Tomorrow Is Another Day...

Back to Life, Back to Reality

This post is brought to you by a very lazy girl who feels the need to update her site because she can just feel the handful of readers she has managed to aquire drifting slowly away and yet cannot think of a single entertaining thing to say, aside from anecdotes about her dog. Isn't it funny how when everything is going along swimmingly, life just isn't very interesting? How am I supposed to weave whimsical stories about my life, that may or may not be based in fact, when there isn't any inspiration?

It's just not possible.

However, tomorrow night I will be working from six o'clock in the evening until six o'clock in the morning, so I'm sure at some point during that interim I will have the time to devote to being highly entertaining and amusing, but for now I will just say: RIP Nick Lachey. You had a good ride of it grasping on to your wife's coattails and I anxiously await your desperate and inevitable attempts to remain famous while standing on your own two feet. Also, once you've faded unceremoniously into oblivion, give me a call, I'll be waiting.

Random Thoughts Swirling in My Brain

1)  When shopping for the Thanksgiving meal, be sure to get in the checkout aisle with the longest line, because undoubtedly you will get in the shortest line and then watch as the 14 people in the other line process through quickly while the woman in front of you with a carton of milk spends 30 minutes trying to find a method of payment that will work.

2)  Don’t wait until the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to shop—all of the cranberry jelly will be gone, and the rednecks will fight you for the last bottle of sparkling grape juice.

3)  When Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is released in theaters I’ll be 24. That freaks me the hell out.

4)  Jack has 400 toys. Jack has 400 favorite toys that must be by his side at all times.

5)  If the gerbils have been quiet for a while you should probably feed them.

6)  I can find a Tater Twister and a Beverage Warmer at Wal-Mart, but will have to use a rolling pin to smash my pecans because there are no nut choppers to be found. Also, that sounds very wrong.

7)  Tom Cruise is a scary, scary man.

8)  Buy Thanksgiving cards weeks in advance, wait until the last possible moment to send them. It never fails.

9)  Why is it so hard to find a simple pair of cute black heels?

10) Why do I think I need another pair of cute black heels?

11) When hurrying to fix dinner so that you won't miss the episode of Gilmore Girls where Luke may or may not tell Lorelai he has a daughter and Lorelai may or may not tell Luke that Chris is a bajillionaire and wants to give her money, you will absolutely dump your salad bowl on your lap blue cheese dressing side down.

12) Is it time to go home yet?

You Ask, I Answer Pt 2

Harry, Harry, wherefore art thou fictional and only 16? My love for you dost beeth illegal and perverse, oh, if only with a flicketh of my wand I could maketh you mineth. I twould kicketh Ginny’s ass for only one moment with thee and thou twee little glasses.

Right, so, onto the second part of this whole interview process…

From Sophie: Why did you choose your email address?

I am what one might call “obsessed” with Gone With the Wind—seriously, people want to buy me all things Gone With the Wind as gifts, but are always too worried that I already have whatever rare collectible they’ve stumbled upon. So, there you have the “Katie Scarlett” bit. However, Yahoo! already had a fair number of Katie Scarlett’s registered, so I got to choose a number. I have a horrible memory with numbers so I went with my bra size. There you have it internet. My email address equals my bra size, there is no shame left in my world.

From Kenju: What is the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?

Sweet baby Jesus in heaven, I couldn’t possibly choose the most embarrassing thing, mainly because my embarrassment is never ceasing. So instead shall we go with the most recent embarrassing situation? We shall, excellent. Not long ago my boss got this wild hair that when he went for his ATV training, his executive officers (that would be me) should go along with him, because wouldn’t that be fun??

I’ll preface this for those of you who may not know me personally—I am not the ATV type of girl. I didn’t even know what an ATV was until I moved to Arkansas, and when it was explained to me I responded with “Oh, you mean like those little Barbie Jeeps?”

So, what no one tells you about ATV’s is that they pretty much do whatever they damn well please. Including refusing to go into reverse, refusing to brake, refusing to climb hills and instead bringing you nearly to the peak and then beginning a steady roll back downhill because I NEVER LEARNED HOW TO DRIVE A STICK.

Yeah, so that was a blast, I rolled down the hill within the first five minutes and landed in a patch of tall bushes, not much later I got left at the stables when all the guys drove off leaving me desperately trying to reverse, went the wrong way after getting rescued, and then got yanked and jerked off the path (and I use that term loosely) because also THERE IS NO POWER STEERING and literally drove into the woods. And when I say into the woods I actually mean into a bunch of trees. And guess what? I couldn’t reverse.

All of this while my boss was watching. I would have loved to have died except that I probably would have wrecked the ATV and then my parents would have to use my death benefits to replace it for the Air Force.

From Stephanie: What is one of your most cherished childhood memories?

For this one I’m going to have to go with a collective grouping of memories, and just say that my favorite memories of childhood all involve Christmas. I don’t necessarily mean Christmas morning with the presents and the food and the presents and the presents, but the whole Christmas season and all of our family traditions. This year is the first time that I’ve not been home for the holiday season. Last year I was lucky enough to be TDY close enough to home that I could come home for the weekends leading up to Christmas and help decorate the house and the tree. The tradition that I know I’ll carry on some day when I have little demons of my own is decorating the Christmas tree with John Denver and the Muppets playing in the background. Because there is no soundtrack to Christmas like Miss Piggy flipping out about figgy pudding (with bacon).

And last but not least from my dear, darling girl Kristi(n) (teehee): If you could be doing anything right now, what would it be?

Watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN….

Here's the Line... and Here's You

So, I think a large part of my problem with people is that when it comes to other’s personal lives they just have no boundaries. I’m so glad that there are so many people who care about my life, and are happy for me, and worry for me, and just generally consider me a friend or family. I do get frustrated at times when they seem to think that they know best and that they can judge my relationship or decisions in life best, but overall I believe that it’s only out of love for me that they even bother. If they didn’t give a rat’s ass then they probably wouldn’t poke and prod and query.

This sentiment does not extend to people I meet at the fitness center.

While working out last night I struck up a conversation with a nice girl who had recently moved into the apartment complex. Eventually we got on the topic of my trip to Washington and from there upcoming job decisions I’ll have to make and my boyfriend. She was very easy to talk to and was giving helpful opinions until we got to this point in the conversation:

Her: Wow, 2 ½ years long distance. That must be hard to stay faithful.

Me: (huh?) Well, no, actually that’s not really anything I’ve ever worried about. I’ve got a really great support system, so when I start to get down I usually realize I’m just being silly.

Her: But aren’t pilots usually the ones who go off and cheat all the time? Like really arrogant?

Me: I guess some are, but he’s really not that type of guy. It’s just that we’ve only dated in the same city for about 6 months of our relationship, so it would be nice to live more locally for a while if we were to get married eventually.

Her: Well, girl, if he’s not willing to commit right now, don’t you waste your time on that. You could get anyone; you don’t need to wait for him.

Me: Yeah… well, it was nice to meet you, maybe I’ll see you around again. (exit stage left and RUN LIKE HELL)

Well, thank you for your opinion, and thanks for thinking that I’m completely incapable of making informed, intelligent decisions that are right for me. I mean, what makes a complete stranger think that another person’s personal life is any of their business, and how could she know after talking to me for 15 minutes that she knows better than me what I should do in my life?

Sure, I have moments where I question things, and sure I’m ready for more at this point and time than he is, but does that mean that I’m just going to drop everything like a hot potato? No. Believe it or not I’m a pretty smart girl, and I don’t sugar coat things. I know that there is good and not so good in my relationship, and I’m not expecting that that would be any different no matter who I was with. I just so happen to think that the good is worth sticking around for and that honestly the bad in our relationship is probably pretty good for most relationships.

I’ve been in a bad relationship, I know what it’s like. I’ve been miserable and convinced myself that I was happy. I know what that’s like. I’ve been promised the moon and given a kick in the ass, so I’m just happy that I have someone who is willing to be honest with me and talk about things realistically. Not just someone who will tell me what I want to hear to keep me around. I know what that’s like.

I’ve been told that I’m very mature for my age and —can we all pretend like that’s actually true and have enough confidence in me to live my life on my own path?

Why Grandmother, What Crap Eyes You Have

I. Have. To. Get. Glasses.

Now, I realize that of all the horrible things in the world that could happen to me, this is not the most dreadful. I don't even have to wear them all the time, just when I'm doing paperwork/reading or driving at night. In fact, I'm having to work very hard here to make this a tragedy. Thing is? Some people look awesome in glasses--take Tina Fey for example. Way hotter with glasses than without. Lisa Loeb--who would she have been without those kicky glasses?

I am not one of those people.

Also? My vision has always been my "thing".

Pretty much everyone has some health attribute that they're bizarrely proud of--even if they don't realize it. Like... my metabolism is so high I could eat a quarter pounder with cheese 5 times a day while shooting back Chantico's and never gain a pound. Or... my memory is so great that I can remember all of the names of my classmates in kindergarten and the thread count of their nap blankets. Possibly... my toes are so long I can fold my laundry with them and play the Rachmoninov Piano concerto No. 3 in D minor. I don't know... SOMETHING LIKE THAT!!

My "thing" is my vision. I've always breezed through eye exams without even thinking about it. Oh, that tiny little speck of a line? You want me to read that? Suuuuuure, I can read that! And I would. And I could also see through walls. (Okay, not the last part...) But seriously? Eagle Eyes, that's me.

Then I went for my yearly "checkup" and the stupid little technician set up the machine wrong so that I couldn't even read the biggest line (and YES she set it up wrong). So, I had to go in for an official eye exam from the Big Boys in the white coats (no, not those white coats).

There I sat smugly reading line after line, trying not to let on that I was having to strain more than a little bit the further on we went and maybe, possibly might be making up letters... is that a b or a z? Wow, they look remarkazly similar...

Then he put this little machine in front of me and made everything go blurry and then--holy mother of God!! I could see again, with the strength and glory of my formerly wondrous eyes, as I looked through Lens 1 or 2? Lens 3 or 4? It was like some sort of miracle, only my tears were more tears of horror and revulsion than rejoicing.

So, I should be receiving the Metallic Lenses of Hell sometime this week, and then, I will officially? Be a dork.

You Ask, I Answer Pt 1

Okay, first thing—from now on I promise to do better spell checking before I post! I was reading over my last post and in the words of one of my favorite bloggers, fat hot ham, I was annoying the crap out of myself with how many words I’d misspelled… Also, use of the word “incredible”, consider it stricken from my vocabulary from hereon out. I didn’t actually count how many times I used it in my last post, but we’ll just all agree that it was excessive!

Now moving on to the fun part—answering the great questions that y’all came up with a couple of posts ago. Depending on how long my answers get I may break this up into two posts. We’ll just see where this goes. I’m also doing this during my Sunday night television viewing, so it will depend on how fascinating Desperate Housewives is tonight as to how far I get!

First from Samantha: The story of my first kiss.

When I was growing up, I was always boy crazy, but I wasn’t allowed to date until I was 16, so I actually was “Sweet 16”. (Well, sort of, I don’t think Truth or Dare kisses count…) I’d had a HUGE crush on a guy in my class for ages, but he was always dating someone so I didn’t think he had any interest in me. But, we all know how high school works, my friends talked to his friends, it got around to him that I was interested and wham bam thank you ma’am, I had my first real date. Being the little innocent that I was, I didn’t kiss him for a couple of dates, but eventually we ended up going with some friends to another high school drama production of Guys and Dolls. He drove me back home and walked with me up to the front door. Usually I’d just give him a hug and then run inside before he could do anymore, but that night he went in for the kiss. I’d been dreaming of this all my life, and waiting for the fireworks and choirs singing in the background. He kissed me, and I stood there. And I stood there longer. He pulled away and I said goodnight and walked slowly inside. My parents asked how the date was, I said it was great, and then I closed myself in my bedroom and I cried and cried and cried. It had been horrible! No fireworks, no choirs, not even a butterfly fluttering, nada. We dated for another 4 months or so, mainly because I felt like such an idiot for crushing on him for years and then 3 weeks into the relationship moving on to the next guy. But really from there on out it was all downhill, any big surprise?

From Sharon:  Correct me if I'm wrong but don't you believe in ghosts? Experience any ghost encounters lately?

I do believe that there are ways that spirits can communicate with us, and some people are more attuned to that communication than others. I, for one, am about as sensitive to it as a brick. I’ve only got two stories that can be construed as “ghost stories” in any way.

When I was in high school I worked at an Italian restaurant that had been built recently and often had shifts during the daytime on weekends. We would come in early to clean and it was usually pretty quiet during the shift. One day I was out in our main lobby dusting off the wine rack. It was mostly out of sight from the dining room and there was a To Go counter behind me with a door that connected to the kitchen. It was very quiet—I can’t remember if we hadn’t opened yet or if there just weren’t any customers, but the kitchen wasn’t really busy and I was the only hostess working. So, I’m dusting off the bottles when I heard my name called. I turned around to see if one of the waiters was trying to get my attention, but I didn’t see anyone. I waited for a minute but didn’t hear them call again so I went back to dusting and heard it again, this time I went around to the dining room to see who was calling me. When I didn’t see anyone around I went back to the kitchen and told them to leave me alone, but no one had any idea what I was talking about. It happened one more time when I was cleaning out shelves behind the To Go counter after closing, and again no one was around. I have no idea if that was anything supernatural at all or if I’m just insane, but a couple of the other hostesses claimed that the same thing happened to them in the same area of the building.

The second story is a dream that I had, but this I firmly believe was my grandmother’s way of communicating with me. My grandmother passed away in March after declining for years and not long after that my grandfather passed in July. We all knew that my grandfather was very sick and my mom had gone up to see him. I had a dream that I was at a funeral but I didn’t know who it was for. I was sitting with my younger sister on one side and my grandmother was on the other side. In my dream, I knew that she was dead, and I tried to talk to her, but she just kept looking straight ahead without speaking and patting my leg comfortingly. I wasn’t afraid, but I was confused. I turned and asked my sister if she could see a woman sitting next to me and she just looked at me like I was nuts and said no. Right then my phone rang and woke me up. It was my mom telling me that my grandfather had died. I think that my grandmother knew how difficult the next few days and weeks were going to be for me and she was doing what she could to comfort me in the only way she could reach me. Through my dreams.

Not the Boyfriend: Am I going to let my boyfriend pick any radio stations on the car ride to Seattle?

Of course dearling. Isn’t it wonderful how you love all of the same radio stations as me and just hate all of those screamy rock and roll stations and secretly bless me every time I change it to easy listening! Love you, *muah*!

That seems like a good place to break for now. I’ve only whetted your appetites, the best is yet to come—aren’t you excited! And now I shall go back and edit my little brains out because I can’t tell you how much I hate it when I use “your” instead of “you’re”. Don’t I have a fascinating life??

The Great American Road Trip

Come with me, on a trip back in time to a place far, far away… or actually just come with me to my apartment back in October.  But not really, just in your head, you probably don’t actually have time for a trip right now.  I’m going to do my best to tell you about our vacation without going on and on about it for the next 5 hours—we’ll see how that goes!

Things started out exactly as predicted, we dropped Jack off at the vet’s to board and I cried, then I put off doing laundry and starting to pack until about 9 o’clock that night, so I didn’t get to bed until nearly 2 o’clock while setting the alarm for 5… ugh…  We got off right on time and spent the next 10 hours in the car on our way to Nebraska to stay with Colby’s grandmother.  I slept, he drove.  It was beautiful. When we got in the car that morning the weather was in the upper 70s, when we got out in Lincoln it was in the lower 40s.  Yay!!  Winter!! 

Colby and his Grandma

So we spent the weekend in Lincoln with his grandmother and then headed out again Sunday morning for South Dakota. One of the great things about being in the military is the ability to get a hotel on any base anywhere in the world for between 20 and 30 bucks.  And as long as your on orders, even if they have no room on base, they have to put you up in a hotel downtown.  So we stayed at Ellsworth and got an awesome suite for about $25—not bad!

One of my favorite old red barns along the way.

The next day it was off to the Badlands, which, again, people I’ve never seen anything like it!  Granted I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon which from what I stand is similar but on a much larger scale, but the Badlands were just what was left of the earth after the glaciers moved through.  It was incredible, and I can attest to the fact that these pictures just don’t really convey how breathtaking this place is.

(Yeah, I know, it's the Corn Palace... hang on, I'm getting there!)

There it is!  The Naughtylands... I mean Bad, yeah Badlands...

The next day we went to Mt Rushmore and Devils Tower and I did my best to restrain myself from taking too many photos, I have a very trigger happy finger and there’s always a better picture that can be taken after the last one!  Luckily we were using Colby’s digital camera, so I was able to control myself with the delete button if necessary Both sites were absolutely incredible and completely packed with retirees… It was pretty funny.  I think we were the only people there under the age of 50, which just sort of served to remind us that “Haha, you’re on vacation and no one else is!!  Woohoo!!”

We spent another day driving and then spent the next day in Yellowstone. Which, oh my gosh, if you’ve never been there, put it on your list of things that you MUST SEE before you die!  It was absolutely incredible in so many different ways.  I knew Old Faithful was there, but I had no idea that really the vast majority of the park is a geothermal area and there are geysers and boiling waters and deep pools all over the damn place!  Apparently a large portion of the ground is only a thin crust over the molten layer so they ask you to stay on the paths pretty much everywhere.  On the flip side there are acres and acres of hills and trees, prairies covered in buffalo, rivers, lakes, beautiful mountain views… it was incredible and you could easily spend a week there and still not see everything there was to see.

(At one point Old Faithful was much more impressive than this, but after about 2 minutes of it going off I realized, oh crap, we didn't take our picture in front of it!  So... this is how it looks at the end, right before it rolls over and smokes a cigarette.)

The Abyss Pool

The next day we made it into Spokane, our first foray into “civilization” for some time!  And the next day we finally pulled into McChord AFB, in Tacoma—about 45 minutes south of Seattle. We had great fun over the next couple of weeks as well—Aquarium, Space Needle, Lake Union, Vancouver, shopping, Point Defiance, Mt Rainier, museums, theater, Pike Place Market… it was incredible!  And I have to tell you how amazing my boyfriend is—not only did he agree to going to see Little Women the musical at the Paramount, wandered around after me in Sephora and Coach, he hardly even complained once, and even admitted to liking Little Women when all was said and done—what a man!!

Downtown Seattle

I'm pretty sure that's Lake Union, and you can see the shadow of the Space Needle down there too!

On our way out to Mt Rainier

Doesn't it look like it should be the cover of a Christmas card?

It's snowing, it's snowing!!

As for the most important part we found Colby a great apartment, and he moved in on Wednesday of last week.  Of course, he has no furniture yet as the movers have yet to have made their appearance, but he’s a tough guy he’ll make it!  And we did our part to stimulate the economy through eating at every damn restaurant in the Seattle/Tacoma area and they were all mouthwateringly delectable!!  (Although we both decided that we don’t care what people say, Izzo’s Illegal Burrito is still way better than Chipotle!)

So, those are pretty much the cliffnotes from the trip—I’m pretty sure there were about 900 bazillion things I’ve already forgotten, but suffice it to say I had an absolutely amazing time and absolutely fell in love with the area.  And we were so incredibly lucky with the weather.  All of the days that we were out walking around and touring it was beautiful and sunny, cool but not too cold and we only had to experience the nasty grey, rainy days on the days when we were apartment hunting or just lazing about.  The only bad weather we had when we would have liked to walk around a bit more was in Vancouver, and even so we had a nice driving tour of the city!

I'm in Canada... it's a huge red maple leaf... get it??  It's a joke!

The Peace Arch at the border between the US and Canada

So, that's the end. I’ll get to answering the questions tomorrow or Monday (because yay, four day weekend!!)—I was going to do it today, but I’m pretty sure this is already long enough and I’ve probably lost most of you by now anyway!

It's Aliiiiiiiiiive!!!

Um, well, I’m back.

That was rather anticlimactic, wasn’t it?

I almost think it should be illegal to take more than a week off of work, because once you go back? It is SHEER TORTURE!! Why am I sitting behind this desk staring at a computer screen with absolutely no natural light when I could be off gallivanting through the Rockies and communing with buffalo or sleeping in and then waking to spend a lovely day with my lovely boyfriend strolling through lovely shops such as Sephora and lovingly stroking lovely Coach bags? This sucks royally.

Anyway, the trip was absolutely fantastic. We traveled through some of the most beautiful country I’ve ever seen as well as some of the most boring, but it was all just amazing. I have about 400 million pictures that I’ll put up at some point that you may or may not like to look at. Quite frankly I can’t even handle looking at them right now; they mostly just make me want to cry and be tantrummy (new word invention perhaps??). But in a good way!

I’ve only had about 25% of the people I work with glance pointedly and somewhat questioningly at my left hand ring finger, and the other 74% physically attacked me en masse and asked how the proposal was and where is the ring?? The other 1% just looked at me sort of questioningly when I said, no, actually I didn’t get married but thanks for making it your business. I'm not even joking. There is not one person who has started off by asking me about my trip. It's like everytime I go away for a span of time some evil munchkin goes around spreading rumors that I'm pulling a Britney in Vegas. By some superhuman feat of strength I managed not to kill a single well-meaning person and have only smiled pleasantly and somewhat amusedly while repeating soothing mantras in my head involving bunnies and rock gardens and Zen thinking.

So, if any of you are still wondering. No, I’m not engaged, I’m not married, and at this rate will not be any time in the near/distant future. No, I’ve not yet begun looking into harvesting my eggs, I’m leaving my mail-order husband catalog in a tightly locked cupboard for now, and I don’t planning on buying 15 cats over the next month and referring to them as my precious heirs, I’m NOT A FREAKING SPINSTER SO LEAVE ME THE HECK ALONE ABOUT IT! I’m still trying to figure out at what point in time 22 became an age at which point you should be married and possibly pregnant with your 3^rd child. And no, I am not bitter and do not have anger issues so if you just back away slowly I probably won’t hurt you and will more than likely curl up in the fetal position and beg for chocolate and shiny things and hope that you pet me softly.

Yeah, so the trip was great! It’s been the coming home part that has made me somewhat homicidal.

On another note, I’ve gotten some interesting news about my job… I still haven’t quite figured out what I’m going to do with that, but it certainly leaves open some options that I didn’t realize were available to me. I don’t really want to go into details here since there’s probably some sort of covert Air Force operation dedicated solely to sniffing out Air Force member blogs and laying the smack down. Anyway, suffice it to say… it’s got interesting prospects. And we’ll leave it at that.

I shall return with a much more upbeat post soon that will not bring to mind Bette Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" and shall answer all of your probing questions from my previous posts. (Even though I KNOW you didn’t all play along—I have a stat counter people. I KNOW YOU’RE OUT THERE!) I’m also getting around to all of my blogreading. I’ve checked up on a few of you already, just didn’t have the energy to actually think of a comment with any substance aside from—“Hey, I remember you! Remember me!” Now… onto the rest of the day…