally for tall, skinny girls.

Clothes for fat girls are generally for fat, short girls.

Back in February, I wrote about my frustration over a recent shopping trip to Lane Bryant. I’d been buying their “Right Fit Jean” for a few months and I was on the search for a new pair. I was frustrated when the employee told me that Lane Bryant had decided to discontinue their Right Fit product and that they’d no longer be carrying Tall’s in any of their stores, they’d only be available online. I was down right livid when I placed my order online and learned almost a full week later that they were ‘out of stock’ and didn’t know when they’d have more.

I even reached out to customer service looking for an answer and walked away even more confused and frustrated.

People were, and are, understandably upset over this change. I’m obviously not the only person who was irritated, as that post has generated quite a bit of traffic here on the blog. Even traffic from store employees, although I never did get a clear and concise answer from their corporate office and no one ever reached out to me to clear up any confusion.

Imagine my surprise, yesterday, when I walked into Lane Bryant and discovered an entire section of pants and jeans in tall sizes. I asked the clerk if they’d be stocking tall sizes there and she looked at me like I’d grown a second head and said, “Well, of course!”

Of course?

I went on to explain my experience, thus far, with finding tall sized pants – she seemed completely unaware that tall sizes were limited to only certain locations and that her location was one of the lucky few…

I think the most frustrating part of this entire experience is that no one seems to know anything. If a corporate brand is going to limit the availability of certain products to a limited number of retail locations, then you’d think they’d make darn sure that everyone in that market knew what location those products were being sold at, so they could refer their customers and potentially save a sale.

Instead, it left customers like me frustrated, angry and pantsless.

If I hadn’t happened into the Lane Bryant Store yesterday (my 3rd Lane Bryant of the day and the furthest from my home) I might have just assumed, based on what I’d been told at stores where they were NOT carrying tall sized pants, that Lane Bryant wouldn’t be stocking tall sized pants in their stores any longer.

So, score for tall pants – at least I can find them semi-close to home and if you’re in the Phoenix market looking for tall plus sized pants/jeans from Lane Bryant, I’ve located what appears to be the only store in the area that stocks them:

Fail for Lane Bryant – every store in this market should know which locations sell tall sizes and I should be able to search on your website for store locations that stock tall sizes – instead, I’ve you’ve made it impossible for me to easily find my size at Lane Bryant and that’s a huge disappointment.

As for my shopping trip – I did find a few pieces to wear, including a pair of pants from Lane Bryant that fit me. I didn’t find any tops I liked there – they all looked like my grandmothers house dress got pregnant and gave birth  – way to busy and loud.