There are lots of things along that way that have started reminding me of my age. I'm not talking about gray hair...have had that trying to take over for the last 10 years and at the moment, I have been letting it think it is winning. Mostly becuz I have had lots of sun bleaching my hair out so the gray doesn't show so much...and I just don't feel like dying my hair only to have the sun take the color right back out.
My face is changing...starting to show some sag...not a lot but enough for me to stare at it and wonder who that is in the mirror.
Then there is the 'Senior Citizen discounts'. I always thought that you had to be over 60 to qualify. Not anymore! I am turning 51 next month and there are lots of places that are HAPPY to offer me that discount card. I told AARP where to stick it. Many times. I have my own reasons for not wanting to have anything to do with AARP and it is all political.
Then today we got our car insurance bill for the month. A couple of months ago it went into a yearly renewal and was I surprised to find out that the monthly payments fell $40 per month...if you do your math that means it is $480 a year cheaper!! And I didn't even have to spent 15 minutes talking to some Gecko or some lady with a bee hive up do. I looked over the papers and both cars were still fully covered. hhhmmmm And all 3 drivers in the house.
Then the bill came today and it was ANOTHER $10 per month cheaper. Now, really, who would complain about THAT? I had to call my insurance agent, though and ask. He just sighed and said, could be your cars are getting older...you're getting older..." I laughed and said, "I didn't know insurance companies gave old drivers discounts." He said, "Oh...I didn't mean that in a negative way!" I just left a silence hang in the air...I could just envision Lionel (yes that's his name) with his bald head, tight t-shirt and arm grafitti squirming in his chair and his face turning red...yeah...Lionel looks like a biker. And his name is Lionel. And he sells insurance. Sorry...I just find the guy to be anything but a stereotype. Not a bad thing...just makes me giggle.
So, I made Lionel bring up our account and look it over. Jr. is turning 21 while I am turning 51. I won't make any comments on everyone's driving record as of late because I don't want to jinx it. I have a WEE bit of superstition in me about some things.
Ya can't fight the passing of time. I guess I'll just be waiting by the mailbox for my Buckeye Sr. Citizen discount card.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Taking That Time to Appreciate...
This time of year is hectic. It is when I am scrambling trying to get things pulled together for the beginning of the school year. It is also the time of year when I am trying to get things pulled together for myself. My life revolves around a school calendar.
It is always more hectic becuz hubby is always out of town for end of the fiscal year training and meetings.
This year is also more intense since my son is going through class sign up for fall and has his job...and my daughter may be beginning a babysitting job at the end of the week...every weekend. I am lining up my calendar and supplies to FINALLY paint the inside of this house...three years after moving in. Yes, I've put it off cuz I am not great at painting. But someone has to do it and it looks like I am the only one left in Dodge.
This year as Troy goes off to the end of the year fiscal meetings it will be with a heavier heart for him. He just found out that one of his main cohorts in crime dropped dead at a job on Friday. I could tell over the phone that he was shaken and trying to control himself. It isn't often that I have been witness to my husband getting emotional over anything. In our 22 years of marriage I could count it up on one hand. I think the shakiest part for him is that they do not know yet why his friend Gary died. Troy was trying to sort it out. He said, "he wasn't even 10 years older than me. He smoked, he could DRINK, and he was a little overweight but not even as overweight as I am." I was wondering if he was giving any thought to his flipness on our 20th anniversary when he had taken me to a great hotel, out to dinner, then returned to the room for wine and handed me a box with a brand new wedding ring inside and with the clink of the classes he said,"Thank you honey for all the years. I love you. I only want 10 more." It startled me because I at first thought he was putting a time limit on how much longer we were going to be married. When I said, "10 MORE??" he said, "be realistic...I'm overweight, I don't exercise, I smoke, and I have a high stress job! If I last 10 more years it's a miracle."
I wonder if that was running through his mind these last few days. He also has cholesterol problems which he has refused to deal with. I think about the fact that even though I have always emerged with a clean bill of health (and, as the doctor puts it, "enough GOOD cholesterol to share with the whole family") I could still just drop over as well as anyone. I'm going to be 51 in about 6 weeks.
Live each day as if it was your last...enjoy it as if it will last forever.
Believe me...I have been paying a lot more attention to the details and the ppl in my life for a while now. Every since 2 years ago when a male friend of mine from HS suddenly dropped dead from a massive heart attack a few weeks before our 30 year class reunion. He lived life hard, ate everything wrong, smoked, and drank like it was all going to dry up the next day. He cheated on his wife (his ex-wife at the time of his death...surprise) but he was the first one to give the shirt off his back to help a friend. He was respectful to me...except when he felt the need to share a raunchy joke and even then he apologized to me afterwards. He was one of a kind.
It's tough getting older and finding you are losing the ppl you know.
It is always more hectic becuz hubby is always out of town for end of the fiscal year training and meetings.
This year is also more intense since my son is going through class sign up for fall and has his job...and my daughter may be beginning a babysitting job at the end of the week...every weekend. I am lining up my calendar and supplies to FINALLY paint the inside of this house...three years after moving in. Yes, I've put it off cuz I am not great at painting. But someone has to do it and it looks like I am the only one left in Dodge.
This year as Troy goes off to the end of the year fiscal meetings it will be with a heavier heart for him. He just found out that one of his main cohorts in crime dropped dead at a job on Friday. I could tell over the phone that he was shaken and trying to control himself. It isn't often that I have been witness to my husband getting emotional over anything. In our 22 years of marriage I could count it up on one hand. I think the shakiest part for him is that they do not know yet why his friend Gary died. Troy was trying to sort it out. He said, "he wasn't even 10 years older than me. He smoked, he could DRINK, and he was a little overweight but not even as overweight as I am." I was wondering if he was giving any thought to his flipness on our 20th anniversary when he had taken me to a great hotel, out to dinner, then returned to the room for wine and handed me a box with a brand new wedding ring inside and with the clink of the classes he said,"Thank you honey for all the years. I love you. I only want 10 more." It startled me because I at first thought he was putting a time limit on how much longer we were going to be married. When I said, "10 MORE??" he said, "be realistic...I'm overweight, I don't exercise, I smoke, and I have a high stress job! If I last 10 more years it's a miracle."
I wonder if that was running through his mind these last few days. He also has cholesterol problems which he has refused to deal with. I think about the fact that even though I have always emerged with a clean bill of health (and, as the doctor puts it, "enough GOOD cholesterol to share with the whole family") I could still just drop over as well as anyone. I'm going to be 51 in about 6 weeks.
Live each day as if it was your last...enjoy it as if it will last forever.
Believe me...I have been paying a lot more attention to the details and the ppl in my life for a while now. Every since 2 years ago when a male friend of mine from HS suddenly dropped dead from a massive heart attack a few weeks before our 30 year class reunion. He lived life hard, ate everything wrong, smoked, and drank like it was all going to dry up the next day. He cheated on his wife (his ex-wife at the time of his death...surprise) but he was the first one to give the shirt off his back to help a friend. He was respectful to me...except when he felt the need to share a raunchy joke and even then he apologized to me afterwards. He was one of a kind.
It's tough getting older and finding you are losing the ppl you know.
Friday, August 12, 2011
The Little World
I have a faith. A Faith in not only a 'Higher Being' but a belief in God. I believe that He has created everything and is omnipotent. I believe I can pray/talk to Him and He will answer me...on a need to know basis. OR He will work things out...not always the way YOU want it to, but what ends up being the best thing that affects not just YOU but the other ppl that would be impacted by it all.
Blind faith. It is as much a part of me as my eye color. I don't go around shoving my beliefs down other ppl's throats. If someone asks, I share MY beliefs and WHY I believe that way. I am a CHRISTIAN because I believe Jesus was the son of God...not some long-haired, sandal wearing pre-cursor to '70's hippie nuts (they don't grow on trees).
So, from there....my mind works like someone that is continuously trying to figure out the mysteries of the rubiks cube. I pray about things and just pray for the situation to be 'fixed' and for understanding. But it is hard for anything to get through to me since my mind is already trying to figure out the next move and find the answers on its own.
I have complained to my mother on numerous occassions that God always seems to drop the things I dislike the most in my lap. However, I take it and go on with it and in the end it all has turned me into a more tolerant, understanding person.
That all leads to this...I have not, so far, gotten a teaching job with an online school. It would be, in MY estimation, the best fit for me. It would be insulary...not much contact with ppl in person, I wouldn't have to leave my nice little world and there would not be terrible discipline problems to deal with. I have been praying to God telling Him I know He will point me in the right direction for me to take.
This morning I woke up, let the dogs outside, made my coffee and sat down thinking about my kids and their journey with anxiety and the coming school year for both of them. I also was thinking about my husband and his weeks of travel and how it has come to the point where I actually get anxious and depressed when he is gone for more than 2-3 days at a time. THEN it hit me...how my world over the years has shrunk and how it has become just this plot of land with a house on it. I talk to some of the neighbors once in a while but to actually get out and join in things and be around ppl has become such a TASK...and I have dropped out of everything that would bring actual face-to-face contact. Then DING! I get it...I HAVE to be pried out of my nice, snuggly tiny little world before it swallows me whole.
I don't like substitute teaching. Believe it or not, it is not the time in the class that bothers me...it is the anxiety that leads up to it. I get all anxious wondering if I am going to be called the next morning and if I am, where is it they are going to ask me to go/do? I worked for a school system once (the one back home) where the one incharge of calling the substitutes would call me in advance when she knew teachers were going to be out and assign me ahead of time. Then it got to a point where certain teachers just wanted me in their classrooms when they were gone so getting called at the last minute to be in a classroom that I was used to with a group of kids that was used to me was not so anxiety inducing.
I have begun filling out the application for substitute teaching in the school district that I am living in now. My son and I are still sharing a car but 3 out of the 5 school buildings in the area are within a 5-7 minute walking distance. Hopefully, if I get enough work, I will have a vehicle of my own before the snow starts to fall. My son doesn't have college classes until early evening anyway so if I had the car to sub at the high school he would have it back in more than enough time to get to his class. If he is working at his part-time job on one of those days he could drop me off at my teaching assignment before he got to work (which is a 10-12 minute walk for him anyway) then he would be done about the same time I am and he could pick me up AND his sister as she gets off the bus from the Career Tech Center..which will let her off at the middle school, anyway, which is one of those schools that is a 5-7 minute walk from home. The only day that the car would not be available for me is Monday when jr. has classes from noon until after 7.
This could be a good thing for me. Substitute teaching doesn't pay all that great and there aren't any benefits...but luckily I don't need the benefits since I have them through my husband's employer AND I don't need to live off of the substitute pay. I just need to make a car payment, pay off my Penneys charge, and pay my cell phone bill. Anything else would go into the vacation fund. And perhaps the whole thing will help me not be so anxiety riddled over joining back up with some of the things I have pulled myself out of over time.
I know some ppl would tell me the thoughts I had were just my subconscious coming to some conclusions that it could finally shoot to my conscious mind. And if that is what blows your skirt up...you are certainly entitled to your opinion. However, I do not believe that. I believe my mind stopped long enough to listen and God was finally able to give me an answer as to WHY I have not been hired for an online teaching job.
I also believe in the Rapture..and for those that don't and think it is something that was invented by religious leaders that just wanted to scare ppl...that is for YOU to believe and don't dare to refer to me and my beliefs as stupid and ignorant, etc. I look at it this way...if I am making myself ready for the Rapture and it doesn't happen the worst that will happen is that I have become a better person/better Christian. If there IS a Rapture and YOU are not ready for it, I get to go to Heaven and you get to struggle with the aftermath. And that's how I see it...in my little world.
Blind faith. It is as much a part of me as my eye color. I don't go around shoving my beliefs down other ppl's throats. If someone asks, I share MY beliefs and WHY I believe that way. I am a CHRISTIAN because I believe Jesus was the son of God...not some long-haired, sandal wearing pre-cursor to '70's hippie nuts (they don't grow on trees).
So, from there....my mind works like someone that is continuously trying to figure out the mysteries of the rubiks cube. I pray about things and just pray for the situation to be 'fixed' and for understanding. But it is hard for anything to get through to me since my mind is already trying to figure out the next move and find the answers on its own.
I have complained to my mother on numerous occassions that God always seems to drop the things I dislike the most in my lap. However, I take it and go on with it and in the end it all has turned me into a more tolerant, understanding person.
That all leads to this...I have not, so far, gotten a teaching job with an online school. It would be, in MY estimation, the best fit for me. It would be insulary...not much contact with ppl in person, I wouldn't have to leave my nice little world and there would not be terrible discipline problems to deal with. I have been praying to God telling Him I know He will point me in the right direction for me to take.
This morning I woke up, let the dogs outside, made my coffee and sat down thinking about my kids and their journey with anxiety and the coming school year for both of them. I also was thinking about my husband and his weeks of travel and how it has come to the point where I actually get anxious and depressed when he is gone for more than 2-3 days at a time. THEN it hit me...how my world over the years has shrunk and how it has become just this plot of land with a house on it. I talk to some of the neighbors once in a while but to actually get out and join in things and be around ppl has become such a TASK...and I have dropped out of everything that would bring actual face-to-face contact. Then DING! I get it...I HAVE to be pried out of my nice, snuggly tiny little world before it swallows me whole.
I don't like substitute teaching. Believe it or not, it is not the time in the class that bothers me...it is the anxiety that leads up to it. I get all anxious wondering if I am going to be called the next morning and if I am, where is it they are going to ask me to go/do? I worked for a school system once (the one back home) where the one incharge of calling the substitutes would call me in advance when she knew teachers were going to be out and assign me ahead of time. Then it got to a point where certain teachers just wanted me in their classrooms when they were gone so getting called at the last minute to be in a classroom that I was used to with a group of kids that was used to me was not so anxiety inducing.
I have begun filling out the application for substitute teaching in the school district that I am living in now. My son and I are still sharing a car but 3 out of the 5 school buildings in the area are within a 5-7 minute walking distance. Hopefully, if I get enough work, I will have a vehicle of my own before the snow starts to fall. My son doesn't have college classes until early evening anyway so if I had the car to sub at the high school he would have it back in more than enough time to get to his class. If he is working at his part-time job on one of those days he could drop me off at my teaching assignment before he got to work (which is a 10-12 minute walk for him anyway) then he would be done about the same time I am and he could pick me up AND his sister as she gets off the bus from the Career Tech Center..which will let her off at the middle school, anyway, which is one of those schools that is a 5-7 minute walk from home. The only day that the car would not be available for me is Monday when jr. has classes from noon until after 7.
This could be a good thing for me. Substitute teaching doesn't pay all that great and there aren't any benefits...but luckily I don't need the benefits since I have them through my husband's employer AND I don't need to live off of the substitute pay. I just need to make a car payment, pay off my Penneys charge, and pay my cell phone bill. Anything else would go into the vacation fund. And perhaps the whole thing will help me not be so anxiety riddled over joining back up with some of the things I have pulled myself out of over time.
I know some ppl would tell me the thoughts I had were just my subconscious coming to some conclusions that it could finally shoot to my conscious mind. And if that is what blows your skirt up...you are certainly entitled to your opinion. However, I do not believe that. I believe my mind stopped long enough to listen and God was finally able to give me an answer as to WHY I have not been hired for an online teaching job.
I also believe in the Rapture..and for those that don't and think it is something that was invented by religious leaders that just wanted to scare ppl...that is for YOU to believe and don't dare to refer to me and my beliefs as stupid and ignorant, etc. I look at it this way...if I am making myself ready for the Rapture and it doesn't happen the worst that will happen is that I have become a better person/better Christian. If there IS a Rapture and YOU are not ready for it, I get to go to Heaven and you get to struggle with the aftermath. And that's how I see it...in my little world.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Cob Web Cleaner
My memory is not the greatest...long term, short term...either one. I can admit that. I don't like it but I can admit that.
My mom has a bad habit of saying, "do you remember Mr. Crabtree?"
Me, searching through the cobwebs in my empty attic of a brain, "ummmmm...I don't recall him."
Mom, "Emil Crabtree?" (I'm shaking my head slowly) "Oh sure you do! He and his wife Agnes...went to Greystone Baptist Church.." (I'm raising my eyebrows, eyes wide, pursing my lips, sighing...still shaking my head) "they would dress in matching outfits, always sit on the left side of the church..."
I left out another sigh that sounds like it is chasing out my words, "nope...sorry...I just don't remember!"
She gives me that look like I'm just not trying or I'm lying...either way, she is frustrated with me and grunts at me then starts with, "Well ANYWAY..."
My kids will do the, "I TOLD you!" to which I will follow it up with, "I'm not saying you didn't...I'm saying I don't remember!"
I spend a goodly number of minutes of my day retracing my steps trying to find the coffee cup that I set down somewhere that I was most certain was at least half full of some really good coffee...only to find it half an hour later with very cold coffee in it...and it is only two sips, not a half cup.
You know what I blame it on? I blame it on using both halves of my brain. One should either be left brain functioning or right brain functioning. For instance:
While typing this I am watching a serious cop show while having a discussion with my daughter and her friend Amber about how to keep a flying squirrel from slamming into the wall when you throw them (everyone knows that you have to buy the attachable front airbag and back-up parachute separate!). The cop show is making me angry while the girls are shaking their heads, laughing and telling me how disturbed I am.
DISTURBIA...the sign that hangs over the entrance to the cobweb infested empty attic of my brain.
This is what a double-use sided brain gets you (besides a large prescription for buspirin):
As I drove into the Wally World parking lot I slowed for a large woman using a cart as her personal walker while she swayed back and forth as if to a soundtrack of Michael Buble singing, ironically enough, 'Sway' in her head while huffing and puffing as if every step was squeezing the last bit of wind from her lungs, with whom I assumed to be her zombified teenage daughter scuffling slowly behind in her well-worn flip flops while using what is left of her human operating system to click out a text message to her equally zombified teenage friends. Not wanting to try and maneuver my car around these two subscribers to the Law of Snail Speed...I went to the next aisle and promptly pulled my car into the first available slot. I HAD contemplated giving the two travelers-at-the-speed-of-smell a little nudge with the front bumper of my car as my way of helping out the forward moving challenged but I kinda like not having damage to the front of my car. After a short conversation with the male offspring of mine who was settling into his seat as if it was his own personal twin bed, I prepared to exit the car. HOWEVER, who was in my way but the aforementioned Forward Moving Challenged mother and daughter...squeezing between my car and the one beside me becuz, as it ironically turns out, it is THEIR mode of transportation and Large Woman wants to put the contents of the cart into the trunk. Meanwhile, the zombie girl slows to a millimeter a minute shuffle by my door, obviously unaware of my eyes watching her and my door slightly ajar. I thought of turning my head away while quickly throwing the door open, causing the zombie girl's phone to be dropped to the ground and break open, slide under her mother's vehicle while she falls forward into the back of said large pillowy mother, which breaks HER fall while the cart goes rolling too fast for mom to hang onto and mom falls forward to the ground, where, upon contract, her large bosoms act as big rubber kickballs and she bounces back up, and backwards, onto her daughter and into my door, causing it to close on my leg...and that right there is the reason while I chose to wait for zombie girl to slowly inch far enough past my door so that I could exit without bumping into her.
And all becuz I got out on the wrong side of the bed...or was it the right side? It all depends on if you are lying on your back or your stomach when you wake up.
Okay...
My mom has a bad habit of saying, "do you remember Mr. Crabtree?"
Me, searching through the cobwebs in my empty attic of a brain, "ummmmm...I don't recall him."
Mom, "Emil Crabtree?" (I'm shaking my head slowly) "Oh sure you do! He and his wife Agnes...went to Greystone Baptist Church.." (I'm raising my eyebrows, eyes wide, pursing my lips, sighing...still shaking my head) "they would dress in matching outfits, always sit on the left side of the church..."
I left out another sigh that sounds like it is chasing out my words, "nope...sorry...I just don't remember!"
She gives me that look like I'm just not trying or I'm lying...either way, she is frustrated with me and grunts at me then starts with, "Well ANYWAY..."
My kids will do the, "I TOLD you!" to which I will follow it up with, "I'm not saying you didn't...I'm saying I don't remember!"
I spend a goodly number of minutes of my day retracing my steps trying to find the coffee cup that I set down somewhere that I was most certain was at least half full of some really good coffee...only to find it half an hour later with very cold coffee in it...and it is only two sips, not a half cup.
You know what I blame it on? I blame it on using both halves of my brain. One should either be left brain functioning or right brain functioning. For instance:
While typing this I am watching a serious cop show while having a discussion with my daughter and her friend Amber about how to keep a flying squirrel from slamming into the wall when you throw them (everyone knows that you have to buy the attachable front airbag and back-up parachute separate!). The cop show is making me angry while the girls are shaking their heads, laughing and telling me how disturbed I am.
DISTURBIA...the sign that hangs over the entrance to the cobweb infested empty attic of my brain.
This is what a double-use sided brain gets you (besides a large prescription for buspirin):
As I drove into the Wally World parking lot I slowed for a large woman using a cart as her personal walker while she swayed back and forth as if to a soundtrack of Michael Buble singing, ironically enough, 'Sway' in her head while huffing and puffing as if every step was squeezing the last bit of wind from her lungs, with whom I assumed to be her zombified teenage daughter scuffling slowly behind in her well-worn flip flops while using what is left of her human operating system to click out a text message to her equally zombified teenage friends. Not wanting to try and maneuver my car around these two subscribers to the Law of Snail Speed...I went to the next aisle and promptly pulled my car into the first available slot. I HAD contemplated giving the two travelers-at-the-speed-of-smell a little nudge with the front bumper of my car as my way of helping out the forward moving challenged but I kinda like not having damage to the front of my car. After a short conversation with the male offspring of mine who was settling into his seat as if it was his own personal twin bed, I prepared to exit the car. HOWEVER, who was in my way but the aforementioned Forward Moving Challenged mother and daughter...squeezing between my car and the one beside me becuz, as it ironically turns out, it is THEIR mode of transportation and Large Woman wants to put the contents of the cart into the trunk. Meanwhile, the zombie girl slows to a millimeter a minute shuffle by my door, obviously unaware of my eyes watching her and my door slightly ajar. I thought of turning my head away while quickly throwing the door open, causing the zombie girl's phone to be dropped to the ground and break open, slide under her mother's vehicle while she falls forward into the back of said large pillowy mother, which breaks HER fall while the cart goes rolling too fast for mom to hang onto and mom falls forward to the ground, where, upon contract, her large bosoms act as big rubber kickballs and she bounces back up, and backwards, onto her daughter and into my door, causing it to close on my leg...and that right there is the reason while I chose to wait for zombie girl to slowly inch far enough past my door so that I could exit without bumping into her.
And all becuz I got out on the wrong side of the bed...or was it the right side? It all depends on if you are lying on your back or your stomach when you wake up.
Okay...
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