No Bail Money Necessary

Happy New Year! I know. I'm a week late. You know how we have all these traditions about starting the new year the way we want it to continue? We kiss our sweetie(s) at midnight and eat all kinds of "good luck" foods (like black eyed peas cooked with a dime?) etc. Weeeelllll - I sure hope my new year goes better than it started out. Here's the saga: I started 2008 bright and early (3 am Jan 1) puking my guts out. Sad, sad Lilymane. I almost never get really sick and I can't even think of a time where I've been the only one to get sick. If I do finally succumb to something, it's usually after everyone is better and back and school/work. This time I broke with tradition! I was the only one even remotely ill. (Thank heavens!) It is very much NOT FUN to be sick (vilely and horribly sick) when everyone else is home and having fun playing games together! (I mentioned the sad, sad Lilymane part, right?) I managed to get myself better just in time for Bet's birthday on Friday. Yay Bet! As part of her celebration, she and I went to the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh. Friday night we had a big party with 20 or so friends. In addition to celebrating Bet's time on this planet - we celebrated Linus' new job offer! Yay Linus! Then of course it was Wild Card Weekend. Yay NFL! (Although it was total suckitude as ALL FOUR of the teams I was cheering for managed to be eliminated. But it's the Playoffs. I love the energy. LOVE it! The football is intense. No one is holding back. The play calling is interesting - bold. You watch the players mature as athletes and sportsmen right before your eyes. There is nothing like the playoffs. Should I whine now that there are only seven games left - total?? No? Ok - I'll save it for later on in the week.) And if that weren't enough to keep me off line - we had Tapioca weirdness.

**I have to interrupt myself and say that I got a very funny voicemail from my new webfriend Jeff. He called to see if I was ok, if I'd fallen off the face of the earth and maybe needed help climbing back on, or if perhaps I'd been arrested for taking his advice and doing away with my ex. "If you need anything - like bail money - just give me a ring," he said. Don't I have the greatest friends? Now back to the story involving Tapioca, but not bail money (in case you were worried I was throwing in some foreshadowing.) **

Tapioca Report: My mother calls and says, "Have you talked to Mr. Tapioca Head recently? Do you know if he's....ok?" I told her I'd been out of commission but while I was on the phone with her I checked my cell and computer. No messages of any kind. Yay! I love not hearing from him. My mother on the other hand was now trying not to fret. I could hear her trying to figure out how to word what she was going to say. Maybe all mothers do this (egad, maybe I do it to my kids) but my mother has a certain way of pausing that lets me know to pay very close attention to what she says next. Sometimes she pauses because she has decided to leave some of the salient points out for various and sundry reasons (never good reasons as far as I'm concerned - so I listen for the gaps and grill her on them) and sometimes it's because she wants to make sure to say something disturbing in as calm a way as possible. What she said was that the police had been questioning Mr T's neighbors. (She has a customer whose daughter lives next door to my ex and was one of the ones questioned. Of course mom's customer had to rush right in and find out what was going on. My mother tries so very, very hard not to have the shop be Gossip Central but she is fighting a losing battle. Scientists should study the phenomenon. Small town rumorspeed is waaay faster than lightspeed.) So here's my poor mother trying to (on the fly) figure out how to make sure everything is ok by calling me without sounding like an alarmist or a gossip herself. At this point I need to reiterate that as much as I would wish (selfishly) for my ex to disappear - I would never in a million years want that for my boyos. Luckily (for my mother and my kids) at about this point in the conversation, Chaos got home and answered my casually posed question - yes they'd spoken to dad just last night. My mother actually said, "Phew." We still have no idea what it was all about, but at least the fucker is still around (pardon my French.) I guess Mr. Tapioca being missing is one plausible reason why the cops would be asking his neighbors about about "his comings and goings" and what kind of car he drives. In that scenario he would (probably) even be "innocent". Yeah, yeah. I know he hasn't been accused of anything (that I know of) (yet) and that even if he had been - innocent until proven guilty in a court of law and all that. Still. Can you think of any reason for those kinds of police questions that doesn't involve something...unpleasant?? I can't come up with anything. Of course I don't really know enough about how things work to come up with many ideas at all - unpleasant or otherwise. What I do know is (once again) my mother and I ended a conversation with her telling me she truly believes he suffered some kind of brain damage during that surgery (eight weeks before he left me) because he's just been so...weird ever since. Weird Tapioca - just what everyone needs to start the year, eh?

So recap:
Yay Bet! Yay Linus! Yay NFL (sort of)! Yay Friends! Yay having fun with my kids!
Boo intestinal disturbances and Mr. Tapioca!
The good far, far, far outweighs the bad. I think 2008 is going to be a fantastic year.
Peace!