Pieces of December

School is out for Christmas break. The kids got out Friday. My daughter came home with many presents from her friends. It was great – nothing was big and extravagant. They were small tokens of friendship and obviously purchased with thought about what my daughter would actually like. We did much the same for her friends. It made me feel good to see that the great spirit of Christmas overspending has not touched these kids.

Saturday morning, bright and early, I loaded my daughter and her luggage in the car for her trip to Tennessee. She is spending a week with her dad. We had arranged to meet at a Waffle House in Chattanooga that, quite coincidentally, is located at the exit by the BIG mall. I may be mad, but there is always a method! The drive was an easy one. My daughter slept most of the time and I listened to a book on tape. We pulled into the Waffle House exactly on time and her dad was waiting. I had promised M breakfast once we got there. I told her dad and he said he’d wait for us to eat. Uh-oh. He doesn’t want to eat with us? My mind clicked. I asked if he had eaten. No, he hadn’t. I looked at his face carefully. There were many more fine age lines there than when I had last seen him. There was a slightly beaten down air about him. I offered to buy his breakfast, too. The three of us went in and had a fairly pleasant meal. He seems to have lost much of his bravado. I guess that being a ‘kept’ man for so long has been wearing him down. He went through a list of changes he has made in his lifestyle. 99% of them were things I had requested, demanded, begged him to do when we were married. At that time all of those things were beneath him. Now that he has no job and no way to support himself…….well it’s amazing the things will do when forced rather than when simply asked.

I toddled around the mall in Chattanooga and got a little shopping done. Then I found a Target store and got pretty much the balance of my shopping done. Time to head for home. I got just outside of Chattanooga, heading south towards Dalton and BAM! The traffic jam from hell loomed in front of me. There were no exits in site and no way around it. I sat for an hour and a half in a construction induced coma. Thank the powers that be for books on tape! I recommend them highly as an antidote for road rage.

I finally got home – my 90 minute jaunt home taking closer to 4 hours. No problem. My shopping is nearly done, I am not totally broke, my daughter is enjoying her dad, and all I had left to do is get ready for my office Christmas party.

I went to put on my red dress. Uh-oh. I knew I had put on a little weight but I looked like the Pillsbury dough boy stuffed into red sequins. YUCK! Thank heavens for my old black stand-by from my heavier days. Heavier days? Shit, that’s now apparently! So now I know where my focus needs to be in the new millennium. I pledge to look less like the Pillsbury dough boy and more like his younger cousin, the Pillsbury bread dough stick girl!!

The party was fun. I got to meet the spouses of people I work with. They seem like just as great a bunch as the folks I work with. Makes sense that cool people would have cool spouses, doesn’t it? I had to promise to take part in the next paint ball battle that the office goes on. Oh yeah – I can hardly wait for that one! Old, overweight me against a bunch of youngsters with raging hormones. I think I will place myself in charge of tactics. Tactical paintballing – that’s the ticket! I drank more than my boss was comfortable with and a debate ensued – the topic being me driving home. Just because this large framed old Tennessee Whiskey guzzler can drink his cute little short self under the table without even thinking about it! I finally surrendered and he drove my car home, placating me with inane excuses, as his wife followed in their car. I got home just fine – but I wonder if they ever found their way back to where they live? They just moved into a new house and it’s not at ALL close to me – I took them back roads. hehe – I have mental pictures of them driving around in circles most of the night.

Today I got the packages for my sister and my dad in the mail. I have to work on a presentation for work and if anyone came inside my apartment right now, they would ask me which hurricane hit it and urge me to apply for disaster aid. So with all this to do what am I doing? Spending my time on chatty diary entries and catching up with all your diaries! And so it goes…..less than a week before Christmas.