Tag, You're It.

I was tagged by Carey, woo hoo.

Instructions: Choose a band or artist and answer the questions using only titles of their songs.

The one and only, Journey, with Steve Perry only.

Are you male or female? “Butterfly (She Flies Alone)”
Describe yourself: " Walking Away from the Edge”
How do some people feel about you: "Gone Crazy”
How do you feel about yourself: " I Got a Reason”
Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend: “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)”
Describe your current significant other: " Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’”
Describe where you want to be: "Lights” – City by the Bay
Describe how you live: " Trial by Fire”
Describe how you love: "Any Way You Want It”
What would you ask for if you had just one wish: " Out of Harms Way”
Share a few words of wisdom: "Never too Late”
Now say goodbye: " Next”

I'm tagging the lovely "Syren", the snarky "Bob", and the busy "Vols"

I'm a copy cat - thanks syren for the link!

adopt your own virtual pet!

Nonsensical nonsense

I'm preparing to resume my saga but for now, just some nonsense.

Did you see Jon Bon Jovi on West Wing Sunday? I thought that appearance would please some peeps.

I watched the TVLand Awards and really enjoyed it. Grey's Anatomy was highlighted as a future classic. Also Good Times was given an award. JJ sure has changed with age, but John Amos looks about the same. I did love this show except for JJ. He was cute for a minute but wore thin. The cast of Dallas was there for an award also. Did any of you reality watchers watch Dallas. My life revolved around Dallas. No one was allowed to call me or talk to me for that one hour each week. Me, I liked Ray Krebs (remember I never pick the most obvious person, i.e. Bobby) and found actor Steve Kanaly really hot. Of course I also watched Knotts Landing. I got away from watching so much TV for awhile.

I tried to watch Survivor, really I did, but I just don't find it interesting. I do however love TAR this season. I also am watching American Idol now that they are down to a manageable number of singers. I get frustrated with Idol, however because I usually like all the performances. Then when I hear the criticism I flinch. Some idols I don't like their style of singing or whatever and they get praise. Last night was crazy. I liked Lisa's performance but she got slammed by the judges.

Other than watching TV I'm painting the MIL suite for Dbf's sister's arrival the first of June.

My Dbf got word last night that his father is in the hospital in Florida. We will get more details today. There may be a quick trip to Florida in our immediate plans.

My play car, a '93 red cavalier convertible Z24, is broken. I got the top replaced after step-girl ripped it in January. On the way home my son was driving the convertible with me in my truck. We stopped to get some soda and the car wouldn't move. Transmission problems. Now it is sitting in our garage. It starts, sounds ok, but won't go. We're hoping that it is just the clutch (it's automatic) but since it is so labor intensive to fix it will cost more money than I have to fix. I've never had a car that wouldn't run. What do you do with it if you decided to trash it. It won't fit into the trash can.

I don't like not having disposal money. I don't like it when my possessions break. I don't like a boring OT. I don't like .... How about you. What don't you like.

I'm stuck and I can't get out

I'm stuck in the years 1971 through 1973.

Today my son called me and said he needed a ride downtown for a meeting. My other son hadn't returned with his car. So I left work at 10:45 and am back at 12:40. Now I will have to work over tonight - darn.

While he was in his meeting I drove thru and around the OSU campus and then by the townhouse mentioned in the previous post. In less than 2 hours my brain worked overtime.

What do you think about brick streets? I grew up on a street that was and still is brick. I liked driving on brick streets today. They are narrower and bumpy. I was thinking that if all the streets in neighborhoods were brick then drivers would have to slow way down and less kids and pets would get run over.

What do you think about victorian houses? I drove through Victoria Village and Italian Village. We also have a German Village. I love these neighborhoods and the huge brick houses. What are they called - the circular part of a victorian house. The widow's something. I always wonder who had been locked in there during the history of the house.

Then when I drove back downtown I started thinking about city buses. Have any of you had to take a city bus during any part of your life, like before you had a car? I took the bus from the townhouse downtown to my job. Rain, snow, sleet or hail I had to walk 4 blocks to catch the bus home. One dreary, raining evening the bus made a left off the main street and I looked up in a tall brick, run-down building. There was a pregnant woman standing in the window naked. Yep, naked. That image has never left me. I remember thinking at the time; where are her clothes, didn't she have any to fit, had someone taken them, or was she just too hot in the heat to care.

Downtown areas, to me, are the heart of the city. There are people everywhere. What are they all doing? Why are they downtown? Are they visiting? Do they wish they weren't downtown? I'm almost never downtown anymore. Today this young girl was walking down the street eating a hotdog. She was very, very pregnant. She was dressed in a white t'shirt and jeans. Her navel was now inverted due to the pregnancy and it made a bump in her t'shirt. Why was she downtown? Why was she walking down the street between the courthouse and the jail? Was she visiting someone in jail?

And speaking of hotdog stands downtown, have you ever wondered what makes a person decided to buy one and stand downtown feeding people? Would it be fun and interesting? Could I make alot of money doing it?

Did you know that it is cold downtown on days like today? The tall buildings block the sun. I rather like the effect. I remember driving in downtown Philadelphia and noticing the darkness between the buildings.

Why were three guys jogging downtown? What is it in some people that they will change into short, shorty shorts and a t'shirt and run along streets? Is it something they can't help? Does it really help their health that much? Or are they putting their lives at risk running down busy streets in the cold?

Why is there an espresso joint on every corner? For all you coffee drinkers, what is espresso?
It sounds to me like a quick cup of caffeine that tastes worse than coffee.

On the way back Marvin Gaye came on the radio. What's Going On was the song. That song always comforts me. It isn't a particularly comforting song. I think it is Marvin's voice that soothes me. I'm adding him to my 10 crush list. If he were alive, that is. I so loved Marvin. That song reminds me of the idealistic, wide-eyed child I was in my 20's.

What's on your mind today?

I'm am loving this!

I am really loving this. I spent the whole ride home from work thinking about the phase of my life in my last post. In honor of accuracy, I wish to change the following:

I met that group of interesting people at BBF, not McDonalds. Does anyone remember BBF. It came before McDonalds. I believe BBF stood for Burger Boy Foodarama (or something like that). In HS, during my senior year when we discovered weed we would go there for orange drink. I'm sure it was just ordinary orange drink but we couldn't get enough of it. Huge cups fulls we drank. And the fries which were pretty much like McDonalds we would stuff in our mouths.

I'm renaming my last post FREEDOM. This short post contains some additions to FREEDOM. FREEDOM only covers 3 years. The next saga will be titled: No Direction, No Passion, WTF and will be a novel in itself as it will cover 4 years.

Attending school while in "Freedom" was not working out for me. I wanted money and a car. So I up and quit school. Two girls from our dorm-apartment quit also. We moved to a townhouse apartment just south of OSU. The love of my life moved with us.

Now this man is one of two men that I've known that, while with him, I would have preferred to never leave the bedroom. I was constantly turned on. We had sex everywhere and anytime. Most weekends were spent laying on the couch side by side watching basketball - his passion. Can you say lazy! We hardly ever left the apartment except for me to go to work and he to go to school. My roommates were growing increasingly unhappy with our new arrangement. They were actually scared to leave their room for fear of finding us having sex on the kitchen floor.

My first job was at a blood testing place. We received blood samples from doctors and the lab ran the tests. My job title was receptionist. I answered the phones, typed some reports and in the morning and afternoon when the blood vials arrived I marked each one with a number and put the same number on the lab sheet. I'll never forget my starting salary $365/month. I didn't even tell my parents that I'd quit school for 4 months.

Shortly after telling my parents that I quit school and had a job my dad sent my older sister to help me pick out a car, she being the reliable one. I got a new car!! It was a '72 Ford Pinto, light green. This was the good life. The payment - $68.68/month (never will forget that either). Of course it was in my Dad's name and he paid the insurance on it.

Life was good - I was on my own, had my own car, was having amazing sex and getting high whenever I wanted. What more could a girl ask for.

Now I would like to mention a movie that had a big impression on me. It was called "Same Time Next Year and starred Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn. Have you seen it. Go here for a description.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078199/
It was a movie where two people would meet for one week each year. It very masterfully showed the different phases of each of their lives. I remember asking my mother if the story could be true. Could people go through so many diverse stages in life. Of course she said. I now think that I have fulfilled the theme of this movie. I have had distinct, very different phases with very different, diverse co-conspirators.

Then tonight when I looked the moved up on imdb and was reading the page I came across a quote from the movie which I have used many times but didn't realize that it was from this movie "You know you are getting old when you start to worry about the declining morality of the young", or something like that.

I think I've been living this movie for 30 some years - LOL.

And the fact that the director has the same name as the man I married is a coincidence, I'm sure.

Until . .

Moving to the BIG city

I almost posted about class reunions but decided to put in writing what the big city held for this small town girl. Remember, this is the early 70's with anti-war protesting, rock stars dying left and right of overdoses, and the civil rights movement.

Right after HS one of my close friends enrolled at Ohio State. Cindy was a member of national honor, a pretty bright girl. Another classmate, Jeannie, was also at OSU. I spent many weekends on campus with them. Normally I took the Greyhound up and often got home a day or so after the weekend was over. You could drink at 18 in the bars and we did drink, and dance (to Sly and the Family Stone for one) into the wee hours. On my first trip to OSU Cindy said that Jeanne had met some people and we were going to meet them at McDonald's. I didn't know it at the time but the guys we met were an interesting group: one was a pimp (It's hard out Here for a Pimp), one was a drug dealer who had recently immigrated from Cuba, and the other was a schizo with a orange vet. Woo Hoo the party was on. Over time other law abiding, christian people joined the group. Ha. The thing was, I was shy and along for the ride and interestingly enough the guys pretty much left me alone. My friends, on the other hand were quite wild. I spent many an evening sitting in the living room higher than a kite with the other people in the group who weren't pairing up with whoever. You can't image what it was like to be in the car with a group of people and the pimp picks up his girl off the street, takes the money, drops her off at their place, and we went on to party. Honestly, I didn't spend too much time thinking about it at the time.



I was spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to get to Columbus full time. I had never worked and was going to the business school at home. I found out about a business school in Columbus and invited the rep to my house. I begged my parents to take out a student loan and send me off. They did, probably more to get me out of the house than anything else. This school had contracted apartments on the east side as a dorm-like place to live. I moved into a two-bedroom with 3 girls I had never met. There were house parents upstairs in an apartment. Their job was to keep us girls virginal and keep us from drinking. They did none of those things. They were a young couple. We pretty much came and went as we pleased. I was so ecstatic. I was on my own in the big city. Here's a picture of us having a good time.

And one of a guy I started dating. He was into some serious drugs. I knew nothing about LSD so one night while he was tripping I thought it would be funny to hide and jump out at him. Wrong. He flipped and someone had to take me out of there. Anyway four of us took off one weekend and drove through Detroit into Canada and across Canada to Niagara Falls and home. We were only allow to take a tooth brush. The trip was in a WV bug. Entering Canada was easy but on the way back to the US they tore that bug apart; the seats, the doors. They didn't find anything (thankfully). Did you know that they don't put the car back together. They leave that to you.


Oh, and my friend, the national honor society girl, she flunked out of OSU in two quarters - too much parting. Now I was in Columbus and she was back home!!

Another picture I found of me brushing my wavy hair. Check out the beer tab garland around the wall. Beer cans had removable tabs back then. Evidently children were smarter then and didn't try to swallow such things.

So now I had to very diverse sets of friends, my school friends who were innocents from small towns like me, and my wild campus friends who were anything but innocent. And there was also the drug using boyfriend. Talk about touching all types of people.

I started school in Columbus in March. Then in September a new crop of students came. The first morning I was sitting on the bus and we were picking up the boys who lived in another building. This guy walked on the bus and I though I'd died and gone to heaven. He was, to me, the most handsome guy I'd ever seen. I called dibs immediately. Someone told him I was interested and he showed up at my apartment door that night. That started a 3 year time during which I'd never been happier. I was totally and utterly in love. But you see, this love was a possessive, unhealthy love. When it ended I was devastated and had no desire to live. But fortunately I did. However I didn't fully get over him until 5 years ago. I went through a marriage and having children still thinking about him. Not fair to the x, surely, but what can I say. 30 years of wondering, wishing, dreaming.

I admire people who can love and love again. Over and over. My sister has been married 4 times and each time she truly loved the men. Unfortunately she kept picking men who couldn't be faithful. Here I was, for 30 years, still unable to get over it.

When he went back to his hometown and I was alone again I hooked up with the two girlfriends I'd mentioned above. Cindy was back lliving in Columbus. It was party time again.

Next, how what you think is your only true love can cause your heart to die and you make you do some things you wish you could take back.

Graduation Picture

This is my graduation picture. Now I graduated before some of you were born. You know, I've never been shy about my age IRL but here in the box I am. Well I graduated in 1970. Everyone's hair looked like this. And every female wore a sweater. My hair only looked like this on pictue day because I rolled it with pop cans and wore the pop cans to the picture place. Then I sprayed the hell out of it. 1/2 hour later it had waved and frizzed up again. I can't even remember looking like this.

Graduation was a joke. I didn't apply myself in high school. I was painfully shy. I don't know how I got the grades to graduate.

Growing up in a small southern Ohio town was very easy in some sense and very sheltered but I hated it. I couldn't wait to graduate and leave town. After HS I enrolled in a business school called Portsmouth International Business College or PIBC. The school had a heavy international student body. I met some amazing people. One girl, Candy was from the Domincan Republic. She was such a hoot. I remember thinking that she was the absolutely wildest girl I had ever known. There were three girls from Nicaragua. They were not at all shy about the fact that they were sent there to marry an American. One married a local boy. She was very thin and pretty. I can't remember her name. Another named Rosa was not so lucky. The one that I became close to (her name is Maria - I can't believe I couldn't rememger it until today) fell in love with another international student from Tailand. That was my first experience with any predjudice except black/white. Her parents were appalled. It seems that their culture saw the orientals as lower than blacks (remember this is the 70's). She said her parents first wanted her to marry an American, then another Nicaraguan, then maybe an African American but never, never ever an oriental. She said that it was illegal for an oriental to enter Mexico (to drive to her home land) without a special permit which was rarely given. They married against both family's wishes. His name was Anon. He described Tailand as a beautiful country and had pictures of his head shaven for some religious ceremony. After I moved away I lost touch with them. Then about a year later I ran into them in Columbus. We had a great reunion. Then for some reason her family relented and let them go to Nicaragua. About 4 months after they were in Nicaragua the huge earthquake hit Managua. They were caught in the midst of it. I remember hearing about the earthquake when driving home for the weekend. I cried so hard that I couldn't see the road. They, luckily survived. I got a letter about 2 weeks later. They came back to the USA after the earthquake. I eventually lost touch with them. I can't remember how and why. I hadn't thought of them for many years and don't know why I did today.

A few questions:

So who have you lost touch with?

Do you have a graduation picture to post?

Did you enjoy HS or are you like the majority of us who would never, under any circumstances like to return to those confusing days?

Next - moving to Columbus and having some really wild times. This is building up to "How We Met".

Friday Silliness

Sometimes when you have a stressful day or week you need some silliness to break up the day. Here is your dose.. follow the instructions to find your new name. The following is an excerpt from a children’s book, “Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants” by Dave Pilkey. The evil professor forces everyone to assume new names: Use the third letter of your first name to determine your new first name: A=poopsie B=lumpy C=buttercup D=gidget E=crusty F=greasy G=fluffy H=cheeseball I=chim-chim J=stinky K=flunky L=boobie M=pinky N=zippy O=goober P=doofus Q=slimy R=loopy S=snotty T=tootie U=dorkey V=squeezit W=oprah X=skipper Y=dinky Z=zsa-zsa Use the second letter of your last name to determine the first half of your new last name: A=apple B=toilet C=giggle D=burger E=girdle F=barf G=lizard H=waffle I=cootie J=monkey K=potty L=liver M=banana N=rhino O=bubble P=hamster Q=toad R=gizzard S=pizza T=gerbil U=chicken V=pickle W=chuckle X=tofu Y=gorilla Z=stinker Use the fourth letter of your last name to determine the second half of your new last name: A=head B=mouth C=face D=nose E=tush F=breath G=pants H=shorts I=lips J=honker K=butt L=brain M=tushie N=chunks O=hiney P=biscuits Q=toes R=buns S=fanny T=sniffer U=sprinkles V=kisser W=squirt X=humperdinck Y=brains Z=juice Sincerely, Dorkey Liver-Nose

Travel Plans for this year

Do you ever have so many things running through your mind and want to blog them, but don't have the time? Oh course you do. I just decided to put my travel plans in writing to see how insane they are:

April - I can't even remember the weekend and am to lazy to go upstairs and look it up - 2 nights in Alexandria, VA. This is a signing bonus for my time share. Dbf hasn't been in the DC area since he lived there when he was 7. My best friend lives in Manassas and I haven't seen her in 4 years. Dbf wants to do the White House, Washington Memorial. I want to do the Museum of Natual History.

May 21 through May 28th - staying in Durango, Colorado. This was the only time-share convient to the 4-corners area. This is our big trip and allows me to mark off 2 new states (would have been 3 if we hadn't made the quick trip to Colorado in February). My aunt lives in Phoenix and she's quite advanced in years and I am looking forward to seeing her. New Mexico has so many places I want to see as does Utah. Our stay starts on Sunday but I was hoping to fly out on Friday to Salt Lake City and stay just south-east of there to see the sites before going to Colorado. The flight out isn't a problem but the return flight is since it is Memorial weekend. All the good fares (and maybe all the seats in bad fares) are gone. We're going to check it out today.

July 7 - 9 is the current winner for the peep meat in Niagara. We just went to Niagara last year because Dbf had never been there. I'm not at all excited about the location (I wanted Chicago). We really don't have the $$ to do the April and May trips, so with the lack of excitment about Niagara my attendance will definately depend on who else goes. Can we have a yea or nay from all of you.

I am also considering hip replacement this year.

It helps me get through the mundane daily grind of the job and everything else to look at my "holiday" time.

Now I must go paint the ceiling in the MIL suite so we can get to the walls and carpet before Dbf's sister visits in June.

Barbara WaWa's Special

Will you watch it tonight. I will because I am facinated with these people. I don't know why I am, I thinking it has something to do with them being so rich and talented and I find it amazing that they are really just normal people. I can't imagine leaving home and going to Hollywood and trying to make it. I think it is, mostly luck that they make it where they are.

George Clooney makes so many woman swoon - me not so much!
Patrick Dempsey is so hot in Grey's. His eyes make me want to melt. His lips I want to nibble!
Matthew McConaughey has always been one of my favs. He has a boyish charm that comes across on the screen.
Mariah Carey - what's that about. Three hunks and her. I know quite a bit about her and have no opinion one way or another. I can not believe that she has sold that many albums. I have never been tempted to buy one. I think she's good, but I don't know.

Or does Barbara WaWa bother you so much that you can't watch?

I hope to have something more interesting soon. I in a blah, bizarre mood - sorta shell-shocked!