earth wind and fire

ahh, so after reading the title, you were settling in with a nice mocha latte expecting enlightenment - much like this blog's early days. before. well, first, let me introduce you to my friend Nadine...actually, she does a better job of it herself, so check her out at http://www.fiberinspired.com/ . if that doesn't get the muse humming! now, back to my enlightened title. remember the band? the song that goes "roller coaster/SAY WHAT/roller coaster/ooo hooo...etc/ ? well welcome to the midway, my friends! this has been an up and down couple of weeks, let me tell you. as if peri-menopause and PMS aren't enough, throw into the mixing bowl a running attempt at quitting smoking, a husband hell-bent on driving my blood pressure to the moon, and My Job. nuff said about the Job. then out of the blue, a girl i used to work with in Hell appears behind me in line at Wegmans. she tells me about her new job (new in the past year). same job, but different company. Brilliant! Wonderful! effusive adjectives fall from her lips in a confetti of hope for my derailed life. huge salary to start! unlimited opportunity! company doubling in size in the next year! i email my resume that night, and get a call 1st thing tuesday morning. interview on thursday, get called thurs night for 2nd interview on friday. the fri interview gets cancelled due to snow, and is rescheduled for mon. do i dare hope/dream that this will work out? the money isn't outrageous to start, but about $4/hour than i make now WITH hope for normal raises. there are plusses & minuses in each direction, depending on how badly i want to move at the moment i'm doing the tally. by 10am this morning, i'm totally fence sitting. THEN, the hand of God sends me into the Thrift shop across from my Job to buy a baby sized fleece jacket for diva dog (cut off the sleeves and she's warm and oh-so-Little Mermaid fashionable). as i head to the checkout...***GASP***! can it BE? yes! it is!! one - just ONE - of my stolen and discarded coffee mugs from the great coffee mug debacle! my mug on a dirty shelf with all these sad odds and ends and fondue sets and baby dolls with no heads and scrabble games with no z's. tired and sad shoppers wading through lime green platform shoes and breast-less Barbies and chipped china...i imagine them fondling my mugs. my Cafe Du Monde coffee mug! what!? only 25-cents???! it is once again mine. it now sits proudly in its righful place in my cupboard, still bearing it's price tag. the checkout clerk said some guy came in with a bunch of them. i told her i knew - they were mine. she promised to search for "more of them mugs with the writin on em." i trust her. she's the type of woman who's been wronged more than righted. i offered her a commission as well. it made me sad for the rest of my mugs, just when i thought i'd denied all that. anyway, that re-enflamed my resolve to revolt and reinvent and re-address myself. if men were mindreaders, they'd be afraid to come down from the treetop. the equation tipped further when i arrived home to find husband celebrating some holiday unknown to anyone but himself, having just driven up north to view the frozen wasteland of snow for himself (he could have just put up one of his three sheets to the wind rather than waste the gas) with my diva dog in the car. i refuse to comment further on this or my head will physically explode like a watermelon at a Gallagher show. so anyway, the office job looks very goos right now...i can't wait to get through all these Hallmark holidays (valentine's day). too much pressure. i mean, NOT buying a card/present after 5 years of marriage would make a huge statement. and the time is not right for that. but then, what do you buy?? and why?? so my friends, you can see the roller coaster ride that's been going on. by the way, unbeknownst to me, we have changed our internet provider. it's effective next monday. this will necessitate that i get a new email address, so i'll let you know as soon as i do. i've printed all of yours out, but if you email me over the weekend, or early next week and it bounces back, i'm not being rude. we will be keeping both for a week or so, but i don't know how that works. i suspect, not well. but who am i? oh shoot - back to that question! roller coaster...say what? L.