YIKES

I may not be very smart. 

Yesterday, I was at work alone and I had to leave the office for a few minutes to load a Power Point presentation into the sanctuary computer. Before I left, I looked at the security monitors to make sure there was no one outside that needed to be let inside before I was out of the room.

I saw a van acting weird in our parking lot. By weird, I mean that there was a van in the middle of our parking lot in an odd position. People do park there during the day from time to time, as people feel safe stopping to make a phone call or answer a text in a church parking lot, but they always park in a space and they leave after a few minutes. This van was in the center of our lot, then it would move forward about 20 feet, then it would stop, then it would go another 20 feet and stop. It caught my attention. So I opened the desktop version of our security software (I always feel very CSI when I use it) and I watched as the van approached my car, stopped as if someone was looking at it, then began circling my car. I thought maybe it was someone trying to figure out if they knew my car. It has fairly distinctive stickers on the back, but other than that it's fairly common  and non descript. However, they just kept circling and circling, getting closer and closer, and then they'd drive around the parking lot again, only to come back to my car and stop after circling it again.

I've only seen a car do this kind of thing once before in our parking lot, and it ended up with three windows being busted out. As I had just paid more money than necessary for my car to be fixed last week, I was feeling protective of Brunhilda Fahrvergnügen and didn't want her getting violated.  So I did what anyone would do. I grabbed the bat that sits behind my desk and ran to the back door with it. I'm not kidding, I was honestly about to go outside and attempt to f*ck someone up for messing with my car.

I'd like to pause here to clarify something. I realize that to say I was about to go outside and use a bat on someone sounds like I'm trying hard to sound tough or bad ass. This is not the case. I joke a lot about using my bat to hit people with, and I joke a lot about throwing things and shouting at people, and while I do get the urge from time to time, I'm not really a violent person. It takes a lot for me to act on any sort of confrontational physical tendencies, and usually by the time I get to that point, I'm either crying in frustration and can't see well enough to do it, or I manage to control myself. If I do act on it, I usually only throw stuff across a room and that is a petty way to handle anger and I always regret it. As I said, I am not a violent person as a rule, but just like anyone else, I can be pushed in that direction.  However, taking the time to write about it on Twitter (which is my go to) gives me a second of clarity before I do stupid things.

I only say all of that because in that moment, I was genuinely about to go outside and do it. I don't know what was going on in my head, or why I thought it was a good idea, but the thought of some punk-ass neighborhood jerk (and we have lots of them here) messing with my car flipped a switch in me that doesn't get flipped often. Luckily, before I could do anything, I realized how stupid I was being. What exactly was I going to do when I got out there? Was I going to hit someone with the bat, for realsies?  WTF was I thinking?  Holy crap, y'all, was this some kind of severe PMS or something? I don't know, but thankfully I stopped, and when I got a good look at the van I saw it was a teenager and his mom, practicing driving.  We have such a big parking lot, and it's usually empty, that I guess people do stuff like this all the time. It just so happened that the driver was using my car as part of his homemade, SpongeBob Squarepants-ian driving course.  Can you imagine how scarred that kid would have been if some bat-wielding, crazy haired, land-locked sea witch came flying out of a church to beat his van windows in?  I mean....

Also, what if it hadn't been someone innocuous?  What if someone HAD been about to break into my car? I imagine that if they were going to do that, they wouldn't have a problem getting the bat away from me and hurting me before I could do anything to them. I could have been hurt, or hurt someone, and I have no idea why I immediately went into Mr. T "I pity the fool who messes with my Jetta" mode in the first place!

I suppose it's anticlimactic and all, because nothing really happened, but have you ever had a moment like that, where all common sense left your body? I think that I must be in constant state of high alert while I'm here at church, because there is a genuine chance that someone from around here will do something stupid to our property, but that is no excuse for dumb-assery of any kind.

I was going to include the security video of the moment I realized I was about to be an idiot, but the less you actually get to see me be an idiot, the less likely you are to remember me being an idiot. Haha.

Oy.

NOOOOOOOO

UGH.  You know how sometimes you can be going about your day, just doing your life like normal and suddenly remember something that happened years ago and be freshly horrified about it?

This morning, I was at work and suddenly remembered that about 15 years ago, a woman from our church told me that she had Porphyria (a terrible blood disorder that ultimately led to her going insane and dying.)  When she told me I said "COOL!" because I had never known anyone who had it, and the only thing I knew about it was that it was probably one of the things that created the myth of vampires. 

I didn't mean it was actually cool, and even then I knew it was an awful disease, but I...I don't know why I said cool.  I guess it was the vampire thing?  Maybe?  I don't know, but I had successfully blocked the memory because right after I said it I knew what an asshole thing it was to say.  THe look on her face, y'all...  I'm not even sure what brought the memory back, but I've felt very uncomfortable about it since.

Please know that if you ever get sick and tell me about it, I genuinely do care. If I say something like "COOL!" it's only because my brain hasn't caught up with my heart yet.

via GIPHY

OY

Ok. Let's...let's just hope that things will calm down a little bit around here.  Please?  Ok? 

I mean, I know it could be worse.  It could be a lot worse.  Things have been sad, and busy, and busy with sad stuff, but for right now, right this second, things are calm.  Lots of people have it worse than what I've been going through, and I'm going to keep that in mind every time I start feeling overwhelmed.

Yesterday we buried a wonderful lady.  Aunt Brenda, the lady that we always go and stay with on Thanksgiving, passed away Sunday morning after a sudden health issue no one knew about caused a problem.  She and I were close. After my lovely mother-in-law passed away 12 years ago, Brenda became a de facto MIL to me. We talked a lot, and sent each other gifts, and it wasn't until she was gone that I realized how much of Aunt Brenda had been enmeshed my daily life.

It's like waking up and realizing a chair you sit in all of the time is missing, and you have to work around the knowledge that the chair isn't there anymore, and you keep walking to where that chair is supposed to be and it isn't there, and you have to think "well, shit, it isn't there anymore." and then you have to alter your course and find someplace else to sit that isn't as comfortable or convenient, and it throws you out of whack for a while.

She would probably hate that I'm comparing her to a chair, haha!  You know what I mean, though.

We traveled to Georgia on Tuesday for her wake and stayed until Wednesday for her funeral. I'm very glad that she had a closed casket, because I want to remember her the way I saw her last, and not in a coffin.  I sang at her funeral. It's one last thing I could do. Steve played his trumpet, which was nice.

Also, just for fun, I got some bad news about a close friend of mine and I can't help her at all with it.

I'm sorry if I'm framing it as being about me. None of this is ultimately about me and I know that, but people I love are hurting and I can't help them and it sucks.  Sitting around knowing you can't help is bad.

However, up til this point, I've managed to stay relatively gangster. When other people hurt, you just have to stuff your feelings all down and be strong for them, and I think I've managed that so far.  I don't think I've really had time to process all of the things that have happened in the past three weeks, but hopefully that will happen soon. I'm tired, and sick of being sad, and I would like to have some time where I don't have to think about all the bad things that have been going on, but that will have to wait because Christmas is here and we have to go and do a million things and if we didn't do those things we'd hurt people's feelings and there would be lots of questions and I just don't have the capacity to deal with that because the first moment someone questions why I don't want to do some big Christmas thing I think I'll snap and be rude out of sheer exhaustion and hurt someone's feelings and I really don't want to do that.  It's not even that I want to isolate myself or anything like that, it's just that I'd like so much to not have to think about everything shitty that has been going on, you know? 

But...for now, I'm fine.  I'm just fine. I'm gangster. However, I have a feeling that if anyone looks at me wrong or hurts my feelings in any way, I'm going to very much crack apart. 

via GIPHY

Not because I want to, but because there is just a lot of feelings in here that want to get out and I'm not letting that happen, damnit! 

So, that's where I am right now. I'm OK. I'm just full of all of this and it needs to settle. I'll be fine, I promise.  I think I'm just being selfish.

I hug you.

I AM AN IDIOT

(You know, you don't have to agree so readily..geez.)


July is car tag month for our family. Unfortunately, when we got the new car registered and had the tag transferred, we did it at an awkward time that didn't allow the DMV records to have time to be updated to show we no longer owned the convertible before the bill was sent out.  When we got our tag payment paperwork in the mail, it still showed that we were responsible for the Seabring, and not the Jetta.  Lovely.  Because of this problem, we couldn't just pay online like we always did.  Steve informed me that I'd need to go to the DMV satellite office (which is luckily at the mall near our house) and try and fix the issue. 

I didn't wanna go!!  It was going to be the last day of the month, which meant that everyone who'd been slacking off would be there!  I'd be there foreverrrrrrrrrr!  But, as I am an adult and have responsibilities, I (begrudgingly) hauled my cookies down to the office and stood in the very long line of people this morning. 

Actually, it wasn't that bad.  I was only in line for about 10 minutes, and even with the mistake on the payment form, the lady who helped me had me in and out in no time!  Go me!  As I was leaving, I decided that I was going to put the sticker on my car right away and not risk losing it before I could get home and put it on the tag.  So I knelt down and very firmly applied the sticker to the license plate, quite pleased with how well I'd covered the old one.  As I was just about to stand up, my eye fell on the back of the car.  I noticed that it didn't say "Jetta" like I expected it would.  It said "Focus."  Well, that was weird.  My car isn't a Focus!  So, yeah, I'd just applied my tag sticker to the wrong car.

To be fair, it was the same color and general shape of my car AND it was parked in the spot I'd originally pulled into (I pulled forward into the empty space in front of that one at the last minute) so it was directly behind my car.  It was a mistake anyone could have made....right?  Heh.

So I had to pull the sticker off of that car, tearing a chunk off of the other car's sticker in the process, and run to my car and slap it on and then jump in and drive away.  That parking lot has CC cameras all over the place, so I know that there is video of me doing something that looks shady.  I was so embarrassed.

So to the person who owns the dark red Ford Focus, I'm sorry I ripped your tag sticker, and I'm sorry I look like I was trying to break into your trunk. I was just trying to hastily cover up the fact that I still don't know what my car looks like out in the wild.