A "normal" day

I woke up this morning to the incessant yapping of the neighbor's hot dog. A high-strung dog. Very, very high strung. Also very intelligent. Methinks it would get along with my mother... Ah, but I digress... This dog knows to come to all open windows and eventually someone will heave something at him (hopefully food or close to it). I would have strangled the thing's neck had it had one (Ok, I wouldn't, but I'm on a tirade here). Finally, I haul myself out of bed thinking it was afternoon. Nope, it was really 9:30am. I fiddled around as only I can, and then found out I had sold a book for $41 for which I had only paid $2. More time passes- then I decide that I should go to the post office and send the books out. Not a problem. I start to iron my clothes and it occurs to me that I live in a pathetically small town and being that I was going to be in there a mere 2 minutes- it was worth it just to dress comfy. You know, spare the ironing and the subsequent realization that my ass has indeed grown to ridiculous proportions since I last wore these pants. So, dressed in lazy clothes, with a hat covering my rat's nest of hair and sandals on my feet, I leave. I arrive after a couple minutes. Small town, remember? One car in the parking lot- good! In and out and no one will see me. I head in, and I hear someone say "Oh here is someone [blah blah]..... Jen". I'm just minding my own business, filling out my package tracking slips... and it occurs to me that whoever was talking was talking about ME. I turn slightly and I see an old friend from well... a long time ago and most of the time in-between. I had not seen her in years. You see someone "everyday" or you see a close friend, you can be Scuzzy Ms. Skank-Butt. However, if you see a good friend you haven't seen in ~6 years, suddenly you seem more grotesque than seemingly possible and you find yourself in a cosmic loophole. A quip about my undesirable state of dress, a fast hug, a brief update, and we're done. Just as I'm about to hop in line, who comes through the door but Rob, a friend of my brother's who has since become a friend of the family. He's seen me on worse days, so that "visit" was not traumatic. He falls under the "see every day" clause mentioned above. I hop in line. Rob is gone. In front of me is (follow me here)-- the mother of a former teammate and "friend" of my younger years who was then hired to teach music in our old (actually new) middle school. The one really funny memory I have of her daughter (of ~10 kids I might add) was in 3rd grade when we sat opposite each other and kept using our rulers as a crude catapult device to hit each other with erasers. Any enterprising teacher would have given a basic physics lecture right then and there, but nope, we got in trouble. Anyways.. there was the mother, ahead of me in line. I never had a problem with her, nor did I really know her, but had she turned, she probably would have recognized me. Of course, waiting on her is the cashier that sort of intimidates me (and no one really intimidates me, so she's a rare breed). Oh but wait, the cashier next to her opens up.I head up and tell her I want to send Book #1 via media mail. She glares at me and as she is walking away, she tells me to get them ready. Yeah, she never came back. What's so special about that? The fact that she pretends not to know me, of course. Unfortunately, her son (who I think is gay now) and I were an item... uhm... in kindergarten- but she SO knows that. Maybe she thinks I turned him gay or something. Or...maybe she's just a bitch.. yeah, that might be it. Lest she try and ignore me, I know her other son (who broke my watch when he sat behind me on the bus to elementary school and still would probably pull my hair between the window and seat if I ever *happened* to be sitting in front of him), a couple of her nieces, and her sister/sister-in-law was my bus driver for many years. Anyways, now I have to go back to the cashier I dread. The truly amusing thing is that she was efficient, nice, and I was out of there promptly.Some days, I tell you. Yeah, it may be minor, but these are the crazy little things from which my life is formed. Uhm... or something.

6am in the garden of good and evil

Sunday morning, 6am. What's the perfect movie to watch? Why, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, of course. I almost turned the channel when I happened to catch a glimpse of the statue. Of course, I recognized this from the cover of the book I own but never have gotten through. Kevin Spacey with a "Nawlins" accent coming from beneath his slightly southern style mustache as John Cusack seemingly does a wonderful job acting clueless... What follows is sure to be both too much for my tired mind to comprehend, and mildly amusing. Suddenly John Cusack is no longer a writer for a magazine but an undercover cop questioning what looks to be a cross dressing thoroughbred horse owner with a penchant for bright red derby hats. The way our new sunglass-wearing friend looks at a man in a diner, who admittedly deserves it, gives breath to my catatonic hope that there is a need for people to act utterly stupefied in Hollywood. I won't go any further, as I don't wish to deprive anyone looking for a cinematic nightcap. Although it may sound as if I haven't slept, I can assure you that I have. Why I woke up at 5:30 is still somewhat of a mystery, but one that I am very much too lazy to begin to answer. The thought did occur that perhaps I should go out for a "run" or at least go back to church, yeah it's been a while. I have quite a few people to call today, hopefully some job opportunities will result and maybe I can help someone else out. I've had one job offer for reasonable pay- except for the gas and time I would have to burn trying to get to it. It's residential, place seems cozy, but aside from all else, I get a weird vibe that is kind of unsettling (can weird vibes be any other way??). I'm not limiting myself to substance abuse opportunities, however, I would like to finish my CASAC. Hopefully this week I should know how close I am to having my CASAC-T. I was right about the cross dressing.