Happenings

I accidently defrosted a turkey last week, so today we had Thanksgiving in August. It took all day, but I brined and roasted the turkey, made mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, dressing and gravy (that was a bit on the salty side.) I even made a chocolate Dream Pie for dessert. Color me dead-dog tired.

Last night Zachary told me that he is reconciling with Ali and she's pregnant. In short, I'm going to be a grandma in April. That's something you don't hear every day.

So, I invited them over today and we had Thanksgiving in August together. And we re-took our family photo for the Christmas cards this year.

Blah, blah, blah

Home alone, day 2.

I had a pretty productive day yesterday. Dinner was pretty good. Getting up this morning was not pretty, at all. Savannah tried to stay home and it's only the second day of school.

Dalt has to teach a GED class tonight. He'll be doing it twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Which means he's gone 3 nights a week because of Monday night fire department meetings.

Fascinating, huh?

Not my best thing, change

Everybody's back to school and it's just me and the dogs. I've spent all morning looking up writer's sites and screwing around with PayPal because one of the sites I found makes payments through them.

Things feel weird and different. The kids rode with Dalton to school this morning. It's the first time - ever - in 20 years of having kids in school that I wasn't the one to take them on the first day.

Times they are a-changing.

Sally Sunshine, Part 2

Absolutely nothing new going on here. Anymore. I decided my exercise was stupid, so I'm not doing it anymore.

I took Katie to get her hair done today (thank you again, Monique!), and went to visit my mom and sister Terri while I waited. Terri had her grandbaby, Brooke, there so I got to play with her for a while. Mom said I was the best mom ever, besides her. I'm not sure quite how I feel about that. Aside from the fact that I feel like a pretty crappy mom, actually.

This weekend we're having a get-together at Mom's to celebrate her 71st birthday and to see Zach off to Iraq again. He's not leaving until Sept. 8th, but this is the latest we could get everybody together before he goes. We're going to take our family picture for Christmas 2009.

Dalt is going next weekend to the I-Chiefs convention in Dallas. The kids will be at Rob's, so I'll be home alone. Yippe-skippee. Every day his schedule is busier and every day it reminds me how empty mine is.

Something new

The kids go back to school next week. Dalt went back today. I still don't know what I'm going to do.

I haven't been able to decide what to write, or finish anything, so I decided to try an experiment. I shut off my brain and just let my fingers start typing whatever came to mind. It didn't have to make sense or anything, I was determined to just let my fingers go and do whatever. It was originally intended to hopefully spark a story or just give me some kind of direction, but it didn't turn out that way at all.

I thought a story would come out, or just a string of words that didn't make sense. But what came out did make sense, kind of. I mean, there are punctuation marks and italics and capital letters, even complete paragraphs. On the first one I did, I even thought I was finished so I wrote the date at the bottom, but then more came. The second one, from yesterday, is similar to the first, but it really doesn't make as much sense and there were words I had to look up because I wasn't sure what they meant.

What does that mean? When I'm writing words in a context I don't consciously understand? Is this stuff that's in my subconscious? Is it from something I've read before that's stuck and is coming out this weird way? I don't have a clue.

I'm thinking about starting a new blog and posting these exercises. I don't edit them. They just are what they are. I am going to keep doing them everyday, though. Just to see what comes out next.

I call it "Free Flow."

Scrambled, again

Ok, I realize I can't hide forever.

I've just been a little depressed. Still can't find a job, and you know what? I really don't want to. Of course I need to find a way to bring in some cash, but at the tender age of 43, I am sick to death of bandaid jobs. I only thought I felt old when I was pregnant with Savannah at 34.

So, I thought the solution would be to go back to school. Only the idea of 3-1/2 years of school, just to do something for a paycheck - something I don't really love - doesn't seem like the answer either.

I found out about a semester-long class at Cleveland High School to become a certified Phlebotomist. Bingo! Society approved vampirism? For a paycheck? No long term commitment? Count me in! Like, two weeks ago!!!

So, there went all my eggs - plop, plop, plop - into the Phlebotomist basket. Only when I went to sign up for the course, it had been canceled. And there went all my eggs - smash, crack, fizzle.

Oh well, time for another breakfast burrito!