Dreams

I have very vivid dreams....dreams that I usually remember when I wake.   Most of my dreams seem so incredibly real to me that I've asked "did I dream this or did we talk about this?" 

One particular dream continues to make me giggle.  I love to fly and still hold out hope that one day NASA will decide that they need an organized person in space.  Or someone to plan an event.  If they called tomorrow and asked me to go up in the space shuttle, I would say yes in a heartbeat.  And then invest in super-duper extra strength space approved Depends. 

On this particular dream, I was headed to the moon.  But not on the space shuttle...and not taking off from Cape Canaveral.  It seems that the route from Greenbelt, Maryland to the moon was via 270.  And the mode of transport was.....the Bolt Bus.  For those of you outside the area, the Bolt Bus runs between Washington DC and New York City.  There are several other companies, but in my dream it was definitely the Bolt Bus. 

And now, every time I see the Bolt Bus, I giggle to myself.  I saw one this morning when I was running errands and it made me smile and giggle.

And maybe the next time you see the Bolt Bus you'll giggle too, and imagine me taking that up 270 to the moon. 

Friday Afternoon Musings

Is there something I don't know about Friday afternoons?   Is there a flag that goes up or a light that flashes alerting everyone but me that you need to get the hell out of the office or problems will erupt?  Fortunately these aren't huge problems, just really annoying ones that keep you in the office later than you'd like to be on a Friday afternoon.  Especially a Friday afternoon after a really looooonnnnngggg week.  When you need an adult beverage as close to 5pm as possible.   Do the problems save themselves up to appear just at 4pm on Fridays?  Why couldn't they come at 11am on Tuesdays?  What is the magic about Friday afternoons?

Oh well...the good news is that I successfully escaped the office.  With my terribly long commute (maybe 1 mile) I am now home, refusing to answer the phone and drinking an adult beverage.  Ahhhh.   I refuse to think about all the things on the to-do list for the weekend.   I know the house needs cleaning (off week for the cleaning lady, darn it!), the dry cleaning needs to be picked up and I have to grocery shop.  Ugh.  If there is one chore that I absolutely HATE it is grocery shopping.  I would almost pay someone to do our grocery shopping.   With Kathy in class nearly every Saturday, the grocery shopping is left to me to do.  I must really love her to tackle this.  She realizes that there may be things not on the shopping list that make their way home, and she is willing to accept that.  "Why do we have 5 cartons of ice cream?" will not be asked as long as she is in school.   She knows my response will be either "I couldn't decide" or "they were on sale" or "just don't ask why and give me a spoon."  Smart woman.

This morning I swam again with some of my pals.  One of them (a curmudgeon of 72) teases me about my swimsuit, "look!  It's Esther Williams in the pool!"   My swimsuit (tankini, please!) consists of a halter type top with a skirted bottom.  You can find it in any color under the rainbow at Lands End.  Mr. Curmudgeon wants to know why I wear the skirt (or as he puts it "that damn skirt").  He simply doesn't understand.  I confess, I didn't either....until.....

The Merritt Family Beach Week of 2006.   There we are, looking forward to a week of sun, sand and fun.  The first day we put on our swimsuits and head down to the beach with family members and approximately 429 beach toys.  Once we set up all the umbrellas and plopped down in our beach chairs, we noticed something.  Something rather alarming.   I think there is a memo that is sent to all women at a certain age that gives you guidelines on appropriate swimwear.  These "guidelines" state that women must start to wear swimsuits with skirt bottoms when they reach this magic age.   There we are, sitting on the beach in clear violation of this ruling.  I mean, Kathy's sisters-in-law who are much younger than us were wearing the skirt bottoms.  These are women with NO flabby bits and no need to hide the non existent flabby bits.  Unlike me, who probably should have been hiding flabby bits with a skirt approximately knee length.  (ok, maybe a slight exaggeration)

I'll have you know that we went home and IMMEDIATELY ordered swimsuits with skirt bottoms.  Which really do hide my flabby bits and...frankly....make me feel sexy.   Way sexier than I ever felt in suits with the regular bottoms. 

So there, Mr. Curmudgeon!

Swimming Fears

Since I now work at a pool, I've started swimming once a week.  I'm not a great swimmer by any means -- Dara Torres has NO worries about me competing with her for title of oldest Olympian.  I don't have any fear of the water or the deep end...it's a pool.  I can see the bottom.  I can touch the bottom and come back up.  I can swim to the side of the pool and get out.

Now swimming in the ocean is a whole other ball of wax.  I don't do it.  Haven't in years since I got caught in a bad undertow.  There's something in me that just is...well....scared shitless about being in water past my waist in the ocean with all those currents and undertows.  We won't even get into the fish and other creatures there.  About every other year there is a beach week with various members of Kathy's family.  The nieces and nephews now range in age from 5 - 24ish.  The younger ones have absolutely no fear at all and love to be in the water body-surfing or boogie boarding.  While Julie stays in the shallow water.  It used to be ok because there were 1 and 2 year olds to play with.  But now they have abandoned me for the lure of the ocean's deeper water and big waves.  Even the youngest one:

One day I'll conquer this fear.

The voices are now silent

While we were on vacation, all these thoughts would swirl around in my head.  Deep, profound (yeah, right) thoughts that I had to get out of my head.  I thought up the name for this blog and meant to start posting.  And then I was too tired from all the hiking during the day and would fall asleep before posting.  Now I am back home, having beaten the dirty laundry into submission and returned to work...and I can't remember what so urgent that I wanted to start blogging again.   Maybe United didn't lose my luggage, but they lost my thoughts?  Hmmmm  Perhaps a future episode of Fringe will look into this...

It was a great trip to Colorado, filled with many memories of past trips there to visit friends who have now moved all the way around the globe to Australia.  The weather was fantastic -- the views gorgeous -- and I took way too many pictures.  Now I have to sort through all those pictures and figure out what's a keeper and what needs to be deleted.  I confess that I was a reluctant converter to digital...but I am a convert.  Take that you TSA people who used to refuse to hand screen my many, many rolls of film from past trips and then grumbled when I told them it was my right to request the hand screening so shut up and do your job.  :-)

Ok, maybe I never told them to shut up and do their jobs.  But in my head I did.  And really wanted to say it out loud but thought it probably wasn't wise, considering TSA still hadn't cleared me through security.  

One of my favorite pictures from Colorado:

Makes me smile.