This is my first time....

.....and I didn't ever think I'd hear myself say THAT again.

Inspired by the blog of an old friend and encouraged by both old friends and new, I decided to start my own blog.....at least it's someplace where, if I see responses, at least I know that someone is interested in what I have to say (in this day and age, 'someone' will probably include Big Brother; and I may find myself blogging y'all from the Gulag Archipelago.)

Monday is my Saturday. Sunday afternoons at about three, I lapse into daydreams of just how I'd like to spend my weekends off; but since this is a family-friendly blog for the most part, I will refrain from posting those daydreams, except to say that they are distantly related to something part Animal House and part Ferris Bueller's Day Off. And I don't know which is sadder: the fact that not only do I not have the energy to partake in my daydreams--or that what gets me really, REALLY excited is the prospect of spending a few extra hours in bed......

Alone. Sleeping.

Not that I won't have ANYTHING warm and masculine in the bed....Oliver is both. Kevin Costner once said he liked warm, soft, wet kisses that last for three days......my puppy could have satisfied him on the soft and wet part; unfortunately, Ollie has canine ADD and does well to keep it up for three seconds, much less three days. Oh, well. In the words of Meatloaf: Two out of three ain't bad.

If I've got daydreams at about three on Sundays, by four I find myself have gone from great golden daydreams to the poet laureate of the Home Depot.....Elizabeth Barrett Browning, I am. I'll have to post the one I wrote yesterday, entitled, "Ode To The Bastard On Aisle Ten." If I should suddenly jump up on the Special Services desk and do a recitation of one of my works--(think Tom Cruise in 'Cocktail', standing on the bar with his bad self) I swear to God I'll tell my boss it's the Tourette's Syndrome talking.

Four thirty--the angst is apparent. I dare not look out the front doors; the sight of the parking lot and Highway 41 will give me a nervous twitch in my neck, and I will just barely resist the urge to press my face up against the glass and lick it.

Four forty-five--(tapping the face of my watch; is this thing still working?)

When five o'clock FINALLY rolls around, those of us who were just standing in a suicidal stupor up front--alot like Jack Nicholson after a few days at The Overlook in The Shining--are suddenly sprinting for the breakroom; if it were the Summer Olympics (the Special Olympics?) we'd win the Gold. And win it again when we reach the break room, if there was such an event as the Olympic shoving match. Smoke is coming out of the time clock, overloaded at the repetitive furious punches of the first shift, and it sounds not unlike the signature 'beeping' that a fighter pilot will hear when he's about to get blown out of the sky by a missile. (Ironically, we just got a new time clock about a month ago--it's been repaired twice already.) Sometimes I can even hear the desperation in (again) Tom Cruise's voice in Top Gun--plane crash scene: "Eject....eject, eject, eject, eject, eject!!".......but instead of 'Watch the canopy!!' I have to watch the break room door: one could very well get their nose broken as it swings inward by late-comers to the bail-out ball--usually the poor schmucks who work all the way down in Lumber.

And here it is only 'Saturday' night--and I think I've had the highlight of my weekend: I drove with my sunroof open. Listening to music that drove my parents crazy (call me a rebel, but I still feel a little like I'm flipping the bird at what Mom wanted me to conform to when I hear Guns N Roses. It's undeniable that I'm the only Hell my Mama ever raised......can't say the same for Daddy. He had a couple of bumper crops long before I was planted.)

So, at least by my mother's standards, I've had me a wild weekend. I drove with the sunroof open. Five miles over the speed limit. Listening to Guns N Roses.......

.......on my way to a PTA meeting.