Just when I didn’t think this situation could possibly get any more AUGH, it did.

The last word we had prior to this installment was that our missing parts would ship either Friday the 4th or Monday the 7th.

Now we’re being told they shipped Friday the 11th. Not that we can verify that in any way by the tracker number we were given, because it goes to a login page for their shipping company. If I were feeling a bit more puckish and less Hulkish, I’d ask them for the login information in order to access it, but it just didn’t seem worth it.

We’re now 20 emails deep in the chain with these folk with no real end in sight.

While I typically try to keep these posts somewhat lighthearted, I just can’t anymore. All I can say is, if you’ve read through the saga here, and you still think it’s a good idea to give the folks from https://ultimategametable.com/ your money… I can’t help you.

Is the product concept cool? Yes, absolutely, a thousand times yes. But the sheer frustration and fury of trying to get them to respond, let alone deliver just isn’t worth it. Honestly, if I had known what I was in for, I would have paid three times the price to have exactly what I wanted delivered in a reasonable time frame.

I’ve learned my lesson… you get what you pay for.

I was in the kitchen, shredding up some Dr. Pepper slow cooked pork shoulder, when I realized that I only learned how to make it because Draz wanted to try it. I mused for a moment, thinking of all the things I tried or made for him… I only drew a line at steamed broccoli because I hated the smell of the stuff.

It made me smile, like a lot of the memories I have of him do, but then I started thinking about how I’m usually much too reserved and shy to tell people how much I care about them.

Instead, I cook. And not only do I cook- I bust my ass to make sure I am making the best possible whatever it is, putting everything I feel into working over that stove and giving that dish extreme TLC.

Because, you see, it’s my way of giving people TLC.

For Draz, it was Dr. Pepper pork shoulder. For Adam and the kids, it was meatloaf. For Dan, it was wookiee cookie cake. For my mom, it was sugar free orange chocolate cheesecake. For Frog, it was my giant double decker hot fudge cake.

For Rick, it was dragonmeat.

It goes back so many years… to my mom (oreo brownies) and my dad (chocolate chip peanut butter cookeis).

It was never enough to make something well… it had to be perfect, cause it was carrying more than the weight of some calories, it had to carry the weight of all the things I couldn’t, and to be fair, probably in a lot of ways still can’t say.

Thanks, Draz, for still being over my shoulder and giving me the thoughts I need to be thinking.

Green chile, how I love thee.. and how my stomach hates thee.

Due to indulgence in aforementioned chile, I wasn’t feeling too good last night, so when a CVS mission came up, Rick, like the hero that he is, did that trench run solo. When he got back, it was with the furtive boyish grin associated with surprises.

Rick (at the doorway to the office, hands behind his back): Okay hon, I know you’ve been wanting another corgi pup, and I finally decided it’s time!

Me (lifting skeptical brows): Oh?

Bree (filled with dismay): alarmed look

Rick, with a giant grin, produces this from behind his back.

It plays Bad Case of Lovin You and dances and all the dogs hate it. I guess if you subtracted the music and adding potty training, it kind of is like a new puppy.

Rick’s still in the doghouse with all the females in the house, though.

Poor Rick. Hope he’s enjoying those chuckles.

 

Extra extra-

While I was writing this, Rick headed out of the office, then back in again a few minutes later, carrying something.

Me (sniffing): Oh, you found food.

Rick (munching): Well yeah, I knew the roast was nowhere near done, so I heated up some leftover chicken.

Me (sighing): You know, I had a plan for that. If you like talked to me (makes hand puppet of Rick with a hand puppet of me answering back) you could have known that! Not worth bothering for just me.

Rick: But.. normally you get mad when I ask cause you don’t have a plan.

Me: THIS WAS LIKE THE ONE TIME I HAD A PLAN!

We both sigh and laugh a little. Joys of marriage.

 

One of the supposedly useful functions of the Google home thing is that it can start timers for you. This is real handy when cooking, until it isn’t.

Me: OK Google, how much time is left on the timer?

Googlebitz: There are four timers. One is a six minute timer paused at thirty seconds. One is a fifteen minute timer at zero. One is a seven minute timer paused to two minutes. One is a twenty five minute timer at zero.

Me (making a face, cause none of these were the timers I was looking for, and I wasn’t in the mood for Google mind tricks): How much time is left on the thirty minute timer?

Googlebitz: That timer is t minus four minutes.

Me (sourly with volumes of sarcasm): Thank you so much.

Googlebitz: You’re welcome, I’m here to help.

Rick (bursting out with laughter): I think Google just flipped you off.

Me: That’s it, I’m watching you!

Rick (still laughing): But she’s so polite with her British accent.

Me (still glaring at the bitz): Aussie!

 

Rick’s still laughing. Googlebitz is sitting in a cloud of smug silence.

In the interests of full disclosure, I’m a day behind on writing about my mantra experiences- so this was yesterday’s focal thought.

For the past few years, I’ve taken on a lot between my work life and my personal life, had lots of little epiphanies and revelations about what it means to be myself but also to be brave.

From either of the sides of my life, so there’s so much that wouldn’t have happened for me if I hadn’t been willing to answer a challenge, so many people I wouldn’t have met that helped me change the way I saw myself.

So yeah, the last years haven’t been easy, and I’ve been more tired than ever before. But through accepting the challenges that have come and learning from the astounding people I’ve met along the way, I’ve also found out how to truly love myself, even the aspects that I never thought I would.

Pretty fair exchange, I’d say.

So, if you’ve been keeping up with the story- previous gaming table rant, you’ll know that in September 2017, we plunked down a minor assload of money for this uber mc spiffy gaming table, that, as of January 2019, we don’t have.

So the last couple of weeks, we’ve been engaged in the Quixotic battle to get. our. table.

It hasn’t gone well.

To date, there’s more than 15 emails in the chain to customer service, with the last four being just us begging for a tracking number that we were told we’d have Monday, after our part was shipped… again? for the first time? We don’t know. We’ve reported the project to Kickstarter as failing to deliver rewards, and we’ve messed the company through Kickstarter, who told us to email these three magical addresses, which has not availed us.

This morning we emailed the magic addresses and responded back through the Kickstarter.

Honestly at a complete loss here.

Well, not a complete loss. I’ll keep posting on here, Facebook, and tweeting my little heart out to see if I can keep other people from making the same mistake.

All snuggled under the covers, which is a little interesting with the pups. Zoe in particular likes to steal the spot where my feet go.

Me: Oh, thank God, Zoe moved

Rick: cough laughs, She’s very stubborn about that.

Me: I know, and I hate to nudge her, cause she’ll just crawl under the bed and pout.

Rick: yeah, me too.

Me: You crawl under the bed and pout?! I never noticed.

Ba dum ching! Night folks.

I’m never going to feel like I’m one of the cool kids. I don’t have a bestie that I can call up to go have brunch on a whim on a Sunday (unless you count my corg)…

That’s the face of someone that loves you… and the food you’re holding. Screw it, there’s love involved, ok?

… and I don’t have a hotly active social calendar that books weeks in advance. I don’t have anyone in my life that I talk to every single day, who knows my every thought and feeling.

Please understand, when I say that, I’m not looking for any kind of sympathy or fake feeling of inclusiveness, and I’m not trying to be manipulative. I enjoy my circle of friends and the interactions we have, and if I’m a little solitary by nature, well, there’s a lot of reasons for it. It took me a long time to learn to open myself up to folks and just be me, and it took me longer to spot the signs of when I’m being used.

And, let’s face it, I can be something of an acquired taste.

My point being, when this mantra came up on my to highlight my day list, I decided to keep it around a little longer than a day, because I like the frame of mind it’s putting me in. I don’t interact with a ton of people (a phrase which should handily cement the crazy hermit lady hiding in her house image I’ve got going), but the ones I interact with deserve my attention and care. They deserve to know that they are important to me, that I’m hearing them and that they matter.

And you know? While it doesn’t change my perception of not being one of the cool kids, it makes me feel pretty damn good about being me. It’s breaking down some more of those barriers of shyness and hesitancy, and letting me show a little more of me underneath. Yes, I can be very polished and corporate appropriate- that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s ridiculous that we don’t have George Jetson cars with it being 2019, and I think we can laugh about that a little bit before we dive into an agenda. I’m noticing that I enjoy being around people a little more, that I’m getting a little more out of every interaction.

Maybe what I’m saying is, making everybody feel like somebody means I feel more like somebody, too. And for me, that’s a pretty neat thing.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I promised my Bree bestie that we’d go watch our favorite chick flick on the couch.

It’s Armageddon.

And, you know, so are COLDS. But we’ll get to that in good time.

I’m one of those sick in the head people that has to have a certain amount of unclutteredness to feel at peace with myself. Dust is okayish.. but stuff piled on top of stuff just makes me feel out of control for some reason.

So today, to spread the sense of calm, I began by centering myself in my office, and addressing those bits of clutter that annoyed me one at a time.

Out with the trash. Down with the random papers. Away with the chainmail bits. Extra furniture, begone! Roomba knock off, to work with thee.

And before I knew it, I had an hour of activity on my Leaf AND a tidy office.

And it was good.

I was all methodical and thoughtful about how I approached things today- in the same way that I cleared my office clutter, I cleared my work headspace clutter.

And it was good.

And then Rick came home. Early. Sick.

And that was not so good. I may have actually said, “AWAY GERM VECTOR!” when he tried to cuddle. He tried to look all hurt, but I know he gets it. Only half my sinuses work in the first place, so getting a cold or the flu puts an extra little strain I just plain don’t need.

I’m not letting it bother me.. I’m taking lots of deep breaths (away from my favorite germ vector), and I made sure to have something carby for food. After my workout, I’ll have a cup of hot chocolate laced with my infamous rotgut.. for antiseptic properties, of course. Not at all because it’ll be magically delicious.

The other thing I did to enhance my sense of calm- I stayed off Facebook today. I still perused the news, read a couple of threads on reddit, and tweeted about my continued lack of success in getting my Ultimately Annoyingly Unfinished Table of Gaming taken care of.

And I feel okay. I feel like I did good things today, and sidestepped a lot of potential annoyance just by remembering not to let myself go there. Stupid easy… today at least.

 

This one.. well, it always sounds so easy, doesn’t it? Cause everything in life is so black and white, and kindness is as simply spotted as thinking of a wonderful thought… any merry little thought.

Setting the scene- Sunday afternoon, gray, gloomy, lightly misting rain slowly, oh so slowly melting away the now charmless slushy, muddy snow of downtown Rio Rancho, New Mexico. Trash hasn’t been picked up this week because <insert vague weather excuse here>. It’s chilly and wet and dark and a good day to stay the hell at home.

Except.

The evil day has come. We always think it can’t happen to us, and we hedge our bets against it, but somehow, SOMEHOW it’s happened.

I am out of Rock Star.

I know we have to go out. I don’t want to go out. I’m a junkie and I need my fix before I try to go function out in the world without committing atrocities. But I can’t get my fix until I go out into the world and get it. It’s a seamless Catch 22 and I gremble and mutter as I pull on my Stitch hoodie and bearpaws.

(You start to see how choosing kindness may have a few extra difficulties added to my die rolls today yet?)

We get out to the supermarket, manage to park without incident (which is a pleasant surprise after the last few weeks of holiday parking HELL). In we go, and we see… this.

Wings, tail, horns… and fur?

Now, I love dragons.

All artwork courtesy of Carla Morrow of Dragonlady Art, cross stitch was modified very inexpertly by me to be holding a golden apple instead of a globe, original design Dragon Dreams.

So when I saw that there was a Valentine’s stuffed dragon in with the plethora of unicorns, I really wanted to be excited.

But… look at this poor confused little guy. Yes, he has wings, and a tail, and horns… but fur? And soooo much fur!

Yes, I bought an dragon plushie because I felt sorry for it. I know, I have issues. My issues have issues.

I kept looking at it as we picked up the rest of our groceries.. except the frozen Totino’s pepperoni pizzas BECAUSE THEY WERE COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY SOLD OUT OMG WHY DO PEOPLE THINK THEY GET TO OUTLAZY ME TO THE POINT WHERE I HAVE TO COOK?!? /cough

And I kept trying to figure out what the what the designer was thinking of..

a) Had they never seen a dragon before?

b) Had they decided it was winter and therefore the dragon had to be furry?

c) Did they have a bunch of leftover fur that had to be used and decided what the hell, furry dragons! People like furry things! They’ll buy it!

 

Now, even as all these thoughts were going through my head, we ended up at the checkout counter. And wouldn’t you know it, both the checker and the bagger made fun of my dragon.

That’s when it hit me- choosing kindness doesn’t mean you have to smile benevolently upon the world as it’s kicking you repeatedly in the shins. It doesn’t mean you can’t sit there and look at this dragon and go wtf mate… why did someone do this to you?

It means you don’t judge people for what they choose to see value in. Not even yourself. There’s so few things in this world that will truly speak to you- and you may not even know why they speak to you- the important thing is that you listen. And you don’t judge yourself for being touched by something. Sometimes you don’t even quantify it. You just accept that voice and let it be what it is.

This has been my moment of Zen.