Month: June 2009

Dear Blog,
I’m sorry I’ve been away and busy with other things lately. Just remember that I have to work to buy you more toys… or electricity.. or well.. that comment worked with the kids. I promise that in t-12 days, I’ll have lots to share with you. And lots to share after that. It’s just the pesky work thing getting in the way. And I’m sick of saying that I’m busy with work, too!

How about I tell you a funny kind of story about the wedding I went to last weekend? You’d like that? Ok, here it goes.

The wedding was at 3pm, so by 12:30, I was getting ready. I spent over an hour drying my hair just so and applying the once-in-a-blue-moon application of make up that I only do for special events. I had on an outfit I’d never worn before and felt good that I was looking the best I could be!

The parking area for this wedding was at the back side of the church, so we pulled into the parking lot and found a space that wasn’t too far back in the lot, but wasn’t right in front either. There were a few clouds, but there were patches of blue sky as well. Just as Hubby cut the engine a large raindrop plopped on the windshield. Hubby decided to check for an umbrella, but had no luck. Hubby said we should go in before it really started to rain and since I’d only seen a drop or two, I figured it would be ok to walk quickly to the entrance.

I got out of the car and started across the parking lot, gimping up the curbing at the back of the church – just too far from the car to get back to it in a timely fashion – when the sky opened up and it began to rain in earnest. I quickly ducked under a tree that was growing in a way that kept me dry, snickering with Hubby about the silliness. The rain let up and we thought we were in the clear, so I gimped away from my tree and back on the pavement and got about 10 steps from my protective tree when Mother Nature dumped a bucket on my head. I skip-ran, wailing, to the next tree, larger than the first and down a slight incline, but certainly not growing in the same way. Hubby and I looked at each other and laughed. We laughed so hard at how drenched we both were. My hair was plastered to my head, my clothing was clinging to my body and my makeup was trailing down my face like some kind of crazy clown.

We couldn’t stop laughing. It was just so ridiculous that we could see blue skies and we were drenched and supposed to go into this glorious chapel for a beautiful ceremony. But our laughter was a reminder to us both that this is why we are married.

The rain started to let up a bit and we decided we were soaked anyway, so we should attempt to go in and find some paper towels to sop up some of the mess. I looked nervously at the incline, seeing that it was wet and muddy in spots. All I could imagine was slipping in the mud in my boot….but Hubby was right there to give me a hand and steady me whi…. wha… ?? Instead of him holding me up, I ended up holding him up while he and his sized 14 shoes were doing a crazy kind of cartoonish dance to keep him from falling face down in the mud. Luckily, he rights himself, but by now we are rollin’. We are belly laughing and crying it’s so funny, this comedy of weather. What were a few more drops of rain going to do at that point anyway.

But the rain had stopped and was clearing as if it almost hadn’t even happened. And just as I was thinking of a story from my youth, about when a quick summer shower had drenched me and my cousin’s dog while on a quick walk, but had dried up by the time I got back to my Grandma’s house, so my Grandma accused me of playing in a sprinkler instead, Hubby said, “Oh yeah, and I’ll bet you were going to tell me that it was a rain shower and not the sprinkler.”, almost as if he had read my mind. More laughs and grins and at that moment, I was reminded that this was what a marriage was. Good times and bad, slipperiness and health, shared lives and shared stories and above all of it, the ability to laugh and remember what it was that made you fall in love with that person all over again.

Of course, when we walked into the vestibule, looking like something the cat dragged in from the local creek, and all the other guests looked at us with sympathy and empathy, we knew we were looking pretty bad. One soaking wet, dripping clown make-up, gimping woman and one tall, wet and naturally silly looking man. It didn’t matter one bit to me. I had my Hubby and that’s all that mattered.

Call me old-fashioned, but what happened to decorum in churches? I went to a wedding today and really it was beautiful. I’ll go into that more in a bit. I just had a question for everyone here. Maybe I should figure out how to make it a poll, but how many of you would wear a short spaghetti strap dress, or sleeveless or tube type short dress, to a full Mass wedding without a wrap of some kind to cover your shoulders?

I saw some girls who were involved in what Hubby likes to call, “the sausage style of dressing, where we try to see how much meat we can fit into a small casing.” I know it’s probably really different now, but short dresses were not acceptable in church where I was brought up. There were a few GORGEOUS girls who would have been equally gorgeous had they been taught that you wear more than a yard of fabric in a church.

Two weekends ago, I went down and visited my oldest daughter and her children. It was a really quick visit and a LOOOONG car ride. 20 hours in the car to visit with the kids for less than 20 hours. Whew.

Last weekend, I went to the beach to see my youngest daughter for her birthday. She turned the big 2-0! No more teenagers for me, I’m officially a mom of adults. How incredibly strange this seems to me.

Anyway, the end result of that trip was 6 hours in a car and one real day of visiting her since she worked on Friday and Sunday. We did hang out with her at work, and that was fun, but not the same as one on one time.

My dilemma is not that I spent the time with my girls, far from it. I wish I could have spent more time with each of them, but by taking off two weekends, I’m at a terrible time crunch for finishing up a lot of projects at work. I’m feeling extremely stressed to get this stuff done, done right and done right NOW!! I know it can’t be perfect, but I want it to be as perfect as it can be, so I’ve been staying up late and chained to my desk from early in the AM until early in the AM.

I HAD to take a break to write a blog… it was driving me crazy just inputting data and i knew this wouldn’t take me that long. Besides, I miss my blogging.

The end result of all of this is that I feel guilty that i took the time to visit, even though I don’t feel guilty at all, and I feel in some ways like I was slacking my responsibilities, even though I know I’m not. It all puts me in two mind frames at once, which can make anyone angsty.

I have to take some time to get some groceries tomorrow. Even this thought makes me feel as though I am slacking, even though I’ve got auditions that night from 3-9, so it’s not like I’m shirking work. Ugh. I think I’m going to go lay down and tell my head to shut up, if I can!! Lol.

Holly sat in the hot and humid afternoon sun, eating a piece of watermelon and occasionally spitting out a seed. I was on the porch in a rocking chair, as all granny’s should be.

She casually looked up and with one eye squinting said,  ” Nini, I’ve just figured out something.”

“What did you figure out, pumpkin?” I asked.

“You know how there is are the 12 days of Christmas?” she said.

I nodded.

“Well, after the 12 days of Christmas, there are the 11 days of fake Christmas.”

Hmmm…

“Holly-kins, what are the 11 days of Fake Christmas?”

She looked exasperated with me for asking, and with watermelon juice streaming down her arms she said, “You know! You have real Christmas and then you have 11 days of playing with your toys, getting more gifts and Chanukah.”

Which, of course led to a whole new discussion about what is real and fake and what others believe.

‘Cause that’s the kind of conversation you love to have while eating watermelon and rocking on the porch with a 7 year-old on a sticky afternoon in South Carolina.

Well, not exactly like the song goes, but you get the point.

This blog is, of course, about a dream I had last night.

Even though I was exhausted from a successful meeting I had presided over (a stressful thing for me) I felt very anxious and unsettled last night. I should have been feeling ecstatic. I was well prepared, knew my answers and had 14 happy people.

I went to sleep easily, but I dreamed about someone I knew.

In my dream, I heard a noise in the hallway and a familiar voice. I came out of my room in disbelief and saw him giving my daughter a hug and saying hello to her. I was very shocked to see him in my hallway and thought that something must be really wrong if he were there. I remember just standing stock still and staring because I was so surprised. He looked at me and asked if I’d go out to talk to him.

In real life we don’t talk anymore and parted on not so good terms. But even if this were real life, I’d still talk to him if he needed to, so in my dream it was perfectly natural for me to say sure and walk down the hallway and go outside with him. I asked him what was up, why he looked so troubled and he said, “It’s the screaming. I just can’t take the screaming any more. It’s all that screaming.” He seemed so upset and I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.

After that exchange, my dream changed a bit to show me on a street I don’t know, near something that looked like a phone booth, but was more like a vendors stand somewhere in New York. I’m not sure what I was doing there, but he was standing off to the side, talking or doing something and that was pretty much it.

Even stranger still, I was cleaning out some of my email today and went to a folder I have to file an email. When I opened it, I found a bunch of mail there that shouldn’t have been there. I guess I must have moved it instead of deleting it because it wasn’t anything I wanted to keep, so I deleted them. Then, I figured I should check some of my other folders to see if the same thing had happened there. I opened one folder and saw emails from a few years ago. The first one I clicked open was from this person in my dream, and the discussion was about what the future held, come what may. The second one I opened was him telling me about getting his picture taken in New York.

It’s so strange the way that stuff happens. Kind of like thinking of someone and the phone rings and there they are. Lol.

What’s not to miss, eh? I’ve missed me!

I’m playing hookie from work for a few more minutes before I dive back into the fray. I worked most of the weekend, so I’m not too upset by a morning off, but I do have to prepare for a meeting I’m conducting tomorrow and rehearsals and progress reports and trip paperwork and and and… it’s never really done, is it?  That’s ok, ’cause if you are done and twiddling your thumbs than you are expendable. Must not be enough work if you can just putz around.

I went for a gimp today. After two months in a cast, I’ve learned how to get around pretty well. My doctor looked at me and said, “Where there is a will, there is a way.” You got it, Doc!! He gave me the ok to go walking again and thank heavens! I don’t think I could stand sitting around here much longer. The more I sit the more morose I become. Ugh. Now I’m POSITIVE that when I used to bug people to get up and go for a walk when they started moping around that I was 100% right. (Every now and then I’m only 50% right, but we don’t have to talk about that, true? lol…oh, and I’m not so big in my brtiches as to not be able to say that there are times when I’ve been 100% wrong, too.) How many of you are going to print that and frame it? lol

Back to the ramblings….

I gimped a mile. Up the two hills wasn’t too bad, but coming down the steep one is a bit tricky. Still, I made it. Now the trick is to be able to repeat it tomorrow.

Started tracking my food again, today. I went back and looked at where I started to fall off the wagon and sure enough, it was just over two months ago, just before I got this cast on. I guess it really isn’t so much what I eat, but not moving that does it to me. I could have done static exercises (EWWW) but those really don’t appeal. They are going to have to appeal, unfortunately, if I want to continue the path I started almost a year ago.

Wow, a year ago. So much changes in one year, ya’ know. And then again, so much doesn’t. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in looking at things from one point of view, that I feel trapped and then all of a sudden, POP!, a thought will come along. Almost as if it had been waiting for the right conditions to blossom or to come to light, and it’s a whole new thought process. Doesn’t mean it’s always the complete answer, but you feel as though another little piece of a puzzle has been put in it’s proper place. It just fits. I’ve heard it described as a shift, and I guess that can apply as well, but I like the jigsaw puzzle analogy.

I started reading, “The Stand” by Stephen King. Makes you wonder at every sniffle or itchy throat you may have, and sadly, I can see exactly how social breakdown could occur if and/or when a pandemic happens. Scary.

My flower children are all together, so I’m going to go visit them this weekend. It’s a bit of a haul, but they are all worth it. Anything is worth a really good hug.