Bloggin' ADD

Without anything even noteworthy, this week has just been hectic. Or something. I feel kind of lame calling it hectic. Because, if someone were to say, "oh yeah, why has it been so hectic?" I really wouldn't be able to give a good reason.

Right now I want to bite the head off of two very loud little boys. Instead, I'm typing.

A 19 year old girl I worked with who has seizures (she worked a different shift, we only worked together once--last Saturday) died on Wednesday. The girls she worked with are really having a hard go of it. Understandably. My heart just breaks for her parents. No parent should have to suffer that pain.

My friend Jennifer came to visit me over the weekend. Jennifer is my best friend from high school. She and her daughter were my first visitors since moving here.

I am a sloth. She is full of energy. She loves me anyway. We didn't even really compromise. She just had to endure my sloth-like ways.

Which reminds me, I have been very Cheryl-esque lately. (Cheryl is my mom.)

Here's how it all started. I found some awesome shampoo. It actually makes my hair straight. I can hardly contain myself how much joy this brings me. As a result, I feel compelled to share this with everyone I know. And even some people I don't know. I don't have curly hair. I have nappy hair that frizzes and has random, unsightly, unpleasant waves and curves and funky doodle-doos. This is courtesy of my 3 children. I had lovely hair before they came along. I also had a waist.

Well. The reason this is Cheryl-esque is this:
When I was a junior in high school I met Jennifer in our American History class. We were like this strange combination of very alike while never two more different people. One of our first encounters I noticed a bruise on her arm. She said she got it from wrestling with her boyfriend (that is truly how she got it). Well, I somberly removed my headphones (I was wearing headphones and listening to a walkman in American History!? What is that about!?) and placed them on her head and cued the music (fast forward, stop, listen, fast forward, stop, listen, fast forward, fast forward, fast forward, stop, listen, rewind...oh, that'll do.) to Reba's "She Fell Down the Stairs Again". I didn't know it at the time, but she thought it was hilarious. I have no memory of the incident. Because I have the self-preservation ability to wipe from my memory all the really inane things I do.

We slowly became friends. One day I brought her home to hang out at my house. Jennifer is quirky and random and hilarious and very intelligent. She's an eclectic combination of characteristics. My mom thought she was mentally challenged. Really truly. After Jennifer left that night, my mom was uncharacteristically curious about Jennifer and how we came to be friends. Finally it came out that my mom thought she was mentally challenged and she couldn't really figure out how our paths crossed in school. There was no judgement about me having made friends with a slow girl---she was just genuinely curious how we met. You know, because I was in AP classes. Listening to Reba.

When I thought back on some of the things Jennifer said and did, I couldn't stop laughing. My mom just couldn't figure out some of her behaviors, and that was the conclusion she came to. To this day, we laugh pretty heartily about this. I haven't really lived in my hometown since I graduated from high school, and in those 14 years, my mom and Jennifer have developed their own friendship.

But, what's especially funny to me, is that even given that my mom thought Jennifer was slower than average and not able to grasp a lot, she didn't treat her any differently than anyone else.

Back to that night Jennifer was at my house, it was about 9:30 pm and Jennifer was about to walk out our front door. Suddenly, my mom came flying out of the front bathroom holding a bottle of shampoo. (I think it was Agree. Does that shampoo still exist?) She holds it up, as good as if she were doing a commercial and said somewhat urgently, "Jennifer wait! We just LOVE this shampoo." Jennifer didn't quite know what to do with the information. I didn't quite know where my mom was coming from either. She gave a couple of reasons why "we loved it so much" and when she was done, she turned around and went back into the bathroom.

Jennifer looked at me, hoping for insight, I just shrugged, we laughed, and she went home.

My mom is random. In a helpful way. And I have become the very same.

I even told a girl I work with who has the straightest (and quite thin) hair ever invented about the shampoo that straightens hair. She looked at me for a moment (as though I were slow myself) and then said politely, "I'm really more in the market for shampoo that thickens and gives body."

To summarize: Hectic for no reason week, Jennifer came to visit, found great shampoo, my mom likes to tell people about shampoo for no reason at all, plus she used to think Jennifer was mentally challenged, I tell people about shampoo, therefore, I am becoming my mother.
The end.

p.s. try not to submit this post to any "Pure Gold Writing" contests. I'm just trying to keep it real here.

p.p.s Spell check works again! I only misspelled "eclectic". Who knew it didn't have 5 C's?