http://www.sowal.com/bb/blogs/ en Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:22:26 GMT vBulletin 10 http://sowal.com/bb/images/misc/rss.jpg http://www.sowal.com/bb/blogs/ http://www.sowal.com/bb/blogs/dd/247-im-empty-nester-again.html Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:51:47 GMT As some of you may know, my son's been staying with us while he's been in between apartments. Lease up on one, other one not ready til 1/15. He's never intrusive, but it's just not normal when you've got an extra person in the house. So...Thursday, he officially moved to the new place. :clap:
He moved back to Dallas. Downtown Dallas to be exact. It's a loft. In a rather scary part of downtown, but hey, I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it either at his age.
It's sooooooooo cool. Second (top) floor of the old Nu-Grape Bottling Plant. Just down the street from Jack Ruby's old haunts.
It's huge by rental standards. Over 1800 sf, brick walls, original wood floors. Rooftop deck overlooking the skyline of Dallas. Great views from all the windows--and there's lots of them.
Huge walk-in closet/laundry room. Effiecient kitchen with the tinyest dishwasher I've ever seen.
During the move the other night, I took some stuff over and took a look. When I left, I went through downtown. I NEVER go to downtown Dallas, although I do occasionally visit the Kitty neighborhood. This was the night it was 23 degrees. And you know what most struck me? All the homeless people. I guess when you live in the burbs, you kinda forget about all the folks who don't. The folks who don't live anywhere. Oh my gosh! I wanted to load them all up in the Pathfinder and at least get them warm. It's started me thinking in this New Year, that maybe I should do more to help my fellow man. I'm checking out opportunities to help. It definitely made me a little less comfortable in my warm bed that night.
This could turn into a story..stay tuned. ]]> DD http://www.sowal.com/bb/blogs/dd/247-im-empty-nester-again.html http://www.sowal.com/bb/blogs/dd/146-tale-two-counties.html Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:03:56 GMT It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

That's the best description for our week in Florida.
This past week, I was struck by the total difference between two areas that I love so much. Okaloosa County and Walton County (South to be exact). I also came to a few other realizations, which shall become apparent.

We left Texas at 4:42 a.m. on Saturday, July 19. It's always so exciting on those early morning departures knowing that by nightfall, we'll be in paradise. We made it to Canton by about 5:45 and had breakfast at my favorite hamburger place in the whole wide world...Dairy Palace. I refrained from a burger and went for the bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on Texas toast. Heaven. Sheer Heaven. On to LA. :bang:Called Kitty from somewhere around Monroe, I think. This is also about the time it became apparent that it was going to be a LONG road trip. Travelling with 3 kids...need I say more. It's been years since I did this and even though Sunkist and Mr. Sunkist were along, it usually took all three of US to get all 3 of THEM out of the packed car and into the respective restrooms and then back into the packed car and back into seat belts, etc.
The rest of the trip consisted of the above...many times. Even so, we made it to FWB in about 13 hours. Mr. dd, his daughter and her boyfriend were already at the house waiting with ice cold beer. Popped one open and walked straight to the beach. :shock:June grass and jellies. Jackson was in the edge of the water less than five minutes and got a bad sting. By the time we were at the end of the walkover, he'd stopped crying. What a man!
Went to bed early in anticipation of seeing some beloved friends the next evening. :wub:
Sunday morning was my obligatory big trip to Publix. Two hours later, it was done. Step-daughter and boyfriend went. Their stuff and our stuff got all mixed up, had to move stuff from basket to basket in the checkout line. :angry:
Put the groceries up, made lunch. Made pasta salad. Checked out Mr. dd's rented waverunner..OMG..this is a blog all it's own. :blink:


Sunkist and I left for Sowal. Drove straight to Allifunn's wonderful new home. Let me tell you all, it was fabulous!! She has such great taste and wonderful "stuff". She's lucky she still had it all when we left..I was thinking about stashing a certain tray of treasures in my purse! The food was fab and the company even better. Dune-ahh came for a while, then IBD, Cork, jdarg, punzy and skunky, Toots and Franny. At some point, we called Kitty to wish her a Happy BDay. I think we sang. :eek: As much as I wanted to stay, I was dog tired still and Sunkist had to take mr. Sunkist to the docks in Destin at 5:30 am on Monday, so we regretfully left about 12:30. I will say that the drive from PW to FWB is a breeze at that time of morning. I am so bummed though that I evidently missed a rather "uplifting" game. :D
Monday morning, I cooked. More stuff. We all went with Sunkist to pick up Mr. sunkist at the docks at noon. He was ecstatic that he caught dinner for that night.


Spent the next two hours trying to get everyone ready for the beach. This would become a pattern. :angry:
Beach was more June grass and jellies. Kids didn't get to go in the water. They were bored.


Tuesday..I think was another crappy beach day...I think I lost Tuesday...:idontno:But, I did find this....



Wednesday....rain. Most of the day. I read, went to Publix..I know, try to contain your amazement. Mr. dd did take me to Dewey's Destin for lunch. Heaven. Met some peeps from Nacogdoches, TX at the next table.
Sunkist and mr. Sunkist went to D&K for dinner for a belated anniversary celebration. They loved it. They also ran into Daddy-O and Toots in Seaside.

Thursday...I had finally had it with waiting for everyone to get up and get ready for the beach. Went by myself at 9 am. Heaven. The rain had cleared everything out (including the dead fish...did I forget to mention the dead fish?) except for the jellies. They were there in full force. The only people who were in the water were there with nets catching them. :shock: But the water was gorgeous and this was a good time for me. Others finally showed up around noon, but it took the kids only minutes before they were bored and ready to go back to the house. We headed to SoWal around 3 and went straight to the Red Bar. The kids ate snacks and Sunkist was just sure that we were horrible people for taking kids to a bar. :roll:My sweet friend Jfunn showed up--I was soooo glad to see her!! She joined us for a couple at the beach too. We walked down to the lake and the kids LOVED it. They were totally entertained!! Thank God!!!! Jackson has declared that LJ is his "favorite"! Good friends came. Good times!!! SOMEONE drove us from the beach and if I didn't know better, I'd think he was trying to throw us off. Go figure. :wave:

Friday...our last day. :( I had such plans. Unfortunately, they turned into dreams. I did laundry, went to Publix, then took the girls shopping for souveniers..:bang::bang:OMG!!! It was living hell. TWO freaking hours later, I told them, if you don't pick something in the next five minutes, we're leaving emptyhanded!! They did. OMG!! OMG! OMG!! LIVING HELL, I tell you!! This was all happening while a hospital in Texas was calling me with a referral, I was in turn calling the NH and hearing about crap that I didn't wanna hear about. :bang:In fact, I'm gonna tell my boss that he owes me a day of vacay since I spent about that much time working while I was there! :pissed:
After the shopping trip from hell, I headed straight for the beach.

Stayed all day until around 5 a helluva thunderstorm ran us off the beach. Mr. dd was already packing stuff up. (This is a trait with him which is quite annoying). I spent the rest of the evening cooking, doing laundry and packing and cleaning. Have I said before how much I hate the last night?

Saturday...left at 7 am. Take the trip TO and you've pretty much got the trip FROM. Add in a really LOOOOOONNNGGG stop in Gulf Breeze at the convenience store for breakfast and a line for the restroom that was 10 people long, thanks to one of the kids. :eek:
We lost Mr. dd and his travelling companions about that time. Only saw them one more time during the trip--right before he took a wrong turn in Hattiesburg. :wave:

I realized that even though I love FWB for purely nostalgic reasons, I love SoWal more. I'm always so excited to see everyone and SoWal is just more......me. I feel at home there. In FWB, I feel like a "visitor". I was reminded that friends and loved ones are what make a place "home". There are so many differences in the two areas. Each place is unique.
I also came to the realization that we all have different agendas. I'm not sure we'll do the whole family trip again. I'm sure by next year, I'll change my tune, but with a fresh memory, it's doubtful.
I'm already saving up for a possible fall trip though. Just me and Sunkist. :wub: ]]> DD http://www.sowal.com/bb/blogs/dd/146-tale-two-counties.html http://www.sowal.com/bb/blogs/dd/71-jesus-demon-hell.html Sat, 22 Mar 2008 04:40:57 GMT The Demon from Hell. I work with her. I won't say where I work specifically, or what her position is, but let's just say she's not half as important as she thinks she is. Yesterday was just the straw that broke the camel's back for me with her.

I will say for those who don't know, I work in a nursing home. We have a family member who is the most precious devout Catholic lady. Her husband is our resident. He is equally as darling. They've only been married for about 8 years since the deaths of both of their spouses. But I digress. Every holiday, this lady brings some of us BF boxes of candy. I still have candy left from Christmas and this week, she brought more! She also brought a big stack of those little "prayer cards". You know, the ones with Jesus on one side, and a prayer on the other. She told me, "give these out to the residents, they might want to wake up every morning and see Jesus." So sweet.
I gave the cards to our receptionist and told her to have one of the more alert, ambulatory residents who helps everyone else pass them out as she made her rounds this week. The receptionist had them stacked on her desk beside the resident mail and this woman...no, this demon, (not the resident--the one mentioned at the beginning of this story) while the receptionist was away from her desk, picked them all up and threw them in the trash!!! :pissed:She told the receptionist it was illegal for us to distribute "religious propaganda"!!!
I said well then, we shouldn't be having church services every Sunday, an EASTER egg hunt today, and Christmas for that matter!! Evil biotch.
The social worker retrieved the cards from the trash and gave them to the husband to distribute.
This is only one of many stories about this evil woman. There are numerous others. She keeps "getting hurt" at work, so it's unlikely that we'll ever get rid of the biotch.
All I can say at this point is that I pray with every fiber of my being that "God will get her for that".
Thank you, Kurt, for providing this outlet for my frustrations..
I feel better now. ]]> DD http://www.sowal.com/bb/blogs/dd/71-jesus-demon-hell.html http://www.sowal.com/bb/blogs/dd/55-dd-twilight-zone.html Sat, 09 Feb 2008 04:35:11 GMT Ok..so today,
I had a lady and her daughter come see me about admitting her mom to the nursing home. She was one of those people that was very open and talkative. We just sort of "clicked". Talked for over an hour. When they were leaving the building, she said to me (as she was looking at my name tag)..."Vicki..oh! I mean Renee, it was nice to meet you." There was NO FLIPPIN' WAY she could have known my first name! I told her Vicki was my first name..well, she just about sh*t.
It was the weirdest feeling..so weird. :eek: ]]> DD http://www.sowal.com/bb/blogs/dd/55-dd-twilight-zone.html http://www.sowal.com/bb/blogs/dd/53-dd-kitty-jfunn-sunkist-meet-grumpy.html Sun, 03 Feb 2008 11:00:31 GMT I was so excited to return to SoWal for the Spring '07 Soiree! To have my daughter, Sunkist, with me for the funn was the icing on the cake. Of course it rained like a mofo on the way, but we didn't care--we were on our way to paradise. Sometime before our arrival, Miss Kitty called to say she and jdarg would like to take us to dinner our first night there. The rain had followed us all the way, but soon after we got settled in to our most wonderful accomodations, the clouds lifted and we got ready for a quiet dinner at B&A's. We were so surprised to see the quiet dinner plans had turned into a wench gathering...:clap:
Now, the next three hours or so are a little fuzzy, but I have photographic records of the evening to fill in the missing gaps. I do remember boobs and a butt making the rounds, and somewhere along the way, a SoWal thong became an object of innovative display.... MANY cosmos into the evening, I remember telling "someone"---maybe it was Toots--that "Hail yeah, I'd get a SoWal tattoo". Well, apparently, that's all Jfunn needed to hear and soon she was on her cell. She quickly announced that she had just the place! (Don't ask me what Kitty's doing in the pic...:idontno:)After maneuvering the stairs at B&A's--no easy feat after a few--we made plans to follow Jfunn and Kitty to the tattoo parlor. We bid good evening to Toots, Jdarg, IBD, Franny, Punzy and Mango. I remember Toots saying something like..."you might want to wait til tomorrow"...but ohhh nooooo...we forged ahead. Thank God I had Sunkist to drive--what a trooper. I think she was truly shocked that her mom was in this particular situation, but being the loving daughter, she so wanted me to put my money where my mouth was, so to speak.:biggrin:
We arrived at Big Tiki Tattoos and learned that Jfunn had asked them to stay open for us. Introductions were made, Kitty announced that she was starving and she and Jfunn were off in search of food. I produced a SoWal sticker for GRUMPY and showed him the exact spot I wanted my tattoo. We had to wait, I think, for a few minutes and just about the time I crawled up on Grumpy's table, Miss Kitty and Jfunn returned with a veritable cornucopia of snack foods....Cheetos, Fritos and Bean Dip to be exact. Here it gets a little fuzzy too. Grumpy was telling me something about the colors of blue that he had, but I just remember Kitty on the floor just below me surrounded by Cheetos. I remember laughing so hard that my face hurt and I remember Jfunn with her fn camera.
I don't remember much about the actual skin coloration, but I remember it didn't hurt....duh.
Poor Grumpy would never be the same. We left his place littered with Cheetos, Fritos and Bean Dip. Jfunn had Bean Dip in her truck--or so she said. He just kept saying, "it's ok...we'll clean it up"....God luv him. Wonder WTF he is today?
Now Kurt, do you see WHY the .com never made it to the hip? ]]> DD http://www.sowal.com/bb/blogs/dd/53-dd-kitty-jfunn-sunkist-meet-grumpy.html