January 27, 2009 - Dear Andy Roddick...Australian Open Edition

Dear Andy Roddick,

Could this be a turning point in our relationship? Can you actually win when I'm watching you?? Ok, so "watch" may be a relative term since I was half-sleeping. Stupid 16 hour time difference! And "win" might be relative as well because although you were doing pretty good, the match ended because Dojokovic retired. But hey! This is progress!

I told a friend last night before the match started that you were playing, and her response was "don't watch." But I couldn't help it, and at the end of the first set, I figured I was going to have to apologize yet again for bringin' the curse. Then you pulled out the second set. Go you! That's when I got sleepy. I tried to stay awake by flipping around during breaks, but I kind of dozed. I woke up somewhere in the middle of the third set and tried the flipping around thing again. When the tie-breaker started, I was struggling, but I was trying to stick with you, just to prove that I am NOT your curse. Then guess what...I flipped away for a jolt of awakeness, and when I came back, you were walking off the court. This is reminiscent of the 2007 US Open. I look away, you win.

If that's what it takes...I'll keep the remote handy.

Random thoughts:

1. Two snow days in a row! It's like hitting the Powerball! Whoo!

2. Rice pudding is the greatest!

3. Happy birthday to Susan O'Brien and Amber Chacko!

January 19, 2009 - If I were President...I'd bring back the cheese.

As the nation prepares for Barack Obama's inauguration in the morning, I'm sitting here watching Hour 1 of the History Channel series "The Presidents." I've often wondered why they only show one episode at a time, never the complete thing, and sometimes skip around. I'd like to get my presidents in order and all together sometime, but that's neither here nor there. While watching, I decided to play a little game of "If I were President..."

I wanted to be President while I was growing up. I decided in 5th grade that if elected I would end the Iraq war that was going on at the time (and one could argue has never completely stopped), and so I put that at the top of my to-do list, above such things as marriage, children, or even really 5th grade graduation. But, as the years have gone, despite such nicknames as Madame President, and having a wide collection of anything red, white, and blue, I don't really want to be President anymore. If someone hands the job to me (making me wonder how far down in the line of succession I'd be), I'll take it, but I won't actively pursue it. Something in me suspects that I really only wanted to have the job to stop the war and, probably more importantly, have a motorcade, so I doubt I'm the right person for the job. The world breathes a sigh of relief at my revelation no doubt.

But back to the game of "If I were President...." I'll leave the political ponderings to the people who actually get paid for that. Economic crises, Guantanamo Bay, a college football playoff system - hey, Obama brought it up on Monday Night Football, it's a legit issue - I don't really care for tonight. No, tonight, I'm focusing on the little things. The "cosmetic" things, so to speak.

If I were President...

I've always wondered why that big light under the overhang on the front of the White House (the flat side, not the side with the rounded Truman balcony) hangs so low. I think the wires supporting it absolutely ruin pictures. First, it's not like you can just change the lightbulb by standing on a chair, so they might as well raise it up and just use a taller ladder. Second, the thing's big enough that it'll give off sufficient light for an arrival. If I were President, I'd raise the light a few ticks.

If I were President...

In the Bush White House there is a beigy-colored carpet in the Oval Office. That would have to go. I'd need something darker. A royal blue is always nice. Perhaps a dark green. I'd even take a red-colored carpet. Having grown up with red carpet, you get used to it. But absolutely no beige because beige shows dirt, and I wouldn't be able to concentrate if while reviewing the economic stimulus package I looked down at there were footprints or stains on the carpet. Call me a little OCD, but so be it. I'd just feel like I'd desecrated public property. If I were President, I'd have dark carpet in the O.

If I were President...

"Andrew Jackson in the grand foyer of the White House had a two-ton block of cheese." And, in my opinion, current Presidents are less for having discontinued the fine tradition of allowing anyone and everyone into the White House to discuss their concerns. You can't be a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people if you don't invite the people in for some cheese. Maybe that's the Chatham girl in me where no event was a real event if there wasn't a mound of cheese, but what better way to directly petition your government than to do it in the foyer of the White House while standing around a hunk of cheddar. Say what you will about security, but if I were the President, I'd bring back the cheese. And as Josh would add on "The West Wing", a triscuit the size of Lake Tahoe.

Random thoughts:

1. How sad is it that after two years of campaigning, a massive election night, nearly 60 days of transition and ad nauseum coverage of the impending inauguration that I still had to look up how to spell Obama's first name? And I don't consider myself an uneduated person. One thing I'll say for Bush...I've never had a problem spelling "George."

2. Someday I will figure out how to make my soup delivery dream a reality. It's cold out. I want soup and don't have any. Surely, in this day and age, it cannot be too much to ask for someone to create a way to bring me some.

3. Here we go, Steelers! Here we go! Pittsburgh's goin' to the Super Bowl!

January 18, 2009 - A real turn toward the disturbing

Again, not a cool dream. I want one of those again. Lately though it's just the disconcerting kind.

I've been completely exhausted lately which means getting up, feeding the cats, turning on the TV, and then falling asleep again on my couch. Normally I don't dream out of bed. I can sleep anywhere, but if I'm out of bed I won't dream. Not so much this morning.

I'm not exactly sure what was going on, but I know I was staying in the home of a high school classmate, and it wasn't a home that I'd have ever wanted to stay in while in high school or even now, but I know better than to expect my subconcious to do what I want. It's quite possible that while staying at this house I was having an affair with her brother, who doesn't really exist, and who, now that I think back on it resembled a mixture of another classmate's brother and Jason Hervey, who played the older brother on The Wonder Years, a show I didn't watch. Whatever.

The next thing I remember is standing at the window and what was a wet street before was now a flood that has smaller buildings around the condo/highrise that we're in. A bus was somehow managing to drive through it, but other than that, there was no sign of life outside.

It was at that point, talking to my sister (a sister I don't have and didn't know I had in the dream) that I realized I was still wearing the dental thing attached to one of my upper molars. The best way to describe this contraption is to liken it to the longish security tags that they put on jeans in stores. It snaps on from both sides, and you can twirl the back piece around. I had apparently been doing that in my mouth for hours. I was a little worried about taking it off, afraid that I would either damage or remove my tooth, but I figured it out and popped the thing into my palm. It was bright pink, and when I turned it over, it said "Facebook" on it. Ok then.

This is where the dream took a real turn toward the disturbing. Again, standing at the window, I was watching the activity outside. The flood waters had receded for the most part, but where it wasn't high, the water was now raging. A mother and a little girl stood on a street corner, and I knew that if the little girl took one step into the street, she'd be washed away. But the mother didn't appear concerned. Nor did a friend of mine, Matt, who was fully prepared to send his pregnant wife, Amy, out into the water to go make a sale of some kind. I looked at her, shocked, and said, "You can't go out there!" But she just stood up, adjusted her shirt over her belly and smiled that if Matt said it was ok, it was ok.

When she left the woman next to me and I started talking about how dangerous it was for Amy to leave, and the woman pulled out a wallet with some pictures. She pointed to a middle-aged black woman singing in a choir, and said that she understood sadness because she'd lost two of her children, one of whom was killed under the babysitter's watch.

Cue me suddenly being the babysitter and in charge of the most adorable little dark-haired white boy in 1940's clothing. We were being marched into a roadway that on one side had buildings and a grassy patch near the road, and on the other side, there was an open field, lined with a barbed wire fence that had barbs big enough for people to be impaled upon. And down the road that was happening. People were being lined up and then secured on the barbed wire before right behind them a bomb would explode, killing them.

I was worried that was going to happen to us, but they stopped several feet away and told us instead to line up along the grassy area, making us lie down. I knew exactly what was coming, and when I laid down, I put the little boy as much under me as I could, hoping that somehow they'd not see him and he'd get to live. One by one I had the firing of the pistol as the head guard, who was very much enjoying his job, shot the people next to me. I tried to count in my head from memory the number of people who'd been lined up on that side to know how much longer I had, just wanting to be prepared. My dream persona is a lot calmer than I would be in such a situation.

When the guard finally got to me, I remember looking down to make sure the little boy was still here, and I noticed for the first time that instead of being dressed like everyone else, I was wearing my pink March of Dimes "I'm Saving Babies" shirt, but it was inside out, so that I could only see the back of the design. Even while in the dream I remember thinking, "That has to be more than coincidence," and somehow that made me think that everything would be ok. I was going to save the little boy, if I there was no way that I would be saved myself.

The next thing I felt was the muzzle of the pistol up against the back of my head. I can only assume it was because the gun had been fired multiple times already, but it was hot against my head, almost burning. I kept waiting for the firing, wondering if it would hurt. My body had flinched involuntarily when I'd heard the other shots, but now I laid perfectly still, just waiting. The gun was readjusted a few times. Once it was just below my skull, but then it came back to the original place, still burning. I don't know why the guard was waiting, maybe it was just some kind of sadistic torture, but just as I let myself surrender to the moment, breathing out and letting my body go completely limp in preparation, I woke up. But even after I woke up I could feel the exact spot on my head where the pistol had rested.

Random thoughts:

1. On to happier things...

• Happy birthday today to Laura Deininger!
• Happy birthday tomorrow to Becky Carpenter, and my grandma, Sylvia McKown

2. I really need to try to get rid of some of my books. They are all over the place, and most of them I won't read more than once so they just take up space.

3. I think the Kentucky basketball team is starting to believe that they can go in to any game, any place, and come out with a win. I like that!

January 15, 2009 - One direction or the other

"I'm a delightful, gentle beauty with a lovely smile. I seek all that's good, and I'm well-balanced."


I once had a bear that came with a pair of pajamas that said that when you pressed its tummy. It was supposedly the mantra of a Libra, and both the bear and I, in the pajamas, wore a balanced scale to claim that Libra-ness. That little statement might be true: I like to think I'm a delightful, gentle beauty though some days I have my doubts. But, the part about being well-balanced that damn bear forgot to mention is that while I can make quick, fantastic, good, stick-like-glue decisions on certain things, I can worry other things to death, scared to tip the scale in one direction or the other. Usually it's little things. Today it's something bigger.

Here's the deal. I LOVE my job. LOVE it! Most days I would do this job for free, that's how much I love it. I'd have to be completely supported by a rockingly wealthy husband so that I could do that, but I would. So being faced with the possibility that at the end of the year I might not have my job is scary.

I knew coming into this job that at the end of 2009 it would change. But when you accept a job in the middle of 2007, the end of 2009 is eons away. Not so much anymore. And I didn't know then that we'd be in the middle of a crap economy when I needed to start thinking about things. In fact, that crappy economy has impacted the job in a lot of ways and has absolutely influenced my need to think about it already, as opposed to a little later in the year. So it's not a complete surprise that I need to make some plans. The surprise lies in that the solution might be back where I started: Nebraska.

The job that I want (my boss's job), the job that I have been gearing up to take if my boss leaves for a new position with a project we've been working on since I arrived, is open. But it's open in Omaha. It's possible that the same position will be open in Kentucky at the end of the year, when my position either reverts to part-time, or is eliminated entirely because of the economy, but that's a guessing game. And in the meantime, that same position is open in a place where I have friends, family (plusses and minuses both), and that I sometimes (though not necessarily when it's in negative digits) miss. So the question becomes: Do I, in what seems a crazy turn of events, actually look back and consider a job in Nebraska when, almost three years ago exactly, I started planning my escape?

Someone suggested that I make a pro and con list. And I could do that, but it's really just a balancing of the Libra scales. And it will only lead me to overanalyze to the point where up starts looking like down, and left starts to resemble right. Maybe what I really need to do is just apply and see what happens. Live life now with the same blind faith that I have so far, believing that what's supposed to be will be.

Of course, any advice is welcome.

Random thoughts:

1. Do you remember that sense of excitement you got when your mom or dad picked you up from school when you weren't expecting it? Why aren't there simply joys like that in adulthood?

2. How is it possible that there are enough "Snapped" episodes for Oxygen to fill an entire day with them and not repeat?

3. There can never be enough orange juice for me to drink. It's like the nectar of the gods.

January 12, 2009 - "Poor girl. Has to eat alone."

I can't ever decide if it's empowering to eat out alone, or pathetic.

Tonight I decided to go out to eat for two reasons. One, I was in the mood for Chinese. Two, I need to go grocery shopping, but we're in a winter weather advisory which means the local Kroger is, right now, simply an element of self-torture. Keep in mind said advisory means we're maybe getting an inch of snow, tops, but milk, eggs, and bread will be in short supply, and lines will be long, so going out to eat was the smarter and/or more sanity-saving option.

It's not that I've never gone out to eat by myself. I have. I've lived alone for years, didn't have a roommate in college, and even when I lived with my mother, we never really saw each other, so eating alone isn't exactly a new thing. But there's a vast difference between heating up some Easy Mac when it's you in the living room and going out to actually occupy a booth or table by yourself. And tonight as I entered PF Chang's, I couldn't help wondering if it isn't just a little sad to go out and eat on your own.

I pondered that question all throughout dinner, which took longer than normal though I'm not sure why. Usually when you're on your own, you honestly can be in and out of a restaurant in half an hour. I have a whole theory that it's because the server wants to turn the table, freeing it up for a larger party and bigger tips, but I can't prove that. Tonight, I was in the restaurant for almost an hour, which, honestly, is an eternity when you're on your own.

When you don't have the distraction of a friend of colleague to eat with, you can focus on the little things going on around you. There's the conversations at the table behind you or the way the guys at the bar are trying a little too hard to establish a connection with the female bartender who easily could be their daughter age-wise. You notice the way that the servers bustle around and pay attention to how quickly your order is taken or your food arrives.

There's a lot to take in, but none of it is interesting. Certainly there's nothing to make the world a better place, or just make the day a little brighter like good conversation does. It's like you're sitting in the center of the world, just watching the world spin around you. You're of no consequence, and you should consider yourself lucky is the waiter/waitress deems you worthy of a refill. Sometimes you don't get that lucky. And even when you do get good service, you wonder how much of it is pity service. "Oh, poor girl. Has to eat alone. Better go give her some more iced tea."

I have friends who won't even consider going into a restaurant and eating alone. Is that because they aren't secure enough in themselves to maintain their own company for an hour? Or are they the smart ones, realizing how pathetic a person looks in his or her own booth, with no one coming? Most of the time I think one way, but tonight I'm not so sure.

Random thoughts:

1. What is with the run on milk, eggs, and bread when a storm hits? Is there some innate instinct to make french toast when the weather gets bad?? And if so, why is there never a run on syrup??

2. Am I the only person in the world who likes to write checks? Sure, automated might be easier, but there's nothing prettier than a fully filled out check.

3. A horse was sold at the Keeneland Track today for $950,000. I want to be in a position, in this economy, to spend $950,000 on a horse! Not that I would buy a horse if I had that kind of money. But maybe a Wii. And a house to play it in.

4. Happy (belated) birthday on the 9th to Nick Clark.