Danger! Thoughts Ahead

I had made a photocopy of my horoscope for today and had intended to bring it home, post it, and blog about it. The photocopy is lying on the desk in the nurses' office along with my September schedule.

It said that I should consult two of my friends who knew how to think in order to shed light on current problems as three heads are better than one.

I had immediately thought of my friends, Genny and Al, that I referenced in my last entry. Too funny.

Upon realizing that I had forgotten the copy of the horoscope, I decided that I would put off blogging until tomorrow morning and spend some time crocheting tonight.

In the quest for Tunisian crochet hooks, I logged back onto the computer and headed to eBay. I found a few sets that interested me, other than in price. LOL Some of the sets were quite reasonable. I may purchase one next week. I decided that I would go ahead and cyber skip my way on over here and go a-blogging anyolwho.

I went into work for four hours this evening to finish out the day shift. It was nice to go to work after spending the week babysitting three grandchildren with the "stomach flu."

I have found myself sleep-deprived this entire week. That is such a miserable feeling. It's hard to believe that I went around for years feeling like this when I was working night shift. It is no wonder that I became reclusive and the depression did nothing but get worse.

I was looking at job postings for one of the hospitals and found a hospice liaison position. It sounds interesting. The hours are generally the standard 8to4:30MondaythroughFriday. (I cannot believe that run-on word was not flagged as having been misspelled.) Good benefits. The hospital is the one a block from my house. Nice to be able to walk to work. I also saw a position doing pediatric home care through the children's hospital. I enjoyed pediatric work. However, so many of the children I took care of had such a poor prognosis that it was much like doing hospice work. In some cases, it was indeed hospice. Those cases were hard. I took a break from peds after losing three babies in the span of 366 days. My Dad's ICU nurses and I were talking on the day that we took him off life support. They were amazed that I had done pediatric hospice. And, my mother informed them that I got attached to all those babies and cried when they died. I took a break, not because I could not do the work any longer but because I could not bring myself to look at another tiny coffin.

Hindolo told me of dead bodies being piled in the streets to cause traffic to slow and veer in order to make the vehicles easier to attack. He related that statement without any hint of emotion. I cannot begin to fathom the atrocities of war. My friends who served in the war in Viet Nam relate horrific accounts with a similar affect. They have survived hell while I mourn the loss of three babies.

Well, that was a buzz kill for certain....

I had to stop taking my allergy medicine for a few days. My nose is so dried out that I have scabs inside it. I am wheezing and about to use my inhaler. I hope the pollen count is down for the next several days.

I think I'm going to head back to my textile reality and do something while I ponder the can of worms that I have opened in my head.....

Onward

Spent last night with the guy. Exams were finally over, and books, papers, laptop, and anything else to do with school had been put out of sight for the next couple of weeks.

It was so nice just being with him. I told him that I had missed him these last several days. He understood, and his reply to that statement was interesting. You cannot sacrifice the future because you don't have your priorities correct now.

I love that he has those "good" answers. To the question of whether he preferred me with or without makeup. "Makeup does not change what is on the inside." However, I'm sure there will come an argument where I will be most unhappy that he has those "good answers," and at that time those answers will not seem so good! LOL

I don't argue, really. Unless it is something worth arguing over. My particular litmus test for argument is that if it is something that I will not be upset about in two weeks, it isn't worth arguing over. I will debate on anything, but I will not argue.

I am crocheting as I compose this. Not a good combination of activities for multitasking, I'm afraid. I'm working on a wool afghan/blanket (I haven't decided how the design is going to go yet, so who knows how big it could get.) for charity. It's going to be very pretty. Why should something for charity not reflect your best effort?

The man doesn't understand the inclination to artistic endeavor at all. The concept is completely alien to him. He showed me photos and post cards from his trip to Edinburgh and London. I said that I would like to take some of the photos and enlarge them and collage them into a piece for the wall. He asked how. I began to explain and quickly lost him.

We share an appreciation for architecture so the abstract insight is there. The mechanics of why and how that it would occur to someone to think about doing these right-brained things, however, was never encouraged to be developed.

It is most interesting to interact with a thinker who, while having an appreciation of the abstract, does not comprehend the mechanics of the abstract. He is quite logical in his though processes, very left-brained. He is able to extrapolate the abstracts from the information or data presented to arrive at a set of logical possibilities and conclusions.

My friends, Al and Genny, are both thinkers and artists. Most of the thinkers that I have known over the years have very artistic or right-brained inclinations. I can only conclude that it is merely a cultural difference that causes his brain to not perceive the abstract but have an appreciation for the abstract.

He told me of a friend he was raised with whose parents had some education. The parents encouraged his friend to explore art and creative endeavors. The friend can look at a photo or a picture and tell you what it is exactly that makes it a great image. He sees things that most people don't take note of.

That is why I have to conclude that his wonderful mind has no inclination to the abstract side of the coin; the exploration of such concepts was never encouraged, and perhaps even discouraged, to be developed when he was young.

I should close this here. I relented and took a Flexeril as my back has been miserably painful for the last several days. My back may not be feeling much better at this point, but my brain is too hazy to notice whether or not there has been improvement.

I Am Soooo Mad......

Just did some quick checking...

I send this feed over to my Yahell 360 page; they have not updated the RSS feed for 12 days now. Oh, they just make me crazy! I suppose I will have to post yet another blurb on the 360 page that there is drivel to be had over here, for those inquiring minds.

The guy takes his last exam tomorrow/this morning at 8am. Microbiology. Then, he leaves to go out of town to visit friends Thursday.

Can you say pugnacious pouty princess?

Not really.

He needs to take some time to get away and visit friends and then get ready to start it all over again in two weeks.

Besides, if I were to have a problem with it, it would make me more a shamefully selfish shrew. And, that I'm not. LOL

School starts tomorrow morning for the older three grands. I'll just have the two little boys again, so maybe Gabe will settle down and start being nice to Jonathan again once he realizes he has no one else at home to play with.

Gabe starts preschool in a couple of weeks. I can see him being the only preschooler being suspended from school. About the first time he head-butts another kid, calls the teacher a "stupid ass" and starts spitting on the floor, they will be calling me to come pick him up.

I sent him upstairs for a time out this morning and was a "stupid ass asshole." I don't know how my ranking got so high. When his mother called at lunchtime to check and see how everything was going, she was impressed by my increase in rating.

It's 12:20am, and I have to be out of bed in about 6 hours. Guess I should forego this here and get some sleep.

A Girl's Gotta Do.....

Amanda starts her first day on the full-time job tomorrow morning. I'll have all five of the grands. We were planning on sending the little three to the sitters and having the older two help me with some cleaning around the house, but the baby is sick. Feeling better this evening, Amanda said, but we're going to keep him (and anyone who may have been exposed to the "whatever kinda krud this could be") away from other people.

The man went home tonight to study for finals tomorrow, Tuesday, and Wednesday. He didn't get a chance to study much today, so he decided that he needed to study rather than see me. Which is fine. He needs to take care of the priority. I'm not going anywhere. Not that I know of, anyway.

We kinda got to see each other Saturday night. We went to Joni's birthday party (in separate vehicles) after work. The plan was that we were all going to stay for just a short time because we all had to work this morning. When he was ready to leave, he found me and told me he was leaving. I wasn't quite ready to go yet, but I figured I'd leave to make sure he got back to known routes and roads. Joni told me that he had been to Shemm's before, so with following Shemm, he should be able to get back OK. That was good enough for me, so I decided to stay a bit longer.

I missed his call at 10:45 but returned it a few minutes later. He wanted me to come over. Five minutes or so later, he called back. Having realized what time it was and that we had to work in the morning, he decided maybe we'd just forgo seeing each other until possibly tonight, depending upon how things went. That was fine by me.

And we already know how that scenario played out. LOL

But, he's going to call me tomorrow when he gets in after his exams.

The birthday party was fun. Everyone was pretty well bent by the time we had arrived and everyone had left within 45 minutes or so after we had gotten there. The pool was really nice - no kids & no malicious co-workers to blab that I decided to go nekkie into the pool. Only Joni and Chris were there. Chris is gay so could not care less about naked women climbing into the pool. And Joni is my friend and pretty much ordered me into the pool. As I had to re-dress and drive home, skinny dipping was the preferred option to going swimming in my bra and panties.

When I talked to my boss tonight and told him about the party, I told him that Chris invited me back out saying I could come swim naked in his pool anytime. LOL My boss was glad that someone from the department was carrying on the requisite tradition of taking their clothes off at parties as he's the boss and can't do it anymore. He told me I'm allowed to wear that mantle for 18 minutes. LMAO

Being that Joni had consumed about 6 to 8 beers, she said she didn't think to get the camera and get nekkie pics of me in the pool. I told her that as it was her birthday, I would offer to pose for nekkie pics. LOL She missed my comment, so Chris's ex, Billy, repeated my offer to her. We had a good laugh.

It was fun, just the four of us hanging out and goofing in the pool and talking.

I made Chris give me a tour of the house. He's got a nice place. The decorating style is very "him." I liked the fact that he hadn't bothered to dust the glass coffee table in the living room before the party. LOL Very "come as you are and take it as it is." I can relate to that attitude.

When I talked to the guy before quitting time tonight, I told him I'd be gone by 7:30 or so and to call me when he got off work. I came home, climbed in to the bath tub with the nice smelling moisturizing bubble bath and soaked. I pulled out the pumice stone and did my heels and then shaved. (I had forgotten how annoying this having a man and shaving every day thing can get. My underarms are in rebellion. Ouch!)

My boss called while I was soaking in the tub. We had been talking for a few minutes when the man called. I told him I'd call him back, and I did. I got dressed and we talked for a while longer. I let the moisturizing oils stay on my skin for a while. Then, I showered with the moisturizing shower gel, applied the creamy moisturizing oil, did the chemical facial peel, applied the skin regenerating serum, and then the revitalizing moisturizer and eye cream. Geez. What a regimen.

Carol worked with Ken and me today. I was happy to see her car when I pulled into the parking lot this morning. I work such odd hours, I don't get to see Carol very often. This afternoon in the office, I pulled out the Olay premoistened facial cleansing and moisturizing cloth, removed my makeup, and then reapplied it. Carol asked why I was re-doing my makeup. I told her it was to try and cover some of what it is that I see when I look in the mirror in the morning. She said she could well relate.

I've only lost 1/2 pound this week. Still, it's better than not losing anything. I'm really going to have to go back to the low-carb thing in earnest.

Time to get on to some other things. Sleep would be a good option, but I'm not quite wound-down yet. Maybe I'll try some bowling against the cheating computer.

Nite!

Out and About

The weather has remained unrepenatantly miserable, hot and humid with no relief in sight. It was into this, that my daughter and I dragged the three little ones out of the house to go shopping with us. Taking the little ones anywhere is an adventure in itself. Taking them shopping on a day like today borders on the surreal fringes of insanity.

Gabe and Jonathan quickly discovered that the JoAnn Fabrics superstore is a cavernous space with a wonderful echo. I'm certain everyone in the store knew who those two little boys were before we managed to get out of there. Jonathan, of course being the typical fat kid, threw a hissy fit over candy in the "impulse aisle" that they weave you through in order to reach a check out stand. Once outside and released from the confines of the shopping cart, Gabe immediately did and end around run and bolted for the parking lot.

It was after this that we were insane enough to take them to the Target, or as I like to refer to it, Le Target. I ended up buying a pair of Mossimo jeans for myself. It's the first Mossimo that I have purchased since the sell-out to Target several years back. Mossimo just wasn't cool any more once it started to be carried at Target. However, it happened to look better than just about any other brand of jeans that happened to be there, and I do need some jeans that fit since I've been losing weight and a load of my jeans were ruined in the dryer due to an "ink load" as we called it in the dry cleaning trade.

In an attempt to escape from JoAnn's with only minimal continued screaming and bad behavior, we had bribed the children that, if they were good, we would buy them something from Target. Jonathan had immediately spotted a 4-D cell lantern and informed me that he wanted a flashlight. I was able to change his mind with the lure of a tape measure from the $1 aisle.

While I was in the fitting room trying on the jeans, that both my daughter and the fitting room attendant had assured me regarding the wrinkled marks at the back of the hem being intentional, Amanda entertained the tribe. Gabe and Jonathan had engaged in one of those loud and repetitive dialogues that had their mother admonishing, "Stop telling that to your little brother." "Stop listening to your big brother." and other shoppers being amused by the whole scenario.

I took the jeans and we headed for the cashier, thankful to be away with only the amount of chaos that we had caused and the amount of humiliation that we had endured.

My purchases came to $60.25, and I gave the cashier $100.25. He looked to be all of 15 and spending the summer at his first job. From the look on his face whe I handed him the cash, I knew that he was lost. I received back in change, $39.75.

He did not know how to enter $100.25 into the cash register in order for it to properly calculate the change due me, that he himself could apparently not figure either, so he had just entered $100.00

I let it go. There is no reason in the world to humiliate some kid for 50 cents. I remarked about this to my daughter as we were headed across the parking lot to the sweltering shelter of the kid kart. I imagine he doesn't see a whole lot of cash transactions in the first place. But to have an odd amount like that handed to him had rocked his little world.

An update from my world on the state of basic math skills in 2007. Gotta love the 21st century. Gotta love my grandkids, too. Both are sort of the same, love it or let it kill you.

Out!

To Bed Late and Up Early

Nothing quite like turning out the lights at 2am and waking up at 6:10am. I was wide awake so figured I may as well go ahead and get up. I hate that feeling.

I decided to check Dell for the new computer. Of course, being female and using their "build your own" option I managed to lock up the screen by deciding to toggle too quickly back and forth between components. I knew I should have gone with the list view rather than the nice scrolling components bar. geez

Gave the man a quick ring to say good morning and to watch for fog. (Love those summer mornings here when the humidity stays above 95% or so and the temperature overnight doesn't drop below the mid 70s. My air conditioner has run nonstop for the last two or three days. In the week prior, I did manage to get it off for a few hours in the morning before the day's heat began in earnest.) He's stressed and busy with this being the final week of the quarter. It is nice that he always asks how I'm feeling. I let him go quickly when he came upon a patch of fog. The goofball factor here increases exponentially when driving in anything other than sun on dry pavement. A light misting of rain will cause traffic to slow to 45mph on the freeway.

I would hate to see these people driving in the rain in the Seattle area. Some of those people even scared me. Two inches of standing water on the freeway, the flow of traffic is steady at 65mph. I had to have the mirror heaters on, it was raining that hard. And, here come the morons doing 75 and 80mph, spraying rooster-tails of water fifteen feet in the air and blinding other drivers around them with the spray, not that the rain was doing a less than effective job of seriously decreasing visibility in the first place.

Driving in Chicago has to be the best for braking on to the break down lanes in order to keep from rear-ending the car in front of you when traffic suddenly goes from 85mph to zero and then just as quickly and mysteriously resumes at the previous rate of speed. My first time driving in Chicago, I was leaving O'Hare and quickly found myself doing 80mph in the third of five lanes of traffic. I looked to the far right lane and saw a flat bed semi truck doing at least 90mph. That was all my cue to immediately apply more pressure to the vertical pedal on the right. LOL

The DC/Maryland/Virginia outerbelt has to be the best for having some moron stop at the top of the entrance ramp and waiting for all four to five lanes of traffic to clear before pulling on to the freeway. I was back here and my friend, Carolyn, was with me. We were rolling up the ramp to I270 from Cleveland Avenue when we had someone do that. She was like, OMG! I was like, Oh, I know this one from DC... I down-shifted, passed them on the right shoulder, and merged on to the freeway. No problem.

In Southern California, the gridlock is well known and notorious. When traffic does move though, it moves... at about 80 to 85mph in packs. There will be long stretches of vacant freeway in between clusters of 20 to 40 cars all moving at the same rate of speed. The propensity to weave in and out of traffic and get ahead of the pack is pretty much non-existent. Speeding on your own, in those vacant spots of asphalt between the packs, is how you get ticketed out there. It's sort of impossible to pull-over one person out of that many cars all running together, but one goofball on their own is an entirely different story.

Pick any city with any sort of population at all and rush hour traffic sucks. St. Louis is miserable because of the cluster-fuck of freeways downtown. Cowlumbus is the same way. Let's merge two freeways on to one and make people who wish to stay on the north-south interstate move from the right lane (which is shared with the east-west interstate) to the left lane (which is four lanes over and shared with another interstate spur) in a 3/4 mile stretch. Makes for some very fun accident related traffic snarls and some horribly wicked accidents; unfortunately many times with fatalities. The fatality count would probably be higher if it were not for the fact that the trauma center is about 4 blocks from that particular nasty stretch of freeway.

I went ahead and stayed up. Washed some laundry, helped Amanda clean house a bit, watched the kids while she took a quick shower.

Think I'm going to take a quick nap before work.

Bedtime

I should have been in bed 30 minutes or so ago. Oh well. Being that I'm working tomorrow night and Friday night until 11pm, sleeping a little later in the morning may not be such a bad plan.

Then again, the melatonin generally dictates when it's time for bed. Forty-five minutes to an hour after taking it, not bad and certainly not addictive like prescription medication or something that will leave me groggy in the morning like the Benadryl.

It's now an hour later. Had a nice three-way chat using the Google Chat feature. We were funny, politically incorrect, and overall just "bad." It was decided that the statement "We are bad." is now a compliment. Not 1970s slang "bad." We took "bad" to good with heretofore unknown style and bad behavior. Oh yes, but we were bad. It was fun, though.

My eyelids are half closed. I guess I had better take the cue.

In getting ready for bed last night, I was struck by one of those little ironies. The makeup that washed off my face in all of 20 seconds had taken me 20 minutes to put on yesterday morning. Let's not forget the "touch up" to it yesterday afternoon. ~sigh~

Need to schedule a doctor's appointment here soon. My anxiety level is still running way too high, even with the Celexa, for me to be more than moderately functional at best. I don't want to increase the Celexa as it's working well for the depression at this dosage, and the depression is long-term. The anxiety should only be a short-term situation. The anxiety proves so damn incapacitating.

I haven't lost any more weight, but I haven't gained any either since I've had an appetite again for a week or so. I'm fitting into my "skinnier" wardrobe these days. That's a good thing. The "skinny" wardrobe is still weeks away.

I'm going to pause here and continue this later. The googlegods have a blurb posted that there is a scheduled outage.

I didn't make it back to this last night. Too tired to do much of anything, so I went to bed at a reasonable hour for a change.

I have spent most of today hanging with the grands in alternating groupings while Amanda ran two of them to different dentist offices in different parts of town.

I'm knitting a few stitches on the teal chenille sweater. This will definitely be my Christmas sweater this year. I'm trying to figure a way to spend a day or two with "that guy" during his break from school. I know he's planning on doing some traveling to visit friends on the east coast.

He received a phone call the other night. I was lying across the bed sort of drifting. When he got off the phone he mentioned Indiana police. ~huh?~ I missed the context. He repeated. He would be going September 8th........ Indiana police.... ~still lost but now rapt~ (He tends to speak English a little more rapidly after speaking Krio to his African friends on the phone.) He repeated, again for my benefit, a friend is getting married September 8th and he'll be gone to Indiana police the whole weekend. I finally got it.

I do LOVE his accent, by the way. His voice is one of those deep, silky, quiet tones. I love listening to him talk, even if it's on the phone and I only catch a few of the English words in the dialect. He has a beautiful voice. Every now and again though, one of those idiosyncratic pronunciations will throw me for a loop.

mmmmmmmm..... cheesecake..... I don't know why I'm bothering to eat this stuff. I should just apply it directly to my thighs..... It is totally wonderful and decadent though. There is nothing quite like cheesecake.

I need to win two more matches of gin against this cheating computer program this evening. OK, it's an hour later, and I managed to win one match. Guess I'll try for the other one in the morning though I really wanted to get it out of the way tonight. When they updated the gin game, they made it smarter. Maybe my antisocial self might be better off playing against a live person. Yeah, right! I'll play gin with real people in 3D, but not against real people on the computer.

I'm going to close this here and get an early start on tomorrow.

Home Again, Home Again

I didn't make it out of work quite as early as I had wanted to slip out the door, but it's all good nonetheless. I had to end up packaging medication for a guy who is going out of town for a couple of days for an appointment and to visit his sister. You have to love it when the paperwork never makes in anywhere near the proper channels. My boss happened to stop by for a couple of minutes this afternoon, and I brought up those minor medical details.. you know, medications, paperwork, etc. My boss had never even received the notification paperwork for this in order to assign someone to take care of it. I was glad that I asked, but I wasn't particularly happy about having to stay over 45 minutes to take care of someone else's job due to someone else's snafu. Oh well, not like I was going to get to see the man tonight anyway. 8am class.

Last night I told him that I was going to be wearing the hoochie jeans to work today. I think the implication of that reference may have been lost in translation. I would have felt funny though, showing up looking all curves and ass in those tight jeans without attempting to forewarn him of what I was going to be wearing. Some guys can get sort of funny about that. You know, the other guys looking and commenting about what the girl that no one knows he's sleeping with looks like wearing those jeans. Seems I may have to do a bit of updating to my wardrobe after all. He told me I needed 7 pairs of pants that fit me like that, and all of the money that it would cost me would be worth every penny. LMAO I was floored! I guess it really is true that it's those quiet ones that you have to watch out for.

As I was heading out to smoke my last cigarette around 6pm, I told him my comments that I had blogged this morning about quitting smoking. He had said he would be interested in seeing my blog, so I sent him the addy a couple of weeks ago. I asked if he had read it yet, and he said, without a change in expression, that he had read a few things. Noncommittal diplomat. Staid is good. Sedate is good. He provides balance and grounding. I, being prone to blow into a new town on the other side of the continent on a whim, am saying that being grounded is good.

I'm tired. Guess I'll close here.

Sex In The City a la Cowtown

Rolled in this morning listening to G Love & the Special Sauce "Rodeo Clown" on the radio. Made for a nice groove on the nearly empty interstate. Gotta love the freeway at 8:30am on Sunday, one of the few times it's genuinely cruisable. (Yes, my proclivity for creating my own vocabulary strikes again.)

The coffee is brewing. I'm finishing the first cigarette of the day. The last cigarette will be today, too. I'll be out of tobacco, so I'm doing the quitting-thing again. Everything should be all right provided no members of my family or small circle of friends die unexpectedly. Morbid but truthful.

Spent the night with the guy. His bed is comfortable, but it isn't my bed so sleeping well is a chore. If the dark circles and bags beneath my eyes are an indicator, I did sleep fairly well last night - only slight puffiness and a pale shade of cyan. Spending $28 for the eye-lift serum is seeming like not so bad an investment this morning (and most mornings these days... It's a chore to look in the mirror in the morning and realize you're not 25 or 35 or even 45 any longer... The Max Factor pancake has become the makeup foundation of choice. LOL).

He's a funny one. Very regimented in many ways. In the post coital wind-down, I kissed him on the cheek, told him he was wicked, and asked if we could wake up in the morning and do that again. I was told now is time for sleep and the morning, time to wake up and get ready for work. This morning, he showered and grabbed a text book to read. "Now I read for 20 minutes and then go to work." I told he we were going to have to work on these regimens. (Maybe sex on the dining room table could be a place to start. ~seriously evil & wicked grin~)

After work last night, I came home and showered and changed while he ran a quick errand. We had some difficulty ditching a coworker at quitting time last night. He mouthed that he would call me as I was getting into the van. As I was leaving, I saw the coworker pick him up and drive him to the north parking lot to his truck. Being me, I immediately dialed his cell. He answered at length... "Quit taking with Shemm and answer your phone." He laughed and said he'd call me. Two rounds of phone tag later, we'd agreed to head north to his place.

I showed up in size 9/10 (I can't believe I got my fa-tass in them.) jeans. Flare leg and ripped up one side seam from the hem, about 8 inches, held together with a brass paper brad at the top of the rip. Orange Air Walk tennis shoes and a dark green, long-sleeve (It was in the 50s last night.) v-neck shirt. I asked if he liked the jeans and the remedy to the rip. He replied that it was very me. omg! Is it possible?!? This man just really might "get" me? I knew in my heart that there had to be one out there. I simply wasn't expecting him to be 15 years younger.

Oh, and the body image issues that creates in my distorted self-image. Seriously going to have to get with the crunches and the stepper, and the yoga, and the pilates, and the low-carb diet, and the anti-aging beauty regimen, and revamping the wardrobe. Well, maybe not the wardrobe so much. But definitely going to have to update the lingerie. LOL As my soon to be single daughter noted, we have to get rid of the "mom underwear" and go shop Vickie's for some "single girl" underwear. Not the "young" stuff but the sedately sexy stuff that says "yeah, I know I have it going on "here" (indicating the self), this is just the accessory." I would have to concur with that sentiment.

Time to shower and head to work.

Out....

It Is What It Is

I'm not quite sure what this particular title means, but I guess we'll figure it out as we go along. Welcome to a dose of my reality.

I received email affirmation that I was a smart and controversial woman. I related this to a friend and that my reply had been: Moi? Controversial? I would never think of being controversial. I'm just one of the rank and file nonthinking automatrons who watches soap operas, reality TV, and celebrity gossip shows.

My friend then gave me the latest update on who had been booted from the house on Big Brother and that Brad was, again this week, leaving Angelina. And, this person is my friend. It's OK, he worked in advertising; ergo, I'm not sure if it is that he can't help himself or doesn't know any better. Bill Hicks had to have put it best, If you're in advertising or marketing, do the rest of us a favor and just go shoot yourself.

Not referring to my friend. Referring to those two particular industries which should not be. At least the snake oil salesmen of times past had to look you in the eye as they bilked you. Now, it's millions of dollars for a 15-second spot during the Super Bowl. Just fuck me to tears.

I'm supposed to be getting ready to go do laundry. I'm procrastinating and contemplating driving to the other side of town to do laundry. Maybe I'll pay Al to come over and fix my washing machine. That doesn't get me out of having to go do laundry today. However, it would come in handy for next week and for weeks thereafter. I may just have him fix Amanda's washer too while he is over here. My son-in-law won't even take a look at it and obviously has no interest in picking up and installing a used one or in working the overtime necessary to afford a new one. This is why it is good to remain on friendly terms with your ex. Options.

Of all the things which afford me options and opportunity, which do I embrace? Serious quandary. There are so many things which capture fleeting interest but few to which my heart will hold fast. There are things which may interest me for a while - a long while, but in the end, they too become tedious and mundane. Then, there are those things which will set my spirit soaring. Whether they last days or years, they shall always be a part of my soul. The only thing of which I am certain is that the status quo will be no longer.

And with that, I bid you adieu.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Why am I not at work? The nurse who was supposed to be on vacation this week did not go, so if I had gone in, I would have been the fourth nurse. Not a good scenario when we're cutting back positions and trying to cut over-time for the staff right now. So, I'm going in at 4pm to finish up some routine stuff and hit the floor at 7pm and work until 11pm. Guess it's a good thing that I went in Saturday and Monday being as I'm losing 8 hours today. Just when I thought I may have a bit of extra money on this check. Oh well. Money isn't everything, but it sure does help out with some things.

Tomorrow is going to be designated at "get out of the house early and go do laundry and then come home and clean" day. I've procrastinated long enough on ripping up this carpet and some other major things that need to be done around here. Painting the trim in the kitchen may finally get done as well this week. I guess I'll see how it goes with the carpet first.

My son-in-law rolled in from work around noon. Lovely. He figured since he has to work Saturday, he would go ahead and come home early today. I'm not sure how he is expecting to pay for this washing machine that he wants to buy new so he can have it delivered and installed because he doesn't want to do have to install one versus buying one from a used appliance store or from Craig's List. That really isn't my problem. However, it stresses my daughter out terribly and then it becomes my problem. Oh, Santa Monica is sounding better.

Headed to Bed

I survived babysitting with most of my faculties intact. In fact, they were pretty good today. That's always a plus when Gabe is good, well, "good" for him anyway. I was tired (and depressed) and didn't do a darn thing with the house today. I did take a nap.

I was sort of hoping I'd be awakened by a phone call from "someone" to at least say, though he was very busy, he was thinking of me. Which, I know is true, but you know, a girl likes to hear those things. As I wrote to him, in spite of all the independence, logic, intellect, and the fact that I am proficient with using most power tools, I AM still a girl.

I'm working twelve hours tomorrow/today. I always viewed that it was never officially today until I had gone to bed and awakened. Then, it was today. The compensatory techniques one develops when working night shift in order to maintain some type of connection with the reality of the day-time world. Or, at least my reality of the world anyway.

I'm tired. Think I'll hit the bed and hope it lasts beyond 4am.

~yawns, stretches, reaches for more coffee...~

I managed to stumble on over here at 7:31 this morning. Not bad for a crippled, old broad. The offspring was still in bed and had to be on the north side of town at 8:30. Why does it seem sometimes that you never end with being the parent? Instead of juice and toast in the morning, it is now a cigarette and a cup of coffee. A few things do change over the years. At least the surly wench had gone to the effort of setting up the coffee maker last night. She even ground some beans and so I was able to have Starbucks instead of that nasty Folgers.

I really shouldn't complain too much about the Folgers. We no longer carry it at work but rather they order the house brand from one of the commercial food staple providers. It absolutely is the worst tasting crap in the world. I think it's even worse than the coffee at the Pilot truck stops. Even I have to put cream(er) in the coffee from Pilot. Consequently, those few packets of Folgers that remain lurking hidden in dark corners of pantry cupboards at work have become precious commodities. Of course, being the affected wench that I can be, I generally bring my Starbucks with me on the weekend. We also have a locked cupboard that only coverage has access to and try and keep some Starbucks, to-go cups, and even some Folgers in there. I need to remind Dorothy to give me her extra key to the cupboard. She doesn't even drink coffee, so two keys to our stash spot is really a redundant concept.

Reminding Dorothy to do anything is an adventure in itself. Once the newest grand baby is out of the NICU and off the methadone, she will have custody of it as well. Six babies, three of them still in diapers. It isn't that she doesn't already have enough to think about. She had finally told her grown children that she is done. They are now telling her that she is a bad mother. Give me a break. I went through years with a delinquent teenager and was able to remain supportive, but she has gone above and beyond anything I ever would have done, or do for that matter, if my children behaved the way that hers have. Yet, she is a bad mother.

Dorothy showed me some of the contents of her backpack a couple of weeks back. A bra in case she leaves the house without remembering to put one on. A bottle of those memory improvement pills that they hawk on the late night infomercials. She carries them just in case she might remember that they are there so she can take one. As I am the woman whose backpack contains just about every possible useful item in the world, even I was amazed at a couple of the things she carries. I think one of the few things that neither of us have in our backpacks is duct tape. Maybe I should get us some. You never know.

Wow, it's now 9:40 and not one of the grands has made it out of bed yet. Not entirely anyway. The fat baby was asleep on the sofa when I came in this morning. He probably had come downstairs during the night looking for the Nintendo DS. Gotta love it. He is still sleeping in spite of the intermittent ruckus that the insipid K9 corps makes outside when the guide dogs in training are led by. It is really quite embarrassing to know that they bring the dogs by here solely for the purpose of training the assistive dogs to ignore idiot dogs.

Speaking of yapping dogs... That loud and unruly mob of quadrupeds caused me to miss "yapping" on the bonus round of my word game challenge this morning. I never miss the bonus round words... ever. It quite peeved that Type A aspect of my personality. And, I swear that I am not obsessive. Maybe the Celexa was the right choice of medications for more than a few reasons. Well, at least more than the reasons that I will freely admit to. LOL

Gabe is up and sort of having cereal and juice. Guess that's my cue to get on to other things.

I Made It!

I was off the floor at 7:15 pm, clocked out at 7:30pm, home at 7:45.... YIPPEE!!! What a day!

The morning, as you know, started off with the brief entry I made after my shower. It was after that that things began to get interesting. I had asked my daughter to dig through her closet for a pair of "fat jeans" for me because all my clothes need washed. (I never made it to do laundry Saturday as I got called in to work.) I grabbed a to-go coffee cup and ran next door for jeans and some fresh brewed coffee before heading out to work.

The jeans she had found where those tight-fitting ones with the bit of spandex in them so they h-u-u-u-u-g all of your curves, flared leg, low-rise. omg! Just what you want to send your 46 year old mother off to work in for sure. But, they were clean, and thankfully, I had put on a pair of bikini panties this morning. (Lucky Break of the Day #1)

I made it to work without getting behind one single moron driving 25 mph. (Lucky Break #2) Two of the five homes I was assigned were my own, for a change. (Lucky Break #3) The weather was compliant today, so everyone had gone to work for the first time in a week. (#4)

We have one gentleman who brings around "the news" (the horoscopes) every day. Mine was pretty fitting to my cynical wit for a change, and I really want to look online and see if I can find it and put it here. It was very funny. (#5)

My med passes went smoothly without one single untoward event. (#6) Not one incident report was called to me today (#7) I got out of work on time, which NEVER happens in my world. (#8)

I made the drive home without getting behind one single moron driving 25 mph. (#9) I arrived home to an email that promised a phone call from that guy. (#10)

How lucky can one girl get on a Monday?

That was the quick, pertinent synopsis. As we know, it is the impertinent stuff which tends to reign supreme in my reality. Today was no exception.

About the hoochie-momma jeans that I wore to work today... omg! Every time I turned around, it seemed they were falling off of me. I couldn't bend over all day without feeling self-conscious. I got looks. I got comments. I got slapped on the ass by one of the gay girls. (She's my evil twin, so it's OK. She made me promise to wash these and wear them to work again Saturday so she can see the reaction of one of the guys who tells me I'm not allowed to lose weight because he likes to look at my butt the way it is. She wants to hear what he has to say. LMAO I am so gonna have to do that just for shits and grins.)

The weekday staff haven't seen me since I cut my hair, so more than a few people were wondering who was the girl with the short hair and the shades and the curves out running around the grounds. So very unlike me, I'm telling you.

My feet made it through the day OK. They haven't swollen again, thankfully. My boss and the other nurses were as dumbfounded as I as to any possible cause or reason for why it occurred, but there is no denying the bruising and small cuts across the top of my feet and the blisters on my heels. They just looked at my feet and shook their heads, much the way I did when it happened so suddenly Saturday night.

Can't seem to locate the correct syndicated horoscope for today. Rats. I had a pretty good improvisational monologue going as I was reading it aloud this morning. It ended up being a very funny bit.

Met the new IT guy at work. That's "I" "T" not "it." He was sorta cute, though, in a geeky kinda way. Then again, I do have that attraction to geeks. With my daughter, it's the trash-factor, with me, it's the geek-factor. And, I got to explain to him in detail, up-close and personal-like, just what the problem with the computer was last night when it failed to load for me. I was most helpful, it seems. Glad I stopped to put on my makeup BEFORE I went to work this morning.

All-in-all, it was a pretty good day. Except for this last few minutes when my daughter dropped in. She stopped by the elementary school this morning to meet the new principal and found out there is a meeting tomorrow morning at 8:30am that she would like to attend. This means that I have to be at her house around 7:30 on my day off. Oh well.

Monday (Black and) Blue

I'm off to work to cover a call-off. I volunteered for this yesterday when one of the day nurses called in. I'm not quite right in the head.

I worked yesterday, with my feet blistered and bruised due to them swelling suddenly while working Saturday night, because it was my regularly scheduled day. Yes, I finished my hours on Saturday night after they swelled for reasons only my immune system understands. Gotta love rheumatoid arthritis.

Initially, I was barefoot until I got back up to the office to get a pair of nonskid socks. What was I to do? Go home? Not an option with only one other nurse on duty. So, I finished out. (And we all know that I NEVER break any rules.)

Why am I working today?

I'm just not fucking right in the head.

I'll let you know later what adventures this day held in store.

In Searching For Significance

I sat down tonight and quickly scanned the job postings. A few positions for office nurses. I have yet to check the listings for two of the larger hospital providers here in town. For having such an ill-defined concept of what it is that I'm looking for in the way of a job, my heart seems to have its own ideas of what it is that I need.

I don't need to be "needed," but I do need to make a difference. Somewhere, somehow, in some way what I do needs to make a difference to someone. A positive difference. As I have stated before, it is my love for the people that I serve that has kept me from actively seeking something else to do until now. I don't want to leave. I love what it is that I do.

It really wasn't until I was talking with one of the other nurses this afternoon that I saw the search for significance from an entirely different perspective.

She's one of the African nurses. Very funny, very personable. Quite non-stereotypical in so many ways. She's probably as much a juxtaposition as is KarmaDogma. She doesn't cook; her husband does the cooking. She is quite content to let him do the cooking as he enjoys it. She works and her money is pretty much her own with her favorite ways to spend it being to have her hair done and on her jeans obsession. She likes country music. And, she's Muslim. Now, if that set of data doesn't make for a juxtaposition somewhere... LOL

It seems that she is always coming up with something that surprises me about her, and the reciprocal is also true it would seem as well. I wished that we worked more shifts together as she's a great coworker, always willing to jump in and lend a hand when needed, and just a lot of fun to be around.

When she works with Ken and me on Sunday, the three of us always have lunch together. It's a nice change from the usual hectic routine. When we sat down for lunch today, Ken switched off the CD of reggae that he had been playing, thinking that I didn't like reggae. (Me, who authored "The Obligatory Pseudo-Reggae Song" when it seemed that everyone in the music industry felt the need to include a reggae song on their album? Me? Not like reggae?) Her reply to my response that I liked reggae, "Oh, I forgot. Jo's international," she giggled. We listened and chatted.

I took some of my wings out to the apartment for my autistic guy who, upon seeing me first thing, had grabbed my hand and told me "Kentucky Fried Chicken." I had agreed that it sounded good, but there was no KFC today. His response was to try and drag me out the back door of the apartment to the parking lot in order to go and get some KFC. So, I figured I'd share some of my wings and macaroni salad with him for lunch.

When I returned, Ken was off being busy again. He's the busiest guy I know. I had some time, so she and I began to talk. She asked if I had heard back from the workers comp provider about a job. I confessed that I had never gotten around to applying, but that I was going to go home and do a job search in earnest as the time had come to go.

I told her I was dating someone from work. She was happy for me. After breaking off my engagement, and then the total snafu with Seth... Knowing the grapevine well, she agreed we were right in keeping it away from work. I made the point that people will freely speculate and embellish, so it just proves ugly and lethal to any type of attempt at having a relationship. I told her I would rather have a relationship with him than have my job. And, being that the grapevine has had him sleeping with/trying to sleep with every woman at work already, I just wasn't willing to come close to feeding into it at all.

We talked about how it is that you can be around someone for a year, and then just "suddenly" notice what they're about. I told her that he just amazes me at the depth of soul, quietness of spirit, the intellect and understanding that he has, and why was it that I had never caught on to this before now. (OK, I am blonde, you know. I tend to be just a bit slow on the uptake at times.) I told her that we had talked about meeting my family. She said that means he's serious. I told her that I wasn't sure what it meant entirely, especially being that he's African....

She was floored by that revelation. That this guy that I'm telling her about who is so sweet to my heart and witty and intelligent was African. She was genuinely surprised by the fact that I would be dating an African.

"You're so open-minded in the good ways."

That was the sentence with which she opened the next part of the conversation. We went on to talk about how she feels that many of the Americans perceive the Africans as being stupid and inferior. She related an account of attending one of our staff meetings where one of the employees went off on some tangent about how they were tired of all the Mexicans and Africans coming over here and taking away jobs. I was appalled. It doesn't really surprise me that something like that would happen. It's like I tell people when they find out what it is that I do, "My patients are great. It's my staff that's fucking retarded." That would be a prime example of exactly what it is that I mean when I make that statement.

We went on to talk about some of the other perceptions, misconceptions, educational backgrounds, cultural stuff... She asked if I was going to start fixing African food for him. I told her I'd have to come over and take cooking lessons from her husband for that. We rolled.

In the end, she agreed that I was right in my decision that it was time to look for a job elsewhere if having the opportunity for a relationship with this man was that important to me.

In the search for significance...

The conversation that she and I shared today was significant, in many ways and for both of us.

Significance isn't only to be found in what you do as a job. Significance is to be found in what you do in life in general. Actions and attitudes and relationships and conversations all contribute to significance.

Some Stuff

When my mom and baby sister were opening the store this morning, I guess my mother asked my sis if I had called and told her about the new boyfriend. My sister replied that she had talked to me last night, and why else would I be calling her. LOL Gotta love your family, primarily because if we don't love them, no one else probably will.

If I only called my sister to tell her about a new guy, we wouldn't talk for months at a time. Usually it's just a few weeks that we go without talking. She is so busy with the store and trying to keep staff that she's there most of the time. I've added the store number to speed dial if that's any indication of where I talk to her most of the time these days.

My mom wasn't working last night when I called her, so I assumed my sister has the store fully staffed, at least for the moment. After talking with my sis, I found that there are enough teenagers on hand to sort of take care of the customers. My sister and my brother-in-law had taken a well-deserved evening off and gone out to dinner without the girls. Jason's only criteria for the restaurant - some place that did not have chicken nuggets on the menu and did serve wine. They had opted for the Columbus Fish Market. Nice choice.

I think I may have to take Mr. "So Who Is He?" there for the blackened salmon spinach salad since he tells me he doesn't like salmon. I don't think he's ever had salmon other than the mushed up stuff that comes out of a can that is sworn to be salmon; I remain doubtful of that assertion.

I didn't get to talk with Dee for long. She had to go close the store, and Mr. "He Who Shall Remain Nameless Until Such Time As I Deem Suitable" was calling after work. (He's a co-worker and though none of my fellow employees read this blog, so far as I know, I'm not that difficult to find on the net. If I can google myself and find me, so can anyone else. And, it's sort of a mutual agreement that we aren't ready to be busted-out at work. As I've stated before, the grapevine is effective and for what it may lack in factual details, it more than makes up for in quantity and imagination.) Dee did get a chance to tell me of the Thursday night "it's always an adventure with the teenagers working" moment. One of the teenagers couldn't get the new container of milk opened, so she opened it with her teeth in front of a whole bunch of customers. The girl couldn't understand why everyone would be so upset about that. The girl in question would happen to be the daughter of our cousin, my mother's great niece. I had to laugh, knowing where the fucked-up DNA leading to that particular "hilligan" behavior came from. I told Dee I had been telling the boyfriend about Mom's side of the family, and that I refer to them collectively as "those people." Really, they aren't bad people. They're from the mountains of eastern Tennessee, so you just can't take them anywhere. That does include the ones who no longer live in the mountains. For instance, one cousin from that side of the family who lives here applied for SSI Disability due to cardiac problems. The person at the social security office said getting him qualified for disability would be no problem, based on the developmental disabilities alone. My cousin replied in apt fashion, "I don't want disability because I'm retarded. I want disability because of my heart." Those people... Please refer to the initial statement above regarding why it is that we have to love our families.

About this guy person. You know, I've dated men of all sorts of ethnicities. Hispanic - to include Mexican, Puerto Rican, and from the US, German, British, Filipino, African American, Swedish, Persian, Sicilian. I've even managed to date a few caucasian and caucasian/mixed American guys along the way, believe it or not. The ex-husband is Cajun, so I'm not sure he counts in that particular statistic or merits his own category altogether.

This particular guy is another first. My first African boyfriend. He's well-spoken, quiet, thoughtful - essentially, everything that I'm not. He's intelligent, warm and has a sublime sense of humor - intriguing and with depth. How did I manage to get that lucky? It's funny how you know someone for a year and then just suddenly realize that they're there and what they're all about. In some ways, he is so African. It's both endearing and amusing to me. In spite of the American education and being immersed in American culture, he retains certain aspects of his cultural identity and background. He went to work the other day wearing blue and green plaid shorts and a red and blue striped golf shirt. All I could think was, "omg, you are sooooo African." It was wonderful. And just FYI, no, I wouldn't think of asking him to change. I've seen the closet full of suits and have seen photos. The man does look sharp dressed up, but he looks best just being himself. What came to my mind as an after thought (and this is just because I spend way too much time watching DVDs with the kiddos) was the line from the Jimmy Neutron movie after the parents had been kidnapped by aliens and the kids were enjoying their newly found freedoms, Shane singing and dancing in the street, "My clothes don't match. My clothes don't match. I'm out in public and my clothes don't match." From the woman who wears black, not out of angst but simply because I'm too lazy to color-coordinate my wardrobe, "Here! Here!"

So, the quest for the new job begins in earnest. I'd rather be able to keep our relationship than keep my job, which I dearly love. It is only because I do love the people that I serve that I've delayed this long in looking for something else due to the on-going issues with the rheumatoid arthritis. Personal relationships and work are generally a bad combination to begin with, but our workplace is lethal to them. What everyone isn't able to find out about your business, they freely speculate and embellish, even if they personally know the truth to be otherwise. We had one girl, who knows her co-worker is decidedly straight comment when asked if the co-worker was lesbian, reply, "She's gay. She just won't admit it." There's still an ass-kicking due down the line from that particular tidbit. That's why we're keeping this as far away from work as possible. The less people know or think they may know, the better off things will be until I'm out of there. Just when I'm finally about to be eligible for FMLA, too. Doesn't it just figure?

I'm not sure what it is that I want to do. I've been thinking about this for several months now. I just don't know. Other than doing my art, I'm undecided. As self-employment offers no health care benefits, I have to maintain a "real job" of some sort in the interim until I'm able to afford to purchase a policy of my own. COBRA really isn't an option from my current job. The insurance is expensive and pretty well sucks. It's better than having no insurance at all, but it's not worth the expense to COBRA it. I do need to make sure and get new glasses before I exit, though. A visit to the dentist probably wouldn't be a bad thing either, but I've got that pain-instilled fear of the dentist thing lurking in my brain that will probably prevent that from happening.

I'm still left with not knowing what sort of job to search for. My only criteria and limitation is that it really does need to be a desk job. I guess I'll check the newspaper and the online listings tomorrow.

I'm doing a bit better mental health-wise. I'm on Celexa which contains the same SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) as the Lexapro for the depression but also another drug which helps with the anxiety. It's also available in a generic and is covered by the insurance, so it's far more affordable to me. Most days I don't think about suicide, so I see that as improvement. I'm also eating a bit more. I still don't have much of an appetite, but at least I will generally feel hungry at some point during the day. So much for those weeks of 3 to 5 pound weight loss... Guess I'll just have to go back to making healthy food choices and continue to lose weight the right way. Damn!

It's time for me to hop my happy self into the shower and head out to do an afternoon of sweating in the coin laundry. A couple of more episodes of this and I may finally have the motivation to contort myself on the concrete in the basement and replace the drive belt on the washing machine. Maybe. LOL

Politics and Dissent - What A Long Strange Trip It's Been

" Don't fret precious I'm here Step away from the window And go back to sleep Safe from pain and truth and choice And other poison devils See they don't give a fuck about you like I do..."

"I'll be the one to protect you from your enemies and all your demons I'll be the one to protect you from a will to survive and a voice of reason I'll be the one to protect you from your enemies and your choices son They're one in the same I must isolate you Isolate and save you from yourself"

from Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums

Jump from 2004 to 2007 and it would seem that nothing has changed.

The faces elected to congress in 2006 promised much and have delivered little. Typical. Were you genuinely expecting things to be otherwise?

We were talking the other day about those qualities and things which make me "subversive." Aside from the fact that I know how to think, and we all know how that is discouraged in this knee-jerk conservative political climate or by any other political agenda for that matter.

I belong to Greenpeace, TED.com, subscribe to edge.org's newsletter. I have a copy of the Quran on my computer. I am an atheist. My daughter says more of an agnostic. Which ever, whatever. I suppose when you tell god to fuck off, it is an acknowledgment that deity does exist on some level. My daughter has turned her back on Christian dogma and rhetoric as well, preferring to label herself as pagan.

Politically, I am officially registered as "independent" simply because rational anarchist was not available as a category. Truthfully, it was more a ploy to keep the politicians from filling my mail box with dead trees at election time. I support Obama for president. I'm bisexual. My web browsing habits include international and noncommercial media outlets, piercing and tattoo sites, and on line sex shops. My Google searches alone are enough to have me flagged. LOL

I despise the entitlement mentality of the liberals and the militancy of the religious reich equally. I love my country but mistrust my government. I feel that the police are low-level civil servants entrusted with a disproportionate amount of power, and that lawyers are lower than whale shit. Insurance companies follow a close second.

I feel that taxes are too high, pedophiles should be executed rather than protected by our injustice system, and there should be a $15 per pair import tax on every pair of Nike (insert any other brand/company who uses legal third-world slavery) shoes brought into this country, with that tax doubling every six months until those companies either begin to treat foreign workers equitably or relocate back to the U.S.

Judges should not be political appointees or serve for life. Access to adequate health care is a right, not a privilege. Marriage licenses should be like your drivers license... renewable. And, perhaps if it cost more to get one, we just might see a drop in the divorce rate. Speaking of licenses... why is it I have to have a license to own a dog, but they'll let anyone have a child?

Subversive? Not hardly. But, I'm sure I'm in the data base somewhere. And probably so are you. Big brother is watching, after all.

I have sat down several times over the last week or so to attempt an entry, but things just wouldn't quite come together. So much going on, so much stuff rattling around in my brain...

I'm over-whelmed, stressed-out, under-fed, caffeine-saturated, insomnia-plagued, (How many more hyphenated phrases can she come up with?) burnt-out, and generally pretty much of a basket-case at this point. We'll leave it there, just for the record.

"My Violent Heart" is playing and "Zero Sum" is queued. Those two tracks have sort of become the backdrop against which my thoughts ricochet.

I cut my hair a couple of days ago. It looks nice. People couldn't believe that I cut it myself. It is pretty short, falling to two or three inches above my shoulders. What doesn't show is that the sides and back have been completely shaved out. That has taken everyone pretty much by surprise. I'm not quite sure why. I've told many of them over the years that I'm punk. I guess they just never took me seriously. Lisa Fisher was the only one to ask, "So who is he?" LMAO! She just wasn't buying my reply that this was my version of a mid-life crisis.

"You wouldn't know what crazy was if Charles Manson was eating Froot Loops on your front porch."

Had to add some Tendencies to the play list.

I was looking at sailboats for sale when I ended up babysitting the grands after I left work on Saturday night. I'd have much preferred slipping off into the night with Mr. "So Who Is He?" or even bringing him here to do a meet and greet with the K9 and the Gang of Five but decided to do the good mom thing instead and give the kids a Saturday night out. The sailboat because the wanderlust and the lure of the wide open have been whispering my name again. For some reason, Santa Monica has been sounding better than going home to Tucson.

I do think I'm going to go home for the winter, though. I don't want to spend months in the miserable cold and oppressive grey that are winters in Ohio one more year. The Mansion is gone. I suppose I could rent an apartment at Saratoga or Park Avenue. So long as I can see my Catalinas.

I've lost another 2 1/2 pounds this week. That's over 10 pounds in 3 weeks. There is something positive to be said for extreme mental duress after all.

It's late. I'm tired. I haven't had much sleep the last couple of nights. More later...