O is for Over and Over Again.

When I start to think about writing a post, I say to myself, "Well, not much has happened and so much has happened." Crazy right? Both are true.

In some ways, not that much has happened. In other ways, it feels like I can't keep up.

• Ah, those crazy migraines are still whomping me and good.
• In great part, they account for the feeling that nothing has happened.
• To those of you who don't live with chronic pain, this is just going to sound like whining and I apologize ahead of time. I have had this migraine since 2003. It is like getting on a bike and thinking you're going somewhere and arriving at the same damn place over and over. It is beyond frustrating, beyond annoying, beyond anything. And migraines hurt. They aren't headaches. No no no no no no no.
• A hundred years ago doctors were using drills and drilling into people's heads and the patients were begging them to do it. No one does that for a headache.
• Yeah, most of them died from that procedure. They call it practicing medicine for a reason.
• So, when I get on my kick about axes and all that junk, it is because my head is freaking killing me. Nuff said.
• Funny thing about it. Telling you how much it hurts, doesn't make it hurt less. So, moving on....
• My sister-in-law's mother died last Thursday at 1:30am.
• Yeah, it was shocking.
• I wasn't completely unpacked from going up for my dad's funeral.
• Mom and I had every intention of going up for her funeral, but this was so soon that we weren't recovered from the trip we just made.
• Had we known, we would have just stayed up there.
• The funeral was yesterday.
• I sent her a condolence text message.
• That way she knows I care, but I am not interrupting anything going on in terms of the business of the day. In other words, yesterday was all about her.
• In other news, I went out to lunch and for some belated Christmas, birthday, and Mother's Day shopping with my ex and H-Girl. At the end of that, we had to run by his apartment and order something I wanted off of Amazon.com because we couldn't find it in the stores.
• His roommate was there and ended up leaving with us because they were going to do something after he dropped me at home. On the car ride, they got to talking about Michael J. Fox.
• They both are big fans of MJF. A list came out of MJF's best roles due to his 50the birthday. I stayed out of that conversation. I am not familiar enough with every single role he has ever been in to make an informed comment.
• Then they got to talking about how great he looks for being 50. Now, that is something I can weigh in on. Unfortunately, I think he would look a lot better if the Parkinson's wasn't eating him up and I said so.
• Sometimes I should just keep my mouth shut.
• His roommate told me that MJF looked better at 50 with Parkinsons than I do RIGHT NOW.
• Shut my back door.
• I told him that he was full of crap without actually saying he was full of crap, but pretty much saying he was full of crap. H-Girl was in the car.
• My ex thought that was hilarious.
• I watched The Social Network last night. At the start of the movie, this girl pointed out to the guy who was going to be the start-up guy for facebook, "You can tell yourself that girls don't like you because you're a nerd, but I'm here to tell you that the reason that girls don't like you is because you're an asshole."
• My ex and his friend are like two peas in a pod. Nuff said.

N is for Not Afraid

A friend of mine emailed me with some comments on the last blog. She indicated, once again, that I am much funnier in bullet points than I am in paragraphs. I think it is because I have a sarcastic personality and you can't really get a good jab in with a paragraph format. It is only in bullet points can you sink one. I am a real fun one at parties, too. Nothing out of me and then *BAM* I nail the sarcastic jolt when least expected. Of course, my friend had a few other comments. I think I shall address those and anything else that comes to mind in bullet points, since I am insanely funnier that way.

• She says that I shouldn't have laughed at H-Girl when she said she was "all about the learning." That sort of behavior on my part is likely just to make the kid angry at me.
• I say that the kid needs someone to call her out on her crap. She needs to know that she isn't snowing me like she is other people. Kids don't respect people they think they are manipulating. I want her to know that I have her number. 'Nuff said.
• My friend also indicated that blogger had this nifty bullet point program. Peeps, I am utterly lost on a computer. Hand to God.
• My mother used to tell me daily when I was a kid that I would lose my head if it weren't attached to my shoulders.
• What does this have to do with anything?
• Well, I know that there are some of you who think I should just learn how to do the design on my website. You are thinking, "It can't be that hard."
• I thought like that, too, for about three hours after I bought the domain name and my web hosting site. Into the fourth hour, I very nearly chucked my laptop out the window.
• Eventually I called the 24-hour 800 number help line to get them to put up a page indicating my site was under construction because I could not figure out how to write that on a BLANK PAGE and put that up.
• Yes, it is that bad. And that is where the head and shoulders business figures in.
• I tell you that and I share you this thing about the bullet points for this reason: I have been on blogger for over a year and didn't know that in the menu bar that it would create bullet points for me.
• Right now I am looking at the quotations and I can't figure out by sheer reasoning what that will do if i click on it. Clearly it will do something regarding quotations, but what? what? what?
• It should be obvious, but it isn't.
• It's hard to believe right now that I graduated with a liberal arts degree from college, isn't it?
• I know. I am having trouble digesting it, too.
• On Saturday night, we went to the pizza place for food and karaoke.
• Our usual karaoke guy wasn't there because his band was playing somewhere so some friends of his were filling in. This was a new experience for us.
• Not so much for them. They have their own business and their own equipment.
• Once again, too many kids were singing for our taste. Pretty much any kids are too many because most can't sing. They scream or talk into the microphone and it is monotone.
• However, the kicker this past Saturday was that there were only 8 people on the sheet to sing, but the teenagers took over every time it came to them. How did they do this? They sang solo, they sang duets, they sang trios.
• Three girls managed to hog the microphone for forty minutes every time the rotation got back to them.
• So, we we were there for three hours and sang three times. You do the math on that one. Eight people. Three hours. Everyone should have gotten to sing a lot.
• We almost didn't sing that third time because my mom was tired of listening to teenagers and kids scream into the microphone. The lady came around with the sheet to get our song to speed up the process, and my mom asked how far out we were. Turns out two kids were ahead of us, one of whom was singing.
• At that point, I was in favor of waiting and singing. We were there for three hours and had only been able to sing twice. Mom was ready to go, and said something about there being too many kids.
• I knew that was a pointless drum to beat. When you go to karaoke at a restaurant, there will be kids.
• The lady said if you want no kids you should go to a place that is over 21, and she was right.
• I said that the real problem was letting small groups of people monopolize the microphone. It was not right. It would be like me singing, my mom singing, me and my mom singing, my mom and another friend singing, the other friend singing, me and the other friend singing, me, mom and the other friend singing. We could tie up the works for forty minutes just like you have let those girls do all night, but we haven't.
• She didn't like what I said, but she admitted that it was a mistake and wouldn't be happening again.
• Now, would it not be happening again because I said something, or would it not be happening again, period?
• I got a nasty comment from the guy running the machine about being impatient to sing when he called me up.
• That tells me that even though the woman was very gracious to me, and admitted that I was right, she didn't relay it back that way to her partner.
• Most people just leave and don't come back if they don't like something. My mom said that if she finds out that our regular karaoke guy isn't going to be there, we will rethink going there in the future. And that was after I said something.
• People don't like confrontation. I didn't like it when I was married. My ex made it so uncomfortable that I eventually stopped speaking out about what I did and didn't like. What is and isn't acceptable.
• I am not doing that anymore. It is unacceptable to hog the microphone at a karaoke joint. I will tell you nicely. You can make one jab at me, but not two. And if it keeps happening I won't come back.
• I guarantee you this: for every one person who tells how it is, there are twenty who are thinking it and just not coming back. Be grateful for that person who speaks out.
• And if you are someone who is afraid to speak out, try it. It feels so good. It if is your truth, then it isn't wrong to say it. It is never wrong to speak honestly and from your heart.
• Trust me on this: the worst thing in the world is losing the ability to speak your own truth.
• The first Marshall Mathers song I listened to was Not Afraid. It was what hooked me on Eminem. The song is about not being afraid to do what you need to do, speak your truth, be yourself.
• Before you say that you hate rap or hip hop, know what you are talking about. I thought that I hated it, too. I hated it BEFORE I listened to it. It is dangerous to make those kind of calls. And it is also dangerous to hate an entire genre of music, because you never know when a specific piece of music will jump out and hit you where you live. Just sayin'.
• My mom has been watching OWN (the Oprah Winfrey Network) and loving it. Apparently, there was something on there about the new Oreo cookie. It is a regular Oreo covered in chocolate.
• I couldn't quite follow if it was on one of the shows or if it was a commercial... Anyway, the entire family sans the mom are sitting around the table eating these cookies and talking in Martian about them. (In other words, my mom had no idea what they were saying.)
• Then the mom came in and she tried one and my mom tried repeating what she said. She kept at it until I figured it out. That was when I realized that the kids and hubs are talking in modern day slang. I hated to break the news to mom that the family were not taken over by aliens.
• What was the giveaway phrase, you ask?
• Shut the back door!

photo found at www.weheartit.com