Don't sit under the apple tree

Do you ever have one of those days where you wonder how the hell we’ve been evolving for so many years and yet everyone is still somehow so dumb? Yes, you say? Well, then you know how I feel.

We got two cases yesterday, one is an 85 year old woman that died in a hospital ER, and the other one is a 40-something year old that died as an inpatient. So, when someone dies in the ER the coroner has to be notified and they issue a number to the case and release the body so that the mortuary can pick it up. If they died in the ER of something like a car accident or shooting or something the deceased would obviously go to be autopsied, but a vast majority of the ER deaths are people that are taken in already in the process of dying (like with old people). So, the 85 year old died yesterday, and the idiot coroner won’t let us take her until they have word from her doctor that she was supposed to die. WTF? She’s fracking 85!! She was dying at home and the paramedics tried to resuscitate her while in route to the hospital and couldn’t, so she died. I’m going to be even more pissed when her death certificate comes back reading that she had COPD for years or something.

Then the 40-something year old that had been a resident of the hospital for a couple of weeks is being autopsied by the coroner for who knows what reason. You don’t get to live in a hospital when you’re healthy, obviously there was something wrong with her, and I doubt that the hospital didn’t know what she was sick from and what killed her. She was being treated for Christ’s sake.

Am I asking too much? Sometimes, even though I know I’m not, I just can’t help but wonder…

On a lighter note, my co-worker, Buck and I have been singing Doris Day all afternoon. She's my favorite singer of all time, and the title of the post is one of her awesome songs.

Good days

Yesterday I drove home with the windows down and the music blaring. It was the best. I think it was about 107 degrees out (I adore the heat), I had burned a new cd at work and had my current favorite song on, and was in a great mood. I picked up Clementine from my sister’s house and we went to the dollar store so that she could pick out five things as a reward for cleaning her whole room without being asked (which is a HUGE feat for a 2.5 year old and warrants positive reinforcement). She went ape shit about getting to choose five things, especially when she saw all the skeletons that were hanging up in the Halloween display (not sure why she is so into skulls and the sort). Anyway, we left there with toys that included a bright pink pair of plastic high heels, which she promptly put on and fell over in.

My bff came over, she gets her hair done in my town even though she lives an hour away (red hair = tons of upkeep), and she finished at about six, so she and I made some kick ass tri-tip tacos and had martinis while watching reruns of Bones. Fun times.

Today is awesome as well, I’ve been meeting with families and looking at my favorite artist’s (sorry, mom) website, wishing I was wealthy enough to get one of his prints. Maybe when I’m older…

Love, Me

I received an email last week from a gal asking me to participate in a blog post today. After reading the email (and replying just to see if it was some sort of scam) I decided that even though it wasn’t really “my thing” I would do it. She asked me to write a love letter to myself, and the more I thought about it the more I wanted to do it, and there are a few other gals doing it as well. See, I tend to be fairly self-confidant, but as I was thinking about it I’m not sure why I am that way. What is it about myself that I love? Why do I love those things? Anyway, here it is, my love letter to myself:

My Dearest Darling,
I have been thinking about you this week, tying to decide what I could possible tell you to let you know how awesome I think you are. It's funny though, I can't seem to find the right words. Since I've actually always liked that I'm good at lists, here is what I've come up with so far:

1. Your compassion. It isn’t always your best quality, but when you show compassion there’s no end to the care that you will give someone.
2. Your artistic abilities. You are always patient and meticulous in your artistic endeavors, whether it’s drawing a picture or rebuilding a face, you always do a good job.
3. Your ability to not be ashamed. Mostly I’m referring to the tramp stamp you got years ago, but you aren’t ashamed of yourself, and even better, you aren’t ashamed of your past self either.
4. Your friendliness. You have never met a stranger. Even when you sit next to someone at a bar that turns out to be super annoying and crazy, you can’t help but make friends.
5. The way you walk in heels. You’re just fracking sexy.
6. Your thoughtfulness. You always think of others, and whether it’s a little gift you pick up for your sister, a note you mail to a friend, or a text message to your favorite uncle, you let people know they were thought of, and it means something to them.
7. And finally, your passion. The things you love, you love to the extreme. Your hobbies aren’t just hobbies, they’re your everything. You are relentless in your desire for what you cherish and love.

You are an awesome girl, Doll Face, and you will continue to be awesome for years to come.

Love,
Me

Here are the others that are participating:

This is Where I Write - http://rantsnotdrugs.blogspot.com/

Ms. Bea's Helpful Hints Blog - http://msbeahaven.com/ms-beas-blog/

Twenty Twenty Hindsight - http://twentytwentyhindsight.com/

Rollertrain - http://rollertrain.tumblr.com/

Cherry Bomb - http://www.cherrybombnyc.com

A little sad

Every year for Christmas my parents have an "open door" policy of sorts. We have always had the immediate family do the Christmas Eve thing, where we open our gifts and hang out, and then Christmas morning is super laid-back (except for my mom who cooks kick-ass Swedish pancakes and bacon and sausage) and we all open stockings. So every year there are random people over for Christmas morning, friends, co-workers, whoever wants to come over, and we always have extra stockings for people that just show up. It seems weird I suppose, that this huge holiday is always spent with people that we might not even know (aunts and uncles will also bring folks over that we have never met), but it really is awesome. It's one of those things that I hope I do when I'm old like my parents, just have an open door to anyone, even if it's Christmas.

Anyway, for the last five or six years our friends that we hang and drink with on weekends with the two daughters have come for Christmas, as their families are agnostic and don't really do Christmas, and it has been fun. The girls make it fun just because they're kids and it's tons of fun to shop for things to stuff their stockings, and their parents make it fun because they always seem to have this I-haven't-had-a-Christmas-this-fun-since-I-was-a-kid look on their faces when we sit down for breakfast. My mom says that her brothers would have a Swedish pancake eating contest every Christmas morning when they were younger, so I started that with the girls, complete with a trophy that gets engraved each year with the winner and their pancake number that whomever wins takes home, and it's just awesome.

So, this family that comes each year, they bring their (the dad's) mentally retarded uncle, Ben, from Oregon or somewhere, and he has a blast with us. He's not easy to understand, and every year we give him a blanket or something like that, not knowing him well enough to get him something truely thoughtful, but it's always nice to have him there, and the girls adore their great uncle, so good times are had by all. Anyway, Ben died today, after falling and breaking his neck last week, and it's just a bit sad. I'm sad for me, because I know that he's gone and it makes me wonder what happens next, I'm sad for the girls because while I believe in honesty with kids it sucks to have to actually be honest with them and tell them that he's just not coming back, I'm sad for my mom who was sad when I told her and I couldn't take that away from her, and I'm sad for the girls' parents who are going to miss him worse than the rest of us. Rest in peace, Ben, you will be missed.

Argh.

I had one of those families today that made me want to shoot someone. The son of the deceased was the only one to come in and make arrangements, and he was really nice, however, he was also very nervous. Now you might be thinking, “Of course he was nervous, Doll, I would be too if I were a sixty-something single man with no social skills and I was sitting across from you in that rockin’ black with white pinstripes skirt suit and your new shoes,” but this was different. He is one of those socially stunted guys that one often feels sorry for but can’t seem to like anyway, that always makes people around him feel strange. Anyhoo, he was making arrangements for his father’s funeral and it was all I could do to not tell him that I will be waiting in the office and to come get me when he could get through a sentence without interrupting himself so that we could get some work done.

And now that I’m writing it I feel bad because he’s no longer here and not annoying the shit out of me, and his dad is dead, and I’m just complaining, but there it is, one little bit of myself that isn’t perfect.

In which I realize I'm too old for drinking games

The hubby, daughter and I went to visit his parents this weekend. We own a house downtown in the town we lived in before and our renters moved out so we needed to go through the house and figure out what repairs needed to be done, as well as find new renters. We had put a sign up the weekend before and had a few people scheduled to come by and look at the place. It’s an adorable house, a Craftsman bungalow built in 1917, and the neighborhood is awesome, so we haven’t had any problems renting it (now if we could only get someone to buy it), and by 2 in the afternoon on Saturday we had it rented to a nice couple with two teenage sons. We are going back this weekend to show them how the pool pump works and to meet a repair guy there to replace a ceiling fan and a few lights. It’s very strange being a landlord.

Anyway, we got to see some of our old neighbors which was nice. Its one of those neighborhoods where everyone knows everyone else, so we’ve been missed, as have they. The weather was perfect, probably about 98 or so on Saturday, so there were quite a few of the old neighbors out walking.

Hubby and I decided that we would go out Saturday night and let his parents hang with Clementine (our daughter). We called up the gal that we had hired as a receptionist at the funeral home that we used to work in and she said she was having a few friends over to play beer pong and hang out. She’s pretty young, about 21 or 22, and all her friends that were there were young also, and this is what I realized:

1. I am not young anymore
2. Beer pong is not my Olympic sport
3. Coors/Miller/Bud are not my friends and make me appreciate my Costco brand microbrew multipack.
4. Our friend throwing the party, she is totally hot, but I forgot how hard it was for her to think. Funny though.

Sunday was nice, Clem stayed with the in-laws and hubby and I went back to the rental to have the new tenants sign the lease forms. The man renting the house is a farmer, he and his brother have vineyards about an hour away, as well as some large vineyards un in Napa, and he brought us a huge flat of the best grapes I’ve ever eaten.

Driving home from the in-laws we stopped in a town about an hour from our home so that I could go see the Harry Potter movie with one of my besties while Clem and daddy chilled at her house. One of her girlfriends came with us and we watched the movie (which was good) and then went out for a cocktail at the restaurant across the street. It was funny, we were sitting at the bar, looking quite a bit like Charlie’s Angels (blonde, brunette, and a red head) and I asked my gals to wink at the older guy across the bar so that our martinis would get paid for. We all laughed, knowing that we’d never do it, and not two minutes later was one of the guys right next to us introducing himself and ordering a martini. He was telling us that it was one of his son’s 21st birthday today and that he had been hanging out at the bar earlier and that we just missed him, then he bought our drinks, flirted relentlessly with us, and invited us over to his house for an ‘after party.’ We declined and thanked him for his generosity (they were top shelf) and told him that we hoped to run into him again. Anyway, that’s about it for my weekend, and I should have a funeral-related post in a bit.

New shoes

I had an extra fifteen minutes to kill today at lunch so I went to the Payless Shoe store down the street from the office and bought these bad girls for ten bucks:


Yay for shoes!!!

A force to be reckoned with

It has been one of those days in which all my office work gets done by noon (which probably has a bit to do with the fact that Big Bird is back so there’s little goofing off) and I don’t have anything to do but get bodies ready and in their caskets. Jane came by and took Monica and me out to lunch (best Mexican food ever) and we came back to work full and lazy. The three of us ladies headed to the back to curl hair, put make-up on, and generally beautify the deceased cases in the dressing room. We soon finished and Monica and I decided to organize the cart that we keep all of our everyday tools/instruments/make-up on and integrate the things we bought at Target the other day. Jane made a comment that we needed to get one of those huge Craftsman tool things on wheels, which I would LOVE, but I told her I didn’t want to ask for Boss to buy it for me. The cart I use now is old, and a bit small, but it works well enough. Anyhoo, Jane left the two of us girls and we started organizing. I cleaned all the brushes (both make-up and hair), instruments, and the cart, and she went through the make-up and tossed out the old stuff and labeled all the plastic drawers we keep the cosmetics in with what is in each drawer (this helps the boys either put things back where they belong or at least leave the stuff out that they used so that we can put them away later). We were unstoppable. If it was in the dressing room it got cleaned, organized, and put away. And to make it even better, Big Bird didn’t come back to bug us once with questions about paperwork we have done the past two days while she’s been out sick. Today = Awesome

And I quote, "Yeah, I puked on my junk"

PLEASE DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ ABOUT GROSS STUFF

Okay, so at the end of the workday today, Buffy and I were discussing Big Bird being sick and how it's so nice that we got to have a relaxed, yet productive day. So, Tank chimed in and said that she's home with "the shits" and we all started laughing hysterically about it (just imagine a 62 year old, stick-up-my-ass, I-was-raised-by-Amish-folks-but-I'm-totally-not-judging-you-heathens type sitting on a toilet, let alone with "the shits"), as he finishes by telling us that she is also puking all day long, to which I say, "Oh is she? That sounds a lot like what Jane had on Friday (obviously insinuating that Jane (a lesbian and my best girl at work) was making out with Big Bird (a lesbian hater and a pain in my ass)), and we all start laughing even harder (I had tears). So Buffy starts in about the worst sicknesses we have all had, and we're sharing stories about vomit and diarrhea and all that stuff, and Buff shares this story:

"This one day, it was the wifey and my first, maybe second, Christmas as a married couple, and I had the stomach flu something fierce. I am sitting on the toilet with the worst butt-sickness ever, and I'm telling myself to not get that I-have-to-puke feeling, to no avail. So then I am thinking that I know I am gonna puke, and I had moved the trash can earlier to puke in, and I knew I couldn't try to get my ass off the toilet to puke in it, I would just end up making a shit mess on the floor, and so I decide to lean back, aim for the space between my legs, and puke into the toilet."

At this point I have peed on myself I am laughing so hard, and my manager, Tank, is looking at us with a 'what-is-up-with-this-generation-that-they-can-talk-so-candidly-with-the-opposite-sex-about-shit-and-vomit' look on his face, an that's when it just gets heavenly. Buffy says this:

"Yeah, I puked on my junk. All over my junk"

I DIED LAUGHING.

So, this is my question: Is potty humor always going to be that funny to me? My roomate in college was so anti-potty humor that I wondered if I was normal. I mean, two years we lived together and I just can't remember her even saying "poop," and I just wonder: Is something wrong with me??

Monday Monday

Mondays are busy. People wait over the weekend to call in and get prices, and even wait to make arrangements for funeral services if their deceased family member died in a facility with a morgue allowing for the refrigeration of the body, and then Monday morning they all come pouring in at the same time. There were four families here at 10 this morning, and one of them I met with. They were a nice family, two brothers (and one brought his wife) making arrangements for their mother’s cremation. She had pre-arranged years ago, so really they were just listening to me tell them what had been decided and what they would need to do from there. They were very talk-y and one of the brothers asked if I went to school to work in a funeral home and we chatted about the whole schooling process, and then he told me about a show that had aired a few years back about some mortuary science program in one of the schools in California. It really sounded interesting, from what he described cameras followed students around during their day and it showed their reactions to certain things. Anyway, it sounded cool.

Jane, the embalmer, called in sick Friday which is why I had to embalm that day, and she’s back now. She had been puking all weekend, but says she’s fine now, and I think we might go to lunch together in a bit.

Bid Bird, the office manager, is not here today, and everyone is a bit nuts without her. She keeps us all on the straight and narrow, and when she’s not here it’s just one big party. We all get louder and crasser and a lot more fun. Anyway, I think she is sick, she must be, as it’s unlike her to miss work on a Monday, and while I like the office atmosphere better when she’s gone I hate doing her work.

Also, this just in: Big Bird is off tomorrow too!!

Hello, my name is...

So, I was thinking, since I don't know most of my readers, and I would like to, would you please leave a comment here and introduce yourself? You don't have to, but I would love it if you did, and maybe just told me something about yourself...

Meh

I'm in the office today and decided that since its been so long since I last posted I should do that now. So, here is a list of what I did on Friday that I would bet you out there didn't:

1. Embalmed
2. Ate way too much pizza (that my boss bought us in an attempt to make us feel less shitty about having to scan all the old funeral files into the new computer)
3. Ordered fliers for a gig my husband is playing next month (ones that I designed even)
4. Injected an eyeball full of a plastic substance
5. Learned how to use a new copy machine
6. Learned how to say "I'm fine" in Armenian
7. Went out with some friends that live in Colorado now (why is it that I always expect people that have moved away will someday come "home"?)
8. Drank 2 Ketel One martinis
9. Started writing the September issue article of the local magazine. That's right, I'm like a celebrity.

Sorry it isn't the best post I've ever written, but hey, at least it's something...

Killing time

The server here at work is being redone so I’ve had iffy internet abilities. We’re slow right now (normal for the summer) so it’s the perfect time to do a bit of housekeeping at the office, and we also got a new copy machine (color copies!!!) and today was pretty much dedicated to setting up all the new stuff. The new gal even got a computer. Anyway, while I don’t have much to write, I did want to show you the radio we found while cleaning one of the closets, the mouth moves with the sound from the radio:

Chillin in the car

So, I'm sitting in a work van in the parking lot of a convalescent home trying not to have heat stroke. We got a call at the funeral home that someone here died who had pre-arrangements with our firm, and I offered to go on the call to pick them up. I was actually a bit surprised that I was allowed to go on it, what with all my fragile girl parts that everyone seems to think are easy to damage, but they did and so here I am.

I arrived a while ago and one of the staff members informed me that the family of the deceased had shown up shortly after they were notified of the death, and that there was still someone arriving to see the deceased in a little while. I told her that I would just go wait in the car and she could come get me when they all left, which she responded to by offering to let me hang out in the waiting room. Um, really? Has she never smelled that place? I'd rather wait in the blazing hot and uncomfortable van than go back to work smelling like urine and old people. I know I seem harsh, but these places are awful, and I don't know how they keep people on staff, not to mention residing there as well. And I didn't want to be talked at by the little olds that make no sense. Walking in the front door is like entering a circus, with all the yelling, beeping, coughing, etc. It's a madhouse in there.

Late night conversations

Last night I was talking with my husband out on the patio and I made a comment to him about how strange it is that the general public in the US has little idea about how people die. The comment confused him, so I clarified:

We understand that certain things kill us, car accidents, overdoses, COPD, cancer, etc, and we even understand what happens to the body over time with diseases, but when someone actually gets ready to die (and I realize that this doesn’t apply in accident/sudden deaths, which are such a small portion of the deaths each year) people don’t know what goes on. I suppose it is because deaths don’t occur at home here in America, but are more likely to happen at a nursing home or hospital, so we as the general public aren’t a part of the deaths.

I remember hearing a coworker talking to a family over the phone about a relative of theirs that was dying, they were getting prices and making sure they knew what was going to happen with the funeral home when the death occurred, and my coworker asked the person on the phone if the imminent person was still eating. I don’t know what the person said, but the coworker went on to explain that first they would quit eating, and then they wouldn’t drink anymore, after which the death would happen in a short time (like a day or two), and the person on the phone was shocked. They had no idea that those two things happen, and also no clue that once a person stops taking in liquids that there was really nothing left to do but wait. At first I was shocked that the hospice people hadn’t gone over the details of the impending death with the family, but realized that maybe they had (and really, now that I look back, they most likely had, considering it’s what they do), and that the person calling the funeral home might not be the person hospice talked to. But the longer I think about it (and this happened about 5 years ago) the more shocked I become that people just don’t know what happens when someone is dying. I mean, it happens to everyone, and we have no clue. It’s not even like we can use the I’ve-never-experienced-a-death-before excuse, because we only think we’ve never experienced a death before (if we think that at all) since we are all so “protected” from death by others around us (usually parents). Now, I know it sounds like I’m ranting, and really, I am, but its frustrating sometimes, feeling like this thing, one of the few things that we all go through, is so little understood, when really it could be one of the few things that we all understand about one another. And then maybe experiencing the death of someone close wouldn’t seem so lonely.

Roller Derby

The hubby and I went with some good friends to a roller derby match this weekend. When I moved back to my hometown I was looking forward to becoming a derby girl, but have yet to do so. All the guys at work think I should do it, and the hubby, now that he's seen a match, is also on board with it, so I think maybe next month I'll show up to practice. Now, I don't know if roller derby is big everywhere in the US, but there are quite a few teams out west and the matches are well-attended. Kids under 10 are free to boot, and there are always quite a few of them there. Anyway, once the girls have me on their team I'll let you know what my derby name is.

My day, or, in which there are problems

The thing that really sucks about being an embalmer that also meets with families is just that, you do both. This morning I started embalming a case at 8:40 (after our weekly meeting) and knew I had a family to meet at 10:30, which normally would be fine. Here is a list of everything that went wrong with the case I embalmed:

1. He wasn’t on blocks when I got into the prep room. Now, if any of my readers are embalmers, I am about to sound like a spoiled, whiny, girly embalmer chick, which is fine. Opie, my back-of-the-house coworker, gets to work at about 6:30am and gets a lot of body prep done before I even show up, and is really good about putting the cases to be embalmed up on blocks (plastic or metal footed boards that go under the deceased at the shoulders, hips and feet to allow water to flow over their backside) and with a sheet over them so that when the embalmer arrives they can get right to work. Well, this guy (the one to be embalmed) was big, like 220 or so, and I am not big. Now, you need to know that I don’t like asking for help, especially here at work where the guys all tell me that I shouldn’t be lifting bodies since I'm a girl and girls just aren’t made to lift things, but there was no way I was going to be able to lift him while placing a block under him, so I had to get help.

2. The deceased had what we call “skin slip” on his arms. Skin slip is what it sounds like, the skin slipping and tearing, and then oozing from the place that the skin should be. This happens because the fascia under the skin decomposes enough to “let go” of the skin on top of it, and when the body is moved the skin just slips right off. Gross, yes, but at least it doesn’t smell. This guy was also a bit edematous, which aides in the skin slipping.

3. I nicked a vein. Yeah, so apparently I’m not that great at being careful. I opened the supra-clavicular (yay! embalming term!!) incision I made, and started my search for the artery, and wouldn’t you know, I broke a little vein which started to leak blood all in the incision and get in the way of my finding the artery, that little shit. So now I stick my finger (gloved, of course) in the hole and feel around for the artery (in school they always said that we should be able to find the artery with our fingers, not our eyes, probably for situations just like this), which I found, thank god. It feels like a large, wet rubber band, just in case you wondered, unless the person was really sclerotic, in which case it feels like sand inside a balloon.

4. I wasn't getting any fluid in the legs. Like none at all. So, I made incisions in each leg to find the femoral arteries. It took a while, and by the time I was done with the second leg it was time to meet with my 10:30 family which was:

5. fifteen minutes early. Easy arrangement though and I was back in the prep room at 11:30 to finish up the embalming I had left, which is not normal AT ALL, fyi. He actually ended up looking pretty good, and here are the good things that happened after all the problems:

1. I got to leave at 4:15, the time at which I had requested to leave in order to make my five o'clock:

2. HAIR APPOINTMENT!!! I haven't gone to a 'real' salon in months, it was one of the things I said I'd sacrifice in order to move to my home town and rent an apartment while still owning a house in another town that was not going to sell. I look awesome, and my hairs are like an inch long, but yet still non-manish (or at least not totally man-ish)

3. My hubby and daughter are out of town for the night, so my favorite sister (the youngest) and I went for cocktails to the spot that my boss and his girlfriend were, and we drank for free. Yay for free drinks, right?

4. I get to sleep with the windows open. It's like 78 degrees out right now and I think I'm in heaven.

I can't complain

We’re still slow. The boss was chatting with the office manager, Big Bird, and somehow BB convinced him that we (the three of us women) should go shopping instead of stay in the office, and then go to lunch together, and also got him to give us cash to pay for lunch. It sounds like fun, and I’m totally into it, but it makes me wonder what the boss has in mind for the guys of the office to do. Stripper, maybe? Have a keg delivered? Watch something good on the flat screen in the (unused so far this week) chapel? Hmmm…

Dying of boredom

Jane, the main embalmer here, is out of town starting today until next Tuesday. She is going fishing, which is funny. I’ve never gone fishing for reasons other than being hungry while backpacking, and so never used a fishing pole. I don’t even really like fish, so the whole fishing thing seems lame, or boring or something. So, she’s all excited about a week of fishing and can’t wait to be wherever it is that she’s going. So, that means I’ll be embalming more than usual this week, and meeting with (hopefully) less families. I never like being the director that meets with a family and the embalmer for their deceased relative, mostly because I tend to feel like that is creepy for the family. I mean, my name is listed on the death certificate of anyone I embalm, and for some reason I think that families don’t really want to know the person that did the embalming. I suppose that its weird for me to think that, I mean, the general public doesn’t actually know what embalming really is, so they probably don’t pay much attention to the name listed on the death certificate.

Monica, the new girl, says she’ll help me out in the prep room, and I told her to bring some tennis shoes to keep here at work (it sucks to have to embalm in four inch heels, even if it is sexier), and that I would make her a cute apron. Back when I started at this mortuary I made myself a kick-ass apron out of oil cloth (that stuff that plastic tablecloths are made out of, with the fuzzy backing) that I wear in the prep room. The fabric store had a lot of different patterns of oil cloth and I chose a black and white toile pattern, and plain red accents (pockets, straps and edging). It probably isn’t quite OSHA compliant, but it works for me, and is definitely cuter than the space suit crap the funeral home buys. And the pockets are wonderful.

We are really slow right now, almost painfully so. It’s a funny thing to wish that we were busier, especially since that would mean death for people, but I can’t help it. I spent the morning organizing the prep room and the makeup cart, and am thinking about going to Target (love that place) to stock up on a few “normal” makeup products, as well as a few other supplies that I use during restoration. Hopefully I can leave soon…

Famous people death game

Okay, there’s this game that I used to play with some friends. At the beginning of the year we would submit twenty dollars and a list of ten famous people that we thought would die that year to the leader of the game. Then we would wait. All year. At the end of the year we would look over our lists and add up our points. This is an example of how it would work with the points, say, if Michael Jackson was on one of the lists: Michael’s age, 50, subtracted from 100, which would give you 50 points for that person. Now, it is uncommon to get 50 points for just one person, as it isn’t as likely for someone ‘young’ to die, and therefore such people don’t tend to make the lists of our death game. Now, this would have been a good year for some youngs, had they been on people’s lists, but they are not. But it is a fun game, and I encourage you to try it, and the winner of the year gets everyone’s buy-in.

Lazy Friday

My boss told me yesterday at 4 that I could take the day off today unless we got really busy overnight, which apparently we didn't. So today my daughter and I, along with the family I nannied for back years ago, went to a water park. It was hot as hell today and the place was busy, but we had a great time playing around in the water and eating hot dogs.

This week at work was a week full of ship-outs. A ship-out is when we arrange for human remains to fly out of state or out of the country. I had two that were international shipments, and the funeral home had three that were out-of-state transfers. The out-of-country ones are a bit more work, as we have to get the consulate of the receiving country involved and they approve of the shipment before the human remains can board a plane. I also do consulate work for a couple of other funeral homes when they have remains to ship to Mexico, which is quite often, and I do all the translations for the Mexican Consulate and then they file the papers. The death certificate and transit permit, as well as the certified embalmer's letter all have to be translated, and it's always fun to learn how to say different causes of death in Spanish. I'm actually getting quite good at it.

So, I hope you all have a good fourth, I plan on sitting by a pool and drinking beer all day, and hope yours is as relaxing as I intend for mine to be.

What have I done now?

I know I'm not the only one to think that I might have jinxed myself, but when I wrote the post the other day about how my friend's parents are going to start dying I didn't think it would happen so soon.

My mom and dad are in Canada right now. There's a gal at our church that I am fairly good friends with (her roommate and I are quite close, so we see each other occasionally) and she is very close with my mom who has kind of adopted her since her mom lives out of state. So this gal, she comes over for holidays and my mom always does a birthday dinner thing for her and she gets along with my sisters as well, and is about my age (maybe a year younger). Anyway, my mom's cell phone doesn't work in Canada (what's with that?) but she's been emailing me everyday to check on us and on our grandma, and last night her email read that the gal's mom had died suddenly and that she didn't know what to do, and was on her way to the state her mom lived in, and my mom wanted me to call the gal to see what I could do to help her and answer her questions, so I did. And it sucks, not being where I can really help her, and just making calls to different funeral homes and cemeteries. I know I'm helping, just not as much as I want to. And deep down I know I didn't jinx her mom, but it just makes me feel odd, you know?