Friday Thoughts--or why I will lose more Baptist Points

These are random and scattered, because the cogent post I was going to write hours ago disappeared in the face of a 6 hour Comcast outage. The fact that I know how long an internet outage lasted in the dead of night is either sad or scary--depending. Sorry to those of you who hate my "Larry King" posts. I'm too busy looking for a half-dozen spouses.

Sunday Illustrations
I draw pictures during the special music and offeratory at church. I even have a sketch notebook for this. I realise that this strikes most people as wrong because it appears that I'm not paying attention. Here's the thing. For some odd reason after 30 years of churchgoing I've discovered that if there is a musical number I pay much better attention if I'm either drawing or coloring. Something about the way my mind is wired. If i'm just sitting there listening prayerfully/meditatively I catch myself thinking about such dramatic things as which batch of laundry to do first on Monday or whether Atlanta Bread or Baja Fresh will win the Sunday Lunch War. I wonder why I'm not man enough to put a hunk of freezer-burned meat in the crockpot like mothers of yesteryear and instead subject my spouse to the last-minuteness of restaurant food. I start to wonder why it's okay for Sunday to be a day of rest but still require people in their early twenties to work long enough to make me a burrito or sandwich. Some Orthodox Jews have someone called a Shabbos Goy who will come by and light fires, bring meals and give rides on their Sabbath. We seem to have turned the world onto this practice and made our young adults and recently-pardoned felons do this work for us. I hate that I can't go to Chick-Fil-T (my husband eats there enough that we've honorarily changed the name) on Sunday but I admire their closed-on-Sundayness.

Do you see how busy and random my head is?!? Do you see why it is better for me to do a line-drawing of my dogs chasing a squirrel? That's automatic enough that it takes the part of my brain that wanders and sets it to something so that the other part of my mind can focus on the music. I'm too old for dry cheerios in tupperware.

Things Aren't Always As Bad As You Think They're Gonna Be
I'm absent-minded and my brain easily gets off-track. (See above) A while back I realised that my driver's license expired at the end of May, 2005. Since the end of May was safely nestled in the same distant past as the 2004 elections, my first bra and the time when I still had hope for LOST I knew I was in trouble. I don't drive that often because we have only one car and usually end up going placed together because we love each other's company. So I didn't rush right out and do the responsible adult thing. I did the cowardly recovering-alcoholic-good-thing-I-don't-drink-often thing (ETA: I'm not a recovering alcoholic, but I've known plenty and this is the type of thing those particular AA members do with great regularity) and ignored the problem, such ignorance spiced with moments of terror at the thought of going to the DMV. Patti and Selma BOTH would have my hide for sure. "Some days we don't let the line move at all. We call those Weekdays." I fear the DMV.
Yesterday I cracked under pressure and made Tim haul my irresponsible butt into the Drivers' Hut for the day of judgment. We were there a grand total of 23 minutes. There are three computer kiosks where you can enter all your info and charge your credit card. They then take your picture, hand you your license and send you home. It felt anticlimactic. Tim said "let there be a lesson in it for you." I still think having a baby and getting published aren't going to be as easy.

The Perils of Not Drinking Often
I rarely drink. A year ago I was working in one of the most stressful jobs known to man. Unlike brain surgery, being an Executive Assistant in a poorly run company doesn't allow for a suitable amount of control and leaves one feeling helpless, hopeless, and ready to find new uses for a Swingline. So we were at a restaurant and I saw a "chocolate martini" on the menu. I figured--hey. Chocolate AND liquor! What better way to salve my wounds?! So I ordered my first mixed drink in many many moons and enjoyed it. Kind of.
A couple of weeks and senseless corporate decisions later I decided that I wanted another chocolate martini, even though it surely meant that in a few days' time I'd be living under the Belle Meade Kroger. So I looked up the ingredients on the internet and bought the necessary stuff. All the ingredients say "two parts X, one part Y" and so forth. So after a bad day I made my drink according to the recipe.
I felt like crap. Tim came home from his bike ride and saw me laying on the couch. I thought I had the flu. The next day as we discussed my really bad headache he informed me that the standard portion of Vodka is NOT 8 oz. What do I know? I thought that was about how big a beer was. All the recipes didn't say what a "part" was. So, I've never made a drink again.