No Catchy Title

I can't even think of a title tonight, and I'm not even particularly tired. I don't get to say that often, you know.

I ran around like a crazy person after school today, picking up a couple of Thanksgiving needs I couldn't get yesterday, and looking for a desk lamp or bulb. I have this wonderful lamp, an Ott-Lite, so the light is more natural, but the bulb went out and the only place I can get one is online, $17.99 plus shipping. Now, you'd think that someone who spent $56.00 on a turkey wouldn't find that a big deal, but I know I can get a whole new lamp for less than that. Except I can't. I went to four stores today, including the store where I originally bought the lamp with the bulb problem and I couldn't get a bulb or any other lamp for my desk.

It was very frustrating, so I had to come home and eat lots of pizza. (You know. I had to.) But I just finished my workout (ho ho, it makes me laugh to say that), so, all gone pizza! I can dream, can't I? I'm thinking of trying to do it tomorrow morning, first thing, since that felt good the other day, but it may take more organization than I possess to do that on a workday.

And that's that. I haven't actually started reading the book I have listed down there; I've been working with some new software which has been keeping me busy. And thinking about Christmas stuff. Maybe I am tired after all.


WATCHING FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1918
READING: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Chai's on Fiah!

I have spent this day in a whirlwind of activity. I'm not sure where all the energy came from; I didn't sleep better or worse, really, than I have been all week, and I woke up before six. I realized right away that I had the makings of a sinus headache, so I took a couple of Excedrin and tried to fall asleep again. I didn't do that, but may I say, I heart Excedrin. I can't take it too often, and I can't take later in the day than say, three or so, but it knocks out the headache and gives me a nice caffeine boost that my decaf just doesn't do. I expected to crash by noon, but I never did.

I got up and did my Wii Fit, which was much, much easier to do first thing in the morning than after a day at work, and I got in 35 minutes instead of 20. I'll bowl later, which I've been doing right after the Fit. I took the body test again and my Fit Age has gone down from 75 to 44. I'm sure it has less to do with me than it does with my taking the test originally with the board backwards.

I just got so much done today. Let me share some highlights with you.

I wanted the living room in order, because the R and the GF (Gentleman Friend) were meeting K and her friend Matt here at 5:00 to go out to dinner and then to the play at the high school. I had repaired the broken clothes rack, but K said there was no way she could make the room to take it back upstairs today, and who was I trying to impress, boys? Here's the thing. I wanted my house to look clean because people were coming over. She said that Matt wouldn't care. (More on the Matts in a moment.) Well, I know that Matt wouldn't care, and his mother isn't going to ask him "What's their house like?" because she already knows, and I know her and she wouldn't care anyway, and K and Matt are not dating. The GF, on the other hand, has only been here once, and I don't know his mother, and how do I know she won't say "So what's their house like?" When I explained this to K, she said "He's a boy! If his mother asks him, he'll say 'It's a house, I don't know!'" which is probably true. But these are potential in-laws, it would seem, and okay, am I crazy or what?

Part of my travels today included the Recycling Center. I had a carload of cardboard, boxes and clothes for the Red Cross box. As I was hoisting the bag of clothes into the box -- I hate those things -- I smashed my wrist into the edge of the opening up inside the box. I pulled it out and rubbed my wrist, and thought "Funny, I guess I forgot to put my watch on this morning." (That's called foreshadowing, boys and girls.) Next, I went to the Container Store, where among other things, I got stuff to organize the top of my desk, which I did when I got home.

A few hours later -- sometime after one o'clock -- K was waiting for Matt to pick her up for lunch and she glanced at her watch and said "He's always late!" and I thought uh-oh. My watch wasn't on my desk either; I had just touched everything on it and there was no watch. I checked the blankets to see if I had maybe fallen asleep with it on last night and took it off during the night, but no watch. Looks like someone at the Red Cross is getting a present. By that time, the Recycling Center was closed, so it was too late to go back and see if it might have fallen on the ground instead of inside, just to check.

It was a really good, but not expensive, Mickey Mouse watch that I like a lot, and that is now out of stock on Amazon. (Insert boo hoo here.) I never wear expensive watches (and now we all know why.) I ordered another one, not as good, but relatively okay. (I only like the ones with all the numbers, a good, full-body Mickey in the center, and actual Mickey arms for the hands. OCD much?)

So, the Matts. K actually has four friends named Matt, who can roughly be distinguished as High School (aka Big) Matt, College (aka Gay) Matt, Berlin Matt, and Grad School (aka Engaged) Matt. She has no romantic involvement with any of these, although she and Big Matt have been good buddies since ninth grade, and he has just recently come home to New Jersey, so she's very happy to have him here. When they were in high school and went everywhere together (aka cutting class together whenever they could), the Colleague called him The Bodyguard.

I finished Twlight yesterday, which I thought was an entirely adequate YA (Young Adult) novel. I enjoyed it, but I don't get what the fuss is all about. (Although that boy cast as the lead has, as Hawkeye once said about Ava Gardner, pleasant features.)


WATCHING HOUSE :: ENTRY #1916
READING: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

1. Quack. 2. Quack. 3. Squawk.

[copied from dland]

So I got all my little tasks done today, and more, and when I got home there was a message from K that the audiologist's office had called and there will be a delay in my hearing aids after all and I can call them tomorrow between 12 and 7.

ARGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

Now really, is it the day -- or god forbid, week -- delay that's going to kill me? No. It's that I thought I had it all settled yesterday and now it's not settled. They always call when I'm not here and then it takes me forever to get them back.

MY DUCKS ARE NOT ALL IN A ROW!

Because this, I just realized, is what I crave. This is my OCD. I don't need to wash my hands a million times a day a la Shirl (although I wash my hands plenty, but not obsessively; I just get them dirty a lot) and I don't come home a million times to see if I left the iron on (because I almost never iron, so that one is moot) or to make sure the door is locked. My problem is this:

I must have all my ducks in a row. At all times. If any duck is out of place, I must IMMEDIATELY nudge it back in line. I must make that phone call to secure the appointment. If I perceive that I need something that I lack, I must get it, even it's only a package of file folders, as I had to make time to go pick up today before my nails appointment. My biggest frustration of the day today, other than the audiologist-thing, is that I had things to do, and so by the time I got the ingredients for my next slow-cooker recipe, it was too late to start it. (Not that it was tonight's dinner or anything, but I don't need to be awake at midnight spooning soup into freezer bags and washing out the crockpot. Even I have my limits.)

Well, this is my big revelation of the day, and it only took me 54 years to get here. Aren't you proud of me?

---

I threw out today's list because everything was crossed off, so I can't even tell you most of what I did. I did go to the mall briefly with the Sibs; among other things, I got some brown eyeshadows that I want to try. So I'm sitting here with them tried on, slightly different on each eye, and I ask you: what is the point of having grown daughters if neither one of them is going to be around to tell you which of your eyeshadow tests looks better? How useless are husbands for this kind of thing?

"Hey, Dear, which of my eyes looks better to you?"

*Wheels turn in his head as he tries to decipher where the trap is in the question, and which of your eyes you want him to say looks better, when all he can really see is that yes, you do have eyes, probably two of them; he's pretty sure, although he hasn't looked that closely in years*

"Uh .... uh ..... "

"Never mind."

---

My good deed of the day, I think, was getting someone here to get that door put up. Turns out the old door I have that used to be at the top of the basement step fits, so he took it away to paint it and is putting it up tomorrow afternoon. You should have seen the look on K's face last night when I told her the handyman would be here at 8:30 in the morning. Not that he had to go into her room or anything, but he and I would be talking at the foot of the steps, and it might wake her, because, of course, there's no door. Like I was personally responsible for killing her day off. You know what? Wash the cat poop off your sheets and blankets every single night when you get home; whether or not there's a door there makes me no never mind. And R, when I told her we were putting a door up! I could hear the disdain in her voice over the phone: "Why didn't you ever put a door there when it was my room?" You know why? BECAUSE I NEVER THOUGHT OF IT BEFORE. I kept trying -- for yeeeeaaars -- to figure out a way to put a door at the top of the stairs. And guess what, she never thought of it, either.

Speaking of which, here's one. Our little house is set up with a front door and side door, which is in the kitchen, and leads out to a cement porch about the size of a very small room, and then there are steps down off the porch front and back. In front of the porch is a little side-walk-paved area with trees and shrubs around it, and this is where our trash cans are kept. So, in any weather, taking out the trash meant stepping off onto the porch and walking a few feet, and then down some steps. It meant that the Hubs must always shovel snow there so that we can get to the trash cans.

About two months ago, he moved one of the cans up to the porch so that I can lean out the kitchen side-door and drop a bag into it without stepping outside. When the can is full, he swaps it for an empty one down the little steps, which gives him some time to shovel, if necessary. Anyway, the upshot of the story is that he did this one day, and within 24 hours we realized that it was, like, the best. idea. ever. And I started to laugh and laugh. He asked me why I was laughing, and I said, "Imagine what ideas we'll come up with after we've lived here another twenty years!"

Okay, not funny? TMBS? (Too much boring story.) Okay, then.

I thought it was funny.


WATCHING REBA :: ENTRY #1382

Sidetracked

[copied from dland]

I was going to talk about the whole Dakota Fanning thing, but I just don't have the energy. Morons are just going to keep on being morons, no matter what. Do they really believe that a child was raped for a movie? Probably not. So what makes it any of anyone's business? Don't like it? Don't see the movie. Case closed.

Okay, so I did talk about it. Having trouble staying on track today.

Had the kind of day where I just kept getting one thing done after another, all the laundry done and put away, eyebrows waxed, supermarket, cleaners, all kinds of crap. Cleaned out the refrigerator. Did every single conceivable exercise in my plan, both in the gym and at home. I even did Walk Away the Pounds for five minutes to see how it felt on my knee. Felt fine. That's still the best aerobic exercise for me to do; for some reason, it doesn't exhaust me or put too much strain on any particular muscle area or body part.

R went in to work in the morning and came here after; she and K are out at the moment picking up dinner (Mexican food) so I've got a chance to write. We went a few places, including to see K at work (more to buy things at K's store), but we skipped the mall, since by Saturday afternoon the mall is not a place you want to go unless you're already there. I had wanted to go to the make-up store with R since I think it wouldn't hurt her to get started on some grown-up make-up and I'd help her out a bit, but it was just too crowded. So I'm going to go after school on Monday with the Sibs, which should be fun.

Ah, dinner's here.


WATCHING MEET THE FOCKERS :: ENTRY #1361