Volunteer Appreciation Week

This is Volunteer Appreciation Week (well the tail end of it - 4/23-4/29) - This is probably something that most people are completely unaware of - and reading this they are saying... "next blog" - because, it's boring. Well it's boring to everyone that doesn't work with volunteers nearly daily. So... I work for a non-profit foundation, and we sent out a sappy little card to all of our volunteers saying "thank you" - it was nice, not fabulous but nice (I wanted to send them all candy bars with customized wrappers - maybe next year - I also wanted to send them all this little card that is 'tips for caregivers' - because most of them are indeed caregivers [aren't we all]) - okay so anyhow, this is volunteer appreciation week. Now, I stayed home for years, neither my husband nor I finished our degrees in college, we both had great paying jobs working our way through college and it was just so much easier to stick with that - we were making more than our friends who had finished college (btw to anyone thinking of quitting college - all those people we WERE making more than, are making shitloads more than us now), so we aren't just rolling around in cash that we are dying to give to organizations that touch our hearts. But we do volunteer, OMG do we volunteer, we are volunteer junkies - our accountant every year tells us that we probably shouldn't claim ALL of our volunteer mileage, etc. - so we don't. He coaches, mostly that's his gig - but coaching is a huge commitment of time and miles, etc. - I work with the girls organizations, keep score at ballgames (that would make a very good post), work at school occasionally, coordinate a team to raise money for ALS, coordinate volunteers for several other organizations, and of course working for a non-profit - I do my fairshare of volunteering there as well - so.... what the hell was the point of this? - oh yeah volunteer appreciation week... no I still don't know what my point was... crap. OMG duh! So, yesterday an opportunity to volunteer presented itself through the networking of the non-profits that work together - in other words a friend of my boss needed volunteers and contacted my boss because she is the most hooked up person in the city for volunteers - really she is, she has hundreds that will do almost anything for her - anyhow, this was a nice one, go put pompoms on the seats for Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and get two tickets to the playoff game... yeah you heard me - TWO tickets to a PLAYOFF game (per volunteer) - well my kids didn't have school... so the kids and I - that makes 4 volunteers - took off and went on down - also my boss was busy, so I coordinated the volunteers that came through our organization - we worked for like 1.5 hours, watched the players skate, and had a pretty nice time, then we handed out all the tickets - really nice tickets. I took my husband and each kid took a friend - it was an outstanding game, and wow did I feel appreciated!

Love Songs are BS

An email to a friend (discussing her ‘party shuffle’ on her iTunes), and then some more….

I am pathetically a radio junkie - I need the radio to turn me on to new music - and I love listening to certain DJ's - I haven't even had a CD player in my last three cars. To be fair three cars ago, I was more interested in what sort of vehicle I could afford that would accommodate three car seats and I was glad to have a radio to drown out the whining from the backseats. I do have a tape player for road trips and days when you just can't listen to one more dick-joke, whiney-ass-fix-my-marriage-by-writing-an-email-to-the-morning-show, we're-so-hysterical, we're-so-smart, we're-so-irreverant moronic moment. However, last time I took a road trip completely alone it was to Casper Wyoming and I forgot my tapes at home and had to actually truthfully listen to the farm report - and even that got lost for a few miles and I had nothing but me! I learned a lot about some disease that cattle were suffering from. And I still hate ballads - I should maybe blog about that since I'm obviously in a typing mood.

So I hate ballads, I really really hate ballads – that does not mean that I haven’t swayed gently in my husbands arms looking sweetly into his eyes, maybe even tearing up at the overwhelming feelings of love that I had for him at that moment and listening to some ballad that makes me even more verklempt (it is the best word here). There are ballads that I love – but they are very few and very far between – amazingly I can think of two albums that have two ballads each that I love (Dire Straits and Neil Young). I LOVE the scan button, it prevents me from having to listen to sappy stupid tired love songs that are almost all bullshit. That’s right, love songs are bullshit – love does NOT happen the way it happens in love songs, oh sure it might happen that way in tenth grade for five minutes, maybe even 5 days – but the reality is, real true love, real honest love, does not come packaged with all that sappy sentiment and goopy crap – A. Men aren’t actually capable of a lot of the stupid shit they say they are in love songs – oh sure they might fake you out for a day or two – but they are eventually going to leave their underwear on the floor, fart while you are in the room, (maybe even while your nose is within 3 feet of their asshole), sleep through something you are saying to them, or tell you that they must watch golf on t.v. because it’s the masters or the open or some shit like that – and at those moments, they are not thinking, “I love her so much and I can’t live without her smile every morning”. B. Women aren’t actually that shallow and dumb that “I can’t live without your smile every morning” is enough. We need you to kill the spiders, change the lightbulbs, take out the trash, get up in the middle of the night and prowl around the house in your underwear (or less) looking for the pack of burglars that caused that “noise”. I’m actually having trouble making my point here, because I NEVER listen to ballads – so I can’t remember what the stupid pathetic lyrics are that make me so insane. I may have to actually put on KOSI (yes that’s pronounced ‘cozy’ and they do play sappy elevator shit that you know all the lyrics to, even if you never listen to ballads) – that’s the other thing… HOW do I know the words, HOW???? And while we are at it, the best, make you cry in your beer, make you feel profound sorrow and deep love song EVER (and I don’t do EVER, ALWAYS, NEVER, FAVORITE – and I can’t think of the term for those sorts of words) – ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’ – just rip my heart out with a broken beer bottle, stomp on it with your dirty acme boots, throw your resistol down on top of the withering pile that is left of it and then sweep me off my barstool and have your way with me cuz I’m a puddle of pathetic sentimental goo. Also along those lines ‘Country Bumpkin’ – ridiculous, silly, sad, and so honest it’s agony. Honest love songs/ballads are about pain and sorrow in addition to love.

Biggest crap song I could think of at the moment: (Amazed by Lonestar)
Every time our eyes meet
This feeling inside me
Is almost more than I can take
Baby when you touch me
I can feel how much you love me
And it just blows me away
I've never been this close to anyone or anything
I can hear your thoughts
I can see your dreams
I don't know how you do what you do
I'm so in love with you
It just keeps getting better
I wanna spend the rest of my life
With you by my side
Forever and ever
Every little thing that you do
Baby I'm amazed by you
The smell of your skin
The taste of your kiss
The way you whisper in the dark
Your hair all around me
Baby you surround me
You touch every place in my heart
Oh it feels like the first time every time
I wanna spend the whole night in your eyes
I don't know how you do what you do
I'm so in love with you
It just keeps getting better
I wanna spend the rest of my life
With you by my side
Forever and ever
Every little thing that you do
Baby I'm amazed by you
Every little thing that you do
I'm so in love with you
It just keeps getting better
I wanna spend the rest of my life
With you by my side
Forever and ever
Every little thing that you do
Oh, every little thing that you do
Baby I'm amazed by you

Now maybe the first time you read through that (or heard it) you are thinking oh that is wonderful that’s just how I felt about the most important person I’ve ever been with – but please… if you really love someone ‘every little thing you do’ is not wonderful – cuz… they are going to talk in the middle of the dialogue of your favorite show, they are going to pick their teeth in the car, they are going to shit with the bathroom door open… these are not things that anyone loves about another person… ‘it feels like the first time every time’ obviously they are up to fewer than 50 times, because eventually, it doesn’t feel like the first time – it feels better sometimes and you are blown away, it feels naughtier (and you are either blown away or grossed out depending on your mood), it feels cheaper, quicker, slower, longer, more boring, more outstanding, incredible, obligatory, etc. – and I’m here to tell you right now, when you aren’t in the mood, cuz he farted in the car on the way home from a dinner at your inlaws where you felt less than adequate and you are feeling fat and a little bit overwhelmed by all the crap that isn’t done around the house and you are obligated cuz it’s freakin his birthday, and you do it anyhow… THAT’S LOVE! (and it might just turn out better than you are expecting). ‘every time our eyes meet…’ – I’m thinking they have not had any fights about the kids/money/etc. – because I know for a fact that my husband does not enjoy looking in my eyes when we are arguing. So, in conclusion… love songs are bullshit – except for maybe a few (and even those are part bullshit, but after all you have to have something to slow dance to, and… no matter how much you like the song, you can’t slow dance at your wedding to a song about a hooker, but you can pick another beautiful song off of the same album – one about love and happiness and sorrow and misery).

Dire Straits “Why Worry"
Baby I see this world has made you sad
Some people can be bad
The things they do, the things they say
But baby I'll wipe away those bitter tears
I'll chase away those restless fears
That turn your blue skies into grey
Why worry, there should be laughter after the pain
There should be sunshine after rain
These things have always been the same
So why worry now
Baby when I get down I turn to you
And you make sense of what I do
I know it isn't hard to say
But baby just when this world seems mean and cold
Our love comes shining red and gold
And all the rest is by the way
Why worry, there should be laughter after pain
There should be sunshine after rain
These things have always been the same
So why worry now

I don’t know how love comes shining red and gold, but I know this song is good and honest and not so damn sappy that I want to slap someone, and it has never been played on the radio to the point where I fantasized blowing something up.

Ice Cream and Ballplayers…

So last night the baseball ‘team mom’ (of sorts anyhow) wrangled us all over to the Cold Stone Creamery for a fundraiser. Actually it was a pretty good deal, they gave us 30% of the entire night (some of the other similar ones are more like 20% of those people that bring in their flyers… well if they space their flyer). In addition to that, the boys were back there serving the people… and they loved it, a few of them didn’t want to stop serving. They had practice earlier in the evening so they were all wearing (well almost all) baseball pants and jerseys and hats… there’s something pretty delightful about a cute boy in baseball pants and hat serving you ice cream on a warm evening! Yeah, that was a plus for us, it was definitely ice cream weather, and there were a lot of people in there. I personally think that Cold Stone is pretty pricey and a bit over rated – not that it isn’t fabulous ice cream, but the price kinda knocks me over. If my kids go to town and get whatever they want, then it can cost as much to have Cold Stone as it does to go out to dinner – and that just doesn’t seem right. However, as my two teenaged daughters continue to point out to me, and then validate with each visit… all the cute boys seem to work there. So for them at least it’s a dual purpose visit, candy for your ice cream and candy for your eyes. So this particular baseball team – and hey don’t misread this, I think we’ve covered this in a previous post – I am not a pervert, I just REMEMBER being 14, 15, 16 and I have daughters that age and I can recognize a cute boy… doesn’t mean I want to date him or anything of that nature… usually it just means I want to point him out to my daughters – so back to my point… this particular baseball team almost seems like it is a pre-requisite to be cute to be on the team. Of course some boys are cuter than others, and some are maybe kinda ho-hum to the more discerning teenage girl, but none of them are ugly, geeky, dorky, whatever is unattractive. So these cute boys, all about 14, some are still 13 but will turn 14 during this baseball season – are back there in their baseball garb scooping up delectable ice cream for several hundred people, and my two teenage daughters seemed to have cared less. Well of course these boys are their brother’s friends, so that knocks them down a peg, cuz ewwwww they might have brother cooties or something. But I observed that just about every other girl that came in from 8 to 80 was thoroughly charmed by the boys – it was rather fun to observe. I was dreading it, not a big ice cream person, think Cold Stone is over rated, and frankly, I’m so busy that hanging out at the ice cream store all night held little or no appeal to me. I was wrong, it was sorta fun (wouldn’t want to do it once a week or anything), and it was entertaining, and the boys seemed to just love it.

Blogging v. BigChiefing

Not that I really have any random readers - but for those of you that didn't go to my High School - a brief little explanation (for those of you that read my blog, you are thinking 'yeah right, brief' and rolling your eyes) of 'BigChiefing' - hereafter known as BC'g (or BC = Big Chief). So when we were in tenth grade, what a fantastic year really - and mostly because of the Starkeys - outstanding teachers, at least most of us thought so (sorry Mitch, you were wrong and we were right, they were wonderful teachers). Take a quick survey see if you can find another person that didn't major in 'English' or some derivative that thinks that their 10th Grade English Teacher made the entire year wonderful. The Starkeys also gave us the Big Chief - I know your thinking, no they didn't the big chief was around when my grandmother went to school - well yes that's true, and if you pay close enough attention the big chief was the preferred source of writing paper for John Boy Walton. But the Starkey's gave their students the Big Chief in a way that might have stemmed from some secret obsession with John Boy Walton – though if that was true, it would be both surprising and they never confessed it to me or anyone I knew of. We were required to journal 10 pages per week in our Big Chief – it could be any form of free write that we chose – it could be the same word over and over, and some kids did that – it could be very formal, few kids did that. Another fabulous thing, the Starkeys actually read them – unless you wrote “Do Not Read” at the top of the page, then they would respect your privacy and not read it – and I really do believe that they didn’t read those pages. I had Mr. Starkey, and he would write comments – so you know he was reading it. Not corrections, comments much like a blog can get. Things like ‘Wow, you really did that’ – or ‘I wish I knew someone like that’. It was awful when you had to hand in your big chief and do without it for a couple of days – you felt naked and alone without your outlet. Every day you could find at least 6 students writing in their Big Chiefs in some common area of the school – and some of those were upper classmen – after one whole year as sophomores of journaling, it stuck, and most of my friends still use some form of journaling to this day (and we are all either pushing 40 or 40-something – 25-30 years is a long time to carry on a Sophomore English assignment). They also published a portion of the High School writing samples called ‘Best of Big Chief’ – you could submit what you thought was some of your most profound Big Chief entries for consideration – I remember that I wrote several pages about the Daphnia that we were studying in Biology – and that was published in Best of BC.
So the point of my blog – a clever fellow alum found my blog, and was inspired to begin her own – in an attempt to replace her BC (you see they aren’t made anymore, some sort of terrorist plot I suspect, but exposing my strange political paranoia’s is all for another day) – and she laments some of the differences in her own recent post. Her lamentations (how often do you use that word outside of a bible discussion?) inspired me to note the benefits of a blog.
A. Now that I have children, I don’t feel I have the same level of privacy that I had with a BC in tenth grade, I knew my mother wasn’t reading it, I knew my teacher wouldn’t read anything I didn’t want him to, I could be ‘free’. With kids in the house I don’t feel like if my journal were sitting around they would be able to control the urge to peek – and well with kids in the house – an awful lot of what I want to free write about involves them, and isn’t necessarily thoughts I want them to know that I am having. I have managed thusfar to keep my blog a secret from my family, though I do confess that much of what I actually write doesn’t end up having the publish button pushed – ya know, just in case someone decides to read it.
B. No writer’s cramp
C. Comments – like I said, one nice thing, at least to my mind, was the random reactions of Mr. Starkey – I get that now (well sort of, there’s a possibility of it anyhow)
D. Better for the environment – okay to many of you this will be a stretch, but… less paper, fewer lost trees – and for the power argument, my computer is on all day anyhow, so it’s not like I’m using that power, it would be used anyhow – there could be something said to those who want to be hyper-particular about the power used because of the increased bandwidth used because it resides on some server somewhere – and yes a lot of my posts are quite long – but I don’t do a lot of things that use significantly more bandwidth so I’m not buying that either.
E. I can’t lose it, I lose things, lots of things, often, I suck at filing, I suck at cleaning, and I lose things – I can’t lose something that is filed away from my home.
F. I can access it from anywhere – well practically – might be hard if I decide to run the Iditarod to jump on the web from the middle of nowhere Alaska to post how funny it was when my lead dog farted in the next dog’s face – but how likely is it that I’m going to be in the Iditarod?
G. I type faster than I write – my hands can almost keep up with my thoughts, in fact sometimes my hands actually regurgitate my thoughts more truthfully on a keyboard.

Yes I miss the Indian, yes I miss the texture of the paper, yes I miss the smell, and the way the pages flip over the top, and how you can always flip right to the next blank page because after you write on that paper it changes it’s texture and how it lays together in the pad. I also miss getting to the back of the BC and flipping it over to begin again on the backsides of pages – I never did front then back, I went front front front to the end then back back back to the cover. It was some sort of milestone to flip it over. I have probably filled at least 100 big chiefs with doodles and journals and thoughts and lists in 30 years, and I miss them too.

All Over the Guy

It was a fairly normal morning around here – I woke up after everyone else, but before Hubby took the kids to the bus. As I was lying on the couch waiting for his return, I realized that his ‘paused’ ESPN wasn’t my bag, so I swapped tuners (didn’t want to lose his place in sportscenter) and it came up on a pay channel that required the parental code. Yes you can just go to guide anyhow, but somehow that little box blinking at me is like a dare – and I must enter the parental code because I know what the parental code is. Well, the movie on that channel captivated me in less than ten seconds, and as I told myself that
a. I shouldn’t get involved in a movie in the morning on a work day;
b. I shouldn’t get involved in a movie that is already half over;
c. hubby is never going to want to come home from the bus and watch a movie with gay men kissing instead of sportscenter
I kept watching anyhow, and… hubby watched too when he got home. He turned his head when the gay guys kissed, etc. – but we watched the movie through to the end. Now I am no gay movie aficionado by any stretch, and I’m certain to have any that actually read this (hey I have a reader now!) tell me how wrong I am. Here’s the thing though – my feelings can’t be wrong so pffffft! So I was completely captivated by this film – for those of you who have seen it, I joined in at the moment when the straight guy, played by Adam Goldberg approaches the straight woman, played by Sasha Alexander in the furniture store and begins his salesman routine, which is NOT routine. I really like that actor, even though I had to go and look up his name, and then when they had the discussion about ‘buttercup’ I was all in – no turning back, no matter what little warnings the voice inside my head was shouting at me. The point of my post by the way, was how refreshing it was to watch a ‘gay film’ that was NOT artsy, deep, philosophical, etc. It was a dumb trite predictable love story that could have been a 1950’s movie starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day – they get fixed up on a blind date, they hate one another, but there’s something. They see one another again, and eventually begin dating, but the one is afraid of commitment and the other has terrible self-esteem – and of course (I really am not ruining the movie, because I saw it coming even before I got up to get that first cup of coffee) end up together. I loved that it was trite and predictable and was not really so much about gay as about relationships – it was refreshing that someone wrote a stupid love story and just simply inserted a gay couple. Besides who doesn’t like stupid love stories occasionally. So if you are in the mood for a stupid love story and don’t mind seeing guys kiss each other, you should check All Over the Guy out. It has some clever dialogue, some typical angst, and no real life lessons – thank God.

Seventh Grade Science

What a flashback - Miss something or other - she became Mrs. Cantrell - when she married Mr. Cantrell - an 8th grade science teacher. I really liked her, and him - lots of kids didn't. I also had Mr. Tepley for awhile, don't remember if that was 7th or 8th grade... I do remember he had sweat stains down to his waist line and that I discovered that I was color blind in his class. I remember most of all, and I think just about every kid in Jefferson County does, dissecting a fetal pig. I was fortunate - I did not have a girlie freaking out kind of a lab partner, nor was I that way. We really got into it, we didn't freak out or gross out or get sick or giggle, etc. My nephew attends that SAME Junior High, and is in 7th grade, and now... 30+ years later, actually I think probably 35 exactly, but I'm too lazy to do the math - he dissected his fetal pig a couple of months back. He's a squemish kid and thought the whole thing was rather gross and was glad when it was over. He didn't want to answer my questions either. I also remember that I had the privilege of babysitting some classroom critter over I think spring break - so that Mr. & Mrs. Cantrell could go on a honeymoon. I think it was hamsters - but it could have been any hairy little rodent, I was just delighted to have that special connection with a teacher that I liked.