4am ramblings

I have a confession to make... Nope, I don't. You're not getting a confession this Sunday. Instead you get the rambling recap of my Saturday from my sick (as in ill, not dirty) mind which is angry for being awake at such an unreasonable hour. Thanks to Wife of Riley for the idea.

Saturday started with two panic attacks. See, other than being sick (and not sleeping Friday night), I haven't had much to worry about the past few days so I decided to start spazzing over taxes. Panic attack #1 = talking about taxes at breakfast. I knew we would owe but no idea how much. I hate the unknown. Also, Joe mentioned the possibility of a penalty? He decided the best way to settle me down was to start plugging numbers into TurboTax. Panic attack #2 = the horrendous amount we owed after entering our W-2s. Thanks, Joe, not so helpful so far! HALP!!! But then we started putting in our deductions and even playing it safe with our estimates, we were able to reach a point where the payment to the feds is about equal to the refund from the state so we should be ok.

On to shopping. We needed to buy floodlights, a door, and a ceiling fan for our porch. The first Lowes was a complete loss. The door we wanted was a special order for $150. No fans we liked. All the lights had stupid motion sensors on them. I don't want to light up the neighbor's bathroom at 2am because a cow-colored cat is in the backyard. (Yeah, cow-colored. I should explain but I don't feel like it right now.)

On to Home Depot. Still no luck with fans but we did manage to find the floodlights and magic bulbs that cost only $1.26 to operate for the next 500 years. Even better, we found the same door, in stock, for $75. Win! Except, ever try to fit a 36x80 inch door in a Prius? Fail! It was actually a lot closer than we first thought. Literally one inch kept the hatch from closing. Joe used some little cables to sorta keep the hatch shut and left me at Target (no room in the car for the woman!) while he took the door home. So panic attack #3 = the loading of the door into the car and subsequent wait at Target for him to confirm he had gotten home safely. How's a girl supposed to shop and waste money when she's picturing her porch door falling out on the highway and her husband driving the car off the road in a fireball?

On to Lowes #2. They had exactly ONE ceiling fan (in two colors!!!) that was outdoor rated and Energy Star certified. Are we asking too much? An outdoor fan that's energy efficient and not vomit-inducing amounts of ugly? And where do you buy ceiling fans besides Home Depot and Lowes? All of the local lighting places seem to be closed on Sundays so now we're screwed because we're supposed to have the fan by Monday even though there's no ceiling in place and now we're going to be stuck with an ugly cheap looking fan in our really nice porch or we'll have to get one that's not energy efficient and the devil will own our souls and polar bears will drown and hey is it hot in here and no I am NOT being bitchy to you, if you think this is bitchy then you are sadly mistaken because you ain't seen nothing yet and fine then let's just go home for the night because I HATE EVERYBODY!!! Guess that would qualify as panic attack #4. And my apologies to Joe (and everyone else within earshot which probably means the entire county).

Panic attack #5 was a given - we stopped at Trader Joes. I <3 Trader Joes but it's always very crowded and my claustrophobia is the boss of me there.

It didn't help that I'm still the walking dead with this plague meth withdrawal cold. I took a 12-hour dose of cough medicine that lasted all of 4 hours before I started coughing again. Let's see, I took it at 10:30, went to bed at 11:30, and woke up coughing at 2:30. Three hours of sleep, fabulous. And now I can't take anything again for another 6.5 hours.

So welcome to a day in the life of a girl called Cate. I wonder if I can sleep now... Or not.