Shoelaces for Josie

My attention span is nil. The Biggest Loser isn’t helping with that either.

So, short and sweet and to the point.

Knitting - totally going to start doing it. Remember that one time when Grey’s Anatomy used to be really good and Meredith was sitting at the end of the bar knitting a sweater?  Yep, that’s me. Minus the bar.  And the sweater. Just some good ole fashioned scarf knitting on the couch. Prepping for my own really old lady days.

Grilled cheese - I ate some today and it reminded me of why I shouldn’t eat it. Grease = gross.

Combine the two and you get me hitting the gym because grilled cheese goes straight to the hips and a life-time of knitting doesn’t do wonders for the calorie burner.

End of addition lesson.

It’s big business, this Christmas deal is. I ordered a movie for my folks off that new-fangled thing they call the Internet. (If you only knew my parents…they don’t really have much of a concept of what the ‘net really is…) I just found out that it had been delivered today and I was puzzling over why the package hadn’t been delivered when I realized it had probably been stuffed in my mailbox since the package was rather small and my mailbox is rather large.

So, garbed in my teal robe and leopard-print slippers, I marched around the corner to my mailbox. A few cars drove by - I put a whole new meaning into working the corner - not to mention the street lights glinting off my starkly white (but freshly shaven!) legs.

My movie had indeed arrived which was exciting. Actually, to be completely correct, it isn’t my movie. I’m simply…its holding pen for the time being. But the arrival of said movie got my wheels turning in my brain about what I could possibly get for the rest of my family. I need to think small - shipping 1,500 miles is no cheap task. Not to mention me mum has told me to scrap any Christmas-gift-giving.

I would. And I’m tempted. But I’ve been tempted to scratch gifts since I was 12. I love giving things to people, but a) it’s a lot of work, b) I won’t even be there to see them open it, and c) I don’t know what to get which is directly tied into point a. I’m not into the whole “let’s get something just to get something even though it’s completely stupid and worthless” idea. Unless it’s my bro. Last year, he gave me a stuffed monkey with extendable legs and arms striped like a candy cane, and that says it all. That war is totally on.

Maybe the much larger point I should be making is that it’s barely the end of October. Christmas is still two months away. And who is still up, mulling over gift ideas and agonizing over what gag gift is appropriately harsh/funny enough for her brother? Ah, corporate America, you never cease to amaze me.

Some things are just uncanny. Coincidental. Strange. Lucky. Meant to be? With purpose?

I went out to supper tonight at my friend’s parents. We had steak. Yum. This story had a point and now I’ve completely derailed.

Oh, well, long story short, my friend’s parents and the life they lead is basically identical to the one my parents lead. Oh, you have about a 400 cow-calf operation?  So does my family. You calf in the spring? So do we. Hay and grain in the winter? Yep, us too. Even the most minute little things…like traveling about 30-45 minutes to the livestock auction when selling time comes…same, same, same.

That was odd to me. Quirky. Coincidental. Strange.  Meant to be?

I think so.

I’m a tomboy. Anyone who knows me can quickly affirm that fact. Over the years, however, I have attempted to make a valiant effort to become somewhat acceptably fashionable. Thanks to my good friend Darren, I have made some serious strides.

Rarely do I run to dictionary.com to make sure I’ve used the right word. I’m pretty secure in my knowledge of words to know that if I don’t have the right one, at the very least, I’ve done an awesome job of faking it.

But I checked to make sure “disillusionment” was right, because I didn’t want to flub up on this post tonight.

I believe I’ve said this before but I don’t go into a lot of detail about my job for obvious reasons. I highly doubt my words would ever end up in places they shouldn’t (read as publications where people - aka the public - has access to them) but I don’t want to take that chance. So - I’m vague. No names, no comments about teams or injuries, no information about anything that hasn’t been made public by our office. I’m sorry if things don’t make sense sometimes since you don’t have all the pieces to string it together but, such is life.

I think I came into this job with expectations. It’s hard not to have expectations. It’s how we’re made. When you enter a relationship you have expectations about how it’s going to go and how it’s going to end up, when you get in your car, you have expectations that it is going to get you to your destination, when you ask a Wal-Mart employee for directions, you expect to get no information.

Barf, work is getting in the way of me ranting about work, must run.

Sometimes late can be good. Like……..when you sleep in late - well - that can be bad if you’ve missed a meeting. Late can be good when…oh pick me, pick me! I have an answer!….when you don’t floor your car at a green light because some royal moron blew through their red light. See, now you’re alive because you were late at stepping on the gas. Don’t worry about all the cars honking behind you. Obviously they don’t have as much invested in you being alive.

Late is not good when it’s after midnight on Monday. I haven’t been up this late in eons - probably since college. I can’t do it anymore. Contrary to popular belief, I am not the reincarnated superwoman. All of this doesn’t explain why I’m still up, does it? Well, I’m dedicated. I’m dedicated to this blog and I take my responsibility to my readers quite seriously.

That’s mostly true. Somewhat true. But the real reason I’m still up is to work. Silly me and running myself up against the deadline. One of these days I’m going to clothesline myself on one of my deadlines, and it’s going to take me awhile to pick myself up off the ground. But - why be pessimistic. It hasn’t happened yet!

Oh - I thought of another thing where late is good. When you turn on a light after you’ve just woken up and it takes a bit for it to warm up and really shine brightly. Instead of permanently scarring your retinas with an immediate flash of bright white light, you get to remain friends with your eyeballs and gradually get used to an increased amount of light. Aeh…aeh - I got the goods on this whole late thing. I’m telling ya, it’s a gift.

I do hate to see this weekend go away. It was…awesome.  And all I did was clean, do laundry, sleep and read. I don’t ask for much - I like it that way.

Since I’m sure a recount of my relaxing weekend is going to be less than enthralling, I’ve decided it’s time for another episode of Really Old Lady (ROL). I cleaned for again last Thursday. Once again, I was put on grocery shopping duty. Basically I have a whole new set of friends and, surprisingly, they are all Safeway employees.

Every time I head out of the house to purchase food for ROL, she sends me with money. Usually, quite a bit. That’s pretty irrelevant. The important point is how that cash is packaged. You know those old-style coin purses that clasp and usually come in puke-tan or puke-green colored material? Yep, that’s what I get to carry with me anytime I run ROL’s errands.

Need to pay for something? Hold on a second, sir, let me whip out my old lady coin purse and wade through the 50 dollar bills to find something a touch smaller. I can feel people looking at it. Then they look at me. Then back to the coin purse. It’s like when the cops pull someone over - everyone cranes their necks to see all they can see.

My sister tells me that if I were in San Fran, it would be considered vintage and hip, but let’s face it. Not a single one of those Safeway employees thought me hip or cool, I’m just the weird girl with a really old lady coin purse.

I remember when I was kid. Growing up, weekends usually meant working on the farm but Sunday afternoons usually were mine. In the winter, I would play with big brother in the basement. In the summer, we would roam all over the farm playing goodness knows what. A popular game we played was “getting ready for winter.” Yeah.

When I was a teenager, I read a lot. (Nerdy, I know - not a lot has changed.) Homework, working on the farm, occassionally I would do something with friends but not very often. I think it was around then that I started taking naps too.

My college years, weekends meant something entirely different. A lot of late nights and a lot of droopy-eyed mornings - err - afternoons.

Now I’m in the real world. A lot of weekends are spent at work. The weekends I don’t have to work, are spent like today. Watching college football, doing household chores (seriously, when did laundry become such a necessity? or cleaning? or bringing in wood for the fireplace?) and doing all the little odd jobs from the work week that I didn’t get finished.

Weekends - funny how they seem to have changed. Just wait til I’m like Really Old Lady. I’ll spend my weekends snoring in a chair with my television at the highest possible volume. It’ll still be on football though, I guarantee that.

Secrets are so…secretive. Odd how that works, aeh? (I don’t know why I say “aeh” all the time. It’s Canadian and I’m not of Canadian origin. I did live close to Minnesoooota for four years but that doesn’t really count. Besides, I live closer to Canada than I ever have before and no one says “aeh” around here.)

Everybody has secrets. Some people walk around hiding a pregnancy - others walk around hiding the fact that they ended a pregnancy. Some people hide their poetry about the difficult times of their lives - others lay it out for the world to see but hide behind a pen name. Some people love someone for years and never tell them - others say it outloud and forever wish they could take it back.

I’ve got some secrets. Like…umm…well, if I told then it wouldn’t be a secret any more would it? 

But let’s face it. The best-kept secret is one that never leaks out. I think this blog is pretty high up in the running for that award. I don’t mind that a lot of people don’t read this. I think it’s great. I’ve got an award that proves it (Thanks Reverend!) I don’t need a lot of people to comment on it or to get recognized by the blogging mafia. I’m chill. I go with it. It’s my platform and I treat it like my child. It is my child. It may be an only child and a bit spoiled but it’s my child nonetheless.

Eyes.  Eyes are amazing. I have amazing eyes. A lot of people do, you know. It’s not like it is anything special. And yet it is - probably because of all that “eyes are the window to the soul” crap. Crap that is actually true a lot of times.

My point is that I’m about ready to fall asleep. It’s not even eight in the evening yet. Does that make me a loser? An uncool grown-up?  Maybe. Probably. But I don’t feel uncool or loserish. I just feel tired.

I worked a lot today. I got my hairs cut - it’s ok.  I’m not digging it yet - it’s too similar to what I had before I got it cut. It’s just shorter - if I’m going to go get my hair cut, I want it to change. Seriously. Most likely, I am tired because I had to grocery shop. Oh how I loathe thee, oh shopping of the groceries.

And this short, scintillating (I get an email twice every week with that exact word in it - I laugh every time) tidbit for your reading pleasure. I went to a Mexican restaurant this evening and ordered a cheeseburger and fries. How lame is that?

But that’s not the really lame part. After trying to sound as un-American as possible while ordering my cheeseburger, I apologized to the waiter for ordering an American dish in his Mexican restaurant. Keep on trying, people, but I highly doubt you’re going to hit my peak on the cool-o-meter today.