Category: Life in general

Before I tell my utterly embarrassing story, I must ask: Have you gone over to comment on my Buckets for the Cure  post, yet?  If not, you should – the BlogHer Ads network is donating $1 to Susan G. Komen  for EVERY comment made on my post, as well as on the other Buckets for the Cure posts, which you can find here .

Seriously, your comments have never been worth so much, so go !

And now for my little life lesson.

Blythe is now attending that little preschool I found for her, for a few hours one morning a week.  I try to stay pretty close by, just in case.  One of these days I’ll feel comfortable enough to actually go out of shouting distance from the school, but I’m just proud of myself for actually leaving the premises now instead of reading a book in my car right outside.  Yes, yes I did do that at first.  I’m only just a little bit neurotic.

This morning, my errands included going to the gym and grocery shopping.  I decided to try out a store I’d never been to, because it’s literally within walking distance of Blythe’s school and I figured, hey, why not?  The closer, the better, in my opinion.

In the dairy aisle I randomly ran into someone I knew in high school – someone I was actually happy to see, even if I was wearing sweaty gym clothes.  We spent some time catching up, exchanging contact info, and setting up a time this summer when we’re going to get our families together.

After our chat I had to hustle up to the cashier so that I wouldn’t be late picking Blythe up from preschool.  She scans the stuff and I’m proud of myself for being 30+ dollars under budget (probably due to the fact that the store had  no organics and I’ll have to go elsewhere to spend my “extra” $30).

I slide my credit card through and it asks for my PIN.  I tell the lady I’m paying with credit, not ATM, and should I slide it back through?  Um, no.  They don’t take credit cards.  They take ATM cards, cash, and local checks.

This is where I digress a little and tell you that I pay for everything with a credit card.  We work that thing for every reward point we can, and the credit card company keeps track of the categories of our purchases, so that we know exactly how much we’re spending on everything without any work at all on our part.  We pay it off at the end of every month, so there’s no interest, and we buy the majority of our Christmas gifts with the reward points we earn.  It’s our system, and it works for us!

So, anyway.  I don’t have an ATM card – on the rare occasions that I need cash, I go in to the bank.  I also don’t carry a check book, because, hello?  Haven’t you seen that commercial where the world stops spinning when someone pulls out a checkbook?  Checkbooks are so two decades ago.  Mine is in our filing cabinet for when I have to pay a bill that I can’t pay through our bank’s automatic billpay service.

Back to this morning.  I’m staring at the cashier, speechless.  I mean, what major retailer doesn’t take credit cards?  This one, apparently.

I look at the time.  I have exactly 5 minutes to get to Blythe’s school.  There’s no time to go to the bank.

I dig around in my purse.  I actually have some cash for once, but I’m $27.30 short.  The cashier tells me to start handing back the things I don’t need.

Immediately the movie Terms of Endearment comes to mind – that time she’s trying to pay for groceries but is a few dollars short and her kids think their candy is more important than her midol  and she looks like she’s about to slap them into next week.

I have no idea how to go about putting back nearly $30 worth of groceries, the clock is ticking, and the customers in line behind me are getting annoyed.  I seriously consider running out of there empty handed.

Then I hear a voice behind me – it’s my old friend, and she’s offering to pay for my extra $27.30 worth of groceries.  I thank her profusely, apologize a hundred times, and bag my groceries with a beet-red face. 

I don’t care how close it is to Blythe’s preschool, I won’t be shopping there ever, ever, ever again.

Let’s recap, shall we?  I haven’t seen my old friend in years.  The one time I do see her, I’ve got my hair in a messy pony tail, no make up on, and my clothes are visibly sweaty.  I probably even stink, although fortunately the flies haven’t yet found me.  And now I need her to pay for my groceries because I don’t have enough money.

I’m taking bets on whether that family get-together ever happens.

I know the overall feel of my blog has been… different in recent months.  Has it been a year?  Possibly.

I want to say, for the record, that my days aren’t filled with sadness, it’s just that when I sit down to purge my thoughts, those are the ones that bubble to the surface and show up on the screen. 

I find joy in my life every single day.  I laugh.  I sing.  I dance.  I love.

But it’s the other things, the parts of me that fester in the nooks and crannies of life, that need to find their way out.  Here, they come out and give my mind room to breathe.

There are many, many things I don’t write about here.  Some, because I don’t have time.  Others, because they are far too personal to put out there for just anyone to read.  

Last year, 2009, was beyond difficult.  I am still struggling to overcome some of the bumps that popped up in the road that is my life.  But I am trying.  I don’t feel defeated – most of the time.  But when those inevitable times come, when I’m feeling as though every bump is a mountain to be climbed, I find solace in writing in this space.

I live an isolated life.  I work from home, on a ranch with very few neighbors, on the outskirts of a small town that I love, in many ways, even if I don’t exactly fit in with the locals.  As an introvert, I actually like the isolation, a lot of the time.

Occasionally, I feel lonely.  I often times feel so awkward in the presence of others – even people I know and like – that I can barely speak, let alone have a real conversation.  All that changes when I interact with all of you, my invisible friends.

You add so much joy to my life.  You make this isolated life feel so much less so.  You support me when I’m sad and cheer for me when I’m happy. 

I just want to say thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for making the bumps in this road seem less daunting – even when I’m not able to share them with you.