This is dedicated to the one I love...

Namely, my cousin Teri. Since you made it my New Years resolution to post a blog...  here's lookin' at you kid. :)

So, what have I been up to? Honestly, not a whole lot. Sorry!  I've been going to work, going to church, and in my spare time watching movies on Netflix. For kicks I still watch my niece and nephew with the assistance of my dearly beloved sisty ugler Goob.

I do have moments though, that make me pause and smile - or cringe - and I wrote down a few of them as a reminder for something to post.

So, in no particular order, my thoughts:

The first one that I can think of is about my cat, Ipiki. He is such a brilliant, conniving little monster - and yet so freaking adorable at times that you can't help but love him.  He hates it when Goob and I leave him alone. He'll have plenty of food and water, we make sure that someone checks the fireplace so that he stays nice and warm in our basement home, but still he gets mad at us.

One particular instance was when Goob and I babysat and stayed the night at our brother's house. We came back the next day after work and Ipiki would not be consoled. He yowled without end at first and no matter how many times we picked him up, or petted him, or tried to watch him eat his food (one of his idiosyncrasies) he would not stop. Eventually we just gave up and left him to himself. After a little bit he calmed down a touch and just wandered around muttering to himself.  Finally, after about fifteen or twenty minutes he came to me and jumped on my lap to be petted and loved. Silly cat...

 Piki the poo-bomber...

Much later that same day, right before I was going to hop in my bed, I made a discovery... No, I didn't find any hidden poo-bombs from the cat (although that is not unheard of - often he strategically places them for us to step in...). In fact, it had nothing to do with the cat. I discovered all of my clean laundry piled on my bed. Sigh!! So, even though I was dead tired and ready to drop, I took the time to fold up my clothing and put it all away.  In doing so I had a profound insight. Between finding shirts and pants to fold I'd also come upon the random sock here and there, as is common in laundry folding. Often I'd have to set it aside until I could find a partner for it. Sometimes I found two of the same kind together. And then there were the specialty socks that took to the bottom of the pile to get matched up. And here's where the insight came...

I had the thought that sorting socks is a lot like dating/marriage.  There are those socks, white or black, that you get in a 12 pack that will pretty much go with any one of the others that it came with. There are a whole lot of options and it usually doesn't take too long for a match to be found. While occasionally it might take a little while to get them all put together, usually it's a pretty quick process.  Some of the socks, though, have to wait a little while. Especially as the laundry to sort gets sparser and you have to really dig to find the socks. And even then, sometimes the match to the sock seems to have disappeared completely - fallen by the wayside or eaten by the drier - never to be found again. Until, of course, one of the other pairs loses its mate and voila! you've made a match. Then we get to the specialty socks. There's no easy fit for these babies. It takes time and you have to find exactly the right one that matches - you can't put the gray snowman socks with red poinsettia leaves with just anything... And if the pair to this one gets lost, you're pretty much SOL and just have to chuck it. But of course, sometimes you get a mismatched pair that you just wear out of desperation. They might have nothing at all in common, but you wear them anyway.

This is life - the 18-year-olds that get married right away, the ones that have to wait a little while to find the right one, the ones that have lost and then have found, the ones that never get to have their mate, the specialties that either get it or they don't, and the mismatched that sometimes work and sometimes should never see the light of day.

So which one am I? I'd rather not speculate...

Another funny thing that happened while I was sorting laundry... I was listening to my iPod, headphones in my ears, feeling the music flow. A song came on that I didn't want to listen to, but changing the song wasn't as easy as you would suppose. Why, you ask? Well, when I'm listening to the iPod and need my hands free I have a special place that I stow it - at least when I'm not in public. Yes, my friends, I put the freaking thing in my bra. It's handy and fortunately I'm endowed enough in that department that it won't fall out. :)  Well, I have one of those new-fangled iPod touch babies (courtesy of my above named, well-beloved Goob) that has this wonderful feature - you can shake it and it shuffles the song! While there have been times when I've found this inconvenient (mental image: "I love this song!!" jump up and down, jump up and down, song changes - grrr...) I particularly appreciated it at this moment. I just jumped up and down! Song = changed, life = happy, groove = on, keep folding.

I hope that this has assuaged the longing for those of you that have the longing to hear from me. I will do my best to keep the New Year's resolution made for me and be more consistent in my posts.

A la prochaine!!