September 2005 Archives
Is it already that time of year again? It kind of seems like only a few weeks ago, but noooo... It's World Series season again. The Boston Red Sox have overtaken this household. I can't even watch Friends in syndication, folks.
Have you seen Fever Pitch? Why did he not act like this when we were dating? Maybe for Christmas, I'll get him a whole Bosox-decorated lounge. Whaddya think?
I gotta tell ya, I do loves me some Johnny Damon, though.
Wow. Never joke about giving away a man's dog to the Shirley Temple girl down the street who just loooves the puppy.
He is so attached. Everything we buy for her has to be red, because that's his favorite color. Make sense to anybody else? I go along with it because then the dog and the whole downstairs still match my high school colors.
Oh yeah, baby, cheerleader to the core. Say what ya want to.
Aw, I'm kiddin'. Those were his high school colors, too.
Man and dog are so connected, that she sneezes as much as he does.
It's kind of cute. Maybe she's allergic to herself?
ARGH! There is so much to do and simply not enough hours in the day.
Okay, I'm still not driving, because of the seizures. I know, it's been like a year and a half now. Erik and I run a lot of errands on Sundays. My father-in-law owns a limo company in NYC. Erik says he doesn't mind, because this way we spend all of Sunday together, but he is completely my chauffer on this day. I so badly want to start driving again, but I kind of feel like I'm in a traffic kaleidoscope when I do that. So, in the best interests of everyone, I just get hauled around.
Today, we took Lucky to Pet Smart, where they kept her for three hours, making her beautiful. This is that awkward season during which a Siberian Husky sheds a lot. Roxanne at Pet Smart doesn't think she's three years old because she's so tiny. They made a big fuss over her, and they did a great job. They did her nails and she smells so good. We will take her back there. We needed to get her groomed because she meets her grandparents next weekend (and they're tough to impress, you know)!
Tomorrow morning, we've got to mail Barbie's baby shower gift. Haven't forgotten you, Barb, I promise! Love you!
You should see the blue skies this morning. Seriously, we haven't even gotten rain yet. But, they say hurricanes act funny like that. There is a breeze, and that doesn't usually happen in South Texas.
There was actually a part of me that was hoping Rita would just downgrade far enough to where she'd just whip out to sea all that crap Katrina stirred up, so that the cruise to Cozumel we're planning to take over my birthday next spring would be over crystal blue waters. Well, at least it turned out Rita was not the bitch that Katrina was. Whew.
And that reminds me. I've given up trying to get ahold of my friend Corrie, who was my first roommate freshman year in college, who lives in Beaumont. So please send up a prayer for people who had to board up their windows and evacuate, that they might actually get to go home soon, without a lot of incident. But I left a message for Charolette, my speech therapist, who gave me a Texas accent when I began speaking again after my brain tumor (and then I moved to New Jersey, so my accent is a mess!), who lives in Victoria, who the other day loaded up her husband and four cats and four dogs to get out of town and head toward San Antonio to safety. I love her so.
As you can tell by the run-on sentences, the latte` has kicked in. And the weather's perfect right now. So I'm not going to hunker down in the pantry and drink all day.
Gasp! Travis is moving in, in a week!! I guess I'll just clean and listen to The 90s Channel...
We usually buy jugs of purified water for drinking anyway. Fifty-eight cents a gallon. Okay, tonight, all of those are gone at Walmart, but ya can have a flat of twelve one-quart water bottles (three gallons) for twelve bucks.
I've gotten calls from FL, NJ, and WA inquiring about this storm. We're only gonna get rain, which we need. Maybe some hefty 40-mile-an-hour wind, they say. That's any winter day on the ND prairie, only with crystals of snow whipping into your face, I realize. Ooh. Hey, the way my de ja vu has been lately, I can feel that.
There are, like, four gallons of water on top of the fridge anyway, just about a whole flat of water bottles, and we stopped off at the package store, to get me a bottle of Captain Morgan Parrot Bay. In the case of serious rain and flash flooding and can't get to work, I am taken care of.
The weather for the next five days reads pretty much the same: High mid-90s. Showers and t-storms.
Heh. On college radio, we called 'em "Thunderboomers." Sigh.
I had one last Friday. It was, like, as big as my head!
Nic called me this afternoon from Florida to warn me that there had better be some water-buying and plywood-preparation. I calmly told her we're a good two, 2 1/2 hours inland from the TX coast, and she said that a Category 5 hurricane should not be sniffed at or made fun of. And, she said, it's big. And it has a lot of rain associated with it.
That is so cute. Love you, Nicole. We'll get some rain, maybe some flooding. But praise God, we found a house on a hill, so endoxi (Greek for "it's all good").
Watching CNN now. Wow. That is a big storm. The third most powerful storm yet measured.
Maybe we'll run to the store quick and pick up some necessities.
My Name is Earl premiered tonight. We snickered. Have you ever done something you later tried to make up for? Of course, we all have.
One Friday afternoon in college, I put in $18.18 worth of gas at the Stop and Go by campus, on University, and drove off. Whoops. Those were the days (listen to me, oldtimer) when you didn't have to pre-pay. It was just so many degrees below zero that day, and I was rushing off to somewhere, and I didn't pay attention, quite frankly. The next day, I returned to that gas station and thank goodness the manager was working. She went through the previous day's receipts and found the amount I needed to make up. Whew.
Selfishly, and honestly, I had personalized license plates that read, "LISN2ME." Either that, or by then was it "SUNNY D?" Tash? Fargo's not that big of a town. I thought, for sure, I would not be welcome at that Stop and Go ever, ever again.
Karma. It all evens out. I know, sometimes it feels like you're getting the downside more than anything, but it will.
Last night, we were out to dinner celebrating (because it was Friday AND it was payday - woohoo!), and these completely wrong individuals at the next table stiffed our waiter, a perfectly nice chap named Ian. They just ran out, leaving the last of their pitcher of margaritas and a forty dollar bill, without paying. So wrong.
We were feeling especially wealthy (WOOHOO!), so we wanted to cover it for him, because when that happens to wait staff, did you know that IT COMES OUT OF THEIR CHECK? And he was such a sweetheart, and if you've had the fresh tortillas at this particular establishment, you'd have done the same thing.
No, Ian protested, the people had told him where they were going later (coulda been a smokescreen), so he was going to hunt them down.
Are you sure? asked Erik, because we were there celebrating this fantastic day I'd had at The Scooter Store, and the whole wait staff congratulated me, but they were all going to go find these two. You should have seen seen the solidarity of the team. They were all going after this check.
And that teamwork is what's right.
Remember Shawn Maloney? Those melty, chocolate brown, teddy bear eyes?
Oh Cecilia, you're breakin' my heart. You're shaking my confidence daily.
Well, today I got an email reminder from one of those keep-in-touch-with-your-friends-e-services that today is his 30th birthday, and it's been so long that I have no idea how to wish him happy birthday. I think he's in Seattle, working for IBM.
Happy Birthday, Shawn!
This morning over breakfast, Erik got himself into some very big trouble. I don't know what he was trying to do. He stated, "Wow. You're 30, with a 10-year-old stepson."
The 10-year-old stepson part is not a problem. But why are we rounding up my age? I am still well into my 20s, for a good seven months yet. That is most of a year.
You don't round up. Everyone knows that.
He found a picture the other day, that has been lying on the dining room table ever since, of Doogie and me from 1994.
I know I need a haircut. And thanks to Topamax, my new anticonvulsant, I've recently dropped thirty pounds. And yes, twenty more gone wouldn't hurt, because brain surgery does all kinds of things to your bod. No one knows this more intimately than I do. I have kind of a skewed self-image anyway.
I know I look more than a day over fast cars and freedom (thanks Rascal Flatts) or at least Mustangs and well, you know. But geeeez. CALL IT TO MY ATTENTION, MUCH?
One of the neighbors down the street is barbecuing as a fundraiser. Erik orginally thought this was for the Hurricane Survivors. Nope. He's raising money to defray legal expenses for his daughter. No one knows why. Maybe it's a divorce situation. First of all, I don't think he can sell food off his driveway. Gosh, maybe the ex-husband is what's being barbecued. $5.50/plate...
...is kind of like White Noise, only not. It's also sorta like the sound of mice squeaking on and on, and knives sharpening constantly, and sort of like a fax machine, but kind of like static.
Do you know what I mean?
The doctor said it should end sometime, but he didn't know when.
I called my college roommate's machine this morning and sang Happy Birthday, violating all the copyright laws that go along with that. It's her Triple X Birthday, God bless her. She makes it look DAMN GOOD.
Also, I love my team. They take good care of me.
Number one: I have this ringing in my left ear that makes it nearly impossible for me to function. It's not exactly the same as the pre-seizure "sirens," but sort of a dizzy screeching just the same and, well, kind of tinnitis? "Am I ok?" asks Mom. Sure, because it can always be worse. I don't have a brain tumor or anything. At the same time, it's becoming difficult to differentiate between this screaming and pre-seizure sirens, because my warning times are getting shorter.
Two: The wall looks great. As soon as we can get the computer to recognize the camera, I'll post a picture. That color is the color this room always wanted to be. I'm having technical difficulties.
And three: It takes a couple days to moves troops. Everybody knows that.
...and maybe I didn't spell that correctly. The walls, the ceilings, of my house are all texturized in this pattern we'd never seen before. It's supposed to cut down on dust, so we thought that would be much better for Mr. Allergy.
Now, check it out, for months, I've been doing research. I've been watching Trading Spaces television and dreaming up what I might do. Now, my accent wall in the kitchen is going to be Fandango Red. Trust me when I tell you, this is a beautiful red, and will coordinate with the grape/wine thing awesomely. I cannot wait! I do need to figure out where to put the dog while we paint, though, or she'll be black and white, and red all over!
They say twenty-five thousand hurricane refugees are expected in San Antonio. These people need medical attention, food and shelter. They're hoping to set up jobs for them, schooling for the children, or whatever they need. Many of these folks just want to go home, and they don't have homes to which to go.
My momma always said, if you're hungry, you can eat. If you're tired, you can go to sleep. If you're homesick, there is nothing you can do.
