There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl's complexion

My life is significantly better than it was the last time I posted. Things are better between D and I. My anxiety is much more under control. My father is giving me the money I need to pay off debt and put us in a situation where we can buy a place.

Chicago has had a lousy ass winter that has lingered into spring. It seems like whenever it's nice out, it's when i am either at work or out of town. Such is life!

Cecil turned three on Monday!! D bought him a shirt that says "if you're happy and you know it, lift your leg"

Joy comes in the most random or trivial places....tonight it's "the office"....steve carrell is my current crush.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while.

Sundays are a big day of drinking temptation mainly due to boredom. Traditionally I watch 9 hours of football at the Jefferson Tap or at home. My goal is to break that habit as I hate Monday hangovers.

So today Darrel had to work and I knew I needed to keep myself busy. I did something I haven't done in a long time. I met Julie at Century Theatre and we saw Juno. It was FANTASTIC. Go see it. Then we theatre hopped and saw Atonement. We had to sit in the third row so it was a little big.

Anyway, I am the most sober at 6:30 pm that I've been in years. It feels great. Back to work tomorrow...first full week in three weeks. Yuck.

b>79% Hillary Clinton
79% Chris Dodd
77% Barack Obama
76% John Edwards
69% Joe Biden
67% Rudy Giuliani
64% Dennis Kucinich
64% Bill Richardson
63% Mike Gravel
52% John McCain
42% Tom Tancredo
39% Mitt Romney
39% Mike Huckabee
37% Ron Paul
27% Fred Thompson
</b>
2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Happy New Year Everyone!!

I have had the past couple of weeks off and have been doing a lot of thinking. I need to start posting more often. I need to find my voice again. My resolutions include to reclaim my health/fitness, control my alcohol consumption, spend more time with my family.

Hope that 2008 is a fantastic year for all of you.

I turned 40 yesterday. My parents, their spouses, my grandmother, two sets of aunts/uncle, my cousin are all coming tomorrow for a celebration weekend. We are having a big party tomorrow night here in the party room of our building. Friends from work, the Tap, all over the place are coming. On Saturday, my mother is hosting a lunch for the women at Joe's Stone Crab and my uncle is hosting a lunch for the men. Saturday night my dad is hosting a dinner.

To prepare for all this "celebration", I had my hair cut, highlighted, my nails and toes done, bought three new outfits. I also bought 20 bottles of wine and two cases of beer.

Should be an interesting weekend. My parents have not seen each other since 2002. Most of my Chicago friends have not met my family.

Goal: Do not get trashed and make a fool of yourself.

I tested myself and I am an ENFP.

Good movies
- Wild Hogs
- Bee Season
- Capote
- An Inconvenient Truth

I am obsessed with Truman Capote. I think we must be soulmates.

So I ate a leftover fortune cookie for breakfast. It's about the only thing I like from chinese take out.

My fortune:

"Accept something you cannot change and you will feel better."

I guess I am supposed to add the obligatory "in bed"....but that makes it even worse. But anyway, here we go....

I accept the fact that I can't be young again.
I accept the fact that people I care about are gone.
I accept that Virginia cannot manage her time and that it's not because of me.
I accept that we are moving in 7 days and I have to spend this beautiful day packing up my disastrous closet. I cannot change that slavery has been abolished so I can't delegate the closet to someone else.

I'm still not feeling better.....

I accept that I cannot make Darrel quit smoking or drinking.
I accept that I cannot make my dad believe that global warming is real.
I accept that my parents divorced.
I accept that the Soprano's had to end.

Now we're getting somewhere!!! Fortune cookies shouldn't make flip promises though....don't you agree?

I know that I am not the only one who is plagued with fear of losing the people you love. Until you have had something earth shattering happened (like losing someone for real), you don't know what it's really like. I almost lost Darrel for real last week. We were on vacation in Indianapolis and he went to the gas station to fill up our rental car. He was gone longer than normal, but I tried not to bother everyone with my insane paranoia that the sky was falling. But when the phone rang, I knew.

The voice on the phone was telling me that my husband had suffered a grand mal seizure inside the gas station and that he was in the ER at St. Vincent's Hospital. Two minutes earlier or later and he would have been behind the wheel. Instead the seizure happened inside the BP Gas Station and he fell into a shelving unit and had convulsions for 5-8 minutes.

We don't know what caused it - they couldn't find anything in the CAT Scan, XRay, blood work etc. He chewed up his tongue pretty bad and has bruises everywhere. He can't drive, swim, etc. until he's cleared by a neurologist.

Now everytime we say goodbye, or I even go in the other room, I have a fear I will not see him alive again. It's driving me crazy.

Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other,
that we are still.
Call me by my old familiar name, Speak to me in the easy way which you always used
Put no difference in your tone
Wear no forced are of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was, there is an unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near.
Just around the corner.
All is well.

-Henry Scott Holland 1847-19199
Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral

Today is a sad day for people who have lost their mothers, or children and while I know it's a day of joy for many, my heart is heavy for Nancy, my brother Zach, Irene and Darren.

Friday night was Looptopia in downtown Chicago. "America's first dusk 'til dawn cultural and artistic celebration"....a more timid yet crowded burning man. When I came home, I was lucked out to get the singing cab driver Ray St. Ray who sang me a song about sex and caution.

Still eating vegetarian and love it. Frustrated that McKinsey's Values Day is being held at Brookfield Zoo. I hate zoos.