Who's That Girl

Who's that girl and why is she sitting on the hood of an '89 Mustang?


Whoever she is, will someone please tell her to put on a more respectable top? God forbid her children would see this photo someday. Oh, yes, in 10 years she'll have children. Two to be exact. And then she'll spend 5 years changing diapers. Five. But don't tell her that part, though.


Will someone also please tell her that she's making the right choice by moving to the big city after high school? That creative, artsy, right-brain void she feels will be filled. Hallelujah. And she'll discover espresso along the way. Double hallelujah. And that small town she was so adamant about leaving? She'll return with husband and children in tow, moving for the 7th--and last--time in her life.


And, for the love of all things good, please tell her to go easy on the candy, ice cream, and chocolate. She'll thank you when she's 34.

Cast Away

Taking the pins out of Big pup's arm proved to be easier than putting them in.

We arrived at the hospital at 6 a.m. last Friday. I didn't bother getting him dressed before we left the house, I just left his pj's on and I wish I had done that last time. The nurses let him keep his pajama pants on. That was nice. He took some medicine to relax him--it was just as yucky as last time--but now, instead of making him goofy, it made him very sleepy. He could barely keep his eyes open and he was slurring his speech. Eventually, the nurses came in and wheeled him to the operating room, so I got out a book and managed to read 2 pages before the doctor came in and told us they were done. They kept him in recovery for about an hour then they wheeled him back into our room. He was awake, very alert, talkative, and in a good mood. After he had some apple juice and an orange popsicle, I put his pajama top and slippers back on and we both rode down on a wheelchair. From then on it was like any other day.

One more consultation with the doctor in a couple of weeks and then The Broken Arm Incident of 2007 will be over.

Homestead

Nascar's season finale aired yesterday and to no one's surprise Jimmie Johnson won his second straight championship. He actually finished 7th in the race but it was enough to secure the trophy.

Elliott Sadler started 31st (ugh) and finished 38th (ugh). He ended up placing 25th for the year in the points standings. He wasn't running that great and when he hit the wall on lap 69, it caused damage to the rear deck and his car went from not so great to really bad. In Elliott's In the Field article for Nascar.com, he says he and his dogs (he has 83 of them!) will be up at 6 a.m. this morning getting ready to go hunting. About halfway through yesterday's race, Rodney Childers, his crew chief--I mean, team director--had a question for him:

RC: Are you going hunting tomorrow?
ES: F***, I don't know. I don't feel like doing anything right now. It
sucks, I make one little mistake in the corner and it costs us the
whole weekend.
RC: It's all good. I make mistakes, we all make mistakes. We'll get this
day over with and put the season behind us and start working on next
year.

I'm guessing he did go hunting this morning. In the article he mentioned how hunting is like therapy for him and it sure sounds like he needs it after this race. It's funny to hear them have regular conversations while driving over 100 miles per hour. In Texas, Elliott and his spotter discussed NFL games. Very funny.

Matt Kenseth gets the win, Jimmie Johnson gets the championship, Johnny Benson gets the Red Lantern, and we're in Daytona February 17, 2008.

Call Me Ponyboy

When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.


I think that ranks right up there with "Call me Ishmael" for famous first lines in literature. Anyone who paid attention in 8th grade English will recognize those words from S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. Or maybe not. It seems that some schools have banned the book for depicting drug and alcohol abuse and violence. But that's not what I remember most about the book. I remember Johnny and Ponyboy watching the sunrise while Ponyboy recites Robert Frost's poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay. Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold....

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Finally!

Today, I'm picking up Big pup from school and taking him to the orthopaedic clinic. If the x-rays show his arm is healed then they'll take the cast off tomorrow. Which means tomorrow will be another groggy day.

The school is having the Kindergarten Thanksgiving program tomorrow. It's a shame he doesn't get to go. He was going to be a little Indian boy and his line was, "One day a kind Indian came to the Pilgrim's village. He liked the Pilgrims and wanted to help them." Doesn't that seem too long for a 5 year old to memorize? Or maybe a 5 year old has better memorization skills than I do. All I know is I would want the line They ate turkey, corn, and pumpkin or this easy one And everyone gave thanks.

Although I'm a little sad that he doesn't get to participate in the play, it does mean that I don't have to go out and buy him slacks and a white shirt. And for that I am very thankful.

Quack! Quack!

Emergency Room visit--$75
Orthopaedic office visits--$185
Hospital bill--$940
Having Aflac insurance--priceless!

I highly recommend getting Aflac to anyone with kids. It picks up where your regular insurance leaves off and pays your share of the bill for you. But only in case of accidents. For instance, Little pup's trip to the ER for croup: not covered. Little pup's trip to the ER when mommy dropped a spaghetti sauce jar on his head: covered.

On a related note, while driving by a local Baptist Independent church a few weeks ago, I couldn't help but notice their sign out front. It said, What you need is Life Assurance, not Insurance. And while I wholeheartedly agree that what's missing in ch rch is u, I'm going to have to disagree with this one.

An Autumn Night's Dream

I sat down in the grass. WD sat down beside me. We were soon joined by 3 women. I thought, Why do I have to socialize with strangers? Why can't I just sit with WD and not have to say anything? Now I'm forced to think of topics for small talk. I can't think of anything. One of the women begins to flirt mercilessly with WD. She has spit hanging from her mouth. Why don't her friends give her a nudge? They look as uncomfortable as I am. I look up. There's a diesel truck with a flat bed trailer hauling a John Deere tractor flying in the sky. It's quite impressive. The pups would like to see this, I thought. Everyone around me glances up at the truck weaving through the clouds. It's getting closer and closer. I start to worry. "I have a bad feeling about this," I said. I look over at WD. He's enjoying the attention from Little Miss Spittles. She's asking him about Nascar. Seriously, she has spit dangling like a pendulum from her mouth. Can anyone else see this? I look back up at the sky and the flying truck is headed right for me. "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!" I say over and over. Little Miss Spittles leans over and puts her ear towards my mouth. She doesn't understand what I'm saying. I don't want her anywhere near me. The truck is hovering right above me so I lie back and kick it away. I sit back up and see that the truck had crashed into an overpass, causing the structure to collapse. I'm sitting there in disbelief, looking at the jumbled mess of concrete and cars and WD says to me, "Well, you said something bad was going to happen."

I really don't have very many dreams at all, but this one was a doozy. I woke up in the middle of the night with my heart pounding, trying to think of alternate dream endings to make things right.

The one thing I remember from Intro to Psychology in college was that the professor ate a Tootsie pop during every class. Analyze that! The second thing I remember is that the dream theorist, Alfred Adler, believed that the less dreams you have, then the less problems you have and the more psychologically healthy you are. Woo hoo! Good to know. He believed that our dreams are correlated with the problems in our daily life. I think so, too. In just this one dream you find my discomfort around strangers, me ignoring my instincts, my inablility to make small talk coupled with the feeling that I need to make small talk, the search for Christmas presents (big trucks with 2 trailers) for the pups, and, of course, my fear of bridges. However, I have no idea what to make of the woman drooling over WD.

WD? Do you have anything to tell me?