I usually write mine after I've read all yours, but I just got home and there are so many to read! I'd better write while I still have the energy to type, and before K gets home from class. Actually, I started the beginning of it last night, just things I wanted to remember to write about, so it's kind of random.I just got back from the Chum's, where I had dinner with her and her hubs, whom, btw, she would refer to as Hubby Cuddles when she felt the need to refer to him to her students when she was teaching, so that's what both my kids call him, even though they've known him as Jim since they were toddlers. I digress. It was a lovely evening, if anything, weirdly too lovely. Everything was PERFECT. She apologized for not serving in the dining room, but she used her good china and stuff. Now, I have always known her to be very organized, perhaps too much so, which is probably one of the reasons we worked together so well for so long when we were running the junior class activities.
She ain't organized, folks. She's ... nuts.
I have my theory on this, which I shall now share. She's roughly my age -- we were in high school at the same time -- but her husband is nearly 20 years older. When she married him, he already had three teenagers, who adore her and call her mom (their mother had died some years earlier), so it's not as if she hasn't had some, at least, of the parent experience. She's had the good parts, actually, three grown people who have always been respectful and loving towards her. What she never had in her house is babies. You know babies, those delightful creatures who wreak havoc on your sanity and everything else you own. Toddlers, who destroy your precious possesions with impunity. Snotty tweens and teens who take your stuff and never put it back and then roll their eyes at you when you ask where it is.
In other words, she's never had to live with anyone who challenged her sense of organization, which is, as we all know, a humbling experience. Since all of us have quirks that only intensify with age, as their natural checks and balances wane, she's all about getting everything right, and there's nothing to stop her.
I think it's also her mission in life to teach me to cook. Hmmm. I know how to cook, I just prefer to do so as seldom as possible. This is an eensy bit condescending, but okay. I love her to pieces and that's the way it is. Just a comment on my day there.
Next, I'd like to share with you all yet again my contempt for the U.S. postal service. Recently, I've ordered an item or two that was shipped via USPS, and for which I was given tracking numbers. Really, why do they bother? I check the link and all it ever says is either that there's no record of it in their system, or else that there is a record and that's it, not where it is or anything. Last week, I tried to track a shipment that was never in their system, or located, or even delivered, even after I'd gotten it. What had I ordered? Stamps. From the postal service. They couldn't even keep track of a package that they had shipped me themselves.
I got a call yesterday from a market research place, and I generally love doing that stuff, so I went along with it until their system crashed and they couldn't bring up the next question to ask me, so they thanked me and said goodbye. It was a survey about television; they were going to send me a new show to watch and then call me the next day to see what I thought of it. But among the preliminary questions was this one: How many hours of TV do you watch a week?
My first response was to say "All of them," but of course, I do work during the day, and there is some short period of time every night when I attempt what I laughingly call sleep, and I'm not watching then. I asked her how many hours there were in a week, and she said 168, which is what my calculator says, too. So I guessed that I probably have the TV on about 100 hours a week. Is that right? I think it's probably close. Which leads me to conclude that I must be pretty fucked up, doncha think?
I took a benadryl last night before I went to bed, because now I've got a hive or two on top of everything else, and I just itch all the time. Not crazy itching like I'm about to stop breathing and have to go the hospital or anything, just random mild itching all the time, someplace. So I took a benadryl and then I never fell asleep all night. So what, now I'm allergic to benadryl? Isn't that the stuff that makes you fall asleep? I would fall asleep and wake up two minutes later. I think I passed out around 3:30, so I may have actually slept for two hours or so. I was dragging today, let me tell you.
Here's my last delightful anecdote of the day. There's this commercial that's been on TV lately, I don't even know what for, but they're playing a song called "Possibilities." ("You've got possibilities, maybe even a lot. I see possibilities you don't even know you've got!") Anyway, it washed over me for a day or two until I remembered that I Know That Song. I was feeling that I know it pretty well, too, but I didn't place it until I actually listened to it carefully the other day, and then I knew. It's from a Broadway musical called "It's a Bird ... It's a Plane ... It's Superman!" It was on Broadway for five minutes or so in 1966. Superman was one of my childhood obsessions; my parents took me to see the show for my 13th birthday. Not long after that, I got the cast recording album; I had several albums of Broadway shows, some of which I had lifted from my parents' record collection (see snotty tweens and teens, above) and I listened to them a lot, because I like showtunes, apparently. Anyway, I hopped over to Amazon, where the CD was, incredibly, available, and ordered it and it came today. I listened to it on the way to the Chum's and back, which just fit the length of the whole album.
Oh, ladies and gents, it was bliss! Every single word, every note, was as familiar and friendly as if I had listened to it yesterday. It was like riding in the car with dear old friends. My original record album is probably still in the basement someplace, badly warped now, I'm sure, but I'm certain that I haven't listened to it, or even stumbled across any songs from it, since I was married, which is going back to 1977. (The Hubs, not a fan of the showtunes. He's more of an Eric Clapton sort of music lover.) I don't know how anyone even thought of the song to put in the commercial, the show is so obscure. But the songs are funny and very clever. Nothing profound; we're not talking Les Mis here. But I was grinning like an idiot all the way up and all the way back. Another precious bit of childhood recaptured, eh?
