Suzanna Danna

I thought it was about time to create a cast page. I know I am still new at this, so it may be a bit puny, but I will add to it as we go along. (Updated a few things on 7/19/04)

Suzanna Danna: Me! I am a 31-year-old (now 32) southern woman. I was raised Baptist but I have enough guilt to be crowned an honorary Catholic. I am enthralled by suspension of disbelief on a regular basis and I have an indescribable fear of tofu. I am “Rubenesque” at best and “a big girl” at worst. I dream in color and texture and I am regularly thrown (mentally) by the complexity and absurdity of my dreams. I love my family, my cat, bad movies and most of all Mister. Update: We got married 9/27/03!

Mister: An amazing man who found me last year when I had all but given up on the fairy tale most girls dream of. He rode up on his big white stallion [his SUV], his shining armor glowing in the hot sun [he was nicely dressed after being made an officer at his place of employment], he offered me gifts of extraordinary magnitude [he bought me ice cream then took me to dinner… yep, dessert first! Hee!] and his heart, mind, soul and spirit were a complete match for mine. I may sound like some cheesy bodice-ripper romance novel here, but ya’ll, I shit you not. This man is amazing. Update: I am so happy to be his wife. We have had the most amazing year. We have traveled, we have planned, we have saved, we even moved from our tiny one bedroom apartment into a house in June of 2004.

Momma and Daddy: Yes, it is self-explanatory… oh hush. My mother is also known as June, as in June Cleaver.

xxxxxxxx: Changed at the request of a family member 9/9/04.

Daddy V: The male species of Mister’s parental units. He just underwent quadruple by-pass surgery and a valve replacement in May 2003.

Mister’s Momma: The female species of Mister’s parental units.

Aunt Sue: My Great Aunt on my father’s side. A bit of a shiner and the sweetest woman in the world. She lives in Mister’s hometown. Small world ain’t it? (Update: She just had her 90th birthday in July of 2004.)

Aunt Jean: My daddy’s sister. I Love her more than my luggage!

Debra Jean: My ex sister-in-law. We were best friends in college and ended up marrying (and divorcing) law-enforcing brothers. Short version of the story, well, there really isn’t a short version. I will get her to do a guest entry. Update: She probably will never do a guest entry as she never updates her own neglected journal.

Maximillian McGillikitty III aka Max: My beautiful kitty. Update: He just had his 2-year anniversary/birthday with me. I got him from the Irving SPCA on 7/17/02.

Clarice: A girlfriend whom I met online. Very sweet woman with two children and a wonderful husband.

Hand Boss: My boss, who at one point, gave me the hand while we were having a conversation. So sue me, I hold a grudge. Update: I was laid off from the association where Hand Boss reigns supreme (with cheese) on October 15th, 2003, so I do not work for this shitass anymore.

Co-Worker C: My one and only co-worker whose name begins with C. She and her life partner (of almost 13 years) have a menagerie of pets. A Great Dane, 2 Chihuahua’s, a hound dog, 3 cats, 4 birds, 4 beta fish, a Pac-man frog, an iguana and a turtle or two. I am fascinated by their house, their animals and their lifestyle. My two favorite things to say to her are, ‘you like boys’ and ‘you are sooooooooooo gay.’ Update: Sadly enough with the layoff I lost the privilege of working with Co-Worker C. She and I still keep in touch via email and phone.

If you need explanations on anyone please let me know so I can add them to the cast list.

Update: I am not sure who I am missing with this cast page. It is the first time I have updated it since June of 2003 (it’s now July of 2004) and I am sure a lot has happened, but I don’t talk about many people with much regularity. I am a typical journaler, I am self-centered, naive and vain and the world revolves around me so that’s all I talk about… heh.

Good day to all of you in Dairyland. I am the webically acclaimed ex sister-in-law of the Dairily famed Suzannadanna. Yep…. I am Debra Jean, aka many a nick. I will let you choose which you would like to me to bka (be known as).

1. Debra Jean -- Name on birth certificate and it has a nice southern ring to it even though my mother is from New York – but Dad is from Texas and so am I… still it’s strange to me how she came up with it.

2. DJ -- Yes, it is self-explanatory, but my girlfriend in Santa Cruz, CA provided me with that one when we were young… not to say that we are old now, but you get the idea.

3. Debs – Again, self-explanatory, but all through high school, this was the name given to me by my group of friends. I even had a few teachers and principals that complied. They, to this day, call me nothing else unless they are trying to provide some sort of clarification to outsiders. In that case it is coupled with my last name as well.

4. Pippy -- Name given to me by the Harley group with which I used to ride. I had long hair and always wore it in braids with bows and such that always matched my outfits – hey! I can be dressed for motorcycles AND be color coordinated as well. There is no rule against it. It just doesn’t seem to be done often which makes me different… yea!

5. Trixie -- Name most recently bestowed upon me. I call everyone Trixie, regardless of his or her sex or whether or not I know him or her. It doesn’t really matter to me. The purpose is to get their attention, and it works 99.9% of the time. Now there is a group of us who go out to crowded dance clubs from time to time, and it is so much easier to locate each other amongst the crowds and in the bathrooms if we just yell that blanket “TRIXIE!” We know that we are all Trixie and can answer accordingly. Because we have yet to run into anyone actually named Trixie, we are never running into the problem of a stranger mistakenly thinking we are talking to or looking for him or her. When the name is used, believe me, you understand the way it is to be taken (whether as a term of endearment or as pointed jab to get your jerk-face attention).

I sometimes feel prone to slightly schizophrenic episodes due to all the different titles I hold, so it might actually be nice to have it narrowed down to just one for the purpose of my journal writing. Yes, the more I think about it, I am more inclined to believe that the writings would be much easier for a reader to follow if he or she were not subject to a crapshoot of authors. That is all for now. I am now wrestling with an identity crisis. Once I have a determined title I will continue with my venture to “regale you with tales of hilarity!” ( Suzannadanna, Baby Huey… SEXY!). At least that is the expectation up to which I must now live. But if I don’t… whatever (Suzannadanna hates that! But not as much as touching her with just one finger! LOL)

I got this email from Mister a little while ago:

Next Saturday, June 21st [Big Boss] is turning 50. To mark the occasion, his wife and I are planning a real special treat for him.... :) We want to have his party at [neato place] in [neato town] on [neato road] and [neato street] that night. First, I'm waiting to see if [Big Boss痴 wife] can make sure [Big Boss] will be in town that night. Secondly, I'd like to know how many of us (in IT) we can expect to attend.
The plan is to have a Stripper (God forgive me) and an interesting Cake... [Big Boss] will freak over the Stripper as I have been warned by him time and again not to do it... :)
Please email me back and let me know if you and your other half might be able to attend the party.
Thank you for your time!
[Secretary Girl]

Ya値l? Is it just me? Or is that a recipe for disaster? I have been to office parties, outside the office even, that resulted in hook ups that went horribly awry. People dancing wildly and shakin� their money makers when they are normally quiet and reserved CFO痴. Months of, 泥o you remember when [insert name here] danced on the bar while twirlin� her drawers around her left pinkie!? Hence, I sent the following reply back to Mister.*
Note to reader: Bless his heart, he called me after he sent the email to assure me that he hadn稚 read the email all the way through before he forwarded it to me. He was embarrassed.

My reply:

Seems like a ploy for a rockin� good (er I mean uncomfortable) time!
If you would like to go, I will go with you. I'm not saying that the moment we see some chick in an ill fitting cop's outfit coming towards us that I'm gonna drag you out of there. I'm just saying....

I need to hear from you guys. I feel like I am being a prude, but that part of me that says, 土anno Suz, this could get ugly� is speaking up.

The weather in Texas can change as quickly as the mind of a woman… going through menopause… in July… at a %70 off sale at the Neiman Marcus discount outlet… while wearing tight shoes.

One moment the heat is searing your lungs and your brain, your clothes are sticking to your baking body and the air is so humid you feel like you are breathing through a sponge or a poorly maintained lung machine… underwater; and the next, wind is whipping out of the west, dark clouds roll in, the temperature drops to 80 and you are pelted with raindrops as big as harvest fed field mice.

For the past few days storms have blown in almost a routine fashion. The mornings have been misty and humid, the afternoons muggy and hot and the evenings (and over night) have produced thunderstorms that Zeus would be proud of.

I, for one, am not a big fan of the boom boom thunder thunder big noise loud crash blinding light storm. If it wants to rain quietly and with a bit of decorum [read: visit England during the … well, anytime really] then I am all for the life giving water from the sky. But if a storm wants to stomp around making a big noise and a big scene then I’ll be over here, *points* under the bed.

I have had a considerable problem with storms (and clowns) since I was pretty young. I’m not sure if it was that I thought that the storm was the catalyst for that big snotty looking tree to eat Robbie Freeling in Poltergeist or if I thought it was a manifestation of evil spirits that created the storm. Oooh, another creepy movie with heaps of creeps wishing bad things to happen to curious kids was Something Wicked This Way Comes. That flick used storms as a tool to say, ‘Warning! This is shit is about to get skeery!’ In other words, foreboding. I guess I learned that if a storm sprung up, something was about to get wack.

I know I am speaking of movies here but there were some real life scary storm thingies too.

I lived in East Texas for about nine years and the area was called Tornado Alley. Whee. Fun times. I can remember that every time there was a tornado spotted in the Nacogdoches/Center area that it most likely went right down Highway 7 East. I lived about a mile off of Hwy 7 East. The sky would go green and I just knew that I would have to make my way around felled trees and that rusted out water tank that always got picked up and deposited in the middle of that two lane highway on the way to work the next morning.

I lived in a valley (sorta*) between Swift Hill and another little rise in the landscape. When a funnel or tunnel cloud would come through you could hear it screaming. Sideways winds, the sound of trees cracking and falling over (that suspiciously sounds like trees pulling up roots to come get you), hail, blinding lightening. Suffice it to say, I was/am not a big fan of storm-like activity.

*The valley was there because a 10-acre lake used to inhabit the space. I say used to because my ex brother in law (Debra Jean’s ex bundle of fun) blew up the dam while fishing with dynamite. Poof, lake no more. No, I’m not kidding. Yes, I wish I were.

Last night when Mister and I went to bed a storm was crankin up to let loose. There have been storms three nights in a row, hence the crankiness that surrounds me. I have not been sleeping well. I thought that I was handling the lightening and thunder like a good girl, no jumping, squealing, shrieking or basically acting like a guppy in a blender. I thought that I was being calm, cool and collected. Yes, sure I would wince at particularly bad patches of BLINDING ELECTRIFYING LIGHTENING! But, who wouldn’t?

My façade was blown when Mister suggested that I take a sleeping pill.

*blink*

A sleeping pill?

I have such goodies in my cabinet because of a little thing I like to call insomnia. It hasn’t been bothering me lately [knock on wood], or so I thought.

I padded quietly through the dark apartment to the kitchen to look in my medicine cabinet. I pulled out my little bottle of Sonata (I think that is what they are called.) and looked at them.

Just then a searing flash of white so intense burned through my retinas and allowed me to see the skeletal outline of my kitty Max. An enormahuge BOOM!!! reverberated through the apartment and set my crystal goblets to singing.

I decided to take two.

The next thing I know, it was 6:30 this morning. My equilibrium was off and my brain felt like mush. I stumbled around after I got out of bed, took my shower, contemplated my mascara for an inordinately long time and left my mouth lipstick free.

Moral of the story, I don’t like storms. I should only take sleeping pills on the weekends and a hairdryer is a dangerous instrument when you don’t have your balance.

I still don’t like clowns…. I’ll tackle this in another entry.

Mister cracks me up so bad.

Mister: We can have everybody over tonight to my house if you want. The common areas are fairly clear of debris.

Me: Your “common areas”? What, do you have a compound or something??? *snicker*

Mister: Yes, I am a Twig Dividian… there aren’t enough people for a whole branch.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! *snort*

I can feel the bile beginning to rise.

All last week the hand boss was out on vacation. I made it my solemn vow to have; in my grubby little hands, before his return; all of the materials and files needed to complete the Convention Program. I called the advertisers, I begged, I pleaded, I cajoled up to the very last minute.

I had alerted the advertisers over a month out that their ads would need to be in by the 12th, which was Thursday. How many was I missing come Thursday at 5 pm? Oh, gee. Can you say FIVE ADS!?

Thank goodness I built in the extra day for more begging, pleading, and cajoling.

I got most of the ads, except for two mealy ones that were held up by weather. FedEx and UPS were both running a day late due to the storms we had last week. But I would have them by today!

I was convinced that today, Ye Ole Monday, would be a good day.

I updated my spreadsheet, I put all the ads in the “ad copy basket” and I saved all electronic files to a CD. I gave all of this to hand boss with a barely concealed flourish.

Me: Everything is ready for you to edit the Program as you requested.

Hand Boss: We’ll see.

I am NOT kidding you people. This miserable person just got back from a week of vacation. Cannot he be any more pleasant?

He proceeded to go into his office, curse every file he opened and then make snide remarks on how those weren’t the file types he wanted. He stomped out of his office and told me that we have 4 problems so far. Files were missing for W, X, Y and Z. I followed him back into his office, pointed to the “ad copy basket” and told them that the ads he was looking for were in there. I pulled them out. He snatched them away, threw them on his desk and muttered something.

On my spreadsheet there was a list of which files were in the basket, which files were on the disc and which files were already inserted into the magazine via the desktop publishing software we use.

This afternoon he lost his shit over not having the correct information to list about the seminars for the convention. That information was forwarded to him when I first received it.

Co-worker C noticed my distress and took me to lunch.

When we returned he called her in his office so he could make loud, rude, mean comments about me.

Immature much? This is my BOSS people!

Thank goodness I was on the phone and only heard a portion of the rude comments or I would have walked out right then.

After he left for the day…

Me: So, what did he say?

Co-worker C: You know I don’t listen to him when he is that kind of mood. He’s just mean.

What I heard… “Dear God, it was so awful I was bleeding from the ears before I could escape from his office!”

When I started this post early this morning, I had no idea I was in for this kind of Monday. I was just nervous about the “We’ll see” bullshit comment.

Co-worker C: What are you thinking?

Me: That it is sad when I have taken so much flack from him that I just don’t care anymore.

Co-worker C: What do you mean?

Me: I will still try and do 120% for the board of directors, for my vendors and my advertisers, but where he [read: hand boss] is concerned, I just don’t care anymore. I think I need to stop trying to please him because it seems to be down right impossible.

Sad huh?

I know that there are little issues that make people want to scream on a normal basis in any job. Here’s the rub. I have a theory that it seems more pronounced because there are only three of us in this office. Call me kooky.

You: Kooky.

Me: Oh… all right.

Do to an entry from Mimi Smartypants, I have had the song Boogie In Your Butt stuck in my head for the past month. It only rears its ugly head at very inopportune moments like at church, dinner with my parents, my nephew’s birthday party and business meetings.

I decided to exorcise that demon this weekend. Saturday night on Mister’s computer I tracked down the song and downloaded it. I waited with baited breath as it slowly made it’s way through cyberspace to Mister’s hard drive.

When it was completed…. I pushed play reverently and waited for the song to begin.

Oh Lawd! I had not heard the song in over a decade but I knew almost every word. That does not bode well for what my memory and gray matter are being used for. I was dancing around in Mister’s office when he turned the corner.

Note to Self: Singing about anything, including boogie, in your butt is not very ladylike.

Owie owie owie owie.

I went to the dermatologist’s office yesterday afternoon.

I got out of work early and went home, Mister picked me up and took me to the doctor’s office to wait, and wait… and wait.

We arrived at 2:30. My appointment was for 2:40. The nurse called me in at 3:15, “Miss Danna, we will see you now.” Yay. Mister and I sauntered (yes, stop laughing, it was a sauntering occasion) into an examination room the size of a hamster cage. A strange doctor walked in and said, “Hmmm, You must be Dr. Winn’s patient, because I don’t believe you are mine.”

Out we went, back into the waiting room.

At 3:40 a nurse called us back. “Miss Danna, we will see you now.” Same hamster cage, correct doctor.

Dr. Winn: So, what are we doing today?

Me: Well, you asked me to make an appointment to cut this mole thingy off of the right side of my shin. {I hold up my chicken leg for her to see the mole thingy.}

Dr. Winn: I did? Well, we can’t do this today. You were supposed to make a 30-minute incision appointment. You made a regular office visit appointment.

I could feel the Hulk (aka Mister, sitting behind me) starting to bristle at the petite, Asian doctor’s tone and insolence.

Me: Dr. Winn, when I called to make the appointment I made sure I told them what the appointment was for. I did not say “30-minute incision” but I did tell them that you were going to cut a mole off my leg.

Dr. Winn: Well, we can’t do this today; you’ll just have to come back.

Me: That is not feasible, I work North of Fort Worth and I took off early to come here today. I cannot take another half day off. What can we do?

I did the ‘you and I’ hand gesture when I said we.

Mister: Your staff should pull the patients chart when they call in for an appointment so it can be scheduled correctly.

Dr. Winn: {real snotty like} We cant pull the chart of every patient that calls in.

Mister stood up, extended to his full 6’5” frame and towered over the barely 5’2” Dr. Winn. He took my chart from Dr. Winn and handed it to me sweetly, asked the nurse to step back for a second and then he grabbed Dr. Winn by her neck and her right thigh. He lifted her above his head, knocking one of her teeth out on the examination light, and started to spin her a la’ WWF. He stopped spinning, roared and threw her against the medicine cabinet next to the door. Tongue depressors and cotton balls went everywhere.

Dr. Winn took her little mole-measuring chart out of her pocket and hid behind it like a little child. Her smock was bloody from the (forcibly) extracted tooth and it looked like her pinky toe was broken. She kept muttering, “I should have chosen the violin, I should have chosen the violin.”

I am so not telling the truth… but I wished that is how it played out.

Heh.

What really happened…

Me: Regardless of if they pull the chart or not, I let the receptionist, scheduler, person who answered the phone know that I was supposed to have a large mole cut off of my leg. Can we wait until you have an opening today? We could come back, or just wait.

I looked to Mister for confirmation, he nodded.

Dr. Winn: Well, I guess we could take you after my last patient.

Me: Thank you.

Mister: RRRRRRRRRRRAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWR!

Just Kidding.

So Mister and I went out to the waiting room to play our favorite game of “find attractive people in the magazines from the Mesozoic era that are littering the doctors’ waiting area.” I found Thor, he was really hot, his loincloth was smokin and that brow ridge was just what every girl dreams of.

After a brief (ha!) wait the nurse called for a third time, “Miss Danna, we’ll see you now.”

Same hamster cage.

They had me lay down and after 18 frillon Lydocaine (sp?) shots they began hacking into my poor little chicken leg. It was over fairly quickly with a minimum of pain and discomfort, but still….

I have 3 internal stitches and 5 or 6 external stitches to close up the wound. Ick.

Mister is sooooooooo precious. He took me home, settled me on the couch with my leg up on pillows and then commenced to make the most aromatic yummified roasted chicken ever. With stuffin!

I’m sorta sore and didn’t sleep well, but overall, it hasn’t been too bad. Until I accidentally kicked myself in the boo boo a few minutes ago. Zoikes!

Co-worker C had a doctor’s appointment this morning. They found a lump in her breast that they want to remove. Bless her heart. It will be her second surgery.