Bow Chicka Bow Wow

Subtitled: The Post My Husband Doesn't Want Me to Write.
But really. Surreal stuff like this does not happen to me very often, so I have to capitalize on it when it does. On Saturday, I received a very strange phone call from my dad. Seems he had a favor to ask of me.
Little backstory here to explain this request. My dad is a minister. He's at a location in which he has more than one church. One of his churches is not pleased with him. I won't say any more to avoid giving identifying details. Suffice it say, he's in a delicate situation with one of his churches. The other churches support him completely.
So. The favor my dad needed to ask of me. He, ah, wants me to store some stuff for him during the summer. See, it's some video tapes and dvd's and he doesn't want to put them in storage because the heat would ruin them. But he really needs to get them out of his house right now because of the church situation. Yep, you guessed it, my dad wants me to store his p0rn collection. Yes, me - mother of two small children.
But wait - it gets better. See, there's 10 boxes of movies.
My father wants me to store his 10 box p0rn collection. Hold me.
I mean, really, WHO has 10 boxes of p0rn? Oh, wait, that would be my dad.
Before you ask, yes, I will count the tapes. Yes, I will take pictures. Yes, I will post them. Rock is having a field day with this. He says he's going to take pictures and show them to his friends and when they ask what it is, he's going to say, "My preacher father-in-law's p0rn collection".
10 BOXES!
All weekend, we've been playing the, "if they're small boxes and only hold 10 tapes, that's still 100 tapes." "if they're big boxes and hold 20 tapes, that's 200 tapes!" O!M!G!
Rock says he didn't know anyone in the military who had that much p0rn and that my dad would be the p0rn god. That makes me the daughter of the p0rn god. Hold me.

Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough

RIP, Michael Jackson

Whatever his personal problems, and God knows he had many, he sure did make some awesome music, didn't he? One of our local stations has been playing Michael almost exclusively this morning, and wow, talk about the soundtrack of my childhood. Thriller came out in 1984 and I was 8. It was the first record I owned. I played it to death, knew every word to every song, and it was all over the radio. There were so many great songs, not just on Thriller, but throughout the '80's and early '90's. "Smooth Criminal", "Bad", "Dirty Diana". Man, it was like taking a walk back through some of my earliest musical memories.

Thank you, Michael, for the music.

Inspiration

Inspirational quote for the day:

There is something I know about you that you may not even know about yourself. You have within you more resources of energy than have ever been tapped, more talent than has ever been exploited, more strength than has ever been tested and more to give than you have ever given.

From FISH! attributed to John Gardner (may or may not be a real person. I found several in a google search, but none that sounded right.)
I read that quote this morning and it just really struck me. It makes me want to do more with my life. Get out and exercise and lose this annoying weight. Do more with my photography. More that I can't even think of right now. Just more. I've felt bored recently, stuck in a rut. I like my job fine, but I certainly don't leap out of bed excited to come to work. I have plenty of work and a few challenges, but it is a fairly routine job, with the same tasks each week. Rock and I have a good relationship, but it seems like even we are in a rut of sorts. We need new topics of conversation. New things to do to spend time together.

Of the Awk

Two awkward situations have cropped up recently. First, one of my coworkers, whom I do consider a friend, invited me to join Twitter. Of course, she doesn't know about this blog. Nor do I want her to. So I can either join Twitter with my real name and not mention my blog, or join Twitter but not friend her (or whatever you do on Twitter). So far, I've ignored her invitation and she hasn't asked about it. Whew.

Second, remember this guy? The college boyfriend who wanted to meet for lunch to catch up? Well, he's emailed me randomly a time or two since friending me and is getting progressively weirder each time. The last time, he sent me an email saying that he had had a dream that something bad happened to my father, and just wanted to make sure he was okay. So I wrote back and said, okay, that's pretty weird, yes, my dad is fine. Then, he asked me some questions about kids (he and his wife just had their first), all of which I answered. And can I just say here that I have never, in all my life, had a dream about an ex's father? I thought that was a little suspicious, but whatevs. That was back in April and I hadn't heard from him since. Until yesterday. See, yesterday was his birthday. (Which I wouldn't have remembered except for the little FB notice thingy.) So I left a message on his profile wall saying, "Happy Birthday - hope it's great!", which is my standard birthday greeting for friends. I logged in later and had the following email from him:

"Shelly-I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to wish me a Happy Birthday. I am not quite sure why, but it means a great deal to me that you would do that. I hope that some day you will be comfortable enough to catch up sometime. I would really like that. I think of you and your family so often. My Very Best- [Ex-Boyfriend]"

Oh Lord. WHAT am I supposed to do with this? What does he want? I swear, I want to write back and just say, "WHY? Why do you think of me and my family so often? I don't think about you at all. Ever." And the "comfortable enough" line! I would be perfectly comfortable around him. I just have no interest. I can't begin to imagine what we would talk about. I talked to one of my friends about it last night and she said that he needs closure, but that there's no way that I can provide that for him, so I should cut off contact. What do you think? Is she right? I'm trying to be the kinder, gentler Shelly here and not cut off contact with people just because they piss me off, so I'm hesitant to cut off contact except as a last resort. But if there's truly no way I can help him, I don't want to prolong this any more than it already has been (10 years, people!), so if cutting off contact will help him get closure, then I'll do it.

Any suggestions?

Nerd Out

Check out this Entertainment Weekly poll of most hotly anticipated book of the summer:
http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/06/must-list-poll-whats-the-must-book-of-the-summer-.html

Jennifer Weiner vs. Stieg Larsson vs. Richard Russo vs. Pat Conroy?! I may have to take to my bed.

As The Uterus Turns

First things first - Hair update:
Important things I have learned in the past week:

• The actual purpose of blow-drying. Before, I thought blow-drying was just to get the water out of my hair. Then I styled it with a curling iron or flat iron to create a "style" (we'll be using that term loosely - this is me we're talking about and nothing about me can be called stylish.) In the past week, though, I have realized that I can use the hair dryer to create the shell of the style I want. In fact, the shell I create through blow-drying is the style I get, regardless of how badly I screw it up. If I don't get it right the first time, I might as well go back to bed and pull the covers up over my head.


• The usefulness of leave-in conditioner and straightening gel. Rock uses leave-in conditioner on Supergirl's hair and has always told me I should use it, too. But I've always disdained using any products in my hair, so I resisted. I tried it the other morning and managed to create a curly hair style that stayed all day and didn't get frizzy. Yes, Rock gloated. A lot. And today, I'm trying some old straightening gel that I found in my cabinet and am rocking a straight style. It's after lunchtime and it still looks pretty good, so I suppose I can qualify that as a success, too.

So, I swore (to myself), that I wasn't going to discuss this subject again. But I really can't resist. It does help to write things out. Plus, you guys are awesome and totally supportive and I want to make out with all of you. Yesterday, after a day or two of denial, I counted the days to see if my period was, in fact, late. It is. Today makes three days late. I did this in the middle of the day yesterday which was a terrible idea, because then I spent the rest of the day trying not to freak out at work. Because holy conflicted emotions, Batman! One the one hand, I would be thrilled to be pregnant again. But on the other hand, I would be terrified to be pregnant again. On the third hand, (what? it's just for the sake of argument - no one really has three hands.) I would be annoyed to be pregnant. I would really like to lose some weight before getting pregnant again, and have finally started making some progress in that area, so admittedly, I would be annoyed to have that interrupted. So I would be relieved to not be pregnant, except that I would be disappointed to not be pregnant, because, you know, I WOULDN'T BE PREGNANT. How's THAT for a no-win situation? Or y'know, win-win, cause I'd actually be pretty happy either way. Well, thank god for those cheap, early pregnancy tests, because I took one last night at 10:00 (negative) and then took another first thing this morning (also negative) because I realized that taking a pregnancy test at 10:00 after drinking water all day might not be the most effective way to get an answer to this question. So. Not pregnant, yet no period. Whatevs. At least I know I'm not pregnant so I can stop freaking out. And, y'know, have a glass of wine or two with my friends this weekend.

Snarky Facebook comment of the day (ie. Comment I would like to leave on a friend's status):
If you think of high school as "the best times ever", you probably need to get out more.