day nine

The natives are getting restless. A few nights ago when the Alpha Female was picking out clothing for her trip she asked me for some feedback and suggestions. What the? It only took her a few questions along the lines of, "which of these earrings do you prefer?" and "Should I wear these pants with the black shirt or the red shirt?" before she signed wearily and said, "When is Somebody coming home?" And the Alpha Male just forlornly looks around, obviously outnumbered, and putters lonesomely in his garden. I'm not sure they can take much more of this. I, on the other hand, have taken up refuge in front of my computer. While that is not entirely unusually, the length of time I spend here is more than I normally would. My strategy for survival is easy: blogs, more blogs, So You Think You Can Dance, sewing projects, blogs, and some books. I work hard to distract myself from the silence. And you know what is especially difficult? I am very used to being touched and miss the contact.

Other random thoughts:
* I hate it when a song gets stuck in my head. Hate it. Especially because it is never the entire song--it's always just a few words playing over and over again. Like today, for example. A few lyrics from Bleeding Love go around and around: And I keep bleeding, keep keep bleeding love. You cut me open. Over. And over. And over. This happened with this same song just a couple of days ago and the repeat was so bad that I actually had difficultly shutting it off so that I could sleep. And when I woke up in the middle of the night it started again and kept me awake for a long while. Does this happen to anyone else? The last time a song stuck so well was The Wizard and I which, quite frankly, made my honeymoon a little less than dreamy. And before that it was These Words which I stupidly had set to be my ringtone. Wow. I learned that lesson fast. Anyway, I'm SO tired of bleeding love and I feel quite cut open.

* The punk teenage boys that live near us (their house backyard touches ours, but in the far corner) were out shooting off fireworks this afternoon. I at first thought it was just a gun, but after repeated loud noises got up to see what was going on. (Do you like that? How I'm less concerned about a gun than fireworks?) Anyway, the noise was kind of annoying and I really badly wanted to yell down from the porch for them to knock it off. But what am I, 87 years old? Seriously. I'm like an old, grouchy woman that stays in her pajamas and yells at the neighborhood kids to quiet the heck down. In case you were wondering, I did NOT tell them to stop and let them continue with their hoodlumism. If there is any damage later I will volunteer a description of the punks.

* I wonder how much of a pay cut I'm actually willing to take to get a job in a field that actually interests me.

* I was using some of my massive amounts of free time to go through some older pictures in my files. These two were ones I almost couldn't stop looking at. Look at those two crazy kids, so young and innocent.

* Have you ever had a friend fade out of your life and then unexpectedly reappear? Well, I did recently. Out of the blue he contacted me, but out of a really nice shade of blue. Almost celadon. Ever since then I've pretty much been blog-stalking his wife**. And can I just say that I find her clever and interesting and someone (although I know this is hard to tell just by reading someone's writing) that I would want to be friends with? Okay, I said it even without your permission. I have nothing but respect for him as a person and am beyond thrilled that his life seems to be going wonderful places and that he has such a lovely family to share it with.

**There is music on that blog. Consider yourself warned.