Random thought

If you feel the need to preface a thought spoken aloud with, “With all due respect…,” then I’ll assume no respect is actually being given to the person you’re speaking to/about.

Supermen

It’s official: I’m married to Clark Kent. I mean, I knew Neal was super, but someone he works with today said that he had a very calming, mild, Clark-Kent atmosphere about him that made her feel comfortable. That’s a good quality for such a big guy to have on those around him, I’d say.

On the other side of super and men, we just finished watching “The Hulk” and I realized that with the RTN now locally available, Neal and I now tend to watch more shows from our childhood (and earlier) than we do shows that are currently on. The only show that I actually try to watch with regularity is “Lie To Me,” but other than that? We don’t really remember to watch much T.V. How sad is that?

Heck yeah!

Look what I just got in the mail:

“Congratulations! You have been selected to receive two tickets to the ANTIQUES ROADSHOW event in Madison, WI, on Saturday, July 11, 2009 at the Alliant Energy Center.”

Whoo!

Yes, Neal and I ARE nerds, thank you very much. (Well, I’d say I’m about 1/2 geek and 1/2 nerd, while he’s 1/4 nerd and 3/4 geek.)

We’re also pretty darn excited because this is very near his paternal grandmother, which means we’ll get to see her again! We haven’t seen her in quite a while and have been trying to figure out how to get out there to see her, but this makes the decision easy. We can definitely take time to do both and give ourselves some extra time to spend with Grandma.

Yay!

Yay! Fresh food!

Our local farmers’ market is open once again, and this means that we can get fresh meat, veggies, and fruit as it comes in season. Oh, and cheese. We can’t forget the fresh cheeses. And maybe chocolates again this spring and fall (since it gets too hot and melts in the summer). I’m so excited to see what all there is to buy again. Yum…

Stigma

Someone I have regular (almost daily) contact with was recently admitted to the local psychiatric unit for a couple days. We weren’t sure if this person would be there two or three days, but we were glad this person was getting the help they needed.

Today, the person came back and was talking to me as we normally do when suddenly they asked, “Do you know where I was?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you think differently of me because of it?”

“Nope!” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Let me tell you something about me: My mom is bipolar. I grew up with this and with her being tight-lipped because of the stigma attached to mental illness. One day, she realized the stigma was stupid and she started talking about it. I started talking about it. I think that when a person realizes that they need to talk to someone for their mental health it’s just plain smart to do what you need to do to be healthy. I’ve lived with mental illness in my family almost my entire life, and the thing I’ve realized is this: People can be stupid. Those are the people you don’t listen to and the people that you don’t spend your brainpower worrying about.”

The person was silent for a while and then said they were off to their next stop.

There’s one thing I want everyone who’s dealt with mental illness (whether they have one or they have a loved one who does) to fully realize: You are you and you are loved. Sure, some people may feel awkward around you and may think ignorant thoughts about your illness, but if they make you feel bad about yourself? Then you don’t need them in your life.

Landlords can be evil

Or should I say that property management companies can be evil? Our apartment is owned by a similar company as this, and I’m sure ours would also be more than happy to go after a murdered person’s family for rent “owed” and an ETF for leaving the apartment early (even if the person was killed). Our management apparently was refusing to let a member of the military out of his contract when he was called to Iraq a few months ago (which, in case you’re wondering, isn’t legal).

After all our interaction with such companies, Neal and I are loathe to move into an apartment owned by these types of companies. Here’s hoping we like the house that we’ll soon be checking out to rent this summer: same price as this crappy apartment but we won’t have to deal with imbeciles who don’t know how to keep their TVs, music, and “visitors” at a respectable sound level AND we’ll be getting hardwood floors, a fireplace, and a one-car garage as part of the deal. No more idiots parking half in our space because they were too lazy to back out and actually park correctly.

Well, here’s hoping…

Whoa.

I’m just sitting here watching random people bake cakes on t.v. (it must be cake-baking day on PBS’s Create channel here), when I hear tires screeching. We hear this a lot since we live on a very busy intersection in town and never in the two years that we’ve lived here have we heard what sometimes comes after:

CRASH!

This time I did. In fact, I heard two metallic crashes, so I ran to the window and looked out. A huge fir tree stands on the corner of our building, so I could see nothing of the crash, but I inadvertently witnessed the “run” part of a hit-and-run accident. A smallish car with the passenger side front smashed all to hell squealed its tires again and peeled out, across three lanes of traffic, roaring off past our apartment and dropping pieces of itself here and there.

I rush into our office and tell Neal I’m going to make sure everyone’s okay (I know the person didn’t hit a tree from the sound), so we don shoes and jackets and head off down the hill of our driveway. About halfway down, I see a white SUV on its top in the parking lot of gas station on the corner and hear the sounds of sirens coming nearer. I’ll admit, this freaks me out, and I run the rest of the way down the hill and ask the first person I saw if everyone was okay. She was apparently the person on duty in the gas station, and she let me know everyone was fine. How, I don’t know, but I’m so glad.

The owner of the SUV (not the driver, however) came up to us and said, “That’s my car. He just called me and told me what happened!” He was amazed the side airbags didn’t deploy, but I was amazed that no one was hurt after looking at the SUV (seatbelts, seatbelts, seatbelts!) I overheard the driver talking to the cops: “The next thing I knew I was upside down in the car, hanging by the damn seatbelt.”

Another cop car drove up to the scene and almost immediately took off in the direction of the runaway driver (apparently a lady). It’ll be pretty easy to spot her with half of the front end of her car up about two extra feet in the air.

I hope they catch her, but if they do so tonight, my bet is that she’ll be completely drunk. What is wrong with people?

Why, people? Why?

I just don’ t understand what people gain by being nasty and rude to people they don’t even know. Even more so, what gains do people get from being nasty and rude to people (behind their backs) that they don’t even see EVER? I guess I just don’t get why someone would say awful things about someone behind their back when they have no reason to ever interact with that person and have no clue what that person does at any minute of his/her life.

What’s the point?

Yes, it got back to me. The sad part? Your opinion means nothing to me, because I never see you and I don’t even know you!

Anyone have an explanation for this?

So a little over a year ago, my sister had our second niece. Shortly before, as is usual, someone threw a shower for my sister.

I live in Northern Minnesota; my sister lives in Central Illinois. Okay, that’s out of the way. My aunt-by-marriage (in the same area as the rest of my family) is the one who threw the shower for my sister, and I never received an invitation or any notice that it was going on. In fact, I heard of it the week before the event when I called my sister to check in on her pregnancy, and she asked me if I had received my invitation. Um, no. Even my sister didn’t know that my aunt hadn’t sent me an invitation. My aunt’s excuse was that she knew I wouldn’t be able to attend since I live so far away, so she didn’t want to waste the money on postage or a card.

Cue a couple days ago. I received an invitation to my 17-year-old cousin’s baby shower. There’s a LOT more to this story, but suffice it to say that it’s not a pretty tale at all. How, all of a sudden, do I rate an invitation to my aunt’s and uncle’s daughter’s shower, but I don’t rate an invitation to my own sister’s shower? They know and understand that I won’t be able to attend this one either.

I guess my gift is welcome at their shower, though. Or, at the very least, desired. In fact, they are registered at several places (and I do mean quite a few), and I am also welcome to buy cases of diapers and be entered into a raffle in addition to the gift I bring from one of those registries.

Too bad I’m not paying to ship something down there in this case, eh? I guess they wasted a card and postage on the woman who “won’t be able to make it down here anyway”…

This kind of thing riles me up. I abhor gift-wrangling in this manner.

Me?

I have a lot of real-life, long-term friends and family members who read this blog, and they’ll probably laugh when they hear this. My coworker and I were discussing the end-of-the-year stuff for school, and I was trying to get my head around what my job will be this time of year. My day-to-day job is pretty much the same, but I have many huge projects throughout the year, and no two projects are alike. Every couple of months, I like to meet with members of my “team” (the group of two administrators and two staff, one of whom is me, whose jobs kind of overlap in what our duties are) and find out what is coming up for me. I really like to be able to budget my time and know what is coming up, especially since I’ve never actually worked through this time period at work before. Everything is new and very rushed this time of year. I met with my administrator yesterday and wanted to meet with my counterpart staff member today to find out what kinds of things I needed to have on the horizon for the next couple months.

As we’re looking over the list of things I had written down yesterday, she shook her head and laughed. I looked up from my list and asked her what she was laughing about. “You’re so organized! It’s just amazing,” she said.

I looked down at my list, which was handwritten and had tons of notes in the margins and all around my main list (notes from her and others that I had already consulted about portions of the list that were in addition to what my administrator had discussed with me yesterday). It was NOT organized in the least. I looked around at my desk and laughed. “How can you look at this list and my desk and say that?” I asked.

She just shook her head again and said, “You are!”

For the record, I do NOT consider myself an organized person. One look around my living room will tell you this. After she left and my administrator came back for her meeting, I hijacked her time to go over portions of the list that I needed more of her input on. As I was leaving, I laughed and told her what my counterpart had said about my organizational skills.

“But you are, Jessica! I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t so organized. I am SO GLAD you’re organized out there, because it helps me be more organized,” my administrator said earnestly.

I just laughed again and said, “Don’t tell my husband that, or he’ll expected me to be organized at home. Or he’ll just laugh at you guys!”

Neal and I talked about it over dinner tonight, and he agreed that at work I am definitely an organized person. At home, neither one of us really are, although I do sometimes crave more order in our house. The past several months I’ve been on a “if we aren’t using it regularly, we don’t need it” kick, and I’ve been sorting things to give away. I am just feeling the need to declutter my life for some reason, partially because we are planning to move at the end of July again (to where? We don’t know yet.) and I don’t want to pack up things we’ve had for three years and haven’t really used all that much. Away went clothes and shoes and lamps and, well, just stuff.

I don’t know what’s causing this phase at home, but maybe it will lead us both into being more organized there, too. I doubt it, but it’s worth a shot, right?