Potpourri

(image found here)

This is going to be one of those random blog posts, just kind of blah blah blah about what’s going on in my life.  Some more serious than the rest.

It’s Saturday afternoon, and we just got back from breakfast/lunch at Denny’s.  Denny’s has changed a bit…they put a weird booth in where the counter used to be, and they took out the bar and the big screen TV.  I never went to the bar, but I thought it was interesting that our Denny’s had one.  The big screen TV, I’m thrilled to see that go.

After Denny’s, we went to the Farmers’ Market and got some nice fruits and vegetables.  Mmmm.  Looks like tomatoes are on the menu tonight, which we’ll prepare with fresh basil, olive oil, and French sea salt given to us by our friends the other night.  Yum.

Last night was the first planning meeting for Maya’s girl scout troop.  They’re cadette girl scouts now, and are planning on working on the Silver Award, which is a two year thing, I think.  It was nice to see all of those parents and kids again.  Maya’s known most of them since at least 1st grade, some even longer.  They all attend different middle schools now, so it’s nice when they can come together like this.

This economy sucks.  At the scout meeting, I found out that two sets of parents have lost their jobs.  From two-income families down to no-income families.  Ouch.   Filling in the ’employer’ field on the paperwork was bitter for them, understandably.

I lost my contact lens the other day. Couldn’t find it anywhere. It kinda felt like it was maybe in my eye still, but I wasn’t sure if that was because my eye was irritated from all of the poking and prodding I was doing looking for it. Nope, perhaps an hour and a half later, I finally found the stupid thing in the corner of my eye. How weird is that? Even weirder, it’s the second time that this has happened to me recently, though the first time it only took me a few minutes to find the contact, not an hour and a half. Lame.

My HPV for Boys post was featured on Five Star Friday, which is very cool.  Thanks,  schmutzie. :)  One thing I found interesting about the post was that quite a few people commented on the vaccine in general, but very few posted about whether it was good for girls but not for boys, or good for both boys and girls, or anything like that.  Which was the point of my post.  See how these things go?

Genevieve barfed twice yesterday.  She’s been shedding all over the place, requiring that I vacuum every dang day, which I don’t actually appreciate.  Once she ate her own barf, not wanting to waste good food.  What’s that about?  I don’t know.  You’ll have to ask her.

Maya is totally addicted to a new computer game, Spore.  It’s a creature based game, which for some reason I think was developed by the same people that made The Sims, (a company that used to be right here in Walnut Creek, but I don’t know if that’s still the case or not), so clearly going to be a time suck.  She’s not allowed to use the computer during the week, so she’s pretty much plugged in as much as we’ll allow on weekends.

We got Maya’s school photos back the other day.  Gosh, she’s growing up so fast.  Very cute pictures.  Could there be a Wordless Wednesday soon?  Hmmm.

I had a dream the other night about my mom.  Ted said that he thought maybe burying her had been a bad idea (she was cremated in real life, but not in my dream), so we went and dug her up.  He said he thought she might still be alive, because there was some air still in her lungs.  Then she opened her eyes and got up, and felt GREAT.  She said three months being dead was just what she needed, and now she would like to go to the farmers’ market, please, as soon as she had a shower.  She looked younger, and healthy, and seemed like her old self again.  Monday was three months since she died, so she’s been much on my mind this week.  Seems like the 15th of every month makes it real again, and then as I get further away from that date, it doesn’t bother me as much.  My sister told me that grief is like an onion, with layers and spirals, where you come back to what feels like the same place over and over again.  It feels that way to me.

I went to lunch yesterday with my friend Cindy.  Her mom died four years ago, and she’s still hurting from it.  Her brother died last summer, a similar tale to that of my mom, except that first heart attack did him in, rather than the attempt at a recovery and so on. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone to talk to who’s been through it recently.  I don’t know why this is true, but it is.  Made me wish Starshine lived closer, so we could go get a cup of coffee and commisserate on the loss of our parents. (Her dad, my mom).  Anyway, Cindy recommended a book to me, Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief.  She said it’s not a heavy book, but that it helped her quite a bit.  I ordered it with a B&N gift card I had.

We upgraded to a more expensive level of cable TV a few months ago.  Something we had been talking about for awhile, but put off because we were going to move, etc.  You know what?  We’re really enjoying On Demand.  Last night we watched the first episode of Six Feet Under.  We used to NetFlix those DVDs, and we watched the whole series that way.  We really enjoyed them.  I’ll admit that with my mom dying so recently and all, it wasn’t as fun as it used to be.  Watching the grief in the faces of the family was kind of hard.  Ted could see that on my face, and asked if I wanted to turn it off.  But you know what?  I didn’t.  I like the show, it’s well written, and even if it’s still a bit raw right now, I was in the mood to watch it.  Weird, huh?  I don’t know how to explain it.   Boy, I had forgotten what a bunch of truly f*$ked up people there are on that show.  And having seen the entire series before, kind of colors your viewing.  You know, just the knowing of how it’s going to turn out.

I haven’t been finding much time to read lately.  I’m reading Possession: A Romance, and while it’s good, it’s not sucking me in as much as I had hoped.  I’ve heard such great things about it, I’m not willing to give up on it.  Some of my favorite reads have gone this way for me, where I try them out, and it takes awhile to really get into them.

Got my hair done at Paul Mitchell last weekend.  Saved me a TON of money, as it’s a beauty school rather than a regular salon.  But boy, it sure took a long time.  My appointment was for 9:45, and I didn’t get out of there until 2:30.  I had foils put in, which is very time consuming (and expensive!), but a lot of it was just that because they’re students, they are going quite slowly, being very careful not to mess up your hair.  Also, they have to have their work approved periodically by a supervisor, who will also make suggestions and correct anything that might go wrong.  Will I go back?  Def.  I saved a lot of money.

Ted and Maya are both HUGE Rickie Gervais fans, so in a little while, we’re going to see “Ghost Town“.  I’m in the mood for a good laugh, so it should be fun.  Later we’ll grill something to go with our tomatoes.  I have to say, I love weekends.  I hope your weekend is going well, and that the weather you’re having is just as awesome as ours.  We have the sky from The Simpsons outside right now.  Blue blue blue, with puffy clouds floating along.  Nice.

Edited Monday morning, because I meant to include the following, but I forgot:
If there’s anyone in your house with the sense of humor of an 8 year old (maybe 5 year old?) check out Ted’s blog post from Friday, specifically the third song, “alphabutt”.  I had to listen to it three times in a row.  Totally cute and poopy.