Consider this my help wanted ad

Since moving back, one of the most startling realizations is how utterly and totally alone I am. I swear I'm not being a drama queen. When I moved to Kansas City, I left behind the few friends I had and started anew. The friends left behind were those I had in high school and to some degree, it was just a natural progression of things. Being back, I miss those friends I made in KC and find myself at a loss as to how to find new friends. I live in a college town and that has its benefits but looking around, I am acutely aware of what a couple years age difference can mean. Add to that what I consider my oddities in preference and the relatively small town I'm in and I am just having a hell of a time finding people who have similar interests. I have made a couple of friends online through gaming. I really enjoy talking to them but it's starting to pain me to do so. I get along so well with them that it frustrates me that I can't actually go places with these people or talk things over in a face to face situation. Ya know, do things that friends would normally do. It's almost a sad kind of heartbreak.

And so I'm at a loss. I'm not sure where to go or what to do in order to find people who have common interests. I have this awkward mental picture that its like picking people up at a bar..."Oh, I see you like (insert book/band/movie/food/muppet*) , me too! Ya wanna hang out?" Its a sad and desperate mental picture. So help me, people. Give me some advice. At this point, I'll take all I can get.

* I really don't look for people interested in muppets. That would just be too odd, even for me.

Not a beneficial weapon in fighting colds...

So I've been sick. Nothing new there. As most can relate, sometime sleep doesn't come easily when you're dying of the plague. But as a word of warning, here is something that doesn't help one iota.


Don't have one of these placed at the foot of your bed. More specifically, don't have one that is ready to bark her fool head off at anything and everything that may make noise in the night. That includes you blowing your nose or making random death groans. You will regret it.

I almost made it...

through the entire summer without getting sick. Until today. My sinuses have become the hottest vacation spot for all kinds of nastiness and I'm not particularly thrilled. My annoyance is so great that I did the 30 minute pharmacy line boxstep just to get the really good drugs. Add to that the 15 seconds of terror where I thought the man behind the counter was going to do a strip search because of my out of state driver's license...seriously man, I feel and look like hell...do you really think I'm a meth cook (wait, on second thought, don't answer that).

So two gallons of orange juice, half a box of the good drugs, and a box and a half of kleenex and I'm thinkin I'm getting better. I'm not, but I'm thinkin it. I gotta work tomorrow and if I think happy thoughts, perhaps they will come true. In all likelihood, I'm gonna sneeze all over some little old lady and get written up for my bad customer service and not following dress code by strapping a box of kleenex to my belt. As long as her name is Mildred. I wouldn't feel so bad if my writeup had the word Mildred in it.

Gonna need more drugs...

May I suggest a Gilette?

There's this guy where I'm working. I don't work with him directly but he stops in now and then. Today, he stopped in looking rather shaggy. I had a coworker comment on it and he promptly replied, "Well, Brad Pitt looks like this all the time". Sugar, you are not, nor will you ever be, Brad Pitt. Shave the pimpstache.

Idiot.

What's new with you?

For those who may have visited my previous blog, I've decided that perhaps I should update you on what has been going on. For those who never knew me before...well, consider this your introduction.

While living in Kansas City, I was a manager at a big box retail pet store. I loved it quite dearly and upon moving back to Iowa, I decided to try it out here. The catch to trying it here was that it also involved an hour commute one-way and god awful hours (getting up at 3 am to make it to work by 5 was painful...). After giving it a couple of months, I decided that I had had enough of retail and should try going back to school.

Yeah, going back to school. I already have one degree in the high demand field of archaeology. Super cool, mind you, but it doesn't really pay the bills. Not a whole lot of people care to know what died in their back yard about 10,000 years ago. So I am going back for something more worthwhile. At this point, I'm not really sure what that is but I'm willing to start slow to give myself time to figure that out.

I'm also a recent divorcee. Not a bad thing, just different. He and I are still good friends and I suspect that life will be much better for both of us this way. Life is too short to be unhappy for too much of it.

So that is the nutshell version. Boiled down further, I'm just adjusting to moving back to my home town, going back to school, and starting life over from square 15 ( I mean, its not like I'm going back to kindergarten or anything).

I wouldn't recommend it for a perfume, but...

Are there certain smells that remind you of good times? Ya know, baking cookies reminds you of the holidays...a certain cologne makes you think of a family member...the smell of decaying fish reminds you of summer. Yeah, that last one. Maybe its just me. This morning I took Bug for a walk at a local nature preserve and as we were rounding the lake I caught a whiff of that weird fishy, pond scummy smell. It hit me as that summer smell from my childhood when we would go visit my grandparents. They used to live on a lake and that smell would just hang in the air. I could remember climbing all over the slimy rocks, every once and awhile coming up on a rotting fish. Yeah, those were great times.

My other favorite it the smell of exhaust fumes. Yeah, I'm a farm girl. It always reminds me of when I was a kid and we waited for the schoolbus. My siblings and I would all be hangin out and my dad would leave in the pickup. As he'd drive by, we'd all get washed in exhaust. To this day, that smell reminds me of frosty, fall mornings.

I wish we could take scratch and sniff pictures.

You look familiar

Some out there may know that I previously had another blog. It covered my short married life and all that it entailed. Trying to add posts just left me staring at the cursor and wondering how to add chapters to a book that started in one genre and was going to end in another. It just kept troubling me. And so here is my solution. No longer just adding chapters, I'm just going to start a new book. Call it my sequel. Welcome to my mellow chaos...