There's No Place Like Home, There's No Place Like Home

*clicks well moisturized and exfoliated heels together while wearing pink Old Navy flip flops**

So it has occurred to me that no matter how much of a sty one's home is, it is still HOME. Gah! I left my house on Thursday, May something, intending to return home the following Monday morning. I went down to participate in the Relay for Life (my faux sister Susan organizes it and my high school friends that now teach at the middle school have a team that I join) that I extended that stay until Wednesday voluntarily--Sarah was moving to Calgary and I wanted to be able to spend some more time with her and her girls. We went so many years without ever seeing each other that I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do with her daughters.

Insert really unflattering photos of me and Sarah's oldest daughter Jackson at last year's Relay here:

And with Austin this year here:

Friends, never let it be said that I am too full of myself to hide the less than attractive photos of myself...it's what keeps me real and in touch with the people.

Anyway, read the other post if you want to know exactly WHY I didn't leave Chattanooga as planned on Wednesday. No, here it is Saturday--NINE frigging days after I left home for a 4.5 day jaunt, and I'm preparing to leave. You can imagine how thrilled W. is with me a this point. He's a good egg no matter how much I bitch about him. Frankly, no matter how much he's complained about me being gone, I think he and Five have actually probably enjoyed having the sty, er house to themselves for the whole week plus.

Since Sarah left, I've had lots of free time. I could have gone out w/ a friend on Thursday night, but I just didn't feel like it. Everyone that I know had to do mundane things such as work or spend time with family, so I had lots of solitude. I went to see Sex and the City. I ate at Panera a lot. I stayed up faaaaar too much (last night was freakish and I went to sleep at SIX a.m.) and watched all sorts of my favorite cable rerun shows, Top Chef, and Regis and Kelly. Good times, but pretty damn boring after awhile.

I miss having something to actually DO. This is a clear sign that the Wellbutrin is kicking in, I think. So, I'm heading home in just a few--meeting the parents in Murfreesboro to pick up my kids on their way home from their trip to Wyoming because I don't want to wait for them to drive all the way here and then leave. I'm that ready to just be home. Weird, but true.

I will update here more often, but if I disappear other places, you understand why. I have summer school for two weeks and many, many weeks worth of housework to deal with. Plus, I have to begin my holy-shit-I'm-almost-40 workout regimine so that I don't cry when I see pictures of the unfortunate event. To quote a smart lady, "Be safe!"

I Bought Myself Some Prezzies!

MIL gave me 100 bucks to add to my cash stash, so today SIL and I headed out to the new Super Target at the crack of dawn so I could spend it.

I found THE most gorgeously fun shoes for only $22, but I didn't get them because I realized that I didn't really have anything to actually wear them with. I'm going to go back, though. I need them. They are linen and brown 'leather' with like a 3" or so heel that is covered with brown textured stuff. Love them. I also found some really comfy black platform heels that were probably 3.5", but they had an open toe and I really don't need yet another pair of open-toed heels, so I put them back. I will be watching for them on clearance, though.

I didn't buy anything for myself at Target other than a pair of St. Patrick's Day socks from the 1.00 bin and a beach towel for 4.00. I managed to spend $82.00 on family stuff, including Sam's Easter basket present. When we left there, we hit the new Kohl's, which has just opened this week. There I managed to find two pair of shoes that actually met my footwear needs--a pair of slightly rounded-toe (closed, obviously) black pumps with a high enough heel to be dressy, but not so high I can't wear them to work and a really cute pair of brown slingbacks with a faux wooden heel. Both were Vera Wang's brand and on sale. Then I found a couple of pair of earrings (more on the earring developments later) and with the $10 gift card that SIL gave me (thank you, J!), I spent $99.18. Woohooo!!

Then I went to TJ Maxx and bought a great little Pucciesque print knit dress--BCBG--for a mere $29.00 and a basic white shirt--high waisted with a little belt to break it up--for $16.00. I had an exchange to make, so it came out to like $32.00 for those.

Finally, I hit the Wal Mart and grabbed up a couple more pair of earrings. I had $30 in GC for there, but I ended up spending them mostly on Easter candy and some groceries and frigging $10 worth of light bulbs for Jay's reading lamp. I decided that I'd consider using my money for that a trade off for spending at TJ Maxx, so I still have about $25 or so in my cash stash to put toward sandals or girly things.

I feel very shopped out and I still have to buy more groceries, but now I have lots of earrings to choose from when I go.

Tonight I have to go chaperone a dance for about an hour. Wooo.Hooo. Not. Then I think I'm going to go out to dinner with friends for my bday. W. isn't going to go because he's sick, so it won't be a late night, nor a particularly inebriated one, I suppose. That's a good thing, though. I tried on clothes at Target and felt enormously fat. Blech. Oh, that reminds me, I did buy myself something at Target--whoops. I got some khaki Bermudas. I lvoe Target's brand because they are totally vanity sized.

and thus, we decorated

i do love anna--she's my little sister from sigma kappa back in college. i've not seen her in forever and a day. life, you know. but we met for dinner (I was really late because i seem to have this recurring problem with eastern time, whcih is rather foriegn to me) and then went for more drinks in the bar.

i need to drag out the old college photos for comparison, lol, but she hasn't changed a bit. me, well, i'm looking significantly more haggard and using three times the amount of eye makeup--seriously, wtf?

anna and me

we had a blast just talking and laughing (loudly) and remembering old times (Cary, I'm sure you remember the road trips to UTC and get this, my 'friend' that puked his guts up out the window of our apartment? the one that gave me the roses and the one that made me miss that sig kap ceremony, etc. well, he? is a freaking judge now--so i'm not about to post his name. a judge, lmao. it ain't easy bein' cheesy).

oh, and just because. for dinner, i had meatloaf (my favorite 'real' food), but since i loaded up on chips and jalepeno spinach cheese dip (yes, i, the person who loathes three of those four ingredients ate said dip), i didn't eat much. i got a to-go box for the rest because it seemed shameful to waste it; however, since we were still out and about, i had to put it in my purse. thankfully i have a large purse, but let me tell you folks. you know your frigging old when you're out at a bar and when you go to pay your tab you have to take meatloaf out of your purse. the leftovers:

i swear, this looked much better IRL, too, rather like my eye makeup did. not that my eye makeup resembled meatloaf, but in the fact that both suffered in the photo process.

yeah, i'm done. good night.

sleeeve wins

I posted myself on OT today for the first time ever. I had to sit and think about it for a long time before I did it because once upon a time, sleeeve and I had a bet (if you don't know sleeeve then this will be pointless--sorry). It came about in the bar one night when we were discussing age. His age was one of several deep dark secrets that he guarded fairly closely--such as his name, where he worked, etc. Anyway, somehow we came up with this bet where I told him that I could find out his full name and age before he could find a picture of me online. It sort of grew from there.

I took all pictures of me down everywhere that was even remotely public. He would try to trick me or other people into letting him win. He actually almost DID win one night when he hacked into my yahoo mail totally on accident while we were IM'ing. Because he has ethics and the like, he automatically signed out (I wish I still had the archive of that chat. It was hysterical when he realized that he had figured out my insanely easy password). If he'd just looked, there were a couple of emails sitting right there in the inbox from sheila labeled PICTURES or something like that. They were from a concert in Memphis we'd been to.

I never posted a picture of myself anywhere he could get it and all my friends who might have one were sworn to uphold the agreement. His solicitations on my blog requesting photos were never successful and I was equally unlucky in my quest, although I did get fairly close on some stuff thanks to my super-sleuthing skills, lmao.

And then he just disappeared on me. Gone. I'm not sure what happened--life, I'm sure. He had a girlfriend and there was a lot going on at work. We went from emailing frequently and chatting every weekend to once every couple of weeks to nothing. No idea what's going on with him or anything.

So, feeling very nostalgic and being absolutely immersed in photos from the past few days of school-related things with my seniors, I decided to just give him the win and post a picture. It was harder than I thought it would be, oddly enough. I'd put pics on my myspace for a few months, but that was pretty private. Putting one on OT just sort of sealed the deal. I guess I can post one here now, too. No sense in "hiding" anymore.



On the Tube in London with a student. Excuse the dire need for powder.

Wal Marts Are Curious Places

It matters not where one goes to Wal Mart, one will always run into someone one knows. I saw two friends from high school in less than 45 minutes of Wal Marting.

Old Friends, Good Times...

I spent more than three hours at Chilis today and had the best time I've had in a long, long time Met up with four friends from elementary/high school for the first time in years. They all live in or around our hometown, so they see each other from time to time, but as a group, we've not hung out in at least 15 years, maybe more

It was like time had stood still in so many ways--we still make each other laugh over the dumbest things imaginable--goofy nicknames, silly stories, faces, whatever--and are able to laugh at ourselves in the process.

Not living anywhere near the people whom I grew up with, I forget the good times (and the bad, for that matter) from the past. It was so nice to be able to flashback for a little while and just hang out with those who knew me when I had a mad crush on Kevin from Spanish or who remember going to birthday parties at the skating rink or wearing horrible jeans or being threated by the scary lunch girls.

Ah, the memories.