I am sooo tired of bland food. If I never eat yogurt or applesauce or cottage cheese again, I’d be a happy, happy woman. I tried eating regular food, but my stomach rebelled (hoo boy did it rebel). I’m crossing my fingers that this stupid bug goes away *soon* because I’m starting to dream about cheese. And milk products are just not a good idea right now (sob).

I heard back about the job. As I expected, my lack of previous management experience hurt me. I was expecting to be told no, so it wasn’t a surprise. I’m trying to pretend right now that I’m not more disappointed than I am.

Things are running around at a fever pitch at work – or should I say, they were yesterday when I was there. The relapse forced me to stay home today, close to the bathroom (ugh). This is our last week of development (yeah, right) and of course people are suddenly finding things that *have* to be done now. Ha. Nasty old Jennifer made them escalate it to their own bosses. If they’re going to force us to delay our finish date, I want to make darn sure that their own people know about it. This has the effect of having people write snippy little emails about how Jennifer insisted that they escalate, and wouldn’t even start the work until she heard back. You can bet your sweet patooty I did. After nearly a year of this project I am sick and tired of not having a finished design. And being sick always makes me grumpy. Heh. Poor people. I feel for them. Really I do. Uh huh.

We had important decisions to make today at home. Our builder stopped by with plans and we had to discuss placement of water spigots outside, and heating vents inside. There’s codes about how far from a door the furnace has to be so the water heater is moving out to the garage. I’m eying the open space that is now directly behind my pantry and pondering expansion there. We also discussed windows. Apparently there’s some code that says that a fireman has to be able to get through with a full pack on. Hence, windows must be larger. Okay. I was still weak from being sick and Richard hadn’t been feeling too good the last few days anyway so we nodded dumbly when he talked about dimensions and queried us on vent placement. I’ll bet you never pondered the placement of your heating vents. Trust me. It’s a question that makes you think. The further we get into this, the more I wish it was just over and someone else was making the decisions, and the more I realize just how many decisions are yet to be made. Someone once told me that the pattern of building a house is that you hate it during the process, then love it after.

The process is going to be going on for the next 5 months.

Sob.

The whole family gathered at my older sister’s house for Thanksgiving this year. It’s the first time we’ve had Thanksgiving when it’s not been at my parents’ place, but considering that little sis had Christmas at her place in Washington last year, I guess older sis wanted to play too. I’m going to have to wait a year or two til I get my turn (gotta have a dining room big enough to hold everyone, see), but that’s okay. It’s a really good excuse to go out and buy new furniture. Or at least that appears to be what my older sister thought.

She got a new dining room table. They bought new living room furniture and new futon covers. She dithered about how the soon-to-be-baby’s room wouldn’t be ready and how our niece would have to see it incomplete. Considering that the niece in question is only 10 months old, the rest of us in the family didn’t see as how this was so big an issue, but then, we’re talking about my older sister. She worries about these sort of things.

The funniest thing she bought, however, was new dishes. See, back when we were in college, she and I managed (without planning at all) to pick out the same style of dishes. So when she called to say that she didn’t have enough place servings for Thanksgiving, I expected her to ask me to bring some of mine.

Nope. Seems she decided this meant it was a good time to get all new dishes. Um. Okay. Well, I suppose it was as good an excuse as any.

Well at least now *I* have place settings for 16. Although I did ask Richard if this means that if we ever host a dinner for more than that, I got to get new dishes too. He gave me that look of tolerant amusement I’m beginning to recognize…

Anyway, despite Thanksgiving being held at a non-traditional place this year, we managed to uphold as many traditions as we could.

The drink of honor was grape Kool-aid, served in the battered old tupperware green pitcher that my mom threatens to toss every year. Don’t ask me how when that got to be a tradition. Probably the same year we decided that the traditional Christmas dinner should be meatloaf, but that’s a different story entirely.

We had the traditional discussion over how to cook the yams, and whether my dad makes his special family cream pies for Thanksgiving or Christmas, and when the green bean casserole was supposed to go into the oven.

I made the traditional chocolate souffle…um, okay, so the souffle itself isn’t necessarily tradition. However, me making a non-pumpkin pie dessert is, since I can’t stand the stuff, and after finally determining that my older sister really *did* own a souffle dish (she thought it was a casserole. Silly her), I made my very first souffle. Which rose just like it should, and then promptly fell all flat and squishy. My little sister reassured me that it was supposed to do that. Considering she’s the gourmet cook in the family, I took her word for it. Flat and squishy nonetheless, it was quite yummy, especially with caramel sauce.

We took the traditional photo of the newest family baby about to be stuffed into the oven while sitting in a roasting pan filled with carrots and onions and potatoes. Yes, my family is weird. Yes, the children will probably need therapy when they’re older.

We collected the traditional ammunition for years of later teasing. My niece (the 10-month old) has earned herself the nickname of ‘Tiny Tank’ because she tends to see what she wants and then makes a beeline for it, regardless of what might happen to be in her path. Cats, toys, small pieces of furniture are all no match for her crawling streak and woe be unto what is her intended goal. In this case, the goal was my nearly three-year old nephew, who she headed for with single-minded purpose, then promptly pulled herself up and proceeded to poke him in the eye. He retreated to the fireplace and spent the rest of the weekend eyeing her warily and saying “No pinching!” every time she came within five feet of him. We figure this’ll be great fun to drag out when he’s older and trying to impress a girlfriend. “Say, did we ever tell you about the time you were terrorized by your cute little niece who’s so much younger than you?” If nephew is a big strapping hulk and neice is a dainty little thing, it’ll be even better.

We did the traditional female shopping trip, which involves getting up at some ungodly hour of the morning when all sane people (that would be the men in the family, who usually give us a sleepy wave and a whimper for us to be kind to the credit cards – ah the things Richard gets to look forward to when he and I are married…) are still lounging in their warm cozy beds, and then going to fight crowds of other crazed women who are, like us, coming down from a cranberry sauce-and-stuffing induced high and have a suddenly insane urge to get *that outfit* before anyone else! And of course, then we had the traditional hour of standing in line to pay for all our bargains while we asked ourselves why it was that we did this every year, anyway?

And finally, we passed around the traditional Holiday Bug. This year it was some form of stomach flu wherein some of us got to experience the full joy of one’s intestines deciding to empty themselves as quickly as possible through any orifice necessary. Near as we can figure, my nephew apparently picked it up from his day care and brought it home to his mother, who passed it to her husband, who then proceeded to pass it to the rest of us. At least my mom and I were home while we were sick. Poor Bil-2, who had the worst of it,- he had to do it while trying to fly back to Washington Sunday night. Ugh.

Stomach flu and spiffy trip to the emergency room aside (wherein Richard was an incredible sweetie and took wonderful care of me and hooray for the joys of modern chemistry that finally made those nasty little elves in my stomach stop twisting it into knots), it was a traditional holiday. We ate too much, we stayed up late, we laughed, we hugged, we caught up.

And now it’s back to work, where, since I missed Monday (because of the aforementioned stomach flu), I had oodles of emails and voicemails to look forward to when I came in today, all marked, of course, urgent.

Today was – well, my coworker put it best.

“Too many people. Must not shoot them.”

Mm hmm. And that’s tradition too.

The entire family gathered again this morning – this time for a family portrait. It’s something my mom’s been wanting to do for quite some time now, and even though there’ll be two new people joining the family next year, she figured she might as well take advantage of having all of us in the same state for a change.

After we left the photographer, we headed for the outlet stores, specifically the children’s clothing stores. I wasn’t too thrilled, but figured it was to be expected, since both my sisters have little ones who wear that sort of stuff. It wasn’t too long before I was itching to get out of there, surrounded by racks of teeny tiny cutesy outfits, screaming babies, rampaging toddlers. I finally escaped outside and found an empty bench. It wasn’t much longer after that that my dad, and both brothers in law joined me. We sat there, shivering in the cold, giving half-smiles of understanding, and I suddenly realized that I was on a different side of the shopping fence. My mom and sisters were inside, fingering the merchandise, and here I was, sitting with the Weary Husbands – those tired men who slouch in chairs outside dressing rooms, usually clutching a package or too, with expressions that say all too clearly that they’d rather be anywhere but there, that even a root canal might be preferable to what they’re currently doing.

And there I was, sitting among them, same expression, thinking similar thoughts. It was more than a little depressing to realize that I was joining those ranks, and I won’t be able to escape them for probably years. I am the odd man out in my family now. It’s not so unusual – I’ve been the lone single one for years – but this time it’s worse. This time, I’m the sole childless one, and as that’s not a situation I have any intention of changing, this means that I’m going to be even more of an outsider as time passes.

For a moment, I felt nearly like crying. There was a heavy feeling behind my eyes and I could feel the tears welling up, as I did my best to hold them back. I know that the emotions aren’t just from this revelation – the past few months have been insane with work and everything else, and I’ve probably been in need of a good cry for a while now. But still, to have it come up at this time, sitting outside in the cold, huddled on a bench between my dad and my brothers in law, well, it wasn’t a very welcome thought.

My sisters have become Mothers, and I’m never going to be able to cross that impenetrable wall. Their lives are, quite understandably, completely wrapped up in their children. My younger sister, even though she’s a stay-at-home mom to a 10-month old, seems to be able to talk about other things, but my older sister’s whole life revolves around her son. As we all headed for lunch, something must have showed on my face, because my younger sister came over. I told her how, but then felt immediately guilty. It’s not that I want them to ignore their kids. It’s just that I miss my sisters, and sitting on that bench, I felt as if they were slipping away from me into a world I won’t be able to reach.

Later on, the children down for naps at my parents’ house, my sisters and I slipped away to go chat around ice cream sundaes and coffee. We stole a few precious hours to just talk. Children rarely entered the conversation, but men did, as is often the case when we would get together in times past. We laughed and teased, asked about friends and jobs and houses. And just for a short time, it was as if we were all still the same as before children and marriages ever entered the picture.

I drove home in the fog with a sense of resigned relief. I may not relish spending the next decade or two as an odd female member of the Weary Husbands club, but at least I don’t have that need to weep about what I’ve lost. It’s still there, buried under diapers and discussions of weaning and toilet training, and will still be there once the children grow. I just have to be patient, accepting that while things will never be the same as they were, it’s not going to be so bad.

When my older sister was first married she used to complain about how when she and her husband went to family gatherings at his parents’ place, she was only ever allowed to bring things like tossed green salad, or the bread, or perhaps sodas. She would volunteer to bring the vegetable, or the dessert, but that was already taken care of. She got stuck with the easy stuff. And it’s not that they didn’t trust her, or didn’t think she was capable of cooking something else. It probably just didn’t occur to them to ask – and I imagine that the other siblings had already gone through something similar and had already figured out what they bring each year to holiday meals and weren’t exactly willing to give that up to the newcomer.

It takes a lot to escape the notion that you’re still just one of the kids. For my older sis, part of the problem was that she ended up marrying the youngest in the family – and he is a *lot* younger than his siblings. So naturally they think of him as still the little kid…and of course, therefore, his wife would fall into the same category.

It’s been a few years since then, and I believe she’s graduated from green salad. Sometimes it just takes a while to prove your worth – or perhaps it was the fact that now that she’s a mom, she’s automatically moved into the world of adults.

I was talking to a friend the other day on Instant Messenger and she was complaining of the same problem. She was going to head up to her boyfriend’s family’s place for Thanksgiving, but she’s only allowed to bring the simple stuff. Over 30 years old and they don’t trust her to bring anything else.

It’s not about trust though. It’s about perception of age. I haven’t had to deal with that, having always spent all my holidays with my own family. One year at Thanksgiving, my mom was pretty sick, so my sisters and I took over. Mom still did the turkey and we were more than happy to let her, but we divied up all the other dishes – baking the bread, making the jello salad, mixing up the green bean casserole and even making pies – and it turned out just fine. Since then, there’s never been a question as to whether we could bring stuff. We just start divying it up a week or so before, and so even though the person hosting has to deal with the turkey itself, most of the rest of the meal is handled by the guests. It works out well, and we all volunteer what to bring, so there’s no hard feelings. For example, I don’t like pumpkin pie. I can handle about one bite, but well, it’s pretty nasty stuff. So to compensate, I always volunteer to bring a non-pumpkin dessert. Those of us who have to travel volunteer to bring cans of stuff to mix up later – or bake the bread and stick it carefully in a suitcase when flying home.

The thing is, it’s easy to do it when it’s your own family. It’s not so easy to do when it’s someone else’s. It all works out at my mom and dad’s house – but then we all know the traditional foods. We know what’s expected and how to prepare them and how to work with each other in the kitchen in a fairly choreographed fashion; one sister stirring cream of mushroom soup into green beans, another one making gravy, another one relegated to setting the table with the best china while my mom squishes stuffing together with bare hands and mutters at the turkey. It’s familiar, comfortable. We all know where everything is so we can help.

This is the last year I’ll do that. No, I shouldn’t say it quite like that. I’ll be back to my parents’ place for Thanksgiving every other year. But next year I’ll be going down to Richard’s family for Thanksgiving. I won’t be able to just automatically assume that I’ll bring the cranberry sauce, or bargain with the siblings about who got to do the pies last year. It’ll be a very different set of traditions and dishes and people at the table. It’s going to be very strange – new and exciting and I am looking forward to it, but still very strange.

We went to see The Grinch Friday night. Because we decided rather late that we’d go see it, we went online to find out where it was showing, and discovered that the next showing was at a theater in town. Neither of us had been there in quite a long time. Shortly after we arrived, we remembered why. The seats were small and cramped. We bought tickets from an older man who stood just inside the door – the theater didn’t have a ticket window. As we waited to go into the theater, we noted the people surrounding us. The teenage girls in their Tammie Fae Baker makeup and painted on jeans. The pregnant unwed girls with their crew-cut sporting, tattooed boyfriends. The family with children the size of small water mammals, sucking down jumbo boxes of popcorn. Yes indeedy, we were smack dab in the middle of the ritzy part of town, mmm hmm.

I’ve been wanting out of this house for years, but always promised myself that the next move would be the last, and so I’ve waited. Like so many neighborhoods in this area, the houses are so close that you could probably lean out one window and shake the hands of your neighbor were they to do the same. And as a special bonus, this closeness has allowed me to hear all kinds of things that I didn’t really want to hear. For example, during the summers when the windows were open, my college roommate and I got to hear all about how the next door neighbor’s son got his girlfriend pregnant – for the second time – and how he was violating his parole – and that wasn’t for the first time either. We dealt with the teenage boy next door who would crank his radio up to top volume, put it next to the open window, and then go to the garage. I’ll give him credit for always turning it down when I would go storming over, but you would think he would have eventually gotten tired of that crabby lady next door pounding on the door and complaining about the noise. We had the oh-so-charming children of another neighbor ask if we dated men, or just women….because apparently, even though there happens to be a large and distinctive college about 15 minutes away, the presence of two women living together in the same house could only mean that we were lesbians. My housemate and I got quite a laugh out of that one. What was pathetic about it was the fact that the kids were obviously repeating a comment they’d overheard from their parents.

I moved to this town a number of years ago for exactly one reason. Rent is much cheaper here. Okay, so it also possesses a rather impressive selection of gorgeous old victorian houses, but that’s often overshadowed by the fact that we are in a primarily blue-collar town. There are probably more discount stores here in this town than in anywhere in the surrounding counties. I’m serious – if you’ve heard the ads for any sort of bargain basement, cheap and tacky store, it’s here. I sound like a snob. Maybe I am a snob. All I know is that I am looking forward to leaving this town more and more the closer our house gets to being completed. And when I leave, I’m not going to look back.

So while we’re on the subject of cheap and tasteless….

I have a hotmail account for email. I created it because of a character I was playing on a Mush, but have ended up using it primarily for business reasons (and have had more fun than I can possibly say trying to explain the name of the account because it has absolutely nothing to do with my name and people give me funny looks when I tell them, but I’m digressing). Since it’s an online account, I get spam. Lots and lots of spam.

It comes in different types. There are the ‘Make thousands per day just by following this easy-to-use Multi-Level-Marketing scam!’ letters. There are the letters that ask if I want to get an illegal degree, if I need to borrow money (Fast and Easy!), and offering me hot deals on all manner of items.

But the ones that make me laugh the most are the emails for sex sites. They’re usually easy to spot – it seems to be a prerequisite that if you’re going to send out a porn-related spam, you have to misspell at least one word in the subject line. And so I roll my eyes at the messages and simply delete them without even opening them, having learned that if you’re stupid enough to actually write back to get your name taken off the mailing list, you have therefore told them that your email is live, and you will be completely bombarded with this sort of drivel. Oh, occasionally someone sends out a subject line that makes me think it might be legitimate, and so I end up reading one or two a month that have some trite little comment about so-and-so and her friends having a slumber party with video cameras involved or something – and usually by the first line I’ve figured out what it is and have hit the delete key.

But I’ll have to admit that this one got me. This one actually had me giggling madly into my coffee this morning, so much so that I had to save it. This one was worth subjecting on *someone* (and I copied it straight, so the grammatical errors are just as they appeared first hand. But then, I think we’ve already learned that writing skills are not a prerequisite for advertising porn…). Don’t you feel lucky?
From: spammyaddressTo: unsuspectingperson@wherever.com

Subject: Fwd: Does the Prince have what it takes?

There was once a Princess who was searching for a Prince so she might fall deeply in love. She came upon a swamp where she saw a frog. She felt a strange attraction for this creature. She cradled the frog in her hand and then she kissed him. At once there was a huge flash of bright white light and the frog disappeared…. only to turn into a handsome Prince!

She loved him at first sight…. and he loved her back…Yum Yum Yum :) He thrusts forward sweeping her off her feet. They embrace passionately. Then pause. She suddenly pushes him back and grabs the center of her dress with both hands, tears it open, splitting it down the middle instantly revealing the most beautiful manifestation of female he had ever seen; luscious firm tasty mouth watering flesh!

He moves towards her, removes the remains of her dress and …………….

Click this to continue!

FORWARD TO YOUR FRIENDS

Okay. Seriously now. Tell me you’re not sniggering into your keyboard after reading that!

This afternoon my mom and I did our monthly wedding planning meeting. We sat down and hashed out a reasonably firm guest list, and then revisited the whole issue of where to hold the reception. This decision is a bit complicated by some of the ideas my mom’s had for the entertainment. I’m not so sure a sword fight should be indoors in a room full of people wearing nice clothes – regardless of whether it might be appropriate to the period of the wedding or not. But some of the other ideas will still work…and now that we have some good numbers, it looks like we can finally decide on a place to hold this little shindig.

There are times when I think that I’m not getting into this wedding thing as much as I should. Perhaps it’s just that I’m comparing my reaction to the wedding itself to that of my friends and sisters who’ve gotten married. My older sister dithered over the color of the napkins. I’ve friends who seriously pondered ice sculptures, developed nervous tics over flower arrangements, and agonized over getting just the right cake server. I dunno – as a full-blooded female, aren’t I supposed to be getting giddy with anticipation by now? Shouldn’t I be poring through bridal magazines and pondering china patterns and pricing extravagant wedding gowns? The mere thought of attending one of those bridal faires makes me shudder. I went to enough of those with friends and sisters, thank you. No more. Please, no more.

Getting married to Richard will be the single best decision I’ll make in my life – I have no doubts at all on that. It’s just the wedding that seems to be the issue. But do I really have to care about whether all the candles match, and really, who ever saves most of the favors you get from weddings anyway? Is this yet another one of those areas where I’m lacking in the whole ‘girly’ thing again?

If I actually think about it logically though, I know that it’s because of what we’re actually doing with this theme. The very nature of the theme means that all the ‘normal’ wedding things – foofy wedding dresses, bridesmaid gowns that my friends will never forgive me for, trying to match cumberbunds to the color of the balloons – none of that applies. I haven’t a clue yet as to what color the bridesmaids will be wearing, but the very nature of this theme means that I can get away with having everyone in different colors (although I’m sure my bridesmaids are horribly disappointed that they won’t be wearing the Madonna dress). I’ve got ideas – bits and pieces of random thoughts scribbled down on paper between my mom and me – but nothing concrete. And it doesn’t help that right now my brain is focused much more on the overwhelming volume of decisions that still have to be made for this house that has begin to spring up on what was once a lot of weed-infested dirt. My saving grace for this so far has been that my mom has jumped into this theme whole-heartedly. By picking this theme, I ended up inadvertantly giving her a research project, and there’s nothing she likes better than that. So between the two of us – especially after the brunt of the house stuff is finally taken care of and I can actually *think* about wedding stuff – it will all turn out just fine.

That is, of course, if we can find enough big white candles, and we can figure out where to rent candalabras, and if I can find a seamstress to sew my gown, and if we can get spats that look like leather boots for the groomsmen and…and…sigh.

Sitting in traffic yesterday morning, I saw a man flossing his teeth. It struck me as more than a bit odd, until I pondered the fact that he probably is stuck in this same traffic every morning. I suppose at least he’s doing something productive with the time.

I was in traffic because I had to drive down to my company’s corporate office yesterday. I got up early, thinking I was budgeting enough time to get there, but I hadn’t counted on the accident that backed up traffic for nearly an hour right before the bridge. Luckily the only thing I missed was the presentation on what it’s like to be a consultant at my company. Somehow, I have a sneaky feeling I already know what that’s like…

I spent exactly the same amount of time on the road to get there as I did in interviews with three of the directors. The man who organized this called last week and gave me an impossible choice – either show up at this recruiting day for the interviews, or gosh, they might just find someone else and then well, they’d have to let me interview, but the unspoken part was that it would be moot by then. We’re in the middle of the hardest and most crucial part of development on this project, but I left for a day, for this. It’s not as if I had much of a choice – it just couldn’t have come at a worse time. At least what it meant was that I did well enough in the initial phone interview that they wanted to see me again.

I think it went well, although it’s always hard to guess when you’re intimately involved in the situation. My manager called and left a message saying that the feedback she’d received was that I did really well. Of course there’s the nice factor that could be in play here – they know that I’m one of her group, so they said it to be nice, but I think I’d rather pretend, at least for now, that it’s true. I realized while I was down there that I’m once again trying to make a big leap in my career path without going through the proper channels…but why should I stop what’s seemed to be a relative successful trend so far, right? And if these interviews amount to naught, at least some good came out of my taking the day to drive down there.

I managed to finally drop off my defective laptops (replacement #1 and replacement #2) so that the support guy could try to diagnose it face to face instead of over the phone. Several phone conversations later, he let me know that it’s fixed. Finally. Five hours round trip in the car was worth that at least.

And because I managed to get home in early afternoon while it was still light enough to see, I swung by the lot on the way, and….

We have trenches! Yes! Holes in the ground marking out where our house. It’s finally started! I sat in my nice warm car and watched several obscure machines, piloted by flannel shirted, bearded men, digging holes. They’ve finally broken ground! I sat there and excitedly tried to describe what I was seeing to Richard over the phone, but between my extreme lack of knowledge of what the heck these machines actually were, and the static of my oh-so-wonderful (NOT!) cell phone, but I’m not sure quite how good a job I did. It looks small now that it’s marked out. I remember this from watching other things being built, so at least I’m prepared for it, and I know that once the walls are in place, everything will be just fine. Last night, we came back to take pictures, and to drag my mom out to see the trenches, and the mysterious piles of wood, and of course, the adorable little baby bulldozer (that would be the Bobcat, by the way), in the yard. And now that it’s all laid out on the ground, one thing has become quite clear.

We are going to have one *huge* backyard. The builder says it’ll take five months. Now that it’s finally started, I can barely wait.

t was late at night, the fog so thick that she could barely see, huddled forward over the steering wheel, trying to peer an extra few feet into the murk in front of her, only able to see shapes when they were nearly upon her, like the shadowy figures that suddenly appeared, one at a time, around her car, keeping pace, even though it didn’t occur to her exhausted brain til minutes later that they had to have been running awfully fast to keep up with her, and then they got closer and she saw the gleam of reddened eyes and the steel in their hands, and suddenly wide awake from shock and horror she sped up, despite her inability to see through the fog, but still they kept up, til one reached out one hand (paw?) and grasped the door handle and -*****blink*****

It was late at night, the fog like pea soup in front of the car, lights casting uneven pools of visibility before her vehicle as she inched her way home. She was tired, so tired, and it was nearly impossible to see anything at all, so she drove slowly – but still, when the shape ran into the road in front of her, she didn’t see it until it was directly upon her, and then the heavy thunk as she hit it, and it fell to the road, to one side, and she slammed on her brakes, heart pounding, eyes straining to see outside the window til finally she turned off the engine and stepped outside of her car to see if the thing she had hit was badly hurt, and as she approached it where it lay in the middle of the road, it rolled toward her and got to its feet in one fluid motion, and she could see that despite the blood dripping from one side of its head, it was otherwise unharmed, but it was also angry, and it snarled, and then –

*****blink*****

It was late at night, the fog so thick that she could barely see in front of her car, and then there were lights ahead, strange lights, and she slowed down even further because she thought at first that perhaps there had been an accident, because the lights were flashing and there were other colors besides yellow and white – blue and red – so she thought at first it was a police car, but then as she drew closer she realized that it was most certainly not a police car but something far more bizarre – a strange craft hovering just above the road and emitting a low hum that seemed to permeate her car and nestled in the base of her spine, and she pondered several options including getting out, and then perhaps trying to drive around it, and then maybe turning around and backtracking down the road and taking the highway like she probably should have instead of the back roads that were quicker to get home but less well traveled, but it was as she was pondering that she realized that she couldn’t turn the wheel; couldn’t move; and then there was something moving toward the car through the mist and she couldn’t even –

****blink****

It was late at night, the fog settled on the road in front of her as if a cloud has become suddenly too tired and felt the need to take a quick nap. She drove, not paying much attention to the distance, just driving, tired, sleepy, wanting to get home, hunched over the steering wheel watching for anything ahead of her because this fog was really too thick to see, and it wasn’t until she had been driving for quite some time when it occurred to her that it had been too long and she should have seen the lights of her town by now, and there were no other cars on the road, and so she started to pay attention more, straining to see the sides of the road, looking for street signs, looking for *anything* at all, but to her growing horror there was nothing, and as she watched the odometer click away the miles without seeing any sign of anything familiar she realized that she was –

****blink****

It was late at night and she had been out with her mom, staying up too late so they were both tired and giddy and when she left the house the fog which had only been a sparse mist earlier that evening was so thick it was nearly impossible to see. She drove slowly, tensed over the steering wheel, ignoring the blackness behind her because that always unnerved her when driving in the fog, trying her best to stay awake because she was tired, so very tired, and then finally the lights of town ahead of her, and she turned into her own driveway and she was –

-home

We went to see a play Friday night – the second in the season for the local theater company from which we purchased season tickets. The first play was Chess, which we really enjoyed. This one, however, was a different story. They did Oliver. Or perhaps I should say, they *tried* to do Oliver. My dad, with his musical background, was wincing at the fact that not only was the violin accompanist horribly off beat and all over the score, but they hadn’t even bothered to tune the piano – and it was obvious. I started to cringe as soon as the little boy playing the main character started to sing, and it didn’t get much better. Richard summed it up rather nicely afterwards. “Self direction and self-choreography usually doesn’t work”.

The good thing, I suppose, is that at the very least, a bad play certainly gives you something to talk about. We headed out to dinner afterwards with my parents (since they’ve got tickets for seats right next to us), where we alternated between joking about how truly bad that production really was, rolling our eyes at the current state of the election, and breaking into helpless giggles about a certain Snickers commercial that’s been running these past few weeks.

We went to a Bed and Breakfast this weekend down in Monterey – a trip that was eagerly anticipated, and proved to be definitely worth the wait. The inn was more beautiful than the pictures gave credit, and we both desperately needed the chance to relax and just spend some time with each other, whether in companionable silence while reading beside the open windows, strolling through Cannery Row hand in hand, or chatting with a tableful of strangers at breakfast. We fell asleep to the sound of seals barking, and woke up to a beautiful clear, sunny day. On the way back home, we stopped off at Richard’s parents’ place so that they could see Spiff (and experience the Seatbelts of Doom in the backseat). It was a weekend of fun and relaxation, and a chance to learn some new things:

• Richard and his father will try anything if you dip it in BBQ sauce and then dare them (cinnamon rolls and pecan pie, for example).
• Artichoke plants look sort of like ferns, and brussel sprouts don’t.
• There are people out there who will eat deep-fried artichokes. I am basing this on the fact that we saw several signs advertising them at little produce stands along the way.
• Feather beds are much more comfortable than I’d expected.
• They ran out of imagination when naming the cities on Highway 1, shortly before Monterey. We passed through Seaside, Seascape, and Marina, for example.
• We can live for two days without access to our computers, but that’s the first thing we headed for when we got home.
• If the Charlie’s Angels movie was accurately based on the TV show (which I never did see), then the TV show was incredibly stupid. The movie was wonderful – delightfully campy and fun – but the I shudder to think of how inane that TV show must really have been.

And lastly, and most important, for anyone who has seen that particular Snickers commercial mentioned above, all you have to do to incite hysterical giggles is to put some small object on their shoulder, and then in a cartoony sort of voice, babble out “I invented pants!”

I have been frustrated at the lack of time I have had in the past four to five months for exercise. I would dearly love to start up Tae Kwon Do again (okay I’m hopelessly uncoordinated and look like a crippled moose when I do front kicks, but at least it’s a fun workout). However, my schedule just hasn’t made that likely, and with the wedding less than a year away, I really have been getting more and more antsy to try to at least to *something* to get myself back into shape. And I know myself well enough that if I didn’t get something that I liked, I wouldn’t do it. So after work on Friday, Richard and I headed to the new Galleria mall in Roseville to look at treadmills.

We tried out probably half a dozen of them in the department store while the clerk waited patiently. They’re fancy little contraptions with blinking lights and pulse monitors, some with hand weights, some with ski poles. We poked and prodded and pressed buttons, but eventually decided on a model to bring home.

Then the fun began. We went downstairs to pick it up. The guy brought out a box on a dolly. We took one look at the box, he took one look at Richard’s car, and we all three immediately realized that there was no way in the world that thing was going to fit. So back upstairs to see about delivery. No can do. Can we order it? Nope – can’t do that either. I was just about to sigh and jot down the model number and see if maybe we could find it online when the clerk who’d been helping us called his wife to tell her he’d be a bit late, and then volunteered to follow us home with the box in his truck.

He wouldn’t let us fill up his tank with gas. He helped us drag this extremely heavy box into the house. He drove nearly two hours out of his way to help two strangers who could have probably just as easily broken down and rented a U-haul for a day to get this home. We didn’t ask – he just offered. Before he left we at least managed to get his name so we could call his manager. We realize that they probably frown on their employees doing this sort of thing, so we’re not going to mention exactly what he did. We just want his manager to know how much we appreciated his service. If he gets a pat on the back and recognition from his employers as to how awesome he truly is, then that’s the least we can do.

So now we have a treadmill. We set it up last night, peering at directions in tiny print while we attached the legs and arms, all with the oh-so-useful assistance of several curious cats. Most of them were happily distracted, however, by the presence of the huge box in which the treadmill came. I was good and used it this morning, and loved it. I’m hoping that this will last.

On a side note, the box is still sitting in the middle of the living room. The cats are having too much fun with it and we really aren’t intending to have people over any time soon, and I always feel so guilty about taking something away from them that they really enjoy……and so just one more of the many reasons why I’m hopelessly in love with Richard is because he doesn’t mind if the box sits there for a few days, and not only that, he is perfectly happy to help me build them a boxy sort of maze with it later, when we move into the new house and have more space to put it.

But then, with a guy like this how many more reasons do I need?