Friends?????

I have been MIA...Miss me? 
Sure ya did. 
Please allow me to explain. Work picked up quite a bit for me, and I was given a marketing assignment with a deadline and since I hate marketing that took a lot of time but now I am back and hopefully I can stay back.
Just as I have neglected my blog apparently I have neglected my friends as well. I know that a while ago I posted about how I had very few friends and liked it that way. Well that changed. See, a new girl started on my job a couple months ago and really pursued being friends with me. She was so nice and so persistent that I decided what the hell? She is the type of person that stays out of her house ALL day into the night. She gets the kids out early and they do not return home until bedtime. Me,,,I love being at home but upon her insistence that I was "missing out on life" I decided to try her lifestyle out for a while. And just like her and with her I stayed going, going, going. Pretty much for an entire month. Every day. It was work then gym and then pool. Weekends were full of pool parties and barbecues. All fun stuff but meanwhile my home was neglected........

An accurate pic of what my home looked like while I tried living in the moment.

my kids never ate so much bbq and sandwich meat. We ran outta clean socks, the linens rarely got changed, I was way behind on my TV shows and my blogging and I was dead tired.

Finally I decided enough was enough and pulled back. No more hanging out til bedtime for me and my kids. No more pool 6 days a week, no more anything . I stopped cold turkey because seriously I was living someone else life. I am a scheduled-stay-at-homer. I enjoy life but do not have a "zest" for it. I have no desire to "make every minute count". That is just not me! I'm not an an adventurous type that lives in the moment. In my defense I work full time and have four kids. None of my friends have that load on them. But boy when I stopped hanging out it caused controversy. The friends I had been hanging out with took it personally and even after I explained that I just don't enjoy being out every night it did not seem to help. Add to that the fact that one of my dear friends from the past that had moved out of state returned and wanted to spend all her time with me in the middle of me taking my life back.
At least daily I would get 10 calls/texts from a group of 4 women wondering when I would have time to hang out? Or how come I'm not at the pool? Or when can we go walking? How about breakfast? After I declined every offer the unannounced visits to my home started . And boy let me tell ya I hate unannounced visitors to my home! Despise them! Would rather die than have someone bust by unannounced. If you call me and I don't answer either I'm busy or do not want to be bothered! Ugggghh!!!
I try so hard to be nice, but damn.
So anyhoo I have some stories for y'all about all these "friends " of mine and the complications but won't try to put them all here in this post. In addition to that I have been to the urologist and that too is a post :) And of course an update on David and kiddy stories so trust me I got the goods I just need to have time to post them. 
Just wanted people to know I was still around and ask does anyone else hate friends as much as me? Okay I don't hate them but does anyone else feel friendships are more a hassle then anything else? Or do I just have needy friends? Why do I feel like friends are another chore on my to do list? I have fun with them when I'm with them for the most part but it just never seems to be enough.  Or am I just damn mean?

Napping Time At The Zoo?

So this past weekend the family set out for the NC Zoo. Well, minus one kid who had other plans. We arrived at the zoo and all was well. Everyone was excited and the weather was just cold enough that we wouldn't get hot walking. For the first hour everyone, including me, was running from exhibit to exhibit marveling in every creature. 

About an hour in, the excitement faded but we we still doing well. Three hours in. We had hiked 2.5 miles and we were hungry and thirsty. We stopped at a drink machine and water was $3! Oh hell naw! We got one to share and headed back to our car to fetch the cooler and have some lunch. Looong way back to the car. By the time we got there and set up our picnic we were famished. As I begun to set out the food I realized that I had forgotten the main course, the sandwiches. WTF? I tried to encourage the kids to enjoy the lovely snacks but they were pissed. It didn't help that the table next to us had Domino's delivered and had about 10 pizzas. We ate whatever snacks we could and then headed into the zoo caffe where we spent $30 on PB & J sandwiches and hot pretzels. 
Part two of the zoo expedition was a bit more difficult. We were now tired and for some reason we had somehow picked to travel the zoo on the paths that all went uphill. This was very difficult for us all because we had been walking for hours already. In this particular section of the zoo each exhibit is about an 8 minute walk between animals. So here's how the next 3 hours played out. Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk....almost to the lion...walk, walk. At the lion...oh he's asleep. Damn. Next up the rhinos. walk, walk, walk, walk walk...almost there, walk walk,, rhinos are asleep. Damn. Onto the bears....walk, walk, walk,walk,,walk, walk,,almost to the bears, walk, walk, walk complain, bitch , moan, walk, complain... bears are asleep. This repeated for all the major animals that we really wanted to see, polar bears, penguins etc. Now the birds were all awake, and so were the turtles, and the frogs. But all the big guns were napping. So we walked miles to view large animals asleep in a cave. Here's a few pics of the awake animals:










 Good times.  At the last exhibit, the Sonora Desert an animal shitted in my hair. This building was so packed you could barely move so how did that animal get me so perfectly? Dunno. 
I felt something land on my head and thought it was water dripping from the pants. I reached up to feel it and pulled my hand down covered in shit. I began to laugh, hysterically, until I broke down and cried, yes cried, in front of about 60 people. My kids were asking "what's wrong?" "what's wrong" but I couldn't stop laughing/crying long enough to explain. I'm a bit unstable apparently.
An hour prior to closing we lined up to catch a tram back to our car. Apparently so did the entire zoo so the promised 5 minute wait between trams turned into a 35 minute wait. 35 minutes full of people in line complaining. What a perfect way to end the day.
 Anyway we made it back safe and exhausted. But I doubt we will be doing that anytime soon.