Surgery is at 8 am tomorrow, so I’m doing everything I can to keep my mind off of it. I’ve been doing laundry, cleaning up the house, reading a book, watching television, and blogging to avoid all thoughts of eye-related things.  I’ve gotten pretty darn good at compartmentalizing… although a shrink might call it “denial” instead.

Brandon mentioned tonight that he’s interested in doing a triathlon. Since the knee issues I had with the marathon, I’ve scaled WAY down given up on my running. I’m getting out once a week if I’m lucky, and we’re supposed to be doing a half marathon on Thanksgiving. I haven’t run more than 3 miles since about January, so a triathlon sounded kind of CRAZY when he said he’d be interested in it.

But, I must admit, I’m kind of intrigued by the variety. The marathon was so much of the same thing… for such a long time. I had an awesome sense of accomplishment when it was over, and would love to feel that again. But I just don’t think I could commit myself to doing another 26.2. A triathlon would at least break things up.

I’ve always outright rejected the possibility of a triathlon because of the distances involved in the IronMan. But there are lots of shorter triathlons out there. Swimming and biking would be much better on my knees, and would keep me in shape. The variety in workouts would keep me more engaged in the training. And I’d get to buy a bike!

I’m not sure that I could run after swimming or biking, much less both, but it’s an interesting proposition. The biggest thing motivating me to do the marathon was just that I wanted to put one of those “26.2″ stickers on my car…. a triathlon would mean that I could get a cool “swim bike run” sticker. Plus, I’d finally one-up my little brothers at some athletic feat. They’re both ridiculously good runners (not only do they run, but they do it FAST and without looking like they’re going to die). They ran their first marathons when they were, like, 14. How the heck can I top that?

Maybe by beating them to a triathlon.

Maybe. We’ll see.

Those are the words that came out of my optometrist’s mouth when I asked him about Lasik.

No sugar coating, no warm fuzzies…. we jumped directly to the “Laura with an eye patch” visual.

And yet, somehow, I’ve still managed to sign myself up for Lasik surgery. In a mere 58 hours or so, I will be laying on what will no doubt be a cold, hard table under a laser light show that will be nowhere near as cool as the ones at DisneyWorld.

My vision has sucked for as long as I can remember. From the first pair of blue plastic-framed glasses in second grade to the contacts I’ve worn since years of begging finally wore down my parents in high school, corrective lenses have been a constant for almost 20 years now.

I can’t quite imagine what it’s going to be like on Friday morning to wake up and be able to see the alarm clock. The one with the 6-inch high glaring red numbers that sits within 12 inches of my bed and is still difficult to read when I wake up at all odd hours of the night. I’ve had that clock since about the time I visited the eye doctor for the first time. It’s been in every bedroom I’ve ever had, every time I’ve moved. Even now, Brandon has his fancy clock with two alarms and itty-bitty, teeny-tiny green numbers that are just an annoying, blurry glow in the middle of the night, and I have my behometh on my side of the bed.

Seeing the clock when I wake up is the only thing I can truly say I’m excited about right now. I’m sure I’ll find other benefits after the surgery… no more waking up to gritty contacts in my eyes after I fall asleep reading, and no more contact lens cases taking up space on the bathroom counter… but right now the clock is all I’m focusing on.

I had my final pre-op exam today. I’m a perfect candidate, so there’s no turning back now. My eyes were fully dilated (Brandon says I look like a lemur) and look ready for surgery. I got worried, though, when I realized today that no one in my optometrist’s office has had Lasik done. At some point or another, or the past 5 years, every person there has mentioned something to me about their bad eyes. The optometrist, the technicians, the girl who cheerfully takes my Visa card and swipes it when I leave…. they all have contacts or glasses.

Why have these people not had a surgery that they see the results of all the time? If Lasik is a great as they keep telling me, why not do it firsthand? Do they know something they’re not telling me? It’s not really giving me that feeling of comfort that I’d like to have before willfully sticking my too-steep corneas under a fiery beam of light.

Say a quick prayer on Thursday morning that all goes well and I don’t end up staring at that clock with just one eye because of a botched surgery. My depth perception already sucks.

If you haven’t heard about this already, listen to the following 911 call: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhtRr4vwo6Q

Let me know your thoughts…. in my opinion, Mr. Horn is quite the badass, and took care of business. I’m sure fewer homes would get broken into if there were more Joe Horns out there.

In my neighborhood, this would never happen, because my neighbors and I still don’t know each others’ first names after almost 3 years of living here.

We’re antisocial.

In Mr. Horn’s case, both burglars later died from their injuries. At this point in time, his court case has been thrown out and, per the laws in Texas, he won’t be charged with anything.

Because of a new law enacted in Texas on Sept 1, you can shoot a burglar leaving your neighbor’s house as long as you see them carrying loot away with them. Do they have a big problem with this in TX? Do they have a lot of neighbors sitting at home just waiting to see their neighbors get robbed? Not sure where this law originated, but it seems to have worked out well in this instance.

Call it karma, call it vigilante justice, call it whatever…. the “good guys” won one.

University of Phoenix held our graduation ceremony this past weekend. Our graduation speaker was the same as two years ago, Bertice Berry. Bertice is a great speaker who does many UOP graduation ceremonies each year.

In her speech this year, she mentioned how each day is a clean slate. She described this with a beautiful story, which I will (with many apologies to her) proceed to butcher: Just before Bertice’s mother passed away, her mom was struggling with what to leave her. She didn’t have much money or many valuable possessions. So she told Bertice that, after much thought, she was leaving her with “a clean slate.” When her mother died, she said that she was going to take with her all the emotional baggage, all the hurt and shame and pain of the generations before her, so that she could leave Bertice with a clean slate. She was going to take all of that past with her to the grave, yielding a fresh start for Bertice to do with whatever she chose.

Of course, this was much more inspirational and eloquent the way Bertice stated it, but I hope the point comes across to you the same way. I have been trying to remind myself of this each morning - today is a clean slate. Today is a new day, and regardless of what yesterday held, how great or terrible it was, today is fresh before me. It is a blank sheet of paper that I have yet to cover with writings. I haven’t yet spoiled it with scribbles, I haven’t yet created a masterpiece. It’s clean, perfect, and new.

I’m relishing that moment each day. The peace and quiet that sometimes only lasts for a millisecond before my own thoughts ruin it, or before the sound of the shower blasting on spoils it, or before the dog decides to scuttle across the floor and make noise. No matter what else happens throughout the day, I’m trying to remember to take that moment to thank God for another clean slate, to take a deep breath of a new day’s air, and to think about my blank chalkboard upon which I can write another day.

Man, I forgot how fun weekends could be.

It seems like for the last, I don’t know - forever?, I’ve been spending my weekends playing catch-up around the house. All week long, I’m so drained when I get home at the end of the day, that I just let all of the cleaning/laundry/yardwork pile up to the weekend. Then, come Saturday and Sunday, I alternate between working on all this stuff and lazing around doing nothing to make up for all that hard work.

So, when Brandon had a college friend come into town this weekend, I was a little thrown off. My routine got out of whack, but it paid off. We spent Saturday doing all kinds of fun things like playing Xbox, grilling out, going bowling, and going to Dave & Buster’s (yeah, all in one day!!). I even managed to get in some shopping, too, while the boys went along their merry little way!!

To top it all off, Brandon and I bailed on housework even more and spent Sunday afternoon at the movies, and then played more Xbox when we got home.

It felt so awesome to have a weekend like I did as a college student… doing nothing more than having fun. Made it tough to go back to work today, that’s for sure!

It reminded me, though, that there’s no reason to blow my weekend doing “weekend chores.” If the laundry doesn’t get done, I’ll survive. The dust around the house is still going to be there next Saturday, and grabbing takeout instead of cooking isn’t a mortal sin.

Next up on my list of not-being-too-much-of-a-grown-up: buying some Mr. Bubble and relaxing away in my garden tub (which, of course, has not been scrubbed due to the “fun” weekend, but, hey, I can’t win ‘em all).

Long live the 80s!

Any child of the 80s can recall fond memories of watching the Smurfs. Those were the days… watching and learning from Papa Smurf with his red outfit, Vanity Smurf with his mirror, Handy Smurf with his hammer… oh, the list goes on and on. Who hasn’t wondered at some point about Smurfette being the only female smurf?

Well, 80s fanatics, it sounds like the Smurfs are BACK!! Check it out - they’re making a movie for a whole new generation to enjoy!

It will be written by the folks who wrote Shrek, which makes me somewhat hesitant. I think Brandon & I are the only people in America who haven’t bought into the Shrek hype, but honestly, the movie just didn’t make me laugh. At all.

Let’s hope they do the smurfs justice. You can’t really screw up a script that involves substituting the word “smurf” every 15 words, can you?

The 80s Team will be playing next Friday, June 13 at Mickey Roo’s in Franklin.

Come check them out!!

So I’m wandering through my house tonight, on my way downstairs with a basket full of laundry, when I notice odd things happening outside.

Like flashing lights and some dude prowling around my neighbor’s yard with a flashlight.

The lights were reflecting off the house around the side of the house, so I couldn’t tell if it was an ambulance or a cop car or what… only flashing red lights (no blue), so I’m assuming it was either a fire truck or an ambulance. And no sirens, so probably nothing really crazy.

But the dude with the flashlight creeped me out. He was flashing his light around into my neighbor’s yard, so I came over to the side of the house to get into the best possible ”spying on the neighbors” viewing position. By the time I get there, and the flashing lights are gone and dude is nowhere to be seen.

I chalk it up to general weirdness and come back to the front of my house, only to see a guy (same one, maybe?) walking on the sidewalk directly in front of my house pointing at something past my house.

I’m already slumming in my pj’s (the comfy kind, not the cute kind), so no way am I going to go out there and see what’s up… bad time to finally introduce myself to the neighbors.

To top it all off, I’m well into the murder mystery book I’m reading right now, which already has me on high alert. So now, I’m sitting here, reading this book that gives me goosebumps, imagining noises, and waiting for some prowler to creep through my yard.

Good thing Wicket is here to protect me.

Yeah, right.

I’m a very indecisive person, if you don’t know me. My ability to take decisive action is something I’m constantly working on, but am still not very good at.

Let me give you a way-scaled-down version of what I’m talking about: I went out running this morning and made it to the corner of our block and still wasn’t sure which route I was going to run. I turned left, then jogged in place for a few seconds, turned right, then turned right back around and went left again. Classic Laura move, but one that usually happens in my mind rather than in public. At least I made the folks driving by laugh.

This indecisiveness leads to a lot of “what ifs.” I’m usually pretty good about sticking with a decision once I’ve made it, and try never to let my mind go down that track of “what if I made a different choice.” BUT…. I’ve got a bad case of the “what ifs” today.

What if we hadn’t chosen to move to TN when we graduated college? Where would we be today? What if I had followed a journalism career instead of a college/”sales” career? What if I had majored in the Classics instead of Journalism? What if I hadn’t chosen to go to Univ of Alabama, but went to Penn instead? Hell, what if my family had never moved to Alabama at all but stayed in Pennsylvania? Or Virginia? Or Mississippi, heaven forbid?

I think the reason I’m so indecisive is because I know that one day in the future, I’m going to be having another “what if” day and I want to be sure that I made the right decisions every step of the way. It puts a lot of pressure on every decision that is made.

I am by no means unhappy with the decisions that I’ve made, and love where each decision has taken me. I’m happy with my life, with all that I have, with where I’m going. This “what if” business doesn’t stem from a lack of contentment.

Rather, I think it stems from my overactive imagination and that writer side of me. Everything I see has a story to it (or I create one for it). When I was a kid, I used to love those “choose your own ending” books. But I could never stick with one ending. I would bookmark every page that had a decision on it, then once I finished the story one way, I’d go back and read it another way. One slightly different decision would change the course of the whole entire book.

The writer side of me still does that from time to time. I look at my own life, at all the big decisions I’ve made to get where I am today, and imagine what would have happened if I had chosen differently.

Yeah, I’m weird.

We went to see the new Indiana Jones movie yesterday. Like the rest of Gen X (and most of the Baby Boomers, too), I was thoroughly excited to go watch this movie. The first three movies (and the Nintendo game) were staples of my childhood, and I’ve watched the Indiana Jones stunt show at DisneyWorld so many times I think I could recite it back to you. I’ve harbored much anticipation for this movie.

I became a little wary after reading a not-so-friendly review earlier this week. I stopped reading midway through the review, chalked it up to one of those movie critics who’s too pompous to know a good movie while watching it, and continued quietly humming the theme song in my head all week.

So we got to the theater yesterday, and the movie starts. My expectations were somewhat dampened by said review, so I was pleasantly surprised. I had no qualms with the CG groundhogs, no complaints about Karen Allen keeping a smile plastered across her face throughout everything, and minimal snorts of disbelief during Shia LeBouf’s uber-corny Tarzan moment.

But, ALIENS? Seriously? I was willing to let everything else slide, to still be a proponent of the new Indiana Jones. But Spielberg ruined a great series the moment that ridiculous spaceship rose out of the ground. Did he not realize that the X-Files movie is coming out just two months from now? I only bargained on seeing one alien movie this summer, and dropping extra-terrestrials into a classic movie series like Indiana Jones is unacceptable. It’s like putting a light saber into James Bond’s hands - totally out of place and trying just a little too hard.

I won’t go so far as to say I’d never watch it again, but I will say I’m disappointed. Sorely disappointed. The theme song in my head is now tainted with some “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” notes. Thanks, but no thanks, Spielberg.