As Fish said, the Tuesday that feels like Monday. I hope I don’t miss something important this week, since I’m already running a day behind. I’m also two days behind on the blog. Maybe I can get that remedied, at least. (Um. It’s the following Wednesday when I’ve come back to this and I am SOOOOOO behind)(Now it’s the 23rd and I’m so desperate I’ve resorted to my home laptop which I almost never use).

I hate when I’m dreading doing something, but it has to be done, so I do it, and doing it makes me feel even worse. Life would be an easier pill to swallow if we weren’t conditioned to have hope in the face of all adversity. If we could just say, “Listen, this is gonna suck, but it has to be done. So don’t go telling yourself that it’ll be ok. ‘Cause it won’t. The best you can hope for is getting put out of your misery quickly. A ripping of the proverbial Bandaid.” But noooo. In order to get ourselves through whatever it is, we lie to ourselves: “Oh, it won’t be as bad as you think.” {Yes, it will}. “They might tell you this or that.” {No, they won’t}. “You might get a cookie at the end.” {Well, that part can come true, but you have to devise this happy ending unto yourself and plan for it by bringing said sugary treats}.

I woke up feeling all twisty and anxious this morning but I just heard the verse “be not anxious or afraid, for I am the Lord, your God, and I go with you.” I don’t know what version my paraphrasing is from, but it’s Isaiah 41:10. And it’s good advice. I decided to heed it, and I almost instantly felt better.

And sharing my thankfuls with Emily every morning, as is my routine, also lifts my spirit. She has chronic pain and has all but lost all vision (thank goodness for modern technology and magnifying apps!) but she maintains the most positive outlook on life of anybody I’ve ever known. So it humbles me and puts my problems in perspective. And also she is a HOOT. She was telling me about this girl she used to work with, that I also know, who had a gum sculpture in her car. What’s a gum sculpture, you ask? Allow me to tell you: it started off innocently enough, with a single wad of chewed gum stuck on the plastic lid of a fast food drink container. Well, for whatever reason, the cup didn’t get thrown out, and she kept adding gum to it (how did the bottom of the cup not disintegrate? Unless she’d consumed all the liquid prior to the gum collection, I guess then it would be okay). Anyhoo, the lid eventually caved in but that didn’t deter her. She just started a new one. Emily said she rode with her through three different gum sculptures to the best of her knowledge, and she was still going strong last she saw her. “It was very odd in the beginning but after awhile it seemed normal for her so I didn’t think about it, other than to admire it as art. So basically, she infected me with her crazy….on an unrelated note, did you know a group of clowns is called an alley?”
You see what I mean with the wit.

I informed her of the knowledge I gleaned yesterday, that FIVE saltine crackers carry 12 carbs but a Whatchamacallit bar only has 15??? Unfortunately, Whatchamacallits don’t taste very good in chili. But what a racket.

I finally finished that awful book. I don’t remember where the recommendations came from, but I should have verified through Goodreads, because readers there certainly didn’t give it any slack. Even the people who couldn’t be bothered to spell words correctly were giving it down the road. I was relieved it wasn’t just me.

In other good news, Jake Right Now was gone nearly all day with the biologist. He’s somehow coerced her into stopping for a milkshake, so when he got back it was nonstop hacking. And, of course, he had to visit the bathroom the moment he got back. Even with my little radio blaring, I could hear him coughing up his guts. He can drive me up the wall in five seconds flat. And yes, I tell him so. It’s such an attack on my peace after I’ve been alone all day.

Kay asked me to pick up a package for her at Oak Haven on my way home. I was assuming it was something about the size of a shoebox, something from Ulta or Amazon. I get over there and it’s about a 36″ cube! Luckily, it fit in my trunk. No wonder the staff was eager for it to be picked up.

I took Chester out for ice cream at 8:30. He was super excited. I was, too, until he got ice cream in the console and I stuck my hand in it, thinking it was part of a ripped-up napkin. What a mess, Chess! Life with a dog is better than life with about anybody else, though, ice cream messes or not. I don’t know what I’d do without him. Dogs are a gift that I often feel undeserving of.
It’s funny. I posted a picture of us on my Facebook with the caption: “When your friends can’t go out for martinis, take your dog out for ice cream. It’s almost as much fun.” And it wasn’t but a few minutes later, this girl I know from Cookeville that I’ve met exactly twice texted me and we attempted to pin down a date for a martini lunch sometime soon. I wish I had thought to message her when I was in Crossville a couple of weeks ago. It’s funny because she is a friend of my former bestie and I feel that she tries harder to see me than Lisa ever did.
I might have been on her mind, though, because she posted she was reading Hiking Through, which I read several years ago. I couldn’t resist commenting. Why this is ironic is because Lisa has recently taken up reading voraciously, she’s knocked out seven or eight books already this month, and I haven’t commented on a single post. My petty little way of jabbing. I can’t help it. It truly peeved me that my very nice post about Mike getting dealership of the year went unrecognized.
Anyway. It’s nice to be thought of. I might make a special trip. I’m assuming she doesn’t know the current climate of me and Lisa, but I’d love her take on it. I feel that she would shoot straight and be honest. We’ve always been aligned on our views. At any rate, I can always use a friend. And one who drinks socially is even better.