Month: July 2005 (Page 4 of 4)

Gosh, I sleep in & everyone’s wishing me a Happy Birthday – it feels FABULOUS! :) Thanks, blogworld & friends!

Last night, we saw Cake & Weezer – I could become a Cake groupie if I weren’t so old – we laughed at the four 13-year-old girls in front of us, waving their phones instead of lighters, and then stopping to text message, and indeed, dear world, technology has changed the world. The sweet flicker of a lighter, held up until the holder’s thumb burns, has been replaced by the blue screen of a cell phone. Those girls were so damned funny, and I had great fun watching them, because they weren’t mean girls or fake girls, they were just goofy girls who’d spent a LOT of time getting ready for this concert, with their hair and makeup and outfits, and so they would sway together and slam hips and eat pretzels and giggle and gasp, and while I appreciated their youth and their beautiful skin, untouched by a single wrinkle, I did not envy their next ten years, when every single thing MEANS so much and you are still amassing your wisdom and your footing is so uncertain.

The flip side of being old & wise is that your bladder gnomes become MUCH more vocal, shouting and ringing the buzzer almost non-stop. And also, not being a drunken 22-year-old, one avoids the portalettes as much as humanly possible. So, true to old-folks form, we left before the end of Weezer, got out of the parking lot with no trouble at all, and zipped home to the comforts therein.

The last observation about the four girls: they were chaperoned by one of the girl’s dad. He was so cool, and let them be – gave ’em money for pretzels and didn’t tell them to knock it off when they were almost knocking each other down with their sideways-hip-slams. But he sat at the end, with them, unlike the man in the parking lot, asleep in his truck. And I admired that dad’s dedication to being a grown-up father.

Being a grown-up, no matter what your responsibilities are, isn’t easy, and youth is, indeed, wasted on the young, but I am glad to be alive, and I’m glad to be wiser now than I was back then, and I treasure all the wonderful people I have in my life, some of whom are more like family to me than blood relatives. It is a short trip on this earth, and my journey is better for having you in it.

Thank you, from the bottom of my Cake-lovin’ heart.

We ate Thai food last night, and it was all about the sharing. We got spring rolls – YUM – and then a couple salads & pad thai. We always get everything “medium”, so as to enjoy the heat without passing out. Medium at Thai Place can get a little hot, so that’s why we don’t order hot. Well, the Crazy Jumbo Seafood salad? Medium? Let’s try hot to Thai hot. Oh Mah Gawd.

It’s like time slows down, and you start looking for your server, so they can bring you anything, now, to stop the pain. All my taste buds were smokin’. JWo looked like he was going to start blowing steam out his ears. We ate green cabbage, steamed rice, ice cubes – it took the rest of the meal for our tongues to stop raging. Our second salad, grilled mint beef, was delicious. If you haven’t had that dish, you need to. It’s absolutely exquisite, and for whatever reason, at medium heat, is not on par with the seafood salad. Yet, despite the pain, we finished both salads, because there is something about that spice that makes it so incredibly palatable, tasty, addicting! And even today, the day after, I’m craving it all over again. My poor stomach. Either I’m creating an iron stomach, or I’m slowly burning the entire lining out.

Today is the first day of my vacation! I’m actually taking all of next week off, with many plans & dates already set. The new job gives you your birthday off, so with the 4th of July Holiday, my birthday, and a free 1/2 summer day on Friday, I get one full week for the low, low price of 2.5 vacation days!

And I’m obsessing. It feels like it’s too soon to take more than one day of vacation. It’s been only three months, and I told my boss yesterday that I feel competitive & I shouldn’t take vacation time because he’s not taking vacation time. Now, granted, he’s buying the company, and has a differently-vested interest in the place, but still – it’s not that I think I’m so fabulous and everything will fall apart without my big mouth & brain there – but it’s mostly the whole not-knowing what’s happening all the time, combined with that tiny grain of fear that if you’re not there, maybe they’ll start to think they don’t need you anymore. It’s a tiny grain, but at the last job, it was the size of a fuckin’ boulder. That sort of mentality was bred & fostered, and god help you if something went wrong while you were out – never mind the fact we’re in a business where stuff goes wrong ALL THE TIME, deadlines don’t get met, we’re the middle-men, juggling & shuffling – it’s part of the ad biz. Sure, there are people who do it badly, and leave big messes to clean up. They have poor business hygiene, approving things randomly and not leaving a trail to follow, so three months later you look like a cartoon character with question marks over your head. I knew that when I was asked to depart the last place, that inherent in their “you must leave now” policy, came the inability to follow through on loose ends, straggling threads, and whoever got stuck doing it was gonna curse your ass for having to be stuck on clean-up. Sorta like being the bus driver who has to clean up the vomit.

I know vacation is there to be taken. I always take it. If I were going to Jamaica, I would still worry, but I wouldn’t cancel the trip. Since I’m staying in town, I’m going to check my voicemail & email regularly, and hope that all the effort I’ve put in this week to handle everything that’s outstanding is enough to keep anyone from cursing my existence (and absence!) :) And I will have fun. I’m going to work on organizing my craft room, take some initial runs at the garage cleaning-out-experience, since that’s the gateway to buying a big-ass tv, per our agreement, getting my hair cut, going to dinner with some “rediscovered” friends, SLEEPING, and all sorts of other lofty goals that if I type out will allow others to remind me that I didn’t do…. ;)

So, on the birthday front, I decided this morning that being medium-aged sounded better than middle-aged. I turn 37 next Wednesday, and I plan to spend it with friends, our dogs & my best friend in the world, JWo. The following day I’ll have knitty friends over & we’ll eat like it’s the last supper (after the last time, JWo commented, “Those girls can EAT!”) and laugh and reconnect. Oh yeah, and knit. It’s weird, because most of my life, I spent it as the “younger one” – I have a July birthday, I skipped first grade, and so I was 16 when I graduated from high school, 20 when I graduated from college. People in the business world were always older, and now I’m older than one of my bosses. I refuse to buy in to society’s notion that youth is king, because youth is primarily stupid. I worry about dying, about losing people I love, maybe a little bit more than I did when I was 20, but I’ve always worried about that stuff. My hands look older now when I stop to look at them, and I see little lines around my eyes.

But, much like Great-Grandma Hattie, I may never know if I have gray hair. When she died at the age of 97, she was a deep auburn redhead. Bless her heart, I’ve been meaning to do a memory post in her honor, and I will, this week. Oh yeah, I’m also coloring & highlighting my hair. :)

There is nothing like a Lamar’s donut. It’s the donut that eats like a meal, and they ROCK. I love cake donuts best, and yet, even their raised & glazed are pretty darn tasty – and have some substance, unlike Krispy Kremes, which are the donut equivalence of cotton candy. They have their place, but still – we’re a Lamar’s household.

So imagine my surprise & delight this morning, when I left for work, to discover a bag containing 4 Lamar’s donuts, sitting on the hood/windshield of my car. Awwww! Way to go, JWo! An excellent start to the day.

Unless someone in the neighborhood is trying to poison me. They sure did pick good bait, though.