So, my friend picked up a guy at the bar for me

Seriously. She did.

She came home with the number written on a receipt, in her pocket. The next day she kept trying to figure out why she had the number. You see, she has a boyfriend. SHe finally remember that it was for me.

So she explained that he was hanging out with her and another friend at the bar. They got to talking and he kept saying that he wanted to find someone "down to earth". Hmm, wonder what that means actually? Do I fit that description? Anyway, she told him that I had been seeing someone and she didn't know if it was going to work or not. She told him that he should go out with me. He kind of laughed it off and they kept hanging out. Right before last call he went over and asked her if she was serious about me. She told him she was and so he gave her his number.

She got done telling me this and said that I shold go out with me. We both agreed that it would be werid for me to call him first.

"Uh hello. You don't know me. Actually I don't know you either. Uh, you met my freind at the bar. You guys hung out all night. No, no, she has a boyfriend so she referred you to me."

Seriously, how embarassing! So she called him and told him that I would go out with him and asked him how he wanted to do this. She offered up just meeting one night with her and her boyfriend. Oh and me of course. He asked for my number and said that he would call me.

We've been playing phone tag all week. I get up the nerve to place what seems like a cold call, given I know nothing about him. Then he doesn't answer. I get a messgae from him and start the process again and what do you know - he's not answering.

So tonight, as I write this, I'm stalling. Yep. My turn to call him again.

Ok, here I go.

Ok, really this is it.

No, I swear this time I'll pick up the phone.

Um, may be I need a beer.

Excitement...

Less than a weeek from now I'll be an aunt again.

My sister is going in for a scheduled c-section. I wonder what's it like knowing that your child will absolutely be born on a particular day? Did it every cross her mind to say, "Nope, I want my child born on the 1st, not the 2nd!" or "I was hoping to wait a week so he/she would be a June baby instead of a May baby." Do you think?

Anyway, I took the whole week off to spend with my niece. She's 3 and more than likely will have issues with her place of glory as the only child being taken away. Hell, I was her thirty some years ago. I know how she's going to feel. Well maybe not exactly. Actually I don't remember my time when my sister was born, so I'm going from stories told about it. I do remember standing on one of the black vinyl kitchen chairs in the kitchen of the apartment we were living in. I was watching my Mom mix up bottles of the special formula that my sister needed. It's actually my earliest memory. I had to have been almost 3 at that time. Isn't it amazing that the mind can remember things at such an age? And I wonder what it was about that memory that implanted in my brain?

So my niece and I are going to go shopping for the new baby, play together, do some crafts and decorate for halloween. I'm doing to spend the time to get all those darn pumpkin seeds from those pumpkins so we can roast them together. She loves popcorn, so I think she'll like those seeds.

I'm excited!

I'm not a very steady poster, am I?

It either means that I'm leading a boring life or I'm too busy to post. Let's not guess which one applies to the last few months, ok?

Thanks.

It's back and I can't get it to stop!

Sigh. It's back. That song. You know, the one that sticks in your brain and befuddles it for hours on end. Everyone has a song, right?

Mine you ask? It's "Baby Baby" by Amy Grant. Don't ask me why because I have no idea how it got stuck there or why it's stuck. What message could she be sending me with this song? Seriously, is it because I need love or need a child or need babies? I need devotion? Crap, I have no clue.

"Baby, Baby, I'm taken with the notion...to love you with the sweetest of devotion."

That line runs through my head and has run through my head since 1991 when the damn song came out. It's not like I listened to that CD (wait, probably tape) too much and the song got stuck. It's not like I even liked Amy Grant back then or now for that matter.

There have been times when a new song gets stuck in my brain and I almost rejoice that I'm rid of the baby, baby. But I've since learned in the last 14 years that it's just a matter of time before I'm stuck listening to my brain sing that damn line again and again. I'm starting to think that I'll be 97 years old in the nursing home and still listening to that line in my head!

Mom...

I'm starting to think that my Mom thinks I'm an alcoholic.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good Appletini or a cold beer when I want to. There are even times I drink to excess. But those times are few and far between. I'm too old to be hung over all the time any more.

I believe that it all started when I was 23 and went to my cousin's wedding. It was an out of town wedding with a 4 hours drive one way. My parents decided to go a couple of days before and make it a mini vacation. They also said that we (my sister was 21) could just share their room the night of the wedding instead of having to pay for our own. They would live to regret that offer.

My sister and drove down to the wedding early Saturday morning and got to the hotel about 9:30. It was a long drive and an early morning. We hurried up and took showers and got dressed. The wedding was beautiful. 11:30 start time and it included the full Catholic Mass. Good thing I'm used to the full Mass. Anyway, we sat in that church for almost 2 hours. At 2pm we headed over to the reception at a local hotel (not our hotel).

In the lobby area of the reception there was a large group of people. In the middle of that large group was a bar. With beer. Free beer. Lots of it. See the problem? No? Well, it turns out that the bride and groom decided that they wanted to go bar hopping from the end of the wedding ceremony at 2pm to 5pm! So all the guests, mostly out of town guests, were at the reception lobby with no food and free beer.

Ahhh, I see that you've figured it out now. Yes, my sister and I had beer after beer after beer. After all, we did go to the number one party school in the state and this was a party. By 5:30 when the bride and groom finally made it to the reception my sister and I were feeling no pain, hell, I couldn't even feel my lips anymore. The doors to the dinner room opened and we were all ushered into dinner. We sat down and were searved our choice of chicken stuffed with crab and lobster or veal with something or other. Did I meantion that my sister didn't eat meat? Yeah, she was a vegetarian during college. Did I mention that drinking and rich food don't mix? Yeah they don't. So as there were no other meal choices I tried to pick the chicken out to eat without being obvious. My sister never ate.

Of course we kept on drinking. Free wine now. When the band started playing after dinner my sister and I were the first to get up and dance. Before the newly married couple. Opps. Yeah, probably our first in a string of things to go wrong. My Mom walked over and ushed us back to the table. Our uncles had noticed that my sister and Iwere "tipsy" and thought it was funny. You see, we're considered the "good" kids in our family. Anyway, they decided that they would keep buying us drinks to be entertained. We kept taking them.

By the end of the night my sister was hanging on the bartender (he was good looking) and I was playing butt quarters with the bride's father. My Mom was horrified. She took the quarter from me when it was my turn and made my Dad unwrap my sister from the bar to leave to go back to the hotel. On the way back to the hotel my sister and I had the giggles. This made my Mom more angry. Then my Dad was looking for a place to park and my sister kept telling him to park in a used car lot and wouldn't listen to him tell her he couldn't park there.

I went into the room and fell into bed and pretty much passed out. It was what I needed to do. My sister went into the bathroom. After a while my Mom woke me up and told me to get my sister. What the hell was I going to do? She was in the bathroom, not still in the bar. After much poking and proding from my Mom I got up to go to the bathroom & get my sister. Only that was a bad move. I now had to hurl. I kept pounding to get her to let me in and she wouldn't. So I hurled in her clothes at the bathroom door. Then my Dad jimmied the door open for me. My sister was hurling in the toilet and wouldn't share, so I got the sink. After that, things are fuzzy. But I woke up the next morning in bed.

My paernts came into the hotel room at 10 am and said they were going to breakfast and we had 1 hour to clean up the bathroom and room and leave. Turns out there were hurl all over the bathroom and they were embarrassed to leave it like that. We did the best we could and headed home.

It wasn't a good family bonding experience.

Since that time my Mom had made comments about drinking. The latest was in refrence to a new medication that I'm taking. She tld me, "You can have one or two drinks, but much more than that and you'll be in real trouble." Ummm, thanks. I told her that I pretty much haven't had any lately because it makes me feel worse. She looked at me like she didn't believe me and rolled her eyes.

Mom, I'm not a lush. Really.

That was a cruel trick!

It's 9:17am. Good Friday. I'm awake. It's a cruel trick my body plays on me.

Normally I haul my tired behind out of bed in just enough time to get ready for work and get to work. It's a good thing I live only a little over a mile from work. Yesterday I turned my alarm off and apparently went back to sleep. So, I was majorly late for work. Not a problem because I can pretty much make my own schedule.

By the holiday calender at work we get Good Friday off or another day in the following 2 weeks. Because we are not closed for business today. So, I was almost giddy with joy at the thought of sleeping inthis morning. Guess what time I woke up? Just guess? Yep, 7:30!!!! The time I'm supposed to wake up. Why?

It's such a cruel joke to have the day off & not be able to sleep in.

Sleeping...

Sleeping is simple, right? I mean you eat your dinner and do your nightly routine. You get into bed and close your eyes and fall asleep. Right?

Nope. For some reason, I don't sleep. I'm averaging 3-4 hours a sleep a night. I need about 8. Therein lies the problem.

I've tried EVERYTHING I can think of, everything I've been told, everything I've researched. Nothing seems to make a difference. I used to think that my sleep routine got interuptted and it would get back on track and I'd be ok. For a while. That used to happen about 1 week every month. But it's gradually worsened.

One of two things happens. Sometimes I'm tried (well really, I'm always tired as you might imagine) and I fall asleep between 9pm - 10pm. But I wake up shortly after midnight and I'm awake until about 6am. Then I fall asleep until my alarm goes off at 7am and pray for the ability to roll over and sleep some more. Other times, I just plain cannot fall asleep. I'm awake until about 4:30am - 5am. By that time I'm exhausted and fall asleep until my alarm goes off at 7 and again I pray for the ability to roll over and go back to sleep.

I've...cut out caffine, set up a routine & followed it, not watched TV in the bedroom, read books to relax, taken warm baths, I write down my thoughts to get "rid" of them, gotten up and done other things (like blog!), sipped sleepytime tea, taken melatonin....ARGGGG!

I've tried everyting I can think of. It's gotten to the point that I need to see the doctor about it. I don't want to add another medication to my daily life, but I can't go on the 3 hours of sleep a day. I need my brain to shut off to sleep 7-8 hours.

High School is not what it used to be

In high school I worried about whether or not some boy liked me as much as I liked him. I worried about getting a ride to school from Candace so I wouldn't have to ride the bus. I worried about whether or not Diane was mad at me for some stupid reason. I never worried about some classmate shooting me.

There's been another school shooting. Another one.

I'm not sure when the whole idea of this came about. I'm unclear how it went from beating up someone who you didn't like or weren't friends with to deciding to shoot them. Even more so, shoot them and those who just happen to be standing around them when you decide to shoot. What happened to change that?

I realize that when the media presents these stories they are usually accompanied by statements that suggest that the shooter was bullied by classmates and felt that there was no other choice. There were bullies in my day too. Are they that much worse that shooting is the only way out? And I can't help but ask what's going on in this child's home that prevents their family from knowing how bad it is at school.

I've also noticed that none of these shooters seem to be girls. What's going on between girls and boys? Do teenaged girls handle bullying differently than boys? Do teenaged girls have some kind of emotional or mental capacity to handle bullying in a better way than boys?

I don't know that I'll ever have answers to the questions. All I know is that more children are dead.

I cannot stand to see others cry

I've never figured out why another person crying makes me cry. After so many instances of people in my personal life crying for one reason or another, I've chalked it up to my sensitivity. I think that I place myself in that person's shoes and know that what they are crying about would make me cry too.

Someone made my Dad cry.

You have to know my Dad to understand how that impacts me. He's been through his share in life. Grew up in the 50's and 60's on a farm with a father who was at the least strict, at the most, terrifying. My Dad got married young, had children young and grew up with us kids. He worked his way up in his job, struggled financially to be secure later in life.

3 years ago he lost about 70 pounds in about 9 months. It became abundantly clear to everyone else that he was sick. He refused to see a doctor. Each of us, in our own way and in our own time pleaded with him to see a doctor and find out what was wrong. Finally he did. I think it was my aunt dying that made him realize how short life is. He would later tell someone that he was fearful of seeing a doctor because he thought he was dying and didn't want to hear the words. In fact he has an every day disease that it treatable with medications.

I guess I shared that because it demonstrates how stubborn and strong the man is. He's a man who doesn't show emotion easily. He gets mad, but I've only ever seen him really mad a few times in my life. He keeps his emotions in check.

But yesterday he called me. I asked him a question and he couldn't talk because he was crying. Even though there were no audible sounds, I could hear the silent sobs he was making on the other end of the phone line. It made me immediately start to cry.

I really hate to see others around me cry.

Ok, time for a new license

I don't dislike our DPS. Really. I don't dislike the process of getting that new license. Really. And I don't mind paying the fee for the new license. Really.

I'm fearful of my picture. REALLY!

Isn't it every woman's fear? Normally when I take a bad photo it disappears. Into the trash. A driver's license photo however, sticks with you like that gross gum on your shoe from the parking lot. You can scrape that gum off, but there are still little sticky parts on your shoe for a long time to come. That bad license photo hangs out in your wallet for 4 years, waiting to embarass you when you have to show ID.

My current license photo started out pretty good. I had that half hearted smile that looks ok, instead of my usual cheesey grin. But over the course of the years, I've developed what looks like a beard over the majority of my face. It's something in the photo processing - REALLY! I have no beard in real life. I hate to show the thing, although I will, when asked for it.

So wish me luck. Send the photo gods to sit on my shoulder today. I'm wading into the dreaded license renewal center soon.

What's with Louis Lamour?

I don't get it? What's the draw of Louis Lamour?

My Dad (until recently) only read Lamour books. He reads daily, although not quickly. So as you can imagine, he goes through a lot of books in a year. Yet he only read Lamour. How you ask? He read them over and over and over again.

He would read a book and then as he went through the series he would eventually read it again. And for the life of me, I cannot understand it. While there are some books that I have read more than once, there aren't many. While I read quickly, I retain the storyline, it not all the details. The thought of continually reading a book over and over again is like eating the exact same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day. No variety. No new stories.

On the drive home last night he told me that he's found a new author in the the last year. I was surprized. Eventually this new author is the 2nd top rated western writer. But true to form, he's found all this author's books also. And even better, he's reading them for the 2nd time right now!

Arizona

I've spent the last week and a few days in Arizona.

Someone once asked me what my favorite place was. I had a hard time coming up with a place that I felt was my favorite. I thought about Alison's bedroom and playing with her. I thought about my bedroom. I thought about my Grandma's house, the familiarity of it is welcoming.

When I really had time to ponder the places that I know, I realized that it was Arizona. I have no demands on me. I have no where to be at a certain time. I can relax without worrying about anything except running out of books to read. I'll say it again, I can relax. Relax. Relax.

I just read 10 books in the time that I was there. I love to read and I rarely get to do it.

I love Arizona.

I've rediscoverd blogging...

I know, long time no see. I don't know what it is, but there are times when I just don't have the energy to write or the time. I used to seek solice in writing my thoughts. But now it seems that it's too much work to write them down.