Old Decathlon Olympics Journal

October 2nd: I NEED A HIGHER WORD COUNT

October 2nd, 2004

It is such a relief to be an empty nester. I look forward to the peace and quiet. I had read so much about how traumatic it is for some mother’s when all their children grow up and leave home, and now I find none of it to be true in my case. Are all the women crazy? Obviously! Does that mean that I don’t love my children as much as they loved theirs? NO. I am just rediscovering ME, and I know how many years I put everything that I wanted to do when I wanted to do on hold for the sake of my family, and that is perfectly acceptable and maybe even proper. To my way of thinking, now I have even more “that is ME” to put into some kind of perspective. Life is truly amazing!

The Campfire thing is proving to be a little confusing for me, which is typical as I am confused and confounded by most everything that I have never done before. I embrace and welcome new challenges, and that is a good thing because it seems they just never quit presenting themselves. I do this to myself; it is nobody else’s fault, but that is exactly why I entered the Olympic Challenge last year and the same holds true for this year. I would have NEVER tried to create a Campfire if it was not part of the Olympic Decathlon. [My fingers ache to insert emoticons, BTW.] Seems I have discovered that there is a very big difference between a word count and a character count. The problem is with the 1100 maximum word limitation in the Olympic Decathlon Campfire. It will be fine; it is just awkward. And I am very wordy.

I had to go buy a new shower curtain yesterday. That should be a simple chore, but not for me. Nothing is ever just easy for me. Of course I had been looking for the same identical shower curtain that I already had, but it seems that the powers that be don’t make that pattern anymore. So, I am forced to choose from the current selection of shower curtains available on the store shelves. I didn’t really want a new shower curtain, but the damn things do eventually have to be replaced, and mine was long overdue. So I finally made a buying decision, and begrudgingly paid the cashier at Lowe’s, of all places, the twenty-one dollars and change for the curtains plus the nine dollars and change for the matching shower curtain hooks. Of course that also required that I buy a new matching bathmat. Luckily I found one on sale for ten dollars. Then as I typically do I indulged in impulse buying and spent another thirty dollars. Shopping sucks. It costs way too much money. That should have been the end of the three-week shower curtain ordeal, but you have to remember this is ME we are talking about. Nothing is ever easy or simple.

When I got home the shower curtain that took me three weeks to decide to buy was NOT in my bag. After contacting the store, explaining the problem, waiting for the manager to call me back an hour later, and being totally disgusted with the whole ordeal – the manager called and to my amazement Lowe’s agreed to replace the shower curtain and matching hooks with no qualms. It’s a very pretty shower curtain, but I really don’t think that it should be that difficult to acquire one, but evidently it can be.

Word count: 600 Whew