October 10, 2006

 Net Worth?

This is part of a very important, on-going saga so if you’re just wandering in, you really must scroll down to the archives and read the last two entries.  You’ll be lost otherwise, due to the intricate weaving of very, very intriguing story threads and such.  Very, very important and intricate…intriguing saga stuff, you’ll want to start at the beginning.  Or you’ll wish it were already over. 

Wednesday

October 4

Day fifteen

A most uneventful day:  met the husband for lunch, located and started laundering my winter clothes from storage, started moving summer clothes to storage, and that about covers it.  Watched Lost tonight – so glad it’s back!  What the heck though?  The Others have a book club?  There were what?  Like six or seven people in the room?  If they can get six or seven copies of a Stephen King book, then they can sure as heck arrange for a boat ride out of there.  Tonight’s show was like a cross between The Village and Jurassic Park (the book version).  Sawyer in the bear cage was priceless though.  I suppose there is no question now about the possible story line longevity.  Once this little mystery is over, all the survivors can decide they just love the island and can’t leave, so they’ll start the zoo back up and open it to the public.  It’ll be like Grey’s Anatomy with cuddly bear cubs instead of bloody patients!  Today was email day, or rather new email day, and I was reminded that this is stupid.  I mean, maybe it’s worth it because without it I wouldn’t have discovered that I could marry Ted Turner and never want for anything again, but even still…one has to wonder.  Plus my husband read the Ted Turner thing and said he knew from the moment I suggested we should invest in alternative fuel (right after Ted told Letterman that’s the way to go) that I was smitten.  And here I was offended that he was pretty much sleeping when I was trying to talk investment strategy.  Turns out he was listening, how sweet!     

Thursday

October 5

Day sixteen

Finally had my hair appointment today.  It turned out well, despite having to make a frantic phone call to my sister, to ask her to pick up my kids from school.  I should’ve had plenty of time, but the hair lady (I don’t call her that to her face, I promise) was running a half hour behind and then decided to use a new procedure or whatever that took longer!  Luckily my sister has to be at the school at the same time anyway and could pick them up, because when I was due there at 3 PM and 2:25 PM found me still in foil with not a hair having been clipped as of yet…well, let’s just say that since I told my daughter she cannot wear her plastic, glow-in-the-dark fangs in public until Halloween is less than seven days away, there is NO way she’d appreciate me being allowed out with foil sticking out every which way from my head.  I’d be embarrassed, she’d be ticked that adults get to look ridiculous anytime they want…it had disaster written all over it.  I stayed up late last night and wrote a Mercurial column, which was difficult honestly.  I’m enjoying watching General Hospital again, but it’s really hard to get back into writing about it.  Partly because I missed so much – it’s difficult to feel confident in having any feelings on the matter.  If I write:  “I don’t blame Liz one bit for dumping her drug sniffing dog of a husband”, I just kind of sit back and cringe, waiting to receive an email that says:  “Yeah?  WELL, Lucky stood by that little sanctimonious (because ANY Liz criticizer knows to throw sanctimonious in there, I do it myself) snot while she launched her little home-based business last spring!  I take it you think she doesn’t owe him for getting her a good price on the equipment when she had to shut down her Meth lab?”  I mean, how would I know?  Anyway.  I (*whispers*) answered a few emails today that were marked urgent.  How did I know about them if I wasn’t opening outlook express you wonder?  Well, it’s entirely possible to hit buttons you don’t mean to hit.  Once you do, it’s not like you can just un-learn that knowledge, right?  That is one possible explanation.  Answering those emails sort of morphed into some communication about the Prime Time (and yes, my plan is to spend all my free time circularly linking you to all my writings in order to keep you in my web, ba-hahahahah!) column, but that did result in my actually writing a few lines, so that is probably allowed.

Friday

October 6

Day seventeen

Wow.  Let me just take a moment to apologize for the visual mess that was last weeks’ diary.  I just checked back to make sure I had it right and it really is day seventeen, and noticed that pretty much all of my headings for last week were wrong – each in their own way.  Good grief.  I wasn’t drunk; I swear it. 

Monday

October 2

Monday 

?!?!! 

Is this what it has come to?  I type stuff like that and you all don’t even blink?  Real friends would’ve said “Sherry is much more professional than this!  We must send help, she’s obviously writing under duress and trying to send us a message!” :)  *Sigh* TGIF and all that.  I was lazy today.  It would’ve been great if someone had vacuumed and maybe dusted, but after looking around for maybe fifteen minutes or so I realized that I really am the only one here during the day, so I gave up hope.  This way my husband can write “I love you” in the dust on the TV screen.  Studies have shown that if you’re going to leave such messages, avoid the coffee table.  Your message is more likely to be covered up with papers and stuff, plus the rings from beverage glasses can distort your intent – sometimes with dangerous results.  Imagine the “y” in “you” is partially undusted, and (I can’t believe undusted isn’t triggering spell check – is that actually a word?) the reader sees an “L” instead.  Inevitably a “Lou who?” conversation will have to ensue and then the kids will bounce into the middle of it thinking you’re reading Dr. Seuss and what relationship can survive having to read “Green Eggs and Ham” while she glares at him and he wonders why she just won’t pick up a damn dust rag?  I gotta go make chili, and maybe dust a few things after all. 

Saturday

October 7

Day eighteen

Today we made a trip to the library.  Picked up a Goosebumps movie for the kids, because they’re obsessed.  The desk was holding a couple books for me, so I’m set for a while.  Then we went to Sears.  Let me just tell you how that went.  We had to pick up a birthday gift for my father-in-law.  Seems like a “his” job, so I decided to wait in the car with a book while he went to browse the tools.  I presented either option to the kids, with the happy “oh what fun” voice for the browsing trip and the serious “it will be quiet reading time” voice for the car stay.  The eldest bit for the fun and the youngest thought I shouldn’t be alone.  After they went in, she proceeded to announce that she just didn’t feel “into” reading, and then she set about being an eight-year-old, right in my left ear.  A half hour goes by.  She’s now in the drivers seat, having adjusted it in every manner possible, and she’s asking me for the second time in two days what the hazard light button is.  I wonder aloud about how hard it can possibly be to find a tool in Sears.  Another twenty-five minutes goes by.  We discuss whether it’s possible they were mistakenly locked in a chest freezer or something.  They finally return.  He apologizes, says it’s his fault (well duh – I was pretty sure I wasn’t sending off “don’t come back anytime soon” vibes…though I am good at that when I need to be, of course) and that he picked something out in the first five minutes.  Then he tried to pay with a gift card he had from a return last Christmas.  They told him it only had two dollars and some change on it, he insisted that it had seventeen dollars – because it was wrapped in a receipt that told him so.  So he waited over forty-five minutes for them to get a manager, track down the lady that can look up such information, have the lady actually look it up, and come and tell him what he spent the fifteen dollars on.  “Women’s bikini underwear and a four dollar pair of pants” I absolutely have no doubt that the lady loved reading that aloud to him in the middle of the store, lol!  He says to me “I guess you bought underwear?” with the whole accusing tone thing going on.  I reply: “Yes, picked them out while you were trying on the four dollar pants and then you paid for both.”  Pfft.  I have no idea why, during the long wait, he didn’t think to run out to the car and ask me if I remembered him using his gift card.  Whatever though, I don’t even feel the least bit bad about the footprints on his dash, windows and seat.  As for the four-dollar pants (before you ask, lol) they were corduroys on clearance in the middle of summer – regularly 34.99!  Watched the Tigers spit out the Yankees today.  I’m totally a fair-weather fan, but my father, his father, and *his* father before him are/were die-hards, and my grandpa took all thirteen of his grandchildren to games every summer so I figure if nothing else, I’ve inherited the right to stop in for the celebration.  Detroit may not be lacking in sports celebrations in recent years, but Michigan baseball fans *have* been, so I had to watch.  Plus, I’d watch anyone beat the Yankees, hee hee!  :)  

Sunday

October 8

Day nineteen

Went Halloween costume shopping.  That consisted of the harrowing drive all around town until we located one of those costume stores that moves into an empty storefront a few weeks before Halloween.  I say harrowing because while we’re scanning for signs of life in previously unoccupied windows, the kids are shouting “there’s one” every time they see any Halloween type decoration anywhere near any building.  I really hate dressing up, even as a child it didn’t really do much for me.  I was always something where I could (I thought) look pretty.  Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, a frontier woman, a southern belle, a pilgrim, etc., always with the long flowing dress option and maybe a jaunty hat.  I don’t really recall ever being something scary.  My girls, on the other hand, were princesses when I was making the costume decisions…but now?  They both wanted to be a werewolf, but that was early on.  After looking through several places for ideas, it seems we’ve settled on a Crypt Creature with a mask with blinking red eyes, and a Zombie prom queen.  We bought the Crypt Creature, the Zombie we’re devising on our own.  The Disney princess tiara from the dress up box is getting a black spray paint treatment and we’ll add some black tulle to it.  White face makeup, dark eye rings, and a fake neck slash are up as well.  I just have to locate a dress we can mangle.  I may even have something around here; I’ll have to look.  I guess I’m glad they get into the spirit of the thing, and up until this year I kind of limited how scary they could be (last year we had a pirate and a ninja) but I’ve given up.   Later in the day the kids went on a bike ride with their grandparents and the husband and I took a nice walk, trying to enjoy the fall weather while it lasts.   

Monday

October 9

Day twenty

I have to admit, I really haven’t been completely cut off from the Internet lately.  I’m not spending much time online, but I have had to check for emails here and there because of things that came up.  I have been checking Ebay for a few things.  I’ve sneaked into the newspaper site a few times.  I’ve accomplished more writing than I have in ages, so that’s great, but I think I’ve pretty much proven that I’m not capable of being completely Internet-free.  I’m like those B-list celebrities that sign up for Celebrity Fit Club and then say “What?!  You want me to eat less and spend *time* exercising?  I don’t have time for that!  Nuh uh, no way, you people are crazy!  You’re being unfair!”  When it’s on TV it’s just an annoying dialogue – when it’s in your living room and you’re talking to yourself?  It’s probably certifiable.  I’m really thinking I probably need to get back to absolutely abstaining at least for the remainder of my time in order to feel like this was worth it.  I’m sure I was just on the brink of some major discoveries about myself when I lost the will to carry out my plan.  Hopefully anyway, because there must be some explanation for the lack of personal revelations in all this, right?  “I’m bored” is not exactly new information. 

Tuesday

October 10

Day twenty-one

Twenty-one!  I wouldn’t go back to high school, but I might just consider going back to twenty-one for aesthetic purposes if nothing else.  Can’t really talk much about today, because it’s early.  As of this morning though, I have perfected my homemade café mocha recipe, so that is exciting.  I’m also trying to do some more writing – for some reason I’m just having a real topic shortage.  I think it might be helpful if someone just sent me a column title and told me to write the content around it.  I can usually discuss anything, but I have issue with obsessing on whether something is “worth” discussing, know what I mean?  If it came from elsewhere, I’d have to not worry about that!  It’s been nagging at my mind to write about how I met my husband (and by the way, if I haven’t mentioned it, “How I Met Your Mother” is really funny – Doogie rules!  Watch it.) because it’s an interesting story (well, to me anyway, lol) and because I’d be forced to tell you about how great he really is which I avoid doing frankly because I prefer him to be my little secret.  So…I dunno.  I’ll have to think about it.  I have been informed that “Smith” has been cancelled and it was my favorite new show.  Those dumb network bigwigs could’ve at least given it a few more weeks!  It had just the right amount of soapiness mixed with enough action to keep my husband watching for an hour.  Perfect “we can both watch” show, which is really pretty rare, and I just really, really liked it.  I went to check the DVR for tonight (because it’s early in the season and you have to watch for changes and stuff) and there was a CSI (I think?  One of those types) on there tonight – I don’t watch that!  Then I realized they just changed my Smith entry to whatever it is they replaced it with!  The nerve.  I wouldn’t watch whatever is on in that timeslot if you paid me, so there!  Sometimes I really hate prime time television.  Well, that’s really about all I have to say at the moment I guess.  It’s another beautiful day, so maybe I’ll get out and take a walk.  I have had a slight epiphany, I’ve decided that the good part about this experiment has been that I’ve realized exactly what’s important to me on a few different levels and I think maybe it’s time to pare my life down to match that a little more.  We’ll discuss this more in the next few days, when (or if) I’ve actually figured out what it means.  One way or another, I’ll find a way to make this worth it!  Now I’m off to find the 10,346^th way to make chicken an interesting meal.              

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