Drat! My flight was cancelled! Can you imagine? Well, we DID have some ugly weather up here in Massachusetts yesterday, of course. So now I’m flying out tomorrow morning, instead. 6:00 AM, which means that DH and all my children will be getting up and going off to work, so it looks like I’ll be driving myself to the airport (at 3:00 AM!!!!) and parking my car in long-term parking. Oh ugh, and double-ugh! This is SOOOO not optimum!

Oh, well. ‘Tis nothing but one more of those little dramas that keep us slip-sliding around emotionally, and physically as well, quite often. I’ve been thinking about how a woman my age probably shouldn’t be schlepping around airport long-term parking garages at that hour of the morning, etc., etc., and then had to give myself a little mental shake and ask “Well, why shouldn’t she??????” It’s not like I’m old/feeble/can’t pull my own suitcase along behind me/couldn’t dig my two fingers into someone’s eyes if they tried to grab me (or kick backwards, OR, if push came to shove, knock the poor unsuspecting clod - or clodette - right down on his/her arse). Sure I need to lose 18 more pounds, but in situations of physical threat, I know how to use those extra 18 pounds to my advantage well enough. Heck, back when I was a *tad* younger, I used to TEACH self defense and restraint techniques that would stop an attacker without causing any lasting physical harm or pain. (I’m a humane crimestopper, after all!). Well it wasn’t exactly to stop criminals that I learned all of this and subsequently taught it in staff trainings, but to disable (again, without harming) emotionally disturbed adolescents. Back when I was young and rising (picture a lump of dough; I always do) in my not-so-brilliant career, I did a stint as executive director of a multi-service organization that did everything from day-to-day community services like food pantries in several different locations, winter fuel assistance, job training, ESL classes, GED classes, day care, residential rehab services for drugs and alcohol, 90-day residential assessment programs for troubled adolescents, long-term residential services to the same population…oh, etc., etc., etc. We had twelve different facilities around the state and I did a lot of hopping about from one to the other. So, the whole restraint training stuff was called therapeutic restraint, or *behavior management* and was to be used only when someone was a threat to others or him/herself. I mean, if anyone were to accost me in an airport parking garage at 4:00 in the morning, I’d say they needed a little “therapeutic restraint”, right? What? I haven’t done anything like that for twenty years, you say? Oh, c’mon. It’s gotta be like riding a bike, right? You never really forget.

So, now that that’s well and truly resolved, on to other thoughts.

Thank you all for suggesting that I include my blog entries in a book for my future great granddaughter (I’m sure it will be read by a young woman; honestly? I can almost see her in my mind, and I’m addressing my thoughts and whatever information I have to pass on, to her.  I do wish that I knew her name. I mean, wouldn’t it be just soooo neat to be able to address her by name? Well, perhaps as I write this tome it will come to me in a dream or something.

I need to pack. When I got the message last night about my flight delay, I just stopped running about like a madwoman throwing things into my suitcase and then yanking them out again, and went to bed. Ahhhhh. What a nice thing to do. Much as I hate the thoughts of tomorrow’s early morning endeavors, I have to admit that having a whole extra day to prepare is pretty nifty. So what am I doing to get ready, you ask? Well, I’m now sipping my second cup of life-giving elixir (caffein) and inscribing my last thoughts (well, last thoughts before I fly away; hopefully not last last thoughts, you know?) here in cyberspace and for posterity, at least here in the bowels of my PC. No, I don’t have a laptop. Can I tell you that my age raises it’s ugly head in warning when I even contemplate change of any kind? A Laptop? No mouse? Ohhhhh. No, thanks. I’m fine as I am. Of course, it means that I’m limited to communication of the cyber nature only from home of my office. But that’s okay. I’m the sort who still keeps her cellphone in the glove compartment *for emergencies only*. I use my office phone and the home phone. If I can’t access them, it’s because (a) I’m driving somewhere, and I LOATHE it when people talk on phones while they’re driving - a majority become distracted with their conversation, and slow down to @ 50 MPH on the highway, and usually in the passing lane for some reason. Everybody else is driven mad trying to maneuver around them, and a month or so, maybe six weeks now, ago, I was rear-ended shortly after leaving the toll booth on the pike by a woman who leapt out of her car with the phone still in her hand! Oh, and (b) because I’m in the bloody bathroom and don’t wish to be disturbed. Have you ever been talking with someone on the phone and distinctly hear the sound of the toilet flushing as you are talking? Now, is that gross, or is it gross? I mean, it’s nice, certainly, to be able to keep in contact with those you need/want to keep in contact with, but MUST that contact be maintained even as you attend to your most intimate of needs? Come ON, people!!!!!

Hah. Where did that come from? It just goes to show that, with some people (me) if you give them (me) a means of expressing themselves (my very own blog) they (I) can leap from one subject to another with almost criminal fluidity, and go on and on and on about themselves (about MYself) ad nauseum. Ad infinitum? Truly sad, eh? Must be some sort of PILL one can take to stop the dribble of verbal inanity, isn’t there?

Hah! But this is SUCH fun, and life is short, and (running gaily off across the lawn) Try and STOP me!!!! Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah!

Yes. (Shaking head sadly). Poor thing. She developed senile dementia one day, sitting in front of her computer monitor and had to be taken away in a straight jacket. Laughed all the way out the door, that one did. She always DID know how to have a good time, Old Zoe did…

Yes, I know the above is a tad over the edge. I think of these things, though, you know? And the visualizations are quite comical (to me). 

Alright. Well.

What to do when the drama we anticipated doesn’t develop? How to handle it when it seems like our impact on someone wasn’t quite what we were led to believe it was? (We bought into the declarations of undying love and desire when it was just a tried -and perhaps sometimes successful - line????)  BE GLAD and move on. No time should be wasted in thoughts of how you expected it to play out - the angst, the entreaties, perhaps even the stalking, phone calls in the wee hours of the morning, etc., etc. You didn’t want that, and you didn’t get it. Yay! Really. Yay! You don’t need the drama. Seriously. Even not-so-attractive underachievers learn how to be manipulative. Get that bullshit detector up and running! This is just general advice, you understand. May not apply to everyone. I’m prone to this sort of out-of-the-blue prognosticating, doncha know? (I also read tea leaves. Okay, not, but is sounds fun, eh?)

Oh, jeeze, you know if we were all together around the kitchen table, we’d be happily chatting away into next week…

MUST pack, must do some stuff around here, and must bid a fond farewell (for now) to my blogmates.

Love,

Z