ATTENTION CVS CAREMARK!

I noticed a charge on my PNC bank account on 5-14-2010 from "caremark mail" for $160.

I have not been a caremark customer for a year! when i called caremark - i spoke to several reps this week - and ALL of them found no record of any charges on my acct - let alone one for $160!

The situation has been forwarded to "billing". I WAS supposed to hear back via phone to me, withine 24 hours. THAT WAS MONDAY. TODAY IS FRIDAY.

Conveniently there is no number that I can directly contact billing - they have to contact me. It's Bull $-it as far as I am concerned.

Meantime, I am -$109 balance in my account, PLUS overdraft fees!

THIS MUST BE RESOLVED ASAP! it is insane! I have bills to pay! There is absolutely no reason for this charge! I have not even received any products in the mail relating to such a charge, yet your company now has my money, WITH NO EXPLANATION!

I smell IDENTITY THEFT! SCAM! Poor Customer Service at the VERY LEAST!

Losing my Zane

"I never gave much thought to how I would die. But dying in the place of someone I love seems like a good way to go. Death is peaceful. Life is harder."
-Bella Swan, Twilight

I lost my Zane. I can't even believe this.

He was the love of my life. This may seem extreme to those who never met my cat, but he was quite the character.

He was quirky, loving, protective, active, playful. He followed me everywhere around the house. It didnt matter where I went, he followed. If I was doing laundry, he would walk down the steps and watch me put clothes in the washer. Zane slept with me every night, often on me. I would sometimes feel this heavy weight on my chest, and there he was sleeping away. If I was curled in a ball on my side, he would form himself to the shape of my leg and lay on top of it. He loved it when I scooped him up in my arms, cradled him like a baby and scratched his tummy. He purred so loud it sounded like a motor.

Zane and his twin sister, Isabelle, came into my life in September 2002. I was living in Northeast Pennsylvania and they were given to me - part of a litter of feral kittens born in the wild. I didn't ask for them. My ex in-laws rather dumped them on me, in my opinion, and said something like: "Here these are your's now."

They were so young and so small, they fit into the palm of my hand. Zane was defensive and even scratched my hand when I tried to pick him up out the box they were in. I thought to myself, "I am going to give you extra attention to make sure you trust and love me." And that's how it came to be. I know he was just a cat, but there was such a bond.

My family's 13 year old german shepard passed away in January. We had to have him put down because he was very sick from cancer.

I had noticed Zane sort of hiding out for the last two days. I was in and out of the house all week, so I didn't give it much thought. It wasn't like him to be hiding.

he would pop out as soon as he heard me, but I was so busy, I didn't connect the dots. When I got home from school at 9 pm Thursday, my dad told me to look for Zane because he wasn't acting right. I found him hiding behind the couch. I picked him up and his body was limp. He was barely breathing and barely blinking. My heart sunk.

It scared me to even hold him. I put him in my dad's lap and we called the vet immediately. I started crying and mom tried to calm me down, by telling me our other family cat got urinary tract infections a few times, that its not uncommon in cats and it makes them lethargic. Something told me it was a lot more than that. I knew in my heart how this was going to end.

I held him gently, pet him and talked to him as we quickly got to the vet. The poor baby was jaundice. The doctor said his liver was extremely enlarged and when it gets to this point there is no turning back. Conditions like these are usually the result of some sort of cancer. Since his liver was in failure, the vet said he was purely intoxicated. If we would have taken him home, the doctor said he would surely die a painful death in a few days. I knew what had to be done. The decision was excruciating. I said my goodbyes as he laid so quietly on the table. My dad held me up. I asked him to be there when it was time, because I didn't want Zane to be alone, but I coulnd't watch him go.

He is being cremated and we will bury him in the backyard.

The four levels of coping with loss: Guilt (I wish I had noticed sooner, but the doctor said there was nothing I couldn't have done). Denial (It feels like he is still around and I am trying not to think about it when I lay in my bed. He laid with me all the time) Anger (I am so angry. Why did this happen just two months after God took my loving and wonderful dog Buddy?) Depression (I am in shock, numb right now)

I know I have to focus on the good memories. That's part of why I couldn't bring myself to be there when he was put to sleep. I didn't want to remember him that way. Right now, though, its so painful to believe he is gone. He was not even 8 years old.

everyone deserves to feel that way

"Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist"
-George Carlin

Valentine's Day... ahhhh.. the day single people swear was created by Hallmark. It's the day couples make the extra effort to show each other how much they care. Whether you recognize it as a "holiday", it still makes the single people feel REALLY single.

I am a die hard romantic, yet when you've been through failed relationships, it is difficult not to become cynical and jaded these days.

I do remember what it's like to feel something special. That does not mean I want to re-visit the past at all. You can only look at those times as a learning experience. I have learned a lot about myself. I learned what I want and I don't want. I like myself more than ever now. That, in itself, is worth the journey.

I wish all the couples out there nothing but the happiness loves provides. Everyone deserves to feel that way.

Where did it all go? Where to go from here?

"It is not the mountain that we conquer, but ourselves"
-Edmund Hillary (one of the first to climb Mt Everest)


2009 is coming to an end. Only one more week and its gone. Poof. Vanished.

I don't know how most people think, but my biggest fear isn't failure. My biggest fear is mediocrity. I NEVER want to be average.

My parents told me when I was little - "I walk to the beat of my own drum". I didn't understand what they meant at the time, but now I can see how accurate they were.

If someone were to put my life's path on a chart... you wouldn't see a steady line rising at a 45 degree angle. Instead, there would be a LOT of zig zags. I have experienced many highs and many lows in life, but its been a colorful life nonetheless.

What did I do in 2009?

I ran a half marathon in Tampa in March. I ran the Broad St Run in Philly in May (10 miles). I went to Florida twice. I was in my dear friends', Jen and Jeff, wedding. I took my cousin's 18 month old son to the jersey shore for the day just so he could see the ocean for the first time. I spent a weekend with my mom, my sister, my "aunt", and friend on a boat on the Chesepeake Bay one weekend which was delightful.

I started my first semester of grad school. I finished my first semester of grad school. (Ha ha) I did it with excellent grades too!

I wanted to do another road race... just couldnt fit that into my schedule. I wanted to make more money... well, so do the rest of us LOL! I wanted to secure a full-time job in PR, but it is what it is.

There were setbacks too... some I choose not to share... I lost loved ones, expected and very unexpected.. and it makes you wonder about the bigger picture. Still, you push through. What else can you do? You make sure those around you know how much you love and appreciate them and you stay true to yourself.

Up to this point I have achieved every goal I have set for myself. I think i took it for granted.

So, with new career and life goals on my plate, things aren't coming together for me as quickly as I had hoped, or taking longer than I had hoped. it is frustrating and disheartening. My parents say I expect way too much too soon.... I say I can never have enough.

What do I want for 2010? I am starting to train for a marathon on March. I hope all the stars align so I can make it a good race! A few pounds lighter would be awesome, hopefully the increased training will help with that.

I intend to visit Florida a few times to visit my BFF's. I can't stay away from them, the weather and the beach! I will finish my second semester of grad school. I will continue my push into the formal public relations venue...and i will broadcast the traffic reports on the radio.

But sitting here today, thinking about all of this, I am telling myself to try to enjoy life for what it is today... not wish it away for things that may... or may not happen.

sleepy head, busy mind

"How do people go to sleep? I'm afraid I've lost the knack. I might try busting myself smartly over the temple with the night-light. I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things." ~Dorothy Parker, journalist, writer, poet

That's a quote from Dorothy Parker about insomnia. It's a creature that taunts me, which apparently reared its ugly head to a fellow journalist, writer and poet. Trend, I wonder?

Parker is a gem. She was a rouge. She is a well known writer from the early 1920s to the 60s, the kinda lady who just didnt give a crap what guys had to say. She wrote from her heart, with weapons for words from a pen with a penchant for sharp wit. She wrote for the New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair. She was a book reviewer, also a hollywood screenwriter and playwrite.

I feel a kinship to her for two reasons. When ever I read her works, it is like she is reading my mind. Its a scary place ha ha. Second, I find this quote about insomnia and a lightbulb goes on... so to speak.

According to dictionary.com insomnia is the inability to get sufficient sleep, difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. My insomnia doesnt mean I stay up all night every night staring at the ceiling... although that has happened in the past... more than once. I went into work for my traffic job on no sleep. I had no choice. I have to be there at 4am and when prescription meds dont work, its rough.

Sometimes insomnia means I lay there, thoughts racing about anything or nothing. I overthink everything anyway, so it's no wonder.

I have been on a 4a-noon shift for more than 5 yrs and thats when the sleep problem worsened ten fold. my body clock is going counter clockwise.

Sometimes I get to sleep only to wake up an hour later wide awake. It is so frustrating. Then at 1pm when I get home from work I barely get my head on the pillow and I am out like a light. I sleep so hard that I forget where I am ha!

I know where I am right now though. I am sitting in bed at midnight. I am home from a night class watching tv, browsing online, writing this blog entry. I am starting to get tired. I hope for a full night of sleep. That means one lunesta. six pillows. One of those over my head. One pillow under my arm. The tv is on quietly. I will most definitely wake up at least once, hopefully just to cognitively roll over.
I dont have to get up at 4am... so that is a blessing.

But... insomnia or not... I turn again to a quote from Dorothy Parker...

"Now I know the things I know, and I do the things I do; and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you!”

waiting for someone to die

A journalist is rarely at a loss for words, but there is an absense of adequate adjectives when describing what it is like to cover the story of a criminal who is being put to death.

It's such an eerie feeling, waiting for someone to die.
While personally I am not opposed to the death penality, I can't imagine what it must be like to watch the clock tick, the minutes evaporate, the seconds disappear until you take your last breath. All of this while a panel of people watch and stare at you in this state of dispair and fear, finality.

A few years ago, I reported on the case of Danny Rolling. He was a convicted serial killer in Florida. He is a man who brutally killed five college students at the University of Florida in August 1990. 15 years had passed and his appeals ran out. The day his death sentence would be carried out had arrived. The prison is in Starke, Florida. It's a town, literally, in the middle of no where. It's the back woods of Florida. It's the kind of town where hanging at Burger King is the hot spot at night. The prison is located right outside town and it is the heart of the economy there.

It was a media circus that day. TV news live trucks, reporters, photographers, gawkers, protesters. We all waited across the street from the prison waiting for updates on Rolling's last day. We got word of his visit with visit with his brother and spiritual advisor. We were informed of his last meal. The hours slipped away. All we - the media - could do at that point, was wait for this man to die.

I found myself looking up at the prison from time to time, its barbed wire fences and walls, trying to image the scene inside. It's something I still can't wrap my head around.

I wasn't one of the journalists who witnessed his death. There were a few among the panel who had been selected, among a pool who had volunteered, to sit and watch Rolling get the lethal injection. It's standard. It's part of the duty of being a journalist, if you can bare it. Your role calls for witnessing history, acting as the public's eyes and ears, making sure the sentence is carried out the way it is intended. I am not sure if I ever would sign up for that duty. I know there is a part of me who could certainly handle the task, however another part of me is ashamed at the macabre curiousity.

I am writing this post tonight, having learned of the death of the DC Sniper. 48-year old John Allen Muhammed convicted of killing 10 people during a three week shooting spree in 2002 with the help of a teenage accomplice. He was put to death last night via lethal injection at a Virginia prison.

Word of his death brings back the day I covered Rolling's last day alive inside that Florida prison.

I never met the man. I never covered the murders he committed. They happened across the state, many years earlier, when I actually was in middle school in Pennsylvania. At that time he wasn't even a blip on my teenage radar.

While Rolling may have justly deserved what he had coming to him on that day in 2005, it left me with a sour taste in my mouth. I had to sit and wait, on an hot and humid summer afternoon in a desolate field, outside blank, cold prison walls. I had to sit and imagine, sit and wait for this man to die.

Going home....

"Parents can only give good advice and put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands." - Anne Frank

It's been a little over a year since I moved from Tampa to Philly. It meant living on my own... to moving in with my parents. I knew I needed a change in my life. It was time for a new career, heading to grad school.... but living with mom and dad for the first time in ten years. The idea was questionable at best.

I have never cared much about what other people thought about me, but I did wonder now that, now that I am in my 30s and back in the same bed that I slept in High School.

Dad flew down to Tampa. My friends and I packed up the moving truck we rented and we drove up to PA in the Fall of 08. I cried the entire drive out of Florida. I knew I was making the right decision for my life, but the pain was palpable. I was leaving such a nice life behind. My close circle of friends remain there. The area is beautiful. So many memories.

While I have had to make a lot of adjustments, emotionally and physical, after coming back, my parents have been wonderful.

I havent lived here in ten years. I got lost in my own town. I struggled to find work in the worst economy in decades. I was constantly cold 6 months out of the year - a spoiled sun brat as a result of 4 years in Florida. I had to get an acct with a tanning salon to keep my sanity. I had no sweaters. I had no closed-toed shoes aside from my sneakers.

Most of my belongings remain in storage. I am a full-grad school students with two part-time jobs, commuting an hour back and forth to school three days a week. I long for a full-time job in the industry I am studying. I want so badly to move closer to the city, on my own, making new friends. Developing a circle of friends is difficult when you are in the burbs and all your "old friends" are married with children now. I am not out painting the town red, so to speak, but maintaining those friendships - different now - we're both in different paths in our lives. I am getting so homesick for Florida lately. I have never felt this way before.

My parents have been encouraging, supportive, generous. They welcomed me back home. We have a kind, close relationship and being here has only made our bonds stronger. For that I am eternally thankful. I don't know how I will ever re-pay them. They insist I have nothing to feel guilty about - that this is what parents do. Besides - mom does my laundry and makes me dinner. Dad, a retired owner of auto-mechanic and transmission rebuilding business, looks after my car. I live here for free. In a world of uncertainty, two-part time jobs and school, this part ain't so bad.

The desire to move out is about independence, not a horrible experience living here. My dad and I had one fight over our cats. Yes, it was that trivial. My mom yelled at me once when I was eating cereal. I was half asleep and apparently answered her in a tone that was received as disrespectful. She went off the wall. My dad and I sat there puzzled. We both know she was in a bad mood, although we didnt know why, and it really wasn't that I did something wrong LOL.
Considering I have been here for 15 months and only encountered two arguements. I think thats a good track record.

I am very busy and they give me privacy. The only thing they ask is, that they know if I am coming home at night, to give them some peace of mind. I haven't really dated, so having a guy come over hasn't been an issue ha ha...

I feel like my life is in limbo. "Everyone" tells me to have "patience" - what I want will come in time. But let's be real - thats an easy thing to say to someone when you are living on your own, have a full-time job in your industry, have a tight circle of friends, and possibly a solid relationship with a significant other.

So I keep pushing forward, I keep waiting, I keep working and going to school. I will be honest, I want to go back to Florida. Maybe my path will lead me back after grad school next year.

In the mean time, being "home" again is like living in a comfort bubble. It will always be there. I know I am always welcome at home.