Author: Sharon

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.

I guess I should finish writing from my list of two blogs ago about topics I wanted to eventually write about….

These are more photo oriented posts, and I must admit that the new photo management tools from MySpace “seem” like they should make things easier, but I’ve had nothing but troubles with them so far.

So, let’s recap for a second. I made a list of things I wanted to write about, the remaining topics being:

Hands on Grilling – steaming!

Bess on Drugs – Whisker City.

Which Doctor Who are you test – Facebook

Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start… oh wait.. sorry for the musical interlude. Now I’m busy singing do re mi… the first three notes just happen to be… do re mi… ok..get it together, Sharon.

My first photo goes with Hands On Grilling-

Last weekend, Hubby and I were finally able to clean up the gardens and yard some. We never get to this chore until Mid-May, due to my work schedule, but we always enjoy getting out in the yard and cleaning it up. It always lifts my mood and makes me feel better when I pull in the driveway and see the cheery little heads of flowers peeking up at me through fresh mulch.

The day was a bit muggy and I left my gardening gloves and some tools on the steps while I went inside to cool off a bit. As usual, distracto girl got involved in a few other things and forgot my gloves… until she saw the rain. Ugh.  I still had seeds to get started and some other chores left and it wasn’t supposed to rain all day, just a brief shower.

When the rain ended, it was close to dinner, so we figured we’d fire up the grill, clean up the deck, and then go back to work. I walked out to where my gloves were and picked up my poor soaked and dripping leather gloves and looked forlornly at Hubby.

“Here, give me those, goofy girl.”

And plop! He put them on the grill. Within minutes they were steaming. Number 3 came home and walked out on the deck to see what we were doing, took one look at the gloves and said, “Wtf?”

I told him we were channeling Charlie Chaplin and he said he’d had enough of eating boots, but he thought he could really enjoy a nice pair of gardening gloves. I’m not sure he got it.

My Second Subject, is Bess on drugs…

I *thought* Bess had her birthday this month. But when I went looking at pictures to make a movie, I found out that she was born sometime in late June. Doh!  I had already gone and gotten her a new cardboad corrugated scratchy liner, with fresh CAT NIP. She was a very happy kitty. In fact, that evening, after eating as much cat nip as she could find, she raced around the house and then passed out on her new scratchy. She was very asleep when I took the last photo of her in the box. I think I took about 6, with and without flash, and she didn’t move a muscle. In fact, I thought that maybe I had killed the old girl, but no… she was just STONED. Notice her vacant eyes. The first picture of her was before she started running around willy-nilly. I think it was just kicking in by then.

Next- Which Dr. Who are you?

This is self explanatory. I took this test on Facebook. The quiz was pretty hard to answer, since there were multiple ways I could go with my choices, so I bet if I took it again, I’d be someone else. Hubby took the test too. He was Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor. I guess it’s fitting that I’m knitting his scarf, then, isn’t it! (Still working towards being done when we go to England so I can get pictures of him with it on there!!)

Sharon completed the quiz “Which Doctor Who are YOU?” with the result 1st Doctor.

“The Original, you might say.” Sharp witted and clever, it takes you sometime to trust new people but once you take them in you keep them safe and are sad to see them go. Though you are a bit absent minded at times, you are willing to do whatever it takes to make it through the situation and although you have a tendency to look down on others at first, you respect them when they give you reason.

And Finally…..

These are just because pictures. A student’s family gave me the roses. I don’t typically like roses, but these were beautiful. They opened, they didn’t stink up the house and they kept their vibrant color and velvety petals for over a week.

This is a white iris I had bloom for only the second time within the 3 – 4 years it’s been planted in the back garden. I was so happy to see it, I gimped out to get a few pictures. This year, I planted some hyacinths that my daughter gave me and a beautiful lily that my son gave me. More lovelies for my garden!

When I was 15 or so, I had a plan. I was going to be an AFS student and live abroad for a year. Then I was going to come back, finish High School and work for a season in a local beach town called Ocean City.

Those were my plans, but what is that saying?

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”

Needless to say, my life went a different path, and that’s ok. Now I get to live my past plans vicariously through my youngest, who is busting her rear working in that same beach town while she’s in college.

So far, the weather hasn’t been optimum, but when she has had a hoppin’ night, she’s had a few stories to tell.

First, was the story of the girl, who didn’t look old enough to be in the bar in the first place, who had somehow forgotten to wear any underpants and a scandalously short skirt. Even though Lib’s is studying in a medical field, she’s not going for gyno, so seeing someone else’s cooch was a bit much. While the girl was on her way to the restroom, she passed an older couple, spun around suddenly, and yelled,

“Did you just call me a whore?”

Which, of course, garnered the attention of her young boyfriend who decided to show what kind of a (ahem) man he was, by going up to the older couple and threaten to beat them up! Yeah, that’s the way to shine as the next generation to be sure!! After much to-do, the bar asked the younger couple to leave since they had threatened a patron.
Lib’s take on this?

” I mean, dang, maybe if she wore some underwear, no one would think she’s a whore.”

Sound logic, I say! Score one for her good sense.

Second, there were a bunch of girls who were on the top deck, drunk, discussing another girl at length. Lib said they “put her life, like, right OUT there for everyone to hear!” The whole time, the conversation was punctuated by loud bursts of high pitched voices yelling, “OhMiGAD”.  Each time this verbal exclamation point was bellowed, patrons below visibly cringed. Finally, two older women had had enough. They stood up and made sure they were in view of the top deck and began to imitate the younger girls, screaming “OhmiGAD” and making up some terrible trash talk about someone. They got the attention of the girls, and everyone else in the nearby area. Of course, the girls shouted a few vulgar things at the ladies, but the desired result was obtained. The girls stopped putting their absent friend through the verbal wringer and all was well with the world.
Lib’s take?

“Way to go Grandma!! See,this is why I don’t drink a lot. The thought of getting sloppy drunk and behaving like those girls is just….. (shudder) not worth it.”

YES!! Score another one!! What an awesome young woman!

Lastly, she had a patron who was in his cups to be sure. He called her over to his table and grabbed her arm, telling her to come closer. Lib’s knew what he wanted since another server had told her that he likes to kiss his servers on the cheek. He continued to pull on her and ask her to come closer. Finally she said,

“Sir, I can’t do that. It’s inappropriate behavior.”

After a few more attempts, with her repeated reprimand, he finally reverted to ugly comments, telling her that he wouldn’t leave her a tip because she wasn’t even worth a dime.
Lib’s take?

“Sir, that’s fine with me. If you think threatening my tip will get you what you want, it won’t. Would you like another server?”

Yes! Three for three.

I’m not sure I would have been as gracious as my baby is, so maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t work that summer at the beach. But wait… I’m not taking a dirt nap yet… maybe there’s still time!

http://www.jennsylvania.com/
Jen Lancaster’s website. The site that started it all. Great to pop in and check up on now and then if you are looking for a giggle.

Over the weekend, I went to go see Star Trek.

I remember watching Star Trek as a child and thinking that aliens must be balls of sparkling lights and energy. Maybe I wasn’t so far off, who knows.

I had a few favorite episodes. Who doesn’t like watching grown men act with fuzzy balls of fluff without cracking up? Tribbles have been the name of choice for any kind of overly fuzzy, fluffy, fake fur looking thing ever since.

And then there was Harry Mudd. Or should I say Harcourt Fenton Mudd. On days when I find it hard to compute, stay on track or actually make a coherent thought, I think of Harry Mudd’s android women. Especially the blank looks on their pretty faces when the crew confused the bejeezes out of them, and their circuits began to fry; little smoke curlicues coming from the backs of their heads. Yeah.  I feel that way at times. Then I think of their replacement, Stella, coming from all sides, screeching his name  and I think that James T. Kirk really was a very mean man at times.

What was the topic of the blog today…. (cocks head to one side and looks blindly at the wall… cricket….. cricket….)
Oh YEAH!!

I went to see Star Trek over the weekend. We carefully checked the dates and times and decided the best time to go would be on Sunday. We wanted to go to the IMAX showing. We got there on time, I paid for the tickets and we got settled in to our favorite seats with the bar in front where I can rest my leg.

Not once during the pre-show, nor the previews, did we see anything indicating this was the IMAX showing. Hmm. Strange.  We waited through all the previews and thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but after it was over we both were confused. It didn’t seem to be an IMAX experience to me! Don’t know how we did it, but somehow I must have zoned out and not noticed (Harcourt Fenton MUDD) that it wasn’t IMAX. Oh well, like I said, we enjoyed it, even if I did have to explain a few things to Frank who was SURE he found continuity errors.

And in reference to the word Comedy in my title… while we were waiting for our NON-IMAX experience, we saw a preview for a new comedy show on TV. A loudly dressed, overweight, not too bright, black man was dancing around with his equally overweight wife. I’m curious. Other than The Cosby Show, or a Wayans comedy, why does it seem the formula for all the black sitcoms are based on overweight characters that frequently aren’t that bright? I’m not sure I’d like that to be the stereotype for the typical black family.

Anyway, just an observation.. nothing more, nothing less.

I feel so behind if I don’t blog every few days or so, but I don’t really have time right now. I think I’ll list the few things that were running through my mind yesterday (if I can remember them) and come back to expound when I get a chance.

Ster Trek – Imax?

Bataan Death March – Distressing

Hands on Grilling – steaming!

Bess on Drugs – Whisker City.

Adventures in Libby-land – Panties

Which Doctor Who are you test – Facebook

sigh.. I hate when I can’t remember. I guess I should have written myself a reminder when I have these little epiphanies, since there are times when I have NO idea what to blog about at all.

Which one do you want to hear about first?

I’m going to complain for a minute or two.

Why are some people so nasty? What benefit do they get from making others feel so horrible?

What happened to common courtesy? I know I’ve ranted about this before, but I keep seeing it run rampant and it’s making me nuts. Is it just this area? Is it really so hard to sit through the entire 1 hour concert? Do you really have to come in late or leave early, in the middle of a performance??

Children these days don’t know how to live without their cell phones. Mobile phones are the new pacifiers. It is possible to go somewhere without your phone. Millions of people have grown up without mobile devices and we somehow survived. Unplugging yourself for awhile isn’t a bad thing.

For Pete’s sake, or your own, if you are constantly missing one practice for another event, or if you can’t adhere to schedules you made for yourself, take a look and see what you can do to not be so overloaded! Little Johnny will be just fine if he doesn’t take art, judo, soccer, violin, modern dance, swimming, debate team and softball every week!

Just sayin’….

And if you somehow can keep all the balls in the air with Little Johnny’s schedule, (good for you!!) please don’t be ugly to the people who are trying their best to keep you apprised of what’s going on in each activity. Take some time to read what they had to say to you and don’t assume that you can simply rearrange their entire schedule to suit your own, because guess what… you and every one else had the same idea!!

Whew.. ok, I think I’m done for a bit!