CAUTION: Woman In Progress

My mom just sent me something I think fits a lot of folks I know...including me. ;-) Enjoy!

Yesterday was...well, to say the least, it was difficult. Long. Hard. Tiresome. I was greeted at work with the news that there had been some flooding in 4 stack tiers due to the breakdown of a water fountain on the 6th stack that I didn't even know worked. Thankfully none of our materials were harmed...just a few damp architectural drawings that have to be dried. My super and the building maintence crew took care of most of that work so I didn't have to wade through the water much. I know it's a frightening situation though. Water and library materials don't mix, you know? And a lot of it is irreplaceable. Rare books, manuscripts, architectural drawings and the like. I had to work until 6 last night. Thankfully no problems and despite the best efforts of the sun I was driving into, I made it home with nary a scratch. Unfortunately I had a disturbing message on my machine. It was my best friend, DQ. Her mom is in the hospital again. This time she had to have a mastecotmy...

My BIL (Sis1's hubby) just sent this to me. It's too funny not to share. Sorry if it offends. On their way to get married, a young Catholic couple are involved in a fatal car accident. The couple find themselves sitting outside the Pearly Gates waiting for St. Peter to process them into Heaven. While waiting, they begin to wonder: Could they possibly get married in Heaven? When St. Peter showed up, they asked him. St. Peter says, "I don't know. This is the first time anyone has asked. Let me go find out," andhe leaves. The couple sat and waited for an answer. Two months pass and the couple are still waiting. So as they waited, they discussed that IF they were allowed to get married in Heaven, SHOULD they get married, what with the eternal aspect of it all. "What if it doesn't work?" they wondered, "Are we stuck together FOREVER?" After yet another month, St. Peter finally returns, looking somewhat bedraggled. "Yes," he informs the...

No, I'm not preggers...lol As I may or may not have mentioned, my cousin M and his wife, T are pregnant and she was supposed to be due Oct. 19. Well, she just e-mailed me and said that her doctor told her this morning that she's already begun dialating and the baby has moved into position. He said that she could have the baby as early as this weekend!! The baby is healthy, fully developed and should weigh around the 8lb mark if he/she comes this weekend. If she carries to her original due date the little porker could weigh TEN POUNDS!! :-O I am so excited. I've really been looking forward to the birth of this particular little cousin. M and T are two of my favorite cousins and M's mom is my favorite aunt...a second mom, if you will, so this one'll be more like a new little niece or nephew. GOD IS SOOOOOO GOOD! :-)

I love old gospel hymns. Nothing sooths me more when I'm down and out than a tear inducing Amazing Grace or Softly and Tenderly . I grew up in a small country church. When I say country, I mean, way out in the boonies. The building could have just as easily fit in downtown but the people, the music, the feel--it was plain old fashion country church. Most of the folks lived within a 10 mile radius and many of them had been there for more years than my grandparents had been born. These were plainspoken people. Church was Holy Ground and Sunday morning worship was a family affair. This church thrived on the old gospel hymns. Rock of Ages, Love Lifted Me, Just As I Am, Power in the Blood, Old Rugged Cross ...these are just a few of the songs we sang nearly every Sunday. Comfort songs. Songs of love and healing. Songs of salvation written the century before. Back then I used to get board with the slow cadence and repetition of some of these songs. Now I wish we could go back. It seems ...

Tuesdays are like Mondays to me except they don't have Medium to make up for the drudgery. And since I'm not up for surfing for new favorites on Tuesday nights, last night I did what I love the best anyhow. I read. Learning Curves , by Cindi Myer. I'm really glad I finished this one because it ended up having a really nice ending. I almost tossed it though because I got frustrated with "size 12 women are fat" theme. No. Size 12 is not fat. Size 4 is too small. But, determined to see Shelly and Jack through to the bitter end, I stuck with it and finished it last night with Mariah Carey's Greatest Hits playing in the background. Yeah, I know I'm not supposed to like Mariah Carey but I am a huge fan of her earlier stuff. "I Don't Wanna Cry" still gives me chills and I to this day can't listen to "Fantasy" and not dance. But I digress. So Learning Curves . It was a nice, hot story of how a dreamboat unbelievably handsome man named ...

Ahhhhh...the new season of television has begun and I am in Heaven. Yeah, you can label me shallow but you can't tell me there isn't at least one television show you aren't just dying to see the season premiere of. Yeah, so I'm not a total TV junkie, but there are the must see's and I've decided that today, since I'm fresh out of melodramatic rants that I'd give a brief run-down of the one's I've seen and loved and the one's I'm hoping won't let me down. Monday nights are Medium nights. It's the only must see Monday night show that I've run across as of yet. Yeah, I might halfway glance at Las Vegas while waiting on Medium but I'm not a Vegas kind of gal so I ain't hooked yet. The new season of Medium began last Monday and I must say...I think this show is only getting better and better. I never know what to expect when tuning in because each show is unique. Sure, it has it's regular dynamics in the way that Allis...

I felt this deserved a separate post... My thoughts and prayers go out to all those in the path of Hurricane Rita and all those stranded on the highway without gas to leave and to those who have already lost their lives. I pray that the hurricane dissipates and loses strength before reaching land and that the people on the Texas and Louisiana coast aren't faced with the same devastation left by Katrina.

"The sky if falling! The sky is falling!" This urgent message keeps crying in my mind each time I look at the news or hear what's going on in the world. Just call me Chicken Little, but I have this sort of doomsday feeling in my gut. With everything that's gone on this year with natural and man-made disasters I can't seem to help feeling this way. War, famine, terrorism and mass devastation tends to bring out the darker part of me. I look around in my immediate life and think, "Huh, things are actually going well right now. No family tragedies. No personal grief. All is well with the world." And then I turn on the television and I don't care how fast I flip through the channels I can't escape it. Hurricanes, war, soaring gas prices, death and destruction. Just this morning my CNN Breaking News alert popped up with the cruel message that 20 people had died when a bus carrying evacuees in Texas caught fire. And of course there are the masses of...

I've been out of touch with a group of my best friends for quite some time. We used to do everything together. Eat, sleep, work, breathe--everything. They used to show up at all hours of the day and night. Sometimes they would just appear from seemingly out of nowhere and always with something fun or exciting or dangerous in mind. Their favorite place to visit me was in the car. They would chatter like magpies while I drove home from work everyday and wouldn't leave me alone until I turned my full attention to them. Sometimes they would even wake me from a dead sleep just to tell me what they wanted to do the next day. You would think friends like these would be annoying, wouldn't you? I loved them though. I loved their vibrancy, their take-no-prisoners attitude. Their spontaneity excited and rejuvenated me. Then one day I didn't hear from them all day. One day bled into a week and then a month until I finally reconciled myself to the fact that they had abandoned me for...

The every day life of me. Sit back, relax and enjoy the trip to Boredtown. hehehehe So okay, I've lived in the same little house on the lake for the past four years. It's not much to look at but it's a steal, I tell you and my landlord thinks I'm a nice lady so he gives me breaks. One unfortunate aspect of living there though is that I have dealt with a faulty septic system for four years. Every so often when the rain gets to be too much, my septic tank gets backed up and I have to call RotoRooter and have it taken care of. I mean, it's nothing gross or anything it just takes a little planning and coordination to flush the toilet or take a shower because you can't do both in rapid succession or there'll be a flood of massive purportions on my bathroom floor. Well, for no apparent reason Friday morning (hadn't rained in over two weeks) I had a massive flood on my bathroom floor when I stepped out of the shower. Rapid successions of my head banging against...

I had a perfectly lovely post written up. It was full of delightful insights, fun anectdotes and southern charm. Unfortunately when I hit the spell check button to correct my endless typos and spelling errors it disappeared! I'm not generally one to litter my thoughts or speech with four letter words but there were a couple that flew through my mind at that point. lol Since I can't possibly remember all the witticisms that I had written, I'll just leave you with this for today...Something to give you a giggle and brighten your day. Replace the beer with a Coke and this is me. hehehehehe

I've just had an epiphany. Life is like finding your good China even though your house has been washed out to sea. My BIL, his mom and sister trekked down to the coast this weekend to dig around the rubble of what used to be his mother's house. The didn't truly expect to find anything other than the concrete pilings but God performs miracles everyday. So, okay, finding her grandmother's fine China intact and unscathed amidst the rubble isn't exactly parting the red sea, but it comes pretty darn close when you expected to find nothing left to show of the life you've lived for the past however many years. She found some other things as well, a bed frame, some other kitchen stuff--I don't even know what all she did find beneath what used to be her house but the idea of digging out your China and finding it in just the pristine condition you left it will stick with me always. I think life is like that. Storms come through and rip apart your very soul leaving you...

I've got so many random thoughts in my head I have no idea where this blog entry will go so bear with me. I think I just need to purge. (no, not vomit. lol) So I had the bottom fall out of my stomach this morning. Nothing gross, it just didn't feel so good. My BIL sent me some pictures of his childhood home in Bay St. Louis. The first one was a pic he had taken a couple years ago. It was a beautiful house. A big white house with a wraparound screened in porch and it sat up on white steel stilts. The second picture was taken by a friend of his last week. All that was left was the stilts and even they were bent all to crap. Granted, this house isn't the one his mom lived in. Her house was built two or three years ago some 500 feet behind his old childhood home. But the impact of seeing the before and after just made my stomach clinch and I thought for sure I was going to burst into tears. It's just so heartbreaking. BIL' s mom and sister flew in from Los Angeles yeste...

Is it possible to mold a child that isn't yours into your own image? I think I did that with my niece. lol My sister already claims that I have far far too much influence on the child. Every bad habit Emmy's ever exhibted has been directly attributed to me. Jumping on the bed? Me. See food? Me. (You know, the little trick when you're eating and you ask someone if they like seafood and they say yeah and then you show 'em the food you just chewed? Yeah. hehe) Calling guys hotties? Me. Obsession with CMT? Me. Guzzling Dr. Pepper like it's going out of style? Me. Rolling her eyes and exclaiming "duh"? Me. Sassing her mama? Me. Calling her mama a pain in the butt? Oh yeah. That was me, wasn't it. hehe (In my defense, Sis1 is a major pain in the butt most days. hehehehe) I 'm sure I (and her mama) could make a list long enough to wrap around the world a couple of times with all the "bad" things I taught the child. Heck, it's Sis1's ow...

I should never have started playing on blogthings.com. lol In a Past Life... You Were: A Gentle Assassin. Where You Lived: Italy. How You Died: Natural causes. Who Were You In a Past Life?

Your Outrageous Name is: Connie Lingus Outrageous Name Generator

Why is it that the very best moments of sleep fall somewhere in those 9 minutes in between hits of the snooze button? Or is it just me that encounters this phenomenon? I toss and turn all night long sleeping the same way I write...in fits and spurts and then suddenly the alarm goes off at 6am, I hit the snooze and before I know it I've had the deepest 9 minutes of sleep of my life...until the alarm goes off again and then the process repeats itself at least twice until finally in utter frustration I roll out of bed, eyes heavy, and stumble to the shower. So why does deep sleep wait until it knows it can't last? I went to bed last night sometime after ten, dreamed lustily about the vampire I had just been reading about in the Maggie Shayne novel "Born in Twilight" and proceeded to toss and turn until sometime after midnight when I finally drifted off. By 4 am I was wide awake again. This time plagued by worries and thoughts about all the commitments I had scheduled for...

Thanks to my pal Gigi, this song is now stuck in my head in all it's annoying glory. lol (I'm hoping to pass on the curse, in case you're wondering. hehe) But seriously, the title of this song kind of mimics what's been on my mind since yesterday. Being alone. I nearly cried in church yesterday. Not an entirely unheard of phenomenon as I've been known to cry during especially moving songs, emotional testimony or after a particularly eventful invitation. It's rare for me though to be brought to tears and utterly depressed by the sermon. Yeah, I've heard some extremely moving sermons before and had my toes bruised to the max on more than one occasion but most sermons don't depress me and make me question my entire view of my life. Yesterday's did. Could the preacher have possibly understood how thoroughly he was trampling on my poor soul? Likely not. He was trying to make a point that had very little to do with my own questing soul. I can't remembe...

Looking back, this time last year I got my very first view of the Mississippi Gulf Coast in Bay St. Louis, MS. Of course we are all, by now, well aware of the state the coast is in now. In light of that, I wanted to share some pics from my time down there. It hurts to look at them now, but at the same time, I'm glad I got the chance to go and have the memory to carry with me always. There we all were at my BIL's mom's house on that very first afternoon. Her house, like many of the houses right on the water, was built on concrete stilts. I'm the one sitting on the stairs. As much as it pained me to run up and down those stairs all weekend, I'd give anything to have 'em back. That's my niece...the little stinker. When we all first got there, her Ma-Maw took her out to the water while the rest of us unpacked. Emmy jumped right in...clothes and all! Sis1 was, of course, pissed but Emmy had a blast as you can see. This is one of the many piers that used to dot th...

Cool title, huh? Brings to mind all manner of images. lol But that's the best way I could think of to describe the way my muse is returning to me...in fits and spurts. Thanks to a nudge and sense of direction from a dear friend, I feel as though my long vacationing muse is at least playing tag with me. I wrote an entire scene in a fit of flying fingers. Even got it polished to a semi-gloss before she fizzled on me. Then just now, she spurted out a paragraph or two for another scene and helped me polish a scene I had written a couple of weeks ago before darting back out. But hey, as long as she's willing to come out and play I'm open to fits and spurts.

I'm a writer. Yeah, so I haven't written much beyond this blog lately but I still consider myself a writer. The thing about writing though (and me doing it) is I'm a terrible speller. Always have been. I blame my parents for not forcing me to study my vocabulary lists in elementary school but I digress. I was reading through some of my archived posts the other day and I blanched at the number of misspelled or misused words. I kept thinking, "Oh my gosh. I've advertised myself as a writer and I can't spell worth a darn! These people are going to think I'm an idiot!" Which in truth, I probably am or at least a half whit. lol I have to stop and think every time I write the word "receive" because my brain thinks the "i" should go before the "e" and I have to repeat the old grammar school mantra "I before E except after C" which my sister lovingly reminded me of once in college when my supervisor at work caught that p...

September. It brings to mind thoughts of the approaching fall. The return to school. The hope of cooler temperatures. So many visions collide in my mind when thinking of September. It just seems like a month filled with a myriad of emotions. September is, of course, the anniversary of one of the greatest American tragedies in the nation's history. The September 11th attacks. I don't think a year will ever go by that I won't think about that day. Was it really four years ago? I remember where I was, what I was doing, the first person I talked to after I got the news, the rumors, the speculation...all of it. I can't even see the numbers 9/11 without the flash of memory flooding my mind. It seems almost superstitious to make appointments on that day, you know? But September, for me, has many personal connotations associated with it. It almost feels like September is a superstitious month or something...for both good and bad things. September 8, 1972, my parents married. Sh...

My eyes are a little droopy and I still sound all nasal when I talk but I'm back in action. I (guiltily) called in sick on Friday and stayed home to curl up on the couch with a bottle of Nyquil and a box of tissues. I can't honestly say I remember too terribly much about Friday or Saturday either for that matter. Nyquil really conks me out, let me tell you. My sisters DID both make it to town this weekend though. I saw them for a few hours Saturday. Sis2 and her hubby swung by and picked me up to go to my folks house. We didn't want to risk me getting picked up on a DUI. lol I was pretty much exiled to the living room while everyone else was in the kitchen/dining room. No one wanted my germs. *pout* (Athough Sis1 says she caught my cold anyway. hehehehe) Things at work are back to normal, thank God. Everyone is back and though we're sniping at each other a bit, it's good to have 'em all back. And, I don't have anything on my schedule this week so my mind can...

Okay, if you don't want to listen to me gripe, vent, whine and complain stop reading now. I promised myself I wouldn't use my blog to whine but here I am. I don't want sympathy. I don't want a pat on the head. I just want five minutes to get all my grievances out. And yes, I'll take some cheese with my whine. ;-) I feel like crap. My throat hurts. My head feels fuzzy. I feel like there is a fine mist all over my body and my nose runs at the most inconvenient times. I'm coughing and just generally feel like crap. I dragged my butt into work though because I have too much to do not to and we're shorthanded because of folks stranded without water and electricity. Yeah, okay...ONE person has managed to use that as an excuse for the past two days despite the fact that there are plenty of places around town that are offering use of showers and such and at least one other person who is without electricity has managed to come in both yesterday and today but I digre...