I'm going to sleep now. Really.

No matter how late I stay up, I still have to get up at 7 a.m.  It'll be earlier than that when school starts next month.  Why can't I go to bed earlier? 
I swear, it's the laundry.
I took my mom out to eat for her birthday today, to her favorite restaurant (Tumbleweed).  She wanted to go to the one that's really far away...as my daughter and I were driving there to meet her, we figured out why...there's a bookstore in the same shopping center, to which Mom received about $150 worth of gift certificates for at her birthday party Saturday.  She thought she was being slick...so my daughter and I got to the restaurant first, ordered our drinks, and as soon as Mom came in and sat down, we asked her what time the bookstore closed. 
The guilty look on her face was priceless!  We collapsed in laughter...
I'm so thankful for my mother, and for my daughter, and for today.

Don't try this at home...

Here is the perfect way to lessen your workload and alienate your customers in one fell swoop:
When I went on vacation for three days last week, I set my email at work to notify people that I would be out.  I TRIED to set my voicemail to do that also...
When I got back to work, my voicemail box was full, with mostly hangups!  The first clue that I had that maybe something went wrong was on one of the few messages I did receive, when my customer specifically said that there was no greeting so she hoped I would get her message.
Hmmm...
So, obviously, I don't know how to work this whole newfangled voicemail thing...when I changed my outgoing message, I apparently didn't save it, and the old one was on the other menu...so people would hear nothing but a click, and hang up.
This was a good thing, I thought, because that was fewer calls I had to return when I got back!
But apparently, everyone in the known universe tried to call me when I was out.  I can't count the number of people I talked to today who complained because they couldn't reach me last week when my voicemail was messed up.  It seems that I'm indispensable!
Oh well, it could only work once, anyway... :o)

I was going to post a quiz tonight, but I just can't...maybe tomorrow...
I'm going to bed...I might get six hours of sleep if I go right now...which of course I can't do if I'm sitting here...
It's been an interesting summer so far - not quite what I expected when it first began...
Last year around this time, my daughter had surgery and was stuck at home in bed, and for those few weeks I was off work to take care of her.  In spite of the hardship, we had a great time with it.  We spent lots and lots of time together...I discovered the huge expense of having to change bandages every day...but eventually we grew to look forward to that daily chore, because I changed bandages every night at 10:30 p.m., and we would watch X-Men Evolution together.  (I haven't seen this cartoon on lately, it was really great!)  She would lay on her bed and read, and I would lay on the couch beside her and read...sometimes we would read to each other.  When she got a little better and stronger, we borrowed our church's wheelchair and ventured out into the world...she eventually made a complete recovery, for which we were so thankful.
It's amazing that, sometimes, such hard times can hold such good memories. 
This summer has been harder than I expected, in different ways...I'm still waiting for the perspective to come to tell me what the good things were, and are, this year...I know it's there...it'll come to me! 

Wanted: Rest

I'm really hopeful that maybe sometime by the middle of this week I'll have some time to rest...
I fell asleep yesterday in the car in the parking lot at Meijer.  I held on long enough to park, and then I fell asleep.  My daughter was reading her book, and read for another five minutes before starting the, "Um, Mommy, are we going in?". 
I fell asleep at my grandmother's house yesterday as we were celebrating my mom's birthday.
I fell asleep in my boyfriend's car today, in the parking lot at Cracker Barrel, of all places...he let me rest until they called our name, then he woke me up to go and eat lunch.
I fell asleep again on the couch watching "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" with my daughter tonight, and finally in my room a couple of hours ago, while waiting for a website to pull up.
I have to go the dentist Monday afternoon for my final root canal appointment (I'm getting the permanent crown put in), and it's a safe bet that I'll fall asleep in the dentist's chair.
I've been so tired that I've been skipping writing in my journal and catching up with others, and I hate missing out!  Plus my housekeeping has gone by the wayside...
The main culprits of my sleep deprivation have been the birthday celebrating, and working on VBS (which ended officially today, to great success!), and work, and ferrying my daughter to softball AND volleyball practices AND games.
I think Thursday I don't have anything going on, I'm going to try and rest then!
Now to celebrate a successful HeroQuest, here is a look at the much-loved and coveted Bruce Lee poster:

Ebullience

There is a local radio station in town that is perfect.  Perfect!
They play whatever...with no regard to musical genres, or eras...
It's a high school radio station across the river!  They don't have a very wide listening area...their deejays are high school students...they operate on grants, no commercials...
The song playing right now is "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown".  Before that it was "Dream Weaver".  I have also heard REM, The Supremes, and The Wallflowers tonight.  And lots of songs that I've never heard before, but I like...
Ahhh, and now we have Journey's "Who's Crying Now"...
See? Perfect!

I want a lazy river...

Around and around we went yesterday, in the Congo River at Holiday World.  My newly 12-year old daughter and I, resting up from doing lots and lots of water slides...
"Ah, this is the life...", and "Mommy, steer me away from the water mushroom", were the most we could manage for conversation...
Except for the discussion about where we would put our lazy river if we were billionaires...I said outside in the backyard...she said inside...I said this is what we would do all day, she said that if we were billionaires we would have to work sometime to make all that money...
And we went around and around...without a doubt this was our favorite moment of the day!

Feeling much better...

thanks to the wonderful comments and encouragement I've received over the past few days.  I'm very behind in my journalizing, but I'll be catching up over the next couple of days, since I'm off work! 
(Well, I'm off Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday...yay!)
It feels like I've dropped off the face of the earth since last week...I took Friday off to get the birthday shopping done and I was sooo sick...and Saturday (birthday party day) seemed the longest day in history:
Saturday 11 a.m.:  Having dragged myself through the shower, I'm sitting at the kitchen table with a diet Pepsi and several different types of cold medicine, choosing the drug cocktail that will get me through the day...
Noon:  Baking birthday cake while my cousin dropped by to bring my daughter her birthday present early...
1 p.m.: Stressing out as I realize I need to get ready for another cousin's wedding (scheduled for 2 p.m.)...
2:01 p.m.:  Showing up for the wedding late, very embarrassed as my daughter and I walk into the church right in front of the wedding party...
4:00 p.m.:  Wrapping presents...
4:37 p.m.:  Sprinting out of the house as I remember that I was supposed to pick up the chicken from the Wal-Mart deli at 4:30 p.m....
5:15 p.m.:  Still in line at the deli...
5:40 p.m.:  I get to the party late, where my entire family is waiting, veeerrrryyyy grumpy and hungry.  I hear lots of, "Why did you tell us the party started at 5:00?  Why did we get here at 5 and you weren't even here?"...I respond with a glare to my bossy big brother, and collapse on a couch in the family room...
7 p.m.:  Lying on the couch again, snickering helplessly, as the same bossy big brother accidentally takes a drink out of my cup and frantically demands some rubbing alcohol or other disinfectant to gargle with so as to get rid of my "sick germs"...
9 p.m.:  My daughter has opened all her presents, and she's once again been hopelessly spoiled by my family...okay, and by me, too...but she's happy and loved and that's what's important...
11 p.m.:  My daughter, my grandmother, and I, are out at the gym helping my mom decorate some more...my mom only ever wants us to help her, and no one else...she exclaims out loud at how smoothly it goes when my grandma and I help her, to which I reply (but in a nice way)..."That's because you're a control freak and we let you boss us around", and my grandma and my daughter concur...
11:40 p.m.: In the middle of the night in Fairdale, Ky., yanking up weeds (by hand!) on a long hilly church driveway...Don't ask!
Midnight: Collapsed in bed. 
I did it!  I made it through that day, and thank goodness my daughter's party turned out well...and the big 12 is coming up Wednesday for 'just us' to celebrate, and my nose isn't running at all anymore! (um, was that too much information?)
We can always find something to be thankful for...!

It all comes to this...

When there's really nothing else to say:
I'm miserable with the world's worst headcold, and I'm dizzy from the cold medicine I'm taking.
I've been getting ready for my daughter's birthday party today.  Her birthday's Wednesday, but since most of my family has to work on Wednesday, I'm having her party today.  Then Wednesday I can have her all to myself!
I've been helping my mom decorate for 'HeroQuest' this coming week.  Lots and lots of different types of 'hero' posters.  The point is to stress to the kids who their hero really should be, but still...
...the Bruce Lee poster is really really cool.  I'm thinking of bringing it home after VBS is over, and framing it.  Just looking at it makes you want to take a Kung Fu stance and start doing jumping kicks in the air.
I'm off to bake a cake, wrap presents, etc., even though, with this cold, I really just want to lie down.
Play through the pain!

Typhoon? Tropical Storm? I do live in Kentucky, right?

This may sound redundant, but the weather keeps happening:
My daughter's softball game was at 6:30 this evening, about 45 minutes away in another county.  When it was over, we decided to go to one of our favorite restaurants down on the river for dinner.  My grandparents decided to go straight home...my boyfriend didn't go to the game because he had to work late...my daughter and I had gone with my mom since I try not to drive anymore, ever (and it's a good thing I wasn't driving for this...).
We take the turn onto River Road, happily oblivious to the darkening sky, admiring the trees and the water and the houses and the boats, going on our way...
And then, the wind picks up and I see leaves and twigs flying around in the air above us.  Immediately, I knew. 
We kept our calm for a few seconds, kept driving, until suddenly we were in a bad remake of the movie "Twister", only we would have to replace the tornadoes with a hurricane.
The problems with driving on River Road in bad weather are:
1. The road is, amazingly enough, right next to the really, really big Ohio River.
2. It is lined with lots of trees.
3. There are no commercial businesses at which to stop for help.  It's mainly private property, boat docks, and country clubs.
These things are not necessarily bad things, unless you happen to be driving along it when the worst storm in 30 years comes out of nowhere, and there you are.
The wind slammed into us at 80 miles per hour, thanks to the fact that it was coming down from Indiana and had picked up speed going across the really big river.  The trees bent sideways and, I swear, the river looked like the pictures you see of beaches during hurricanes...it was blowing in waves over the docks.
The trees started falling down.  Remember the movie "Twister"?  We reenacted it in the car.  My mom driving, me yelling "Left!", "Right!", "Tree!"...and my mom even said at one point, completely without irony and with total fear, "We have to get offthis road."
I really thought, for a while there, that we were not going to make it home.  It's probably moved to the top of the list of the most terrifying things I've ever experienced.  Especially because my daughter was in the car...I just knew we were going to either get crushed by a tree, or be blown off the road. 
And we were just lucky, because some cars were.
When we were both completely panicked and sure we were going to die because we didn't know where to go to get away from the falling trees, I remembered to call my boyfriend, because he knows everything (well, about that area at least, since he works down there)...he directed me to the expressway, where the rain was falling in sheets and we couldn't see and the leaves and twigs were still flying through the air and everyone else on the road had pulled over under the overpasses...except us, of course, because after the terrifying experience we had on River Road, we were in complete panic, running mode.
When we finally made it home, every channel was covering the unexpected fury of this storm.  The final tallies:
Hundreds and hundreds of trees down, including over 100 down on River Road itself, and over 100,000 people in the area without power, the worst outage since the F5 tornado of 1974. 
All I could do when we got safely inside the house was cling to my daughter and thank God that we were alive, with the images in my head of all those falling trees that managed to miss us.
Note: It's starting to rain again and I see lightning through the window, so I guess I'll shut down for the night while I still have power.
Life tastes better, right now...

The perfect hour...

The perfect hour is that time of the night when you've forced yourself to stay up way too late, even though your body is so tired, and your eyes don't want to stay open...
And finally, on your own terms, you turn off the light, and take off your glasses, and collapse on your bed...
And you turn over on your pillows, and cover up with your comforter (because your bedroom is nice and cold thanks to new air conditioner)...
And you think...
There, did you see it?  That was the perfect hour.  After you lay down, and before your mind remembers that you probably have things to worry about...there is that time when it's dark and you're resting and you can think about whatever you want, for free.

Mad rush to finish haiku before deadline...

Weekend Assignment: HAIKU
Diet Pepsi, oh!
For breakfast in the morning-
It wakes me up so.

Whew!  Obviously, a LOT of thought went into this one...

Enough!

I miss my life.  Where did it go?
I miss my journal.  Does it miss me?
I've had a sudden influx of being frantically busy the last few days.  Why?  I can't pinpoint it.
And I'm trying to format a brochure to help out my mom (remember HeroQuest?), and I DESPERATELY need a drawing of a little astronaut.  I know exactly what I want, but I can't find it online.  At this rate, it would have been faster to create it myself.  I've been at it for hours. :(
I had another little car accident today.  My rating as the world's worst driver keeps going up and up.  I just get so discouraged, driving, because it's always close calls and people blowing their horns at me.  The man I hit today said, "You need to be more careful, young lady."  The problem is, I think I am careful.  Why can't I drive like a normal person? 
(I had taken my break at work to go across the street to the bank.  I was backing out of my parking space when a car just flew by behind me.  I heard something but I didn't even feel my car move, and I didn't realize we had collided until I finished pulling out and he was stopping at the end of the aisle.  He got out and looked at his car, so I got out and asked if I had hit him.  He said yes, but it was just scratched and he could rub it out.  Then he threw the disparaging comment at me and got in his car and drove away.)
I didn't even think to check my car until after I got back from the bank.  It's just scratched.  It now nicely matches the banged up front end from my wreck a few months ago.  This is a new car, mind you, even though it doesn't look like it.
Only a little over four years, and my daughter will be driving!  I'm thinking it will be like having my own personal chauffeur, we'd both be safer, probably, with her behind the wheel...
I hate that I'm moving at top speed and I don't have time to think or reflect.  I would slow down if only I knew what I'm doing wrong.  My relationships are suffering from it.  My daughter is suffering from it.  I can't get rid of this URGENT feeling inside me.
Enough!  Slow down!  Stop!

If you only knew...

My daughter begged and begged to be allowed to watch an episode, ANY episode, of Buffy...her reasons being that she is a big fan of the Once More, With Feeling soundtrack, and she is almost 12 now, and ALL her friends are allowed to watch the show, except for her, etc...

So I thought, well, the first season was pretty tame, I'll let her watch Welcome to Sunnydale/The Harvest.  I even made her close her eyes through the bad parts and turned the sound down.

She seemed to take it well enough, until bedtime.  Here are the top five reasons why letting your immature almost-12-year-old watch Buffy is not a good idea:

5.  There is no question, this time, about whose bed she is sleeping in tonight.

4.  You get drawn into a long, drawn-out treatise on why vampires really do exist.  Even when you say, "They're not real. Period."  You get asked back, "How do you KNOW?".  "You can't be sure."  The child then proceeds to tell you where in the Bible it says that demons walk the earth, and vampires are demons, right? Um...

3.  She immediately makes plans to ask our preacher to bless some holy water for her.

2.  She rearranges the kitchen cabinets looking for garlic powder.

And, even though I've assured her that a) vampires aren't real, and b) they couldn't get in the house anyway without being invited in, the top reason against letting her watch this is:

1.  She slept last night with a wooden 'Medieval Times' stake under her pillow.

ABC's

It's 3:10 a.m.  Why am I still up?
Well, it's because I went to see the 'Spiderman 2' late show (great movie! go see it!), and then, when I got home, I jumped at the chance to use my first free time in a couple of days to journalize.
The world is not going well for my dad's side of the family.  My mom's side is still pretty intact.  Fragmented v. whole, and also redneck southern city v. transplanted country folk.  And that's me in the middle.  The only Philosophy major/space geek/quiet one of the bunch.  I never quite fit in, but they forgave me for that when I produced my daughter, whom both sides adore.
So when my dad gave me Friday's update, I've cried and haven't been good for anything...Why is it that when one thing goes bad, they all go bad?  My dad was busy all week long with the traumas of his sister and two brothers, my aunt and uncles. 
One uncle's issue this week is jail (he's the black sheep), and the other one's is divorce (after 25 years of marriage).  (Don't go thinking my dad's the trauma-free one, as he is the one who ended up in the hospital a few years ago with a gunshot wound.  He drove himself to the E/R.  That's a tough military man for you.  It will take quite a long time for him to live that one down.)
But it was the update on my aunt that stopped me.  The cirrhosis of the liver was caused by...hepatitis, after all.  I don't know how the hospital said that she didn't have it, and now she does.  But she does.  We don't know how.  She did work in a hospital for years and years, so maybe that's how?  The other news is that she only has about 20% of her liver that is actually functioning.
I had so many questions.  What does 20% functioning mean?  Is that good or bad?  How long can it function like that?  Will it get worse?
She goes back to the specialist this week and then we'll know more. 
My cousins still hadn't told my aunt, either, about any of it.  All they have told her now is that something MAY be wrong with her liver and she is going to need more tests.  My dad is going out there to tell her the truth.  I know that the reason my aunt doesn't know yet is because my cousin, who acts as interpreter, just cannot tell her.  I can't imagine having to be the one to do it.  I'm glad that it's going to be my dad, who's known and loved her the longest...
"Life is a joy, and a privilege."  My preacher said that this week.  He is over 70 years old, and lost his beloved wife of over 50 years to cancer, a year ago this week.  He is still ministering to people, still reminding people of what's important.  He's still reminding people of how to LIVE.
Life is a joy, and a privilege.