What Are the Odds?

Now that's sticking the landing.

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Have You Heard This One?

A princess is walking in the desert and sees an injured snake on the ground, very close to death. She carefully picks it up, puts it in her basket and takes it home.

She nurses the snake back to health, giving it the best food, spending money on the best doctors, tending to it for hours every day.

One day she opens the snake's basket to give it some food and it bites her on the hand. As she lay dying from the poison, she cries out, "My beloved snake! I have fed and nursed you, brought you back to health from certain death in the desert! Why have you stricken me so?!"

And the snake replies, "Bitch you knew I was a snake."

The moral of the story?
What do you think?

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It's That Time of Year Again

Yay!



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Uprooting

My parents are from Alabama. Their parents are from Alabama too, except for my mother's mother who somehow transplanted to Alabama from upstate New York. I never asked her how or why and it's way too late to ask her now. That makes me one quarter Yankee, yet my heart belongs to the South.

My sister and I were both born in San Diego. I don't know what my sister answers when someone inquires where she is from, but I claim Alexandria, Virginia as my hometown. My nuclear family migrated here when I was four. They have long since moved elsewhere. But me, well, I have spent the bulk of the ensuing decades living within a twelve-mile geographic radius. Yes. It's my hometown.

Home for my family spans the USA. I have siblings in California, Oregon, Florida, New Jersey and Arizona. I have a set of parents in Washington state and my mom here in Virginia, a few hours southeast. Wendy's siblings and parents all live within spitting distance of each other in southeast Texas. Our son lives in New York. Our nuclear families are split like an atom.

Why do some families stay close and others scatter? I envy people with family in close geographic proximity. I completely understand Wendy's mother's pique at her beautiful daughter settling in a distant land. Perhaps I relate because I didn't move away from my family, they moved away from me. Yet I take no issue with The Boy's transiency. It's whacky. My emotional double standards run rampant.

Still. To be able to just drop in to my sister's house on a Saturday afternoon. To bump into my father at the grocery store. To attend my niece's ballet recital without packing a suitcase. To babysit for my sisters' children or grab a beer with my brothers. To make a monthly run to the library with my mom. I'd like to do those things, among others. It would be such a delight to take a vacation to get away from our families rather than taking one to see them. Or not seeing them at all.

This rattles in my mind of late as Wendy and I plan a future move of our own. No matter where we choose to relocate, we'll always be distant from large branches of our family. The only one our plan brings us geographically closer to is The Boy. If he stays put. Which he may well not.

And therein lies both the beauty and the beast. The move will be for us, me and my girl. Just us. That kind of thinking takes some getting used to.

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I'm Back and You Know What That Means

It means hair talk. See, I got a really bad haircut last week. I mean a Really Bad Haircut. This RBH ruined my luscious pony tail. I am bitter.

I bumped into my neighbor that afternoon. We pulled into our parallel driveways at the exact same time. She was backing in, her truck loaded with tree rounds scavenged from two streets over where a large oak had recently been felled. As I oogled her bounty and exclaimed over her good fortune, she glanced at me and did a double take.

I caught the question in her eyes, "What the hell did you do to your hair?!" Louder than words, I tell you, louder than words. She quickly looked away.

There is a two block walk between the parking lot and my office. A scruffy gaggle of Brothers frequently hangs out near an alleyway I pass on the way. Typically I'm greeted with a friendly "hey baaaaab-beee, looking good!" or some other such brotherly babble. I respond with a polite nod, a smile and/or a perky "good morning!"

The morning after my haircut? Yeah. I heard, "WHOA girl! What happened to your hair!?" Awkward.

Wendy insists I look fine. While I value her opinion, she's almost required to reassure me. It's a relationship law or something.

Meanwhile, I had lunch today with my Lunch Friend Lisa. LFL has gorgeous hair. She has, on occasion, offered a merciless opinion of my hairstyle, or lack thereof as the case may be. Friends are called on to play that role at times. At least with someone as hair insecure as yours truly they are. I was sure to get an honest assessment from her.

And what did she have to say? Nothing. Not one goddamned thing. The silence. Oh how it burns. I kept it to myself.

I've discovered a Trader Joe's bag fits me quite nicely. It has a style, a panache, a certain je ne sais quoi all its own. Trust me. It's a vast improvement.


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I Like Music Theatre

And I adore this video.



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