Stress, Planes, and True Romance

It's been a rather emotional week. I planned and executed a funeral meal for 150 people only to have 250 show up. I went on a job interview I wasn't sure I wanted, and then didn't even get a call back! (Don't ask me why, but the lack of call back on a job you don't even want tends to be more insulting than not getting a job you're actually excited for.) It came to my attention through a series of misadventures that I haven't had health insurance in 8 months, and then had the completely thankless job of finding an alternative. Of course, maternity coverage is going to cost us $500/mo + my normal health care cost, and we have to carry that for a minimum of 18 months. This all ushered in a brief time where every time someone said "baby" or mentioned family or even loudly thought about either of those things, I'd burst into (seemingly random) tears. As I told Dawn last night, I was my own depressing party trick.

Olls thought it would be a good idea to self medicate with an afternoon at the Dayton Air & Space Museum. I'm not a huge "plane" fan unless I'm boarding it and it's taking me to Bora Bora, but it was hard to throw myself a pity party there so I guess it was kind of the perfect place. I also took this picture, which reminded me of Jeff Foxworthy's "Here's Your Sign" routine.
(Note: this was posted on the doors that open at the bottom of a plane to release bombs.)

Darwinism: Further complicated by warning labels

On the way home from Dayton, we were following a minivan that advertised "True Romance" on it's back window. Of course, Ollie's wanting to know what kind of business would use the tag line "Laters Baby." So I said, "They sell sex products like tupperware." Ollie said something like "Whoa, that tupperware stuff IS really versatile." Of course, what I meant was that it was also a pyramid scheme that SAHMs get in to. But, that was the moment of levity where the entire week's worth of stress and disappointment started to break up and let me breathe.

Last weekend I made Ollie take me to the Ohio State Fair for the greasy food and people watching. We got to see the butter cow! (Is it just an Ohio thing that we sculpt life size things out of butter??) I also got to see new born piglets and baby chicks hatching. ODNR had all kinds of owls, squirrels, fox, and beavers on display, which was neat. For some reason seeing those in a cage is more fun than seeing them in your back yard, though I'm not really sure why. There was a booth set up where Scientologists would use their E-meter to evaluate the amount of stress/Thetans you had. Ollie insisted that he wanted to do it, which somehow equated to us BOTH doing it. A very nice paraplegic gentleman administered mine by having me hold the handles while he asked me a series of questions that were meant to illicit a stressful response, which then made the needle on the machine jump. The first question he asked me was about my family, and that one made the needle go crazy, but everything else he asked the needle stayed stationary. He couldn't believe it and was trying all kinds of crazy questions to get me to crack. I knew the drill so I slowed down my heart rate and answered slowly and thought about kittens and kites and things that made me smile. The most revealing thing I learned about myself from the exercise is that I could probably pass a lie detector test if I had to. Ollie tested pretty high, which he attributes to me using him like a "Thetan lint brush" to catch all of my extra aliens. Tee-hee.

This week is going to start off at a run, but I think it will be less stressful than last week by far. Tonight my inlaws are taking us to the Buckeye Lake Winery, and I'd saw that's a rather successful way to start the week :)