Category Archives: Life

A weekend in pictures


Friday night: after a week that was not necessarily as frazzling as last week, but included the extra special ingredient that was a Mon-Fri off and on (mostly on) hormonal series of head/shoulder/neck/sinus aches so…yeah…it sort of didn’t matter that I only had one football meeting to go to (which was actually quite good and productive)…all that dominate my sense of each day was how miserable I was. Grumpy and just working extra hard to keep my wits about it – which I did – but then I would be so so tired. Therefore, Friday night all I wanted to do was sit on the sofa and watch all the shows that had piled up on the DVR. And I did. From 6-11. Me, the cats and the remote.

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Saturday I woke up pain free and HAPPY! Oh yeah! I went to a boot camp and was thrilled to be able to do all the exercises with 100% effort. Then I had a meeting to learn about a new writing assignment for a local client, then I got home and wrote for Blogmutt to clear those off my agenda so I could write for the new client today. My goal was to write two posts, but I swear I was so amped up from feeling GOOD that I was able to knock out three and still have 30 minutes to spare! In a week when I would have been happy to sell 5 posts, instead I sold 7 ensuring another tank of gas will be funded by Blogmutt:

Blogmutt screen shot

When my posts sell next week, I’ll hit level 5 in points and earn a Linkedin badge – which is pretty cool because it means more exposure to my freelance writing availability and credentials.

The main event this weekend was a neighborhood pizza party at a house across the street. There, we hung out in a yard that is smaller than mine but 1000 times more functional! The owner put in a completely functional kitchen/grill and pizza oven in one corner and a gorgeous fireplace in the other. He picked up raw pizza dough from a local restaurant and let us choose our toppings. It was so much fun and so yummy! The collage below is from the party – disclaimer – the beer bottle was empty! Seriously :)

Pizza Party

I managed to pull myself away at a decent hour and still get up early enough to join Renee for a run out on the switchback trails again. My first time tackling those hills since my IT band has calmed down. I am thrilled to discover that not only could I do the run without issue, but now several hours later after some decent sofa time, it is still totally fine. Hopefully that means I can increase my mileage again…slowly!

View from the top out over the Santa Fe Valley:

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I hope your weekend refreshed you in the same way mine has.

How to make chore day fun! (Cats help.)


During this recent deep dive into work related tasks with an aggressive deadline, I relied heavily on the old fashioned To Do lists. Mine looked like this 6 of out 7 days a week (I took Sundays off):

Lease

Other regular work task

Lease

Other regular work task

Lease

Household chore

etc etc etc

It worked beautifully because I not only didn’t fall behind on anything at home, but I even finished extracting leases with a solid week to spare.

So, I kept up with the lists this week only they didn’t have to be so packed. Still, I want to keep Sundays as off days, even from home related chores so today I tackled my entire cleaning and running around list and even managed to squeeze in that hill repeat run today. It was not without some adventure though.

On outing #1 for the day, I brought my mini-post it list of places to visit so that I didn’t forget anything. On stop #3, I had my first unexpected moment of funny.

I was at the vets office picking up some hairball treatment for miss Amber who has been barfing multicolored piles for the last week and a half. I think the worst of it is over (at least I hope so because that last one was GINORMOUS) but finally I appealed to the vet for help and picked up some sort of goo that I was able to sneak into her tuna tonight and which they say works perfectly for their equally long haired office cat.

Speaking of the office cat…while I was talking to the one vet assistant and paying for the goo and some of Chip’s bladder friendly food, the other assistant was up to no good. I saw her fussing around with the cat and then the next thing I know she is giggling helplessly as the cat gets away and hops onto the counter where I am standing. He turns his head and gives me the classic cat version of “LOOK at what she DID to me!”

And there he sat with a label on his forehead that read “Spicoli” – his name of course. Yup, she had printed off a label and properly marked the office cat. I couldn’t stop giggling at the sight either and frankly I am not sure how we finished running the payment transaction properly of how I managed to not leave anything behind as I walked out. He just sat there, trying to maintain some dignity and failing miserably.

Stop #4 was lunch at Rubios. I allowed myself some time to sit there and eat and read twitter on my phone which turned out to ALMOST be a huge mistake. You see, when I was done eating I got up to refill my drink and then walked right out the door – and left my phone sitting on the table! Years of having a phone and I’ve never done anything like that. And? I didn’t notice until I had been home for 15-20 minutes!!

Then I had the longest, slowest drive ever back to Rubios of course – people cutting me off, driving super slow, clearly confused about their own routes..pedestrians at EVERY intersection making the waits super long. All along I am imagining who stole my just waiting to be snatched phone and what in the hell I was going to do about it.

Luckily, the employees saw me get up. They thought I went to the bathroom so they waited a bit but kept an eye on it. When enough time had passed that it was clear I was gone, they put it in a cash register up front. PHEW!

My heart was racing and I immediately took that as a sign that it was time to go for my run and shut down the chores for a bit!

After the run I dove right into cleaning. Again, thanks to Amber’s little hairball issue, the carpets were kinda messed up. I swept the downstairs and then busted out the vacuum. Now, I don’t do this lightly. Chip the cat is frighted to holy hell by the vacuum. So, I warn him by bringing it out in stages. First it comes out of the closet. That usually wakes him up from the deepest possible sleep right there. Then, if he is on the floor level where I will start working, I shoo him to the other one. In this case I chased him upstairs so he could hide while I did the bottom floor first. (Amber stays a respectable distance away, but also watches every move)

Unfortunately for Chip, I also had to vacuum the stairs themselves. Now, my plan was to get up to the top landing, turn off the vacuum and then shoo him downstairs.

He didn’t want to wait.

As rounded the corner at the second mid-level landing and started up the last few steps to reach the top, I see him dart out from under the bed to my right. He seems the vacuum – startles and reverses course. I figure now he’s back under the bed for good, right?

Nope, as I keep making my way up, he darts out AGAIN only this time he thinks he can run across the bridge into 16′s room.

Except – the door is closed. Now he has to dart BACK running perilously near to the running vacuum yet AGAIN to get back under the bed. In between, he has to hurdle the litter box on the landing just outside my open bedroom doors. He didn’t QUITE make the hurdle….his hind legs snagged on the scooper I keep next to the litter box causing him to bounce into the litter, scramble…flinging litter all over…then finally back out of the box and under the bed again!

At this point I cannot contain myself and I just bust out laughing as I turn off the vacuum. He hears that the coast is clear, slinks…and I mean SLINKS out from under the bed and FLIES down the stairs to the safety of the furthest corner of the living room behind a chair.

Amber watches the whole thing from her perch on the top of the sofa and then looks up at me and meows “WTF?” (essentially anyway).

WTF indeed.

Miraculously the rest of the day of cleaning and grocery shopping unfolded without a hitch…or..a cat clowning around :-)

Tomorrow, I rest! After running around a bit on a trail of course!

Riding in the sunset for a while


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Photo by @KCAlfredphoto 

Torrey Pines golf course at sunset.

I thought this photo was perfect – I was going to look for something that depicted “swamped” or “rat race” but really, in keeping with my NO Whining & NO Gasbags motto for 2013, I must say that while I will need to maintain a more intense level of focus and sticking to tasks for the next couple of months, it’s for GOOD reasons.

  1. My co-worker (staff member in my department) is having a baby in early April
  2. We have a new software program that will, over the long term, make her tasks a lot easier
  3. Technology will allow me to do a lot of work from home so that I can still make dinner, work out, and snuggle with cats here and there.

February and March will fly by. I’ve got to get all our leases into the new system before the end of this month so that we can spend next month tweaking with reporting and auto loads to the AP system for a more streamlined rent payment process (that will benefit two departments). I have to interview temp employees and hopefully have one chosen and working with us in March. On top of the usual tasks in these months of performance evaluations and budget planning for the next fiscal year. Wee?

Plus I need to keep posting on the pergola site once a week. Plus I’d like to run now and then. Plus, oh yeah, don’t I have kids and a boyfriend and stuff?

What that means is likely just weekly check in posts with the money & exercise habit progress reports and not much else. It means no Facebook except on the weekend maybe. I’ll post on twitter, but I wont be reading 100% of my timeline. I’ve currently got four books in my Kindle that I will use as complete down time breaks. I’ll take off all work of any kind on Sundays. But yes, I will be working at night and on Saturdays for the next month for sure, and possibly into March.

The payoff will be sanity while Tracy is on leave and beyond.

And it really isn’t that bad. 16 isn’t playing sports so there isn’t a pull there. His grades are not AWESOME, but they are also not HORRID this year and that is without me monitoring anything. We just had some wonderful, solid time together – all of us – while I was recovering from surgery.

Speaking of which – oh my goodness is it ever freaking awesome to be done with all THAT! Back to normal and feeling great. Phew!

Part of the responsibility of being a manager is having to cover vacancies and I am up for it. I actually really enjoy it as long as I have the space to focus on it. And it’s only for 4-6 weeks and as I check off each lease and task from the list, the load will ease.

I do have a 5k trail race on schedule for this Sunday so I will probably share pics from that – a new trail out in Mission Gorge that I am really excited to check out. Then a 6k trail even in late March at Black Mountain. SO not to worry – I’ll be getting some sanity restoring outdoor running time in :-)

How could I not with that beautiful scenery above displaying just how wonderful it is to live in this beautiful part of the world?

 

3 Mules at Torrey Pines


This is the tweet/facebook status I posted at 8am today:

“Driving in to work, I passed a man walking along the side of Torrey Pines Rd-leading 3 pack mules! Yes, mules!! What the??”

And this is the link that someone posted as a response:

Three Mules in LA Oct 5 as posted in Root Simple

Three Mules in Los Angeles

Last weekend, Kelly and I were treated to one of the most surreal scenes I’ve ever witnessed in Los Angeles: three pack mules being lead down busy Sunset Boulevard. On the side of one of the packs was a hand painted sign reading, “3mules.com“. As is fitting for a man leading three mules across the US, 3mules.com is just one page, managed by someone else. On that page is the following poetic statement,

3 MULES     To answer the most asked questions:  Who are we?  Where are we from? And where are we going?  We are mules. We are from the outside. We live outside all day , every day. Where are we going? Nowhere, we’re here- the outside, the web of life- the beautiful earth, a place like no other.    We have come to this place-a place of golden sparkling light, a place for anybody and everybody.  Give your faith, hope and  energy to this place at which time you connect to it and receive the magic and endless possibility of infinity.   As you walk in this place with these mules you spread the awareness that this beautiful earth like no other can only be protected by the way we live one day at a time.

I couldn’t stop to take a picture because I was driving up the hill in the opposite direction on my way in to work. There was no safe place to turn around. I was also going by too fast to take note of the website on the side of the suitcase that you can see in the picture above. What I find really fun in all this is the comment section on the Root Simple posting. People have been posting in there essentially tracking the 3 mules as the moved south from LA to Orange County and then in to San Diego. It seems as if he has been wandering through the county here for a little over a month.Looks like he started out in the eastern areas and then turned to the coast within the last week and is now making his way back north.

People who have run into him up close and chatted with him report nothing but positive reactions and conversations. The mules look healthy – the man said he’s had one of them for 27 years. Clearly he has all he needs with him to care for himself and the animals. Yeah, he seems a bit nuts yet is harmless and is bringing people a lot of joy as he passes through their neighborhoods.

During this typically hectic time of the year for many, if the site of the 3 mules makes you take a breath and relax and just look on in wonder as they mosey on by then it is ALL good!

When all else fails, just write.


Having no specific topic or opinion on my mind that wont offend a ton of people right now, I shall resort to the mundane – what I did on my summer vacation.

Hang on.

I don’t get summer vacations.

Damn.

Fine then – here’s what I’ve done pretty much since July, how’s that?

Work (day job at it’s most intense since the auditors arrive for year end fun this coming Monday), study (gearing up for the launching of a full on consulting business within the next 60-90 days), cook, drive, clean, nag the teen to study, run, drive, work, study, cook, run, go the racetrack, work, read, watch the Olympics, drive, go to Chargers training camp, work, study, cook, drive, clean, clean up yard for new fence installation, clean out kitchen cabinets and re-arrange counter tops, scratch a cat or two, work, run, drive, cook, clean, nag the teen etc etc.

OK, so there’s one or two fun things in there.

The racetrack has been a hoot. Our trainer Tanja is also a freaking horse betting savant. She grew up around horses, worked at the track while in college and has a pretty damn good system for betting. My first day I just watched and only sort of played along, but once I reported back to Marcus what I witnessed, he promised to give me money for the next outing. That was this past Sunday and though I had a minor heart attack when we lost the first 5 races, 6-8 made it all back and then some and the evening ended with a group dinner celebration where I laughed so hard my abs hurt afterward. Marcus is bummed that we can’t go again until the season is almost over :-)

Chargers training camp was an outing for 15 and I to get ourselves amped up for fantasy football. Oh, and to get him ready for his own set of practices which start in earnest tomorrow. The dreaded August 2-a days in the heat of the summer. Weee!!!

And while the kitchen cabinet clean out may not sound like FUN – it resulted in a kitchen that makes me feel calm and that I have kept clean and uncluttered for 10 straight days now.

I also have to admit that while I was worried that the new taller fence would make the yard look really small, since I did have to strip out all the jasmine (waaah, maybe some will grow back?), it actually gives the yard more usable space along with the additional privacy.

So there you go. While the day job might ease up a bit starting next week, the other stuff will just fill it in. 15 will turn 16…football starts as I mentioned and then school starts back up in just 3 weeks. The first semester of online math is done (solid B) and the second one is started and needs to be completed this month as well. I predict a few more nagging sessions before it all ends!

I will be relieved when it does end. I *think* the right amount of motivation has been dangled before him to at least get us through the hardest part of school – he needs a 3.5 at the end of October review period to get his driver’s license and if he KEEPS the 3.5 into December, I have promised him a new laptop (his old one is from the end of 7th grade & is a clunker). Since the 1st semester includes football, it is usually the one that he has the most trouble staying focused. Here’s hoping that between it being a big year for college transcripts, and the additional carrots dangled, that the motivation stays higher this time around.

I’ll leave you with the in home version of the Olympics at my house – The Cat Hurdles. You must transition from the bedroom to the bathroom sink without disturbing the felines – GO!

A Happy Little Tale That Almost Wasn’t


Do you know people who are always happy?

I mean, REALLY happy?

Like when they smile you can just SEE how real it is?

I do – and to my great surprise (ok, maybe I just suck as a friend), I just put all this together about some friends of mine who I have known since 1990. I was visiting with them this weekend and finally heard the story of their childhoods and was frankly, floored.

How happy are they? They named their dog Happy. They named their wireless networks at their house (yes, there are several) Happy1, Happy2 etc.

And this isn’t fake. Not in the least.

The thing is, these two people started out with a bazillion reasons to not be happy. To be bitter. Afraid. Angry. Sad. Defeated. Depressed. Maybe even settling for content at some point. But no, there was no settling with them.

K & N were born in the 1950′s in South Vietnam.

Yeah, let that sink in as you think about what the next two decades must have been like eh?

Let’s start with N. She was born in late 1953. Her family was fairly wealthy, and well educated and planned from the outset to send their children off to France to study after high school. The French, of course, had a very deep influence in that part of the world and N grew up learning French as a second language in preparation. In 1968 she was still a year away from when she was slated to leave for France.

In 1968, their world began to blow up.

They lived outside of Saigon in a suburb or village. A nice one. With bigger than usual houses for that time in that part of the world.

And good, heavy furniture.

Damn good, HEAVY furniture.

Furniture that saved their lives.

As the first of the bombs rained down, her parents ordered all the kids to huddle under the table. The very BIG, very HEAVY dining room table. The parents joined them underneath, held them close and her mom just kept yelling “PRAY! PRAY! PRAY as hard as you can!”

And N prayed. She doesn’t remember what prayers she said in her mind or out loud, but she obeyed her mother to the fullest.

And then the bombs stopped.

When the only sounds they could hear were screams and cries, but no more ear deafening booms, they peeked out.

And they saw sky.

And smoke.

And no roof.

No house.

Nothing but that awesome, magnificent table – and all of them – safe.

They fled to Saigon, being blessed with being wealthy they had options and resources. In 1969 N went off to France as scheduled. Not yet 17, but that was the plan, she was the oldest, she was ready, there was a boarding school and it guaranteed at least one child’s safety until the “unrest” as they called it, would be over.

They had no idea.

Now I will spare you the suspense and assure you that all of her family survived. One by one over the years each sibling and eventually the parents as well made it out.

N was in France for 2 years studying as her parent’s sent over money to support her. Her plan was to finish college and then head over to the US for a graduate degree. Then the money stopped. In 1972 when everything completely fell into the hands of the Communist North Vietnamese, they lost their money. So, what did N do? She got a job and school had to take a little (lot) longer than she planned. She finally did make it to the US landing on the west coast, married and then divorced she kept working and studying now learning English a lot faster than she anticipated.

Let’s cut away to K.

K was not as blessed as N in terms of family support. He and his brother were doing their best going to school and trying to adjust to living in a communist world. He is a bit younger than N so was still finishing up his undergrad degree on into the late 70s. But he chafed at the control.

Oh, how he chafed.

Can you imagine being able to dream about being all you could be as child? Only to have it all not just taken away, but brutally so?

Just as K was beginning high school and thinking about what he would study in college, the government started to TELL him what he could study. What to wear, where to live, what jobs and classes were approved.

K was desperate.

So he did what so many many of his fellow Vietnamese did back then.

In 1981 he piled onto a boat with 65 other desperate souls and shoved away from his homeland.

No clue where they would end up. Knowing if they were caught they would be in a concentration camp for eternity. But willing to risk it anyway to have even a sliver of a chance of freedom.

They were lucky.

A fishing boat from Bangkok found them adrift at sea after two nights and they were towed into safety.

After a year in Thailand, K got his student visa to travel to the US. Like N, he took a crash course in English and enrolled in school.

Two years later his brother made the same choice and was equally blessed to make it to safety and eventually to join K.

And there, on the campus at UC Berkeley, K and N met while in graduate school.

So, can you see why I said they have every reason to NOT be completely happy? To be bitter, or morose, or at the least very very fearful people?

Sure, you always HOPE that when people turn their lives around as intensely as they did that the overwhelming feeling is one of gratitude and joy and happiness.

But how many times does that really HAPPEN?

Most everyone who comes from places of such horror and fear and devastation as children end up carrying some of that with them even decades later.

Not these two.

In fact, I usually refer to N as the most FORGIVING soul I have ever met. You see, I met her at work and we went through some kind of hard years at the old university together. We had a truly bullying boss for awhile who particularly picked on N. So many days I spent in her office as she cried over the latest shouting match. After that situation was finally fixed with the ouster of the bully, she then had to deal with some truly overwrought drama queen employees. One of whom walked out and then was so mad when she tried to come BACK and wasn’t allowed to that she sued. And she named N specifically in the suit. I was marginally involved and had to give a deposition in the case to defend N because I was a witness to the actual “I’m out! I quit!” event. That was hurtful because N truly trusted people and couldn’t imagine them being that selfish and angry.

Did you get that?

N – who survived a bombing by hiding under a table – who had seen plenty of people in power being ugly to each other in her youth – could not fathom that these people we worked with would be that seriously upset as to file a lawsuit.

I was mostly pissed off beyond all belief that anyone could sue a woman who I knew had not one unkind, revengeful, manipulative bone in her body.

Thankfully – much like other more dramatic parts of her life, this also passed without too much kerfuffle other than the strain of having to go through some depositions. No judge would hear the case and it was finally dropped.

And do you know what this ridiculously kind soul did?

Several years after the lawsuit, N had moved on to work at (of all places) a law school. Along the line, she had a job opening and she knew that L – the person who sued her – had still not found another good full time job. So N hired her!

WTF? I thought!

We went through all that angst and you FORGAVE this woman?!

Dayum.

Not one single resentful, unkind, unforgiving, anger ridden bone in her body!

Anyhow, while I miss her at work, but she is very happy (a theme!) at her no longer new school. She practically runs that place now :-) I am so proud of her and happy that she found such a great job. She and K have one son who has known a life as opposite of his parent’s that it is really rather amazing. Most amazing is that even though most would call him spoiled, he is just a fantastic guy. He has taken advantage of every push and nudge they gave him and graduated college and is working now with his dad.

He inherited his parent’s truly happy smiles. And, seems to have absorbed their true happiness.

They have a gorgeous new house on a few acres of land with stunning views of the foothills and a lake out about 10 miles east of me. Vanishing edge pool, TV’s everywhere, those multiple wireless networks, the most gorgeous and cleanest garage I’ve ever seen. One person at the party this weekend made a lot of comments which sounded a bit like jealousy. I could be jealous – but even had I not known where they came from I wouldn’t have been.

If ever two people deserved some financial luxury just by being the wonderful, happy, kind, forgiving, generous souls they are, it is them.

Maybe that’s what she prayed for under that table that fateful day? Must have been. “Dear God, get us out of here unharmed and I will be happy for the rest of my life!”

I think she’s doing a fantastic job of keeping that promise.

May 30th – Is this the month that never ends?


Seriously – is it?

I know we typically all lament how darn FAST the days/weeks/months fly by, but either this blogging every day thing has made time slow down or else the 31 days of May are THE longest 31 days of the year!

Now, I know I cannot attribute this feeling to just the fact that I committed to writing every day because 15 fully supports my description of May as THE LONGEST MONTH EVER!

I think it is a combination of the daily writing and just the events of the month. May leads into June. June means the end of traditional school. The end of homework monitoring and tussling with him over doing said homework. It means the end of those daily check ins to the online grading system and seeing those soul piercing RED BOXES OF HELL (missed assignments). It means no more weekly check ins to each teacher’s website to plan out homework for the week. June means the end of all of that. Something that clearly both of us are more than ready to get to! May was the lead up to the AP exam and it felt like once that exam was over that it should be time to take finals. And yet? Finals are a full 3.5 weeks later! WHAT?

While it seemed like the days leading to the AP exam flew by, the days since? Crawling.

May was the software upgrade for me at work. We’ve been on the march towards this for 6 months. It seems like it snuck up on us this weekend even though we were clearly well prepared. But then when it was over and the Go Live was official on Sunday, it then seemed like it should be June. Like we should be going right into working on closing the books for May and posting journals and…what? There’s still how many more days? Gah!

And then, yes, there is the writing thing. I certainly do sort of walk through the day perhaps a little more present or focused and thinking now and then about what I will highlight in here at the end. That simple act has probably tricked my brain into feeling like time is moving more slowly. Which, of course, is a GOOD THING!

Right?

 

May 1 – Hormonal insomnia and HTML coding – wee!


Jeebus – on what is essentially day one of my Merry Month of May Journal, I nearly failed. Was about to close this puppy up and head upstairs because – yeah…did you see that title?

Around midnight last night I woke up with my heart racing and realized that from the time I fell “asleep” until then I had essentially been re-running my meeting with Eve in my head. Oh joy. That’s restful.

Then I realized that it wasn’t the thoughts in my head keeping me awake – it was just that I was feeling like I’d had two cups of coffee before bed. Which I didn’t of course.

Scroll down if you don’t want the following female oriented TMI. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to stop scrolling.

So, this is the new thing in hormones you see. I get to the end of a pack of b/c pills (uh oh, guess imma slut eh Rush?) and start on a new one right away to avoid the monthly visit from Flo. This goes on for three months and then I stop for a week to let things flush out and start back up again. It’s been great this way for the last five years. Instead of 12 hormone headaches a year, I only get four. Yes, they still cling on for 72 hours and no amount of pain meds gets rid of them but four times is still better than 12! Anyhoo – recently I’ve noticed that on month 2 I still get a headache, though it is not nearly as high on the pain scale and it kind of responds to OTC meds. BUT – the added bonus is it comes with insomnia – yay! So the headache started yesterday, the insomnia hit last night…it *might* hit again tonight and then by the end of tomorrow I’ll be clear. It quite righteously SUCKS and I would be quite happy if the menopause fairy would arrive already. Whcih she probably wont for another 3 or so years but this whole peri-menopause shit is..well…shitty!

OK STOP SCROLLING NOW!

So four hours of fretful, intense dream filled sleep later and I started the day with the plan right away to just get to work, get my first day of the month entries in and then head back home after a quick stop at the grocery for the remaining items I needed for the week.

Thankfully, work was again a fairly cooperative place and I somehow managed to stay pretty well focused on the tasks at hand. This is a small miracle as you might know if you follow me on twitter or facebook where I frequently fret about letting every shiny object grab my attention away from actual work! Perhaps it was leaving my phone at home yesterday (so no twitter as I strictly read that on my phone) that got me started on the right foot. Today I did bring my phone with me, but I turned off all notifications and didn’t touch it. That translated not only to actual work being done but also my battery was still 100% full at noon. An iphone! With full battery after being off charge for 4 hours! Not possible!

There was one odd thing at work. A card was passed around for everyone in the vicinity of my basement office to sign. A birthday? A retirement/moving on? A marriage? A new baby?

No.

A “congrats on your 7 year anniversary here!” card. Huh? Color me Not Impressed. Talk to me when you hit a nice round number like 10, or 15, or 20, or 25. After my own run of 26 years there, 7 just doesn’t faze me anything worthy of that kind of recognition. Weird.

Got out of there at 2:30 and was home before 3:30 and sleeping by 4. Mild relief.

15 went right to his tasks at hand a little before 5 without whining and I sat down to do my own website homework. Which involved HTML coding. Which means what I thought might take an hour ended up taking 2.5 and involved a lot of cursing. But it’s done and the home page now has better content for the first time visitor (we hope!).

Todays color = Orange. Mostly because no cat peed on it :-)

Dear Meh


That’s pretty much how I feel today. Meh. Eh. Shrug. Whatever. Nothing is wrong. Nothing hurts. I slept fine so I’m not tired. But, I’m also not focused and refreshed and sparkly. I’m just – meh. One of those days for no logical reason at all when you would just sit there and watch tv or listen to the radio and not really react much to anything you see or hear. Not singing along to a song. Not reacting with outrage to anything on the news, not laughing particularly hard at anything funny. Its baseball opening day and I’ve been listening to the local sports radio station while I work and still not feeling amped up about going home to watch the game. Just zoned out and – blah.

Oddly enough, I think I need to go for a run! Haven’t been out since Saturday. Been busy getting my own stuff done & making sure 15 got his homework done so that we could take a night off from the routine last night. It was amazing how hard I had to work to pull that off! Maybe I’m having a rebound day from that? I don’t know. Don’t really feel like searching for a reason. Because, you know – meh!

Anyhow – here’s a rare treat. 15 willingly in a picture – and smiling!

We had a birthday bonfire for Renee last night at Fiesta Island after a bike time trial. Coach T needed 15 and I to help with keeping time so since we were all out there together we got pizzas and birthday bundt cake and  relaxed by a fire afterwards. It was a tad cold :-)

Meh, me.

 

 

Dear Everyone


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This is a gentle reminder on how to behave with class and kindness and some modicum of respect for others.

Sometimes, people don’t live their best lives. They display the flaws and issues in their personalities more than their better and loving sides. Sadly, there are some people who when their life is over, have unfortunately left a lot of people in their wake who are not terribly sad that they are gone.

For whatever reason though, there will be a few people who do get to see their best sides more often than others. For those people, they will be sad when that person dies, even though they know that person had ‘issues’.

Now, I am not talking about a criminal, a murderer or anything nearly so dire. I am talking about someone who led a lawful life, but just made some horrible mistakes in regards to conducting friendships. More often than not, they went out in a blaze of glory and extremely hurt feelings. But not all of them.

So, this is my roundabout way of saying that if you were one of those who was hurt by someone and are one of those people who was NOT sad to find out someone had died, when you encounter one of the few lucky ones who saw the deceased person’s better side most of the time and who DID feel a loss, how about you keep your opinions on the deceased to yourself eh?

To put it more directly: If you are one of the seemingly many people in Jacqueline’s past who was hurt by her and refused to friend her on Facebook years later because you didn’t want to dredge up those issues? Please shut up about it when you cross my path. All you are doing is making a tremendous ass of yourself by showing such a bitter and vindictive side of your own personality. Dropping your issues on me is NOT OKAY. I am not her proxy. I do not deserve that, ESPECIALLY if you are someone who I have not spoken a word to since high school over 30 years ago. I didn’t think it was appropriate for two people to show up to her memorial brunch two years ago and stand up and trash her in front of friends who did love her, and I don’t think it is appropriate two years later to great me with ‘Hi, great to see you in person! It’s been so fun catching up with you Facebook! I was so shocked to read about J’s passing, but I refused to friend her on Facebook because she was so awful to me back in college and…blah blah blah…’ Can you imagine the hit to my gut that was? Meeting up with old high school friends last night and having laughed and had a really lovely time and then I was hit with that! I just sat there stunned not knowing what to say…feeling like I had to apologize for my dead friend who wasn’t there, but then thinking “wait a damn minute! why does she think this is OK to do this to me?”

Because it wasn’t OK. And even though as I was leaving very soon after she did tell me respected me and was impressed with how I had stood by Jacqueline, there was no apology. No remorse for having pretty much ruined my night.

And in all the years I knew Jacqueline she had NEVER said an unkind word about this person. And trust me, if she did carry any animosity towards someone she TOLD me! She *was* brutal that way. But never a word about this person at all.

Anyway, world, just needed to get that off my chest. Sorry if I rambled but I guess the overall message is to just abide by that golden rule eh? Don’t speak ill of the dead. Especially not to someone who doesn’t share your opinion.