My life is a Reba video

This song was released in 1991, which was my senior year. Seeing as how I used to have GIGANTIC Reba hair, it goes without saying that I was a Reba fan back when she had a last name. I used to tear up when I'd watch the video, but now I bawl like a baby. I think I just needed a good cathartic cry today and man, did I get it when I watched the video. Twice.

Little did I know that in just 16 years after its release, this video would pretty much be like putting a video camera in my life for a week or so.

There are lots of similarities and a few differences, though:

Of course, my husband wouldn't call me as I was leaving my busy job at a cafe, he'd call me on my cell phone at my busy job at DHS. Or my other busy job at the college. And chances are, the school would call me first anyway.

I know exactly the emotion she portrays when she walks past the cute young thang in a tight skirt and looks down at her own jeans and "mom" shirt and wonders when she started looking so frumpy. And when did I become so old?

I know what it likes to have the instructor call you out in class by your last name. However, when he hollered out, "Hoover! What's the answer?" I didn't come back with a correct answer - I simply blurted out after a few seconds of silence with "I have no freakin' idea."

I, too, literally turn out the lone desk lamp long after the rest of my family is asleep, however usually Paul is asleep on the couch because the lone desk lamp is here in my office, which is part of our bedroom. He can handle the light, it's the perpetual pecking of the keyboard that drives him batty. If he has happened to make it to the bed, I slide into that bed as carefully as I can - I'm not like Reba who actually wanted to wake her husband up. By the time I slide quietly into bed it's usually 2 or 3am and no way am I puttin' out at that hour.

Last week, Paul and TotOne had brought their usual banter out here to my office for some reason. At that same time, Abby was checking her email on the desktop next to me and Kady was in the floor coloring. Paul and TotOne managed to knock over an entire pile of precariously stacked papers in what I call "my elaborate filing system" and as I sighed heavily and bent over to pick them up I thought of Reba in this video and got a serious case of the giggles right after I blurted out, "I don't need anymore accidents in my life!" Paul and the kids all stopped and looked at me like I was insane.

My husband hasn't had to use a hair dryer to dry a soggy research paper, but he has cleaned soggy, rotting mouse out from under our refrigerator - and he did not use a hair dryer, he used a Wal*Mart sack. In my opinion, that totally trumps the job Huey Lewis undertook in the video.

I have fallen asleep while my daughter has read to me. I feel horrible when I do it, but it's literally the only time I am not sitting at my desk typing or writing or cursing wildly and well, I am up till 2am every morning and up again at 5:45. I'm kinda tired lately. Hearing Kady read about Nat the fat cat sitting on a mat while Dan and Jan bat in a hat is strangely relaxing to me these days.

I have yet to have an instructor tell me I have a "remarkable grasp of the subject" because well, for one thing the one class where I actually see an instructor, I don't have a grasp - remarkable or otherwise - on the subject. Last semester, though, the newspaper advisor told me I had "true, honest talent" for writing. So I'll take that as close.

And while Huey Lewis is a fine lookin' man, my husband is way cuter. And he smells good. And he kisses my forehead if he leaves for work and I'm still in bed. He takes care of the kids on "Pizza Thursday" while I'm in class (They have literally eaten frozen pizzas every Thursday night since the semester started) and he makes sure they read out loud, practice sight and spelling words, brush their teeth and don't fight too much. He also took them for four hours yesterday so I could work on a paper.

Huey Lewis and Reba have nothin' on us.