Seatbelts and Sleepwalking

Warning: Please make sure you have your e-seatbelt fastened. I'm actually posting twice in one week!

Okay, now that we have that safety warning out of the way, let me tell you about my adventures in sleepwalking. I've been walking in my sleep almost as long as I've been walking while awake. When I was three my mom found me sitting in my chair at the kitchen table eating an apple in the dark at 3 a.m. After my house burned down at age 12, I had several instances where my dad caught me trying to escape from the condo where we stayed while our home was being rebuilt.

Sometimes I like to combine sleepwalking with talking in my sleep, which can be confusing for anyone who finds me. Eventually they realize that I probably wouldn't be talking about toy soldiers and angry parrots while conscious, and determine that I am, in fact, dead asleep while carrying on a conversation with my eyes open. Fun!

Yesterday morning I woke up and headed to the laundry room to grab a pair of jeans. I realized there was a light on in there, and assumed I had once again left the dryer door standing open with the light on. (I have no idea why I do this. Probably for the same reason I can load the clothes washer up, fill it with water, and then walk away without closing the lid.)

When I went through the door, I realized the dryer door was, in fact, closed, but the door leading to the garage was wide open. And the garage light was on. Strange. To add to the fun, my parents' mini-van is crammed in our garage right now while they're off enjoying a cruise. And the passenger-side sliding door was standing wide open. You know, the side where *someone* had to squeak past the back of the van and navigate around two bicycles in order to get to the door handle.

I checked in the van, and there weren't any apple cores in there, so I'm not sure what the point of the nocturnal excursion was. And honestly, maybe it wasn't me! I mean, I'm married now, so it could have been my husband right? Just because he doesn't have a history of sleepwalking that dates back to 1975 doesn't mean he's automatically innocent.

The good news is the battery wasn't dead on the van and *whomever* was responsible made it safely back to bed without wandering around the neighborhood in his or her underwear.

I hope.

Random Fridays

Okay, it's clearly evident that I'm no better at this blog thing than I was at journaling when I was 12. So in an effort to do a better job at this, I'm going to come up with a convention here and there. That way when I abandon my shiny new conventions in a week or three, I can feel extra guilty about not blogging. Awesome!

Which brings me to Random Fridays. I'm known as a font of useless information. As a result, I have a lot of very random things that rattle around in my skull during my waking hours. Well, sometimes it happens when I'm sleeping, too, but that would have to fall under "Weird Dream Wednesdays" or something like that. So I thought I'd try to capture a few of these each Friday and post them here. Feel free to add your own in the comments section!

(I say this like I think anyone's still reading this poor, neglected blog.)

1) Sushi doesn't taste as good when eaten with a spork.

2) With the proliferation of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, et al, how many bazillion gigs of computer storage are being used to preserve such chunks of wisdom as, "I don't like mint toothpaste. Or parakeets."? (Or crap about sushi and sporks, for that matter.)

3) I have 58 pink Garmins on my desk right now.

4) I sometimes really wish I could talk to my dog. But if I could, I'd want her to have an off switch so I wouldn't have to listen to her talk about what her butt smells like for half an hour.

5) If everyone's using reusable bags at the grocery store now, what's going to happen to all the people out there working at plastic bag factories?



Okay, that's enough for now. I've got to go update my Twitter account with something really meaningful.

I promise not to mention sporks.

God Bless America. And, I'm scrappy.

This headline made me stop in my tracks this morning.

Blogger jailed in Iran is dead

We take our liberties for granted far too often. In another country, would my post about Obama have been reason enough to jail me? Probably. And that's beyond sad. For most Americans, we can't even wrap our heads around a concept like that. As Americans, most of us suffer from an extreme expression of entitlement. Not only do we expect to have enough to eat every day, we pitch a fit if our favorite restaurant runs out of the daily special before we order. Because it's OUR RIGHT to eat salmon, damn it. When we want it! So there!

We don't stop to appreciate the wealth of affordable products available at a store like Super Target. But lord help the people around us if we have to wait.in.line. for more than five minutes to check out. And the old woman in front of you is WRITING A CHECK. How dare she?! Doesn't she know that your time is IMPORTANT?

I don't want to turn this into a blathering politicky post. And I have to be careful here, because I'm about two shakes away from a diatribe about the important role our troops have played in the Middle East defending simple human rights for those too weak to defend themselves.



So instead, let's talk scrap. Several of my blogosphere friends awarded me the Honest Scrap award.

The rules:
1) Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design.
2) Show the 7 winners names and links on your blog, and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with "Honest Scrap." Well, there's no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
3) List at least 10 honest things about yourself.

Being the non-conformist that I am, I'm skipping the first two rules. Partly because almost everyone I know with a blog has already been tapped. But mostly because I'm lazy. I will, however, follow rule #3.

1. I like watching Spongebob SquarePants. And iCarly.

2. Poor grammar drives me insane. However, I've learned as an adult that it's rude to correct people. Instead, I chew on the insides of my cheeks.

3. When I was very young (pre-K), I insisted on using the phrase "Amen't I?" instead of "Aren't I?" I calmly informed my mother that since it was the contraction for "Am I not," "Aren't" simply didn't make sense. She eventually talked me out of it. Perhaps that's the reason for Honest Thing #2.

4. I don't wash my face every night. Since I don't wear makeup (except on special occasions), I allow myself to be lazy about this.

5. I don't wear makeup (except on special occasions). [And don't try telling me this one doesn't count. Just because you've known this fact for all of five nanoseconds thanks to Honest Thing #4, it's still honest. So there.]

6. It takes me forever to write a blog entry.

7. I could watch HGTV for six hours in a row.

8. I despise doing laundry, but it makes me very happy when it's all done.

9. I snore.

10. I would have made a kick-ass female pirate back when pirates wore eye patches and had parrots on their shoulders.

Happy Irish Day!

Disclaimer: I am not, in fact, Irish. I did marry into a large Irish Catholic family, however, so I consider it perfectly appropriate that I celebrate as though I have green flowing through my veins. Plus, I spent six weeks backpacking through Ireland after college and drank enough Guinness to qualify as a native.

I love holidays that are celebrated purely for the sake of celebrating. Halloween? Dress up and have fun. Thanksgiving? Cook for days and eat pie. St. Patrick's Day? Wear a little green and drink some beer. What's not to love?

No presents to buy, I don't have to clean my house for guests, and -- if I'm lucky -- I get to see a parade. I don't get to go to the parade today, of course, because for some reason "parade viewing" doesn't fall under my company's guidelines for acceptable absences from work. I personally think this is a travesty, but will have to live with my husband's play-by-play of the green shenanigans taking place at 3 p.m. His place of business happens to be located ON THE PARADE ROUTE, which I think is way cool for him and incredibly unfair to me at the same time.

Oh, well. He's the one who's actually Irish. At least he appreciates his good fortune!

Slainte!

No cliffhangers

I've been reading a lot of blogs recently, and some of them have a common characteristic that drives me nuts. Either the author talks about something that's going to happen in the near future and promises a follow-up that never comes, or refers to something in the past that wasn't discussed in the blog, and there ends up being a gap in the narrative. Of course, I only really notice it when I've discovered a new blog and am reading several months of entries at a time catching up on a stranger's story.

For some reason this bothers me. So, on the off chance that someone's reading this post in 2011 and is wondering why it's been a month and I haven't posted about my grandma again, I guess I should suck it up and deal with it now. After my last post, I really needed to post a follow-up, and I wasn't sure how.

My grandma passed away February 18. She lived a long life, and I hope it was a happy life. I know she appreciated having her family around her in her last days, but she was ready to go. Her health had failed her, and her quality of life was completely gone. We were ready to say goodbye, and she died peacefully in her sleep, which is all any of us can really ask for.

I had a complicated relationship with my grandma. We shared the same name, but we were never particularly close. Or, I should say, we were as close as we could be given her personality. She had trouble showing or telling the people close to her that she loved them. I truly believe she did love me, it was just hard growing up without the cookie-baking, book-reading, coming-to-your-school-play kind of grandma.

(Sidenote: My other grandmother was actually cruel in a mentally unhealthy kind of way, so I was a little lacking in the grandparent department growing up. Both of my grandfathers died before I was old enough to remember them.)

So, grandma was the closest I came to having a real "grandparent/grandchild" relationship, and sometimes it hurt. For example, she didn't come to my wedding. She had a hundred excuses, but I'm firmly convinced that she didn't come because:

a) I was marrying a (whisper) Catholic! (Who was Divorced! With a CHILD!)
b) I wasn't getting married in a church.
c) I had the audacity to have alcohol at my reception.

I was her youngest of three grandchildren, and she didn't come to my wedding. She never met my husband. Or my gorgeous stepdaughter.

But I tried really hard to let go of all of this when I went to see her the weekend before she died. I mean, when you're hugging your dying grandmother, it seems kind of petty to hold grudges about something that happened almost five years ago.

She told me she loved me the last time I saw her. I guess I just have to hold on to that.

I feel like I'm in limbo

My 90-year-old grandmother is in declining health, and I'm waiting for a phone call. She's several states away in Missouri, and I'm waiting to hear from my mom what our plans are. I think my mom is going to fly up to be with her, and dad and I are going to drive. (He doesn't do well flying because of his own health condition, but my mom's afraid she may be too late if she makes the drive with him.)

Despite being named after her, I haven't always had the closest relationship with my grandma. But there's still something to being able to say goodbye.

I'm trying to get my work cleared off my desk in case I need to leave tonight.

It's just a strange feeling not knowing what's going to happen. Am I going to be starting a two-day road trip with my dad this time tomorrow? Or will I be sitting right here still waiting?

I'm not sure I can afford Obama

Don't get me wrong, I respect him and wish him the best. He's got a mess to clean up, and I'm sure some of the fixes are going to be painful one way or another.

But I just read an article that Obama is expected to sign a bill this afternoon that will increase the price of cigarettes by 62 center per pack to fund additional health care for children. I'm sure your first reaction is, "What's wrong with that? Kids' health is way more important than smokers' rights!"

And on the surface, I would agree with you. But I'm sensing a disconnect. Why should Americans who choose to smoke be forced to fund health care for the segment of the population that makes too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but apparently not enough to afford private insurance for their children?

Instead of placing the burden on a segment of society that is already treated like pariahs, why don't we take a look at related areas where money is pouring down the drain? How many non-U.S. citizens are receiving health care free of charge? Or - god forbid - put the responsibility back on those folks who chose to have children they can't afford.

And what comes next? Will it be 50 cents per gallon of gas to pay for unemployment benefits? Maybe a beer tax can help fund Social Security as the Baby Boomers continue to reach retirement.

Hopefully it won't happen. The good news is, I'm trying to quit smoking anyway. Obama's going to have to look someplace else for my 62 cents.