Friday, April 28, 2006

Me, tagged? ha

I have no weirdness... quirks, eccentricities, perhaps...but no weirdness.

1) I'm learning to play the oboe.. (baby steps, baby steps)
2) I have an antique hutch full of snack sets or toast and tea sets...none of which I have used; can't figure out why I frantically collected them from e-bay.
3) I have to have books on shelves in every room; I can't bear to part with my books, hence we are hemorrhaging books from years and years and years; can't find anymore places to put them.
4) I'm crazy about Avon's "Dream Life" powder; a most distinctive and wonderful scent.
5) I "have to" drink coffee during working hours from a Sandra Boynton hippo mug, either "Dance is Everything" or the other mug she designed with hippos in tutus...however, I will not drink from either when I'm not working...
6) I'm an "Exalted Queen Mother" in a local chapter of Red Hat ladies.

I tag:

First Lady Laura Bush
Robin Williams
Tyra Banks
Annie Potts
Sneezy the Dwarf
Big Foot.

:)

Posted JDaaris @ 4:26 PM :: 5 chocolate drops

Gimme some chocolate!

Faded negatives and old papers..

are sitting on the porch right now, having resided in a forgotten corner of the family room. Funny how pieces of my father's, mother's, grandparents' lives are reduced to old letters and documents in a cardboard "drawer" on the porch..beckoning me to probe into the past, repelling me as well with interspersed photographs of people I never knew. The public face of my mother became less and less familiar to me as she aged and slipped into a perpetual state of partial inebriation. Her photographs almost strike me as being those of a stranger; I even found an early photo of me, probably in my early 20s, and wondered if I actually was ever that person, or just cleverly disguised as the gal smiling with her parents. The pictures don't seem real to me. I don't seem real to me either, sometimes.

The porch discoveries have ignited an urge in me to trace my family roots. I'll never have the opportunity to know the people who begat the woman my mother became...I'll never know what was done to her which made her the venomous person she became... but I know in my bones something or someone influenced her to spiral down... I just think this is something I must do; I don't know why, but perhaps I will know someday.

Thanks for "listening" ~ I'm just trying to gather my thoughts into a cogency which I don't think I managed to do... :)

Posted JDaaris @ 10:21 AM :: 3 chocolate drops

Gimme some chocolate!



Saturday, April 22, 2006

More job change blatherings

Hi all. Apos, this is the job that has been vacant since September, when the gal who had it (and who made my life miserable with her incredible stupidity and stubbornness) stepped down. I have had twinges of applying for it off and on, but nothing as strong as I have been feeling lately. I don't have any particular desire to be on the "management team" per se, because of the politics involved, but I have this restlessness about me...some days I wake up and literally despise the idea of getting up to work... do yall go through that? My husband has worked at Disney since 1983; he enjoys his job, it satisfies him and sometimes challenges him, he does not know what it is like to get up with the idea of despising to go to work... I don't know that I'll take the job if it is offered, as I've said; I don't know that it will be offered, but since I have more qualifications than the gal who had it previously, I suspect it will be. It can't come down to money... or can it? The idea of wearing dress code every day (black slacks, black shoes, and a gosh-awful all-cotton oxford shirt in blue which makes me look like I work in the service area of the local garage... "ya want an oil change with that tire rotation?" ...) disgusts me, but then again.... maybe this is an opportunity...

Anyway, I will go with the feeling of peace to accept, or if there is a feeling of foreboding, I will decline.

Sorry to keep going at this subject... the danged interview isn't until Tuesday, May 9th... I could get hit by a bus before that... :)

Update: Yes, I can always return to my current staff position, thanks for asking Leo 'n Lisa. We both have 90 days to decide if we like each other, but I can always step down... makes it easier to take the plunge, if even for a coupla months.

Posted JDaaris @ 7:46 AM :: 5 chocolate drops

Gimme some chocolate!

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Stymied

I've been "busy" but not, ya know. I think I've been prohibitively introspective, unsettled, mentally restless and physically lethargic. I haven't felt like blogging, honestly. I applied for a spot on the management team in our department. I've been thinking about it, so I put in a transfer; I have to go through a long drawn out interview process, update my resume (I've been at this hospital 18 years, for crying out loud!), blah, blah, blah. I know I'd like the job, the biggest factor is relocating my physical self (inside the hospital rather than at home), as well as shifting my hours (starting and ending later), and LESS MONEY. I don't know if the fact that the job interests me is enough to simply overwhelm through the negatives or not...I've decided if it is offered, and I have a feeling of peace about making the change, then I probably will take it. Otherwise, nothing lost but some time and a new pair of shoes.... :)

Posted JDaaris @ 9:53 AM :: 3 chocolate drops

Gimme some chocolate!

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Three movies I recommend

Please, please see if you can rent these and watch 'em. Very different scenarios, very good movies in their own right:

"Decoration Day"(James Garner, Morgan Fairchild), Hallmark
"What the Deaf Man Heard" (Tom something or other), Hallmark
"Crazy From the Heart" (Two people you'll recognize, I've forgotten their names), not Hallmark.

I'll be very curious if you like them as much as I; smaltzy, but in a good way...

Posted JDaaris @ 3:37 PM :: 5 chocolate drops

Gimme some chocolate!

Damaged goods

It seems like I slept for 10 hours between a nap yesterday afternoon and going to bed at 9:30 last night; I feel pretty rested, thankfully. I was lying awake, debating about whether or not I should get up (you know that hesitancy you feel on a day off), and started ruminating about teenage angst.

I didn't have the same type of angst most teens feel; I pretty much left home at 15, working as a car hop at Whataburger and going to high school, living with an older single mother coworker from Whataburger and trying survive to adulthood, basically.

I hear, watch TV. and read about the intensity of high school, the pressure to fit in, be in the right social clubs, go to the right parties, have the right accessories (cell phone, laptop), and I just want to SCREAM to these intense, vulnerable kids that IT DOESN'T MATTER. I don't know a living soul today from high school. I could probably pass a fellow graduate on the street and not recognize him/her. I do know that some friendships last much longer ~ a lifetime ~ but those are the exception, not the norm. My daughter was always so easily influenced by what others said, thought, did...I think she probably stuck to some of her core values for the most part, but I never was successful in trying to convince her that what other people think doesn't matter.

I couldn't forge friendships.. I couldn't have kids over, and I didn't encourage anybody to call me on the phone. I never knew what I would find when I entered the house in the afternoon, even from elementary school; mom might be nice drunk, mom might be mean drunk, or mom might be passed out completely. I remember vividly one Saturday afternoon, I was 15 and still at home. I spent the entire day with a guy I admired a lot, who surprisingly apparently liked me as well; we had gone to a movie, visited the park downtown, walked, and talked about everything. It was a real connection, and a memorable day. He walked me to the door of our home. I didn't invite him in, came up with some excuse by rote, but watched him from the livingroom window as he walked down the street. The house was eerily quiet, except for some dripping water. I headed toward the kitchen to investigate. I found mom passed out in a chair at the kitchen table, her face in a plate of food; she stunk. I didn't have to get too close to see that she had defecated and urinated on herself, the urine dripping from the ends of her soaked and soiled nylon nightie.

Almost 40 years later, I can see her; thankfully, I can no longer smell her.

I wonder if I failed as a mother because of my own inability to be empathetic to my daughter's seemingly unimportant high school skirmishes and relationship crises? Have I, as damaged goods, begat another generation of damaged goods?

Posted JDaaris @ 8:36 AM :: 3 chocolate drops

Gimme some chocolate!



Friday, April 07, 2006

Stuff 'n nonsense

Got these e-mailed to me; somebody tells me they're not true, just urban legend, but I get a shudder outta reading 'em anyway... I particularly like "honorable mention.." :)

Darwin Awards:

* In Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.

* A 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally zoned when he ran," accidentally jogged off a 100-foot-high cliff on his daily run.

* Buxton, NC: A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he had dug into the sand caved in as he sat inside it. Beach-goers said Daniel Jones, 21, dug the hole for fun, or protection from the wind, and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom Thursday afternoon when it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand. People on the beach on the outer banks, used their hands and shovels, trying to claw their way to Jones, a resident of Woodbridge, VA, but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him while about 200 people looked on. Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital.

* Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA, as he fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burglarizing. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth (to keep his hands free) rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor.

* Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in Selbyville, Del, as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.

HONORABLE MENTION:

* Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover township, NJ, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, when a quarter-stick of dynamite blew up in their car. While driving around 2 AM, the bored couple lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the window to see what would happen, but apparently failed to notice the window was closed.

RUNNER UP:

* TACOMA, WA Kerry Bingham had been drinking with several friends when one of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the middle of traffic. The conversation grew more heated and at least 10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30 AM. Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge they discovered that no one had brought a bungee rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking, volunteered and pointed out that a coil of lineman's cable lay nearby. One end of the cable was secured around Bingham's leg and the other end was tied to the bridge. His fall lasted 40 feet before the cable tightened and tore his foot off at the ankle. He miraculously survived his fall into the icy river water and was rescued by two nearby fishermen. "All I can say" said Bingham, "is that God was watching out for me on that night. There's just no other explanation for it." Bingham's foot was never located.

Posted JDaaris @ 12:40 PM :: 4 chocolate drops

Gimme some chocolate!

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Some serious spring fever...

Yep, I'm suffering from serious spring fever (Apos, guess it's about fall for you, ain't it?)... I'm off today, to attend a County Mayor Avian Flu Summit... dunno exactly why I was invited, it's not like I'm anybody or anything; I think they are behind the times in that I had to resign from the county advisory board I had been appointed to; the meetings were multiple and all in the morning, I just couldn't ask my job to work around as many schedule changes as they wanted, and all the meetings were "mandatory." No wonder they currently have five openings on that board alone.... anyhoo, at least it's a change of pace for me, I'll be doing something out of the ordinary, and I'm not sitting in front of a computer listening to some doctor drone on and on in my ear! :) I'm thinking about doing something completely "delicious" and out of the ordinary for myself after the summit. I'll be in a very different part of the county for me, perhaps I'll do a little shopping, nyuck, nyuck... get that checkbook smoking! Happy mid week yall.

Posted JDaaris @ 6:15 AM :: 5 chocolate drops

Gimme some chocolate!

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