I did this mostly myself. Keith was pretty much useless. He stopped working a week ago yesterday but mostly all he did this week was sit and play games on Facesbook (farmville & mafia wars) or run errands for me.

Today, I (verbally) kicked butt and made him finish packing the kitchen with me. I am not sorry to be leaving Apollo Beach/Tampa. I was out-of-place here, and *they* made sure I knew it.

People always asked me if I was from England (I speak nicely, enunciate, know a lot of words that are mostly useless). I would tell them “No, I’m from Boston”. It might as well have been England.

There are many definitions, many and varied types of behavior that get a woman considered a *bitch*. Around here, not dressing, talking, thinking and doing business the customary and usual way is enough to earn one the title.

I recently saw a picture of the author Jackie Collins (not one of my favorites but I have a healthy respect for accomplishment) in a short interview in Vanity Fair magazine. She was wearing a belt with the word “bitch” spelled out in diamonds on the buckle. It worked for me.

It is amazing to me that areas of Florida can be so very different from each other. On the east coast of Florida I am unremarkable, to the extreme. Here, not so.

Oh well. I am going home.

I have been on Facebook some today, it is not a place I spend a lot of time. I go there to keep in touch with Keith’s family (who are all there in all their glory) and to market NewNeedlepoint.com.

Most of my “friends” there are either family or in the on-line needlepoint community. I respond yes to most friend requests and suggestions from within the needlepointers.

There were 2 of them who were particularly pesky however. One, Wendy Stevens, who I don’t know except on facebook would send me suggestions of people I should “friend” quite often. Oddly, they were people who had few friends already and none within my “facebook communities”. These were mostly harmless.

Then there is Gloria Vaughn Morgan. I have no idea who or what she is but almost daily I would get these emails through the facebook system from her, telling me to join this group, join that group, become a “fan” of this or that.

They were endless. I began, however foolishly, to resent what I started thinking of a “cyber pushiness” or even “cyber bullying”.

Some were harmless, some were outside my “areas”. I had a whole week of repeated requests to join an Embroidery Group (and me a hard core needlepointer).

So, this evening, after packing, packing, packing I sat down here to check my email and there she was again, with another group.

I sent her a message through facebook asking her why she was doing this. I told her that I, like her, was more then capable of making my own “group” decisions without her guidance.

Ohhhh, she de-friended me. I am devastated!

What else. I sold more books this past week and I sold the Laurel Burch Butterfly Dogs canvas alone today.

The canvases and kits are packed but accessible, I will ship it Monday.

My web site checkout process messed up AGAIN with this order.

Remember how it did not collect International Shipping from the customer in Australia?

Today it collected $15.00 international Shipping from a customer in Arizona (last time I checked they were still in the USA).

I have an email in to poor put-upon Zac about this but I will not be back on-line until Thursday.

Want to put some money on how much I have unpacked between Wednesday morning (when our stuff get unloaded) and Thursday between 8 and 11am when the Comcast guy is expected?

Anyone?

I thought not.

Want to hear something nice? Jack the Cat is not welcome to spend the night Tuesday night at my mother’s house. He is not a good traveler (understatement alert) and she is concerned he will have a puke-a-thon on her carpets (the only woman in S. Florida with wall to wall carpet in the entire house). I can’t blame her on this one.

So, Jack was going to spend the night at our own house, but empty of furniture. I was going to bring his binkie and his food bowls and such but still. I was concerned he would be traumatized by the long ride and then being alone in an empty house all night.

He is a people cat, I doubt he knows he is a cat, really, except that he knows he is superior to us but must ask us cretins for food, to get it.

So Keith is going to drop me at my mother’s and go back and spend the night with Jack the Cat in the empty house. He is going to make a nest for them in quilts, on the bedroom carpet. (I do not have wall to wall in my whole house).

Isn’t that nice of Keith?