10 Signs That It Is Going To Be A Bad Day

1. You wake up seven minutes before your alarm is supposed to go off.

2. You run out of conditioner in the midst of putting it on, and are only able to condition about half of your hair.

3. The shirt you wanted to wear is dirty.

4. Your computer is r e a l l y s l o w . Uh-oh. Viruses?

5. Your hair dryer shuts off and will not start again, and your hair is in that weird not-wet, but not-dry stage.

6. Something spilled in the fridge. Something very sticky.

7. Guess what? It's raining. Now your under-conditioned, not-wet but not-dry hair is all frizzy.

8. Everyone on the freeway forgets how to drive. Of course.

9. As soon as you turn on your work computer, it reminds you that you have a two hour meeting this afternoon.

10. It takes you a full fifteen minutes to find some fucking coffee that is not left over from yesterday.

Warm Fuzzies

I don't have a lot of family that I'm close to. In fact, I don't really have all that many people that I'm close to. But this past weekend was spent with members of my family that I never thought I would be able to spend time with all together. Especially not having things go as well as they did. Amazing, right? Your eyes do not deceive you. That is Mama, Dad, Dennis, and Brian all sitting together. All laughing together. I love this picture more than words can express.

Sedona

I love Arizona. It is a place of opposites and extremes. The only comfortable middle ground to be found is artificial. In its natural state, Arizona gives no quarter. In winter, the days are freezing and the nights even colder. In the summer the heat will scorch your throat until you breathe in gasps and year round the air will leech the moisture out of you until you feel that you will be thirsty for the rest of your life. At the peak of the heat of summer, another extreme will confront you. Just when you feel as though you are about to pass out from heat exhaustion, a drop of water lands on your nose. Startled, you pause. Another drop hits your forehead. For a few seconds, you are afraid that you've begun to hallucinate. A bright flash of light draws your eyes upward. As your disbelieving eyes take in a ceiling of roiling black clouds, a booming peal of thunder echos across the sky and the clouds open up in earnest. Within minutes, you are soaked through and running for cover, as lightning flashes all around and thunder cracks like some demon coachman, driving you on. Half an hour later, the sky is startlingly blue and the air around you is steaming. The edge of the mountains seems to slice into the sky like a knife. This image is helped along by the red-stained earth freshly saturated with rain, looking a little too much like blood for comfort.

Taxman

Just one more reason to boycott Wal-Mart.

The Trouble With Love Is

I've been thinking about past relationships a lot lately, and I've come to the conclusion that I have a bad habit of dating guys that either a) have little to no future or b) are assholes. Sometimes they were a combination of both, like a sliding scale (but not like a Lazy Susan, Shawn). Now the asshole thing would be somewhat understandable, if I were talking about guys that are assholes in that "bad boy" sort of way, where they secretly have a heart of gold and all they need is the tender love of the right girl to reform them. Unfortunately, that is not the case. I am referring to the more sinister type of asshole-ness, the type that sneaks up on you. These guys seem normal when you first meet them, and for a while after they remain in that normal category. However, slowly, very slowly, you begin to witness jerk-type behavior. And you make excuses, "Oh, he's just cranky" or "He's stressed out" and the like. After a while though, it becomes undeniable that this guy is a full-fledged asshole. At which point, you shake your head and sigh at wasting so much time, and you move on. Hopefully.

Much more prevalent in my life have been guys that have little to no future. This trend is more disturbing as well, and the reason is two-fold. One, it preys on my nurturing side. I know that I try to come off as a cold-hearted bitch, but the reality is that if I truly care about someone, I'm very generous with them. Two, aside from being a general asshole, my father was great at not having a future. Sure, he's got his shit together now, and he has a nice business out in Texas, but when I was a kid, it was one job after another after another. Not to mention being in and out of rehab. Not that I think that he's lazy, in fact just the opposite. The man can't stop doing things. Even on his days off, he would constantly tinker in the garage on a variety of projects. The problem was that none of his ideas and projects spanned beyond the moment of conception. Sure, it might take a few months to follow through and complete whatever he was working on, but it was only to be able to say that he had accomplished whatever it was. There was never any thought to the bigger picture, no plans or projects with real staying power, nothing that would improve his mode of living above its current state.

This worries me, since I seem to have an affinity for guys with the same type of mentality, a sort of lack of ability to act toward to future. I have been getting better about this. I've gone from dating a guy living in a tent in a trailer park (no joke) to a really great guy who just doesn't have the level of motivation that I'm looking for. But this trend really makes me wonder if I will always choose guys that need some sort of care-taking. Would I recognize a guy who could share the care-taking burden equally?