My life is marching on... (cue the music)

Okay, I'm done obsessing over the possibility that someone will want to stick a needle in my knee. All it took was the post-op visit to the orthopedic doctor yesterday.

No needles were in sight.

The doctor looked at my knee, pronounced it 'healing properly' and told me to come back in a month for a final look at it. He gave me a series of exercises to do and told me that it will be tired and sore on occasion, but to keep at it.

Easy for him to say.

He also had a set of photographs taken during the surgery to show me what he did and how things looked in there. They're really interesting. Evidently there is some arthritis in the knee (he cleaned the edges of the kneecap etc.) and I also had a rather large cyst. (It looks ugly and forbidding in the picture... like it has a malevolent little pus-filled mind of its own.) So between the torn meniscus, the cyst and the arthritis, it's not a wonder my damn knee was sore for so long.

I went to Goodwill on the way home and found a double set of edge punches for scrapbooking. There are ten total, two of each kind. So I'll be sending five punches to my mom along with bunches of other stuff I've been saving up to send that direction.

I also stopped by the grocery store.

Apparently, the dingbats in charge at Fred Meyer have decided that patriotic music played over the system in the grocery store is a rousingly good idea for this time of year.

As a person who tries really hard to ignore the crap du jour played over the PA system in every store I shop in, (how come we have to listen to music to shop? Huh?) I found it horrendous.

It's bad enough at other times of the year, (don't even get me started on the annual bloody butchering of formerly well-loved Christmas songs) especially when it's a song I liked in its original form. For some reason they don't always play the original version. Instead, its some smashed up and remade version. To hell with that!

To paraphrase, give me the original or SHUT THE HELL UP!!!

Aren't the garish displays, the I-bathed-in-perfume-matrons, the self-important dickheads who can't even hang up the cell phone while they're going through the checkouts and the screeching of toddlers enough for sensory overload? They certainly are for me.

I am not thrilled when they add still another layer of noise. I REALLY hate Sprawlmart because not only are all the aformentioned things going on there, they've hung televisions from the ceiling to blare advertising in your face.
And forget going to the electronics department... what a clusterfuck!

Oh.

Have I digressed again?

While I shopped for bananas at Freddy's, the PA system was blaring out The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

And I watched a woman not much older than I am marching in place and singing along as she chose pieces of broccoli from the bin and put them in her bag.

She wasn't singing loudly, but she was quite unselfconscious. It was sort of surreal, really.

I liked being out of the house for a change. So much that instead of waiting a few days, I plan a quick run to Sprawlmart this morning (before the great unwashed show up to do their shopping) for a couple items I need to send to Mom and a visit to the hair guys for a trim of my hair and Alyssa's.

Matt's feeling better. By the time this posts, he'll be finishing up his graveyard shift. So he only missed one night of work.

The mortgage guy called and told me the underwriter is insisting on a permit for work that took place on this house in the late 70's/early 80's. LONG before we bought it. Judging by the age of the vinyl flooring in the bottom of the built in cabinets when we bought it, it's possible that Eric and I had not even MET when the garage was turned into the family room I'm sitting in right now.

Not only that, they wanted a copy of the permit for the re-roofing we did in 2006. (not required by the county)

And a copy of the plumbing permit for the landscape.( which we do have)

And a copy of the building permit for the shed. (Not required because it's smaller than the legal permit-required size, is not on a foundation, and has no electricity or utility hookups of any sort.)

So I called the city offices to see if we can find the permit for the garage conversion. Then, I reconsidered the hoops I'm being made to jump through and got a little angry.

I called Mr. Mortgage back, said, "You know, this is the third time we've been through a refinance, and this is ridiculous. I have never been asked any of this stupid stuff before."

He agreed with me. Said that in 40 years in the business he's never seen one like this. Mentioned that he talked to different lender this morning who said that they would not have all these wacky requirements. And I said, "Give my business to that lender. I am tired of dealing with this. Those tiny little percentage point increments that the interest rates are bumping up and down may be no big deal to them, but they're a VERY big deal to me, and can mean a great deal of difference to my family. I want to take advantage of the rate TODAY, not next week and certainly not next month. To be quite honest, this is starting to piss me off. I want you to find me a different lender."

So that's supposedly what he was working on for the afternoon yesterday. I'll be anxious to find out.