we don't have a problem......we have A GIFT.

one of mother teresa's nuns came to her one day and said, "mother, we have a problem." and,mother teresa replied, "we don't have a problem. we have a gift."

talk about your parallel universe.

talk about the truth.


when i heard about mother teresa's comment (more than a comment - a way of life. more than a way of life - an homage to God), i dang near drove off the side of the road.

oh, sure.......i've heard about your sliver linings. i've heard about picking yourself up and getting back on the horse. i've definitely heard of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. but, "we don't have a problem.....we have a gift???"...........whoa. that's something else altogether.

i think mother teresa probably meant a coupla things - a coupla true things - when she said that.

i think she meant that a person's perspective and attitude about something is way more important than the something itself.

i think she meant that problems usually highlight a failing in ourselves - a failing that we now have the privilege of fixing.

i think she meant that if things always went well, with no bumps in the road, we'd all be pretty nice and decent people. but where's the victory in being nice and decent when everything is going well, with no bumps in the road? the real victory - and the one i think God cares about the most - is whether or not we can be nice and decent - and grateful and loving and unselfish - when the bumps in the road are so big you'd like to kill somebody.

i think she meant that problems are opportunities. not merely opportunities to sharpen our skills, get better grades, get more promotions. not even just opportunities to be better people. opportunities to serve the Lord.

i think she meant that problems are God's version of wake-up calls.

wake-up calls to be humble. to be selfless. to be charitable.

wake-up calls to say to the moron ahead of me in line who has 22 items when he's only supposed to have 15 and he can't count money worth a damn......wake-up calls to say to him, "i forgive you."


and wake-up calls to say to myself......... "love more."

the REAL story about my invalid hook handle

turns out, even the IT guy didn't know what an invalid hook handle is!

he said he'd never heard of it before and he isn't going to try to learn. well, that makes two of us, dude.

there are A LOT of things i don't want to learn. i don't want to learn how to skydive. i don't want to learn how to do my taxes. and i definitely don't want to learn how to change the oil in my car. i mean, are you kidding me?

my philosophy has always been, if there's somebody you can pay to do it, pay to do it. i am so totally not into anything do-it-myself.

with, ok, the exception of food. i do like to cook.

but even that interest is startng to wane a bit. increasingly, i have been munching on popcorn and calling it dinner.

trouble with popcorn is - the bag.

a.) the bag is too hot when it first comes out of the micro. b is, all the good stuff settles to the bottom of the bag. and c.), it's hard to hold onto a bag in one hand and a glass of wine in another and the remote between my feet without something spilling.

guess my popcorn bag needs a handle. (wine glasses don't look good with handles.)

maybe my popcorn bag even needs a hook handle!

just not an invalid one.

maybe, just maybe

for some reason, we love to say, "maybe, just maybe." we never say, "sometimes, just sometimes" or "yes, just yes" or anything just anything, but we love to say, "maybe, just maybe." i just wonder why.

somebody a long time ago must have said, "maybe, just maybe" and it stuck like glue. it must have sounded good - and not just good, but very good - and we've been doing it ever since.

too bad the guy who said, "maybe, just maybe" didn't think to get a patent on it. just like the city of new york didnt think to get a patent on their "i heart new york" slogan.


i heart, just heart, new york.

(PATENT!)

Easter - from a 6-year old's perspective

in a nutshell, i didn't like it.

the whole thing scared the, no pun intended, beejesus outa me.

having dinner when you know it's your last.......eating body and drinking blood...... doesn't anybody ever think how this must sound to a kid????

"i can count my bones"..........brrrrrrr!!!!

"Good" Friday. Good?????? doesn't anybody ever think how this must sound to a kid????


i remember how i used to be scared on saturday night after Good Friday. hell, i was just a stupid kid.......what did i know????? i always half-expected Christ to appear in my bedroom or something......all white and ghost-like and......scary.

by the time Easter Sunday itself rolled around, i was pretty much a (no pun intended) basket case.

doesn't anybody ever think about how this must feel to a kid????


i do.

if you moved, wouldn't you know why?

how many people move and don't know why?

i don't mean move almost imperceptibly, as in shifting from one foot to the other, i mean move as in, pack up all your stuff, leave town, and go live in another town. how many people do that and when you ask them why they did that they say, i dunno.

i don't mean they say "i dunno" to be funny, as in, beats me if i know why i moved to this flea-bag town. i mean "i dunno" as in I. DO. NOT. KNOW. WHY. I. MOVED.

life's hard, i'll give you that, but one simple thing that can make it easier is to only move if you know why. i'm just sayin.

i know a person who moved from cleveland to columbus. if you ask her why she did that she'll answer like this:

"i was making the highest salary of my life. i was getting ready to move into a beautiful new home. and then my dad called and told me to get down here right this minute, so i did. and now i'm here. and i hate it."

"why did your dad tell you to get down here right this minute?"

"i dunno."

"you dunno?"

"i dunno."


ummmmmm.........................


so then she'll tell ya, she'll say, "my dad's brother is dying of cancer. any day now."

"is that why your dad asked you to move down here?"

"i dunno. maybe. i guess that makes as much sense as anything."


ummmmmm.........actually? no. it doesn't make as much sense as anything. it doesn't make any sense at all.


and then she'll say, "maybe i need a therapist."


and then your brain goes, "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! finally! something that makes as much sense as anything."

the cure is worse than the disease

why on earth i ever decided to inform the IT guy at work that my hook handle was invalid, i have no idea, because now (why didn't i see this coming?)......now my hook handle is valid and now - you guessed it - now it doesn't work at all.

why i didn't just leave my invalid hook handle alone, i have no idea. that's probably what my invalid hook handle would have wanted anyway. i mean, wouldn't you? if you were an invalid hook handle, wouldn't you prefer that everyone just silently look the other way and not make a big hoo-ha over your invalidness? your invalidity? your second-class-citizen status? i know i would.

but, nooooooooooooooo. i had to do the "right thing" and inform the IT department that my hook handle was wonky and now that they've "fixed" it, i can't log on remotely at all. when i tried, this is what i got: "network administrator pinged the application but has not received response from host."

well, here's a response from this host:

IT department? you're not invited to the party.

invalid hook handle

ok, ummmmmmm..........what?

invalid hook handle. yessir. whatever the heck that is.

i swear to you, i run into more weird stuff than anyone else on this planet, including invalid hook handles.

every time i log off from my remote connection to my work desktop, i get an error message that tells me that my hook handle is invalid. well, your hook handle ain't all that groovy yourself.........d'ya ever think of that?

what, pray tell, is a hook handle - invalid, valid, or otherwise? i mean, besides what the shepherds held onto while they were adoring the baby Jesus, what on earth is a hook handle? and why should anyone care?

well, according to my computer, i should care, but i don't. unless it means there's some money in it for me, i don't care.

i do wonder sometimes, though....... am i ruining my computer with my invalid hook handle? i ruined an afghan once with an (invalid) crochet hook.

whenever i see the error message box pop up with "invalid hook handle" written in it, i wanna take that hook handle and give someone an upper left hook. if that makes any sense. which it probably doesn't. i don't follow sports.

i don't follow geeks, either, but i am trained in psychology. geeks who are ashamed that they're geeks and wish they were big, hulking boxer-types with a good upper left hook instead have projected their insecurities onto my computer.

maybe what they should do is think about those shepherds instead.

reserved parking spaces

i don't mind reserved parking spaces for doctors at hospitals, the handicapped, and employees of the stupid month. what i do mind are reserved parking spaces for the ceo, the president, the principal, and mr. whatever-his-name-is.

it appalls me how huge of an ego some people have. if i were a ceo or a president or a principal or a ms. whatever-my-name-is, i would never in a million years let them give me a special parking spot. never.

but, then, i guess i'm weird. i had one of the nicest offices of anyone when i worked at nationwide children's hospital and one day, i gave it up. i walked out of it and said, i've had my turn at this nice office, now it's somebody else's turn. and i never regretted doing it. never.

i would no sooner pull my bad-ass car into some specially assigned place closest to the door than i would take a 2-hour lunch. never mind 3.

i ate lunch in my car today. my car that parked waaaaaay over there.

where i - and the whole rest of the world - belong.

why whole grains do not make a person happy

first of all, they have the word "grains" in them. when was the word "grains" ever used nicely?

people go "against" the grain and photos that aren't clear are described as "grainy."

quick, right off the top of your head, who would you rather marry......a grain operator or a surgeon?

so, as you can see, nothing good ever comes from grains.

(which is why i am having pizza - without the crust - for breakfast.)

:)

the village news

update on rallying the community to support TEAM BOWMAN:

• abby's friend, leslie, has offered to watch the twins (plus her own toddler!) all day, everyday, during the entirety of abby's bed rest!
• columbus state community college's early childhood education department has agreed to recruit some of their students to help with the twins and the triplets as an internship project.
• tansky toyota (btw, eli had dr. tansky as one of his professors at the fisher school of business at ohio state!) has been contacted. pray that they have a van on the lot that needs a family!  :)
• kroger, proctor and gamble, babies r us, and toys r us have been contacted.
• thanks to eli's mom, local media outlets have been contacted. WBNS's anchorwoman, andrea cambern, has responded with interest.
• full-time domestic help is in the process of being hired.
• the triple stroller that abby and eli have determined that they need/want carries a high price tag......a thousand bucks. my parents to the rescue.  :)
• a dear friend who shall remain nameless but is named kate has offered to clean the bowman abode once a week during abby's period of bed rest and then, when the babies are born, to bring a casserole and a bag of diapers (a "giant" bag, she said!) every week.
• EVERYONE has said, "what can i do? please tell me what i can do." the outpouring of love and support has been phenomenal.

                                 
                                           GO, TEAM BOWMAN!!!!!!

do you do this, too?

man, i go to church, all set on focusing on our Lord's suffering, and whatta i do? i check out the chick's shoes in the pew next to me. if that's not a mortal sin, it should be -  and it probably is. the Catholic church doesn't miss a trick.

i try not to do stuff like that - i really do - but i swear to you.....if there's a single other soul in the church, he's/she's got my attention. is he balding? does she really think we don't know it's all gray under there?

the "pious" ones are the worst for detracting attention from piety. if you wanna get sidetracked from piety, check out the pious - their hang-dog expressions, their thumping of the breast......it's a show, i tell ya.

even the priests take away from the whole point, which is not the whole point. they keep scratching at their vestments which, who can blame them - you'd scratch, too, if you wore brocade that weighs 10 pounds and has seams that chafe. maybe if they made those things in the good old u.s. of a., they wouldn't chafe so much.

today was a really hard day for concentrating. the woman in front of me had dorothy hamill hair in the back and i-don't-know-what-kind-of-hair-in-the-front cuz she never turned around long enough for me to see. not even during the passing of peace which, come on now.

there was also a woman who had red mary janes on -  only they had a double strap instead of a single one and there was about a 1 inch heel to them. maybe halfa inch. i'm never very good at eye-ballin' stuff.

well, that's a lie. mortal sin number two.

why we need more swinging doors

i've been watching the old dick van dyke show when i babysit at abby and eli's and there's a whole lot about that show that needs to be brought back. including the swinging door.

the petries had a swinging door that connected their kitchen to the living room. my paternal grandparents had a swinging door that connected their kitchen to the dining room, which probably made a whole lot more sense seeing as how what you ate in the dining room was that which was cooked in the kitchen and you're not supposed to eat anything in the living room. not to mention you can't put your feet on the coffee table.

so, anyway, the petries had a swinging door and why we pretty much did away with those, i have no idea. the swinging door - not the open one and not the closed one - should be the metaphor for............life.

swinging doors work both ways. you don't just get in and you don't just get shut out. you gotta put forth a little effort to get where you want to go. that's how life should be but nowadays, nobody wants to push even the small amount that's required to open a door. everybody wants the door to just be permanently open, period.

in modern homes, the "open floor plan" is all the rage. well, open schmopen. not everybody gets to be everywhere all the time. sometimes doors should be shut. sometimes they should even be shut. in. your. face.

the swinging door addresses that reality. it's not always open/it's not always closed. most of whether or not it's one or the other depends on.....

you.

it takes a village to raise a ............village.

the minute i learned that abby and eli are having triplets, on top of the toddler twins that they already have (i mean, on top of the so-adorable-i-could-eat-them-but-i-won't-but-i-could-but-i-won't-but-i-really-really-could toddler twins that they already have)......the minute i heard about that, i sprung into action. they say barack obama was a community organizer? well, move over, barack obama.......i don't just have the audacity to hope that my community is gonna help this big, young family (and by big, young family i mean big, young village), i have the audacity to guarantee it.

first thing i did was, i made a list of local and area businesses and franchises who, if they have even half a public relations brain, would want to contribute/donate/fork over. places like babies 'r us. proctor and gamble. local car dealerships. grocery stores. stride-rite. baby gap. gap for kids. (not to mention gap for grandmas which they don't have but they should.)

i told abby and eli that i would be "command central" - a position that is not that unfamiliar to me. (just ask david and per.)

i told them that i would spearhead this effort......in an effort to keep this village boat afloat.

the way i look at it, it is as much to the businesses' advantage as it is to abby and eli's. it's columbus, ohio's own little jon and kate plus 8.

except it's abby and eli and the only stars they're going to be dancing with will be the ones in their eyes.

ok, and the ones in front of their eyes.

(oooo! opthamologists! add opthamologists to the list, nancy!)

not the women's restroom.....the LADIES' restroom

education may be in the (toilet) tank but the women's restrooms in the columbus public schools sure aren't. it goes to show what 20 bucks, a little ingenuity, and a day's worth of elbow grease can do. (try teaching those principles in this day and age!)

in every school building in the columbus school system that i go into - and i go into all of them - the women's restrooms are nice. not nice as in granite counter tops or hardwood floors and not nice as in cool, hip, and artful lighting. but nice as in, somebody took a little effort to spruce this dingy room up a bit.

the decorating is never quite my style, but i don't care. i appreciate the decorating, period. how many public buildings - especially those that are decades and decades old - have decorated anything? and, as far as i'm concerned, if they're gonna decorate anything, it might as well be the women's restrooms.

the columbus schools must have a "women's restrooms decorating committee" or something because they are all decorated in a similar style........frilly. i'm not into frilly but on the other hand, when you're in the bathroom for reasons that you are in the bathroom for, a little frilly goes a long way.

in almost every single bathroom, someone has taken some pretty (if you're into that sort of thing) fabric and fashioned a "skirt" to go around the sink and to cover the plumbing. (the thing about plumbing is, if it's new, it looks good exposed and if it's old, it looks good with a skirt around it.)

most of the bathrooms have a little wooden table that someone has painted pink or pale yellow or light green or maybe they stenciled some flowers on it. on the table is, invariably, a cute little basket with a ribbon around it, filled with potpourri. there's usually some hand cream and maybe even a thing of hairspray (do people really use hairspray these days?) or a collection of little toiletry do-dads.

many of the bathrooms have a border along the walls that somebody either bought and wallpapered on or maybe they actually painted it. it's usually something flowery, which is fine, who doesn't like flowers.

speaking of flowers, there is almost always a vase of them. silk flowers, yes, but flowers nevertheless. i'll tell you this much......the bathrooms in my house don't have flowers in them so ha! they got me there!

anyway, it's always kind of fun to go to the women's bathroom in one of the columbus public schools' school buildings. you walk in feeling like a slob and you walk out a little prettier.

i hope that's not true of the men's restrooms, though.

looking awful in green

green is not my color. green makes me look, well, green.

green around the gills is not called green around the gills for nothin, people.


i'm not all that down with green, period. traditionally, it has been my least favorite color, although recently, i find that there are some shades of it that i like. in fact, i have quite a bit of green in my house (but i don't have a greenhouse).

speaking of greenhouses, i don't like those, either. the second you walk into one, you're half suffocated and your blouse is soaked. what the appeal of that is, i have no clue.

green has its place, i guess, but one place where green absolutely does not belong is on a car. i have never in my whole dysfunctional life ever seen a green car that looks good. never. there oughta be a law against green cars. instead, we're making more and more laws mandating green cars! (what's this freaking world coming to, anyway.)

anyway......

here we are - st. patrick's day - and the world is suddenly awash in my least favorite color of all......green.

tomorrow it will go back to normal - all colors.

i'll like that a whole lot better.

the ides of march

growing up, i always thought it was the eyes of march, and that kinda freaked me out. who's eyes? what eyes?

later, when i learned that it wasn't the eyes of march, but the ides of march, i didn't feel much better. who's ides? what ides? what are ides?

even later, i learned that march isn't the only month with ides. all months have ides. why we only talk about march's ides, i have no ide(a).

an ide, for those of you who need to brush up, is basically something to do, more or less, kind of sort of, with full moons. the ides of march, in particular, has something to do with julius caesar. what it has, in particular, to do with julius caesar is that on the ides of march, i.e., the 15th of march, he got hacked to death (back in the days when "hacked" had nothing to do with some sleaze bag stealing your identity) in the roman senate. somebody told julius caesar to "beware the ides of march," and dude........that somebody wasn't playin.

so, in summary, we now know that it is the ides of march, not the eyes of march.

it is, however, still the eyes of laura mars.

not to mention bette davis.

"be thankful for what you got," by william deVaughn, otherwise known as, thanks, mom and dad. :)

dick van dyke on netflix on abby and eli's t.v. which i can NEVER figure out

i was watching old dick van dyke reruns at abby and eli's last night while i was babysitting. (no, i didn't raid their kitchen cabinets! no, i didn't talk on the phone! no, i didn't have my boyfriend over! no, i don't even have a boyfriend! no, i don't  want a boyfriend ! no boyfriends! never again! never, never, never again!)

anyway, so i was watching old dick van dyke reruns and lemme tell you.....dick van dyke certainly has grown up. he is now on netflix at the click of a button, which is pretty funny considering he still has a rotary dial phone in his kitchen - on. the. wall.

anyway, so dick van dyke certainly has grown up. well, no he hasn't. he's still acting like a clown and sally rogers still has that bow in her hair and mary tyler moore used to be really, really pretty. millie and jerry from next door still live next door and from what i can tell, jerry hasn't gotten any promotions or raises cuz millie is still wearing that same dress.

but, anyway.....in a way dick van dyke has grown up because he is now on netflix and you can get him at the click of a button. provided you know which button.

i know i promised never to yell about technology again but hello, i'm yelling about technology again. i hate technology!

every single time i babysit for abby and eli (sidebar here: am i babysitting for abby and eli or am i babysitting for the twins? either way, i ain't gettin' paid diddly!)

but anyway....... every single time i babysit for whomever (sidebar here: is it whomever or whoever? whom cares.).....every single time i babysit for whom/whoever, abby and eli gotta show me - yet again - how to work their t.v. i would take that very personally were it not for the fact that their other grammy - eli's mom - says she can't work their t.v. either - and she's smart. debbie says that when it's her turn to babysit, she doesn't even turn the t.v. on. cuz she doesn't know how. well, amen to that, sister.

but anyway......so, i have to have a t.v. tutorial every single dang time i babysit over there and every single dang time, the tutorial doesn't help. it's always something. i swear to everything that is holy.......can't we just go back to the days of magnavox?

speaking of magnavox, rob and laura were in the market for a new t.v. last night which, right there, is pretty ironic, considering what i've been talking about.  so, ok, they go to the appliance store on hudson street and they're lookin' at all these rows and rows of televisions and they're trying to figure out which one to get and all the televisions are sorta starting to run together in their minds and they're having a helluva time figuring out what's what and which one to get.

i love the petries.......they hate technology, too.

why i am not on jim tressel's side on this one

the primary argument that i have heard these past few days as to why we should all go easy on jim tressel is that he has done so much more good for kids than harm. fine.

i have done, i hope, so much more good for kids than harm, too, but if i act negligently - or worse - towards just one, the state of ohio is gonna yank my social worker license.

most of the guys in prison who are in there for murder have only murdered one person. what about all the ones that they didn't murder? don't they get credit for those? no.

and it doesn't have to be as horrific as murder. what about theft? if you didn't steal from most people but you stole from two, should we go easy on you?


people in jim tressel's defense are calling what he did - or didn't do - a "mistake." a lapse in judgment. he's human. give the guy a break.

i'll give jim tressel a break as soon as you give me a break for hurting your kid.

how to count

you know how they (and by they, i mean counselors like me) tell you to count to 10 if you're angry? well, yeah, right.

i don't know about you but the way i look at it is, anything worth getting angry about is worth more than 10.

i had a pretty much genius client once who sneered at my counting-to-ten suggestion and said, "fine. i'll count by tens."


so, anyway, the whole point here is, counting to 10 does pretty much nothing about anger. the only thing it does about anger is give the counselor the satisfaction that she recommended something about anger.


i have been thinking a lot about counting lately, and for lots of reasons. and by lots of reasons, i mean 3 reasons. and by 3 reasons, i mean 3+2 reasons: my daughter and son-in-law are pregnant with triplets. yes, triplets. and that's on top of the 2 not-quite-2 1/2 year olds (twins) that they currently have.

that's a lot of counting.

so, what i did was, yesterday, when i was talking to a 2nd grade kid about counting when she gets angry, i had a sudden brainstorm........i asked her to count by 2s or even 3s instead of counting by 1s. i told her that it takes more thought and concentration to count by multiples than it does to count by ones, and the extra concentration on the counting can help to distract from whatever it is she's angry about. (i presented this to her as if it were proven, scientific fact, and her eyes grew big and wide. bingo! just the reaction i was hoping for!)

so, anyway, the point is.........abby and eli? when you start to feel yourself getting frustrated or angry? instead of yelling at your kids, count them.

that'll take quite awhile and by the time you're done counting, you won't remember what you were mad about in the first place.

really. proven, scientific fact.

me? a hero? pshaw! (i mean, wait. maybe so.)

when your job is to try to help children who have been neglected, abused, thrown away, and unloved, people call you a hero. they shouldn't. and by "they shouldn't," i mean,  maybe they should.

people are always asking me how i do it. they tell me they sure couldn't do it, how do i do it?

people are naturally intrigued and attracted to people in my line of work. people admire us, they look up to us, they feel small in comparison to us.

speaking of feeling small in comparison.........here's my trick for how i do it:

i try to remember, with every client or parent whose eyes i am looking into, i try to remember that i am looking at Christ.

i sit there in dirty houses with angry mothers and drunk fathers (that is, if the fathers are even there at all) and i tell myself, "you're looking at Christ, nancy.....you're looking at Christ."

i think of the ten commandments and i think of "i was naked and you clothed me" and i think of people in the Bible with leprosy.

i don't think of any of these things easily or only. these wonderful thoughts are constantly in competition with thinking that i need to get out of this dump. they are in competition with " when can i get lunch - i want a big mac!" and "what time can i finally get home tonight?"

none of what i think or do while i am doing my job makes me a hero. none of it except one thing......

Christ.

abby's right (i mean, art linkletter's right)......kids DO say the darndest things!

abby, eli, charlie, olivia, and i went over to my parents' house yesterday for some fun and food. usually when i go somewhere for fun and food, i end up having more food than fun, but yesterday was an exception.   :)

those kids crack me up. plus, they're very educational.

take, "what happened????" for instance......

charlie and olivia - especially olivia - like to say, "what happened????" - with a huge dose of bewilderment and wonder - whenever what happened was they dumped their food all over the floor.

they like to say it when they spill their milk.

or when they grab the pickle off your plate and shove it in their mouth.

the odd thing about "what happened????" is, they never say it when everybody else is truly wondering what happened.

say, for example, you fall down and dang near break your neck. no "what happeneds" to be heard.

not that these kids aren't kind and compassionate. they are. they're also expert at assigning external blame which, face it, is the american way. it's funny how they learned to do this because it has not been modeled for them. their parents take responsibility for their own actions and they have always instructed the twins to do likewise. well, responsibility schmonsibility. you hang around these kids long enough and you get yourself a good, old-fashioned education in how to dodge owning up.

yesterday, at dessert time, my mom and dad had an assortment of goodies from which to choose.......decadent brownies, cookies, and chocolate fudge cupcakes. olivia chose a cupcake......

they say you can't have your cake and eat it, too, and boy, oh, boy.......is that ever true: olivia discovered that if you plunge your hands into the middle of the frosting that's piled high on the cupcake, you sorta get frosting all over your hands and your face and your shirt and your pants and the table and your hair and your grammy's hair and everywhere but your mouth. the cake part of the cupcake sorta falls apart into a pile of crumbs when you smash your hands into it and all in all, what you have, instead of a lovely cupcake to eat, is one big, giant mess.

you also have a very difficult question to answer........."what happened????"

it don't add up, lee ann. it just don't add up.

ok, so, update on me and ben matlock and his attorney assistant daughter, lee ann, who seriously needs to ditch the shoulder pads:

when i came home from work yesterday, there were still cops milling around the SOTC. (for those of you who are not up to speed on what i am talking about, read yesterday's post. and for those of you who are up to speed, let me just say this: it is never a good thing when the SOTC is so close to where you live that you could skip to the SOTC and only use up one and a half skips. although, why anyone would want to skip to an SOTC, i have no idea.)

so, anyway.....the cops were still there. so was the maintenance crew. i found that curious. why would the maintenance crew already be in there fixing whatever got broke during TC (the crime)? whatever happened to preserving the integrity of the SOTC?

(speaking of the integrity of the SOTC, i have always thought that that's a weirdo way to describe a SOTC. isn't the main reason that there even is a SOTC in the first place is because somebody - and probably more than one somebody - has a serious lack of integrity? but, ok, fine, whatever. cops love to use jargon.)

anyway......

so, ok, the cops were still there and the maintenance crew was there and the blood was still there. some of it had already started to dry and turn a spooky lookin' black color. creepy, i tell ya.

so, what i did was, i asked one of the maintenance guys what's goin' on. you could tell he didn't want to answer me. the reason you could tell he didn't want to answer me was cuz he didn't answer me. but i pressed on. (that's what we matlock types do......we press on.)

i asked the maintenance guy if anyone had died in this shoot-out or stab-out or whatever kind of out this was. he said no. i asked him what kind of weapons were involved. he said none. i said, none???????? he said none. i said, none???????? he said, just feet. i said, "feet?" he said yeah, feet. one of the other maintenance guys shot (pun intended) him a look like, what the hell did you just say that for? how stupid does this lady look? the first maintenance guy shot (pun) the second maintenance guy a look like, pretty damned stupid, dude. the second maintenance guy sorta nodded. almost imperceptibly, but i saw it. we matlock types are trained to see small things.

anyway, so the maintenance guy tried to tell me that this whole hullabaloo and all the blood that went with it were the result of an argument where two people were kicking each other with their feet. (sidebar here: i just bought a new pair of glasses a few weeks ago, partly to make me look smart. apparently the glasses guy ripped me off.)

i let the maintenance guy know in no uncertain terms - and by no uncertain terms i mean that i gave him my best matlock "hrmpfh"  - i let him know that i was not. buying. his foot story.

fast forward to this morning:

when i took pippi out for her usual potty break, i discovered a letter from management on my door. what i did next was brilliant.......i read it.

the letter said that an "unfortunate" incident happened in my building about 5:00a.m on friday. the "unfortunate" incident included 4 guys who were reportedly unknown to the "victim" and the 4 guys banged on the "victim's" door and the "victim" looked through his peep hole and didn't recognize the 4 guys so what did the "victim" do? the "victim" opened the door. (and the maintenance guy thinks i look stupid?????)

the letter went on to say that after the "victim" opened the door, the 4 guys barged in, "assaulted" him, and robbed him.

the letter also was very, very helpful in terms of offering advice to us residents about how to stay safe in the future. "be aware of your surroundings" was one of the pieces of advice. i am aware of my surroundings, you morons! that's what lead me down the hall yesterday morning to the SOTC in the first place!

anyway, i'm not buying this story for one cotton-pickin' minute. there are too many questions and no damned good answers. ben and i will keep pokin' around till we solve this sucker.

we better hurry, though. if you take out the ads, we only have 34 minutes left.

MATLOCK!

wow, no lie, there was a murder in my building last night!

well, ok, maybe there was a murder.


when i woke up this morning and stepped out in the hall with my dog, i heard voices walkie-talkie-ing back and forth. i stopped. i listened more carefully......

yep. the cops. they were in my building. and they were using "cop speech" back and forth with one another.

my dog picked up the scent. (no, literally. she did.) she tugged on the leash to go this way when all i wanted to do was go that way. (not thataway, as in, "she went thataway, officer!".......just regular, ordinary, thataway.)

she tugged. and tugged. the cop speech was everywhere. i followed my dog.

we didn't have far to go. the unit catty-corner from me was the. scene. of. the. crime.

an officer was standing in the doorway and the door was open. i saw blood everywhere. i mean, everywhere. my dog leaped forward. i pulled on her leash as hard as i could which isn't all that hard given the fact that i have been warned not to climb stairs or lift anything heavy thanks to that stupid antibiotic that i was on that could potentially rip my tendons to smithereens.

i "pulled" on the leash. pippi pulled back and, three guesses who won. this basset hound was determined to scope out the scene. she wasn't bred for hunting for nothin, y'know.

i asked the police guy what in tarnation is going on. he answered in the kind of voice you expect a police guy to answer in when there's blood all over the place: "step back, ma'am."/ "can't discuss it, ma'am."/ don't know yet, ma'am."

immediately, my senses kicked into gear. it's amazing how fast a stupid old lady from central ohio can turn into matlock.......

i noticed the lack of yellow crime tape.

i saw the bloody glove. yes. there was a bloody glove. i am sooooooooo not lying.

i saw the case (my suspicions were that it was empty.....turned out, my suspicions were spot on. i mean, matlock on) of bud light.

i heard cop voices - lots of them - coming from inside the apartment.

i wished i'd had my little notebook with me.


after pippi and i came back inside from her potty break, i thought of something. a tip, maybe. anything. anything at all that you can remember, ma'am, that might help......

two weeks ago, there was a man outside the apartment in question, now known as SOTC (scene of the crime) passed out drunk. stone, cold drunk. if it hadn't been for his thunderously loud snoring, i probably woulda thought he was dead. (am i prophetic??????)

i reported the guy to the management here. i thought they should know that a resident or a guest of a resident or somebody who somehow cracked the security code and got in here was lying stone, cold drunk on the floor outside the SOTC. the management thanked me for letting them know and told me, which was really none of my business, that the resident of the SOTC has "a problem with alcohol."

no foolin.

anyway, so i told the cop who was straddling the doorway of the SOTC what i knew about the drunk from 2 weeks ago. the cop's eyes narrowed. his eyebrows went up. oh, crap, i thought, when am i ever gonna learn to keep my big mouth shut?

he asked me a few questions. confirmed that i had, indeed, reported this to management. wanted to know where i live. "right there," i pointed. (why the hell didn't i lie??????????) told me they might have more questions for me later.

so, long story short, i might have to hire matlock.

provided matlock's still alive.

ooooooooo........"provided matlock's still alive".............

the plot thickens.

matlock

since i've been sick, i've been watching a lot of t.v. i've sorta gotten hooked on matlock.

i never really watched matlock the first time around and maybe that's a good thing because maybe i wouldn't have liked it the first time around and if i hadn't liked it the first time around, i probably wouldn't have checked it out the second time around and if i hadn't checked it out the second time around, i probably woulda had to watch the price is right which, if i hadn't been sick before, i sure as shootin' woulda gotten sick watchin' the price is right.

matlock stars andy griffith, which you probably already know and while i already knew it, too, i didn't fully know it. it hadn't sunk in. when i think of andy griffith i think of andy taylor, period. i mean, who doesn't?

ben matlock and andy taylor are a lot alike. they're both southerners and they're both just folks. ben's richer than andy, but not by a whole lot and besides, ben and andy don't care about money anyway.

ben matlock and andy taylor both play the guitar. neither of them are married anymore. they each have one kid. difference is, opie grew up to be a big-time famous hollywood film director and lee ann grew up to be, well, i have no clue what lee ann grew up to be.

lee ann also wore shoulder pads and sprayed her hair into oblivion. i don't think opie ever wore shoulder pads - except maybe on the pee wee football field - and i know for a fact he never used hair spray on his hair.

he used brylcreem on it once, though. stole it from his dad. had to sweep the kitchen floor for a whole week for that.

what is it with me and katie holmes?

for some reason, i love katie holmes. sup with me, right?

first of all, sorry, katie, but you're not that great of an actress. you're just not. you're good, but you're not great. and no, that's not just compared to your husband. compared to anybody, you're not that great of an actress. sorry.

second, your daughter's hair is too long. it was too long when she was born and it's even longer now and she looks like you guys can't afford to take her to get a haircut which, i'm sure that's not really the case. (is it?)

the other thing is and, look here, i'm all for freedom of religion, but you gotta admit.......yours is a little out there.

that thing that tom did a few years back when he jumped on oprah's couch? now, i realize that it was tom who did that - not you - but still. how i can like you so much when you're married to a goofball like that, well, i don't know.

but i do. i like you. i really, really like you.

(too bad you'll never win an oscar, cuz sally and i just wrote your speech for ya.)

the month of green

march is the month of green, and i like that.

it's green because of st. patrick's day and it's green because new life first begins to appear.

it's green all the other months of the year, too.....now that "going green" is such a big deal. but no month will ever be greener than march.

march is green.

i was thinking about that this morning when i blew my nose. if you get my drift.

:)