After expenses – posterboard, tape, etc. – the yard sale netted me $183. I think that’s acceptable – most of my stuff was at pocket-change prices, so it’s a pretty good haul, all things considered.

There are still two big boxes of clothes, all packed up for their trip to the Salvation Army tomorrow. Don’t ask me why no one wanted to buy a Juicy Couture terry dress (green, size P, gently used) for two freaking dollars – but no one did. Heh. My neighbors are so low-brow. I still have the wedding dress and I’m going to try that on Craigslist again a few more times. I’m stingy enough to not want to let that one go for free.

There’s still so much to do in the week before the house hits the listings. I have two more rooms that I MUST paint in the basement, a floor to finish (after Dad is done with the drywall tomorrow), quarter-round molding to stain and install, and a ton ton ton of cleaning. My agent says that a lot of the houses that go on the market and stay on the market forever are not bad houses… they have messy owners who don’t understand that buyers don’t want to know what you had for dinner, what sort of cheesy collections you have, or what your family looks like.

When I was shopping for my house a few years ago, I toured one that not only had dog hair everywhere, it was practically a shrine to the Lords of Tacky. A LIGHT-UP rendering of the Last Supper? It looked like someone slapped a poster on a Lite-Brite and let their toddlers go nuts. Couple that with the velvet clown thing over the fireplace. Now add in the moose head that was wearing a Miller Lite cap, and one of those singing fish things. The occupant also obviously collected thimbles, shot glasses, spoons, and anything else you can buy at gas stations near state lines. There were lawn ornaments on every square inch of lawn. A fake waterfall in the backyard.

Um, NO.

The sad thing is, it was probably a really nice little house. I have a good imagination and I can usually see beyond things I can easily remedy. I can switch out light fixtures and change paint and remove wallpaper and install  closet shelving. I can envision the “after” pictures before they show them on HGTV. But even I could not look past the volume of CRAP in that particular house. I understand that people still have to live there while the house is on the market, but I’m prepared to live without my friend’s wedding pictures on the piano and my little travel collectibles on the sills of the stained-glass windows. My agent even suggested taking down things like my college diploma in order to declutter the walls and give that “more-space” feeling. I think YOU can lose your Lite-Brite for a little while.

Maybe living without my stuff will make me WANT to move. Why should you leave when you’re comfortable? The thought of such a clean and clutter-free house just makes me kind of itchy and ready to go someplace where I can leave a dish in the sink and not worry all day about my cat leaving a hairball in the hallway.

Wow, I just motivated myself. The faster I clean and paint, the faster it sells, right?

Now I just have to finish Pretty in Plaid, catch up on the Google Reader, and take one last look at the crossword I started but didn’t finish last night….

The happy fun of going to the  Cubs-Cards game yesterday (7-3,go Cubs go!) was tempered by a migraine and a very drunk boyfriend that I was about to punch in the head. It drives me nuts sometimes – he is normally such a sweet and considerate guy. He worries about me and takes care of me when I’m sick. But yesterday, good lord. Some sort of E-replacing, beer-based demon ate his brain, and that was NOT what I wanted to deal with when I was stuck at his house, unable to drive myself home or even sleep because I was in so much pain.

I woke up this morning, still woozy from the supa-strength narcotic pain meds, in a snuggly cuddle with a snoring boyfriend whose first slurry words were “I love you so much” when I rolled over and woke him.

Anyway, on to a different thing that might put you off your appetite instead.

I was reviewing some OR instrumentation today. Some of these names make about as much sense as the names on OPI nail polish. Maybe less. You could guess that “In the Navy” is dark blue and “Canta-berry Tales” is probably some shade of dark red, but put your imagination to use on these…

Brain Spoon?

Big Ugly?

BEAVER RETRACTOR???

Oh, it was cold up there. Good thing I had a little Bailey’s in the hot chocolate or I might have crumpled. 36 degrees in misty rain and gusting wind for four hours – people die of hypothermina in situations milder than that.

But the Cubs didn’t! We stayed till the very end and danced to “Go Cubs Go!” and waved the big “W” flag as the Colorado Rockies fled the field with frozen heads hung in shame.

It was so different to go to a game at good old Wrigley Field again – it was my first trip there in about twenty years. I’m so used to Busch Stadium with its millions of lights and colorful ads and Jumbotron. Even before the flashy new stadium was built in 2006, we had the lights and screens and music. There’s a Build-a-Bear (a Fredbird, really) inside Busch Stadium, along with an arcade and a million other things to divert you from the game you ostensibly came to see. In weather like we had on Monday, you probably wouldn’t have seen over 40,000 people sitting outside at a game in St. Louis. They’d be in the stadium bars and restaurants and watching the TVs and Jumbotron to see what was happening on the field. It’s not that we in St. Louis are necessarily big wusses, but it’s what’s available to us and so we take advantage of those things.

At Wrigley we had no choice. Go big or go home. We went big – literally, bundled up in layers of warmth and waterproofing, giving us an excellent cover for the bootlegged booze. We watched the game as it played out on the field, not a screen, and the scoreboard behind us was the old kind where you can see the person inside pull down the numbers and replace them. There were no instant replays. No trivia for the crowd. It was kind of heartwarming.

But you know, foot-warming might have been better. I couldn’t feel my toes for about three hours after we left, but it was such a wonderful day. A wonderful weekend, really. E and I did the roadtrip with some friends, and we all stayed at a Very Nice Hotel off Michigan Avenue for free, since it’s part of the family of hotels for which he works. Dinner the first night was at Morton’s with E’s dad, and I may or may not have had one too many vodka and Diet Cokes. E kept pinching me under the table to keep me from talking, lest I say something completely retarded in front of his AA dad. Oops.

And as usual, I forgot my expensive camera at home.

_____________________________

Two Updates:

1. The girl who had dinner with George Clooney did NOT get fired. He got permission from the boss to take her to dinner – how’s THAT for slick? At the Very Nice Restaurant, the customer is always right.

2. While we were up there, we talked to Archie about the Vegas deal. Everything is still kind of up in the air.

Dear Adobe Illustrator CS4 30-Day Trial Version.

I heart you. <3

Unlike almost every single other software trial version in the whole World Wide Web, you don’t put icky watermarks all over my files. Thank you for that. Since I don’t work for Creative Services or Marketing, I don’t get any good design software without a fight/extensive groveling. And even though my sloooow PC was basically asleep for half an hour while you installed everything, you saved me so much time today. I needed to edit that EPS file. I needed to convert things to paths. You were there when I needed you. And you humbly refrained from writing “Unregistered” on my finished files. Watermarks would have made them completely unusable for the factory, and all would have been lost.

I’m off to fight the IS Department and/or grovel extensively for a licensed version of you now.

xoxo

Rebekah

UPDATE: I WIN! INSTALLATION OF LICENSED VERSION HAS BEEN APPROVED.

My former pastor was shot and killed last Sunday during church.

Fred Winters was the pastor of First Baptist Church of Maryville (IL), where I went to youth group in high school. And he was gunned down by one of my high school classmates.

I haven’t been to FBC Maryville for years now, but the first text message from my sister last Sunday morning hit way too close to home – literally, about 5 miles from the house where I lived. The shooter was in the hospital (not mine) this week about 5 miles from where I live right now. And now he’s in jail, about 5 miles from our old high school.

It’s freaking SICK.

My sister was in the church she attends with my parents when the news broke. The mayor of the town is a member of her church and the head of the volunteer fire/EMS crew that was first to respond, so he was keeping all of the churches in town updated as they prayed in their Sunday services. We were texting back and forth all morning – her with news from the town and me with whatever I could find on CNN and other news sites. At first the news was just that there had been a shooting and people were hurt. Then it was that one person had died, but they got the bad guy. Then it was all over CNN that Pastor Fred was shot in the chest and killed in his own sanctuary while finishing up a sermon about finding happiness in the workplace.

Two members of the congregation attacked the shooter, who had stabbed himself with a knife after his gun jammed only four bullets into his 30 rounds. They were wounded by the knife but are both all right now.

I only knew him for a little while, but Pastor Fred made a big impression on me in the short time I went to his church. He told our youth group that it was okay to have questions about God. That it was okay to not have answers to those questions. Pastor Fred was always firm in his own convictions but they weren’t closed convictions. He had an open mind and an open heart. He didn’t just want to share his knowledge, he wanted to take in what other people knew and thought and felt. He was young and energetic and got excited about everything. I bet that even the most convinced atheist out there couldn’t know Fred as a man – not as a pastor – and not think he was a wonderful human being.

Why why why WHY?

Now that he’s out of the coma, out of the hospital and in jail, everyone wants Terry Joe Sedlacek, the shooter, to start talking. When I first heard what happened, I thought I just wanted that scumbag to die on the spot. But now I want to know why he targeted Fred Winters, of all people. I want to know what drove him to plan this crime so callously that he marked last Sunday as “Death Day” in his planner.

Not that it’s going to make any difference though. A good man is dead and he left behind a wonderful wife and two beautiful daughters. But we all want to know, as if it will make sense from the senseless.

Cindy Winters, Fred’s widow, gave her husband’s eulogy (click for link to video) yesterday and said “I’m not going to hate.” Can you even imagine saying that about the person who killed the father of your children? Can you imagine what it took for her to stand up there less than a week after her husband of over twenty years died so close to where she was standing yesterday?

I wish I had that sort of strength and faith. I believe in God and in being good and living a good life, but I don’t know if I could ever have what Cindy Winters has in her heart. Maybe that would make a difference, more than any story Terry Joe Sedlacek can tell us. Because no matter what he says, we won’t say “Oh, well THAT explains it perfectly.”

I work at a hospital and people die there all the time. Two of my favorite early blog posts (“Thoughts on a Sheeted Stretcher” and “Um, There’s a Body by the Elevator”) are about death and dying in the hospital. It happens in ambulances, in the ER, on our operating room tables, in the inpatient ICUs, on the regular units. It’s not just sick or old people. Some come in as victims of traumas and they die senseless deaths, like Pastor Fred with a bullet right through his heart. And in a professional way, we get used to it. We have to.

But it doesn’t make it any easier.