So this afternoon, I take Gracie to the park for her walk prior to picking up Thing 2 from school.
I pull in to the parking lot, which is pretty empty except for one truck. Gracie and I head off to chase geese and squirrels attend to some bathroom habits. And I don't mean both of us were chasing squirrels and geese and dropping a deuce. Only I did.
KIDDING!
After our walk, in which we were chased by geese (the geese at the park are badass and they scare me) and chased some squirrels and Gracie did her business in the middle of the road (she has this thing against doing a #2 on grass) we head back to the car.
The parking lot is still mostly empty except for a car that arrived while we were out on our walk.
And because there were 100 million empty parking spots, OF COURSE the car owner would park here:
You can even see that this is a mostly empty parking lot so why, WHY would this driver decide to park RIGHTNEXT to my car? Why not one parking spot over, leaving an empty one between us?
I have parked at the side of the road inside the park and have been the only car parked at the side of the road and someone will come and park 3" from my back bumper. For reals. There's 1/2 mile of empty roadside in front of me but nope, they have to park on my bumper.
I'll go to a shopping center and deliberately park in the North 40 so that I wouldn't have to deal with a Parking Space Invader and yet they still find me.
Back when I still had my Ford Excursion (a really, really big SUV), I had gone somewhere and made sure to park far enough away to ensure that the dreaded Parking Space Invader wouldn't find me. They did. Two of them. One on either side of me and so close were they to my door that the only way I could get into my vehicle was by crawling in the back window.
I was discussing the behavior of the Parking Space Invader with someone and wondered why the PSI does this and the other person said they thought people do it as an unconscious "safety in numbers" thing.
That may be but I think the real reason people do it is because they're clueless assholes.
Bad things tend to happen on February 15. Usually related to events of The Day Before, aka "Valentine's Day."
On year, it was on February 15 when I discovered, via the grapevine, that My One True Love had given an expensive piece of jewelry to someone for Valentine's Day and that someone was Not Me. Which is how I found out that My One True Love was a lying, cheating Rat Bastard.
It was another February 15 when I woke up after a wonderful Valentine's celebration the night before with my long-time boyfriend to discover he had flown the coop in the middle of the night, although he did take the gentlemanly step of leaving a "Dear Jane" letter on the pillow.
So, every year, I have to wonder/worry about something Bad happening on February 15.
This year has been no exception.
This morning, my mother-in-law died after a 10 year battle with Alzheimer's. A battle in which Alzheimer's robbed her of her dignity and turned her into the equivalent of an adult-size infant, an infant who could be out the door and halfway down the street the moment your back was turned.
Instead of mourning her death, we're going to try to remember the person she once was, before that bastard known as the Alzheimer's became such a dickhead and we're celebrating that she is finally Free.
Once upon a time, in the early stages of our romantic romance, I decided I was going to cook a pot roast for TheManTheMyth because he is a meat-and-potatoes type of guy and I thought, "what could be more romantic than a home-cooked meal?"
So I get out a cookbook, called "Square Meals" and there's a recipe for pot roast with a picture. And I ask my sister, who is an awesome cook, for help. She tells me to get something called a 7-bone roast and even draws me a picture of what it should look like and sends me off to the supermarket.
Where I proceed to stand if front the of the meat counter looking hopelessly dazed and confused. I don't see anything called a 7-bone roast. I see plenty of other roasts: rump roasts, tri-tip roasts, standing rib roasts which did have several bones in it but not 7 of them and even something called a Bone-in Chuck Roast but I don't see anything with 7 bones in it.
So I go back home and tell my sister that the supermarket doesn't sell anything with 7 bones in it, which sends her into peals of laughter and she takes me back to the store, picks up the Bone-in Chuck roast, holds it up to the picture she had drawn and waddya know? They match! Who knew?
We get the rest of the ingredients and go home and I cook a pot-roast, which did not come out looking ANYTHING close to the picture in the cookbook, which actually looked more like this
even though that recipe actually did call for a chuck roast. Way to really confuse me, people.
I don't remember how it turned out, probably not that great because I? am not known for my culinary expertise, is what I'm saying.
I'm sure you're thinking this post has to do with Valentine's Day and that I tried to be all romantic by cooking a meal for TheManTheMyth but you'd be wrong with that thought process.
TheManTheMyth and I, old-fashioned romantics that we aren't, celebrate Valentine's Day the same way we celebrate August 27: we don't.
27 years ago, I was at work, busily ringing folks up as a cashier at our local Gemco when I happened to notice my dad and my boss standing there. My boss told me to take a break because my dad needed to talk to me. And my dad told me that my fiance "G," who had been in declining health and had been in the hospital for 2 months at that point, had had a massive stroke and was brain dead. So I go home and I sit there and wait for the call from G's parents telling me it was all over.
And I wait. And I wait. And I wait. The next day, it was my Grandparents who came and told me that G had died after a hard fought battle that included dialysis, 2 kidney transplants, multiple strokes in the last year of his life, the removal of his spleen and a last minute diagnoses of diabetes before his body finally called it quits at the age of 24.
Yesterday morning, my brother in law called to let us know that my mother in law had been rushed to the hospital with pneumonia and a urinary infection. He said it wasn't looking good and to be prepared. My MIL was diagnosed with Alzheimer's about 10 years ago and has become little more than an adult size newborn in the last few months.
Last night BIL calls and tells me that it will only be a matter of hours now. Too much fluid in her lungs and brain, her heart rate has plummeted, her blood pressure is almost at a standstill and she struggles to breathe with lungs filled with fluid. And because she had made out her living will before she became incapacitated, BIL tells me no lifesaving measures will be made. The only thing the hospital will do is administer pain meds and make her as comfortable as possible.
And just like when my father in law died, TheManTheMyth is out in the desert in an area where there is no cellphone service. That time, we came home to dozens of hysterical voice mails from family members.
Once again, I sit and wait for THAT phone call.
And the waiting is the hardest part.
So. Thursday night at 8:00pm Pacific Standard Time found me sitting poised at my computer, staring intently at the monitor, waiting for Question Number 1 to pop up. My fingers flew over the keyboard as I typed in my answer and hit the "Submit" button within the 15 second time frame and continued on to Question Number Dos.
50 questions later, I completed the Jeopardy Online Test, which is given only once a year (for my time zone) in the hopes that I too would be up on that stage, giving the correct questions to the answers and winning buttloads of cash.
The only way I'll know if I "passed" is if I'm contacted by the Jeopardy people within one year of taking the test. Wait. ONE YEAR? Seriously?
Well, I won't be holding MY breath on a callback. While there were more than a few easy-peasy questions, there were also several that had me hitting the "pass" button because I knew that I couldn't even TRY to guess. And also because I remember a former Jeopardy champion advised players to never guess. If you're not 100% sure of the answer, DON'T answer and I've always taken Chuck's advice.
I guess (ha!) that I was lucky that there were very few (if any) questions in the categories I suck at: US Government, Physics, Mathematical Equations, German Literature, The Table of Elements, Poetry and World Geography. Because those categories fall under Things I Really Don't Know.
My dream categories would be Royalty, British History (sad that I'm more familiar with British, French and Russian history than my own country's), the Civil War, Opera, Religion and Celebrity Gossip. You know, the shallow and superficial stuff.
So I guess I'll know if I'm picked if the phone rings sometime in the next year and Alex Trebek will be on the line. I can only imagine the little interview during the first commercial break where each contestant relates something anecdotal about themselves. Somehow I doubt relating the time I had dinner with OJ Simpson will suffice in this case. And we can't talk about my penchant for stalking hockey players and a certain action/adventure actor who also stars in several Guy Ritchie films.
Unless. This might be my chance for Jason Statham to see that I am his one true love and he will have His People call My People (me) and we will ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after.
And all because of Jeopardy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMzdsUtcves
Oh, did I have an awful nightmare last night, the plot of which I will share with you right now:
For some reason, I was on a bus headed to the airport to go on a trip to Hawaii. My friend "Noodle" happened to be on the bus next to me and I was all happy to see my childhood buddy and excited to be going to Hawaii.
We get to the airport and it suddenly occurred to me that A) I did not have a plane ticket with me 2) I had forgotten my wallet with my ID and iii) I had forgotten my cellphone as well. And also too, I didn't know WHICH airline I was supposed to fly to Hawaii on or where I was supposed to stay once I got to Hawaii on Unknown Airways.
So I'm wringing my hands and crying and panicking over what I'm going to do since I have none of the items I need to get to Hawaii, including a suitcase with clothes for my trip to Hawaii. And Noodle decides that I'm going to be arrested as a terrorist because I'm at an airport without any valid reason and am making a scene so he bails on me (THANKS A LOT, PAL), leaving me to get out of this mess on my own.
Somehow, I find a cellphone so I can call someone and of course I can't remember anyone's phone number. Of course. Doesn't this always happen in a nightmare? You try to call someone and either you can't remember the number or you keep getting a busy signal or your finger slips off the button and you have to start all over again and you CAN'T COMPLETE THE CALL!!!
But this nightmare gets worse. Oh yes, it does. What happens next caused me to force myself to wake up from this awful nightmare, which I did, gasping with fear and a pounding heart.
In my nightmare, I told someone that I was hoping my son's girlfriend would get pregnant because, get this, I WANTED TO BE A GRANDMA.
Even my nightmare addled brain was saying, "What the hell?" because anyone who knows me knows I'm not much of a baby person. The only reason I tolerated my own babies was because a) they were the most beautiful babies ever to exist and 2) they were mine and I was kind of obligated to be their mom. But I've never had "baby fever" and I definitely don't have "Gramma fever" as I've made it abundantly clear to Thing 1 and his girlfriend of this fact.
I'm sure a Dream Analyst can analyze this NIGHTMARE and would say that subconsciously, I'm sad about my children growing up, leaving the nest (like THAT will ever happen) and not needing me anymore (yeah, right) and that I need a baby to nurture and love (Um, no).
Some friends came over last week and they had their 3 month old with them and yes, I held little Riley and cooed and did the rocking-side-by-side motion that comes automatically when you hold a baby and I was perfectly happy to pass him back to his Mama after 5 minutes and realized that nope, I don't miss having one around.
I think I need to go back to bed and start over again. Maybe this time I'll dream about something lovely, like a shirtless Jason Statham. Because he is the stuff dreams are made of.
You know what just drives me nuts and pisses me off? This is where you all say, "No, Kelly. Tell us! Tell us now what drives you nuts and pisses you off!"
Well for starters, it drives me nuts and pisses me off when Blogger decides to change the font every time I hit the return/enter key. I don't WANT to use the itty bitty Times New Roman font, thank you. But that's not what this is about today.
THIS is Kelly's kvetch of the day: I hate it when I ask someone a simple Yes or No question and instead of answering with a simple Yes or No, either I get a long, involved monologue that never really quite answers the question or the person sends me on the Ho Chi Minh trail to find the answer. Just answer the question please, Yes or no?
The question "Is it hot outside?" doesn't mean you should hand me a Farmer's Almanac and suggest I research the temperatures on this day in this location for the last 100 years to get an understanding on average rainfall vs sunny days on this very date.
"Are there tomatoes in this dish?" does not require an answer that goes like this: "Well, that all depends on how much you like tomatoes and what variety of tomato you prefer and do you prefer extra tomatoes or just a small amount of tomatoes and you'll notice that we use the most freshest ingredients and can I get you a refill on your ice tea?" Huh wha?
These are not trick questions I'm asking. They require nothing more than Yes or No as their answer.
IN a pinch, you can always use the classic, "I don't know." I'd rather have an "I don't know" than a non-answer. "Mr. Hand, will I pass this class?" "I DON'T KNOW!"
Oh wow, I just noticed the calendar, did some adding and oh, okay. That explains why I'm a bit, shall we say, testy.
"That time of the month?"
"Yes."
"Outta here!"
