Archives for 2008

Here, I site in the Detroit airport waiting to the two women that I am supposed to ride to our hotel with. Let’s start on the hotel “story” first, seem the hotel we were booked to stay out informed the person who made our reservations that they were overbooked. So my first thought was, so do we not have a place to stay? Seems the hotel had found us some place else. When I heard the name, I wasn’t so sure about the place. Then on the way to the airport, we drove past the Birmingham location of this particular chain and it confirmed my suspicions. I’ll give you an update, we we arrive at the one we are booked at.

I thought I would see what type of WiFi access I could find while sitting here in front of the baggage carousels, I can sign up for an hour of service for $4.95. I’m still thinking about it. Of course, this means that what I’m writing at this moment, will be time delayed. I am not going to be a happy camper if this motel does not have internet access.

Minor update on Megan, she went back and talked with her “career adviser”, he told her that getting her Registered status takes time and that because she took 3 Radiology courses she would be submitted for the Radiology Certification too. He also told her to drop off her resume with local offices – hmmm, that sound familiar, I think I told her to do that too.

The funniest thing I have noticed here at the Detroit airport, the signage is in English and Japanese! It’s a nice change from the English & Spanish signage in Alabama. I guess it goes along with the plane full of Japanese Honda executives that I flew in with.

Maybe I should open up Windows and do my writing in Word, without a left/right click mouse I’m pretty useless using TextEdit and spell correction. Maybe I’ll learn all the correct Mac key functions while I sit here and wait for my ride.

I suppose in the grand scheme of things, it’s my fault that my daughter is not prepared to deal with failure. She has spent the past six years living a fairly sheltered life from the real world. She was home schooled by someone that was never home. Her first exposure to education outside her self imposed cloister was attending a local junior “college”. It was her idea to become a dental assistant, school got tough and she wanted to quit but those people who loved her the most told her to keep at it.

Now she has finished and she has had her first real world interview. The first real school of hard knocks, something she really wasn’t prepared for. The interview pointed out some short coming of the program she completed. One has turned out to be a rather serious issue that I would like her to address with the school. She was told by one of her instructors that the certification testing was no longer needed, just the registration. While that mis-information was a relief to her, it turns out it was very incorrect.

So now she feels like the whole world is against her, that it’s out to screw her, and that she just wants to crawl into a hole. I have repeatedly tried to tell her life isn’t fair, life isn’t easy. I’ve tried to use myself as the example, but I guess until she experienced it for herself she would not understand.

I think we all want to blame someone for all this, I want to blame myself for not being able to get her to understand how hard life really is. I want to blame her father for basically handing everything she wanted over to her. I want to blame the school for not properly preparing her.  I think the only one of these that should be held accountable is the school.

But now she’s angry, now she feels like everyone has pushed her into something she didn’t want to do. So I’ve spent the last six years trying to get her to figure out what she wants to do? She does need to remember, she came up with the dental assistant idea?

She’s going to be 21 very soon, she has not had a real job yet. She was working as casual labor where her uncle used to work, but they had a falling out over the work she was doing there, so that job ended abruptly. She tried a part-time job at a video store but she found herself stressed out over the hours, the work and school.

I cry for you sweetie, because I feel I failed you.

It’s amazing all the memories that came flooding back while coloring my hair this evening. I have been coloring my hair since I was about 12. It all started with way too much Sun-In. I loved the bleached out look but my mom didn’t. I was given a color close to what it should have been and told to fix it.

Fast forward to when I discovered I liked red highlights. Mountain Home AFB, Idaho I was using my regular favorite shade of brown and I got distracted talking on the CB radio (okay, stop laughing, I was actually geeking on the sideband technology, so give me a break) and the color stayed on a bit too long. Not long enough to make it brassy, but just long enough to bring out the red highlights – I was hooked. I always had the temperament of a redhead. So my new favorite color became “Tawny Auburn” – that one stayed with me for quite a while. A sidenote here, I started graying very prematurely, so coloring my hair was a way of life.

So after moving half way around the world, up to the frozen north and down to the deep south, I starting trying on the strawberry side of blonde, after the Sun-In experience I don’t think I ever tried blonde again. I still can see the picture of me with Strawberry Blonde hair, standing in front of our Yard of the Month sign at Gunter AFB, Montgomery, Alabama. A sidenote here, I’ve lived so long here in Alabama some people would try to tell me I’m from here, sorry folks, them there’s fightin words.

After I got the Strawberry Blonde phase out of my system, I went back to the more subtle side of red or so I thought. I treated myself to a Glamour Shots session a few years back. I remember hearing a remark my ex made about how I changed my hair color to red. One more reason he’s my ex, it had been “red” all those years, just different shades of it.

Other memories that rolled out was one of my mom’s last comments about my hair, she had asked me when it turned so dark. I have to sidenote this, my mom was terminally ill with cancer, at this point it was already in her brain, so I sort of brushed off the comment to the illness. I stopped in my tracks when I looked at a very old picture of me, it was a black & white picture that had been colorized (eat your heart out Ted Turner) – my hair color was blonde in the picture. It reminded me of Megan’s hair when she was little, it was so blonde but has darked with age too.

The thoughts of hair color also reminded me of my mom’s, her hair was black, jet black, but she used to frost it. I always thought it looked so cool, it was probably how she hid all the gray hair I gave her. My last memory of my mom also has to do with her hair. It was my last time with her, we were at the funeral home, I remember stroking her snow white hair…

Too bad I can’t make money blogging. Then again who would want to read the ravings of a mad woman? I’ve had times were I would love to do commentary on movies or the few TV shows I like, but so many other people already do that, I probably wouldn’t have anything to say that didn’t sound original. I have my neglected soap box blog and my All Things Vols blog (that seems to go into hibernation until football season). I’ve pretty much given up on helping with Volsfootball.com – but that wasn’t a blog.

So instead I ramble. I head to Detroit on Thursday to bowl in the Women’s Nationals Tournament – get to see how well my MacBook Pro travels. It’s definitely a lot lighter than the Toshiba laptop I’ve been toting around for years now. Yeah, I’m a geekette. My two favorite geekettes on TV are Chloe from 24 and Garcia from Criminal Minds. I like Garcia because she’s smart, cute and funny. Chloe can be classified as a bitch but she knows her stuff and doesn’t take the extraneous crap that goes on.

Some of the women I’m traveling with want to go to Canada (some have never been) – not sure if I want to go. I wasn’t planing on toting a camera too. I do need to find some new music for my Shuffle.

Then the weekend after the 4th, we will spend some time with Megan celebrating her 21st birthday. She has an interview on Wednesday (June 25) for her first dental related type job. Too bad the office she did her internship at wasn’t hiring, she really liked it there. Don’t think the geekette gene got passed on to her.

Okay, this wouldn’t be the official raving of a mad woman’s blog if I didn’t add one “ex” gripe – we all know how much I lost in the divorce, things like my mom’s silver, pictures, my diplomas (High School & College), my yearbooks (with many of the original prints of pictures taken for the edition I was a staff photographer), all my course books from college, my Gamma Beta Phi awards, but most of all my Air Force awards, particularly my Air Force Commendation Medal. It was sent to me after I got out, I still remember the surprise (shock was more like it) when I opened the package that came to me in North Dakota.

What makes it even worse trying to replace it, is that it was awarded after my DD-214 was cut, so it’s not on there. I have no idea who to contact, I tried one place but they seem to go by what is on the DD-214. Anyone know how to track down something that may not have been recorded? Maybe I should check some of the PMEL websites for names I recognize. Or maybe I should find a Veteran’s group that doesn’t take kindly to awards like this being destroyed.

One last thing, I finally got my eyes checked (it’s been 3 years) – I knew my vision has been getting worse, but I found out my vision is “not legal to drive” without glasses. When did glasses get so expensive? I didn’t even go to Lenscrafters this time.