I'M BACK AND IN A BIG WAY.

I know you have missed me in a way that you can only miss baseball during the cold, long winter months. However, since spring training is back, so am I.

I had a dream this weekend. It was a good dream. I am not providing details, but the following story played a big part in the dream. It is a true story and happened when I was 14-15, in my kitchen in Keystone, Colorado. And here it is:

I was in the kitchen with my cousin, Tim, same age as me and his neighbor, Mark, one year older. I had the biggest crush on Mark and in fact, dated him off and on until I was well into my 20s. That of course, is another story. Anyway, I have been skiing since I was about 2 years old. My parents worked at A-basin, one of the oldest ski areas in that area, and our house was a couple miles away from Keystone (built in 1970), so I was pretty good on the boards.

Mark, male chauvinist that he was (is), made a comment about me not being as good as a guy skiing (he had never seen me ski as we had met sometime the summer of 1974). My cousin and I strongly disagreed with that statement and proceeded to let him know that. Now here is the part of the story that was in the dream.

I made the comment that I could pretty much do anything a guy could do with the exception of writing (peeing) my name in the snow. My real name is Kelli. There are a lot of loopy letters in that name and my cousin, Tim, proceeded to demonstrate how it would be possible to write my name in the snow. Picture a 14/15 year old boy, crouched down like a crab, moving sideways, trying to recreate "KELLI" in cursive writing, peeing in the snow (There was no actual demonstration IN the snow--the kitchen was funny enough). We were all crying because we were laughing so hard--weak, I tell you.

After Tim finished the demonstration, I looked at him and said "It's a real bitch to dot the "I"", which put us all on the floor.

In the dream--the person I was telling the story too, ended up laughing so hard he was crying, which of course, made me feel good. It's strange how things from the past have come up recently. Writing your name in the snow, phone calls from people you haven't talked to in for damn near ever, dead mice in the garage . . .

And if you feel that you are having a sucky day--just remember--it's a bitch to dot the "I".

I HATE BEING SICK!! Especially with a stomach virus. Those of you who have a sensitive gag reflex should just stop reading now. Really, I mean it. Okay, don't read one more word. Srsly. You've been warned.

The thing about the stomach virus--you don't get any warning. You go to bed on Saturday night and Sunday you wake up reeling around like you don't know how to walk. You think you got too much sleep or not enough sleep, so you walk the dogs and get home and eat breakfast. Every time you move, the room starts spinning and then BAM. You realize that you are indeed about to puke. And even though you can't walk because the room is spinning, you realize that you better hurry your ass up to the bathroom. The good thing about the bathroom is that while you are sitting on the floor, you realize that it is cool in there. Which is good because you are sweating profusely. And then you realize that your day has just gone to hell. Because you will spend the next 7 hours running from the couch to the bathroom, all at a drunk angle because you've got the motion sickness from hell.

I could not lay down because the room would spin and when another round was starting up, the room spun more. I swear, I don't know how I kept from passing out. The only way I could sleep was to sit on the couch and prop a bunch of pillows to the side of me. I kind of leaned over and could sleep for 20 minutes or so. I could have handled the volcano puking--it was the motion sickness that was killing me. I still can't lay on my right side to sleep. It's getting better during the waking hours (today is the 4th day), but not so much when I sleep. I finally got some motion sickness meds, but if this doesn't go away by tomorrow, I'll need to get the prescription strength. My doc is already aware that I wanted to die this weekend and she assures me that this has been going around and that indeed the dizzy thing is one of the main complaints.

So while I'm feeling all sorry for myself because I feel like shit, I get an email from my pal Tony. He has been sick himself and the doctors cannot figure out what is wrong with him. They do have it narrowed down to mono or lyme disease. Tony told me that he was approaching it like it was "myme" disease. It sucks like mimes and no one can figure out what the hell they are doing so they can't treat it.

I swear, he killed me dead with that comment. I wish I was half as funny.

Srsly? Clay Aiken gay? What dumbass did NOT know that 3-4 years ago?

For those who have emailed me--YES I AM WORKING ON SCANNING PICTURES. NO, you will not be sorry. One thing that I am horribly sad about--I do not have a picture of the blue unitard with leg warmers used at the Richard Simmons Anatomy Asylum in the early 80s. Complete with Richard Simmons Afro-y frizzy hair.

well, i'm not REALLY sorry about it because it was so awful that I'm glad I do not have pictorial evidence.

Yes I know it's been awhile since I updated. However--I got a scanner a couple weeks ago and you know what THAT means?! Yes, I'll be mocking myself in all those stunning fashions of the 60s and 70s and all those FANTASTIC hair styles over the years. Along with me minus teeth, me plus braces and other mockable traits.

In the meantime--one of my friends made a comment that I am just SURE is a compliment. I was telling her about the whore and how said whore is about to take the hugest professional nose dive ever. yes I know hugest isn't a word but just stay with me. She looked at me and said I love how you just back door all this information and when it explodes, you just sit back with a smug look on your face and say--hmmm, don't say I didn't tell you months ago. That's me--Queen of Smugness and I wear it well.

Stay tuned, I'm going to be scanning this weekend and it takes awhile to upload to photobucket, but it will be quite fun. I'm just sure of it.

The WHOO HOOO of it all. I'll admit it--I whoo hoo occasionally. Most of the time it has a sarcastic note to it and it's really never the WHOOOOOHOOOOO rebel yell type thing. It's like the tah dah I taught my niece when she was learning to walk--very quick and to the point and sometimes, most of the time in a conversational tone.

Well, I found myself in whooo hoo hell. minus the hoooo. I signed up for Jazzercise. Mock me if you will, but it has been hotter than hell in my house (where my work out equipment resides) and I thought that it was better than dealing with the Curves nazis on a daily or every other day basis. I do not much care for the exercise whoooo'ers. Denise Austin makes me want to stab a fork through my brain with all her g.d. whooo'ing. "That's right! Feel the burn! WHOOO!" and multiply that by an hour and you get every exercise routine Denise ever did.

Now the thing about Jazzercise--I have great rhythm (SP? and I know it's not spelled right, but I'm too damn lazy to get up and look it up, but wait--there is a spell check button on Blogger so I will fix it later) and I am a great dancer, but for the life of me--they do a bunch of complicated shit right in the middle of something and it's always off beat so while everyone is going right, I'm going left. I just blame it on being uncoordinated. Okay--so I go to the first class and right off, the instructor starts whoooo'ing randomly. Then she starts "Okay, Left side of the room WHOOO. Right side of the room!!! Jackie!(jackie whoo's) BALLLZ--dead silence. Then she does it again--BALLZ BY HERSELF! whoo And if I could figure out how to make that any smaller, I would. The whole effing class--whooing. for an hour. For the love of GOD people, save your whoo's for something special--Jazzercise is not it. So the entire class consisted of me turning the wrong way and refusing to whoo. All while sweating profusely.

I will say this--the people there were much nicer than the Curves nazis. And the second night? The instructor was NOT a whoo'er. WHOOOO!

WELL, THERE YOU GO.

I was at my friend's house yesterday, getting my hairs done (she does my hair in her kitchen so I don't have to drive to her salon) and the conversation gravitated as it always does to our social (read--dating) lives. She is about 6 years younger than I am and yet--we have the same issues. She told me yesterday that she was tired of dating guys with combovers and guys who were 'old'. I told her--Hey! I'm old! She said oh no you are not. You at least get off the couch and play softball or take your dogs for a walk. I'm talking about guys our age that act like they are two steps away from dying. So she told me about her latest blind date. They met at a bar for a drink and he proceeded to have 5. That would have been a big red flag to me. Especially on a meet and greet. I do have to give her props though--she told him at the "goodbye" that she didn't think they had much in common, but thanks for the drink and good luck.

I wish guys would do that--I'm kind of particular--weeding out any guy that has a "wife beater" on in their profile picture or lives um IN WYOMING. More about that later. But dude, seriously? Don't say--hey, I'll give you a call and we'll go out on Saturday. Because it's just in bad form and it shows my balls are bigger than yours, because if I'm not interested, I'm going to just come out and tell you.

The Wyoming guy sends me an email and says "I just got back from Orlando and I just hated it. There were too many people and it was too hot and I'm so glad to be back home. I've decided that a bad day in Wyoming beats a great day in Orlando". This was his first email to me. I responded 'Dear Wyoming guy--Thanks for the weather report! I'm headed to Disney World!" I did not hear from him again. Oh and there was the 400 pounder whose picture showed him shoving a sammich in his face. This is on the fitness site. All I can do is wonder HOW he got there.

So I think I'll stick with Hottie McHotterson or the Triathlete for awhile. Because living in Hottieville is better than ANY day in Wyoming--good or bad.

WE ALL KNOW GOD DOESN'T LIKE EITHER DUMBASSERY OR ASSHOLERY, but now I strongly suspect he doesn't like whiners or poor sports either. Even when it's His own. Case in point--I play softball on Sunday. The league I am in is mostly church teams. We were neck and neck with one of said church teams all season. I thought they had pretty much locked up 1st place because we had lost 3 games and they had only lost 2 (both to us).

I get to the field last night for the last game of the season and was told that they were losing and if they lost and we won, we would win the league because we had beat them twice and they had only beat us once. Plus--we had more points scored than they did (our second tie breaker). Then, the league director told us that the team we were supposed to be playing didn't have enough players and that they would forfeit unless we let them pick up players not on their roster. This is normally frowned upon for a game that decides the championship, but we said oh hell yes we'll let them play. So the church team lost and immediately filed a protest over some stupid shit (players didn't have a team jersey--which is not required in this league). This team bitched all season long. They bitched about the umpires not calling strikes, they bitched about plays, they bitched about us having an all guy outfield and the umpire said "What about the all-girl INFIELD that they have? You gonna complain about that too?" They really just never shut up.

So we take the field, we're the visiting team and we score 2 runs. Then the other team bats and scores 3 runs and it wasn't even that close. our defense SUCKED the first inning. As we finally got the last out, one of our players said-we just need to settle. We're way over stimulated. The second inning wasn't any better. But finally in the 4th, our bats got started (not mine--Mine was hot from the get go--3 for 4 and the one I didn't get was to left instead of right. If I would have stuck with what I know works, I'd have batted 1000.) Our defense got going too--I made the spectacular boob catch. A throw came in from the outfield and it was low and I scooped it and jammed it into my chest to get control and got the out.

I made the comment that I didn't know WHY we had to wait until the 5th inning to get a good lead and couldn't we just do it sooner? The reply was NO--then it wouldn't be us. It was the last inning and the other team had the bases loaded and time was expired. One of their big guys was up and put a hit to the shortstop. She fielded it on a one hop and I was at second waiting. She threw to me and it was the last out.

The director told me that it was an exciting finish to the season and that we had earned first place. We could have taken the chicken shit way out by accepting the forfeit, but we played, knowing the risk--if we lost, we would have lost the championship. And she's right--we earned it. It was an exciting game and the final score was 9-5--us. And just to pee on our parade, the church team filed a protest that we did not all have team shirts and we let the other team pick up players. It is now proven that GOD doesn't like Whiners, so maybe instead of praying on the field after the game, the church team should be like us and have a moment in the dugout before the game.

Please God, don't let us suck. Amen.