De-stress from TMC and Read My Blog

Hmmm it's over a week since I last fed my blog. I'm not in a writing mood this week. It probably has something to do with TMC (Too Many Clouds or Too Much Crap)these days. Like natural disasters (Texas hurricane), Sarah Palin, Jordan's ridiculously high dental bill (Kauai does not have an HMSA participating oral surgeon), and the stock market plunge (why why why does it happen when we have ridiculously high dental bills, need tires on two vehicles, have to repair the garage, etc. etc.?).

Dave Barry claims that his appliances can hear when there's extra money in the house. Well our stuff can do more than that, they can affect the stock market! Yep, whenever we have big expenses the stock market takes a dive. Nice, really nice. How are we supposed to retire and go to Vegas 4 times a year???

Since I'm not in the mood, I shall cheat and post more of those "coincidences" instead:

Many years ago I dreamt about a married relative I hadn't thought of or heard of for years. She was dressed in a wedding dress and surrounded by her young daughters. After I woke up I thought "What a weird dream, what made me dream of her getting married when she's already married with kids?" Well within the week, my mom told me that this relative was getting divorced. Years later she remarried.

I decided to post on an eczema message board about Jordan's experiences and while typing out the long entry, LeAnne Rimes appeared on "The View" and said it was Eczema Awareness Month.

One day out of the blue, I wondered how long Carla would stay on as Jordan's aide. The next day when she came over to pick Jordan up, she said "I have some bad news...I found another job so I'm quitting."

We went to my mother-in-law's on Christmas Day. On our way back to Palolo about 15 minutes after leaving Kailua, I suddenly missed our videocam and was about to ask my hub if he took it. His cellphone rang and it was his mom saying we left the cam at her place.

We were driving down to Waipouli and decided to go to Hong Kong Cafe, our favorite Chinese restaurant on Kauai. Leonard said "Eric will be happy to see us, we didn't go there for a long time!" (Jordan had been somewhat allergic to corn and chicken). Inexplicably, I thought to myself "Well, maybe he'll be so happy he'll show us some customer appreciation!" WELL..that night for the first time ever, they gave us a free dessert: deep fried black bean rolls!!

I was chatting with Karen and telling her about my conversation with my hub the night before about Portuguese: Why do we know so little about Portugal and why don't we hear stuff about Portugual the way we hear about France, Italy, Spain, etc.? Portugal needs a Press Agent! At the same time I was chatting with her I was playing a DVD of "Lost" (season finale) and I had the closed captioning on. I looked at the TV and two men were talking a foreign language. The Closed Captioning said "...speaking Portuguese". Whoa!!

Okay, there'll be more of this later...on another night when I'm uninspired.

Oh, forgot to mention that I took Jordan to her American Sign Language class tonight. I really love sign language! It makes so much SENSE and I really appreciate LOGICAL in this ILLOGICAL world! The only thing illogical about it is...why on earth should there be an AMERICAN sign language? I'm assuming it was developed in the days of more efficient communication, so why couldn't there have been an International Sign Language? I've got to Google this later....

ESP Must Need Vitamins

I've been having a dry spell. I haven't had a "coincidence or not?" moment in a couple of months. I won't go so far as to claim I have ESP, but a couple of years ago I started to write down some "coincidence or not?" moments. I do believe in the "paranormal" and you have to admit that there are forces in nature that we have not yet defined, much less understand. Here are a few of my interesting moments from the past 3-4 years:

• My husband was mowing the grass on the easement between our yard and the street. I crossed the street to check the mail and because the grass by the mailboxes was long, thought "He should mow over here by the mailboxes!" Then I thought "Well why would he do that, he'd never cross the street to mow! Crazy!" That night on the way home from a party he said "I mowed by the mailboxes today!" That was the first time he ever did that.

• After almost FIVE YEARS of wearing braces, Jordan's braces were supposed to come off very soon. The day she was scheduled to visit the orthodontist, I thought to myself "Even though it took almost 5 years, at least we were lucky she didn't have to wear headgear or rubberbands." When Jordan came home that afternoon, not only did she still have her braces on, she had on RUBBERBANDS!!

• On a visit to Honolulu my husband and I had a conversation about Woolworth's Waikiki where I was an assistant manager almost 30 years ago. Although I had worked with about a dozen other managers, the first "I wonder what happened to..." that I thought of was Cornell Lam. I'm not sure why since I hadn't been any closer to him than the others. Well just a couple of days later, we went to Ross, one of our favorite Honolulu stores which we always shop at. I was on my way out after paying and noticed a free-standing sign near the door saying "Store Manager: Cornell Lam".

• We went to Mini Garden Chinese restaurant on another trip to Honolulu. I was hanging my purse on the chair back and thought "I'd better zip it closed in case the waitress spills food on it". I don't recall thinking like that before. Well before our food arrived, a waitress dropped a milky drink behind me which splashed on me.

• On the ABC news show "20/20" they featured a story on Dubai and how the city is developing in such an ostentacious fashion. They showed workers who were virtually slaves from other countries. I thought to myself "I should write to Essar to warn him against going to work in Dubai." Essar is an internet friend of mine from Pakistan who talked about wanting to emigrate somewhere (he never mentioned Dubai). The very next day I checked my email and found he'd written me a couple of days ago saying he was living now IN DUBAI and enjoying being in a new environment. Happily, he was employed by the same employer he'd been working for in Pakistan (TV company).

Now before you think that I'm able to ask for things and they happen, fuggedaboudid! I go to Vegas every year and no amount of imagining myself winning a jackpot has ever paid off!!

I have more stories similar to these that I shall share later. Meanwhile I'll try to think of reasons I haven't had as many of these cool coincidences this year...I may be lacking some essential nutrient (ice cream, I hope)...or maybe not exercising enough?
Right now it's past midnight and time to read my Stephanie Plum!