Random Stuff

The dark scares me. Not the natural dark of night. It's an unnatural darkness that consumes from within.

It rolls in quietly, shrouding everything in it's path impairing your vision and judgment. Slowly suffocating you until everything is dark.

Even though you feel it coming. There is nothing you can do. You can't outrun it. You can't wave it away. You're trapped.

On special occasions it is literally like someone flipped a switch. You're fine one minute and the next you're engulfed. Suddenly people and things seem out of reach, muted.

Time slows to a crawl. The slightest movement becomes a burden leaving you gasping for air. Your survival instinct kicks in and you fight. You feel your way through inch by inch.

At times the darkness is stronger, thicker. It lets you believe the nothingness of it is better than fighting. Fighting it leaves you drained. You ponder sitting and letting it overtake you. The desire to see and feel clearly without the veil of darkness is stronger. You stumble on blindly until the darkness thins and you can see slivers of light

It has always been a frustration of mine that I was never able to find Waldo or see the Virgin Mary on a Taco. I’ve always felt like an ass when someone showed me a picture told me what it was and I still didn’t see it. Five kids and I was never able to make out any of my children on an ultrasound. I’m the person standing in the museum staring at a titled painting going, “I don’t see it”.

All that changed today with this picture. Now I don’t feel like an ass because I see one.

My blogged was humped over at Lucky’s place. Lucky doesn’t like ASBT. FYI, I don’t know what that is. All in all though he wrote a very nice critique on nothing. Let’s face it there really is nothing here. He nailed that summation up and coincidentally tied it to a television show. Bonus points to him. Not only do I jump topics post to post, I’ll do it within a post. If you want to hear a lot about nothing, I’m your man. Could I be more imaginative? Perhaps. Could I be more consistent? Definitely. Will I? Probably not.

Lucky’s a good read and I’m not just saying that because he humped me.


Anyway, here are a couple of pictures. I’d apologize for the poor quality of the pictures but hey they aren't your kids.

Ever notice 8 hours on the weekend flies by but the 8 hours of a workday seem like F O R E V E R? I’m not even referring to the actual work. It’s the 8 hours of drivel shelled out by your co-workers that can make your ears bleed and you want to take a flying leap out the nearest window. Okay in my case, it would be to push someone out the nearest window. Even when I’m at my lowest I never entertain thoughts of hurting myself, only others.

In my defense though, how many times can one be asked to explain the same thing to someone before you just stab them with a pencil. As one who tends to forget things or flat out not listen in some instances, I will give people a 2 explanation of the same thing limit. If you ask me a 3rd time I do tend to get irritated, although I don’t growl as one co-worker described it. My feeling is that if the question is important enough to ask, you should pay attention to the answer. If you don’t understand the answer you should ask for clarification. If you don’t retain information (at this point in your adult life you should know whether or not that applies to you) and write it down. That seems logical to me but apparently it’s not.

There was a time when I had a bad habit of taking on the task instead of explaining it for the 3rd time. It just seemed easier to do it myself instead of telling the dumb-ass how to do it again. However, I realized in some instances, I was the dumb-ass because the goal of the person was to get out of doing it. Now I don’t give out the fish anymore. I patiently teach others to fish. If they don’t get it, I push them overboard. No one needs dead weight on their boat.

Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to push other crewmembers off than it is the captain. One would hope the captain wouldn’t steer the crew around in circles but we know that happens more often than not. Most captains won’t ask the crew for directions because they don’t want anyone to know they’re lost. What the captains don’t realize is that the crew knew we were headed in the wrong direction long before they did. Well, most of the crew anyway. There are always a few crewmembers that are so far up the captain’s rear that they will follow him in circles. Like Lemmings they will willingly follow the leader over the edge of the cliff.

Most days I don’t mind going in circles, going over the cliff is where I draw the line. I’m getting paid whether Skipper knows where he’s going or not. However I have a problem when I’m asked to explain how we ended up lost when you were the one steering. If I plot out directions and you don’t follow, that is your doing. If I give you wrong directions and you follow those, than that is mine. If you insist on having more Gilligan’s than professors on your boat, your three hour tour is bound to run longer.

I often find myself relating aspects of work to television or movies. I can’t begin to tell you how many Scarecrows here are in need of a trip to the Wizard.

BJ’s Wholesale Club that is. Although I do have a soft spot in my heart for, well never mind. BJ’s is like Sam’s which I hate, or Costco’s (sp?) which I’ve never been to but my sister who lives in Virginia is a big fan.

I may not always know where to store my vat of ketchup or that big ass box of fruit snacks but it does save me money. What I really love about them is their electronics department and their return policy.

Last year I purchased a portable DVD player for trigger finger for Father’s Day. In January the little round thing that holds the DVD broke. I searched high and low for the receipt and couldn’t find it. They exchanged it without the receipt.

This time the screen went blank and once again the receipt was not to be found. Fortunately I had given it to him for safekeeping this time or I would never here the end of it. Once again they exchanged it without the receipt.

BJ’s totally rock. And you can take that statement however you want.

For some reason the following line, “People grow, or at least they should, on a daily basis, and what you get in the beginning is not guaranteed to be there in the end.” which I read in someone’s blog (btw, I hope things are better), reminded me of two plants I received for Mother’s Day one year.

When my two oldest sons were in Kindergarten and first grade they both planted seeds in milk cartons so they could give me a plant on Mother’s Day. Both plants were watered, given plant food and placed in the sun. One flourished and quickly needed to be repotted. The other grew a bit and than just stopped, so I gave it extra care. I talked to it. I gave it extra plant food. I tried moving it to different parts of the house. I even put it in a new pot hoping that its roots would spread with all the room it now had. It didn’t. It seemed content as it was even though it wasn’t really reaching its potential.

While I was trying to coax it into growing, the plant which I had pretty much been ignoring sprouted pretty white flowers (don’t ask me what they were because I don’t know) and eventually grew out of the new pot.

People are the same. Some people will grow and thrive. Some need extra care to get them going; some do it on their own. Others won’t even with Miracle Grow. Some people are content knowing what they know about themselves and everything else. They don’t see any reason to broaden their horizons. They have set views and opinions. They see no reason to step out from the relative safety of the known and try to learn more. They blame their relationships, their upbringing, and their jobs. There is always an excuse stopping them from thriving.

People should grow; it’s a natural part of life. Hell yes, it’s scary especially if those around you don’t but it’s worth it. No one likes a dead plant.

No, I haven’t received any. I did however make one this weekend.

There I was in my comfy chair with my book minding my own business when suddenly I hear “MOMMMMEEEEE” at ear shattering levels. After putting my book down and investigating this is what I encountered:

6 yr old: Doesn’t 2+2 = 4?

Me wondering how many times my heart can drop to the floor before I actually keel over: Yes it is. Why are you crying?

6 yr old: She said its 22 and 1+1 =11.

Me looking over at 16 year old who is trying not to laugh: Stop aggravating her.


As I left the room I heard from the 16 year old: But 2+4 is still 24. And my friends, that is when it happened. I threatened to whack her in the head with a math book if she didn’t knock it off.

Charles did an alphabet meme that I thought was pretty cool. You are given a letter of the alphabet and write ten words that tell something about yourself beginning with your letter. My letter is A and I have to thank Charles because that gave me 4 words right away. If you'd like to try it leave a comment and I'll send you a letter.

Here's my 10 in no particular order.

Ass- Don't be an ass like me and not leave your email address in the comment section if you request a letter. So thank you Charles for coming over here and leaving it in my comment section since I didn't have the sense to leave my address.

Assclownopolis-Techinally that may not be a word but it is one of my favorite reads. While we're on A, so is An Unexamined Life and Am I Thinking That?

Ant-Thursday we had an ant in the house that must have been exposed to radiation. The thing was huge and had the potential to star in a really bad sci-fi movie. At least it did until it was stomped on.

Anyway-I'm not sure when I started saying this but I say it a lot. It helps me get back on topic as I tend to go off on a tangent on occasion.

Asshole-I use this word quite often especially at work usually in reference to this person or while driving.

Advice-I suck at following my own advice.

Alright-Despite sucking at taking my own advice and my myriad of other faults, I'm alright.

Apples-When I was a kid my father would load me in the car for the long drive to the orchard where we would have warm doughnuts and cider after picking apples, then when we got home he'd make the best applesauce.

Angelina-My favorite A of all. She's graduating from Kindergarten in a couple of days and you'd think she was going on to college. OTOH, I guess to a 6 year old, first grade is the big leagues.

Amel Larrieux-Two words and one starts with an L, I know, but I had to throw that in for Charles. Besides I'm running out of A's unless you count acrylic because I'm about to have my nails done by my favorite A.