Dream a Little Dream

Well I am getting older. At least that is what the mirror tells me.

Sometimes I don't recognize the person looking back at me. I think: "Who is that old chick with bags under her eyes? She should catch up on her sleep and then maybe have some fun."

But even though the body has some miles on it, and life has lately given me some crushing disappointments, can I tell you something? I am always dreaming a little dream.

I get a few "big ideas" every day. I kind of toss them around and think of all the reasons they might not work and then usually throw them out of my brain due to their impracticability. Some of those have been: running a marathon, (the 5K almost killed me), becoming a foster parent (you have to give the kids back) and buying a little house in Tuscany (the buying part was a problem).

My daughter Abby says that these constant big ideas are the fault of my adult ADHD. She likes to diagnose things. My mom calls it "flight of ideas." She is trying to keep me on track. My friend J. calls in genius, but he also has ADHD and flight of ideas, so he perfectly understands.

For instance, right now he is considering making movie about the life of a cow.

So he doesn't see anything weird about my newest idea, which is to become a dahlia grower.

 I am pretty convinced this is actually going to happen, because I have been tossing this idea around ever since I met Marvin the Dahlia Grower at a nearby farmers market several weeks ago and it is still in my brain just waiting for a reason to be thrown out.

Every Tuesday I drive about a half hour just to talk to Marvin and to see what beautiful dahlias he has brought to sell for 50 cents each. There is a white one with yellow striping on the petals, A pure white one as big as your outstretched hand and a cinnamon-colored one with tube-shaped petals that are the kind of perfect that makes you believe in God.

I have this whole dahlia-growing thing figured out. I already have a green thumb, so I know I can get them to grow.

I have signed up for two sunny community garden plots to grow my dahlias in.

I have researched all about growing dahlias on the amazing Internet.

I have placed dibs on some of my favorites of Marvin's dahlia tubers.

I have even found three flower shops that want to buy my dahlias.

My dahlia idea was still up there in my brain a couple of nights ago, just looking for a reason to get thrown out, when I noticed a gorgeous red dinner-plate sized flower growing in the front flower bed of a little ramshackle house while I was out for a drive.

I turned around and drove back to get a better look, pulled into the driveway hoping the owners didn't have an attack dog, and snapped a picture of that amazing flower.

 And in that moment my idea turned into a dream.

You guessed it. That flower was a dahlia.

I Tell You I'm Qualified!

I am looking for a job. Me and half of the rest of the world.

The last job I applied for used to belong to my friend Wendy. She purchased fruit and ordered lunches and answered phones and sometimes wrote letters for a Public Relations firm.

She was basically the PR firms' mother.

Then she got promoted to finance and told me that her former job was available.

So I wrote a clever cover letter and sent a padded resume and it has been two weeks and still they have not called me.

What? I mean seriously, I rock at buying fruit and ordering lunch. I have been doing that for 20 years.

The job market is tough!

First of all, there is a job just writing job descriptions to make them look impossible, I think. (By the way, I would also rock at that job).

All of the entry level full-time jobs on the site I visit have a huge list of requirements that you must meet to even be considered.

Just to be a nanny you have to speak two languages. I got all excited about that one until I found out that Pig-Latin, which my sister Kate and I are awesome at, does not count.

You must "be proficient" at a whole bunch of computer programs that I don't even have on my computer.

You must have "at least" three years experience doing whatever it is the entry level job wants you to do. So then, not really entry level, I think, kind of mid-level.

I keep checking this site every day hoping to find a job description that reads:

"Must be good at motivating unmotivated people."

"Must know how to divide day lilies."

"Must be proficient at acting positive while feeling negative."

"Must be able to design and plant a kick-ass front porch container."

"Must know how to create dinner using a half-rusted head of lettuce, a pound of bacon, a can of black beans and a half package of tortillas."

"Must be able to remove gum from from the seat of a pair of jeans."

Does anyone need a mother? Oh, by the way, medical benefits and at least a week of paid vacation would be nice.

The Wash Tub

I had these two friends. They were so reliable. I could really depend on them to be there whenever I needed them. They always helped me look clean and fresh.

Then one day a mean man took them without asking.

I really miss my washer and dryer.

It turns out that they are irreplaceable due to my current deplorable economic situation.

So now I do my laundry at The Wash Tub. 

In the beginning, I was afraid of The Wash Tub. To me coin laundries had all the appeal of biker bars and fast-food restaurants. But can I tell you something? The Wash Tub is not such a bad place at all.

I do my laundry there on Monday mornings. There is a little old couple there that I like to watch. She is the one in charge and bosses him around a bit and will only let him fold the towels. I can't really blame her, though. There is a fine art to folding shirts that I don't think the male gender really grasps.

It is his job to carry the baskets out to the car when they are full. It is a team effort that is heartwarming to watch.

You can pay a little more to leave your laundry there and have Helen, the attendant with a very bad blond dye job and the high-pitched voice of a five-year-old fold your clothes for you. But I happen to know that Larry the welder, with just one leg, gets this service done for free. It is pretty clear that Helen has the hots for him.

I get a lot of compliments at The Wash Tub. The clientele seems fascinated by my agility in folding while at the same time keeping an eye out for when a dryer turns off. They like how I stop mid-fold and run to plug more quarters into the machine. One woman was dazzled when I removed some items that were dry and continued to dry the remaining items in order to get the most from my quarters.

"I've never tried that," she said. "That is very clever."

In the easy days, I did my laundry in between other household chores. Put a load in, unload the dishwasher, wipe down the kitchen counter, pack a lunch, put the clothes in the dryer. Get dressed, put on my make-up, fold the clothes. Clean the cat litter box, water the front flower pot, shove the basket on my hip and bring it upstairs to unload.

Now it is just the laundry all by itself until it is done. It is one thing now that can't be hurried. And there is something kind of nice about that.

Populars, Geeks and Jesus Freaks

I don't know what it is about teenage girls, but they seem to like placing themselves in a social group and sticking to that from about seventh grade until Junior year in high school.

After that, they have figured out who they are and settle into just being themselves.
I am rearing my third teenage girl now, and as gung-ho as her oldest sister was about boys and dances and friends and her second sister was about vocabulary words and the exact decimal point of her GPA, that girl is gung-ho about Jesus!

It all started about six months ago when she attended a youth group meeting at the church we attend (sometimes). She met some kids she really liked. They were nice. There were some cute boys there. There was some cool music. And so she began to attend all of the youth events, which took place pretty much every night. And now she is a Jesus Freak.

Don't get me wrong. I am down with Jesus. But I am one of those people who believes in moderation. Some Jesus in the morning and maybe some Jesus at night before bed. But Jesus all the time kind of tires me out.
My youngest daughter reminds me that Jesus does not like swearing or yelling. He does not like it when you say something mean about someone who is torturing you, even if it is completely true.

But there is a silver lining to being the parent of a Jesus Freak:  Jesus Freak teenagers are pretty respectful to their parents because of my favorite bible sentence: Honor your father and mother. That one is saving me from all the back-talk and disrespect that I got from the other sisters.
Thank you Jesus!

Flowers Can't Fix Everything

Flowers can fix a lot of things.
Like sometimes, when I wake up in the morning and walk past the dining room and see my beautiful cherry furniture where we used to sit with our four kids every Thanksgiving and Christmas which I just sold to a nice, not divorced couple who are coming to pick it up and bring to their new home in Texas where they are moving to be closer to their grandchildren, I can keep on walking right out to the deck and look at my orange zinnias blooming and remember that there are pretty things mixed in with all the ugly things in life.
But when a man calls the flower shop and wants to send birthday flowers to his wife and - by the way- they are going through a divorce, I know that is something that flowers won't fix.
But still, I ask what her favorite color is and he says he doesn't know and I feel really bad for thinking: "Well, you idiot, maybe if you paid attention to things like that, you wouldn't be where you are right now."
But instead I tell him I will make something very pretty, and I will sign the card "I'll Miss You" just like he has asked me to.
And I decide to make the bouquet all yellow.
Yellow like a brand new day.

Sugar really does help

So yesterday I had to run a check to the university where Mr. Nice Guy goes to school. Seems the X "forgot" to pay his tuition, and all of his classes would be dropped by the end of the day if a large installment was not paid. So I drove a half hour to the college and signed my life away.
Back in the car on the way to get some unneeded matching notebooks and folders for my youngest child to start school with, I listened to a voice mail from the auto body shop where I had left kid number three's car to have some inexpensive work done on the muffler. Turns out the brakes and exhaust were bad to the tune of about a thousand bucks.
Now normally this would cause me to have a breakdown. But over the last year I have had to put out a lot of fires, financial and otherwise, and instead of having to go out and do some major retail therapy to get myself back happy, I have discovered a much cheaper mood-altering substance: SUGAR.
Yesterday it was a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate from Dairy Queen. Not only was it yummy, but it brought me back to the days of my youth when my biggest problem was a brain freeze caused by a Mister Misty from the local DQ in good old Sioux Falls South Dakota.
It turns out I am not the only one using sugar to bring me out of the doldrums. My friend got in a fight with his daughter yesterday and confessed that he made himself feel better by eating a muffin. "A muffin is really just a cake in disguise," he said. True that, and you know, I don't feel so guilty because that ice cream was once just a harmless glass of milk.

Enough Stuff

This is my garage. The X moved out and left a bunch of crap behind. Then I moved back in and brought a bunch of my crap back. Believe it or not, I have already gotten rid of a lot of crap.
My grown-up son, who I call Mr. Nice Guy, says if you have too much stuff you don't own your stuff. It owns you instead. He is very wise and throws away his couches every time he moves. That may be because they have beer spilled all over them, but still . . .
So now I have to get rid of some more stuff. Like the basketball hoop I purchased to entertain my nephew for one weekend when he came to visit. I need to remember that when I was a child I played with sticks.
I need to remember my sister Anne's mantra for when you go shopping and see a two-for-one sale on sweaters that you kind of like but don't need at all: Two of crap is still crap. Only she uses a different word that gives the phrase a bit more punch.
Here's to you Annie. The next time I post a picture of my garage, there will be space in it to park a car.

What the hell, why not?

I used to have a blog. It was kinda funny. Lots of people read it. Then I got divorced and nothing seemed funny any more. Everyone was like: "I miss your blog!"
I wanted to say: "Yeah, well you think of something to write about when your life is falling apart." but instead I said something like: "I just don't have time for that any more."
But you know what? I miss my blog too. And now things are so ridiculously awful they are sometimes funny again so here it goes. And remember that you asked for it.