Back In the Saddle

Hallelujah! It’s a miracle!

I’d lost 40 pounds when we left on our vacation, and then I spent two weeks without going to the gym, without watching what I ate, and being totally lazy and decadent. Honestly, I expected to come back and find out that working out at the gym again would hurt like hell and I’d have gained 20 pounds back.

HAH! I gained only 2 pounds, which is less than I average losing in one week when I go to the gym, and I worked out at the same pace and strength that I did when I left, without any loss.

Woohoo! I can actually have a decadent vacation and not be set back much at all.

Now, I must plan another decadent vacation for very soon.

Who wants to go on a road trip with me?

* * *

Something controversial happened at my library while I was gone, and when I returned to ask about the offender who so heinously abused his library privileges, it was told to me that even in my absence, I was somehow involved. Why am I not surprised?

When I asked for a description of the offender, my boss explained the patron was nondescript, but then I got dragged into this.

Boss: [Coworker] said, “Nikki knows the guy. She thinks he’s creepy.”

Me: Oh, jeeze, could you be more specific? So many of them are creepy to me.

Boss (throwing his arms in the air): I know! I said, “C’mon guys, can you give me SOMETHING to go on?”

Me: Really! Hell, I think half the staff is creepy. Don’t even get me started on the patrons!

Boss: Yes, well…

He didn’t agree about half the staff being creepy, but he didn’t refute it either. And the patrons, well, we’re not professionals, but there is probably a higher than average sampling of the mentally ill members of our community wandering about our library at any given time.

And there it was. Someone I have warned my coworkers about, a guy who totally creeped me out, proved me right.

Kick ass instincts: I has them.

If only I could remember who the hell this guy is. Honestly, there are just too many creeps to choose from.

* * *

There’s a spot on the Fox River where we go to sometimes, and for the last few visits, there has been a man there who I have come to hate.

He’s a gray-haired man, probably around 50, pudgy, smoker, limping from a very recent hip replacement, and he has the biggest mouth on any human I’ve heard in a long time.

Also, he used an insult I haven’t heard in about 20 years, which only makes him more pathetic.

He called someone a jagoff. Who says that anymore? I had to reach back into my brain to try to remember when I last heard that, and you know what? I couldn’t remember!

So, we call him Jagoff Man. It makes me happy. I wish I could tell him that.

* * *

I posted this picture to my blog while on vacation, and it was pointed out to me, rather brutally I should add, that I look like a happy, laughing pirate with a full beard in that picture.

That’s just great.

By the way, that’s not a beard! That’s my big, honking, Nikon camera I’m holding up near my chin so that I’m ready to take a picture of some ducks I was waiting for.

My only comfort is that no one is going to stop me on the street and say, “Hey, you’re Happy Villain the Pirate, aren’t you?”

Man, I hope not.

* * *

The other day I was sitting on the couch eating dinner on a TV table, like always, and I noticed that instead of sitting and staring at my food, Doggie Extraordinaire was staring over my shoulder. I was watching a show on ghosts, so I immediately assumed something terrifying was sitting on the back of the couch behind me.

I wasn’t wrong.

I slowly and tentatively turned my head to the left, following his line of sight, and saw an inch-long centipede crawling across the blanket on the back of the couch, headed for me.

There must be a certain tone, a certain pitch, something distinct about the scream I emit when there is a bug threatening me. I leaped off the couch and had a fit of heebie-jeebies that still has ripples now. My brother, in his room with the television on and the door closed, heard my scream, recognized the nature of the scream, and came running out of his room.

Not to help me. Nope. He didn’t even come all the way down the stairs. He stopped halfway down the flight where he could see me.

“Is that the scream of the sighting of something with eight legs?”

Does he know me this well or is there a special bug scream I don’t know about?

I said, “No, it’s a HUGE thing with A HUNDRED LEGS!”

He responded, “Ew.”

There would be no rescuing here. I was on my own to do battle with my centi-legged foe.

Somehow, B.E. got the thing onto the floor, where I promptly stomped the life out of it, without regret.

My brother was grossed out and said, “Bluck, I thought you were exaggerating, but you WEREN’T!”

So the question remains: do we have a completely separate scream when bugs are involved?

* * *

On Friday, Ann, B.E. and I went to see the premiere of Wild Things.

I absolutely loved this movie. I laughed, I sobbed, I was moved. It was really beautiful, and a totally perfect rendition of what I remember childhood being like. The fear, the loneliness, the yearning for allies, the use of imagination to escape from reality, the darkness, the laughs, and mostly, the need to be loved and cared for. If it was flawed in any way, it was in my inability to separate the character Carol from the voice of Tony Soprano.

If anyone else has seen it and has opinions, please chime in. Marina didn’t like it at all, but Ann did, and I’ve yet to find anyone who loved it as much as I did.

I’d eat it up, I love it so.