Put Your Hands Up in the Air! It's Shelly's Birthday!

Today was an adventure. My friend, Shelly, had a birthday, so Becky and I made plans to go to dinner tonight with her at Gringo's. James and Darrell (Shelly's husband) were "allowed" to come but had to sit at the end of the table across from each other so they could male bond while Shelly, Becky, and I tried to catch up on everything under the sun at the other end of the table, and Aidan was left with a babysitter at Shelly's house with James, her son, and no tears!!! Woo hoo, Aidan!

Shelly, Becky, and I became friends through our weekly happy slash venting hours for a couple of years while we were teaching... 5 years, 6 years ago?? We could spend hours talking and the sun would go down as we sat on the deck at "the boat" (Sam's Boat...fun place!) Between work and our personal lives outside of work we never ran out of topics. Becky still teaches the babies and loves it, but I left deaf education when I got married in 2005, and Shelly left a few months before her son, James, was born in 2007.

So anyway, tonight was a great getting to catch up, eating Mexican food, and drinking margaritas kind of night. *sigh* I miss our happy hours and dinners from back in the day. Both of them were in my wedding, and they threw my cowboy themed baby shower for my eleven day late mini cowpoke. They straightened out my dazed and confused self tonight, when I told them my first mapping is this Wednesday, the 31st. Nope, Tuesday is the 31st... and color me thrilled... American Idol, I'm going to be ready for you Tuesday night! (I'm really optimistic about the first mapping if you can't tell.) Becky is going to try to make the first mapping, and Shelly wants to try to come on the 1st, my second appointment, the next day. I adore them. If you guys are reading this... I MISS YOU, darn it!!! :-)

Before we went to dinner tonight, James, Aidan, and I went shopping at Kohl's. We had to check out by 2pm to get an extra discount, and darned if James wasn't in line for at least 10 minutes only to be checked out a minute or two after 2pm without getting the discount. It must've taken 20 minutes or more to get it all straightened out and have the register re-rigged to give us our discount. With a lively, opinionated toddler in tow, it feels like double the amount of time.

Then we took Aidan to McDonald's at lunch with a big indoor playground to burn some energy and eat "burgers and COKE!" as he screamed pulling up in the parking lot. Where does he get this stuff??? James climbed up the maze (to the ceiling) with Aidan and through the tunnels. Then, on their way down the slide, James got STUCK in the slide. Aidan jumped ship and went down without him. Little Turkey Butt, but oh so brave! Fortunately, James worked his way down and looked a little wounded... (his ego and physically... poor guy! ;-)

We went to my hair appointment at 3:30. I haven't had it cut in 3 months, and it's been over half a year since I had it professionally highlighted. My hairdresser had booked 3 or 4 appts at once and was running ragged between a perm, coloring, and haircuts BEFORE she even threw me in the mix about 20 minutes later. I told her I had to be out by 5:30, which she agreed to before I sent James and Aidan on their way, only to not finish until after 6:00 (when we had 7:00 dinner plans across town) because she started so late and had too much going on at once. I showed her pics of subtle highlights that didn't look like bright blond zebra stripes which scare me, and lo and behold, I came out looking like I had bright blond zebra stripes. Not to mention, I told her I'd just had surgery and she raked the metal pick side of the comb right down my incision while doing highlights... oh. my. gosh. That was extremely painful! She apologized, but how does she forget something THAT important? I also gave her very clear details on how I wanted my hair cut because I wanted to grow it out. She nodded and then long pieces of hair were falling left and right on my salon apron/jacket thingie. I'm sure there's a word for it but so not important. What's important is I can barely pull my hair back in a ponytail holder (which is esstential for Houston's heat and humidity in my humble opinion.) She told me that my hair looked beautiful, and honestly it is a nice cut, and she did tone down the color, but my hair length is gone. *sniff*

Sometimes I think many deaf people can hear/comprehend more than some hearing people because we actively try to pay attention to what's going on around us. We're mostly a visual group and can pick up a lot of clues that hearing people tend to miss. If you want to know how somebody REALLY feels about something, ask a deaf person who has been observing. I hate it when someone with perfect hearing has highly selective hearing, especially when they use it on me... *boo*hiss*.... (I won't mention my husband's tendancy to do that, since I have him "trained" to listen to me MOST of the time now. :0) Oh yeah, I went there.)

I will never go back to my hair stylist on a Saturday again, and if I even go back is questionable. I have a history of "firing" my stylists after too many screw ups and then searching madly around town for someone better... There's 1, 2, 3 and hmmm.. now maybe 4 stylists I finally had to break up with since I've moved to Houston after utter frustration. My friend, Anna, used to follow me to whoever I found because she knew I was super picky. Every time I told her so and so is fired, she'd sigh and ask me "well, where are we going now?" That was always funny because she hated answering questions to said stylist about why I abruptly stopped coming for appointments, so she just divorced the stylist too. I'm not as fussy anymore... I mean please, I'm not a single girl on the town every Saturday night anymore, unless you count Chuck E Cheese, but I do have some standards.... like, don't hurt me. Don't whack my hair off, and please no bleached out stripes in my hair, and get me out of the salon at the time you promised.

Anyway, James and I ran home to change after my appointment and were rushing to get out the door 10 minutes later to make it to Shelly's on time, but then her husband was late getting home from a frisbee golf tournament (where he won 2nd place today! Go Darrell!) The babysitter didn't arrive until 7:00, so Shelly and Becky planned, at the last minute, to meet for dinner at 7:30 instead of 7:00. We finally touched base with Shelly about 15 minutes away from her house to find all that out, and we were so relieved to find out everyone was running behind. We could finally relax. When the 3 of us get together, one of us is always late. They like me because they think I'm the worst one, and I make them look good.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SHELLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tonight was so much fun! ~~xoxo~~