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.
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...

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!!! She told the receptionist it was illegal for us to distribute "religious propaganda"!!!
I said well then,...

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.

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...
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...)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...