How I Really Feel Friday - Late Edition: Holiday Weekend

The Holiday weekend is here and I'm looking forward to a lot of down time and alone time. My daughter will be working and off with friends peppered throughout the weekend and the beau is in Florida at his son's graduation. Normal plans will resume on Monday.

Oh and yes, I just realized, today would have been my anniversary had I still been married - should have wished the ex Happy Anniversary when I saw him yesterday.

Wishing everyone a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend!

My Best Attempt....

photo above is what I'd like to look like and NOT a photo of me

Serious dieting begins tomorrow
Cruise in approximately 12 weeks
Shooting for the moon

How I Really Feel Friday ~ Pretzel Logic

Steely Dan tonite

5 Local Places to Eat

Taken from Chickie's blog:

The Rules:

• Add a direct link to your post below the name of the person who tagged you.
• Include the state and country you're in.
• List your top 5 favorite places to eat at your location (locally).
• Tag 5 other people (preferably from other countries/states) and let them know they've been tagged.

My favorite 5:

Eli Cannon's Tap Room - A small pub with great beer on tap and wonderful food and appetizers - a really good hang out.

Tre Scalini - One of the finest Italian restaurants. The entrees, whether it's pasta or veal, melt on your tongue and they have the most wonderful desserts. A very romantic place.

Morton's Steakhouse - This is the place you go if you want to be pampered by waitstaff and have beef that melts on your tongue and is cooked to perfection. A real treat.

Black Eyed Sally's BBQ & Blues - This awesome little gem has southern food and a really cool atmosphere. In the evenings they have blues bands. A great place to go with a crowd of friends.

Olympia Diner - Just a little greek diner that has big appeal for all ages and the image of this diner is known nationally. This is the place the young crowd goes to after a night out at the clubs and where families and friends schmooze over breakfast and a cup of coffee.

Previous players:

Nicole (Sydney, Australia)

Velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)

Selba (Jakarta, Indonesia)

Olivia (London, England)

ML (Utah, USA)J (California, USA)

CuriosityKiller (Hong Kong, SAR)

Shelli (Minnesota, USA)

Bluepaintred (Saskatchewan, Canada)

Avitable (Florida, USA)

Amy (California, USA)

Chickie (Florida, USA)

Regal (Connecticut, USA)

I won't be tagging you but encourage you to play!

HNT - Dorothy, Dorothy....

Last evening there was a tornado watch in most of Connecticut. I left work at 3 p.m. for a dentist appointment. While I was in the chair getting my 6-month cleaning, it became very dark and windy and started pouring rain. The electricity flickered a couple times. By the time I left and was driving home, about an hour and a half later, it cleared up nicely but there were a lot of roads closed due to downed trees.

And this is what I found in my front yard

How I Really Feel Friday - Late Edition

I am so glad the weekend is here! The kids had prom - I even let them go to an "after" party with the exception that I pick them up at the end of the night - 2:30 a.m.

But experience tells me, that was the smart thing to do. Once they left the actual prom where there was NO DRINKING and came home and changed out of their clothes into jeans and then went to the "real" party I know they were staying put at that kid's house. But then was worried and didn't want anyone drinking and driving and driving my kid home.

The girls were thrilled to be out afterwards and actually called me a little early to come get them because they were tired.

Well worth being tired this morning to know my kid was safe.

Now, onto other things as the little darlings sleep. I will clean house and go to the nursery and get some flats of flowers for mom for Mother's Day. She informed me yesterday that that is what she'd really like.

Prom Night

Before and after...


Mine is the one in the hot pink, but the one in the lime green has become mine too - she's at my house...a lot. In fact one day when she did go home I was bringing her bags of clothes to her (at her real house) and couldn't believe how many things she had here. It was almost frightening. I think she was secretly slowly moving in.

The group above came to my house to pick up the girls and they were then going to my daughter's date's house.

The girls are sophmores. A bunch of them, all friends, were going to the prom with Junior boys, all as friends.

I think the Cingular rep may have saved my kid's life HNT

Every now and then you get a nice person on the other end of the phone to deal with. Today was the day for me. The overage charges are simply for text messages. I pay extra for 200 text messages per month. Apparently that is not enough as "we" went over by 800 text messages during that billing period.

Now I've called several times in the past 3 weeks toying with either paying for unlimited text messages or having the ability to text taken off her phone entirely. But I called once more today and it ended up paying off. Simply to ask why I see a commercial offering unlimited texting for $5 I began a rapport with this rep. I ended up paying extra for unlimited today because if I take the texting away she'll use the phone during peak hours more and cost me that way and quite frankly its nice to be able to get in touch with her when I want to.

So this young woman named Dana, without me asking, as a courtesy took 50% off the overage and therefore reducing the overage to $43. I appreciate that. She also was compelled to tell me that after the above billing period ended and up to this point we are 500 text messages over which is $50 for the next bill. She couldn't do anything about that but said if I call back that possibly they will do something for me at that time but going forward I won't see any additional cost for text messages and I am now paying extra for unlimited.

I told the kid that she now owes me $30 a month going forward. The $9.99 to have her on my phone and the $20 extra I'm paying for text. (She only just got a job as she turned 16 in February.) She did in fact sound ungrateful at that prospect but its that or NO phone on my dime.

Happy Mother's Day to my blogger mommies!

Pardon the appearance....

I had to change my template due to some funky thing that was happening. This may be temporary OR may not. We'll see.

Photos from Ladies Range Day yesterday:My sister and my girlfriend: archery and fishing

How I Really Feel Friday ~ it was a perfect day until

I had not expected to speak to the ex or for that matter discuss what occurred last Sunday, but he called the house phone (why don't I have caller i.d.?) and I picked up right when my stove's timer was ringing. I was making thin spaghetti with shrimp and a butter garlic sauce. He was calling to firm up arrangements for picking up my daughter on Mother's Day to take her to the Boston Red Sox game. (yes, Mother's day!)

I immediately started getting emotional and blurted out...
"And just so you know...blah, blah, blah."
"I could tell you were upset, I didn't mean it, I worry about you, blah, blah, blah."
"Well you don't have to worry about me, it's not your concern, blah, blah, blah."
"I feel lucky to get along with you. All the guys at work that are getting divorced are hateful and bitter with their exes, blah, blah, blah."
"Too late now, blah, blah, blah."
"Don't hold a grudge, blah, blah, blah."
"I know I'm just a big payday to you, blah, blah, blah."
"That's not true, blah, blah, blah."

I'm sure we'll get past it - we always seem to.

So I'm eating the shrimp scampi-ish dish while blogging and now that I've brought myself to the same level of upset as last Sunday, it's not half as enjoyable as it was going to be while I was taking care in delicately slicing the garlic and peeling the shrimp and sauteing the ingredients.

Motherfecker.

We seem to care now more about how we hurt one another's feelings then when we were together (at the end of course - which happened to be a very LONG end.)

The original point being that it was a glorious day until then.

So I ask myself, why do I still allow the "aura" of HIM to run me emotionally. I know I do. I could be in a happy relationship but yet I feel like I still seek acceptance from HIM. Maybe because nothing ever seemed good enough for him? Although I know he sees things differently now for the occasion where he tells me that in retrospect he appreciates certain things.

AND I am SO not a jealous person but my crazy emotions alluded to how thrilled I am when I get the weekly check from him from the joint checking account he now shares with his girlfriend. I think I would have blurted out every annoying thing that he's ever done to me if I could have talked over him while he was trying to talk over me to prove his point to me. Yes we were talking at each other. Both trying to get in the rebuttal from the previous statements.

Oy! All-in-all I feel better that I got it off my chest and let him know he hurt my feelings. I guess I wasn't going to be happy until I "delivered the mail to the right address."

So I will now make myself a cup of tea, clean up the mess in the kitchen and prepare for tomorrow. I'm very excited about tomorrow. I'm going to Ladies Range Day. A game and fishing club that puts on Ladies Range Day annually. I went last year and it was awesome. My girlfriend is coming along. My sister and her friend and a couple of her co-workers and mostly the whole company where I work will attend. I'll post more tomorrow and this year I'm bringing the camera to take a few photos. I found it to be the most relaxing and peaceful day last year. Forced relaxation where I can't think about anything but the moment at hand.

We will be placed in groups of women and go station to station and do things like: archery, trap and skeet, pistol target shooting, black powder and rifle, fishing and a demonstration of trained bird dogs. Yes, there was nothing more satisfying than shooting an M-16 and blowing up plastic gallon jugs of water.

Peace.

Appreciate...

My dinner tonight - was trying to give me a message - I will heed it.

I do have an appreciation for the present moment.
Something fortunate happened for me today.
What it was is not important, but just that it was.

In addition, I haven't posted HNT's regularly of late
but I am fortunate enough to have a couple
blogger friends leave a comment on whatever
post I have left last.

For this I am fortunate.

I don't write in my blog for the comments or for sympathy.
For me it is the process of healing by putting it in words that
I can look back at and see how I was feeling at the time.

But to get a virtual hug or a nice comment from a friend
somewhere far away is certainly an uplifting
and happy moment.
As I do consider you a friend and am very
fortunate to have you.
Thank you.

I felt so lucky after the good thing happened that I went
across the street and treated myself
to an eggroll
and then to the local nursery
for two potted plants for the yard.
The above from the fortune cookie was just reinforcement for the day.

Peace.