No title for you

Things have just gone to hell lately.  No, I don’t want to write about it.  I sure as hell don’t want to talk about it.  The F word. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.  Not in a good mood.  Not in a good anything at all.  It’s time to pull out one of my favorite Stephen King quotes and bastardize the meaning a bit…”sometimes an accident is an unhappy woman’s best friend.”  I mean it in an entirely different way than it was used in the book.  Time to quit thinking about F’ing stuff I don’t want to F with and F’ing get back to F’ing doing it because it sure the F isn’t going to do itself. 



What are you so F'ing happy about???



ready or not

I’ve had little enthusiasm for the current class, and I’m dreadfully far behind on the reading. The text books have been surprisingly interesting but I haven’t started the journal articles which are usually what I concentrate most on. Hopefully, this change in strategy isn’t a huge mistake. If the professor posts one more helpful hint, success tip, word of advice, or explanation of his grading rubric, I’m going to have a full blown panic attack or something. Just how much of an asshole does he plan to be? We already know the definition for a substantive post, how to count words, differences between APA version 5 and 6 , etc, etc, etc. Jeez Louise……enough already! Undeserving people have been passed through to this point; why penalize them now? They should have been dealt with years ago. I have to start writing this Sunday, ready or not.


I’m about out of panties stories, but I will mention that when little girls start dressing themselves, it’s not uncommon to find panties worn backwards or inside out. One child in particular used to love running around with little or no clothes on and her panties were nearly always on backwards. She really didn’t care. It would have driven me nuts to have a wedgie all day…but she was OK with it.

Fast forward. One day, I took girls shopping for bras. Bras are hard to fit so I insisted they try them on. One child was discussing how difficult it was to reach behind her to fasten the bra and why didn’t they just make bras fasten in front. I spoke up with motherly advice, “Well, simply fasten it in front, slide it around and stick your arms through the straps.” I assumed they’d seen me or a big sister do that, or at least seen it on TV, for heaven sakes! Other child says, “Oh, I always just do it like this!” She held the bra out in front of her, fastened it, then stepped into it pulling it all the way up over her hips. Um, yeah…good luck with that in a few years!

Sarah proud owner of her first horse, Banjo (Joey). 

haircut alternative

It’s too much running around this week…this whole DANG month has been too DANG busy. I hate when my calendar is so scheduled that I can’t even think about doing anything without consulting my calendar to see if I’m free. When did life become so F’ing complicated? I use that F word way too much. I think that should be the epitaph on my gravestone – “She F’ing died” – no, I don’t want a gravestone. I want to be cremated and my ashes dumped into the river or over a cliff….so it’s like I was never here. I F’ing don’t have time to plan a F’ing funeral and no relatives will have time to come anyway. I’ll be doing them a favor – they won’t have to reschedule their day to attend a funeral – one less complication and that’ll be my parting gift.


If I don’t find time to get a haircut soon….I think I’ll just light a match to it. I’m smiling. I actually did that once accidentally back in my college days – getting ready for a “hot date” and had my hair in rollers. I accidentally set one of the rollers on fire with a match. Long story…not appropriate blog material. I heard “crackle crackle” and started looking around, like, what the hell is that? “It sounds like something is burning,” I thought to myself. Then I realized it was my hair. PANIC! I patted it out with my hands and the roller fell to the floor. I ran to a mirror and saw my eyebrow was singed and there was frayed, singed hair where the roller had been. Yikes. More panic. What do you do when that happens? I parted my hair on the side and it wasn’t too noticeable. Valuable life lesson learned – carelessness has a price. By the way, I now know hair burns extraordinarily fast.

I have been writing about little girl panty stories…let me back up to the diaper stage. One of my little girls found her diaper to be especially useful for storing things. She used it like some people might use their pockets. When I changed her diaper, it was not at all unusual to find plastic animals, rocks, little Polly Pocket dolls, cookies, blocks, gummy snacks, or other assorted little toys in her diaper. Diapers are a bit bulky on a baby but sometimes these objects gave her a very unusual shape. Sometimes, I would pick her up to carry her and feel something hard and strange in her diaper…but with this child, it was always a few blocks or perhaps a plastic hippopotamus. I would change her diaper and tell her it’s not sanitary to eat from her diaper, but she’d just smile at me and look at me with giant eyes, and act all innocent.



bad influence

I’m still dragging from a miserable headcold. Is this what old age does? You get a cold and it takes weeks to recover?


Erin got in from her trip at 2:30 Monday morning and called for a ride home. Jerry popped up and offered to go get her. Thank the Lord. I went back to sleep but as soon as they got in, Erin wanted to talk about her trip and I dozed off and on hearing bits and pieces about hot Australian boys and some New Zealand guy named Ryan. A 15-year-old girl remembers the whole trip in terms of boys and who said what. I’m certain she had fun which is the most important part, and she is talking about working hard next year so they can make it to internationals again. Internationals are in Indiana next year.

Another little girl story related to panties…as promised. The little girl in this story is about 6 years old. It was a dreary, rainy day and I was laying on my bed flipping channels half asleep while the little girl was in her room playing. I was watching MTV music videos when a spoof about Madonna’s birthday party came on. Madonna was opening presents and got lacy, crotchless-panties which she held up for the camera and made some sort of lewd comment. Honestly, I was in that zombie-zone where I would have watched anything that came on because changing the channel was too much effort. What I didn’t know was that my daughter was standing in the doorway watching too….I don’t know for how long. I hear, “Mommy, what are crotchless panties?” Instinctively, I grabbed the remote and turned off the TV. That was probably a major mistake - signaling inappropriateness. I stammered and explained very objectively, a description of panties without crotches. I saw her little wheels turning and she asked why that lady wanted those for her birthday. I didn’t come up with a good answer and I think I ended up saying some people think the lady is not very nice and the lady is in show-business so she likes to shock people and get attention with her clothes. Then I quickly changed the subject and suggested that since it was nearly HER birthday, we should go shopping for the new dress I promised her.

So no more talk of panties, we spent the day at the mall and she found a dress in a department store that was having a great sale. Unfortunately the lines were l-o-n-g. We waited in line for at least 20 minutes or so and when we were finally ready to check out, the clerk smiled at her and said, “This is a beautiful dress! It will look lovely on you. Did I hear you say this is your birthday present?” My daughter beamed and agreed that the dress did looked beautiful on her and told her she would be seven in a few days. The lady asked if she was going to have a party. My daughter said “Oh yes. I get a cake with flowers and my name on it so I can blow out the candles, and there’ll be presents that are a surprise.” The clerk said, “I love surprises. Do you hope you get a Barbie doll?” Now, there are two checkout lines at the counter, two clerks, people standing beside and behind us too. People all around us. Imagine this. My daughter says quite loudly, clearly, and very VERY seriously, “ Well, I think my Mommy is getting me some of those crotchless panties.” My mouth dropped open and I felt my face go red. The clerk’s eyebrows went up and her mouth dropped open. The two clerks looked at each other and the clerk looked back at her and said, “Well! Have a happy birthday and enjoy your dress.” She looked at me, handed me the bag, and smiled…and I was never so grateful to exit a store.

sickly

It’s a dreary summer cold for me this week. I blew off school work last week and even went swimming in beautiful Grayson Lake with Erin and Someone. What could be better than swimming with the fishes on a beautiful hot summer day? But I’m paying the price…still. I got sick that night and I’m still messed up.


I dragged myself into work Monday and survived the day. Tuesday night, I doped myself up good with all sorts of cold medicine and went to bed early. I never went to sleep though. My heart started pounding out of my chest. Major cold medicine buzz going. I layed there for over an hour and decided it was a huge waste of time to lay there waiting to sleep because obviously sleep was not in the cards for me. I sat up, flipped on the light and grabbed a text book. I sat there and read chapter after chapter of case studies on global ERP implementation successes and failures. Normally, less than one chapter would have put me into a deep coma. At 4:30 AM, I went downstairs, fired up my laptop, and sent my stand-in boss (copied my boss) a note telling him I was sick and would be missing work. I no more than hit the send key and he replied (and he copied my boss). Can you believe it? Young Mr. Stand-in Boss is really taking his job too seriously. My boss is on vacation. At 6:30 AM, my boss replied (copied my stand-in boss) reminding me to update this/that/the other in case of emergency since I’m off work sick. I hate bureaucracy. I am SO ready to retire from that place. When I am out of the office for any reason, I have 11 things I have to update to state my whereabouts. So, I update websites for 20 minutes with contact information when I’m going to run out of the building for even 10 minutes. STUPID!!!

So while I’m sick, I don’t sleep in the same bedroom with Someone because he’s all paranoid about getting sick. It’s fine – he doesn’t wake me up with his snoring, he doesn’t steal my pillow, I don’t wake him up with my nightmares, and he’s not whining about me coughing or sneezing or breathing on him. We both sleep better. If he wanted to make it permanent, that would be OK. I’ve been sleeping in the little bedroom that used to be Emily’s, it’s painted a horrendous pepto-bismal pink color she picked out. The color is too dark for such a tiny room. It has fairy decals that I do like… it looks like a little girl’s room. I’m happy I had little girls.

Project-puppy is on hold. Erin is gone to Wisconsin for the International Future Problem Solving competition and she says we cannot get a puppy while she is gone. She will be back next week when hopefully my cold will be history. I’ve been leaving the door open to the little bedroom since I started sleeping in there…Molly makes herself at home in there.



more morbidity

What am I doing here? Am I the only person who asks myself this question day in and day out?


My between-classes break started Tuesday and because of major MAJOR burnout lately, I’ve been taking a break from all school-related work (until tomorrow)…this is the second day of break. So, I went to bed early last night and watched some TV. I found a documentary on the right-to-die law in Oregon. That is the way to go! We need that law in Kentucky. I bet there are too many religious zealots in Kentucky to get a law like that passed. It should be a federal law so we can avoid the religious control freaks. The people who benefit from the law already know they’re going to die; it just gives them more freedom about when and where it happens. What’s wrong with that?? I watched my grandfather suffer the last year of his life. If he were a dog or cat, we would have had him put down humanely and peacefully. Why must we make humans suffer? If I have to move to Oregon, I’ll do it.

I don’t see a slow death from disease for me. I expect some sort of impact, explosion, or perhaps fire. It’s not how my preference would be, but what my imaginary crystal ball tells me…my destiny. I accept my destiny because what else can one do? Is there escape from destiny? In the news recently, a little girl, two-and-a-half years old, pulled a gun from a center console of her parents’ car while her mother was buckling her baby brother into his car seat. She accidentally shot herself in the face and died two hours later. I suppose the only grace in that death was that she immediately lost consciousness and never woke up. The mother said she heard the pop, looked up, and saw the little girl slumped in the front seat with the gun in her lap. What a horrible accident. What a horrible world where people keep loaded guns in their cars, and where the difference between life and death depends on a second of inattention. Who created a destiny like this for a little girl?

Maybe we will look for a puppy this weekend. I love dogs, but all that mess-making and chewing-up-everything is a pain. If we’re going to do it, now is the time with the girls home from school to help with house training and making the dog social. We got Chewy around Christmas and she spent much of her early puppy days alone, and at the mercy of mean neighbor kids who teased her terribly. Jack will “like” having a new playmate, I’m sure.

Jack