Last Friday evening after I left work I met up with an old friend that I used to work with at my old job. I’ve talked about him before on this blog, but for memory’s sake, he’s the maintenance man at my old job where I was working as a Receptionist. He’s the nicest man you will ever meet in your life, so unselfish; he goes out of his way to help you out and would give everything he had for you if you needed it. We were going to have lunch at Applebee’s but something came up last minute with his mother and he was running a little late. Since he does not have a cell phone I left the restaurant and ran into him in the parking lot. I kind of felt bad for not trying to stay and wait a little bit longer and he profusely apologized for being late. I think it turned out better anyways because we went next door to Wendy’s and it was a lot quieter in there to talk.

Nick went fishing for most of the day Saturday so it was another “Girls Day Out” with me and Kennedy. We had breakfast with my mom and dad in which I argued with them for the duration of breakfast.

We had walked into the restaurant and Kennedy was carrying an empty water bottle that mind you, was a disposable one with a sport cap. She drops it cap first on the very obviously dirty carpet of the restaurant. My first instinct is to throw it away because it fell on the dirty floor. My dad proceeds to argue with me that it won’t hurt her.

“That’s what’s wrong with people now-a-days, people are too clean!”

TOO CLEAN? Of all the complaints, I’ve never had someone tell me I was too clean. Any person with eyes could see the carpet in the restaurant was dirty and the part of the water bottle that Kennedy was going to put her mouth had hit the ground. That’s disgusting! After a few more arguments as to if I should give Kennedy the water bottle back, I finally said,

“Ok Dad, you lick the carpet and I will give her the water bottle back.”

That was the end of that conversation, for the moment at least. We eat breakfast, we talk about random things going on in life and then my Dad leaves the table to pay as to which my mother I guess decides that she wants a piece of my butt on her plate today as well. It was back to the same old argument about me moving out of the house. My rebuttal is the same every time,

“If you can pay my student loans and my credit counseling program then I will move out.” Because seriously, they have told me that with all my student loans and the debt that I created from being young and stupid which has caused me to join a credit counseling program, that is the only reason they are letting me live with them. Plus I’d have to get a bunch of mortgage lenders drunk or drugged to convince them to give me a loan. I don’t feel guilty about being 25 and living with my parents because when you are in debt up over your head with things all that matters is taking care of your mistakes. Because let’s face it, going to school was a mistake, but that’s a whole other discussion.

What else did we do Saturday? Oh yeah, Kennedy and I went to Petsmart and bought a playpen for the ferret. The ferret knows how to jump off the bed now and it always ends up happening when one of us looks away. The playpen will keep her confined to a large area so she can still play around, and we can turn our backs for two seconds and not have to worry about her running away from us.

That night Kennedy sat down and watched the race with me.

The bright side of that day was that I convinced my boyfriend’s 6 year old daughter to watch the race with me. If you have read my past posts before, she absolutely gets irritated when I want to watch the race every weekend, which coincidentally enough, she is over every other weekend. She has her own TV, I have my own TV, but she wants to watch TV with ME. She finally gave in and sat down next to me and watched it. She knows to always look for my orange #20 car, and when it shows up on the TV she would scream and yell,

“GO TONY STEWART, GO!”

Well it looks like she has picked out her own favorite driver. When the Kasey Kahne All-State Commercial came on and the girls were screaming for “Kasey Kahne” she turns to me and asks,
“Is Kasey Kahne a race car driver?”

“Yes he is!” I happily explained, it was my moment to convert her to the wonderful world of racing. “He’s cute isn’t he?” I ask. She just turns to me and scrunches up her nose,

“I’m going to tell Daddy you said that…” she threatens,

“That’s OK; he already knows I think Kasey Kahne is cute.”

So she continues to watch the race with me and I am requested by her to point out which race car is Kasey Kahne’s.

“It’s the red #9 with your Daddy’s favorite beer name written all over it.”

So a second Kasey Kahne All-State commercial comes on, it’s the one where he’s dancing around like a Backstreet Boy in all his cheesiness. Then she turns to me and smiles,

“Your right HE IS CUTE!” What an influence I’m turning out to be? This little girl could be my stepdaughter one day and I should be telling her boys are icky and gross. I guess I have a lot to learn about being a mother figure. Even if I ever have my own children one day, I have a feeling I’d be more of a best friend than a mother because I always like to get into something new, fun and different. We’ll see one day…

Fast forwarding to Sunday; I guess Nick caught a few fish on his all day/overnight fishing excursion. He was supposedly very close to winning some money, but got beat out at the last minute. I honestly don’t care if he doesn’t come home with any money, I just think with all the stuff going on with me right now, he needs to be out of the house so I don’t kill him, plus absence makes the heart grow fonder and how can I miss him if he doesn’t go away. Ah, stress is the story of my life.

My youngest cousin Kirsten had her first communion at church on Sunday. This was at the church in the same lot at my old elementary school, and ironically enough for me some of my teachers were still there. I ran into my 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Costello and she recognized me, I must not have changed much unless you count me ballooning into Shamu the whale, but anyway…my first grade teacher, Mrs. Gellings was there as well. It was very nostalgic all together. I have not been to church in a very long time, and it was overwhelming to be there in every way possible. I don’t want to say I had a spiritual awaking, but I felt something being there that I almost welled up a tear. I used to get so bored with sitting there listening to the priest preach for what seemed like hours. I almost kind of missed being in church, taking up an entire pew with my numerous family members, watching my little cousin get her First Communion, getting together with my family after church to just hang out together…everything. I might consider going back to church on Sundays but I want to see how I feel about this later. I’ve been so lazy lately, feeling so tired and stressed all the time, I guess you could say I had a temporary loss of faith but church just might be another de-stressor I need in my life.

The family all got together after church and had food and a little party celebration for Kirsten and her first Communion. I was very, very happy about the entire day, the sun was shining, I was out of the house, being with my family, and I even decided I was going to go to the park for a nice healthy walk. My second youngest cousin, Lyn wanted to go with me, I warned her it was a 4 mile walk, but she said she could do it so we ventured off to my house and her house so we could change into some jogging gear. I felt bad because I had got a call that Kirsten was crying because we left and didn’t take her. I had just assumed that she couldn’t do the 4 mile walk, but I wasn’t thinking ahead I guess. If you take one, you’ve got to take them all, so we went back to pickup Kirsten and headed off to the park.

I didn’t take my 4 mile power walk, but we took a walk through the nature trail (woods) and those little girls were out walking me the entire time. Shame on me for assuming they couldn’t do it, I was the one that couldn’t keep up. Afterwards, Lyn and I found a bench to sit on and watch as Kirsten played on the playground. It was very nice, and a wonderful end to an adventurous weekend. I couldn’t have asked to do anything more, and in my life, that is a major accomplishment for me.