It’s Monday. In most cases, that would be enough. Not today. Actually my head started to spin around last night thanks to my wonderful, caring EX-husband. But, that’s another story all-together now isn’t it?

No, today (after last night), I decided to:

• Get up early – check
• Drink some coffee – check
• Have a nice long shower – check
• Do my do – check (thank God for Aussie Freeze) – check
• Actually put on some war paint – check

…and be somebody and have a great day…

Yah, right.

I managed to amp up on caffeine, have a shower and look like somebody today. Most days, I go to the office looking scary because who the ever comes in our office? Not a damn soul but the UPS guy and he’s used to seeing me look like something my cat just yacked up.

All is going well, I main-lining my Juan Valdez coffee, I get dressed and look pretty damn good for a Monday, drop my purse and coffee cup on the end table so I can run up to the kitchen and grab my lunch. I get back downstairs, I stick my lunch in my purse, grab my coffee and out the door I go. So far, so good, eh?

Well, not so much because as I hear that click that signifies the door is indeed shut and LOCKED, I realize my damn keys are in the house… Figures, in the past this wouldn’t of been an issue at all since I new all the locksmiths in Osborne Park where I used to live…

“Damn!” I said out loud to myself and the trees. “No biggie. I’ll just call OG and she can pop over and get me.”

It was already 8:30 and since 8:30 is merely a suggested time to get to work, I knew I wouldn’t be able to reach OG for at least another few minutes.

“Good grief. Here they fucking come.” I muttered to myself standing in the middle of the driveway.

THEY are my nosy neighbor and her moppy looking muts. I can’t stand her or them. She’s the one neighbor that everybody has. She knows everything about everybody in the neighborhood well, exepting us, as we avoid her like the plague.

I saw them coming at me, barking like there’s no tomorrow. I looked at the one taking a shit in the neighbor across the street’s yard and looked up to see NOSY in her front yard, yelling “No jump! No jump!” Whatever.
Those dogs don’t understand plain English because they still run and jump all over anybody that has the balls to walk anywhere on our road when she has them out.

I looked her dead in the eye and gave her my “you’re a skank” glare her before I made a snap decision to take off and walk to work.

Off I went, thinking I’d make it a little ways, be away from psycho neighbor and her mutts, I’d get hold of OG in a few minutes and she’d come get me. I try her again.

“Hey. Come get me. I’m a dork, I locked all the keys in the house…”

“Dude,” she said in a solemn tone, “You just take this like a man. But you’re F-U-C-K-E-D.”

I’m automatically assuming some more fresh cooked drama is coming my way.

“I rode my bike to work today.” She concludes. Excellent, no drama, but it appears I’m walking the 6 miles to work today in these friggin shoes…

They are Gloria Vanderbilt and they were expensive. These are the most comfy slides I own. However, I don’t think Gloria had me walking to work in them., cuz after the first mile and a half, my dang dogs were barkin.

I made many personal observations on my trek this morning.

1. I shouldn’t wear silky, thin pants in fall. It’s fucking cold and I might get locked out of the house.
2. I really, really don’t like my neighbor. Her dogs shit in everybody’s yard but their own (trained to do so by their proud owner I assume).
3. Random people who walk along the river in Oak Ridge are super friendly. I suppose I exchanged 10 smiles and at least that many “hello” and “Good mornings”.
4. Our ex’s are never going to go away. They are part of our pasts and we just have to learn to deal with it.
5. I can indeed do two things at once. I can walk and text at the same time.
6. People really do throw some nasty stuff on the side of the road. For example:
   • some dude chucked his Joe Boxer tighties out the window… Ewwwww…
7. There is too much roadkill for a Monday morning…  The count goes a little somethin like this:
   • One disemboweled and half masticated deer (bllluch)
   • Two squished baby skunks
   • A racoon that had just been plowed down
   • A poor bunny rabbit that being eaten by crows
8. Maybe I should go back to the gym.  All things considered, I feel all happy and refreshed after kicking every pebble for six miles.

Ahh, ya gotta love a Monday!

Peace!

Dr. Tony Lightens the Mood

I’m sure everybody knows that Tony’s mama got really, really, REALLY sick on the day we got married.  It is amazing, incredible even to see Ms. Pat now and how incredibly far she’s come along since that day. Had I known the day we got married, before I walked down the aisle, that she wasn’t there I’d have postponed the whole damn thing again (yah, yah Spanky, you’d have won the bet again).  But I didn’t know until I actually walked up to Tony and they played the first song in the ceremony that she was even sick.

By 4:30 that afternoon, Tony’s brother called and said that Tony needed to come to make Ms. Pat go to the hospital because she was “out of it” and really, really ill.  We made it to Methodist Medical Center, where they quickly found out she had suffered a life threatening aneurysm and needed to be transferred to Univeristy of Tennessee hospital immediately.  They did surgery and it honestly appeared that things weren’t going so well and the outlook was grim.

That was six weeks ago.  Today she is in EXCELLENT shape!  The first thing she got back was her since of humor.  When asked “Mom, how do you feel?”

She’d shoot back, “With my fingers.”

She is breathing and eating without any assistance from machines, which 6 weeks ago she could not have lived without..  Her right side is getting stronger and stronger by the day.  She has improved so much that she has been moved from UT to Patricia Neal Rehab Center where she’s walking with parallel bars and peddlin’ her ass off on the bikes.  GO MS. PAT!

So, we were there to visit her last night.  Tony keeps her laughin all the time, which is what she needs for sure.  Nobody needs to be sad and worried anymore!! She’s made it through the bad stuff already.

We walked into her room and Leacha is sitting on the end of the bed with her.  I took the real chair and Tony got to sit on the portable shitter.

“Damn, mom.” He says.  “If you’re not careful on this thing, you’ll shit on your shoes.”

It’s always so good to see her smile and laugh.

As it turns out, Ms. Pat had found out what all had happened to her in the last six weeks yesterday.  When we got there, Tony’s sis (Leacha) asked his mom to tell him what had happened. 

She looked at Leacha really sad, then over to him still really sad, like she was afraid she’d scare him if she told him.

“He already knows what happened, Mom.  He just wants to hear you tell him so he knows you know what happened.”  Leacha told her.

Ms. Pat looks over at Tony, still worried, “Well, they told me I had a brain aneurysm and that I was real sick.”

“Yah.  You were pretty serious, Mom.” Tony pets her arm.  “You know how that happened don’t you?”  He asked her all serious like.

“No.”  She tells him as we all sit and wait for his professional diagnosis.

“Well, it happens when people hold in their farts.” He explains.  “If ya don’t let it out, then it travels up and causes real problems.”

“That’s your son.”  Leacha tells her.

Ms. Pat laughed to hard to say anything back.

Thank God for Dr. Tony and his warped since of reality.

I was sitting in my office today when a friend of mine sent me a text message on my phone that had little hearts and said “I love you”.  At the bottom it instructed me to send it on to all of my friends.  So, I did.  I sent that bad boy to everybody, including my teenaged boy, who hates that kind of crap.

About 20 minutes later, my phone rang.

“Hola!”  I answered. I have caller ID so I knew it was my boy, Matt.

“Hey!  Guess what!!!!” He said, all giddy and excited like.

“Uh… what?”  I played along.

“My phone’s workin!!!” He exclaimed.

You see my boy has a really bad habit of tossing, flipping, pitching his phone..(along with other various forms of abuse).  About two weeks ago, the phone, in an act of ultimate retribution, just up and quit working.   He could still send and receive text messages, but not talky talky.

“No shit?!?!”  I get giddy with him.  “You mean the phone you called me from works?!?!?”

“Ha. Ha. Ha.”  he retorts. “But I wanted to let you know.”

“Well, very cool, baby. I’m glad its workin.”  I tell him.

And I am genuinely glad it’s working because he’s been on an “I want a new phone” kick for about 2 months now.  So right at this second, he’s thrilled to have one he can speak into and hear from.

Then it hits me that he’s calling from school, because I can hear all the chatter of teenaged boys in the background.  So I ask him,  “Why the hell are you in school?”

“Cuz we’re rednecks and apparently we don’t vote up here.”  He says as serious as can be.

“Did you get my text message?”  I ask him all lovey dovey.

“Yah. Yah.” He says trying to put me off like teenage boys do when they are confronted with the “L” word.

“Well?  Do you love me, dammit?”  I push out of sheer enjoyment knowing he was squirming in front of his buddies.

“Come on, Matthew.  You can say it.”  I prod.

“Oh, God.” He said.  “I gotta go.”

“Fine.  Love you.”  I tell him.  He knows I really do love him.

“Ya. Ya.  Bye.”  He said and hung up.  I’m pretty sure his eyes were rolling in back of his head too. 

I really do love the brat and I’m really super proud of him.  That’s ok. He has to come home sometime.

You know, for the past decade, I kept thinking to myself “Damn. Christmas seems to come earlier and earlier every year. I thought it was only in my head because I am simply annoyed by how commercial Christmas has become.

I took note, back in August no less, that as soon as Wal-Mart took out the swimming pools and other summer items… in came the Christmas stuff. IN AUGUST! Before even halloween had time to come and go.

Pisses me off, the money-grubbing devil stores peddle as much as they can for as long as they can. And what really slays me is the fact that, everytime I’d pass through lawn & garden, even back in late summer, there were people buying that shit up. It wasn’t on sale, it was just out on display and for sale at regular prices.

Now I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t want my house decorated with little elves and the like that early in the year. I’m the type that as soon as Christmas is over, I’m ready to jerk the ornaments down and sling the tree in the yard.

What I think should happen is, since the the stores have all the Christmas crap out that early, the Salvation Army should round up sexy bell ringers and have them out there in the heat of summer in a Santa-like underwear  made of red velvet with white trim and an excellent and yummy tan.  Then maybe I could swallow Christmas that early in the damn year.

Bah!  Friggin Humbug!

I’m working on finding my sarcasm again after losing it somewhere between the altar and Germany.  In hindsight, I don’t actually think I ever lost it.  I think somehow it got kicked in the corner, or under my dresser with the dust-bunnies when I started having girl problems.  Nothing like some girl issues to jack one’s system completely up.  None-the-less, I started to feel my sassy self coming back to life.