Someone to watch the 'Stros with

Well, I have met someone.  He is really nice and smart and GAWgeous.  We have just about everything in common.  He loves Jack Kerouac and a lot of the other authors I love, we like the same sort of movies and he is a huge Astros fan too.  Sunday night he took me to the Astros - Cardinals game.  It was our first date.  Our seats were right on top of the Astros dugout!  We were mere feet away from Pettitte and Berkman and all the others as they came off the field into the dugout.  At one point we looked down and there was Roger Clemens standing there, right in front of us!  It was amazing.  If you follow a team, you can understand the excitement.  What a night!  The game went to 12 innings!  We ended up losing, but it was still a great game.  I dreamed about the game, when I finally got to sleep.  I haven't had a decent night's sleep since then.  I can't get him off my brain.  We are going out again on Saturday.

I am back in the land of the living.

 

I'm Back, Again
I hope I can get back into this blog thing. I have a very hard time committing!

So much has changed. No more Rachad. He's gone with the wind, back to Lebanon I hope. I have nothing bad to say about him, except that I couldn't help him out anymore, he leaned on me too much. As in, all the way, completely. It was too much for me to handle. He was never mean to me. I really did love him but the relationship just wasn't going in the right direction. it was hard for me to break up with him but I do not regret it. I'm very happy.

I did the rebound thing, but I don't want to be in a relationship right now. The thought of it gags me. I want to be single for a while. I'm enjoying it.

I am off for 4 days for the 4th of July holiday.

I'll post again on Wednesday the 5th hopefully.

Same old same old
Well, thanks for filling me in as to what happened to Wally! He was a lot of fun, that's a shame that he's grounded from us.

Not much has been going on since I last wrote ages ago. Same job, same guy, same routine. Which means everything is good.

Rachad and I went on vacation to Gatlinburg. We had a good time, even if Gatlinburg is the Redneck Aspen. Once you get past all of the hillbillies in the downtown area, all the John Deere emblem t-shirts and hats and all of the "Git-r-Done" tshirts and mullets galore everywhere you look, once you escape to the mountains and the dark trails leading to waterfalls and running streams and you stumble upon cabins built over 100 years ago by wiry farmers and then you spot a black bear or a wild turkey, deer...then you feel something amazing, indescribable. Everything was so beautiful. Rachad drove like crazy up and down the mountain. He said, "this reminds me of Lebanon!" and I just stopped breathing and closed my eyes until we got to wherever we were going.

We stopped in Chattanooga (my great grandma says "Chattanoogy") and saw the waterfall inside the cave, that was something else too.

At work, things are good, I got a raise last week, and I even got a Christmas bonus. But we replaced one dummy receptionist for an even bigger dummy, and I was really surprised because I was just sure that the first one was the biggest idiot in the world, hands down, so meeting the new one who's even dumber really threw me for a loop. I could really tell you some stories about this one, she's a nut! But I won't get into that right now.

I am going to catch up on reading everyone's blogs, so I'll be busy for a while doing that!

Whaddya Know
I can't believe my blog is still up after all this time. Where's Wally?

The Whistler Has Left the Building! almost....
I have great news! My coworker The Whistler has put in her 2 week notice! I think this is just what I needed to perk myself up since I've been having the blues lately. I feel much better!

No more whistling, no more internet radio disturbing my concentration, no more idiotic mistakes! I haven't lied to her and told her that I'm sorry she's leaving or that I'll miss her. I just ran to the copy room where no one could see me and I danced a little jig of joy. Then, on my lunch break, I called everyone I know and told them "GUESS WHAT?!?! My idiot co-worker just put in her notice!" and they immediately say, "Who? The Whistler?" because I think I've complained to everyone I know about her whistling habit.

So long! Absence makes the heart grow fonder...of the fact that we will never see your face again.

I'm Worried About My Best Friend!
My best friend is in the hospital. She had gastro-bypass surgery yesterday. I can't help but worry about her.

I have known her since junior high. We both ended up moving to Houston at about the same time, so while lost touch with my other friends from school, she and I remained close. We were even roommates for a while until she got married. She has always been overweight, but over the last few years her problem grew worse. She tried a weight-loss surgery before (I think it's called the "lap band", where you stomach is cinched by a tiny ring to make the stomach smaller) but it had to be reversed after 2 months because she had severe complications.

She says that this procedure, the gastro-bypass Roux-en-Y, is much safer and more effective. I began worrying about her from the moment she told me last week that she was going through with it. What she went through several years ago with the lap-band was horrific.

I am going to the hospital tonight to see how's she doing. She had to have a GI this morning to make sure there were no leaks around the incisions made to her stomach, and her mother says all looks well. She's on a low dose of morphine to control the pain. She can drink something now that she is done with the GI, but it will be her first drink since the surgery yesterday morning. For the next week she will only be able to have liquids, and for the next few months only soft foods. After that, one ounce of food 6 times a day. That seems like such a hard way to go through the rest of your life, especially when eating was previously such a joy. But I guess that is where the problem lies.

I am really worried about her. Not so much about the surgery, but about her emotional condition. She even told me that her doctor said many people become severely depressed after this procedure. She'll lose handfulls of hair like she did when she had the lap band. She won't be able to go pig out on fajitas with me at lunch anymore. They recommended that she eat no sugar because it can cause Would I even feel comfortable eating around her at all? I'm probably taking it worse than she is. She told me last week, after I voiced my concerns, "you just don't know how it feels to go through life like this. 'Morbidly Obese' is not an easy label to have to wear."

I do want the best for her. I want her to feel good about herself! And I want her to be healthy. Perhaps I'm wondering just how healthy this stomach-stapling, intestine re-routing can be. I just want her to be happy, I don't want her to have pain phsically or emotionally. God knows, women within their normal weight range have a hard enough time feeling good about themselves, I cannot imagine how she must feel. I know it's got to be hard. But she is a great person, she has a wonderful husband and a great job, she has more friends than anyone I know. I'm just worried about her and I love her so much.

(retitled) Please Pass The Prozac...
I know, I haven't written in a while. To be honest, I haven't felt like doing much of anything lately.

Same old excuses, I guess, and a few new ones. I get so busy and run-down at work that I sleep for no less than an hour or two when I get home at 5:00. Then I drag myself off the couch or bed and for the rest of the night I feel lazy. I lie in bed till 1:00 or 2:00, wide awake. Then I can't get out of bed when the alarm clock starts blaring at 7:00.

I've been getting into fights with my boyfriend. One day I can't stand him, the next day I can't stand to be away from him. It's all very strange.

I feel like a kid because I'm missing my mom and my grandparents. I get homesick. But then when it comes down to it, I don't take any action to go visit them. Then I start beating myself up about it.

Chalk it up to PMS. I've been a mess lately, but I'm starting to feel a little more together and less bitchy and irritated by everyone who crosses my path. I think I even half-way smiled this morning. So I'll be back to my old self in no time. I really don't know what came over me! I have just been under a lot of stress lately. I had a lot of bills to pay and they all came up at once. I was sweating it, and I still am but I'm trying not to be so overwhelmed to the point where I get depressed. It's not exactly fun to feel that way, or to be around me when I feel that way.

I noticed last night that my bad attitude has taken over the body of my boyfriend. He is, on most days, the definition of happy-go-lucky. Not any more. Last night, he was lamenting and whining in the key of "no one calls me anymore, I used to do so much for so many people and they forgot that I exist, you find out who your real friends are when you really need something and no one shows up" and on and on and on. And I realized that it's really f*cking annoying to be around someone like that! Ok I don't mind to listen to his problems, but he was just whining and acting like a baby and pouting and snapping at me. It was annoying. So I decided I'd try to change my attitude a little and try to cheer myself up and cheer Rachad up too. I saw my reflection in him for a minute, and it was pretty damned ugly!

Now, it's lunch time. I think I am going to get myself out of the office and out into the sunshine for a while. It might do me some good! I don't want to think of clients or bills or projects or money or boyfriend or family for at least an hour and a half.

Are You Superstitious?
Take a quiz to see how superstitious you are.

I am in no way superstitious. You won't see me knocking on wood! But my great-grandmother says that owls are omens that someone is going to die, or signs of bad luck, and even though I never believed her theory, I sometimes get a chill down my spine when I see an owl.

And owls remind me of ghost stories that were told to me when I was a kid.

There is a lake house owned by my family, and I spent a lot of time there when I was growing up. It's in East Texas in the middle of the woods on a small lake. We'd sit outside on the porch at night, my cousins and I, and my great-aunt would scare us half to death with all of her fabricated ghost stories. We'd start bugging her early in the evening to tell us some stories, but she'd make us wait "til the hoot-owls start hootin'". So, late in the evening she'd sit out on the porch with us, and it was so DARK outside, out there in the middle of the woods and not another person for miles, except for the homicidal maniac who escaped from the Huntsville prison (30 miles from our lake house) and was out there hiding in the woods and was probably watching us that very second, waitin for us to go to sleep so he could come in and cut us into little pieces (I'm telling you, my Aunt scared us so badly with her stories that we slept with one eye open all night!). There were owls all around the lake, high up in the pine trees, hoo-hooing all night. Combine that with the weird bug and frog noises, and you have yourself one scary setting.

She used to tell us that the old man who lived on the other side of the lake, Mr. Johnson, died in his sleep and his wife had him cremated and sprinkled his ashes all through the woods, and if we liiiiiiistened close enough we might be able to hear him walking out there right that very minute, twigs breaking under his feet and leaves rustling. Of course, there are always noises like that coming from the woods, from possums or armadillo etc, and my cousins and I would run into the cabin like we were on fire, screaming "It's Mr. Johnson, it's Mr. Johnson, he's coming to get us!"

At any rate, I may get scared by really good ghost stories and owls, but I'm not superstitious about anything!

Have A Great Weekend, Everyone!

I hope you all have fun this weekend! As for me, well, this is a picture of the guy I have a date with tonight. Who could resist a hunk of burnin love like that?? What can I say, I know what I like, and I go and get it.

Just kidding! (April Fools!)
TGIF

Laugh and the World Laughs with You, You Drunken Idiot!

I kind of like him! His truck is on top of his mobile home, both are damaged beyond repair, he probably doesn't have insurance on either the truck or the trailer, but there he is, smiling and laughing and even appears to be raising a cold one in a toast to the tornado that has now depleted him of the few worldly treasures he had acquired. "Here's to you, Tornader, you ol sonuvagun! Yeeeeha, boy! You ain't got me yet! I'm still standin, son! Yeehaaaaa!"

I kind of like his attitude!