Call me Mara...* (Edition 3.5)

Okay, I am almost at the point of bitterness here.

Which may seem surprising, since I was so upbeat last post.

Well, I still have this cold, I still don't have a car, I'm still paying $200 a week for a rental until I get one of my own. (And then I'll have a car payment, but at least it won't be WEEKLY.)

I don't have a working VCR or DVD player (and hello, movies and TV reruns on DVD are my drug of choice main comfort source?)

I have given myself 7 minutes to blog b/c I have to haul myself to work. I'm sick of working every Saturday. And I'll be working at least part of every Monday until Christmas to obliterate my "negative comp time." I would rather take a cut in pay!! (and that's saying a lot, see above.)

One of bobbie's blogger friends, Anj, has a blog called best/worst. So you just got my worst. Lemme see if I can come up with some "bests" before my chicken time clock runs out.

Well, I have less than two minutes:

Last night when Max came home, he woke me out of my Ben & Jerry's induced stupor. I had NOT taken my bedtime pills, and he reminded me to do so (which I did) and then I called him back and said, "can I come down for a hug?" I'm sure I looked like the bride of Frankenstein, hair falling out of my ponytail, pillow marks on my face, but he gave me a hug nonetheless.

It's fall here. I think our Indian Summer is over. Last night, coming out of work, was just like the foliage looked on the day I had my interview, five years ago. I remember thinking, I could like working here. And part of that thought was based only on the beautiful foliage.

Well, the chicken just rang, but I'll tell you one more. I'm reading a wonderful book called Alison's Automotive Repair Manual. (The US hardcover cover picture is more fun than the paperback.) (And it's the one I'm reading.) It's about a widow who decides that before she gets her life in order, she has to fix the sports car that is in her brother-in-law's garage. Each chapter starts off with a quote from the Haynes Automotive Repair Manual: Chevrolet Corvette, 1968 through 1982. I'm a little over halfway through. One of the characters I love (besides Alison) is her new beau, Max (well, I'm sort of attached to that name, but still): a guy who blows things up for a living. (He's a munitions guy.) The theme song for this book could be "Don't fall in love with a dreamer**," since that's what her late husband was, and she is faced with her brother-in-law who nails pomegranetes to the house for fertility, and Max's dad, who has the whole town convinced that when they drain the town's lake they're going to find a car that he escaped from as it sank to the bottom. The theme of truth telling and dreaming your dream, no matter how much it costs, run through this book. I'm a little more than half way through (blame it on not having a VCR or DVD player.)

Well, it is now officially (my cell phone doesn't lie--all the rest of the clocks in this garett do) 7:56. So I better get my rear in the shower and on with my day. I think when my first alarm sounded I had a fantasy of getting to work at 8:30 and taking an hour and a half for lunch. Dream on.

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Note: all linkages were done after the first edition went to press. I strongly recommend the Ben and Jerry's link as it has fun stuff--what do you expect from guys whose motto is "If it's not fun, why do it?"

Also, I think on my lunch I may just go to Targét and buy their cheapest VCR. Credit, it's the American way... DONE!!
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*Naomi, in the book of Ruth (who, by the end of the book was a grandma) (Have you met a grandma lately? They are pretty un-bitter people.)
**the lyrics to this song are pretty dire, but when I think of this song, I think of someone who keeps letting you down, not necessarily who leaves you. Maybe I'm thinking of a different song, like "Mama don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys"

"If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane."

(From the pop philosopher, James Buffet.)

When it rains, it pours. Or something's in retrograde, as Badger and Blackbird would say.

I'm feeling a little Job-ish (That's as in the guy in the Bible who lost everything) and I really don't have any power over the rain that has started to pour on our lives. (And I don't want to compromise my privacy on this. So just know that more than a lot of bird crap has landed.)

So I called Marian, told her what happened, and then at one point, after I was all wrung out, I said, and you know what, my dad didn't know today was Talk Like a Pirate Day! He had dinner with my sister, and he didn't know that today was TLAP Day! And Marian bust out laughing at the mental image of my sister saying, "ah, matey, pass me the salt or you'll walk the plank" and my dad still not getting it. Which made me bust out laughing.

Then we discussed driving to the West End (which we will be doing separately tomorrow for Focus Groups on computer replacements. She goes at 9, I go at 11. Another librarian from our library goes at 1pm.) The building we're going to is on Wabash St. on the West End. So I told Marian that when I was doublechecking the MapQuest route, I punched in 22 Wabash St, Pittsburgh. Wouldn't you know there is a Wabash Street in Pittsburgh, North Dakota? It would take me 18 hours to get there--and we bust out laughing again.

Go hug someone. We live in a messed up world with tons of things we can't control. But if we can find something to laugh about, our pain is lessened for a short while.

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If you can't hug someone, go visit Blackbird, whose pictures of Positano are breathtaking and at once very Blackbird. Or visit Paula's photo blog "Finding Beauty" whose titles make me laugh. These beautiful yet tough ladies have a lot to teach this gal about fortitude in the face of disaster.