Finally, a quiz that "gets" me!

Your result for Reincarnation Placement Exam...

Reclusive Artist

We think we've found a place for you.

Your answers indicate that you're very fond of the fruits of civilization... for example, education and technology. But, in some twist of irony, you're not too fond of the pressures of civilization... you know, human beings and crowds and working together. We found you a place where you could enjoy an erudite existence, live a life that's intriguing and not entirely secure -- but far from the madding crowd.

Removed from civilization and humanity, yet educated and sophisticated, you'll make the perfect reclusive artist... An eccentric that produces irresistibly attractive masterpieces. Your art will make people swoon, and yet you will despise your audience. Your audience will probably dislike you as well, though they will go on admiring your work. So it all balances out, and your patrons will leave you alone to shape beauty in the wild, dangerous parts of the world where people won't pester you so much. Probably, you will write under a pseudonym, and mutter a lot when a rare admirer comes calling. If you feel really adventurous, you can pursue the role of a political dissident.

As you age, you will grow into the role of an incorrigible curmudgeon.

You artists, you're all the same.

Take Reincarnation Placement Exam at HelloQuizzy

A guy walks into a bar*

On July 4th 2004 I quit smoking. On July 5th, 2004 I started running.
The first thing was a simple decision to not die before my mother. I simply did not want to put her through the act of burying another child.
Yeah, that's really why I quit.

The running thing was more complicated, one part distraction from grief, one part the not dying before my mom thing, and two parts wanting to do something that was HARD and a little bit like punishment.
I'm currently still saving for the therapy I probably need to sort that last bit out.

I've been struggling with my running since I moved to North Carolina in Spring 2005. I've had one injury after another, struggled with finding a gym I didn't hate, and had a horrible time sticking to any kind of training program. I promised myself this year to get my act together and train for an event.

My life finally feels like my own here. I'm not sure what took so long, the complete career change, the leaving the life/place/friends I've had for 20 plus years behind and moving somewhere I knew absolutely no one. Nothing in that to make me feel little off-kilter, right?
There is no way I can train to run 26.2 miles when my kilter is crooked.

Just after the first of the year I started planning, and I started with the need to lose some weight that had found me. It's funny how when you stop running 30-35 miles a week and don't stop eating like you're still running 30-35 miles/week - the weight just finds you and hangs around.
Literally, around.

This summer I had an annual physical, and yes, for the person that said "don't you think you should be over that by now" four years after losing my brother I get all choked up when I have to talk to a medical professional about my family history. The nurse practitioner I saw said great things about my health, my blood work, my body weight and actually asked if she could record my heart for teaching purposes (Ohhellzyeahyoucan) I'm approaching "a certain age" and so I heard a lot of sentences that started with "a woman your age should..." I'll be unhappy about this another time, currently I still feel too good about the visit to get all weird about growing older.

Somewhere between that and the weight loss meetings I've been attending, I've been doing some significant thinking about my health.
I think it started with my mom, she'll be 76 this year, still drives from south Florida to North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania and/or New Jersey and Massachusetts about three times a year. She walks about 5 miles a day, and runs around after her two youngest granddaughters almost daily. My mom, she is no slacker. My dad is about a year older, and my last email from him said he had just finished his first book (to be released at the end of September), and is going antelope hunting in Montana and deer hunting in western Nebraska later this fall. My dad, not a slouch.

Both sets of my grandparents were dead and gone before I was out of grade school. Two, I never met, were dead years before I was born.

I have no intention of lecturing anyone on taking better care of their health. None. I smoked for years, and have been known to eat a tub of cool whip for dinner. In college I lived on free donuts the cops brought us, coke, stale coffee, Ramen noodles and Hormel chili for more years than I can to remember.

I do want to say this though, just about an hour ago, my sister Karen called me, to tell me she is a grandma. Her son, Matthew and his wife Erin welcomed their first baby girl, Jodi, into the world tonight. My mom is a great grandma. That little baby doesn't have any way of understanding how many people already love her, but I'm grateful to be a part of a family that loved themselves and us enough to take care of themselves so they could be here long enough to meet her.

For all it's warts, and age spots, this life is not so bad, and I'll take the warts to hear the happy in my moms voice when she tells me about her first great-grandbaby.



*I am tired of trying to title posts - I am using the first phrase that pops into my head when I put the blinky cursor in the title box. Deal with it.

Stolen from Mojo...

I've started three blog posts today, and not finished one. So yeah, this is all I have for you.
I hope none of you are laboring on labor day.

You Are a Pistachio

You are funky, freaky, and a total character. You're very different than anyone you know. There's no way you're changing the way you are... Which is good, because no one wants you to change.

a href="a href="What'>http://www.blogthings.com/whatnutareyouquiz/">What Nut Are You?

Balance

I never would have made it as a gymnast. I can’t get the balance right. In any thing never mind on 4” of wood suspended 4 feet in the air.

Lately, it’s all I’ve been thinking about. The need for better balance in my life.

I get busy at work and I can’t turn it off - I come home at night and can only sometimes manage to stay away from my laptop, even if I don’t actually work. I have to log in look at it. Review it. Read and email. Something.

I get wrapped up in fixing something in dog training and I do it to death. Training four-five times a day., until it’s fixed, or at least better. Same thing with horseback riding, I start something and I’m relentless, until it’s better, I’m better, until I reach some level of acceptable that I can only identify when I arrive there. Its.. infuriating.

This problem, is getting worse, not better. I am currently stressing about my job, about showing my dog, jumping “my” horse, money issues/the IRS, and some other personal issues I don’t care so much to hash out here. (This is my happy place. It is so. Shut up.)

I am tired until about noon each day, by 9pm I’m exhausted and can’t wait for bed, I get to bed and I’m awake until 1am, on a good night - I sleep til 6. Most nights? 4 am.

I am tired of the Ferris wheel in my head. It’s not even moving fast enough to be exciting, it’s just relentlessly spinning. And someone tell me why I’m stressed about my hobbies. I love these things, why am I letting them bother me?

This is NEW and I do NOT like it, at all. Like brussel sprouts.

Some things don't deserve a title

Today, while working in my living room, on a project that’s been plaguing me since April of last year; I had to refer to a document written by a company I worked for about 12 years ago. There on page 2 was the name of a woman I once thought of as my nemesis because she, She had HIM.

I was fresh out of college at that job, still living in my tiny college apartment, and by tiny I mean by comparison, an efficiency would have been palatial. The whole space – max, was probably 10’ x 12’ BUT it was on a horse farm, and it was cheap, and my dog was welcome there.

He was the very good friend of my assigned mentor. They used to smoke Marlboro reds on the front steps of the building, cracking jokes, telling hunting stories, talking to everyone and sometimes about them, as they came in the laboratory doors. They were always together, so I got to know him. He made me laugh a lot, and one day he paid me the most amazing compliment I had every received up to that point in my life. I was speechless and instantly, totally and utterly infatuated.

I used to hang out at the company softball games just to be near him, to listen to his accent, his laugh. I used to imagine him watching me as I walked over to the security area to use the bathroom. I was never sure if he did, but I hoped.

It’s weird, because I remember those things, but I can’t tell you how it happened the first time. The first time we crossed the line, the first time we made plans to see each other outside of work or work-social environments. But we did. And we ended up together, and it was amazing, and fun, and dizzying, and so, unbelievably wrong.

I know it lasted quite awhile, because I moved into my condo while we were still seeing each other. I was crazy, crazy, crazy, mad, wild, sick for him.

I remember one day, being with him in the late afternoon, talking in my bedroom, and he was just sitting there, on the edge of my bed, smoking.

And just like that, I knew.
As clearly as if he had taped a banner to my bedroom wall.
He was going to leave her. And their kid.
For me.

I walked him out to his truck that day. Said goodbye, waved to him in the mirror, and then sat on the steps in front of my building and sobbed.

I called in sick for the next two days, didn’t answer the phone, didn’t answer my door.

I ended it the very next time I saw him. I told him the biggest lie I could think of.

The truth was I couldn’t be that girl. The one he left for, and oh I wanted to be. So badly. I wanted to be wanted that much. I wanted to be enough for him to give up so much.

He quit his job about a week later, said he couldn’t see me every day. That it was too hard. I quietly hoped he’d leave her for an embarrassingly long time after. I hoped he’d be there one day, at my door, in my parking lot, somewhere, someday.

I saw him one more time, just one of those things – in the parking lot at the fair. He ran back to his truck to get something and ran into me in the parking lot. He came over to me and told me he still drove by my place, hoping to catch me outside, not to talk to me - just to see me walking the dog or getting the mail. He made me cry, just a little. I don’t remember saying anything. I remember feeling raw and angry. I knew I had done the right thing, finally, but I also knew that at that moment, I was wishing I hadn’t. Or that he hadn’t.

Staring at that document today, her name was still his name. I remembered all of this in the time it took to read the paragraph of results I was looking for, then, I looked them up. Same addresses, same phone numbers.
He never made it back to Kentucky.

I still don’t know, after all these years, why I did it, or why I ran from it just when it became clear I was going to get what I thought I wanted. I don’t know if he told her, or she found out, or if she knew all along.

I don’t know why I needed such a grand, dramatic, heart-rending gesture to feel like I was ‘enough’ and I definitely don't know how long it will take me to feel like saying I’m sorry is ‘enough’.

Go World! and Thanks

I use my automatic timer on my coffee-pot as an alarm clock. This makes one of my not so favorite things (waking up in the morning) much more pleasant because it is one of my favorite noises (the coffee pot finishing its task) that usually jars me from my sleep.

The downside of this is that the buttons on my coffeepot are easily bumped, say when putting the pot back on the burner, cleaning it, or breathing in close proximity to them. This morning, I got out of bed, stumbled into the shower, brushed my teeth, dressed, etc, only to arrive in the kitchen to realize it was about 90 minutes before I even needed to be awake. The really bad part is that this is the second time this week it’s happened because I didn’t fix the damn clock the first time.

Normally, an hour wouldn’t make too much difference, because Granny Cravey, she is in bed (usually) between 930-1000pm but I cannot stop watching the Olympics and I am up late every night. I have watched Archery. And Waterpolo. Things I do not care about it. At All. However, if you throw a couple of flags up I am apparently, unable to turn away.

Oh, and NO I am not tired of watching Michael Phelps win, nor do I hate the women volleyball bikinis, because if I had Kerry Walsh’s ass I would wear nothing but bikini bottoms, EVERYWHERE. Corporate dress code be damned. I also don’t care why divers shower after diving, they are doing incredibly cool, twisty, turny things at the exact same time as the person next to them and I don’t care about much else (why do you?) I also do not know if the Chinese women’s gymnasts are 12 or 16, and either way, I don’t care. Have I cleared that up, co-workers? Excellent, now shut up and either love the Olympics like I do, or go back to your offices and whine to someone else just leave me out of it. I am in love with the Olympics and your bitterness will not taint me.

==============================================================

I want to thank everyone for their kind words about my friend Dennis..
I am frustrated to report that they still have not caught the dirt bag who took my friends life. I check every day and I hope, but so far.. nothing.

Thank you all again for caring about me and about him and the many other people he left behind. It matters to know this.

My friend Dennis

I met him early in my freshman year of high school. My sophomore year I liked him more, because he was never afraid of my brother. He was rarely serious, but knew even way back then that he was going to someday be in law enforcement, so he never took a single drink, had a cigarette, or did any of the more exciting illicit drugs so widely available. He was going to be able to answer those questions with a resounding and completely honest No.

Dennis was always laughing or working to make others laugh.
He took me to see the Freddy Kruger movies, and made a fake Freddy Kruger glove that after the movie he used to tap on bedroom window. Should have been terrifying, except he couldn't stop laughing. Dennis didn't laugh like Freddy Kruger. He laughed the way kids playing in sprinklers do.

We were always friends, through all the high school drama, and later, he refused to let go of our friendship even when his first wife tried to demand he cut off all ties with his female friends from back then. He'd just shrug it off, saying 'they are my friends'. We talked less, but he always made time for me when I called to catch up - both of us knowing full well the days of anger and bitterness he would endure from his jealous wife.

About the time I moved to NC I found out he was in South Carolina, remarried, and finally working towards becoming a police officer. That first time, we spoke for hours. There was much to catch up on and we made the time to do so. We laughed a lot on that phone call. Dennis wasn't a part of anything bad in my life. He was always just a a true friend. His mission was always the same, to make you laugh, and let you know he cared. We talked about getting together for our high school reunion, and then neither of us went. We talked about him driving to North Carolina to visit, and hadn't gotten around to that yet either.

Yesterday, I got a call, Dennis had been shot and killed while working late the night of August 6th. I hate the imagery of him dying alone in the front yard of some vacant house. I realize we all die alone - but I hate it anyway.

I read this morning that they haven't found the responsible party yet. I sincerely hope whatever they took from that vacant house was worth it, and I sincerely hope they find you and hang your sorry ass from the tallest tree in the state.

Even here at the beach this morning, the world is a little uglier without Dennis.
We had one of those jokes - that aren't really funny - and no one else really gets, about him telling me the indicator brake light in his car was a reading light - and I argued what the hell could you read by that little light? His answer - Brake.

I miss you Dennis.
Godspeed.