Meaningful Dream or the Fever Talking?

When I'm sick, I seem to have really strange dreams. I don't know if it's the fever talking or the Nyquil, but they can be pretty weird. This last week I had a very strange dream that has really stuck with me. I'm wondering if it has some significance or if I was just sick and it is the result of that.

I dreamt I was in my hometown of St. Johns. I wandered around the town a little bit lost for a while. Finally I grabbed my pillow and decided to lay down on the sidewalk in front of the Drug Store in St. Johns. There I was just laying there on the sidewalk with my pillow and this woman comes up to me. I haven't seen or thought of this particular woman in years. I'm not sure why she was in this particular dream. In real life she lost her husband several years ago and she lost her son to suicide a few years ago. Back to the dream. She came up to me and started scolding me. Not in a mean spirited way, but in a gentle, kind way. She was telling me that I needed to get myself well because we had a lot to do. We had a lot of people we needed to get our messsage to and to help and we couldn't do that until I was well. Just then a man walked up and was kind of chuckling. He was kind and funny and introduced himself as her new husband. As he helped me up off the sidewalk, he told me not to listen to her because she wasn't getting counseling for herself either. He then walked me over to a car and offered me a ride. The car was a fully restored older vehicle, something like a Chevy Chevelle. As we were driving down the road, he offered to give me the car. I was shocked and excited at the same time. Then I woke up.

So, do I need to get physically well or emotionally well to help people? Helping people is helping me to get emotionally well so I'm not too sure. And why her? Because she lost her son to suicide or is it just because I have St. Johns on the brain this week after hearing a St. Johns friend lost her husband this week? Or maybe it's just a fever or Nyquil dream and I should just move on. Hmmmmmmm

The Windshield or the Bug

Do you ever have those times when you feel like you can't catch a break? In the scheme of things, it is insignificant, but still it is stressful and annoying. That is how the last couple of weeks have been for me. It seems that sickness is making the rounds lately. My son was sick, then my daughter, then my mom, it went through my sister's family...a couple of times. I have been able to ward it off, but it was just a matter of time.

A couple of weeks ago I was supposed to go on a date with a guy I met on line. I ended up having to reschedule because my mom got sick and ended up in the E. R. We rescheduled for a few days later. He then had to reschedule because he got sick. It was a bit frustrating because this is one of the few guys that have not been waving the red flags and I was interested in meeting him in person to see if it would be the same in person. We had some good phone conversations so I was encouraged by that. The day of the date came and it was a crazy day. After work I got my 30 minute workout in, picked up my kids, ran and got my haircut, went home and took a 5 minute shower and hit the road. My sister offered to babysit for me so I could go on the date. She lives in Phoenix and we were having dinner in Tempe. So, I was cruising along good on the freeway, making good time and then 10 min away from my sister's house traffic stops. I sit there and wait, and wait and wait some more. Sitting in traffic is so annoying, but when you are in a hurry it is twice as bad. I exited the freeway to see if I could make better time on the surface streets. I did ok for a little bit, but then...there was a train! Really??!! Rush hour traffic and there is a stinkin' train! I had to text him and tell him I was going to be a little bit late. Yeah, so I battle traffic, drive through some scary neighborhoods and finally make it to my sister's house. I drop them off and hit the road again. I decided to take the surface streets again because I saw the freeway going EB and it was a parking lot. Not much better. I hit every light red and traffic was backed up. I finally get to the freeway and I think it should be getting better since it was after 6 o'clock. I get on the freeway and it is moving pretty good. That is until right before my exit there is a crash and traffic is backed up. I could literally see my exit, but I couldn't get there! OMG! I was on empty too. I was going to be one of those moronic people that ran out of gas on the freeway when my exit is in sight! I was beginning to think I wasn't supposed to go on this date! I finally made it to the restaurant and it's a good thing there is a gas station in the same parking lot. The date was ok. We kind of struggled to find things to talk about. I guess we talked everything out on the phone already. He was nice and polite, but the spark wasn't there. He must have felt it too because he said he was going to call the next day. That was over a week ago and he still hasn't called. Actually, I'm ok with it.

Wednesday morning I woke up with some body aches and a scratchy voice. Great...good thing I wasn't going to be doing my regular duties that day and was only going to be helping to teach a class. I got in the car and started down the road and my brakes started grinding and squealing. That's just lovely! I have replaced those brakes twice in the last 9 months and now they are going out again!!

There are two things (ok more than two things) that really piss me off. Unexpected car troubles and sickness. I have no patience for either one. I don't have money for unexpected car troubles. When you are a single parent every dime goes somewhere. You don't have anything extra to put aside to save for those times you need to fix your car.

By the time I left work on Wed. I was feeling pretty yucky. I knew I had a fever and my voice was going, going almost gone. I spent a couple hours on the phone with a friend of mine having a mutual bitch session and by the time I hung up, I had almost no voice. I ended up being sick Thursday and Friday. My kids were probably pretty happy I didn't have a voice because then I couldn't yell at them. I'm not really much of a whiner when it comes to being sick, I just get mad. I hate being down. I have too much to do. Fever, no voice, my chest so tight it hurt. Then it turned into stuffy and yet runny nose and coughing so hard I think I'm going to cough up a lung. At least the fever is gone. A friend of mine brought me soup yesterday. that was so awesome of her!

I had no choice but to get up and take my car in today. I was thinking it was going to cost me a couple hundred bucks to fix it. Nope...more than twice that!! OMG!! Ugh...I just need a hug.

Natural Consequences

My son is a challenge to say the least. He has been diagnosed with ADHD. I struggled for a long time with whether I should put him on medication or not. Finally his pediatrician convinced me to do it. What a difference! This last year for the most part, life has been a lot easier, except for my daughter has been acting out as well. I think her behavior is something else. Anyway, it took a little while to find just the right doseage. The main problem we would have is when the medicine would wear off. He would be twice as bad! And first thing in the morning is very difficult. Lately, it seems the medicine hasn't been working as well. He is arugmentative, loud, refusing to listen, talking all the time, etc. It was time to re-evaluate the medication thing. The doctor decided to put him on two different kinds of medicine. One is non-stimulant that last 24 hrs and to help him get through the times he's not on the other medication. The other medication is to help him get through the day. We started the new medicine on wed night. So far there is a slight change, not too much. Soon we will up the doseage and hopefully it will help. I just really want to help him be the best that he can be. He is such a smart and sweet kid, but we have a really hard time when he can't be calm and when he can't focus. Hopefully life will settle back down soon.

Because of all this, he has been having a problem in school and a lying a lot. He got busted lying last week by me and his teacher. Even after he was busted he still denied it and lied. He got grounded and his tv taken out of his room for just over a week. On Friday I let him go to the park to play with his friends. He was so excited because he wasn't able to do anything for a week. I told him to find a way to tell time and he had to be home at 5 pm. I told him he better not be late or he was going to be in trouble. 5 o'clock came and still he wasn't home. I started walking down to the park. It took me just over 5 minutes to get down there and I was fuming the whole way. His first time being able to play since being grounded and he's late. I'm almost to the park and I hear this kid crying and two kids come walking up the sidewalk towards me. One of them is my boy. He is crying holding his nose and I can see he's got blood running down his hands. There was another boy with him that was telling him to keep his nose pinched to stop it from bleeding.

It turns out, just as I was crossing the street to the park, he got hit on the side of his nose with a baseball. He now has a black eye and his nose is a little bit sore. If he had just come home when he was supposed to, it wouldn't have happened. I started out being really mad that he didn't follow the rules, but then I figured, his black eye and bloody nose were good enough punishment...natural consequences!

The Nerve

As I mentioned, I am back online for dating. The one thing I have noticed about it is, when you first get online, a lot of people want to look at your profile, talk to you, send you instant messages, etc. Ooooooo...new meat!!! Then after a couple of weeks it slows way down...you're old news now! Then you get something here and there. So, I got online and got a message saying so and so wants to chat. I hover my mouse over the ok button for a minute and I am thinking, "What if this guy's a weirdo? What if he's married like the last guy? Or only cross dresses on Tuesdays like that other dude?" Then I say to myself, "Self, you can always x out of it." Ok, here it goes. I click on ok and the instant message box pops up. I can immediately see the guy has his webcam on. How can I tell...it's moving around. Then finally it moves around to where I can see a guy wearing a white button up shirt that is undone and he is sitting on his bed. That's right folks...I'm pretty sure you can see where I'm going with this. I can see him from his shoulder down to his thigh and except for that unbottoned white shirt, he is NAKED!!!!! Yep, that's right...I said NAKED!! WTF??? I quick x'd out before I saw something that was going to send me screaming to another room! If he was worth it, then maybe. haha Ok, just kidding! What in the world made this guy wake up in the morning and say, "I think I will get online and chat naked with some ladies today. I'm gonna show them what I got! I know they'll want me now!" Wow, the nerve of some people!

Valentine's Day

As I always do on this day, I first have to say Happy Birthday to my brother-in-law!!

Another Valentine's Day has come around. A lot of people feel sad and lonely around the main holidays. I do too somewhat, but Valentine's Day is one of the worst for me. It is one day a year set aside for people to tell each other how much they love each other and the one day I, along with millions of other singles, am reminded we don't have that someone special in our lives. As if mocking us, everywhere we turn there are discounts for couples for dinner, dessert, movies, flowers, candy, etc. The single people are the ones that should have the discounts on this day!! It should be a discount saying, "Hey! Come celebrate being single!" There are heart shaped pizzas, candies, stickers, sandwiches, cakes, etc. Everything is pink and red. Do people really only tell each other how much they love each other just one day a year? If so, how sad.

There also seems to be a stigma attached to this day. You can't go on a first date or a just a casual date on this day because there is such stress for it to be a day of love. A single person can't go to dinner by themselves either. If they did, everyone would be saying, "Look at that sad, pathetic person sitting there all alone on Valentine's Day."

Don't mind me and the ramblings of the hopeless romantic that is hidden deep down inside. I hope everyone has a great Valentine's Day. I just want to say I love you to my children, my family and my friends! Although, that shouldn't be a surprise because I say it a lot and to quote my late husband, I LOVE YOU MORE!!

Reality Check

There is nothing that makes you realize you are getting older more than when your parents get sick. As a parent I expect my kids to get sick once in a while. I expect to have to take care of them and be there for them. Even though we all know there's a strong possibility for it to happen to our parents, we live in denial. I know I do anyway. All of my living parents (stepmom included) are still healthy, active and strong. It's not like any of them are ready for assisted living. But, my mom got sick this week. She has been fighting a really bad cold type thing all week. Then yesterday she ended up in the er for the afternoon because of various other things. While she was in there she was diagnosed with diabetes. There is a very strong family history there for it so it shouldn't have been a surprise, but it actually was. I wasn't expecting that until her 60's...oh wait, she IS in her 60's! When did that happen?

The bottom line is, I made the realization that I'm getting older so my parents are getting older. That is not supposed to happen. They are supposed to be young and strong forever! I want them to live until they are 100, that makes me 80 and then I can accept it.

The Games People Play

A good friend of mine called me the other day and as usual, our conversation turned to dating. He is very frustrated with the dating process, just as most single people are. He was telling me about a woman that he was interested in. She was pretty, smart, has a good job and appeared to be nice. She works in a profession where she sees the public all the time and he would see her at least once or twice a week. When he would go into her place of business, they would have nice conversations and things were progressing well. She told him one day that if she had his number, she would have called him because she had tickets to a sporting event. He took that as a hint so he gave her his number...not a word. So, when he started going in to that business he stopped talking to her except to say hi and move on. She didn't like that so much. She would actually get up and go talk to him. There is more than one purpose to this story. First, it isn't just men that do this to women which I seem to forget sometimes considering I'm the woman that this is usually happening to. Second, why do people play games? Seriously! Third, we all always seem to want what we can't have.

The game of love. It's almost like a dance. Remember in Jr. High everyone was so excited to go to their first dance. We would put on our best clothes, fix our hair just right, the girls would put on their make up (a bit too heavy) and everyone would gather at the school gym...and proceed to stand against the wall all night. The guys huddled on one side and the girls huddled on the other. Both really want to dance, but both are terrified. The boys acting like they are bigger than they are and the girls trying to get their attention. When they do, they turn away and pretend they weren't. Then some boy would get up the nerve and make the long walk across the gym floor to ask a girl to dance. They would be the only ones on the dance floor feeling awkward because everyone was staring at them. The game of love is the same. We all do the best we can to attract the opposite sex and then stand and wait. When the man starts to make his move, the woman turns away. She really wants him to make his move, but yet, she pretends she doesn't. I have never been very good at this game. I have a hard time hiding what I feel and think and I don't understand why I should have to. If I'm interested in someone, why can't I say so? Why do I have to play the game? We all seem to like the chase. If we are all doing the chasing, who does the catching and what do you do when you catch them?

We could have the most amazing person standing right in front of us, jumping up and down and saying, "Hey!!! I'm right here! I'm exactly what you have been waiting for and I will make all your dreams come true!!" We then look around and go, "Oh look at that person! I've got to have that person. They don't even know I'm alive or they are already taken, but hey, I can make this happen! They will see that I'm the best for them!" You see the vicious cycle here? They want what they can't have...you. You want what you can't have...someone else. It makes me wonder if we would truly be happy if the person we thought we wanted so badly changed their mind and decided they wanted us back. Was them not being available the ONLY reason we wanted them? Definitely food for thought. It also makes me ask the same question I have been asking for years...how the hell do people get together?? My biggest fear in this whole game? I'm afraid that I have been running from those that scare me for so long, if the right one comes along, will I know it or will I run away looking for someone that is unavailable to me?

Here We Go Again

Well, I decided to get back online. Why? I guess because it has been a while since I have had a real date. I don't go to bars, I don't really go anywhere except to work and stuff with my kids, so I'm back online to hopefully meet people. I haven't officially met anyone, I've chatted, but none have worked out to meet yet. On that note, I still have stuff to write about!

I found a guy on the site that was a firefighter. He said that his humor is sarcastic and the woman that he dates needs to have tough skin to handle it. He also said one of his interests was quilts. Ok, I couldn't resist! I wrote him an email and said, "Hey firefighter...or should I call you hose dragger! haha I was wondering, when you say you are interested in quilts does that mean you make them or you just really, really like them?" He wrote me back and said "Both. I love them and I make them with my sister. We have made some awesome shit!" I wrote him back, but I never heard back from him...I guess he didn't like me calling him a hosedragger and his skin isn't as thick as he wants his woman's skin to be! ha

So, I started chatting with a guy from Flag. He's an irish guy, weightlifter, poet. From his picture, his arms are as big as my thighs and let me tell ya...that's big! haha So, emailing and instant messaging was going ok until I asked him what he did for work. Oh boy, then it became all secret. He finally tells me he is "trying" to get into executive protection...so basically a bodyguard. He asked if that bothered me..."ummm...well I guess it depends on who you're guarding. If it's on the up and up, why are you so afraid to tell me about it?" "Because not all girls can handle me being around beautiful women and super models all the time." Eye roll! Bottom line, he doesn't have a job right now and he was afraid to tell me about the prospect...red flag is a waving!!

Another guy is 30 and wasn't looking for anything serious. I told him I was and he still wanted to chat. I agreed to chat and we decided we would only be just friends. He wanted to meet this weekend...haven't heard from him in about 5 days. I also got a msg from a guy that didn't have a picture. This is how our emails went. From him first..."Hi. I like your eyes." "Thanks. Why don't you have a picture up?" "Hey, wanna meet in an hour?" "Ummmm...I'm at work and I don't know anything about you!" I haven't heard from him in several days and today I got a msg asking if I have plans tomorrow morning...really??? That guy kind of scares me! Another guy wrote me and said he is disabled, can't work and lives with his mom...I'm not even sure how to respond to that.

I got an instant message from a guy the other day that started out ok...until I read his profile. He's married looking for companionship...huh????? I point blank asked him why. He said he prefers women friends and no sex has to be involved. Ok, I can kinda get that...I have a lot of men friends and there is no sex involved...but I don't go looking for them online! Then he asked if he could buy me a drink! Uh, no thanks!

The next night another guy instant messaged me. He was ok until he started trying to crack jokes to break the ice. He said he only cross dressed on Tuesdays. Ok, funny...until every other sentence was about his wearing a dress on Tuesday. Ok dude, it was kinda funny the first time, but not the other 80 times...unless he really does wear dresses on Tuesdays. Yikes!

So, bottom line...the quest continues! In the very least it gives me something to blog about!