So quiet you could hear a rat pee on a cotton ball.

I am really...really tired.
I don't know how to respond to people when they say something nice or thank me to my face. I wish they wouldn't do that - I get all awkward and fumble with my words and my face. It isn't that I have this problem on a regular basis or anything - and I know I sound like an ingrate and all, but ewwwww. This week I've been responding with "NO THANK YOU!" or "BACKATCHA!" those are getting old and trite. This week, I sorta want to say "Of course, we both know it is so all God and how he connects all of us." but that is a little too - I dunno - long. I want to "Give God all Glory." without sounding like Ernest Angely or Billy Graham. I want to say "I appreciate that you are taking time to think of me and say something nice and it belongs to Big Daddy. So I'm just gonna go somewhere and give him your words..k-bye. (and quickly flee)" but then people could perceive that as being "off" or perhaps "crazy".

It isn't that I don't want to be appreciated, I just want it either behind my back and to hear of it as second-hand news.

I have one friend who gets it. I am so grateful for her appreciation of snail mail and postage. One word in the mail is worth a jillion to my face.

Nice problem to have. It has been a long week and my time alone in the quiet is now over. My fellas have returned from dinner.

I have espoused many, many, MANY stupid things in my life but I have two favorites and the second happened today - I'll drop them both for posterity.

1. A year ago, My Dr. was checking/talking to me about my family history for breast cancer. I shared that my aunt had it. He asked "which side?"
I replied "Oh! I don't know she never said!"
His perfectly generous and deadpan response: "Fathers? or Mother's?"
I like to think of a doctors lounge, where they try to one-up each other with the dumbass things people respond or say to them. Perhaps I have a dubious award in that lounge and there is a martini named after me.

2. Today, while having lunch with my mother-in-law, who we haven't seen since last summer, I asked "so hows Grandma?"
I was asking about her mom who died in the Spring. It wasn't just any old forgettable, Spring day that she died. It was my birthday.
I wish my mother-in-law was funnier and would have quipped back with something marvelous - it was such a missed opportunity. Instead she showed so much grace bailing me out with a story of how she had done something similar. What I wouldn't give for a zinger response. Got any?

Fast of the past

I started writing letters to Big Daddy each day beginning January 1, 2010. Based on the last little journal I found, I stopped on August 10, 2010.

August 10, 2011 will be the start of something different at work, maybe elsewhere...

Dear Passengers and Airlines...unfinished

The Rules: passengers

1. Do NOT be a loud talker. Check yourself. Do you hear only your voice?
2. Never put your seat back. Notice there are a total of 16 inches between our heads? I WILL put something gross on the crest of your bald spot.
3. Don't use BOTH arm rest. Everyone only gets ONE. If anyone should get two it is the one in the middle sandwiched between the morbidly obese Hoarder and the BO guy.
4. Use deoderant (why does that word always come up as spelled wrong, with no good explanation?)
5. Don't talk to me.

I sound miserable because I am. This is an introverts nightmare – very good reason for going to the grocery at midnight and catching the red-eye.


The Rules: airlines
1. Offer Dominos pizza and KFC
2. If I pay for luggage, I should get something else...like a luggage tag.
3. Surprise me.
4. Don't make planes with reclining seats unless there is significant room (I should NEVER smell another grown person's follicles).