The past weekend was the 4th of July. In my former life in retail, this weekend would be like no other. I would have worked bell to bell without being able to enjoy the holiday or our freedom like nearly everyone else in the country. My boss would have let us grill out – but getting her to make an accommodation for Boca Burgers on the menu would have been like pulling teeth. Thankfully, in my new life, I can sit out on the front porch, in the new rocking chairs that my sister and I bought Raymond for father’s day and write my latest blog entry.
My weekend started getting complicated a couple of days ago. Normally I don’t have plans on the weekend until the 9th hour and they usually just involve my friend Ann and being her wingman as she prowls the bars looking for men to boink. I would say that she’s looking for men to date – but she’s not. She’s just on a quest to sleep with them. She can’t deal with a relationship that is more involved that fuck buddies. She likes to call them friends with benefits, but in my opinion, those men aren’t her friends. They don’t take her to dinner, the movies, and a walk along the river or even to the museums. She meets them at bars. She doesn’t have conversations with them about worldly issues. She has an obligatory 10 or 15-minute conversation and then sleeps with them. Then she hangs out to their phone number in case she needs it down the road – during her dry spells.
Okay, so up until a couple of days ago, the only plan I had for the weekend was a backyard BBQ my friend Lora was having on Sunday. I was happy with that because July 4th is a big NASCAR race weekend at one of my favorite tracks. I could just sit at home or a bar, watch the races, and then go to Lora’s on Sunday. Then, my friend Jerry invited me to hang out with him while they were camping at the fairgrounds.
Jerry invites me to things all the time and I rarely go. It’s not that I don’t want to because I do want to – I need to meet new people and socialize outside of my small circle of friends. But I get new situation anxiety, which is an awkwardness of not knowing what to do when I first get there, and then I don’t go. I’ve been to his place twice for his annual Halloween party. The first time I went alone and I had a great time. Then second time I took Ann and a few other friends, which ended up in a disaster. There were no single guys there for them to flirt with and my friend Jolene’s boyfriend felt uncomfortable – perhaps having his own new situation anxiety, and they wanted to leave. I had to go too since I rode with them. I felt like an idiot in front of Jerry and his significant other Angie.
So the last time that Jerry invited me camping and then had to brag to me about how much I missed, I vowed that I would not miss it again. I could have gone last night, but I fell asleep on the couch watching something DIY. I woke up when he texted me at midnight asking why I wasn’t at the fairgrounds. So come hell or high water, I’m going to be there tonight.
And I invited Ann because I thought it was about time that she do something besides bar hopping. A couple of weeks ago, a mutual acquaintance of ours told me that Ann had a reputation in town as being the bar slut. And then a couple of days ago, a regular at the bar we frequent, asked her to sleep with him. In the back alley of the bar. He’s married. She freaked out. I tried to downplay it and just make an excuse that the guy was drunk – but the truth is, he probably thought she would go for it – because of the way she acts. That’s when I told her that she needed to start hanging out with a better class of men and not bar slugs.
As it turned out, Ann did not go with me to the fairgrounds. I tried to entice her by going to a bar first. We watched the last 60 laps of the race, we socialized with some people and yes, she even flirted a bit with a drunk guy. But when I said I was ready to head out, she decided to head elsewhere. She claims she went home, but she was in bar – look at my bare skin – attire. Nothing someone that was going to a campground would wear, but definitely something a person would wear to go out to find guys. I knew when she showed up at the bar that she had other plans. And I guess that’s fine. It’s her life, I’m just a spectator.
I had a good time at the fairgrounds. The most exciting thing that was going on there was a foot race that a bunch of the campers did around the racetrack. Other than that, it was just people, sitting in lawn chairs around a fire pit, drinking beer. That’s my kind of party. Not out to impress anyone. Just relaxing and having good conversation. Ann would have hated it. So, yeah, it’s a good thing she didn’t go and ruin another night for me.
Okay, so that was complication #1. Number 2 started when my friend Lora told me to bring a date to the cookout. I asked Rod because I thought that was safe. He had something to do later so we decided to just go for a couple of hours. Then my friend, Judy, invited me to Lake Delhi to hang out with her at her cabin on Sunday. So Sunday the plan was that I would go to Boscobel in the early afternoon and the circle the globe to hang out with Judy in Delhi at night. Then complication # 4 started when this woman I met through a mutual friend, called and asked if I wanted to meet her for drinks. What the heck??? I go from no plans to 10 thousand plans. I had to bow out of the invitation because it was just going to get too messy. I like Beth. We met for drinks a couple of nights ago. Time flew by … but trying to squeeze her into my already complicated weekend just wasn’t going to fly. I asked for a rain check for next week --- the week I had planned to go to Chicago – so next weekend is going to be another cluster, I can see that already.
Just for the record, Sunday didn’t happen – for a plethora of reasons. I stayed at home and did nothing all day. And ironically, I enjoyed that too. I sat on the porch and finished reading a book. I worked on my latest story and I relaxed. Of course, Lora had to rub it in to me how much fun I missed. I wasn’t sad about not going – although I did kind of miss watching fireworks
^--^
I discovered the CLOUD virtual storage on Amazon last week. At first, it was my new best friend, because it managed to upload all my ITunes music that ITunes wouldn’t let me do anything with, other than listen to on their site. “They” claimed I had burned them too many times?? Anyway, CLOUD swiped all those songs outta ITunes and downloaded them to my EVO without any hiccups. Every exciting. What’s not so exciting is that I downloaded a Guy Lombardo greatest hits album to the CLOUD with the intent of burning it to a CD for Raymond. Somehow, the CLOUD downloaded it to my phone without my knowledge. It’s like 55 some songs. And while I have over a thousand songs loaded on my EVO, a Guy Lombardo tune manages to play about every three songs. I’ve tried everything to make it stop. I’ve shuffled. Reshuffled and even tried to delete, all to no avail – because he keeps coming back. He's like gum on the bottom of your shoe.
I just skipped Moon over Mantooka. Why it hasn’t played one of the 15 Johnny Cash songs I downloaded or the three versions of King of the Road or the Nickelback album or ever Diamond Rio? I don’t know, the guy just won’t go away.
^-^
It’s probably punishment for my ill-fated attempt to be civic minded and volunteer with the Legion Auxiliary. Raymond is all excited about it. Me, not so much. I’m the youngest person in the group. And anyone who really knows me understands that I’ve horrible around food or food preparation or food clean up. It’s grossed me out since I was a child and was forced to do lunch room duty at the ole catholic school. It’s why I have never sought work in these fields. But at the moment, that’s all the auxiliary does. The summer’s big event is the Babe Ruth Baseball Tournament. The auxiliary works the concession stand at the games and serves at the dinner. I was roped into working the concession stand and serving at the dinner. I think I missed the dinner because I had the dates wrong. I thought it was on the 10th, but someone told me that it was in June before the tournament started. Oops. And get this … No one called to remind me that I was supposed to be there either – and it’s not as if they don’t know what family I belong too. My auntie is on the auxiliary for criss sakes! I’m not sorry that I missed it – I’m no waiter.
But I did make it to the concession stand duty – which was a little overwhelming at first. I had about 3 minutes of training on what was what, how much to charge people and then they set me loose in a room full of plain m&m’s, ice cold sodas, hot popcorn, beer, hamburgers, hot dogs and brats.
Thirty minutes into my shift, when my feet were start to throb from standing on the hard concrete floor, one of the legion guys came over and said I could have a beer if I wanted – for FREE. And trust me – I drank several.
After 4 hours in the stand – I was pretty darn good at slamming hot dogs into the buns, nuking pretzels, making nachos with meat on them and selling laffy taffy’s (3 for a dollar is easy math) I even helped clean up the place – only because I was bored. It was hot in there too and the flies were dive-bombing us. In true redneck style – they had the ole yellow “fly catcher” tape hanging from the ceiling.
Thankfully, that wasn’t hanging over the food.
Working in the concession stand was kind of fun – but not so much fun that I’d apply for a job at McDonald’s or anything. I was supposed to work a second night, but I called out because my feet and my back were killing me. It wasn’t that big of deal that I didn’t go. There were four scheduled on a night where there was only one game. I looked outside at 9 pm that night and the park lights were off. I bet they were as bored as we were – except that our games ran until midnight and they were done by 8.
My next event with the Auxiliary is on Sunday, July 10th. It’s the Julyfest parade for the Catholic Church. Another event I’m not too excited about because: A. I’m not catholic and those of my immediate family that are catholic have nothing to do with the Farley catholic church, despite that we live here. B. I have to get up early on a Sunday morning to go to my Aunt’s house and work on the float, so I can ride in a parade with some old catholic women and throw candy to little kids. When I told my friend Jerry that I was involved with the auxiliary, he laughed in my face and asked me if I liked hanging around with blue hairs. Yeah, I guess.
I keep telling myself it’s civic pride – and Jerry isn’t one to really talk. He’s on the fair board of all things – an organization that in my mind is a bunch of ole farmers. Jerry lives on a farm, and has some animals, but isn’t really a farmer in the true sense of the word. I guess in a sense, I’m forcing myself to be involved because someone has to do it. Take for example – the concession stand at the park. One the of ladies I worked with last week made a comment that it was really clean in there as opposed to previous years. That’s because my friend’s mom was working in the concession stand last year and thought the place was a pit, so she went to the city council and bitched about it and now has become the official – unofficial concession stand manager. She’s there every ball game or park activity, every night or day to man the grill, slam hamburgers into buns, pop popcorn and stock the beverage fridges. Rain or shine. 100-degree weather or freezing temperatures. And she doesn’t get paid … she’s a volunteer.
When I was working in the concession stand, I was talking to my friend’s mom and said that I might be interested in other volunteer work – so she could keep me in mind if something came up. Then she asked me if I wanted to be part of the garden club that goes out to maintain the flowers at the welcome to Farley signs. I’m not the gardening type either, so I declined that as well – but a couple a days later, I saw some older Farley women out planting flowers and nearly reconsidered. I know nothing much about plants and growing things. But those women that were tending to the flowers were mothers of my classmates – again a bunch of blue hairs – trying to make our little town look nice. It makes me wonder where are all the residents from my generation? So I guess it’s not that bad of thing to be the youngest in the crowd -- because like I said, someone has to do it. Someday those blue hairs are going to be gone and who is going to be there to step in their place.
^-^
There are spiders in my bed – and not just my bed in my dreams like my previous blog entry. In my bed for real. The other night, I was watching a movie late and thought I felt something crawling on my arm. You know the feeling, you think there’s something there and there’s not. So I rubbed my arm and then brushed it off. A few minutes later, I thought I left something in my hair and I ran my fingers through it, but thought nothing of it. Really. Until, something crawled across my cheek. I’m sure you can guess how fast I jumped outta the bed and flipped the light on. Yup, all the pillows, comforter and computer hit the floor. And there he was … a little black spider, walking across the sheet as if it was his bed. Well, he’s dead. Smashed in a tissue and flushed down the toilet.
One would think that would have taken care of the problem right? No. Not so lucky. The next night, a moth made his way up to my room – maybe he liked the heat. I don’t know. But it only took his flying on to my computer screen twice before he too was smashed into a tissue and flushed.
Last night, another spider – crawling of all places, down the front of my tank top between the twins!!! If that isn’t enough to scare the bejeezus out of a person, I don’t know what is!! He’s dead.
And as I finished cleaning my room today, I hear these words squawk out from my MP3 player: “bell bottom trousers, coat of navy blue, she loves her sailor and he loves her too.”
It’s Guy. He’s stalking me.
No comments:
Post a Comment