Dress Possibilities

I’m leaning towards something like this if I get married at the justice of the peace.  I always wanted one of those tiaras with crystals sticking out.  The same dress and tiara in green would be for my daughter.  

Kevin wants to get married at my mother’s church, but they’re going to ask him for a certificate of baptism.  He doesn’t have it, even though he was baptized.  I guess I’d have to wear something fancier if I got married in church, but aside from the baptism certificate rule, there’s too many rules to get married in that church that I don’t think we could fulfill.  

I just want to do a small ceremony.  It’s hard to plan this after so many years of being told I have to be an independent woman and not need/want a man.  I was always told not to want this, so it’s kind of hard to visualize what I would want now that it’s happening.  We told our boss and his wife today.  They seemed ok/happyish.  

 

Ring 💍

 So that’s the ring I picked out. I love the white color. I want to wait until I get my nails done to take a picture of it on my hand. Kevin is wearing my dad’s. 

I announced my engagement on Facebook, and the responses were 92% positive and 8% negative. Despite the negative reactions being by far the minority, I still deactivated both my facebook and instagram accounts. Im laying low for a while and feel like I'm disappointing everyone. More on that later. Maybe. 

I tried looking at wedding dresses, and they’re all huge Nopes. I never wear sleeveless ever. Not going to start now. Let alone low cut stuff with obvious cleavage. I’m leaning towards a simple Greek goddess costume from Etsy. It has nice sleeves. Not sure I even want a wedding at all. I’d rather go to the JP 👨🏻‍⚖️ 

I did them all myself !!! 🚗 💨 🚗 💨

Today my car reached 200,000 miles. 

I did most of all of them myself!! It had less than 20K when I bought it.  

Disclaimer: “Maintenance required” simply means it’s time for an oil change. The last time I got one, they put a windshield sticker stating to get one when I hit 200,300. 

When I was pregnant, one of my coworkers gave me a book called “Oh the places you’ll go” by Dr. Seuss. I mean, it was for the baby. But I obviously went to a lot of places in this car. Between 2020-2022, I did retail audits all over Texas and 9 other states. I did spend one day in Memphis, but did not venture east into the rest of Tennessee. I left Memphis after doing some 10-12 audit jobs there, because it seemed like there was a police state. Cops were everywhere, and it made me nervous. Sometimes I say “all over nine states”. That has truth to it if you include Texas. Tennessee was technically the tenth state. 

Yesterday something else higher happened. Kevin asked me to marry him, and I said yes. We are shopping for rings today. I knew it was coming, and I knew 200K was coming on the car.  But I didn’t imagine they’d happen the same day. 

20-25 years ago, most people in my life were vehemently opposed to the idea of me ever getting married or having a family. Miraculously, that ended last year when I moved in with Kevin. I surmised that it was because I was by then 45 years old. No one is going to try and boss a middle aged woman around the way they would boss a woman in her early 20’s around. It’s a lot nicer without all the hate and drama, but at the same time- is it going to be the same for my daughter?  Does she have to wait until she’s 45? 

I don’t know. The very few people I’ve told so far have been happy, but I haven’t told anyone that wouldn’t be. 

 

Beautiful Dance

 I’ve listened to and watched this video a lot in the last couple months. It’s a group of teenagers doing a Circassian dance. It reminds me of when I was in Greek dance groups for Greek festivals in the 90’s. By “Circassian”, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe they mean the part of the former Soviet Union that is right on the cusp of Europe and Asia. 

Just like when I was a teenager in the Greek dance groups, I tend to love the female parts of the dance but dislike the male parts. I’ve always thought in this kind of dancing, the women look very beautiful and graceful, whereas the boys look almost ridiculous. Someone in the comments (if you click on “translate” since most comments are in Russian), say they look like “courting birds. Lol they do look like courting birds. Do birds court?  I don’t know, but I always loved how in Circassian dancing the women look like they’re floating. 

Here is their dress rehearsal in a dance studio. It’s catchy. 

Rest and Reflection

 Kevin and I are in the middle of six days off. We worked long days locally Monday through Wednesday last week, and have been off since Thursday. We don’t have to work again until Wednesday. 

The last time we had six days off in a row, we had a hard freeze, and it snowed. It’s freezing this weekend, too, but it’s not snowing. On days like this, I can’t believe I ever entertained the idea of moving back to Chicago. Never would have survived! 

I didn’t do anything productive today except for grocery shopping. I’m on a specific diet/eating plan (more on that later, maybe). I got a tax refund of over $500 that posted today, so I went to both H-E-B and Walmart and bought all kinds of stuff on the green light list for this diet. 

I’m also suffering from writer’s block, even though I know how to combat it. I usually combat writer’s block by making lists. List things that happen in this scene, list things that happen in that scene, etc. I even bought my favorite Astrobright colored paper for the lists at Walmart  

But I can’t bring myself to do it in this weather!  I am not creative enough to do any sewing or crafts, either. My sewing machine had been sitting there with a broken needle for almost a month. I changed the needle today with a package of needles I got also at Walmart. But that’s about all I can do in that department!  No muses today!  No creativity whatsoever. 

Kevin and I just watched movies all day. We mostly watched Pink Panther movies. I forgot how funny those were. I had a toy of the pink panther when I was little- that was all I had remembered. I fell asleep in the middle of the first one. Woke up to pee and kevin was already mostly through the next one. 

This is Crazy.

 

Today I checked my credit alerts and discovered that my credit score is now back over 700. This is the first time in nearly a decade that it’s been over 700. Before I went to college, it was often as high as 800. But college debt absolutely ruined me at the time. 

Recently, I paid off two accounts. One was an actual student loan, and one was a credit account that was used for books and a laptop at the time. The last time I checked it, it was 684. I knew paying those two off would bump it, but I thought over 700 was impossible with four student loans still remaining. 

I’m also about a month ahead on my car at all times since about a year ago.  I pay it as soon as it cycles.  

Their calculating system over at Experian must be different now than it was 10 years ago. They must be more forgiving of people who were just doing what they were told. 

Tumeric Lattes

 

A long time ago, I attempted to make Tumeric lattes, but they were a fail. That was years ago- so I tried again, and they were amazing. My daughter and I had ours in mugs served hot, and I put the rest into this empty reused bottle. 

It’s good cold, too. Now I’m just looking at it, and I’m looking at the three nearly ripe bananas I have and thinking the two items in a blender would be a good smoothie. 

All I did was simmer three cups of almond milk and added two tsp of Tumeric and one tsp of cinnamon. 

Photo Dump and Personal Changes

 I feel like I’m changing a lot. I can’t explain it. It’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. I’m more at peace. I no longer have anxiety that I’m going to die prematurely because I found some happy for the first time in 10 years.  I also feel physically better.  I lost about another five pounds, and I feel recovered from the sheer exhaustion I had in December and January. The only negatives are that I have more severe perimenopause symptoms. I’m not just getting hot flashes, I’m getting hot and cold flashes. I have extremely dry skin, and cycles closer together than normal. I just have to tell myself, at least I don’t have to wait until after 50 for this crap. My daughter is spending more time here in Waller with me and Kevin now that she’s almost 18. It’s a little nerve wracking that her spending more time with me by choice will send her stepmother into some meltdown, but at the end of the day, what is she going to do?  Not let me see her for four months?  My tech savvy child?  Not a chance. I will be taking my daughter to her future university in San Marcos, Texas the last week of June. There’s going to be a parent orientation, and then we are going to do something fun. Not sure what yet. I don’t know how else to explain my recent enlightenment, so here’s a random photo dump  

Sounds like my mother and my aunts talking to me my whole life. 👍🏻. 

No offense, but there’s too many people doing this ⬆️ these days. 

I felt like this in December and January. 

Starting to no longer feel this way, for about the first time in my whole life. 

This reminds me of when I worked at the children’s museum. 

My daughter dressed as a banana on Halloween of 2007. 

Learning and Unlearning

 Kevin and I had a conversation yesterday about what parts of our K-16 schooling were beneficial and which weren’t. We both have bachelor’s degrees, and that’s what I mean by K-16. From kindergarten until we got our bachelors. 

I don’t remember it, but I was always told that I learned to read when I was 3.  Recently I asked my mother how I did that. I didn’t tell her this part, but I really couldn’t picture her sitting me down to teach me. She said that I learned by watching Sesame Street every time it was on, and if I asked her what something said, she told me. When I went to kindergarten, I was ahead of the game.  However, it was all downhill from there. I always struggled in school. I always got bad grades and behavioral points. I was also extremely shy and never spoke to many people.  This caused me to be overlooked a lot.  

My psychiatrist diagnosed me with ADHD when I was 43.  I often wonder what I would have been diagnosed with if I’d gotten any sort of real help whatsoever when I was a kid. But I didn’t, because any mention of me needing any sort of external help (be it counseling, a learning disability evaluation, tutoring or even summer school) sent my parents into shouting rages and screaming matches. 

When I graduated from high school, I took math placement tests and scored at middle school level. It was as if I had never been to high school. The guidance counselor there asked me how I graduated. I told him I didn’t know. My high school in Arizona was very wealthy and had a lot of funding. It didn’t matter. 

As a freshman, I still lived in Chicago and went to a Christian school. I don’t remember math that year at all. It was probably just freshman algebra. We moved to Arizona on the last day of my freshman year and I went to Mountain Pointe High School in the Ahwatukee foothills area of Phoenix. Anyone who knows that area knows they have all the funding they need. I had the same math teacher for sophomore and junior years. He obviously never looked at anyone’s homework. Before tests, he’d review, and his reviews somehow made me memorize some other way to get the correct answers. Either that or he just passed people without giving a shit, but I never had a clue what was truly being taught there. In my senior year, they told me I didn’t need math. I had enough to graduate. But then once I got to community college and they tested me at 7th-8th grade level, I was forced to take two years of remedial math and pay for it myself. 

I think “maybe” those remedial classes were helpful, but there’s no way to know for sure. We all “do math” all day every day, and maybe I just exist in this world doing it all my own way instead of how it was taught. 

A class that I always “did well” in was Spanish. But like I’ve mentioned before, I “know all the words” in Spanish, but absolutely cannot have a conversation in it. So did school help with that?  I don’t know, did it?  If I wanted a bump in that area, I’d have to travel somewhere that only speaks Spanish and I’m just not going to. I use it here and there in public if I am communicating with someone who only speaks Spanish, but it’s always very basic things that are on signs everywhere anyway.  

In high school, I didn’t take chemistry, because I took anatomy and physiology. In community college, I took medical terminology. Then I became a CNA.  Those things helped with that, somewhat. If I ever want to go back to caring for the elderly, I don’t think I can lift people like I used to. I can lift kids but not adults. I used to be able to do it easily. I don’t know what happened, maybe I just got old. Luckily the last elderly person I cared for was able to walk, even though she used a wheelchair. She could get up and get herself from here to there, I’d just hang on to her arm. That’s the extent of what I’m probably able to do anymore. The job I have now pays way better than that anyway. 

The classes that I took that were most helpful in my life were the ones I took because they were topics that interested me. I took five sewing classes at that community college, and I love to sew. A year or two ago, I took a real estate class for fun, and it was right after I started dating Kevin. The things I learned in that class helped me to “get” him out of a homeownership situation that was a nightmare. He just didn’t know there were investors out there that will buy anything. I didn’t either, until I took that class. He always tells me that I saved him from that townhouse, and that I’m his hero. If that’s all that will ever come out of taking that real estate class, then it was more than worth it. Luckily, we were already saying “I love you” and had decided we were boyfriend and girlfriend before that happened. (I’m sure you know what I mean). 

I also really always liked philosophy class. BUT. A philosophy class in any school today will only tell you about a handful of white guys who lived 200 years ago that were the “first philosophers”. Were they though?  Human beings have been around for about 300,000 years. My old Christian school lowered that number to only about 10,000 years ago because they were Bible literalists. But still- no matter how many thousands of years ago we’ve been around, did “philosophy” just start 200 years ago with these old white guys?   No. Our ancestors have been philosophizing from the beginning. It’s human nature. I would argue that every single person who’s ever lived on this earth has done it. Maybe not people who died in early childhood. But it’s just part of who we are, and it’s represented wrong in textbooks. That’s my unpopular opinion!  

So the only classes in school that ever helped me were MAYBE remedial math, MAYBE Spanish, and definitely sewing and real estate. Also my CNA class definitely helped.  (But I actually got paid for that one, it’s a long story). 

I believe I’m pretty scientifically illiterate, but definitely not as much as someone who say, goes to the pediatrician and demands antibiotics for their child and doesn’t understand that antibiotics won’t work on a virus. I’m not that scientifically illiterate. I just don’t 100% “get” the scientific method. I’ve worked with kids a lot, and I saw the scientific method once compared to a baby or toddler exploring the world around them. That made a little more sense, because I had so much experience working with kids.  But I still don’t understand really how research works or “peer reviewed” anything. Once I finally made it to the university in my 30’s, methods in research was another class I basically bull shitted my way through, just like sophomore and junior high school math. Scientists will act like they know everything, when clearly (I guess?) the point of the scientific method is that you don’t. 

All of this and more is why I consider myself an unschooler at heart. I just believe in everyone finding their own way, learning as they go in whatever way is best for them, and having choices. I don’t like the educational system very much, but I do support anyone who wants to go as a choice. Kevin told me his grandmother paid for his college education, but if she didn’t, he would have never gone. I’m jealous of that. I was told, you have to go, and you have to pay. When I was 18, I didn’t know that I suddenly had choices. If Kevin’s grandmother had been unable or unwilling to pay, he’d just be in the exact situation he’s in now, and that’s ok. 

A lot of people who’ve gotten burned by higher education will kvetch about it online, and then people will always argue “what about the doctors”. It’s tiring. 

My cousin/best friend is a doctor. She has never told me her student loan balance, but she has said that it’s equal to her mortgage. I just don’t think that’s fair. Doctors must also do residencies that do not pay well. My cousin/best friend said you can defer paying your student loans for two years during residency.  But residencies are four years. She responded, “Actually most are 3-8 years.”  Ok, but you still only get to defer paying for only two?  

That’s wrong, imo.  If that keeps happening, we’re going to run out of doctors. 

In the end, I just want to keep doing what I need to and what I want to do, and learn along the way. Sometimes graduations are seen as the “end of learning” when there can really be no such thing.  It creates a false monopoly on learning. I’m actually not even sure my daughter fully realizes that you learn all the time. I’ve preached it to her, but I’m 50/50 on whether she’s noticed it in her own life or not. 

MIL from hell.

 My coworker had two married sons and just seems like she must be the mother in law from hell.  She calls both her daughter in laws whores, treats her biological grandchildren A LOT better than her son’s stepkids, and is actually trying to set one of her sons up with someone else. She must be going through something, because she’s also become sort of evil at work. I was venting to my mom about it, because it can often be triggering to hear a lot of these conversations. We carpool long distances very often, and I just- need to always remember my earbuds. 

My mom started talking about what a mother in law from hell my paternal grandmother was. I asked right away, “But did she ever try to set my father up with someone else?”  My mom paused. She said, “Well no, I’ll give her that.”  

My paternal grandmother died when I was 15. I have two first cousins on that side that are younger than me, and I distinctly remember her telling the three of us not to name any of our children after her. She was superstitious and thought that if anyone was named after her, then she’d also inherit her bad luck. She literally told me and my two younger cousins, “I will haunt you.  I will haunt the hell out of you if you name your kids after me.”  So what did one of those cousins end up doing? Name his daughter after her. I asked him recently, “… Don’t you remember that conversation?”  He said he didn’t. He wouldn’t believe in haunting anyway, even if he did remember it. 

I also thought of the fact that my paternal grandmother had a lot of similarities with my daughter. My grandmother grew up speaking both English and Greek fluently, which made her truly bilingual. It’s not like she had a “first language” and a “second language.”  She was born into a household that spoke both equally, but she also obviously had some undiagnosed learning disabilities.  She would get unnecessarily irate if something wasn’t spelled how it was pronounced, and INSISTED on spelling things exactly how they sounded. 

When my daughter was learning to read and write, she was exactly the same way. I remember her learning about the letter K being silent. She argued, “That’s dumb, why even have a K if you aren’t going to say the K sound?”  I told her I didn’t know, that’s just the way it was. I told her, “it’s just for writing. When you speak the word, there’s no K. When you write it, there is.”  I started panicking a little because it was exactly how my grandmother would argue about the same issue, and I thought, is my daughter going to go around the rest of her life now spelling knife “nife”?  

My mom agreed that my daughter was the same way as my grandmother in this department. But then she added that at least when we would explain English language oddities to her, she would just accept it and let it go. My grandmother spent her whole life insisting on things that were just wrong, and it often made her look stupid. I mean, my daughter wouldn’t always instantly let it go. But she doesn’t remember any of these conversations.  

I hope that someday if I ever get a son in law, I’m not like that at all. I hope he’ll be like the son I never had. And if he comes with kids, I’ll be an instant grandmother, even if my own daughter ends up giving birth. They’ll all be treated the same way. I’m not going to brag about it either. Some people do- you ask them how many grandkids they have and they’ll say a number but then they say how many are their kids’ stepkids “but I count them anyway” and when people say it like that, it gives “I want pats on the back vibes”. If my daughter ever has any combo of step, adopted, foster, bio etc kids and someone asks how many grandkids I have, I’m just giving the number and that is it. Because that’s all it will be in my mind. And I’m never definitely ever going to try and fix her up with other guys if she’s married. Good lord. 

Back to Corpus Christi

 We spent three days in Corpus Christi last week, then had three days off, and are now headed back for another three days there. I call it Galveston number two. 

It always reminds me of when we watched “Under the Tuscan Sun” with Diane Lane. (Where Diane Lane’s character buys a run down house in Tuscany on a whim.). 

I was watching it with my parents. 

During this wedding scene (which is a bit of a tear jerker because this couple had some pushback against their relationship), the priest is giving them communion. He says in Italian to the groom, “El Corpo de Christo” and my father blurts out “Corpus Christi!” 

My mom quickly scolded him, saying, “No not Corpus Christi, he’s giving him communion!” 

Then the priest in the movie does the same thing to the bride- gives her communion and says, “El Corpo de Christo” and my dad blurts out, “Corpus Christi!” 

My mom rolled her eyes. I don’t know why she was mad, lol. 

Walmart Lady

 Has anyone seen this going viral?  Not too many people care that the panties are now a dollar. People mainly feel bad for this lady, saying who on earth made her pose for this picture?  And I agree, imagine a picture of you like this going viral, just holding up grannie panties, not a very flattering picture, etc. 

what I’m sort of mad about is that I just paid $3 for some of these. So my comment under the pic was “dammit I paid $3 for these” and got quite a few ha ha’s. 

Memory- Lunch Lady

 When I was in 3rd grade, we ate lunch in our classroom at our desks. There was no cafeteria. The teacher left to eat her lunch in the teacher’s lounge, and a classmate’s mother Mrs. F came to supervise us for the hour or so that we were eating. One of her sons was in our class. 

One day, another woman came to supervise us at lunch time, and we were told that Mrs. F was sick.  About two weeks later, our teacher announced that Mrs. F had died. 

It was a terrible scene. Third graders don’t usually cry loudly like toddlers or preschoolers, but we all were. There were some 25-30 eight and nine year olds just sobbing loudly. It had to have been a rough looking sight. Our teacher buried her head in her hands and cried with us. 

A couple weeks later, her son returned to school.  Probably then about a month after that, he said that his dad got married. Even at that young age, that seemed kind of wrong. It was extremely quick. Fast forward a few months later after summer break was ending, and we were all at family orientation for the first day of fourth grade. Our classmate’s dad and new stepmom were there, and we are ALL giving her the most evil, bombastic side eye ever. I thought of her recently. Now that I’m older, it’s obvious to me now that they were in an affair before Mrs F died 

I thought, if that many nine year olds are looking at you so sideways like that, you know you did wrong. 

My classmate announced on Facebook in 2021 that his father had died from ALS.  How horrific. His stepmom is still alive, and had two more sons for my classmate’s father. ALS sounds like a nightmare no matter who you are. I never told my mom that he died that way. She would have thought it was “what he got”. But really, terminal illnesses don’t work that way. They’re random.