Well, Hello Dolly!

Yesterday, I was talking with my life-long friend Dolly and she said,

"Hey Paula, you should have seen me last night. I wore a cheetah print jacket and felt like a cougar, until I fell off the bar stool and realized I was Lindsey Lohan."

And with that, I realized it was time to write about Dolly.

One of the things you have to understand in order to understand the magnificence of Dolly is that from the time she was a child, she was obnoxiously beautiful. Long wavy blond hair, green eyes like a cat, porcelain skin that never got pimples, and the body of a runway model. She's always reminded me of a character from "The Great Gatsby".

Sometimes, I get the feeling that Dolly found her beauty more of a hindrance than a blessing. Because here's the thing, Dolly is also smart and funny and she's always made me laugh.

Hanging out with Dolly is fun to this day. She is timeless and has always made me feel like I was funny and brilliant. She loves music, and has been to hundreds of live concerts. She is still a party girl, and always open to an adventure, of which, through the years, Dolly has had many. That's why I wanted to introduce you to her, she's got the great stories.

Once, when we were teens, Dolly looks at me and says,

"Hey Paula, let's go camping".

To which I replied "awww, hell noooo....".

See, I've always hated camping. So there, I said it. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was faking that I like camping when I was first dating my ex-husband. That fib haunted me for seventeen years of outdoor living hell.

Back in the day, going down to the Red River Gorge and camping in the primitive was what all my friends were doing. Not me, buddy. You could fall off a cliff, and nature is scary, plus it feels like being poor, which I know because I am poor. To this day, I've never been to Red River Gorge.

I could tell, that on some level, Dolly was going to make me go camping no matter what. She thought she could "convert" me. For her, I thought, what the hell, the party always follows Dolly anyway, and dammit, I love a party.

It's about five pm by the time Dolly has me talked into going camping. We've compromised on starting small, by going to Big Bone Lick, which is closer. Honestly, the name just cracked me up.

Dolly assured me that all we needed was a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and two sleeping bags. She was trying to discredit my "camping is way to much work" defense.

So, off we went, in Dolly's car, heading south at sunset to Big Big Bone Lick. Now, I love a ride in the car, especially because none of my friends drove yet. That was the funnest part. By the time we finally got to the camp ground, it was dark, and everybody else had tents and campers.

There was Dolly and me, and our loaf of white bread and peanut butter, ready to lay out our naked sleeping bags for the night.

I looked at Dolly and said "Oh hell no!"

Dolly looked around, at all the tents and campers, and our two little sleeping bags, shook her head and said "We're out of here. I know a better place."

So we packed up our stuff, you know, loaf of bread, etc. yadda yadda, and got back into the car. Dolly did a u-turn, squealing tires and all, and off we went to the "better place".

Dolly was good, I have to give her that. We ended up at a Holiday Inn, and camped out over night in a hotel room. It was the greatest camping experience of my life.

Lost

Every morning, at 3, give or take, those damn ghosties tickle me awake, and I wander through my psyche, dragging my dreams, and my plans, and my mental blue prints
tucked under my arm like a life jacket that I know will save me.

My psyche is a beautiful old house, with tons of doors, and windows, and stairs. So full of brightly colored choices and opportunities, it bubbles over,
and suddenly I know my focus has left the building, perhaps forever.

Visions are always colored in magic marker, because they are bright and permanent.
Idea's are always colored in pastel, so I can change them and blur their edges.
When the magic marker bleeds through the pastels to the idea, it becomes a vision.

I suspect that no one I've ever met really knew shit
mostly because they didn't know enough to know how little they knew
but that didn't deter most, because then they just lowered the curve.

Therefore; I'll not look to others as a benchmark for what direction is mine.
I'll no longer bend to fit their curve and help defend their broken hearts
I'll follow my own corridors, peeking inside each door, until I find my own way home.

This Was Just a Nightmare. Any resemblance to persons dead or living is strickly a coincidence

Earlier this afternoon, I was sitting at my desk up on the hill, eating some chicken noodle soup. Just as I was taking that last coveted bite, my cell phone rang. The ring statled me and I spilled the soup straight down my clevage. While the warmth of the liqued wasn't so bad, I knew it wouldn't last.

It was Joy on the phone, and she had a question.

"Paula, did you feel an imbalance in the force today?"

Feeling the warmth of the soup turning cold, and congeeling in my bra (by the way, a good bra can hold some soup with leaking)Smelling the congeeling chicken soup puddled in my bra, I immediately said "yes" because while I had no idea what Joy was talking about, I knew that some shit somehwhere was out of whack. Then I asked "Why?"

"Paula", Joy said, "Dark Stain was on campus today!"

"Oh, for the love of God, NO, not Dark Stain!" I screamed in shock "Will he never go away?!"

Let me tell you about Mr. Stain. He is an outside contractor that the technical college hired to manage their Information Technology Services department. He arrived through a Blackhole, which was a consulting firm that techno-phobic companies paid through the nose for to have Blackhole staff and manage their ITS area's.

Dark Stain is actually a very handsome man, with good hair, and a beautiful smile. He likes to think of himself as a renaissance man, an intelligent man, a fair man. Unfortunately, due to the pressure's of hanging on to that multi million dollar contract Blackhole has with the technical college, poor Dark Stain is rotting on the inside, which leads to the worst halitosis I've ever smelled.

Now, it could actually be worse. The technical college could not let Blackhole outsource any of the non-managerial technical staff because the techical staff was smart and organized and were protected by the Union. That caused Dark Stain and Blackhole to loose millions of dollars on the contract, and someone was going to pay.

Needless to say, Dark Stain and all his little middle minions despised the Union, and began to spread the horrid rumors about the character and integrity of those who dwelled in the Union. Dark Stain roamed the halls up on the hill, silky and efeminate, whispering poison into the ear of any Governer that would listen.

Soon, Dark Stain had convinced many that the leader of the Union was lazy, dishonest, greedy and evil. And I'm here to tell you, it's really played well in Peoria. At the height of Dark's reign, my office had been moved to a small closet (no, seriously, it was a real closet) with no desk and 45 watt bulbs. Dark said there were not extra desks to be had, and that I should bring in a floor lamp from home.

Finally, after seven or eight years of living under the well manicured but iron hand of Dark Stain, he finally went away. He plagerized "The Last Lecture" filling in the blanks with what he felt really mattered and didn't matter, and that Unions divided us all. He then went on tour, giving his "Last Lecture" to the Board of Trustee's, the President's cabinet, and at an all department ITS staff meeting.

It was the most nauseating, hypocritical document I've ever been forced to listen to. Then, right at the part where Dark was telling us that it was "our families" that really mattered, the unthinkable happened.

MY CELL PHONE RANG!

When I saw it was one of the J's calling, and after hearing Dark Strain drone on about my screwed up priorities, I decided to finally change my ways, and dammit, I got up and left that meeting and took my child's phone call.

After Darks "Last Lecture" finally ended, the new CIO from Blackwell, Spanky Faker, came straight up to me. I felt really excited, because I thought he cared enough to ask if my kids were ok. So I smiled at him and went to shake his hand, and that's when he said,

"You have no class what-so-ever"

In shock, I replied "Is that suit going to help you be a good CIO?"

Oy vay, not a good start, but hey, Dark Stain was finally gone and the people on the hill had rejoiced. Dark Stain had felt sure that he was revered and loved by all, but the sad truth was that he was a joke with no punchline.

So, today, Dark Stain returned. Please, universe, I beg you, for the love of our technical college, make Blackhole and Dark Stain go away. Now that the Queen of Blackwell Ohio is finally off the board of trustee's of the technical college, we could mange our own stuff. Especially because no one has ever been better at technology than we are, and outsourcing your technical management isn't just wildly expensive, it's bad self-esteem.