A Little Bit of This ....

.... a little bit of that.

It's been a busy week.
I'm trying to get caught up on things but there seem to be way too many things upon which to catch.
That's what happens when you're out of town for a couple of weeks .... especially when one of those weeks happens to hold the first day of school .... and you volunteered (weeks ago) to work 2 days of the week you come back.

But heck .... life is mostly .... good.
Mostly.  Not all.
But then .... whose life is all good anyway?

The kids are all doing well.
Very busy, but well.
D#1 was planning on moving to NY but has decided to stay in Baltimore longer.  She got an offer from another theatre there so she'll stay.  She's not too keen on living in NYC, although I was beyond keen.
Dang.

D#2 is back in school getting her Masters in sociology and doing an internship in Ft. Worth.  She is way past busy.
D#3 is teaching again, though this year she has a class of one grade (teaching deaf children) instead of one class of every grade.
I hope it's a better year for her, though it hasn't started off well.  She seems to be experiencing burn out and she's only taught one year.  Although to be fair, her one year of teaching that class was about the same as 15 years of teaching an average classroom of hearing and mostly averaged-behaved hearing students.
She continues to work on her Masters degree at the same time.
This will be an intense year for both of them.

Son #1 is enjoying his last year of college.  He will graduate in May with 2 degrees: accounting and Spanish.  And then he'll be going to law school.
My kids STILL make me tired.  :)

Son #2 is working a lot and hanging with friends when he can.  His boot camp date is still February, but I'm hoping that he gets the chance to go sooner.  He's getting more bored as the weeks go by.

Son #3 decided to not play football this year.  It makes me a little sad.  I enjoyed going to the games and watching him and the team.
He is now a Yell Leader for the varsity team.  Kind of like a male cheer  leader, without all of the clapping and sharp, mechanical movements.  Lots of yelling and running and .... to my new-found-apprehension .... back flips.  He came home today and told me that he now knows how to do one of those.  And offered to perform one in our family room.  The room with the really hard, potentially deadly-to-anyone-who-just- learned-how-to-do-a-back-flip slate.
I told him no.
Sigh ....

He has also joined the tennis team and seems to be enjoying it.
We're going out to play on Saturday morning.
Keep us in your prayers.

I played tennis yesterday .... for the first time in a long time.
I played for an hour and a half.
And then it was either throw up, pass out or quit playing.
I quit playing.
Which is totally unlike me.
I usually tough it out and keep playing.  But I knew that it would be very ugly if I did.  And I was playing with some women who I knew would be ok with stopping after 90 minutes.  Thankfully.

Today I went to drills for the first time since May.  I knew that it would kill me.
Thankfully, God sent rain last night and this morning.
Oh we still had drills.  But the temperature was in the low 80's, rather than the high 90's that it's been in every morning since I-don't-know-when.
Today would have broken a record if we had hit 100 again.
We did not.
Some records are best unbroken.

Our season starts Monday.
It's supposed to reach 105 on Monday.
I can hardly wait.
:-<

The shoulder is fine when I'm playing .... it's the stamina that needs a lot of work.
A whole lotta work.
Hopefully my team mates won't take a secret vote to remove me from the team.
Or pull straws to see who has to partner with me every week.

V and G and R left the hospital yesterday.
Just in time for V's birthday, which is today.
What a great birthday gift, no?
G is doing well and will stay in St. Louis until his "numbers" are balanced and within his new normal range.  Once one has a transplant the normal numbers are different than they are for un-transplanted people.
R continues to do well and is flying home tomorrow.
Thank you so much, Peeps, for praying for them.
And for me.
And for my friend S.
Please continue to pray for her and her family.
Sigh .....

The on line dating saga continues.
And continues to be pretty boring.
Well, it was boring .... until today.

I decided to join Match.com last night.
And then I went to bed.
This morning I woke up to find 12 matches.
While I was on line at 7:30 this morning, looking at the profiles of the men who had been "matched" with me .... or who had "winked" at me (don't get me started) ..... I suddenly saw that someone was trying to IM me.  I didn't even know this site had IM.
I stared at the IM thingee, flashing at me .... and hesitated.  I wasn't sure that I wanted to IM with someone on Match.com.
But then I clicked on it.
And oh. my. word.

The guy on the other end of the IM was a bit ..... oh, I guess the word I'm looking for is .... intense.
He was looking for his soul mate.
He IMed the wrong person.
Seriously.

He claimed to be from NYC, which of course I think is great because I love that city.
But then we IMed a bit longer.
He claimed to be a widower.  His wife and son were killed in a car accident 6 years ago.
I said I was sorry.
Then he claimed to be an army guy (or ex-army guy) and is currently on a peace seeking mission in Afghanistan, but will be returning home in 6 weeks.
And as I read his words, I started to doubt.
And I began to re-read his words .... and note that he was writing the way someone who is not fluent in English would talk.
Call my cynical, but I began to doubt a lot.

He asked me what I was looking for.
I thought about saying, "The meaning of life", but decided to not be flippant.
But it was a question that I was not prepared to answer .... not to someone who had just IMed me for the first time, anyway.
So I played it light and airy and said something like, "Meeting new people, fun .... and world peace."  Actually I left out the world peace thing .... that was way too Miss America for me.
And then I asked him the same question.

Wow.
He's looking for his soul mate (I'm finding that most men on Match .... or .... to be fair .... most men that I've encountered, are looking for their "soul mate".  Gag me with a spoon.

He wrote a lot of other mushy, too friendly words and then he asked me for my email address .... so that "we could get to know each other more quickly and better".
What. Ev. Er.
I told him that I was not comfortable doing that, but that maybe we'd run into each other again on Match.
He then gave me his Yahoo address and asked for mine again.
And again I said no.
And added that I had to go.
He asked again .... he was an insistent little bugger, whereever he's from.
I told him goodbye and added "Have a great day."
Gag.

At that very moment I was IMed by another guy.
And within 2 seconds .... a third guy.
And then a 4th.
I kid you not.

So I just closed out my internet.
Like a big chicken.
It was too much, too fast.
WAY different than the snail-crawling-slowness of eHarmony.

But I'm tired of eHarmony.
There are way more women than men there.
And they match you up .... and then the men sit on their behinds and don't do a dang thing.  They wait for the woman to make the first move.
I did that for the first few weeks but now I'm SO over that.
I refuse to make the first move to a bunch of pansies who can't take a chance and start the conversation.
So over.

But, after 24 hours, I'm close to being SO over match.com.
They don't do any kind of background check, whereas eHarmony does offer that.
So then you get guys who claim to be from NY, and widowed, but who really seem to be from Pakistan or some such place, looking for someone to take complete advantage of.
I am not that person.

Needless to say, I am less than thrilled with the on-line dating thing.
Way less than.

The third IMer tried to start off the conversation with "Hi Pretty".
Double gag.

And then I received a couple of emails.
One from another man who was posing as an American and clearly was not.  He raved about my profile and all of my touching comments and answers in it, in halting English, which I thought was hilarious because I didn't even fill in most of the profile questions.  I just put in a few words and left most questions unanswered.  He had not read my profile.
Or even glanced at it.

As the first guy was demanding my email address he said it was because he wanted to get to know his soulmate better so that he could meet her when he returns in 6 weeks.  I asked him if he really thought he'd know in 6 weeks who his soulmate would be.  He said yes.
I said goodbye.

So much for the online thing.
I'm creeped out by it and contemplating just becoming a nun.

I hear they're in short supply so maybe they wouldn't mind a Baptist/Methodist?Lutheran nun.
Hey, beggars can't be choosers.

OK, that's it.  It's way past my bed time.  Six thirty comes way too early in the mornings.
Tomorrow I go see the R.A. doctor.
The medicine hasn't affected me much at all.
Thank God.
Om the other hand, it hasn't done anything for my pain either.
Sigh.
More test tubes of blood will be draw and I expect that he will tweak the meds, if not change them out to another one.
We'll see.

OK, this post is way too long.
Sorry about that.
I'm tired.  So I tend to ramble.

Thanks again, Peeps, for your prayers, comments, e-mails and good wishes.

I hope you all have a great weekend.

Happy Thursday/Friday Peeps.

God is good.
All the time.
:)