I can't help it ya'll...I gotta rant. It's Friday and that's what you do when you've had a bad week, right Claude? First off TVA announced that prices for our power will rise "significantly" beginning October 1. What was quietly added to our utility bills back in April as a surcharge that fluctuates with the price of fuel has now turned into a full fledged line item that will equal a twenty dollar or so increase on top of the twenty I've been paying since the sucker went WAY up and never went down. TVA's explanation is that the poor things are having to pay for too much for coal which provides 60% of its' power. COAL??? Holy crap people...no wonder the earth is shriveling up. I thought coal mining was outlawed a long time ago and then Kathy Mattea wrote songs about the way it used to be in West Virginia. A nation with the technology that we have access to should have, long ago, found a cheaper way to run things that doesn't harm the environment. I feel sure the idea is out there somewhere, but there's too much money to be made off of fuels that are harmful. Yeah, I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory, huh?

Anyway, I was pretty pissy about that considering I've had to go stand in front ot the "man who lets you make payment arrangements" and have the July tab divided over two pay periods. The only way I managed to pay this one in full is that I had borrowed money from a credit union for some other problems. The alignment on the trusty (shaky) Camry had to wait. So then today the powers that be at the sawmill announced a new dress code to go into effect at the first of next year. Each department chooses two colors and can only wear scrubs of those colors in any combination. Except no printed bottoms, which I don't wear anyway 'cuz they make my butt look seriously big. The theory is that we will be more easily recognizable to patients as being from a certain area of the hospital if we kind of color color co-ordinate all look the same. Most of our in-patients are so elderly and frail that they don't even know we're there, much less remember what we wear. This includes the minimum wage earning housekeeping staff and there will be no stipend. Granted, it will be a hardship on even ME to buy all new work clothes over a three month period...but to them? I can just see my Mama now, sittin' there on a hospital bed with the color chart for departments trying to figure out who's who.

I was telling Babygirl about it on the phone this morning and made a passing reference to the book 1984. "Huh?" she said. "You mean the year I was born?" I could tell she had never heard of the Orson Wells tale or knew that Big Brother started there and not on TV. That, my friends, is when I felt really really old and weary. Needless to say, the natives are restless. That's why those kinds of things come down on Friday, so they won't have to look at us for a coupla days while we're pissed. Whatever.

I missed the 2nd meeting of the photography club thing because I just didn't have the energy to go anywhere else. I will still enter the contest because, hey. My mom wants me to :) Her favorite pictures are a pair of the barn and Pecan Lane with snow. Those will be on our cards this Christmas. I've gotten a bit more organized in taking pics and it pays off when you get ready to share 'em.

Fay is kicking our butt way up here in the form of heavy humidity. It's August, so I reckon you have to expect that. At least it's not 100 degrees. Hell on allergies, though.

Grand-cousin is trying to get born over in Jackson as I type and I'm hoping things won't be like they were for me when I had my one and only. Lord.Have.Mercy. They say you forget that shit, but I never have. Hang in there Carissa and Buddy. And Nana and Ronnie! And AUNT GRANNY!! ^j^

The best thing about the afternoon before a couple of days off is knowing that this too shall pass. Some sleep and giggles and quiet time will make it all look a bit less gloomy. How's that for faith?