ENOUGH with the ribbon magnets!!

What EXACTLY is this ribbon supposed to be supporting? I mean, people, really. I saw it yesterday driving down the highway, and actually slowed down, pulled behind the guy to get a closer look at what I was seeing:

Being far from your best friends SUCK

I have a best friend. More of a soulmate, really. She moved away a few years ago for a killer job. She went from being across the hall, to my roommate, to owning a house in the same damn neighborhood, and now she's five hours from me.

She's going through some REALLY tough shit right now. It SUCKS that all I can do is sit on the phone and sob with her, when what I really want to do is buy her beer and chocolate and sit down and get Shitfaced Drunk with her. Anything to take her pain away. But I can't. I'm sorry, babe. I love you.

My other BFF just moved back home to go to law school. She's having the time of her life, but I wake up every other morning expecting to call her and say "get over here and drink your coffee, chick". But she's busy and happy. And for that I'm glad.

But now I can't even sit with one friend while moping about the other friend.

So I mope to the blog. And to you. Deal.

So I'm trying to watch Oprah

But I have to turn the channel. Poor Poor Priscilla. You used to be so lovely. Now you look like the Joker. For God's sake, STOP having plastic surgery, or you'll look like your ex-son-in-law.




What do you think?

About Four Days

That is the answer to the question in my previous entry. Girlchild DID NOT want to go to school today. Mostly because she was dead ass tired.

We went to the state fair last night and got home way past bedtime for both children. But the fair makes it so worth it. This is a spectacle not to be missed if you live in central Indiana. It has gone by many names in our house, but we mostly like to call it White Expo. It's a festival of fried foods, stinky animal barns, carnies and mullets. You gotta go, mostly to people watch. The funnel cakes aren't half bad, either. Or the Dole Whips, or the fried cheese...I didn't go for the fried confection of the year, the Deep Fried Moon Pie, because I don't touch those things even not dipped in batter and hot oil. Besides, you'd be hard pressed to beat the fried oreos of last year.

This year, we had a bonus freak sighting: The CLAYMATES. Now don't get me wrong, I was a NKOTB fanatic and wore my share of Jordan Tshirts, but this group takes the cake. I saw many of your usual preteen fans, but TONS of middle age women, grown men, and even old ladies jonesing for His Gay...ahem...Clayness.

I'm not going to be a hater: I like the boy. He can sing. He should have won that season of AI. He'd do better in Rent (the role of Mark was MADE for this boy), but if a life of cover tunes and pretending to like girls suits him and makes him some bank, who am I to judge, right?

But these FANS. Holy cats. A forty year old with her preteen wearing a Tshirt that said "Clay is my future son-in-law". A fifty five year old man wearing one that said "I support my wife's OCD...I LOVE Clay, too!" There were photos of fanclub reunions being taken everywhere, and crowds around the backstage ropes, trying to get a glipse of Opie himself.

I had a good laugh, remembered the good old days of stalking the New Kids to their hotel room in South Bend, Indiana, and moved on. But it took everything I had not to go up to the Claymates in Love and say "you do know he's GAY, right?"

With two tired children in tow, sucking on a Dole Whip, my arm around my husband, walking to the car, I hear screams over the night as Clay began his rendition of...oh it even pains me to say it..."Mandy".

And it hit me: Clay Aiken *is* the Barry Manilow of this generation. Minus the bathhouses.

Highlights of her first big day

"I cried a bit on the bus, because I missed you and Daddy. But quietly, so none of the other kids wouldn't see."

"The bestis part of the day was that I made some friends to hang out with."

"I got to eat lunch in the cafeteria, play outside TWICE, sing a song AND go to the library and check out a book today!"

"Mom, I think I LOVE my new school!!"

Ah, kindergarten. How long before they don't love school anymore?

Fishing for sympathy

Today:

1. My daughter got on a big yellow schoolbus and went off to school. She looked so tiny, climbing the stairs with her big pink backpack and teeny navy blue jumper.

2. My son is on day two of Ten-Days-With-Grandmas-Detox. I am in charge of this, and let me tell you, it is NOT going well. I need earplugs and a margarita.

3. My husband cut up my credit cards.

Please, feel sorry for me.

Tat a tat tatt

I want another tattoo.

Reeealy badly.

I got this cute one on my ankle several years ago (Japanese kanji for "woman") for my anniversary (Jer got the "man" one, together they say "husband and wife").

Cute, huh?

Now I want to do more.

I always said when I turned thirty I would do a tribal butterfly on my lower back. Now everyone has that. Plus when I was thirty I was three weeks from delivering WeeMan.

Now I have lost the weight and feel pretty confident there will be no stretching of the backside from now on. So what do I do? Be trite and get what I've always wanted, or wait for inspiration to do something not everyone is doing?

I also want to do more to my ankle. I'd love to add kanji for "actor" and "mother" to the "woman" on my ankle, but I can't design or draw for shit.

Any artists out there want to take a needle stab at it?

Unanswered Prayers

It's a Garth Brooks song. One I always liked, but thought trite. Now, I know it's so so true. You can google the lyrics if you like, but the gist is that even if you pray and pray for something, just because God doesn't answer you, doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's doing. In the song's scenario, it was running into an old highschool flame, the one he'd prayed that would be his forever, until they sadly broke up. He didn't understand why God didn't listen, but when he ran into her ten years down the road, he'd realized how lucky he was with his family and wife, and that there was a reason God hadn't answered that prayer.


So, this weekend, we attended a friend's wedding and there, in the flesh was my high school love. The one I was going to marry. The one I was left standing in the dust when I met my now-husband. The heart I broke, and still occasionally wake up crying about, because he was a good man and deserved a good life. I was afraid I'd ruined his life. The woman he dated after me got knocked up and they were married within four months. I had nightmares of him coming to me, saying he was trapped and miserable and why did I leave him??

Well, the fantasy man that I hadn't seen in 12 years was just that: a fantasy. He looked old and tired and puffy. The 6'4" quarterback and basketball star I left in 1993 had turned into his father. A lump that only got up once the entire evening, to the bathroom. I managed to arrange a "bump into" there in the hall, and faked casualness. Extremely stilted smalltalk told me he built a house on his mom's property, was a guard at the state prison for the last ten years, and was still married, with two boys. They looked just like their mother. Pretty much everything that at age 18 scared me about staying with him. I wanted to go to college, to the big city, to perform. He wanted to stay in his mom's backyard, making babies.

And the mother? Sat there as well, scowling (more than likely because I was there, but I think she was just sour in general). She was wearing a striped men's oxford shirt over dockers. Not exactly formal wedding gear, but I can be a *leetle* judgemental, right? It helped I was wearing my little black dress and heels, right? Night and day, the choices we make. Very obvious that we were opposites.

Our very awkward conversation was cut short by his youngest coming out into the hall, screaming: "DAAAD! Mom wants to know what's taking you so long!!!"

And his mom thought I had him whipped.

I walked away from the wedding with a lot of closure and a few thoughts:


1. I chose the right man. We laughed and drank and danced the night away. Jeramy lookes better than he did when I met him at age 20, and looked HOT in his suit.

2. Jason is living what *I* would call a miserable life, but not to him. He's living my nightmare, but he seems okay with it. And for that I'm glad. I'd have been unhappy in that life. He is not. I hope.

3. Secretly my biggest fear was that when I finally did see him, this dream man from my past, that my heart would flutter and I would lose my senses and wonder if I screwed up. Turns out I wasn't REMOTELY attracted to him, nor would I even recognize him if I passed him in the street.

4. His mother is still a bitch and sat at the table all night whispering and shooting snide glances my way. My MIL is crazy, but thank god she's not THAT woman.

5. We all make our destiny, and even the most heartbreaking decisions and unanswered prayers have a place in that destiny. Next time I get angry because God isn't listening, or that I have to make a choice that kills me at the time, I will have to let go, and know that a higher plan is in place, and who am I to screw with destiny?

I'll be scarce

...the next week or so. Taking the kids north to see the grandmas for a week, since it's going to be our last trip we take for awhile. Once my school starts, no vacation time whatsoever, so this is it.

We're packing up basically everything we own.

I hate travelling with children.

But I will be shopping with my mom next Friday. No kids. God keep me away from the Coach outlet. :)