Phylly Time, Birthday Surprises and The "Vicious Circle"

I made you a video this morning to show you all my birthday surprises from Margaret and Phylly, so you might as well watch it first.  PLEASE FORGIVE the "rocks" in my dryer.  The camera was hearing it, but I wasn't.  So sorry!

And now that I've told you the WRONG restaurant to go to for the spinach salad, I will correct that.  It is Applebee's that has it, not TGIFriday's.

This video WOULD have had Phylly in it too, BUT she had to leave right after I woke up this morning.  I was not happy about it, let me tell you, but my crying and carrying on did not change her mind.  For some reason, she thinks her husband, Roger, is more important than I am.  Go figure.  (-;  I even told her I was sick, but she wasn't buying it.  She reminded me that we will be having lunch together several times a week, and she promised to come another Saturday, so I guess I will get over it.

Besides, she did give me such darling gifts for my birthday.

My husband and I aren't speaking at the moment.  I'm not real sure why.  I'm assuming he is just too busy to remember I am gone, and I won't call him because he forgot to do something for me he promised he would do, so I have to stay mad about that a little bit longer.  He NEVER remembers stuff I ask him to do unless I nail a post-it note to his briefcase.  And then he is more likely to lose the post-it note than do what it says on it.  Then, when I get upset with him for NOT doing what he promised -- he gets mad at me for getting mad at him.  A vicious circle that goes NOwhere.

OH!  Speaking of "vicious circles", I have to tell you my vicious circle story from High School.

When I was 16, my parents decided I was too wild because I had a way-too-serious boyfriend, and my sister overheard a phone conversation where I was talking about running away with him to California.  He didn't go to High School (I forget why), but he did have a car.

And you all thought I had good sense, didn't you!  NOPE!  I was just as crazy as a teen as the rest of them.

ANYWAY.

My sister told on me.  It was Christmastime, and we lived in Phoenix, AZ where we had lived since I was 3 years old.  I was born in Ohio where my grandparents and thousands of cousins still lived.  My grandparents were visiting us in Phoenix for Christmas.  To me, as a 16-year old, my grandparents seemed ancient and about to drop over into the grave any moment, although I loved them very much.  When you are 16, 30 seems ancient.

When Daddy and Mom heard the news about me wanting to run away with this boy, they decided they had to get me AWAY from him, AND FAST.  Christmas was over, and the day came for Grandpa and Grandma to fly back to Ohio.  Daddy came into my bedroom early that morning and said he had to tell me something.  This is pretty close to what he said to me:

"Your Mother and I are sending you to live with your grandparents in Ohio.  You need to pack your things because you are getting on the airplane and going home with them today."

I was in MAJOR SHOCK!  I cried and cried and cried, and I begged Daddy not to make me go.  I was IN LOVE, after all, and I couldn't move away to some foreign land where I didn't have any friends.  And what about my High School?

That was all to no avail, and I was on the plane that very day.  We landed at a mini-airport in Ohio and drove home from there to the very, very, very old home my grandfather had built when he and Grandma were young.  It was a simple two-story house with a lot of rooms in it including a big open kitchen.  NO central heat and air.  There was a gigantic furnace in the cellar.  Next to the furnace was a fenced area that had a pile of nasty, dirty black coal in it and a big shovel.  Every so often, you had to go down the rickety stairs into the cellar and shovel that coal into the furnace.  I was HORRIFIED that I was expected to do such a scary task.  I was afraid of the cellar with or without the coal and the furnace.  It was dark and cold and gloomy down there, and I had visions of somehow getting locked down there so Daddy wouldn't worry about me running home to Ronny -- my true love.  After all, they had forced me to get on an airplane and fly off to nowheresville leaving all my friends and my school.  Why not just lock me in a cellar!

And the WATER!  The water came from outside in a well, and it stunk to high heaven!  It smelled of rotten eggs.  It was the hardest thing of all, I think, for me to get used to.  I had a hair piece in those days that I wore to get my very thin, scrawny hair high enough up on my head.  That was the style back then.  I washed it in that Sulpher water, and it shriveled up and matted and never came out of it!!!  No more high hair styles for me.  And not only that horror, there was NO SHOWER -- only an ancient bathtub with that nasty water coming out of the faucet!

After the Christmas break, you have to go BACK to school.  I, of course, had to go to a different High School in a different City in a different State.  How bad could it be?  Let me just say -- for me -- it was like going from the White House to the Outhouse!  In Phoenix, AZ I went to a brand new High School with long, wide hallways -- lovely air conditioned classrooms -- a huge gym and a huge cafeteria and new everything.

In Ohio, the High School was an antiquated building with no air conditioning.  A lot of Mennonites went to school there.  The Mennonite girls did not wear deodorant, and they did not believe in zippers and buttons.  They wore those funny little hats, and had very few dresses, and did I say they did NOT wear deodorant -- and did I say there was NO air conditioning???  I don't remember anything about the boys.  Maybe they got to be normal.  The classes were small and had very few students in each compared to the High School in Phoenix.  I was totally distressed and depressed over the whole situation.  I was sure my true love, Ronny, would be driving his car up to Ohio any day to rescue me.

For SOME reason, the teenage boys at this school were attracted to the "new girl" who happened to be me.  I was from Phoenix, and I had a very dark tan all the time because I walked to school every day, and when I wasn't at school or at home, I was outside in the sun.  They thought I was Mexican or Italian or something.  Of course, I was IN LOVE, so I didn't care if any of them was dead or alive.  The problem was, the OTHER girls in the school DID care, and they were very upset that the boys liked the new Mexican/Italian girl.  All of what I suppose was the "popular click" of girls were very mean to me.

There was one very nice girl there though.  Her name was Diane.  She approached me, and she said we could be friends.  She invited me over to her house and over to her boyfriend's "house" which was actually a bar.  Daddy would have croaked on the spot if he had any idea where I was hanging out after school in Ohio.  I had Diane over to "my" house in Ohio, and we were together all the time.

One day at school, the mean girls had done or said something to me to upset me.  Diane came over to me and asked me if I was alright.  I told her what the mean girls had done.  I think they had put something nasty in my locker.  Diane felt bad for me.  Later that day, Diane wrote me a note and passed it to me in class.  It said,

"Don't let them bother you.  They are just a vicious circle."

SOMEHOW, those girls got hold of that note.  I may have tossed it in the trash -- or maybe they stole it out of my locker.  I can't remember if it was the same day or later, but Diane and I were walking to our locker during a lunch break or after school.  As we started down the hall to our lockers, all of the mean girls were holding hands and walking around in a circle repeating out loud, "We're a vicious circle -- we're a vicious circle."  When Diane and I got close to them, they broke arms and circled around us -- still repeating "We're a vicious circle -- we're a vicious circle."  Then they started throwing something on top of our heads.  We put our hands up on our heads to try to figure out what they were throwing on us.  It was POWDER.  They had taken out those little hard powder compacts -- broken up the powder -- and they were throwing chunks into our hair!!!

Needless to say, I was miserable!  WHEN, OH WHEN, was my true love coming to rescue me!!!

It did turn out, however, after I was there several months, that the mean girls decided maybe I wasn't such a threat after all since I was in love with Ronny in AZ, and he was coming in his car to get me any moment, and I wouldn't be taking any of their boyfriends away from them.  They tolerated me after that, and I actually ended up loving that school and didn't want to leave when the time came.  Time is a great healer.

I even got used to that nasty water to the point I didn't smell it anymore.  I loved my bedroom in the rickety old house, I ADORED my Aunt Barb who also lived in it and, of course, my grandparents.  I was allowed to go back home with my parents when Daddy got transferred to Oklahoma.  I was a Senior then.  I had such a glowing report of my time in Ohio, that my sister decided to spend a Summer there.

And let me also add that I THANK GOD STILL TODAY that my parents had the wisdom to separate me from that boy and send me to a "safe place".  I love my Daddy so very much for being able to do it.  My Mother never liked me much anyway, but I know it was probably the hardest thing Daddy ever had to do.

And now that I am way down here at the bottom of this post, I will show you the picture I took of one of my gifts from Phylly described in my video.

I better get up from this chair and do something that gets my heart pumping.  I'm feeling like taking a nap, and that is HIGHLY unusual for this girl.

Hugs, Joy