Good morning! Way too much swirling around in my head today and it seems like it is the perfect time to flush it out and move forward, so bear with me that this really lacks any sense.....
This past weekend, I was humbled beyond words, angered at something I have no control of, saddened by some of my actions, confused by a couple of things said in my presence, and frustrated with a choice I made, but I did manage to find a little happiness. All in all, a well rounded weekend.
Lets begin with Friday, shall we? Okay, here goes. After some last minute errands for some on-site work for an out of state client I was given, I watched my daughter leave for a sleepover and began what I call my well rounded weekend. I was invited to a birthday gathering and since it is was on a Friday night, I pondered the notion to stay home, but agreed that I needed to get out for a little. Usually Friday nights are impossible for me to go out. DH has his night of decompressing with a few beers with his co-workers and a few friends right after work, while I stay home and take the responsible road to watch our daughter and head off to bed early so I can wake up to my alarm the next morning to go to work. What made this past Saturday different than the others is that I was not going directly into work, but to a hotel to transform someone into the bride she envisioned in pictures with her chosen hairstyle and makeup. Since it was a morning wedding, I had to arrive ready for the task at hand quite early. I have met this woman only a few times and believe me, the first time scared me. She appeared to be the textbook definition of a "Bridezilla"... so tightly wound that I could hear the ear-slipping twang of guitar strings being pulled to the brink of breaking. My zen-like nature kicked in and over the course of just a few more random visits, we became more like old friends than a client and her hairdresser. After performing what some people believe is magic, I was invited to stay the day with her; to be a guest to her morning wedding and afternoon reception. Since it was a relatively light Saturday at the salon for me, I graciously accepted. The wedding was a small and intimate affair, but beautiful nonetheless. The food was great at the reception and when I left, she took the time to personally thank me for being there, hugged me and asked for my phone number so we can keep in touch because she got more out of my working on her hair and makeup.... she got a cherished friendship out of the deal. I was humbled to the point of being speechless.
Okay, I skipped ahead a little, but I can catch up with this..... I know I have good hearing, but I do have the tendency to take what is said and try to figure out what the sentiment meant. Infliction of voice can be deceiving at times. On Friday night, as I was leaving the birthday gathering, I walked past a table of guys enjoying the beers before them and one guy happens to look straight up at me and says one word.... "Damn!" Now, I could take that one word and make it into two totally different feelings. I just cannot decipher which one it is. Could it be a compliment? Or not. If I only stuck around to see if there was anything else this young dude wanted to add to clarify the sentiment, but alas, I had to go home and I am left with the curiosity that remains.... Did he mean "Damn! She is good looking!", or did he mean "Damn! She is one train wreck of a woman!" Either way, I guess I will never know and I will not assume which it is because I see it as I will choose the less than nice comment when it comes to compliments.... I am not all that receptive to them. Well, onward to Saturday's flummoxing moment.... At the wedding reception, I was placed at a table of friends of the bride. Nice bunch of people, if you ask me. We talked about sports, horses (since they are all into riding horses, owning horses, and training horses), and our families. Well, the guy seated next to me offers to get me something from the bar and I asked it that drink could be a diet coke since I did have to return to work for a client that was booked for the end of my day. He returns with my diet coke and says loudly, may I add, "Here, love". I was a little confused to say the least. I never met this person before, in the short time we talked it was clearly understood that we both are married to other people (but attended the festivities alone), and even if it was just a term of endearment that they use in Ohio (from where he is from), I felt a little uncomfortable thinking it could possibly be not a term of endearment. I did not ask for clarifications. I could only say, "thank you".
After returning to work to attend to one more client, I was handed a devastating bit of news. A former co-worker that I have blogged about with her battle with cancer was struck again with the return of the cancer that we thought she had removed and was given a clean bill of health. She is still not fully healed from such an invasive procedure where internal organs were removed, veins and arteries rerouted, and so much more. She had stage 4 abdominal cancer and survived a major surgery to get her clean bill of health and a year to heal, only to have the cancer return in generally the same area. She decided that the return of the cancer is God's plan for her and she is making her final arrangements and already hired hospice to attend to her needs while she waits for her number to be called. I was furious to hear this news! She fought to survive the first time, but is embracing the inevitable now and I am obviously not ready to let her leave my life. I did call her and talked. To hear her be so calm about this definitely shows strength to face something that we really have no control over.... Our mortality. I wish that there was something I can do, but there really is not.
Fast forward to Sunday. DD finally decides to get her weekend homework done. Of course, I did not know what she had to do, but knew she would get it done before Monday rolls around. In a feverishly high whining pitch of her voice, she needs my help. She forgot her history book and cannot figure the answers to her assignment that is due the next day. I recalled at parent orientation, there is a website that has her history book materials on-line, only to find out that it only offers study materials and not the actual book. As DD's voice becomes more grating on my nerves, I send an e-mail to her history teacher, tell DD to turn in what she has done so far, and hope for the best. Come Monday night, well after DD was home for a while, she springs upon me that I have some papers to sign for her science teacher. Knowing fully well that I never sign something without reading it, I ask DD what this is for and she can't seem to explain to me what the teacher said. While the paper was clear with what it was for, I wanted to see if she retained the information, but she instead goes off on some tangent about knowing how to make a paper airplane. My voice got tense, my words were stern and I made my daughter cry. After roughly an hour of talking to her to calm down, she wanted to talk about other topics that scare parents of girls. Obviously, they were concerns to her, too. Once we got an understanding of one another, I apologized for my short temper, signed the necessary stuff for her to return to school, and sent her off to bed for the night.
I still felt awful for making her cry, so I stayed up late to read a book. Yep, a new author, but same genre of chic lit. While there are some parts that made me giggle with the female protagonist's sharp tongue, this book quickly became more of a whining piece of literature that has become painful to read. The bitterness and short-sighted opinions of this character over the fact that her life is no bed of roses is getting a little too much for my liking. Yep, a country music song in book form... all drawn out in details that could have been condensed, but was not. "Good in bed" by Jennifer Weiner is about a 28-year old overweight journalist that gets the short end of the stick. Her parents are divorced, her father denies their existence, her mother comes out of the closet and is now in a lesbian relationship with a chain-smoking emotionally damaged woman 20 years her junior, her boyfriend (I mean ex-boyfriend) took her need for a break from their relationship literally as a solid breakup and lands a job writing a sex column in a cosmo-esque magazine about their relationship, and while trying to win back his love, she gets pregnant with his child while she joined a medically controlled diet program that she gets kicked out of. There are five parts to this book and I am only in part three and skimming parts now. All that self-loathing is getting a bit much. Blaming her father for not loving her, dealing with her mother's new lesbian lifestyle, saddened that her ex-boyfriend has moved on, angered about the publicly told story of their relationship in the light of how it was a challenge to love a large woman, and hating herself for being fat. While I can sympathize with the similarities of the self-loathing, I can understand the frustrations of trying to lose weight, I can relate to the fear of becoming a mother for the first time, and I can definitely feel her pain... I would only hope that something enriching or even soul affirming could take place somewhere in there. It has been nothing but misery, longing and bitterness with no growth potential. This story is dragging and normally I can read through a 360 page book in a day or two. This is taking me far longer to achieve finishing it because it is too painful to read. I think it is time to skim over the rest of this book, read the last 4 or 5 chapters fully and get the closure this book needs. At least, this book alone has broken the feverish pace that I have been reading and is making me return to finding other things to do.
What I did manage to find among the varying emotional roller coaster ride this weekend was a little happiness in the mix. Happiness, you ask? Yep, happiness that I continue to learn a little more about myself through the emotions that present themselves. It is the focus on the little things that put those hidden feelings in the light to be seen and understood.
Thanks for reading and have a great day :)
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