IT'S ALL RELATIVE

Humor me for a moment, will you? 

Are you familiar with the "Many Worlds Theory?" I'm not going to pretend that I can explain it the right way, but as I understand it, it means that all possible outcomes occupy a place in and on an infinite amount of different worlds. That's probably not exactly right, but it's close enough. I have always interpreted it as every possibility of a choice creates it's own reality. That makes a lot of realities, since we make hundreds of choices every day, but the idea makes an odd amount of, ahem, sense to me. I will think of it as the Quantum "Sliding Doors" Theory. (Pratt, 2020) So every time a decision is made, another reality is created where the opposite decision was made. So, say, I decided not to marry Steve back in 2000, and now there is a very complex parallel reality where I become a plus size stripper or anchor person on MSNBC. Maybe both. 

One thing that Steve and I talk about sometimes, only partially seriously, is that people must have the ability to inadvertently slip between realities. I already know that sounds crazy, but my theory is that if a new reality is created to accommodate a new outcome it has to go someplace, and if the outcome of a choice is fairly minor, then the reality isn't that far removed physically from the one we are currently living in, maybe even overlapping it. So, say, if in one reality Kool-Aid never created a blue raspberry flavor, then that blue-raspberry-less reality is positioned much closer to the original reality because it would be a small change. So one day you might wake up with a craving for that Kool-Aid, but go to the store only to find out it never existed. You might remember having that flavor many times, or seeing commercials for it, but no one else remembers it. That would mean you somehow crossed over into the different reality through one of the overlapping places. Stephen King calls them a "thinny" or a thin place in reality. Of course, in his case, the alternate realities are full of Lovecraftian monsters, while my own ideas are more about which Kool-aid you can buy. 

Potato - Potahto

Anyways, this has been coming up a lot for me lately and it's getting weird. Not long ago I had a conversation about something I thought I heard a friend say years ago, but he said he didn't say. I could remember it so clearly that you could have held me at gunpoint at any time and asked about it, and I would have sworn on the bible that he did. However, he didn't. Obviously, I just misunderstood what he did say, but in my head it was so freaking clear that hearing otherwise makes it seem unreal.

Another example is something my mom told me, or so I thought. It was a story about my aunt going somewhere and getting sick. I remember hearing the story and being indignant about it, because it seemed like a silly risk for her to take. I remember details about the story, down to being able to imagine the situation. I even told that story to my coworker, because I was irritated that it happened. I brought it up to my mom yesterday and she had no idea what I was talking about. She said that never happened, and proceeded to tell me a completely different story of how she got sick. In fact, over the past couple of years, that same thing has happened to me with my mom. I remember her telling me stories about family members, and those stories became part of the way I thought of my extended family in general, but when I've asked her about it, she said none of it was the way it actually happened.

It's not just me, though,. It's happened to Steve as well! We were standing in his office and heard a big truck outside, so we looked out of the window and saw a utility truck a crew working on a fire hydrant. He said "When did we get a fire hydrant there?" I didn't remember ever seeing any big utility work being done on that side of the street, so it couldn't have been put there in the past 20 years, so it had to be there much longer. Also, it's an old hydrant, so if it were newer, it wouldn't look the way it does. That might not be so weird under most circumstances, but he's lived in that house literally all his life. How could he live somewhere for 45 years and not notice a yellow fire hydrant right across the street? He's also had other things happen to him several times that he's noticed recently don't exactly jive with his memories.

Now, I'm not saying any of this is real or that it's true, or even that I honestly believe in it. For all I know, we are just considering a pseudo-scientific explanation for both of us having really bad memories! But it has been happening enough lately that it's starting to become almost too much of a coincidence. 

Has it ever happened to you? Have you ever believed or remembered something clearly, only to have it be proven later on that it was different than you thought? Think about it, or at least start paying closer attention to some of your memories in case some things you've thought for years are suddenly very different. 

I'll just stop here before you really think I've gone off the deep end. I hope you wake up in the right reality! Especially the one that has blue raspberry Kool-Aid!

STILL...ALIVE...

Ten points if you know where the title of this blog entry came from!

WARNING: Rambling Ahead. 

Yes, I'm still kicking, and no, nothing interesting has been happening. At least I don't think so. It's kind of weird, but I have the WORST memory right now. I don't know if it's because so many days are the same, too much Sweet and Low, or if my brain is finally catching up to my age. At any rate, if anything interesting has happened, it wasn't interesting enough to remember.  

I haven't known what to do with myself, lately. I feel like everything is still on hold. I suppose that's really is what is going on. The world hasn't gotten back to normal yet and I am heartily tired of it!

Let's see...I went to the doctor the other day. Finally. I used to go three or four times a year, but my current GP only sees me once a year. In some ways that's rad, because I don't particularly like going to the doctor, but in other ways it kind of sucks because a year is a long time not to know if your blood work is right or whatever. Granted, I know I could make an appointment if something was wrong, but what if it's something I don't notice? How do you know if your cholesterol is bad, or something like that? Eh, well, I guess that's the price you pay not to have to be arsed to go to the doctor more than you want to.

I like my doctor a lot. I met him last year. He's a bit younger than me, quite nice, and funny. He is one of those people that I immediately felt comfortable around when I met him, which is both rare and cool. He came into the exam room wearing a Batman print mask. I made a comment and he said he normally has some Harry Potter masks that he wears, but he'd forgotten them at home and had to wear that one as a backup.  Of course I asked him if he was a Harry Potter fan, in which he demurred and said that he wasn't a huge fan. So I pressed him about whether or not he knew his Hogwarts house. He was a Griffindor. Of course he was. 

Look, I know knowing your Hogwarts house seems like a silly thing, and it means nothing, but I love it when people have enough of a sense of humor to enjoy silly things like that. Especially adults. If you're reading this and don't know your house, please go to Pottermore and find out! It brings me joy. (Of course, I'm a Slytherin, so what do I know? Haha!) ;)

Since my appointment was a wellness check, he and I talked about a lot of stuff. I told him about the panic attacks (he didn't seem worried, but did refill my emergency meds) and I told him about my back. That he seemed worried about. Mainly because I'm so limited as to what I can do because of it. I can't run anymore, I can't comfortably ride a bike, and hell, I can't even do yoga anymore without having to sleep on an ice pack. He told me I could probably swim for exercise, which would be great if I could swim. He told me I could have ...and I don't know what it was...radicular something or other. The only reason I remember that much is because I thought he said I had a ridiculous something or other. I mean, maybe whatever it is is ridiculous, but it still hurts. Other than that, there were just a few things I need to work on. My weight, my cholesterol, my blood sugar levels. The usual. They took a lot of blood for some other tests, but I guess they all came back fine because they didn't contact me again.

Ya know what? I just realized I talked, at length, about a doctor's appointment. I really am turning into an old person! But really, it's been the highlight of the last two months! What else can I talk about?

One day we will get to to stuff again and I'll have new stories and adventures. One day! Don't give up on me! 

I HAVE A THEORY

I have this theory that all of our weird, irrational fears come from the way we died in other lives.

For example:

My fear of heights: I probably fell out of a tree or down a mountain or something.

My fear of suffocation: I was probably murdered by a jealous lover in my sleep or buried alive by a jealous lover. (Honestly, I'd be disappointed if I wasn't murdered by a jealous lover in one of my past lives, so LET ME HAVE THIS, OK?)

My fear of suddenly dying: I probably suddenly died, like, at a baseball game in front of thousands of people.

I have others, but I'll spare you.

Anyways, I figure that if reincarnation could possibly be real, then all the stuff we are afraid of that doesn't make sense comes from things that made a big enough impression on us at another time, and what could make a bigger impression on us than something that kills us?!

I know, this is a hell of a way to resume blogging after all this time, but honestly, I just needed to write that down and I figured I might as well share my wisdom with all of you fine folks! :)

Also, I started another entry weeks ago and haven't finished it yet, so this is what you get right now.

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND STUFF!  *Fireworks!*


PS: Please don't tell the preacher I'm thinking about reincarnation. He'd disapprove.

VICE

I have a shameful secret. I shouldn't even talk about it on here, but I think I've kept it to myself long enough.  I hope that the repercussions don't spread too far and ruin lives, but I need to talk about it.

I can't stop watching these horrible, gross, slime videos on YouTube. I mean, I don't indiscriminately watch slime videos, and trust me that is a weirdly prolific genre, but just one "creator's" version of slime videos.  The channel is called "Lena Slime" and this woman (I assume) makes clear slime, and then smushes makeup into it.  I know that description doesn't really sound terrible, but trust me, it is.



You don't have to watch it, but just in case you're curious of what I'm talking about, there you go.

I accidentally found this channel when I was on Facebook. I don't know if you've ever noticed, but if you watch a video on Facebook, they try to keep you watching videos (and therefore ads) by scrolling down to another video, and another, and another. One of these popped up and I thought I'd see WTF it was, and this is what I was shown. After I started watching them, I couldn't stop. I even subscribed to the channel.

The Shamalanian twist about this, though?  I hate the videos. I don't just hate them, but I'm actively disgusted by them. I don't care than this person is wasting makeup, which seems to be the biggest concern in the FB comment section, but I hate it because it's gross. I am grossed out by the sound of the squishing slime. I am grossed out by the fact that she mixes all manner of different textures of waxy, oily, powdery makeup together into a big disgusting paste inside whatever slime is supposed to be. I can somehow mentally FEEL the mix-matched lumps of stuff and it makes my skin crawl. I am also weirdly disturbed when she puts the "wrong" color into the slime - as there is always a theme - and I am completely sure that the end result has something else mixed in to make the colors so homogeneous and for some reason it makes me mad.

There is only one thing I like about these videos, and that is the one moment when she is through destroying makeup, she curls the sides of the clear slime up over the mess in the middle and for a very brief moment it looks like a ball of really pretty, dichroic, blown glass. That's it.

So why do I watch it?  I'm not sure. The only explanation I have been able to come up with is that I can turn my mind off while I'm watching it and I don't have to think about anything. I just watch this woman crumble up makeup and my brain is free to roam at will. That's not always a great thing, especially in my head, but I don't have to focus on anyone talking about politics, or bad things, or people getting shot, or anything like that. I just wish I didn't hate the videos so damn much.

So if you can think of some type of restful, brain unplugging, non gross thing I could be watching instead, please let me know.

Thank you for listening.

NEIN, ICH BIN KEINE BANANE

So far, this has been kind of a shit day. 

I mean, it hasn't been terrible by any stretch of the imagination, and it could certainly get worse, but it's been one of those days where little things keep happening that just build up and keep the day from being as awesome as it should be. I woke up not feeling well but had to come to work anyway, I'm still waiting for a response from at least two people I need to get in touch with and cant seem to catch, my car had some kind of seizure and I couldn't turn it on, or off, because the computer got stuck somewhere in the middle, I had to drive the truck (which is a non-air conditioned adventure in itself) and I have had to listen to my coworker bitch for a solid, everlasting, two hours. You've been there right? 

But I don't want to dwell on any of that. Seriously. I know that doesn't sound true since I just outlined all of it, but I did that to kind of purge it out of my brain. I also wanted to put out some good vibes to you lovely people to counterbalance my own weird karma today.

So I hope your day is better than mine has been so far.  I hope your lunch tastes awesome and your tea is perfectly sweet. I hope your dogs and cats behave themselves and no one throws up on your carpet. I hope you get to kiss your sweetheart hello and/or goodbye, at the proper intensity and as often as you like, and the fact that they're wearing lip gloss won't matter at all. I hope your favorite movie comes on and you get to watch it in it's entirety uninterrupted with your choice of pants or no pants and the snacks of your choosing. I hope you get to make your vacation plans, that you find that thing you lost, that you get to go home from work early, and that you get that text you've been waiting for. I hope you run into that friend you've been missing and get to have lunch with them, that your bike ride is epic, and that you hit all of the steps your fitness tracker seems to think you need. I hope you are suddenly struck with a wonderful memory that you haven't thought of in a while that makes you smile and laugh spontaneously while you are coming back from lunch so that other people see you and wonder how you can be so happy just walking back to your office. I hope the doctor visit results in good news, that the package you've been waiting for gets delivered early, and that you are having a really great hair day.  And finally, I hope that if you decide to get naked, either by yourself or with the person of your choosing, that your time is well spent.

I genuinely mean all of those things because, whoever you are, I want you to have an amazing day.

I hug you.

I DON'T KNOW

I have not been myself the past few days.

I'm not sure what is going on, but I have been feeling very odd and on edge, like I'm waiting for something to fall on my head.  Does that make sense?  As I posted elsewhere, I feel as though I'm in mental cover-my-head mode. Like I'm expecting something bad, maybe, but don't have any reason to.

Nothing is going on, as far as I know, and I have no real reason to feel like I do, but something feels "off" to me, and it's making me all jumpy and defensive and I'm beginning to get on my own nerves. All last week, I felt this way, just kind of prickly and growly.  I even got called out by a friend for being kind of an asshole (and to be fair, I was - and they used nicer language than that - but calling a spade and spade, that's what I was being!) Granted, at that time I was irritated at my boss for changing budget stuff again, but geez, that's just part of working with other people. I don't know why that made me get snippy at anyone else.  I've felt bad about it ever since. :(

I feel the way I usually feel when I'm around someone who is upset or angry, because I can pick up on that kind of thing at close range, but I haven't been around anyone like that lately. I used to be able to depend on my spidey-sense, which felt a lot like this, to let me know if someone that wasn't physically close to me having a problem, but that hasn't been a thing I could rely on for a long time. My spidey-sense is on the fritz, I guess you could say.

I don't know, but I wish it would go away! I want to feel normal again!  I'm ready for normal. I'd like to go back to the things I was doing before the December from hell, and I'd like to enjoy stuff and have fun, and not feel like I'm anticipating something bad!  UGH!  Y'all!  This sucks.

I'm sorry to complain. I just have this feeling something is off it's axis, and I can't place my finger on what it is, and it's like an itch I can't scratch!  I know it'll pass, as all things do, but I'm afraid I'll run everyone away from me before I can figure it out.  I don't want that! Just bear with me...I'm working on making this better! 

(On a completely different and much nicer note...I learned to make biscuits this weekend! They were good and they didn't burn or anything! There is hope for me yet!)

I still hug you!

ETA: It isn't PMS. Shame on you for thinking so! :)

YAY

The days seem so odd now that we don't have a holiday to look forward to, don't they?

Don't get me wrong, I am glad that it's all over and I am not expected to go anywhere for a while, and I can cook my own dinner, and I don't have to prepare for anything big. I'm not complaining!  It's just that everything feels so quiet.

Steve is traveling for work for a couple of days, so things are even more quiet than usual, and that's OK, too.  I'm going to do whatever the heck I want!  Well, maybe not everything I want to do, but certainly as much of it as I can.

Three cheers for no big holidays for a while! 

You can use this quiet time to prepare for my birthday.  :)

I hug you!

HARRUMPH

I've written, like, three different things here and nothing was worth saving.  I could have just deleted everything and not published anything, but damnit, I came here to write a thing.  It isn't my fault that nothing interesting came of it!

Sorry.  I'm alone and bored and my friends live in different states than I do and I don't have time before church tomorrow to drive to see either of them because Indiana and Georgia are too far for impromptu drives.  Eh, well.  I don't mean to complain, I'm just restless.  Everything will revert back to normal tomorrow, everyone will be home, another week will start, and that is just full of possibilities, isn't it?

Anyway...I hope your day was marvelous, whatever it consisted of!  :)

PS: I found out that I might be slightly allergic to cayenne pepper.  What a weird thing to be allergic to.

DUDE...

First off, let me apologize for talking AGAIN about the stupid weight loss program I'm in.  It has temporarily taken over my life and I can't help that.  Also, I don't have anything interesting going on at the moment, so bear with me while I talk about this.

A few weeks ago, I was feeling discouraged about the whole thing.  I mean, like, I went on a mini rant about it to Steve, because it sucks and I'm hungry all the time and I lose weight very slowly.  It was just a moment of pique, because there are weeks where I do everything by the book and lose zero weight and it's irritating.  You understand, right? OK, so I go to the weigh in, find out that my weight hasn't shifted at all, and I do the rant.  I did this privately, to Steve (who has a fat head and is losing weight rapidly because he is a man and biology works differently for men) and I got it out of my system.

I'll pause here to explain that this is usually how I work. Sometimes there are things that stress me out, or make me mad, or even things that concern me for one reason and another and I'll have a moment of rantiness about them.  I just do.  It's not always fun, but I have to get the initial reaction out of my system so that I can think about it rationally.  I'm not completely unreasonable, I just need to have moment of emotion so I can put that part behind me.  You know how it is.

Anyway, so I have this rant. I express, privately, about how much I hate doing the whole thing and about how it isn't working, and blah, blah, blah.  I happened to mention that it sucked that Steve is losing weight so fast (again, I know that's just a way men and women are different) and that it wasn't fair.  I mean, it isn't, but I'll take it up with God one day, because it isn't anything we can do anything about. So I'm discouraged all through that evening's class, but I'm over it by the time it's all over.  No big deal.

We always have this slip of paper we fill out at the end of the class giving feedback about whether or not we thought the class lesson is useful to us, and there are places to write comments. So Steve, God love him, decided to take matters into his own hands.  I know he thought he was helping, so I'll give him credit for that.  In the comment section, he mentioned that it was fine to have these classes when everything was going well, but they don't do much good for the people who may not be doing so well in the program as others. ( I paraphrase, because I didn't read what he wrote and didn't know he wrote any of that until the next week.)

So the next time we go to class, I get stopped in the hallway by one of the lovely, well meaning people who run the program and asked to step into her office.  There she gave me a very special pep-talk about how great I'm doing and how my weight loss is normal, and how there is no way I can compare how I'm doing against Steve because - well, blah, blah, blah.  It was so awkward.  I was completely mystified, because I hadn't said anything to anyone about how frustrated I was, except for Steve.  Y'all...I was so embarrassed.  Steve shouldn't have done that.  It isn't a big deal in the scheme of things, but honestly, I'm capable of having a rant to any number of people if I feel they need to know my opinion about something, but I don't usually do it in front of anyone that A) I don't know and B) who doesn't know me well enough to understand how I work.  I wasn't going to quit the damn program and I wasn't so upset that I was going to go home and eat an entire BBQ chicken (which happened once when I was a teenager, but that's another story.) I was just frustrated.  I wasn't even really frustrated for long, either!

The worst thing is that because of all of this, I seem to have been branded as a hyper-competitive, over-emotional, somewhat troublesome member of this class who has to be treated with kid gloves.  You can tell every time someone talks to me that they're talking to me like they're afraid I'm going to cry.   I have no idea how to let them know that I'm not any of those things!  Nothing I've done or said seems to change their mind.  So not only am I not getting to eat normal, human food, I am apparently a kind of problem child to these people.  I dunno, it sucks, but I only have a few more weeks on the program, so if I have to be this (alleged) delicate princess in their eyes, I guess that's OK.  It's just weird that I can see this happening and can't fix it.  Oy.

Anyways, things are otherwise going fine, if not incredibly slow. I'm doing alright.  Now, if you would, please go and have a burrito or a hamburger for me.  I'm begging you.  Maybe just some fries...  Just send me your mental joy of it, but keep the calories to yourself. :)

MY WORST DATE

Sometimes when I get bored at work, I'll go to "Askreddit" and poke around for a while.  It's not exactly the most highbrow of all reading material, I suppose, but it's fun to read answers to the questions from lots of different kinds of people and it passes the time that I'd otherwise be using to stare at the ceiling and question my life choices! :)

Yesterday someone posted the question "What was your worst date?" or something similar.  I read through a lot of them, which made me cringe in sympathy for many of those strangers. In the process I remembered my own worst date, which I hadn't thought about in years. Well, I call it the worst date, but that might be a bit dire.  It was certainly the weirdest and most awkward date I can remember though, and that has to count for something!

I never dated a ton.  I had boyfriends that tended to stick around for a while when I had them, but I didn't go on "single-serving" dates much at all.  That's what happens when you live in a small community. Your dating pool is a bit more limited than it might otherwise be, so unless you wanted to pass around boyfriends like trading cards (and to be fair, some of that did go on at my high school, heh) you didn't get a wide range of folks to date.  That's not to say that there wasn't a lot of really great guys that I knew, but I went to a K-12 school and basically grew up with most of them and I was good friends with a lot of them which would have made dating weird.  You know how it is.

Anyway, I digress.

Once I graduated high school and ventured beyond the borders of my community (like the Viking Adventuress I was always meant to be, I guess) I did meet a few nice guys and went out on a couple of those single-serving dates.  Most of them were fine.  There's a reason you only go out with some people once or twice, obviously, but none of those dates were really all that memorable.  The one in question was one of the last dates I went on before I started dating Steve seriously.

I'm going to call this guy Ben (to protect the innocent.)  I met him while working at the Sprocket (ptooey) and he was not, strictly speaking, my type.  Ben was a tall, gangly guy; a former basketball player from one of the rich-kid neighboring county schools, and he was very....enthusiastic...about everything.  Imagine a morning show radio DJ crossed with a personal trainer.  But he was sweet, though, and funny, and also not gay - which due to recent experience was an important detail for me at that point in time.  I don't remember how he asked me out, just that suddenly we had a date one night.  Ok, then!

We met at work and our adventure began!  We went to dinner, although I can't remember where.  I'm sure it was one of those places young people went at the time, like Olive Garden or Applebee's.  The reason I don't remember where we went wasn't because it was boring, but because I spent most of the meal watching in horror as Ben destroyed his dinner in a manner I generally associate with Great White sharks.  See, Ben had braces.  I don't know if you've ever had braces, but eating can be difficult because you have to learn to eat in a way that you don't get food, or your lips, caught in the things.  His technique was to chew with his mouth WIDE open, which allowed anyone sitting on the opposite side of the table to see whatever he was eating floating around inside his mouth like clothes in a glass door washing machine. He also liked to talk while he ate, so the food not only swished around in his wide open maw, but bits of it would fly out and land on the table.  There was ranch dressing involved.  *shudder*

Next we went on a walking tour of downtown Huntsville, at night, to look at church windows or some such thing.  You guys know I love stained glass windows, but the churches were all dark inside, so we were basically walking around in the dark in places that (I know now) aren't all that safe.  Now, I like the idea of walking around and looking at architecture very much, but A) I'd like to be doing it in a place where I wouldn't get mugged, B) I'd like to be able to see what we're looking at and C) he never told me what we'd be doing, so I was wearing tall sandals that weren't made for walking long distances, so my feet were killing me after a couple of blocks and I kept tripping. He seemed oblivious of the situation and I was too shy to say anything about it, so we just kept on walking.

Lastly we decided to go and see a movie.  It was a sequel to a movie I'd never seen before, but I didn't want to complain because he seemed psyched for it.  It was a movie about dinosaurs.  Anyway, even thought I didn't really know what was going on with the movie, it wasn't all that bad. I was able to rest my feet a bit, which was nice. He also wasn't trying to put his hands on me in any, which was good, but that made what happened next even stranger.  During a part of the movie that was supposed to be "Scary" he grabbed me in a headlock. It wasn't a "he had his arm around me and it tightened a bit" sort of thing, but a legit out-of-nowhere headlock and he pulled me across the armrest of my chair.  It has been suggested, by one person or another, that Ben was trying to get in on some of that "Alanis Morrisette Theater Action," if you know what I mean, but I don't think that was it.  If so, it would have been the strangest 0 to 60 that I'd ever witnessed.  He also wasn't trying to kiss me or anything like that, he just seemed to think it was appropriate to put his date in a sudden headlock during the movie.  I was too stunned to do anything, but he let me go pretty soon afterwards.  Unfortunately, in that strange scuffle, one of my earrings disappeared.  Steve's dad* had gone to Italy on a work trip and had brought me back a pretty pair of silver and blue earrings, and when I realized one was missing, I was pissed.  Put me in a headlock for some reason I can deal with, but I felt terrible to have lost part of a gift, so for the next few minutes, we scrabbled around on a dirty theater floor looking for it all to no avail.  After the movie was finished, Ben drove me back to the SpRocket (ptooey) and  left me at my car, and unless I'm mistaken, he was completely oblivious that we had just had the strangest, most tone deaf date in my whole history of dating!  He didn't try to kiss me goodnight, thank goodness, because I was still having flashbacks to him eating dinner and I'm fairly certain I would have thrown up.  Ben and I did not go out again.

For all I know, I was his worst date, too.  I can hear it now "She barely talked at dinner, she lagged behind me the whole time I was trying to show her the church windows, AND she didn't seem to have a clue what to do when I put her in the 'First Date Headlock!' Such a waste of time.  Duuuuuude."  (Yeah, I'm pretty sure he would have added the dude.)

The strangest part of the whole night was when I got back home and was changing for bed.  The earring that I lost in the theater was in my bra.  Not just, like, hooked on to it, but way down inside one of the cups of my bra, and y'all, I was wearing a turtleneck sweater that night and Ben didn't get his hands inside that sweater, so how did my earring get inside of it?  As weird as that night was, I can only assume it was aliens.

So that was the, if not worst, certainly the most uncomfortable date I'd ever gone on.  One day, maybe I'll tell you about the best one. SPOILER: It wasn't with Steve!  Shhhhh, don't tell.  He doesn't read my blog!

*Yes, I was sort of dating Steve already when I went out with Ben. I was unaware at the time we were not supposed to be dating other people.  That was an awkward conversation.

BUTTON, BUTTON, WHO'S GOT THE...

One of the things I remember most clearly about being a little kid was visiting with my Grandmother Martin.  Maybe it's just mistaken, fuzzy, little girl memories, but it feels like I was at her house more often than I wasn't.  I never minded because I loved my grandmother a lot, and being there wasn't like being anywhere else that I knew.

She grew up hardscrabble, a daughter of sharecroppers, hard core country, but not in that redneck, NASCAR, pop-country music way that people think of as "country" these days.  She was born, lived, and died pretty much all in the same little patch of dirt in Limestone county, and I'm fairly certain that that was exactly the way she wanted things to be.

At her house there wasn't a room set aside, filled with plastic Fisher-Price junk for us grand kids to play with.  Nor did we haul bags of toys or video games back and forth when we visited.  When we were at Grandmother's house (and she would not be called Nana, Granny, or anything else except for Grandmother) we played cards, we played outside, in the barn, in the woods, or we found something she had stashed away to keep ourselves occupied, and boy did she have things stashed away.

Like a lot of people who lived through the depression, my Grandmother kept odd things.  She wasn't a hoarder or anything like that, but she was a very dedicated keeper of things that she thought might come in handy.  She also kept a treasure of "important" objects. It was through her, and the things that she kept in that tiny house of hers, that I developed a love of old things. I'm not talking about fancy antiques, although I can appreciate those on their own merits, but I'm talking more about old pieces of junk jewelry, old coins, old yearbooks, worn wooden tools, old quilts and other things that have stories attached to them. When my Grandmother passed away in 2006, I inherited quite a few of her special things.  It would probably seem like a lot of trash to anyone who didn't know her, but to me, they were all things that were special because SHE thought they were special.

One of my favorite things that she kept was an old, White Owl cigar box full of odd buttons.  I"m sure I've mentioned those buttons a time or two before.  When all of the grownups were in the kitchen talking and I was bored, I'd sometimes go and get that button box just to play with them.  That box had a specific sound, a very distinct smell, and it was endlessly fascinating to me for whatever reasons.  I'm sure they were all buttons from her family's clothes, and not things that she arbitrarily bought, so keeping them made sense. Divorced from their purpose, though, they became something much more interesting.  That box of buttons was the inspiration of my own, albeit less utilitarian, collection.

Whenever I go into a junk shop or an antique store, I always look for the jars of buttons.  Sometimes the ones you find aren't anything special.  It's hard to explain why that is, but you just have to have an eye for it.  Some jars came from people who were trying too hard to be "Shabby Chic" (bleh) and some are really just new buttons bought in a mix, like from a craft store.  The ones you want are the ones that make no sense all together.  There's no scheme, too many colors and shapes, maybe a little dirty, and usually in an old peanut butter or jelly jar. You can usually tell by looking closely if they are old, but sometimes you only find the good stuff once you open the jar.  Of course, I'm not EDUCATED on buttons.  I'm sure that there are people out there that could tell me if I had anything really valuable, but to be honest, I don't particularly care if they're valuable. I like them for other reasons.

I know that buttons must seem like such a silly thing to keep.  They are such ubiquitous things that most of us don't really think about, unless we lose one of course.  They are just a part of your everyday clothes, something you touch without thinking about them, but I think that's why I like them so much.  I like the idea of having something that was used, and that passed through a lot of hands to get to me.  Every time I get a new jar of buttons, I look at them one at a time and wonder where they've been.  I always separate them by color.

There are always more white buttons than any other color, which isn't surprising.  The plain ones got the most wear.  I like to imagine some grandfather's hands, buttoning up the same plain shirts every week to go to church, or maybe someone who had a job interview buying that shirt to look nice.  Some of the white buttons are made from mother-of-pearl, with traces of the oyster shell still visible on the back.  Some of them are tiny and feminine, and I wonder if they were on a long ago wedding dress, maybe a pair of gloves, or a baby's special outfit.

The neutral ones are second most plentiful.  Except for the ones made of wood or coconut shell, those are my least favorite.  It's hard to say why, except that I'm not fond of brown and gray, but occasionally you'll come across an interesting one.

The multicolored ones are my favorite, as they are the ones that are the most varied in size and shape.  I imagine most of these were from women's and children's clothes, or that there were some flashy guys out there back in the day.  There are huge buttons that I know had to have come off of someone's winter coat, and some that I know probably came from a woman's best Sunday dress.  Sometimes there is still a bit of material sewn on to the button so that you can see the fabric that they were attached to, which is fun.  

 

 

 

I also keep a separate jar of buttons I like the best, regardless of color.  These are the ones that catch my eye.  I don't know why, but they are the fun ones, or at least the ones that are the most different.  Some of them are pretty old, I think, and all are interesting in some way.  They also don't always make sense, fashion wise.  There's one in there that is shaped like an eggplant.  I have no idea what kind of thing would have eggplant buttons!

I have buttons which I don't keep with any of the others, but that I haven't taken pictures of yet.  I have some of my Great Grandfather's WWI uniform buttons and one shell button from the around the civil war (which I mentioned the other day.)

I suppose that it seems silly to get excited about something as silly as a button, but these are things that someone touched, used, and they had a history with someone somewhere.  These buttons were saved by someone for some reason, and I like to think about where they've been.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you about my buttons!  

 

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1)  I'm here and still alive, so far.  Thanks to everyone who has been concerned! I'm glad you guys care. :)  I have an appointment with the cardiologist today, and I sincerely hope that it doesn't end with another appointment to run on a treadmill and have my left boob make another new friend.  I mean, because really, if that's going to happen, I'd like it to be in a much more relaxed setting. ; )

Ugh.  You know what makes me mad about the whole situation?  Ever since the original stress test I had, and after finding out that my left arm periodically going numb was due to the spine problems I have, I have not been worried about my heart at all.  Not even a little bit.  Granted, I know hereditary stuff is still a possibility and all, but the fears I had due to my dad's heart attack had gone away.  Do you have any idea how rare that is for me?  I worry about things. To be free of one of those worries was such a relief.  Then out of nowhere, my heart decides its going to do a dumb thing and I have to start all over.  It pisses me off! I'm too young for this! (Young being a relative term, obviously.)  I'm (kind of) young and shouldn't be worried about things of this nature!

I do have a theory of my own about what happened, though.  I think I have a food allergy that maybe I didn't have before. The only thing I did differently that day that I do everyday is that I ate a Cliff Bar.  I don't like them, but I was in a hurry to get out to the door and do what I had to do, and it was the fastest thing I could get my hands on.  I ate it, and 20 minutes later everything went to hell.  I didn't think of that at the time, but when everything else came back normal, I thought maybe that could've been it. Who knows?  Since the fiasco with the probiotics, I apparently can't eat dairy stuff anymore, so it's not out of the realm of possibilities that something in that bar caused me to have a bad reaction.

So, there you go.  Hopefully it was a one time thing and I can go back to being a normal person who does normal things after I see the doc.  However, if there is a new problem, and I'm talking worst case scenario stuff, I might need a few of you to help me cross some things off of my Bucket List!  I've got too much I want to do in my life for this kind of nonsense. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

2) Steve got a new job!  I have no idea exactly what he does, but I do know that he is one of the few people in the US that does that particular thing. I mean, I know his title, but what he does has something to do with a an acronym and even though he's explained it, I still don't really understand. It's computer stuff that goes too deep for me.  His new company will be sending him all over the place for consulting.  I think that's neato!  Go Steve! 

This will mean he'll be traveling more, but apparently I'll be able to go with him to a few places.  I'm hoping he'll go somewhere interesting so I will want to tag along. I hope one place will be Alaska.  There are sled dog puppies there somewhere, and I'm going to find them and bring them all back with me!

3)You want to hear something weird?  I know you do.  :)  Heh!

Years ago, and I mean around 17 or more years ago, I was having a very slow day at work and so I passed some time by drawing out what I considered to be (at the time) my dream house.  I didn't draw the blueprints, just the outside, but in my head I knew exactly what it would look like and how it would be laid out.  I could describe it in detail, but that would be boring.  All you need to know was that it wasn't a big house, but it was an older style, two-story cottage that had a staircase that started just inside the front door. It was one of those things a person thinks about when they're bored, so for a while, I thought about it a lot!

Of course, knowing how way leads on to way, I just sort of forgot about it all and went on with life. But a few months ago I started thinking about the house again out of nowhere.  That part isn't weird.  I don't know what jogged my memory, but the house just started popping into my head a lot.  The setting and inside decor would change depending on my mood, but it was always the same house.  Then a few weeks ago, someone on Facebook "shared" a picture of an old, abandoned house.  I don't even know the context of it, but it was my house!  My "imaginary" house!  There were even pictures of the inside, and it was laid out like it was in my head.  I suppose I should mention that I've never been inside a house like that before, so to see an actual photograph of a house I knew, but had never been inside of, was a little creepy.  I could understand the outside being something I'd seen before, but not the inside.  I saved the pictures, but don't have them on me at the moment, or I'd post them.  Not that it matters, I guess.  You guys can't see inside of my head.

Or can you?

*Twilight Zone Music*

4) I have been getting grief over this from all sides, but this presidential election will be the first one since I registered to vote that I will not be voting in.

I know it's a right and a civic duty, but I just can't do it.  There is no lesser of the two evils here.  It's all a giant dumpster fire and America is sitting on top of it.

I hope you'll forgive me.  I just can't, with good conscience, vote for anyone that is running.   Please don't make me!

5) Oooh!  Another weird thing.  Two nights ago I was in the living room by myself after Steve went to bed. The television was off and I was reading something, so it was completely quiet, when I heard what sounded like a robotic voice outside of my window.  It scared me BADLY.

Well, let me be more clear.  At first it sounded like a cicada, you know, the "reeeee reeeee reeeee" sound they make, only it wasn't.  The tone was the same, but there was inflection to it, and the pattern wasn't consistent like a cicada would have been.  It sounded exactly like something with a metal voice box trying to speak a long sentence.  Maybe a better way to describe it would be to think of one of those poor people who have had cancer and have to have that thing implanted so that they could talk, only imagine that being distorted and the battery running down on it.  There were no intelligible words, just a scary, metallic voice that was trying to say something, but didn't quite know how. 

Scared nearly pantsless or not, without looking at the window, I calmly walked to the house alarm and turned it on, and then walked into the bedroom and said "Steve, I'm not crazy, but there is a robot talking outside of our window."  Steve asked what I was talking about, and I tried to explain, but of course he didn't believe me.  He just laid back down (BECAUSE HE APPARENTLY WELCOMES OUR NEW ROBOTIC OVERLORDS) and I had to go back to the living room by myself so that I could turn off the lights.  I know how stupid this sounds, I promise, but whatever it was unnerved me enough that I couldn't make myself go into the living room right away because the big windows are right there.  I finally had to sternly talk myself into it so that I could go and turn off the lights.  I did it, but didn't hear any other weird sounds.  I was still scared, though. Before I got into bed, I strapped one of the heavy police flashlights we have onto my arm and turned it on.  I figured that if whatever it is that made the sound broke into the house, I'd have both light and a blunt instrument. I left it on for a long time. I also didn't sleep for a long time.  It's been a while since anything scared me that badly. 

I still don't know what it was, but I swear if it was some kid playing Pokemon Go (Does it make sounds like that? No idea.) or something outside of my house, I'm going to hunt them down and beat them with my flashlight for scaring me.

Is it wrong that I get irritated when people pigeonhole me?

I know not everyone can know everything about another person, but it really bothers me when people assume I only have one facet of my personality and that's all they will talk about with me. 

I know that shouldn't bother me so much, because some people may legitimately not know anything about me other than the fact that I like Doctor Who, or that I work at a church, or that I once auditioned for American Idol.  For those people, it's ok, I guess.  I can't expect more than that.

But people who have known me for any length of time and refuse to see me as anything other than the one thing they've pegged me as? Or that they designate me as "The Person Who Does This One Thing and That Is All I Care About."  It bothers me.

I'm an effing, shiny diamond, y'all!  I mean, sure, I'm a little chipped and dusty in places, but I can still sparkle if you look at me from a different angle! Grrrr.

This is why I'm extra grateful for the people who've taken time to get know me better over the years.

That was an weird little rant, wasn't it?

I CRINGE

Perhaps you don't need to know why.

Just know I feel very dumb, a little disappointed, and a bit confused.

Having said that...I'd probably do it again!

But, I still cringe.