Friday boring-ness

My left eyelid is twitching from all the stress recently. But, in the immortal words of Miss Scarlett O’Hara “I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow”.

Probably not the healthiest way to live, but it’ll do for now.

There’s a new Jimmy Buffett cd coming out in October! Sure, he’s getting back to his “country” roots, but his last cd with all the country singers was ok by me. And it seems like country is now code for “it’s not rap”. Or what ever it is you young kids listen to these days. Why, back in my day, MTV played music! Music videos! Imagine that. None of this over-indulged My Sweet 16 crap. Even VH1’s sold out now – Celeb-reality.

When did I get this way? It snuck up on me. Oh sure I still crank the radio up in the car when there’s a good song on, but now, if the car behind me in line at the Dunkin’ Donuts has a loud bass thumping, I get irritated. Why? If my chest hurts I immediately think “heart attack” and not muscle aches and pain? And why do I have muscles that ache? I don’t want to be this way.

At least the weekend is before us – two whole days of not working. Swimming lessons, birthday parties, maybe a movie, some shoe shopping (I promised C a girls’ weekend, and I think shoe shopping is a pre-requisite). Perhaps Chinese food for dinner Sunday night (cook? Me? While I am capable of cooking, it just seems silly to cook for two, when I can call the Chinese place and they’ll cook for me!).

And Sunday is October! October already! Time to get pumpkins, and plan Halloween costumes, and get cider and apples and all kinds of fall-y things. Hopefully there will be an Indian summer too.

Hopefully next week will bring more coherent and interesting posts. Hopefully.

Five Weird/Unusual Things Meme

So, Elle*bee tagged me with a meme, to name 5 weird/unusual things about yourself. Below is my list. Hopefully I'm not so weird I scare away the few people who do read!

1. When I eat pizza, I scrape all the toppings off, eat them and then eat the crust. Doesn’t matter if it’s just a cheese pizza or has lots of different things on it, that’s how I have to eat it. Even when I lived in NYC (or visited D when he lived there before I moved) and we would go get a slice after a hard night out drinking, I would eat the topping first. One of D’s friend’s thought it was so unusual he promised to make me a character in one of his plays (except I don’t think that’s happened yet, and it probably won’t, it’s been over 10 years now!).

2. I always like to have a drink (not alcoholic!) by me at all times. I used to go to bed with a cup of Coke on the night stand (in case I woke up thirsty). Now I drink Diet Coke, or more recently, Diet Barq’s (I love that stuff!). Even at work, I’ll have two mugs of green tea (now that it’s getting cooler), and then switch to soda for the afternoon. I probably should switch to all water, but it gives me heartburn (which D would probably say is weird in and of itself).

3. Clutter doesn’t bother me (my desk at work probably horrifies people, but it’s the only place left that I can be “me”!) but germs do. Make that the thought of germs. When I clean, I CLEAN. Clorox, Lysol, any kind of germ killing cleaner that I can find is used. Plus then I will put the clutter away. But it takes a lot for me to get to that point (let’s just say that D keeps the place neater than I did)…And I think we read or heard that the clutter is another form of OCD. So D and C have the “line everything up” sort of OCD, and I’m the “never throw anything away” OCD (if it can even be called OCD, on the scale of things OCD it’s probably pretty mild).

4. I can “name that tune” if I hear a few notes of a song. Not a very useful skill, but some people have been impressed. And, it is apparently the only musical talent I have.

5. I will go out of my way to not have to make a left turn when I’m driving. Not sure if it’s connected to an accident I had while in college (totally not my fault, btw!) or what, but I hate making left turns. Kind of tied into that is I’ll mentally review the route I’m driving to anticipate any sort of traffic – I hate just sitting in traffic.

Since I suppose I should tag someone, I tag the following:

Clare's Dad
Mrs. Big Dubya
Les

WOW

Why has no one told me about Grey's Anatomy before?? And the yummy Patrick Dempsey who is the star?? Hello? He was only in one of the great cheesy 80's movies (Can't Buy Me Love) !!

Secrets of the Shopping Mall (at EWR)

Does anybody remember reading the book "Secrets of the Shopping Mall" when they were in Junior High? I've been traveling since Sunday (Texarkana, TX/AR) and spent most of yesterday stuck in Newark, and it felt a bit like that.

And that wasn't even the part of the trip I was concerned about. I only had 40 minutes to make a connection to Newark in Houston - and their shuttle system consists of busses (that look like NYC busses) that actually drive on the tarmac to the various terminals (the little puddle jumpers come into one terminal, and bigger planes leave out of another). But that wasn't the problem. I made that connection with time to spare.

Landing at Newark, it was cloudy and a bit bumpy, but nothing unusual. I had a little over an hour and a half between flights (and really, Newark to Hartford is driveable, except for the driving through NYC part, which I will get to later). I grab something to eat, check out the gift shops for something to bring to C (I promised) and sit near the gate to ensure I don't miss my flight. I'm exhausted, achy from sitting so long in planes, and just want. to. be. home.

First they push the departure time back from 2:55 to 3:55 - something about having a plane and a first officer, but no flight attendant or pilot. Coming in from Albany, haven't left yet, ok, understandable. As we get closer to 3:55, it changes to 5. Alllllright, in for a penny, in for a pound. My bosses are emailing/calling to tell me to rent a car (because I emailed wanting sympathy, not solutions. I wasn't about to rent a car because by the time my luggage was located, I rented the car and got on the road I would be in rush hour NYC traffic. Probably quicker to take the plane).

And then, it happens. The flight is cancelled. Use the phones near gate 102 to re-book. The next flight to Hartford? 8:40. PM. ARGH!! I start crying. Crying is theraputic. I'm so tired, I just want to be home, and it keeps getting further and further away. Another reason not to drive, too. So I now have approximately 4 hours before the next flight. There's a lot of shopping in the airport, so I take advantage.

It was interesting watching the mix of travelers change - from business people/ vacationers to the people taking the international flights as the evening wore on. If I had my passport, I would have been tempted to hop on one of those international flights: Rome, Dublin, Sao Paolo (Brasil), Berlin, etc. At least the people were going somewhere!

Let's just say 8:40 turned into closer to a 10 pm departure. I didn't get home until after midnight. I am "working from home" today. Hopefully there'll be a nap somewhere today (oh yeah right, who am I kidding. Too much that could be done with a day home in the middle of the week. The curse of being a woman!)....

Kindergarten

So we survived the first week of kindergarten. C even brought home homework last night! Nothing major, just some coloring, but still. Homework? In kindergarten?

She was very upset on Saturday because there was no school and she had to hang out with me and D. Maybe this is a preview of the teen years? I hope not. And, she wanted to wear her uniform. On Saturday. I think aliens have abducted my child.

And the funniest? The school had a mass (Catholic school) on Friday for the beginning of school. So she comes home and tells us "Jesus is invisible, but he lives in the box in church". Then she wants to know why she can't have any of the "cookie" that gets handed out towards the end of the mass.

Think she'll be upset when she makes her First Communion in a few years and finds out it's not really a cookie?

History Lesson

There are some questions parents dread answering. Usually about where babies come from, or “the talk”, or about drug use. I’m not looking forward to the question about where I was on 9/11.

It started out like any other Tuesday. The sky was blue – not a cloud to be seen. It was one of those crisp, late summer days that make Manhattan sparkle. I remember the sky vividly, for some reason.

I made it to work almost on time, got my coffee and checked my emails. My boss had scheduled a meeting to discuss the budget for the following year so I was gathering my paperwork for that. One of the admins, Bob B., was excitedly talking about a plane having hit the World Trade Center. I thought, hmm must be a small plane, maybe the pilot had a heart attack or something, I’ll see if anyone wants to walk over at lunch and look.

We were in my boss’s office when there was a loud boom and then papers and smoke started fluttering by his window, into the East River. And the sirens. All the sirens – it was non-stop. (We were near one of the fire stations and were used to hearing the sirens, but this was different). At that point, our admin, Yolanda, was fielding all kinds of phone calls from people who were trying to reach us. She came in and just rattled off everyone who had called for us. My boss’s daughter, D, Peggy’s boyfried. My boss said, ok, just go call everyone and tell them you’re ok.

I tried getting on the internet to see if I could find out what was going on. The connection was the slowest I’d ever seen, and I then tried calling my dad (since he was retired) to ask him what was going on. His phone was busy (later I find out he was answering calls from relatives in different states asking about me), so I called D (I got his voice mail when I tried earlier). When I reached D, he was almost in tears. “It’s a terrorist attack, you have to get out of Manhattan”. What did I tell him? Stop believing everything you read on the internet.

At that point everyone was milling about, trying to look out the windows. The fire alarm went off and everyone was to evacuate. For some reason I took the stairs. When I got outside, everyone was standing around waiting to see what we should do next. We couldn’t see the Trade Center because our building was south and east of the towers (one block up from the ferry terminal). Most of my friends/co-workers urged me to leave. “We won’t be going back in to work today”. So I started to walk to the subway.

When I got to the corner, there was a police officer directing traffic. I asked him if he thought the subway was still running. He suggested I walk up to the City Hall subway station, as he wasn’t sure. So I start walking up Water Street, and stop at one of my agent’s offices on William Street. I could see the towers at that point, and thought to myself, it’s going to take some time to put out that fire. I was in the elevator to go up to my agent’s office, and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go up in the elevator (I was planning on using her phones to call to tell people where I was and what I planned to do).

I got back outside and just started walking again. When I got by City Hall, there were barricades up already and the police officers just kept yelling “Keep moving! Don’t stop! Keep moving”….I still had no clue what was going on. There were so many people walking north – everyone from business people in suits to the “runners” from Wall Street with their coats still on. I think I was near Chinatown when everyone paused because we heard an awful sound. We turned around to see the first tower collapse, and everyone on the street just burst into tears.

The rest of the morning was just a blur. The one time I did get through to D (on a payphone) he kept saying, “take a taxi to Grand Central”….I had to tell him that traffic was gridlocked and there were no taxis to be had. And the fire trucks…all the fire departments from Westchester were on their way downtown…I couldn’t believe I was seeing the Larchmont Fire Dept, the Mamaroneck Fire Dept and others just streaming downtown. When I got to 14th Street I could hear the fighter jets up above (finally!).

I kept walking, walking, walking, until I reached Grand Central. I caught the first train that was leaving and asked D to meet me at the station near where he worked, to first cancel my doctors’ appointment for that day, and then re-schedule it for later.

The reason I dread the question? Because I will have to tell C she was with me that day. I was seven months pregnant.

First week

We survived our first week of kindergarten. And this was only half days! Next week will be a better test - full days of school. Except that Friday is a teacher in-service day, so no school!

C has been waking up ok, but when she gets home - look out! Nothing is right, there are tears and frequent breakdowns. And I know it's because she's tired. Even though we began going to bed earlier and waking up earlier before school started, it's still a shock to the system.

Last night she was so tired she fell asleep the minute her head hit the pillow. About an hour later, D and I were downstairs watching tv, and we hear her walking around. We go up to check, and she's trying to open the door from the kitchen to the garage! D asked her where she was going, and she just got upset and started flapping her arms. I picked her up and she put her head right down on my shoulder and closed her eyes. She was sleepwalking! When we asked her tonight what she was doing, she said she was dreaming.

But she laid out her skort tonight and said she would wear it tomorrow. Even when we told her tomorrow was Saturday and there was no school, she said she wanted to wear it! So much for me worrying that my little fashionista was going to have problems wearing the same thing every day....

First day of kindergarten

She woke up with a smile, got ready with little prompting, sat still while we brushed her hair, got right on the school bus, and went right into school without a backward glance.....







And she can't wait for the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth day of kindergarten. But wants to go visit Mickey Mouse. After she gets out of school for the day so there's lots of time.

The night before kindergarten

I can't believe C starts kindergarten tomorrow! It seems like just yesterday I was throwing back the sheet in the delivery room and telling the doctor I was done and going home because she was never coming out.

And due to the circumstances of this summer, she'll be taking the school bus too and from school. She seems so little to be doing that. Actually, I think she's more excited about the bus than kindergarten itself.

Some people have actually had the nerve to tell me it shouldn't be a big deal, C going to kindergarten, since she's been in daycare since she was 4 months old. Excuse me? Of course it's a big deal. This is the big time, the majors, whatever you want to compare it to. Not the same at all. At daycare, the "teachers" would look out for the younger kids, make sure everyone played nicely, etc. In kindergarten, maybe not so much. She'll be with some older kids (the school is pre-k through 2nd grade). She'll have to remember her back pack and lunch box and eventuall coat, every day. The backpack seems so large and heavy for her too. And why does she need two bottles of glue and six ! glue sticks?? Are they going to glue each other to the walls??

I'm sure she'll be fine, wonderful, insert an appropriate adjective here. Lunch is made, her uniform is set out, her backpack is packed, and she's showered and asleep.
My alarm is set, and I'm not going to work tomorrow. My camera has batteries, and I'm even planning to go work out after school starts.

Pictures to follow.

Who would have thought?

You're Totally Sarcastic

You sarcastic? Never! You're as sweet as a baby bunny. Seriously, though, you have a sharp tongue - and you aren't afraid to use it. And if people are too wimpy to deal with your attitutde, then too bad. So sad.

How Sarcastic Are You?

The Horror

I just realized something. With D home ALL THE TIME NOW, I'm not going to get to watch my cheesy 80's movies when I come across them Friday and Saturday nights flipping through the channels!!

No more stopping and watching Dirty Dancing (poor Jerry Orbach, known only to a generation as the person who put Baby in the corner), no more tearing up at the last scene in Sixteen Candles (where they're sitting on the table sharing the birthday cake), no more marveling at the Brat Pack in St. Elmo's Fire, thinking "wow,they're young!", no more watching Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club or Pretty in Pink, remembering how I ached to have her self confidence....

I need my 80's fix!!