Rhonda's Ramblings

I know that you all have been waiting with bated breath to find out which statement on my previous post was a lie. I answered it in my comments. You were all wrong, by the way.

20 things about me that might surprise you. (then again…they might not)

1. I have never attended a public school. (Wait, I did take one college course at a junior college)
2. I am quite messy.
3. I don’t own any make-up.
4. I own and wear lots of skirts.
5. I (and my family) were homeless on more than one occasion when I was a child.
6. I have “internet friends” Okay, that doesn’t suprise you, since if you are reading this, you probably are an internet friend. Maybe it’s more suprising that I have real life friends.
7. I have a kajillion fillings. Maybe not a kajillion. But I’ve got a mouth full of metal. Horrible teeth, yet I think my best feature is my smile.
8. I’m not a very good manager because I am not very good at telling people what to do. I guess I feel like they have all worked there long enough that they should know what to do without me telling them. (But I was such a bossy kid.)
9. I have never kissed a guy.
10. I am in love.
11. I have been naked in public.
12. I am kind of a picky eater.
13. I don’t have my ears pierced.
14. I have read Shadow of the Almighty at least 20 times.
15. I don’t have a best friend.
16. I have 5 goldfish and half of a cat.
17. The only t.v. in my house is a 10″ black and white set that my friend got for free on the side of the road.
18. My family life growing up was “highly dysfunctional”
19. I listen to country music quite a bit.
20. My kitchen is decorated with strawberries.

Wow. That was harder than I thought it would be. I haven’t hidden much from my internet friends, apparently. I am an open book.

So, did any of that surprise you?

One thing in that list is not true. Which do you think it is?

I know that it is Friday for most of you. But it is my Monday.

And it didn’t start off so well. I got to work today to discover that the other waitress that was supposed to have been there an hour earlier didn’t show up. She finally showed up over an hour late. And then she told me that she has another job. I’m already working lots of extra shifts as it is. So, I really need to hire a wonderful waitress, and have her trained and ready to go in two weeks.

Yeah, right. I’ve hired and trained SO many people in the last few months. And most of them didn’t make it.

I was just in the middle of writing a post about finding a box of my grandparent’s old pictures. But then my computer froze and I lost it.

But the basic points were:

1. My dad had big ears.
2. My grandparents loved National Parks (I think I got my love for National Parks from them)
3. I love seeing pictures of my dad and my grandparents in stages of life that I did not know them.

In other news, I am continuing my boring life and loving it. I have three days off in a row, which is quite rare. And so I’m spending the time baking, sewing and working in the garden.

I have really been praying and looking for opportunities to get to know my neighbors better. Since I live in a tiny little town, I really want it to be a part of my community. The two families that live to the west of me go to my church so that has given me a bit of an opportunity to get to know them better and to teach their kids in Sunday School. And this week, a couple of things happened that opened the door for me to pray with my next-door neighbor Jennifer, and to watch her kids while she ran some important errands. So, God is working things out. And she has adorably cute kids.

I could tell you all the details of the last few days. (I got my hair cut, I made zucchini bread, I made some new Russian friends.) But instead, I’m gonna talk about singleness again. know, I know. I talk way too much about singleness. But I’m single. If I were married, I’d probably blog about marriage. But after all, I am the poster child for perpetual singleness.

As my new friend Oksana and I were in the car together for a couple of hours, we got to know each other, and asked the usual questions. She asked me what I really wanted to do in life. (Because she just guessed that I didn’t want to work at the Northridge forever.) And what was my answer? Well, there are SO many things that I would like to do. Too many to list. But at the top of my list is being a wife and a mom. That’s what I’d really like to do. She kind of looked at me with a confused look…expecting me to add some other important thing, like being the high ranking employee in the corporate world or something like that. She gave the common response, a version of “Is that all?”. And no, that’s not all. I would love to do so many things, like start a garden classroom and get my Master’s. But I really want to be a wife and mom. I don’t think it’s that crazy of a goal.

The thing is how I approach it.

I am a goal setter in general. I don’t reach a lot of my goals. But I do reach a good number of them. I achieved most of the things on my “Things to do before I’m 25″ list. I’m the type of person who really thinks that I can accomplish most things if I just apply myself enough and have enough discipline. Of course, I am often not disciplined enough. But if I want something badly enough to be disciplined, I can achieve that goal.

But I don’t think that way about getting married. I think of it as something that I don’t really have much control over. It’s not a goal that I can set, and can make a list of the things I need to do to accomplish that goal. It’s something that is very dependent on other outside factors. Like the guy. So, maybe I need to change my mindset. Or maybe I need to think about it a lot less. Or maybe it’s just a different type of goal. One that I don’t have much control over.

Yesterday I went to the river with Colleen and her two boys. A river day with them has been long overdue…with the crazyness in both of our lives. (Her house recently burnt down, and she has an almost 3 year old, a 10 month old and another on the way.) It was great to catch up with her and play with her adorable kids.

So, after leaving her house, I decided to stop by the Salvation Army on the way home. (I love thrift stores.) And guess who I ran into? My mom. Which is more random than it may seem. I rarely see her, since I work evenings and she works days and we live in totally different towns. So, after we both completed our shopping, we went out to dinner together. (I got a dress and some overalls, and some red boots??…at the thrift store, not for dinner.) And I think I got a love for thrift stores from my mom.

We had a wonderful time at dinner discussing our struggles in life and jobs and love and guys and beating them up. Okay, maybe we didn’t talk about beating them up, but we did talk about giving them a good talking to. And my perpetual singleness. Which seems to be a hot topic lately. At work and on the board and at dinner with my mom.

And if you think you might know the/a reason why I am still single, then tell me (I mean something that is “wrong” with me, not “because it’s God’s will”). Seriously. I want to know what my glaring flaws are. Because I really am baffled that I’ve never been on a date. (This is not a “I suck, I’m single, and life is horrible” statement. It’s just curiosity.) I like to ask for trouble.