if i'm tired, it must be monday...

so today . . . was monday. i hate mondays...

the problem is, i am usually more tired on monday morning than any other day of the week. and this is just wrong! you would think that after having the weekend off, i would feel at least a little bit more rested monday morning than i did friday afternoon. but i don't.

the problem is, my weekends...

i do not have lazy, relaxed weekends. my weekends are busy--spending time with my family, catching up on household stuff, watching the shows i tivoed (is that even a word?!?!) during the week. it seems like there is very little "down" time.

but this last weekend was worse than usual. i had plans to attend the women's retreat for our church. this meant i had to hit the road as soon as i got out of school at noon, if i was going to beat the traffic. which i did.

the word "retreat" sounds restful, but our ladies' retreat weekend never quite seems to achieve that. if i just went, "retreated," and came home, it might be fine. but that isn't what i do...

i left shortly after noon, drove for about an hour, and then planned to stop and eat. every year, i plan to stop and eat after driving for an hour. and every year i miss the exits with food and end up eating a chili dog at the tiny dairy queen at the outlet mall.

but not this year. this year, after i whizzed past the exit i wanted, i decided i would just get off at the next exit and turn around. which i did. and found myself smack dab in the middle of nirvana--a brand new mega towne center!

i was just going to eat lunch and read my book, but before i could find a place with food, i found ulta. and target. and ross. (it is worth mentioning that we have all of these stores within about three miles from our house, so it isn't like these are my favorite stores that i never have the chance to go to. but there is just something about going to familiar stores in a different city...) i finally forced my debit card back into my wallet and went in search of food. i found a chick-fil-a, ordered a kid's meal, and settled in with my book.

the next thing i knew, it was raining.

i had seen the clouds gathering, but it has been so long since i have been in the rain, that i didn't even think about that as a possibility! we have clouds occasionally, but they rarely drop rain on us. it is such an unusual occurrence, that i could have just sat there by the big windows and enjoyed the show... except it was raining on my car... the one i had just taken to the car wash the day before... my nice clean black car...

when your car is black, you look at rain in a whole new way. and wind. and trees. and leaf blowers. they all become the enemy. i knew my car would get dusty on this trip, but rain was nowhere on my radar. i just sat there, helplessly, as my nice clean car got covered in water. and thought about what to do...

i quickly ruled out sneaking paper towels from the bathroom to dry it off. my car is small, but it was very wet! i was pretty sure i could not hide enough paper towels on my person to adequately dry my car. (i know, it is a little unnerving that the thought would even enter my mind!) i thought about driving back to the bed, bath, and beyond store that was just between target and ulta, and buying a big bath towel to soak up all that water. but i was pretty sure that while it might soak up the water, a new towel would probably also leave lint all over it's shiny black surface. i finally settled on target--surely they would carry that sham-wow i keep hearing about...

surely they didn't. but they did have other specially designed car drying towels. i didn't already have a specially designed car drying towel, so i chose one and headed to the cash registers.

by now the sun was shining. the water was starting to dry and leave spots on my car. i needed to put that new drying towel to use fast! but there were so many people in the parking lot... so i drove to the "outskirts" of the parking lot, got out, and started drying off my car--only to realize that what i thought was the outskirts was actually quite near an intersection. i am sure the people who live there were busy tweeting, "there is a crazy woman in the target parking lot drying off her car!!!"

when my car was dry and shiny once again, i continued on down the freeway to the retreat center. and the weekend progressed from there. i ate. i listened to a really good speaker. i napped. i went in search of a soda (and also found chocolate cake!) i ate and listened some more. and on saturday night i headed home.

sunday was as busy as usual, with the addition of unpacking to do. then there were lesson plans to finish up, and facebook games to check in on, and blogs to read...

and then it was monday morning. again. now i have a whole week to recuperate before facing another weekend...

a retreat?!?!?!

so today . . . i am not home, i am at murrieta hot springs for women's retreat. i am actually writing this on thursday night and scheduling it to post on friday, because i am pretty sure i will not have internet access all weekend! but my blogging has been somewhat sporadic lately, between battling evil viruses and feeling cranky instead of funny, and i didn't want you to go all weekend without any new posts. however, since i am writing this on thursday night, i don't know what will happen to me over the weekend, so what to write, what to write . . . i thought about making something up, but then i remembered about last year . . .

usually women's retreat is fairly uneventful for me. i work friday morning, eat lunch with rollie, sit in bumper to bumper weekend traffic for three hours (to make a one hour trip,) arrive at the retreat location, stay there all weekend, and come home on sunday afternoon. and then my weekend is gone. because although we call it a retreat, i usually come home more tired than when i left. while most people think of a retreat as being in a quiet, secluded place where lots of resting and relaxing happen, that has not been my experience. it seems like most of the "retreats" i attend are not restful at all. actually, it would be much more restful for me to stay home . . . but i digress . . .

anyway, last year was not restful (as usual,) but it was eventful. and i blogged about it the following tuesday, on october 7, 2008. here's what happened...

so, this weekend was our church's annual women's retreat. while i am not much of a "let's get all the girls together" kind of person, i usually enjoy it once i get there. this year, however, there were a few bumps in the road on my way to a fun weekend.

it started off great! beautiful weather, a chance for a road trip in my convertible, loud music on the stereo, and leaving early enough to avoid most of the traffic (my usual lunch with rollie being sacrificed on the altar of a quick trip.) my plan was to eat after i got past corona and most of the traffic--i had my book and i figured i could spend a while eating, and reading, and refilling my soda cup. then i would head on down the freeway a few miles and spend some more time at the outlet mall before arriving at the retreat center in time for dinner. it was a perfect plan!

and then i missed the exit--the one with all the food places . . .

it is a little hard to exit when you are zooming along in the far left lane, which is where i was.

ok, plan b. i will just eat at the dairy queen at the outlet mall. but then i almost missed that exit too! either i needed to slow down or start driving in the right hand lane where all the exits were! (when you only go someplace once a year, i guess you kind of forget where things are . . . ) thankfully the traffic was light, so i just quickly cut across three lanes of traffic and made it off the exit at the outlet mall.

ok, mission accomplished. i ate at the dairy queen, but without my book, because i didn't want to schlep it around all afternoon. so lunch wasn't quite as relaxing as i had pictured, but the cheeseburger was still good and there was still shopping to be done!

and then it happened. for the first time EVER, i did not find anything to buy at the gap! nothing!! the gap is my go-to store at this outlet mall--i ALWAYS find great stuff there at ridiculously low prices. always. so it was a little disorienting, but i soldiered on and did have some success at old navy and the guess store. still, nothing from the gap--this was not an auspicious beginning . . .

i checked in at the retreat, unloaded my car, had dinner and went to our evening session--all good. but before i went to bed, i decided to go out and get the new jeans i purchased at old navy to wear the next day. and guess what i found? my car battery was dead!!!

now my car is only two years old, so i'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around this, but it is the only explanation i can come up with for why the beeper won't unlock the car. so i went back inside to get ready for bed, without my new jeans, and wondering about my car . . .

the next morning my alarm didn't go off, as i had set it for sunday not saturday, so i got a bit of a late start but still managed to make it to breakfast. and then our morning session began. i saw someone without a chair, and since i don't mind sitting on the floor, i picked up my chair to offer it to them. and managed to tip over my diet soda onto the carpet in the process. i rushed to the ladies room to get paper towels to clean up the spill, but the dispenser didn't work. so i knocked on the men's room door, and when i got no response, i bravely entered and retrieved a handful of paper towels. of course by now most of the soda had soaked deep into the carpeting, but i did the best i could (thank goodness for dark carpets!)

i finally settled down on the floor at the back of the room to listen to the speaker. she was very good by the way (but she had these really cool glasses on that kept distracting me!) pretty soon i was not feeling too good--i got really hot and sweaty and thought "i should probably go to the bathroom now" which i did. and i got sick! and it wasn't fun! i finally came out and laid down on the stone wall outside the building we were in and waited for someone to help me back to my room. there was no way i was going to get there under my own power. and the cold stone of the wall felt so cool to my hot head . . . soon someone realized i had gone missing and came and found me nearly asleep on the wall. security was called, and they came and rescued me. in a golf cart.

a few hours later i was feeling better, which was good, because i still had my dead car to deal with. fortunately we have AAA so i called them, and they said a truck would be there within the hour. fifty-five minutes later the truck arrived. he checked the battery. he jump started the battery, and then he checked it again. the car was running, but he informed me that it wasn't charging and if we shut it off, it probably would not restart. i needed a new battery! luckily he had a battery that would work, and he would be glad to install it for me. so i pulled out the plastic and soon my car was running again.

i went back inside and took a nap.

i managed to eat dinner without incident and made it through the whole evening session without getting sick. thank goodness.

then it was time for me to go home--i was leaving early because i have responsibilities on sunday morning. i'd been looking forward to the trip home, as i really enjoy driving my car at night with the top down. but guess what? it had been raining! the ground was wet and the air felt damp. and it was dark and i couldn't tell if there were clouds in the sky or if it would rain some more. so i got in my car, cranked up the heat, stopped for a giant soda and headed home.

i kind of think i've retreated enough for one weekend.

let's hope that this year is less interesting . . .