#Monday Musings

           It’s Monday.  It’s Martin Luther King Day.  Wow.  I haven’t written anything since November 11, 2015. That is a long time.  Do I even still remember how to write?  We will see, won’t we?  Where have I been?  Sick.  I have been sick with pneumonia all this time.   My husband had pneumonia which led to him being unable to work for two weeks.  The only blessing was that the kids never got sick once.  He got better.  I didn’t.  Go figure.  I mean, I have no trains to catch, no job outside the home, so who truly gives a rat’s ass if I ever get well?  It has been a long, depressing road.  We survived the holidays.  The internet was off at our house all this time.  I had the internet on my phone, but nowhere else.  Honestly, I didn’t feel well enough to waddle from my bed to the bathroom, let alone write.  I kept a low profile and flew under the radar battling depression, my own demons, and making a minute by minute attempt to literally cough up my vagina and every bodily fluid I could possibly possess.  Have you ever coughed so hard that you literally peed your pants? Or worse?  I have been there and done that and, this time, didn’t even have the joyous excuse of being pregnant.

        So here I am! For those of you that wondered if I died, you didn’t get that lucky.  I am still struggling along somehow with my messed up  humor and special brand of sarcasm very much intact.   With that said I’ll be giving this writing thing another go.  I am older, struggling with mental-pause hormones.  The up- side is that my doctor finally figured out that perhaps I needed a bit of medicinal help with that situation when I shared that I normally step out on my back stoop in subzero temps in my underwear, barefoot…in the snow,  because I am sweating my ass off.  Behavior like that doesn’t really help the whole attempt to get over pneumonia.

       I have discovered a few things about myself during this time period, though.  The first, and perhaps the most important is that I giggle when I am nervous and uncomfortable.  It isn’t because I am particularly happy.  I also laugh hysterically when I am amused, which still happens quite regularly.   I talk entirely too much when prompted.  I probably share things I relate with and am amused by entirely too much on Facebook.   I am perhaps a bit too honest for most people’s tastes and probably a whole lot inappropriate.  I am convinced that it is a public service for me to isolate myself as much as possible which is why I hide behind writing fiction and haiku.  I also realize that I am just not that great of a writer, but I am OK with that now.  I will write for the fun of it and see how it goes and have absolutely no illusions that I belong at the top of any writing heap.  Sometimes you just need to let it out and vent. Sometimes you simply have to realize that God never abandoned you after all and you are OK.  And then sometimes, you need to quit caring so much, and simply try again.  That is what I am attempting to do.

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         It’s Monday, so it’s time to muse!  Today I am rocking out to pure nostalgia.  Anyone who knows me at all knows I am passionate about music, and if you know that much about me, you might also know that I love movies and own a vast collection.  This weekend I indulged myself and updated my collection with a DVD of “Dirty Dancing”.  While I have the video cassette, I no longer have a VCR.  Because of that fact, I have been steadily beefing up my DVD collection with some of the titles I love that I have on VHS so I can actually watch them again!

          With “Dirty Dancing”, I get the best of both worlds…amazing music and a coming of age romance that tugs at the ole heart strings for the bargain price of $5.00.  Now you can see why I couldn’t simply walk past this one.    I LOVE this movie.  It was released in 1987, a year after I graduated from high school.  My daughter and I sang along to all the songs, and I find myself still singing them today.  I have them cranked to full blast on Spotify as I write this.  If you haven’t seen it, you must!  If you have seen it, you must see it again.  It is well worth the effort.

             It was one lazy ass weekend at my house, staying up late watching movies, playing cards, and sleeping in until late into the afternoon.  Saturday was made better with a Notre Dame win, and Sunday was dominated with grocery shopping, dishes, house cleaning, and laundry.  I even managed to get a bit of knitting done!  Thanks to 4-H and my tutelage, my daughter is quite the baker so while I cleaned, my daughter made bread bowls which were filled more than once with homemade steaming hot chili topped with melted cheddar cheese and then promptly devoured.  I love weekends.  There is nothing I look forward to more, and unfortunately, there is nothing that passes quicker than a weekend.

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       A little late in the day, but not too late for a little musing this Monday.  15 years ago today I was eagerly anticipating my cesarean section scheduled for the next morning with a twinge of fear and a whole lot of excitement.  I had never had a baby before and even though I had taken the childbirth classes at the hospital, I still felt ill equipped for what was to come.  Besides, I spent 99.9% of the movie shown the expectant parents about childbirth and cesareans cringing horrified behind my pillow.

        I endured a tough pregnancy with my first 
born.  Let’s just say, I don’t do pregnancy well.  I was not one of those fabled expectant mothers who simply glowed.  Tinged a sickly, pasty, green,   I struggled through every minute of my pregnancy plagued with nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, riding on the hellacious roller coaster ride of hormones, high blood pressure, and gestational diabetes.  To be honest, by the time it was time to go under the knife I simply wanted the pregnancy to be over.  I simply could not imagine the reality of the baby, I would soon have.   I had no idea whether the baby would be a boy or a girl.

        Fast forward 15 years and here I am preparing to celebrate the beautiful and smart girl I was blessed with by blowing up bunches of balloons, suspending them from the ceiling, and stringing a “Happy Birthday” banner in their midst.  The real celebration won’t commence until this weekend when my husband comes home.  Still, I couldn’t let my little girl’s day pass unnoticed.  Tomorrow I will bake cupcakes, a simple precursor to the birthday cake she will have this weekend.  She will get to blow candles out on both occasions, because really a person cannot have too many wishes!   Then, once both kids are home from school, away we will go to the local pizza place to inhale as much pizza, pasta, salad, and bread sticks that are earthly possible to inhale without exploding.

     Only a handful of hours to go until her fourteenth year will be gone and her fifteenth year will dawn.  No matter how old either of us get, she will always be my sweet baby girl and I will always be her mommy and for that I will always be eternally grateful. 

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      I never really pay attention to blogging anniversaries or how many posts I have actually put up.  Sure, I have seen other bloggers happily sharing how they have made it to this milestone or that silently because I usually have my head lodged so far up my ass that I miss when things like that happen.

         

    

     Well, guess what?  For some reason, I woke up and literally smelled the coffee today and realized that I have published 900 posts on the Giggling Trucker’s Wife Writes!!!  This happy mess of Monday Musing is number 901!  So before this moment completely passes by without any acknowledgement at all, I will take this moment to jump up and down, and say “Look at me!  Look at me! Aren’t I special?”

 

       

      Why do I write?  It’s something to do, and let’s face it, it is way more fun than doing dishes, folding laundry, or housework.  Let’s be quite clear, I DO THAT TOO!!  I am a stay at home mom, but yes, I do more than just sit on my duff and take up space.  I cook, clean, crochet, knit, play piano, and play games, all sorts! I also juggle kids and dogs, literally.  I make the dogs do their duty outside and make the kids do their homework.  Yes, I do!  I also am honorary chauffeur to every after school activity event.  I cook too, which explains where all the dirty dishes come from.  Just as soon as I get them clean another heap appears.  It is a vicious cycle and an evil conspiracy that I will never be able to explain to you.

   

       So for all you folks that have taken the time to stop by and read the literal stream of BS that I have spewed, marveled at my haiku, and commented on my stories, thank you.  I love you guys.  You are proof that I am not completely wasting my time.  I will do my best to continue to deserve your devotion!

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     This last weekend was a bit busy, which is why I simply didn’t get around to posting Friday.  Life stepped in, asked me to dance, and I obliged.  Saturday marked my husband and my 18^th wedding anniversary.   A lot of anniversaries have come and gone without much fanfare.  This one, we made plans, and followed through.   We took the kids to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum for the day and had a ball.

     So much to see, so much to do,  so much to learn, and tons of pictures to take!  I actually took over 200 pictures.  I wasn’t the only one snapping pictures.  My daughter and husband took pictures with their phones too so we have a lot of photos to document the day.          

      Highlights of the day included getting up close and personal with dinosaurs, the transformers Bumblebee and Optimus Prime, taking a trip to China, learning all about religions from all over the world, and goggling amazed at a 43 foot tower of colorful blown glass.  As much as I hate waiting for trains to pass, I still managed to enjoy the train exhibit they had that included vintage toy trains and a life size replica you could climb aboard and experience a simulation of traveling down the tracks.  Another favorite from the day was the show we took in at the museum’s planetarium.  Very cool to sit back and travel through the galaxies and catch a glimpse at how the universe formed, the planets of solar system, and the millions of stars.

           Indianapolis is about a 3 hour drive from where we live.  On the way home, we stopped at Grissom Air Force Base and took in some of the airplanes they have on display outside.  Unfortunately, the museum itself was already closed for the day but we still got to see some pretty cool planes.

         Sunday we took the swimming pool down and put it away until next summer.  Even though the days are fairly warm, the nights are reaching the 40’s so the days of lazily floating in the pool were numbered anyways.  The rest of the day was spent with being lazy, napping, watching movies, laundry, and a run to the grocery store.  I was happy to discover that the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame won their football game this week, but unhappy to learn that their starting quarterback, Malik Zaire, was injured and will be out for the rest of the season.  Hopefully Coach Brian Kelly has another amazing quarter back to take the reins and lead NotreDame to victory for the rest of the season.  GO IRISH!!

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