Stupid questions

I was standing at the deli/bakery waiting for someone to wait on me. There were three women behind the deli counter all working together on something at a table a little off to the left (I think they were making cookies or something). So I'm standing there and about 30 seconds pass. These ladies don't acknowledge that I am alive until one of them looks in my directions and says, "Are you waiting to be helped?" Huh? No, I'm standing there hoping to be discovered as America's next top model.

You're the emptiness the whole world sings at night

We attended an end of the season banquet for my daughter's sports team last night. It was a really great evening, with lots of celebrating, pictures, awards, laughter and fun. After the dinner and the awards were handed out, one of the mom's did a tribute to one of the women who would no longer be helping out because her daughter is graduating this year. This woman has been helping out for years and so people were asked to speak about a memory they had of her during her reign of volunteering (aka controlling/organizing everything and acting the "martyr"). Well, after 7 people gave their little stories/tributes, I felt like the focus of the whole night shifted from the kids to this woman (I'll call her Beth Ford for purposes of this post).



A good half hour to forty five minutes was spent recounting this woman's good deeds while the kids were all fidgeting and wondering what the hell happened to their banquet. Then they presented her with an expensive gift from the boosters club (which parents basically fund and which Beth is a part of) and that was when I felt like enough was enough. It was officially BETH FORD NIGHT and not a high school sports banquet anymore. She stood up front thanking everyone, making speeches like she'd won an Oscar, and crying like a death had occurred. Honestly, the whole thing was quite a spectacle. If that was me, I would have said, "Thanks, let's get the focus back where it belongs...on the kids." But she was soaking up her moment in the sun and loving every minute of it. I wanted to scream, "GET OVER YOURSELF ALREADY!!"

What is the deal with people who have to be the center of attention at all times (especially adults)? I think they start that way as children and never grow out of it. They volunteer to head all sorts of committees just so that they have control over everything and then they love to shove it down your throat that they do all the work...when they are the ones who volunteered in the first place! Ugh. It's so annoying. They need other people telling them how wonderful they are, how giving, how hard working. If your sense of self has to come from outside sources all the time, I'd say you're doing something wrong, but that's just me.

School is almost over here. I am both happy and sad. Happy that all the rush is almost over for awhile, but sad that life is moving so fast. I try to stay in the moment, but the moments are flying by me and it's so difficult to hang onto moments that will not stay still no matter how hard I wish they would. I want to yell stop sometimes, but I know that's not possible.

I can hear the minutes ticking away on the clock that sits beside me on a shelf. I feel the beating of my heart in perfect time with it. Right here, right now, I guess this is me living.

You can steal happiness

"It's a mean town, but I don't care. Try and steal this. You can't steal happiness."~The Weepies

Except you can.

I like the idea of The Weepies song, "Happiness." The song basically says that if you're really happy, no one can steal that happiness from you, but I have to say that it's been my experience that people can and do steal happiness away from each other. I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but I do know that there are certain people in my life who don't seem to like it if I am happy and it's almost as though they want to knock it out of me so I can't have it if they're not having it. Misery loves company but I guess happiness should just shut up and stay in a corner somewhere. I don't get that about people. I am always happy when/if other people are happy. I'm not jealous of them. I don't want to knock their happiness out of them just because I might not be happy in that same moment or if they have something I don't have.

As a for instance, the other day I had made a cake for my daughter's birthday. Her father wasn't going to be home the day of her birthday so we went into her room with the candles all blazing and we started to sing to her. Well, she had the ceiling fan on and all the candles blew out so I stopped to relight them and as I was relighting them she motioned with her hands to "speed up the process" so I asked her if she had a problem with us singing to her and she said, "well, my birthday's tomorrow, not today." Um...no kidding. I'm the one who gave birth.

Me and her father were just happy and being silly and all of the sudden it was like...STOP!!! You cannot be happy because I'm not in the mood for it right now. So then I asked her if she wanted some cake and ice cream and she curtly told me NO and reminded me AGAIN that it wasn't her birthday. OKAY! I hustled out of her room and got my husband some cake and ice cream because the reason he wanted to sing early was so that he wouldn't miss out on the cake. I know. He's like 2 years old on a good day.

But my point is that I was feeling happy about her birthday and WHAM!!!, then I was in a bad mood because I started to think how I went out of my way to do something nice and how it was unappreciated and how I am sick of having to tip toe around all these moody people who want to steal my happiness away from me.

So even though I like that Weepies song, I'm afraid it's just a bunch of nice sounding words, set to a catchy tune, that sadly don't ring true in my world.