RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING: BLOG & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY

1) You guys...I have to tell you what happened to me on Saturday!

Actually, I think I've just oversold it, but it was kind of strange.  Imma tell you anyway.

Saturday I was helping out at our church's golf tournament.  My only real job is to make sure that the course gets paid after the tournament is over, but I usually help setting up the prizes and things of that sort.  We (two other church ladies and myself) were sitting under the porch of the pro shop organizing the stuff when I looked around and saw a man, covered in blood, shuffling towards us.  At first glance, I couldn't tell what was wrong with him because it looked like he'd spilled chocolate milk on himself. (Dried blood looks like chocolate milk, btw.)  But I realized when I looked at his face that he'd been hurt, and the chocolate milk was actually blood.

OK, for a moment...just a brief moment...when my mind did a waver and I saw that guy shambling towards us, bloody, dazed and slow, I thought my time had finally come.  I was going to be VINDICATED for all of the zombie apocalypse plans I'd made, and all the joking that people give me about my zombie survival stuff!  I was going to be able to stick out my tongue in the most sticking-out-of-my-toungiest moment of my whole life!  I was going to save us all from the undead and it was going to be awesome!  So, you know what I did?

I did nothing.  I sat there while a potential undead man came towards us and, for all I knew, was going to snack on us all, but I did nothing!  None of my survival instincts kicked in!  That was actually a good thing, as it turns out.  He was not a zombie at all, but he was a man who had just had a car accident and had sustained a bleeding head injury.  I suppose it wouldn't have been great if I'd beaten him to death with a chair while trying to destroy his head.

I did ask him, several times, if we could help him and he kept saying no.  I wish I'd helped him anyway, but he walked inside the store and one of the other ladies followed him in there to help and I didn't want to be in the way.  They called an ambulance, but the man refused treatment.  I wish he'd gone, because head injuries are no joke!  You can bump your head and think you're fine, and the next thing you know, you're in a coma or something. I should have helped him anyway and tried to talk him into going, but he was determined not to.  I don't feel good about my inaction. I hope the man turned out to be OK in the end.

Also, after that dry run, I'm probably going to be one of the first people eaten if the zombie apocalypse does happen because I'll be too busy asking one of them if they're ok and they'll just eat my face.  I need to write down my otherwise stellar survival plans and send them to people, so they will at least have a chance.

2) Do you remember a few entries back when I talked about the weird package I got in the mail?  Well, I don't want to say too much in case someone gets a similar package and starts Googling it, but suffice it to say that it was the best, most creative birthday gift ever!  The McGee family sent it to me, and I didn't actually get a letter explaining it until a few weeks later, so I got to puzzle over it for a while!  I basically got my own Scooby-Doo mystery in the mail and I loved it!!!!!!!  Thank you, McGee family!  Very well done! :)

3) I had to apologize to someone the other day and I still feel really bad about it.  I don't feel bad about the apologizing, but about what I did.

Have you ever gone into work, or any situation really, where everything just happens all at once and none of it is good?  It's not anything huge, but just a bundle of little annoyances that pile up until you just snap?  That happened to me last Sunday night.  I know that being a church secretary sounds like the calmest job in the world, and usually it is, but sometimes it's a huge cluster-frag and it's easy to lose patience with people because everyone, and I mean everyone, thinks that their issues are the most important thing and should be addressed immediately..

I'd gotten a call from the pastor asking if I knew where a copy of our insurance card for the church van was, because it had been in a small fender bender and the card couldn't be found in the van.  I told him where the copy was, but he couldn't find it.  I swore it was in the place that I put it, where I ALWAYS put them, and he looked, but still didn't find it.  That's kind of what started the carnival of poop that was Sunday evening, just trying very hard to walk someone through something and it not working at all.  Ugh.  So Steve and I left for church early so I could go in and find the thing, only when I got there, I couldn't find it either.  I looked everywhere.  Not only could I not find the card, I couldn't find any of the paperwork that we'd gotten with this year's insurance policy.  So, while a cop somewhere was demanding proof of insurance (and I remembered that we put the original card in the glove compartment) I felt like I was going crazy while looking for the thing. While I was frantically looking for the card, people kept coming into my office and talking to me.  I can usually handle that kind of thing, but the insistence that we find a card that seemed not to exist in the first place (it did) and people hovering over me asking if I'd found it yet, and people standing at my desk asking questions and talking to me while I tried to look for it, and then someone coming in to ask where the teacher for the class was since he hadn't shown up yet, just got the best of me.  Instead of just saying I didn't know where the teacher was, I snapped.

In words which I have not used since a whole other life ago, I snapped because "Bookie tired of ALL Y'ALL"

I grabbed the phone and called the teacher at home and basically left a message reading him the riot act about not being there and how the people in his class count on him, and all kinds of things that I wouldn't have said on a normal, non-harried day, and I said it in my nicest Church Lady Voice.  It was bad. That kind of thing is not my job at all.  I do not know what came over me, but I immediately felt terrible about it.  I couldn't do very much about it, though, because church was going to start and I had to be back in the A/V booth to run the sound. I had to sit through the music service and wait until preaching started before I could sneak out of the auditorium and call that teacher back and apologize.  I wasn't even mad at him, I was just frustrated at everything else and I took it out on him.  I really felt terrible. I know how awful it is for someone to do that to me, so I called and apologized and he was confused because he had let someone know he wouldn't be there and he hadn't heard my message and it was all just so embarrassing.  I don't want to be the guy who does things like that!  I don't like that guy.

We also never found the damned card. 

NICE (A QUICKY)

I had an appointment with my doctor this morning for a checkup, and after he'd gone over all of my stuff (barring accidents, acts of God, and jealous wives, I should live a few more years, at least!) we stood outside of the exam room and talked a bit. 

We always chat for a minute, but he was particularly talkative today while he was filling out my prescriptions. He suddenly stopped and looked at me kind of strangely.  He said:

"Wow, I've just told you a lot about myself today!  That's more than I've ever told.  How did you do that? You should become a policeman or detective.  I just wanted to tell you things.  Is that normal?"

How did I do what?  Maybe I have a nice face?  Maybe the girl who does my eyebrows makes me took perpetually interested in whatever people are saying?  I don't know, but he acted like he thought I had somehow tricked him into telling me his life story!  It was kind of funny, but I thought it was nice.

I hope people feel comfortable telling me things.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING: THE BLOG AWAKENS

1)  When I went to the dentist the other morning, the dental assistant that was scheduled to do my cleaning was running a bit late.  I guess I look like someone who'll start eating the dental floss if left to my own devices, so they turned on the television for me while I waited for her to get there.  It just so happened that the station was turned to HGTV, and they were showing one of those awful real estate shows. This one was about people who wanted to buy homes on the coast.  Not vacation homes, but primary homes that were on the beach.  Great!  We all know that one day I want one of those, so I figured that if I was going to get stuck watching one of these damned reality shows, this one might be OK.  It was not OK. 

Let me begin by saying that I've never had to shop for real estate myself, so I don't know first hand what it's like.  I have been told that it can be a stressful, sometimes tense, activity.  You have to be picky because it's a huge, important investment, and there are probably going to be points wherein you and your significant other are not going to agree somewhat vehemently.  Why would you want to put something like that on television?  There is no way that you are going to come out of it looking good.  Probably a lot of it is editing, but agood bit of it was not. Oh, dear Lord, and they also tried to be funny.  It was cringeworthy.

These people obviously had the means to buy very nice houses, but their arguments about things that were wrong with the ones they were being shown were ridiculous.  I get it, they want what they want and there isn't really anything wrong with that, but they just sounded so silly.  Rich people whining that the walk to the beach from their back door is just a bit too long is not a thing that I want to hear.  I know it's dumb that these people aggravated me so badly. I recognize that.  I just...I don't usually use the word privilege very often, but these folks didn't seem to recognize just how good they had it, and their fussing and complaining about these dumb things on freaking television in front of God and everyone just bothered me.  Also, the real estate agent kept taking these people to houses that were way out of their budget.  Why would she do that?  If you have a budget, and you tell them that, why would they show you a house you can't afford? I got stressed out just thinking about it and wound up talking to the TV like the people could hear me.  I'm sure the other patients were just loving that.

I think I'm just annoyed way to easily! :)

2) I had a terrible dream the other night, and I couldn't escape from it!  I won't go into much detail, because I really don't remember a lot of it, but when the dream started, I remember thinking "Oh, no!  Not the intruder dream again!"

For the record, I don't remember having a dream like this before, so that was kind of odd.  However, sure enough, it was a dream that someone had gotten into my house and was trying to hurt me.  It was one of those dreams where I couldn't get away from the man, no matter how hard I tried.  He was supernatural in some way, so no matter what I did, I couldn't stop him.  Then I either kind of woke up, or was dreaming that I was waking up, because the next thing I knew I was lying in my bed with the remote control to the light in my hand, trying desperately to turn the light on.  It wouldn't work.  I couldn't get the light on no matter how hard I tried.  Then I slipped right back into the dream and at that point I was fighting the intruder off.  I wasn't alone, although I don't remember who was with me, and we all had weapons. I finally got a clear shot and stabbed him in the chest with whatever it was I was holding.  He didn't die.  He just kept coming!  It was so scary.  I finally, finally, woke up, but was in crazy town for a few minutes.  I was convinced that the intruder was actually in the house and I knew I couldn't sleep anymore until I found out for sure.  I got up and went to the living room (no intruder, of course) but Steve had forgotten to set the alarm which freaked me out all over again.  I set it and wound up falling asleep sitting up in my chair.  That dream was not at all fun.

Although, on a lighter note, the intruder who was scaring me so badly was Tom Cruise.  I'm sure IRL, he's a lovely man, but in my dreams he was a scary mothershutyourmouth.

3) I thought something was terribly wrong with me last week.  I'd go to bed, sleep all night as far as I know - except that night with my Tom Cruise dream, and wake up with these horrible black, puffy circles under my eyes. It looked very much like I had black eyes, although I had not engaged in any fisticuffs that I remembered.  I actually started to get scared something was really wrong.  My skin is so pale that any spot or bruise is very obvious, so I started looking up what could cause something like that to happen.  As I said, I was sleeping all through the night, and although I was tired during the day, it still didn't explain why I looked so sick.  I even went through some trouble to find and buy special make up to neutralize the color under my eyes. I have a checkup with my doctor this week, and I was gearing up to tell him that something HAD to be wrong with me when I finally figured it out. 

Three Words:  Cheap. Ass. Eyeliner.

I wear dark eyeliner, and it doesn't always all come off when I wash my face.  I had gotten a sample of some black eyeliner and I'd been using it.  Apparently it was running down under my eyes at night and staining the skin.  Instead of looking like makeup, it faded just enough to look like bruises, and the stain wasn't rubbing off when I rubbed my face.  I feel like such an idiot.

Silver lining, though, at least I figured it out before my doctor did a bunch of blood tests on me!  Go Me! :)

4) My mom told me something that my dad used to say, but it doesn't sound like him at all.  Has anyone ever heard the term "Pee like a tied coon?"  Apparently it means you pee a lot.  I don't know.  I know it's crass, but it tickles me!  I like finding out bits of info like that.  It makes my parents seem more like real people, rather than just parents. 

POSTAL

 I got the weirdest thing in the mail the other day.  I've been kind of hesitant to talk about it because I had to check it out first, but as far as I can tell it's nothing nefarious, just strange. 
I got home from work the other day and saw a package sitting on our stoop.  I had been waiting on a package, so I was expecting to open it and find a bunch of art supplies I had ordered.  Instead, the box was full of packing peanuts and a wooden box that had an envelope sitting on top. I had never seen anything packaged like that before, but I'd never ordered anything from this particular company before, either.  I opened the envelope, thinking it would contain a packing slip, but it was a letter that started out "Dear Kelly." OK, then, maybe it was a very friendly art supply company. 

The letter was long and kind of hard to read because the handwriting was very cramped, but I figured out right away it wasn't a packing slip of any kind.  It was from a guy named Tom, and it said he didn't know me, but he needed to warn me, and he'd been given my name.  He said he needed to relieve himself of a terrible burden and turn away from his memories of "this terrible woman." It also said that fate had its reasons for wanted me to hear the story.  It didn't make a lot of sense, but it sounded like a warning.  I thought I'd been the recipient of some kind of chain mail, but it didn't tell me to pass anything on.  Like I said, it was weird. 

 I immediately started to document everything I did from that point on for Twitter, because if I'm going to wind up with a human organ, a box of bees, or anthrax I want people who know me to know how it went down.  There are too many people who'd think I was up to shenanigans were I to be found dead with something like that on me.  The next step was to actually open the box, which I was hesitant to do.  I was home alone!  The box look like it had been left over from some kind of old industrial use and it didn't give me a clue of what it was and it could have had anything in it! 

 I managed to pry it open (and it wasn't bees, thank goodness) and it was full of old newspaper packing.  Underneath that was an old book with a burn or stain on the cover, a metal thing with symbols on it, and a missing poster of some kid I'd never heard of. 

I was grateful it wasn't anything disgusting or dangerous in there, but still...WTF?  The newspapers didn't give any info away, because it was just classified ads that didn't seem to be specific to one place, and the book was all scribbled in and full of newspaper clippings.

I didn't really know what to do with all this.  I mean, I've always wanted to get a package in the mail that had some kind of mystery in it, but I had always thought it would be something Indiana Jones-esque where I'd have to grab my passport and fly to some other place to solve a mystery.  This was more like someone with a weird nephew who had gone nuts needed to get rid of evidence!  Still, though, I was intrigued.  Tom had evidently known someone I knew, so why not send it to me, right?  I still got my cool mystery box from an unknown sender, so I was kind of digging it, creepy or not!

I finally managed to read the book, which turned out to be a journal of some kid who evidently thought he was either haunted by a ghost, or possessed by something.  The newspaper clippings were obits, apparently from the same family of people, but I still haven't put it all together yet.  I guess it could be a joke of some kind, but it's really freaking elaborate, and I don't know anyone who'd go to that much trouble to play a prank on me.  I'm still trying to go through everything and see if I can figure out what's going on.  I haven't gotten anything else from Tom, so maybe this is it?  We'll see!

I'll let you know if I figure anything else out about this!