Girls Girls Girls

Have you ever thought of how many songs there are with 'girls' in the title?  I like two by Rick Springfield (sure, show my age):  Jessie's Girl and Calling All Girls.  Then there is Diamond Girl by Seals and Croft, Sedaka's Calendar Girl, Cowgirls Don't Cry, Crazy Girl,  California Girls, (I'm a) Girl Watcher, Girl You Know It's True (Milli Vanilli ain't really singing that), Fat-Bottomed Girls (possibly the best just because I got one) Forever Your Girl (don't really miss you Paula; I got J-Lo on that show now), My Girl (I got sunshine on a rainy day), Material Girl, Uptown Girl, The  Happiest Girl in the whole USA, and Charlie Rich:  (Hey - did you happen to see) The Most Beautiful Girl in the World (and if you did, was she crying?).

I could go on for the next 17 blogs just naming songs, listing them.  My point is girls are celebrated in music.

My girls made it home.  Yes, they are almost 21 (August 20, 1990) and 22.5 years old, and their friend, whom we jokingly refer to as my other daughter, is 23.  She is here from Hot Springs, Arkansas, for a month.  They did not invite me to their weekend jaunt and that set off the alarm bells.  Here's a song:  Girls Just Want to Have Fun.  It crossed my mind, because I teach about 88 college students every semester and know what devious manipulations they are capable of, to wonder what the girls were really going to do in Pitt.

They rented a car, with my insurance policy, so I did worry it would involve alcohol, an unfamiliar area to navigate, darkness.  But the car came home intact and is back at Enterprise already.  I think judging by the bags that came into the house, there was no time for strange boys because they hit every store in two malls and three Targets.  (sidenote:  I got presents, one of which was a green bistro toaster from Target marked down, you got that right, 75%, from 59.99 to 16 some odd something, woo hoo - and three "tablets" of Lady Godiva chocolate _not marked down_, a heart card from the Warhol Museum, and some chandelier style earrings with green and purple stones, my favorite color combination.)  So, if they had a boy planned into their schedule, he was a shopper.

Ergo, no boy.  But they did come home with more holes in their head via a piercing shop.  Frankly, I love pierced ears and my mother did mine when I was ten without me asking her.  If you've seen the movie "My Girl" (which also has that song) you saw Vada Sultenfuss get her ears pierced the exact same year I did!

But I don't want any extra holes.  However, all things considered, it was a pretty good weekend.  Carly, who was the other listed driver of the rental car, sits on the recliner and says, "I'm tired.  I feel kind of like a mom.  I had to drive and navigate and plan everything."

There is poetic justice in the world.

I just smiled.

I am thinking about girls because too many people don't think about them.  I mentioned Casey Anthony in yesterday's blog.  I don't think the jury really had enough evidence to convict, but that is no justice for a little girl.  Like there was no justice for Jasmine Archie (google that if you can stand it) or for a childhood friend of mine named Regina.  I have googled everything I can remember about her, but without last names, I can't find anything from 1972.  I still remember my mother calling me inside and telling me to sit down.  Her voice petrified me.  Then she told me that Regina's new step father raped and murdered her two days before.

My first brush with crime.  And if you start with Eve, girls have always been exploited, seduced, lied to, abused, killed.

They start out so beautiful.  I am sunburned right now from sitting in the Wal-Mart parking lot again selling more Sheetz coupon booklets.  And sitting in a Wal-Mart parking lot for three hours will show you all the humanity you can stand.  A woman about my age with twin boys about four wailed the tar out of one of them, and then told him and his brother to get into the car and she did not want to hear another word out of him and he said, "yes ma'am."

Somehow that hurt me worse than if he had yelled no, I hate you.

I thank Jehovah everyday for my life and for yours.  But I also ask everyday that I can live through another one and not crack up from a broken heart.

After the meeting, I dashed into Sheetz to get the paper (and hence the coupons) for Carly.  Brother Varmecky was in there from East Hills.  He asked how my girls were, said to give them his warm regards.  When we were in EH, he would send them postcards from his vacations.  He always talked to them at the hall.  He is trying to get to their hearts and I don't know how well he did, but he sure got to mine. 

And, there are beautiful girls to help me through.  Today, Nancy came into the hall in bright pink.  Bip Sue was dressed like a Barbie doll, in a swing simple dress with lovely beads and these maroon shoes, ooh lala, upswept hair, the epitome of elegant chic.  Then there was Paula in this green scoop neck blouse with rosettes around the neckline.  If I could have made it fit something besides my thigh, I might have tried to talk her out of it.

Addie was wearing a black and white print dress with green geometric-roundish prints dashed on it.  My office is green, white and black and so is most of my house.  My bathroom is green/white/tan and my bedroom is green/purple.  Paula dresses Addie the way I dressed the girls when they were little only I was into the chunky sizes.  When the girls were very small, toddlers to preschoolers, we were in a congregation where all the other little girls had pageant-style dresses.  I could not afford them and I remember Carly going up to one of the little girls with bells on her lavender tulle underskirt (literally, it used to annoy the WT conductor when they rustled, as we had one of those brothers who could cut his eyes and communicate more effectively with his expression than with words) in awe and I felt like slime because no matter how much she admired those clothes, we were not going to have them.

Addie is always dressed like a real girl.  Stylish, tasteful, not too old and not babyish.  And we have another baby girl, although Keiara is now a toddler, and she was decked out in polka-dots today.  Yes, we have little boys at our hall.  I just notice girls.

Every year when someone with an earlier DC tells me the new releases, because I have no patience and I ask, I always hold my breath for a book just for sisters.  Just for girls.  Then I think well, that is okay.  The WT Library on my computer lets me look up more information on girls than I can get read, and I confess, I am still on Estonia in the new Yearbook and thankfully I got both brochures from the DC done, haha.  Whew.

I was wearing a skirt Beverly gave me here in Pennsylvania and earrings Pepper gave me back in Arkansas.  Dana was wearing a skirt from Carly and Heather and Matt were wearing golden/yellow.  She dresses him to match, just like her mother dresses her father, or I guess I would not notice.

Matt has a twin named Nathan.  Nathan is Kieara's father.  When we went to our first meeting in Windber, there was also their older brother Michael who resembles them very closely.  When we were going home, I told the girls that there were a set of twin brothers there, and Carly responded, "Oh, that's wonderful.  I thought he just went and changed his tie to mess with my head."

And my friend Becky, in Saipan, is probably finished with the DC by now, way finished because she is over the International Date Line somehow.  The first time I read Sula by Toni Morrison, there is a line in the book where Nell remembers Sula and wishes she had spent more time with her as an adult.  She thinks:  We were girls together.  

That's how I feel about Becky.  I'm more Sula with the crazy life and she is more Nell with the normal family, but still, we were girls together.

Sometimes I feel like Jehovah's loving kindness is not for me, that I am just not good enough, can never be good enough, because at least every week some bad word slips through my mind and/or out my mouth, and even this morning I cut off the alarm and contemplated staying in bed and missing the meeting.  I did not sleep well, and wanted to keep trying.  Still on Estonia in the YB, have not done more than glance at the new YPA book, have papers to grade tomorrow and no time to do much else, and I must be a bad mom because the girls believe this is the truth but they have not gotten serious about it, not enough, and that is breaking my heart and even my mother didn't like me.  Then I look at a picture of myself when I was five.  I know I am five because I have baby teeth in it.  I am holding an umbrella for a prop and have two long ponytails and rickrack trim on my dress.  The picture is in my closet, an 18x24 my mother gave me because she didn't want it anymore.  And I'm a cute little kid.  Chunky, but nothing wrong with me that I can see.  And that is why I keep trying and I can't give up.  I know Satan wants to add my name to the list of "tauntees."  And I know Jehovah wants that little girl to get life and love Him, and that picture is me when I was a little girl.