Life as We Make It

Back To Work

Wow. Going back to work has been awesome. But, I wasn’t really prepared for the reduction in personal time thing and the writing time thing. Writing takes a lot of moldering time for the brain, at least it does for mine. And, I kind of forgot to reduce my drinking time. While it is true that I have to squeeze it into a different time schedule, it just seemed to mean that my after work hours became make up time. And for some reason I like to write at 11 am.

I did, however, recently find time to throw a dinner party. Texter wanted to get the parents together – meaning, his GF’s parents and his own. So I called up my (sort of) ex-husband – long and short of that is that we have been separated for, well, um, 8 years, but have not actually filed the paper work for divorce – and I arranged for all of us to get together at The Big Red House for dinner. GF is a vegetarian, and sometimes my culinary skills get wonky around vegetarians, being more of a slow cooked meats kind of a girl. And then I had to push back the time, twice actually, as it dawned on me that as I work until 6, and hadn’t shopped, it would be hard to have the original 6:30 schedule. They were kind about it, and they arrived with many bottles of wine at the appointed hour. I liked that. I liked them. The “children” went off to do video game type things with Pokester, which was awesome, and the “adults” stood around in the kitchen, drinking and watching me cook. Extended cocktail hour meant dinner at 9, by which time the “adults” were having a high old time.

I am proud to say that I only fell down twice. And it was in exactly the same spot. Went down on one knee, right leg extended cheerleader style, left knee took the beat down. The second time GF’s mother said “Take those shoes off!” which I immediately did, because she has that kind of presence. If she had demanded that I give her my debit cards and remove my undergarments I probably would have done that too. Seriously. She has that Take No Prisoners thing going on. We politely agreed that Big J’s drool was the culprit in the slippage department, but GF’s Momma took to calling me Grace after that. The “adults” had fun, the “children” were probably pretty mortified.

Thankfully, I think I have gotten the rhythm of work now and can adjust my drinking schedule to accommodate my writing schedule. The vacuuming and mopping schedule will likely not be affected, since when I had 40 hours a week to get that done, well, you know. I did learn, however, that inviting GF’s parents over threw Texter into a cleaning frenzy. So they might become regular guests.

I swear I Am Not Making This Up

I just cannot get undergarments right. A while back I wrote about an incident in which a dog fight revealed my lack of wearing panties. So, in attempting to correct myself, I do try to wear panties when it seems appropriate. Like today. I was downtown for important reasons, in a pretty dress. So, panties. I was walking up one of the busiest streets in our fair city, in the middle of the afternoon. Cars were streaming by, people out on the sidewalk, crazy sky ready to either bust out some sunshine or pour down some buckets of rain – just a normal summer day. And I am walking along, going to my destination when I dropped a letter I was carrying. I bent down to pick it up, and then when I stood back up, my panties fell down. Onto the Sidewalk. In front of a toothless homeless man. And many, many other people.

I don’t have a lot of backyard real estate, so to speak. And I guess these panties were just ready to give up the ghost or something. I had had to tug them up a few times, which was awkward enough. But I have to tell you that given the choice between having your skirt blow up to reveal no panties and having your underwear FALL OFF ON THE SIDEWALK I would choose the former Every Single Time. Because you know what? You are presented with quite a dilemma in the second situation. There is no graceful exit to your underwear on the sidewalk. You cannot in anyway reach down and put them back on. You cannot recover. Your underwear fell off in public, and there it is. On the sidewalk. Picking them up seemed equally as appalling a choice. Am I going to pick my panties up off of the sidewalk and put them in my purse? Walk away and let the toothless homeless man ponder my panties? Someone find my underwear on the street and wonder about That Story?

So there we were, Me and the Toothless Guy, staring at the spectacle of my undergarments on the concrete before us. Who knows who else witnessed this “brief” event. Nobody honked, although that would have really made it better, because then I could have put on my show face, picked them up and waved them around my head yelling “Woot! Woot!” or some other such typically drunken girl exclamation. But alas, I was slightly at a loss as to how to deal with the situation. So I stood there for a moment, glanced at toothless man, and then started to laugh. And laugh. He looked at me and said “Ma’am?” and then kind of laughed a little too. But I think he was mostly Confused. I did pick up my panties, stuffed them in my purse, and then(hopefully) discretely dropped them in the trash. And then went about the rest of my day.

P.S. I was on my way back to work. Thas right! (Belle got a Job)