Dear Shirley

The weekend did not go as planned. Mother Nature not only didn’t listen to my plea for calm weather, she essentially threw a righteous temper tantrum that effectively canceled the Super Seal Triathlon. No cheering for my friends. No pictures. No cowbell. Just lots and lots of cold cold wind and rain and even hail. Consequently we treated our no running/no racing depression with lots of beer & high calorie food. OK, so that part wasn’t so bad 🙂  I just want to say that I highly recommend both blueberry beer (can be found in your grocery store) and the Bloody Mary Brunch at Small Bar.

As an added treat,  I also found a lovely little surprise in my in box this weekend.

It’s been ages since anyone passed on a bloggy award to me. I guess that actually, you know, updating the blog now & then means more people might stumble across it and play along? 🙂 Shocking eh? I should really pass the award on to 15 since he has largely been the inspiration for writing (for better or worse!) Of course, he might not be so thrilled about that eh?

At any rate, I would like to send out a huge thanks and hello to new blog friend Scott at Raising a Realist for passing this along. He’s one of those YOUNG parents with an adorable daughter but he also has the added JOY of being a high school teacher. IOW, he really gets to spend his days with the likes my own Mr 15. Poor sap 🙂

So, the rules for accepting the award are:

1. Thank the award-givers and link back to them in your post – DONE!
2. Share 7 things about yourself. HAH – since my about me already has a few more than seven this might be difficult but for the newbies I will figure it out.
3. Pass this award along to 15 other bloggers. 15?! Ack!
4. Contact your chosen bloggers to let them know about the award. Will do!

Seven Things About Me

1. I absolutely cannot handle violent movies. Images stick in my head way too easily and way too long. Why then, you ask, do you watch all the CSI’s and Criminal Minds and Gray’s Anatomy? Easy – at home on my TV I can look away easily and those are still somewhat tame compared to an HBO type show or a movie in a theater.
2. Speaking of the theater… I have a very hard time NOT typing spelling that as “theatre” I learned how to read and write at a Montessori school where the teachers were all from Sri Lanka and had learned proper British English. Consequently there are still a few words in my brain that are spelled differently. I am not always aware of them, it’s just something that comes up as I am reading or writing now and then.
3. My summer/early college jobs were a) Wild Animal Park food worker (traumatized by the site of maggots in a particular side dish has ensured that I will never eat that side dish again) b) Avon sales gal (HATED IT!) c) Office assistant at a periodontists where I filed charts and insurance forms. Just as boring as it sounds and convinced me I wanted nothing to do whatsoever in the medical/dental fields. IOW – all of those early jobs taught me exactly what I would NOT want to pursue as a career. Good process of elimination there considering I didn’t just automatically know what I DID want to do.
4. (This is a lot harder than I thought to some up with these!) It’s been 12 years since I last made a car payment.
5. I am the rare girl who does not like to shop for clothes. I’d estimate that the majority of the clothes in my closet are over 5 years old. Some are easily 10. There may even be items that I still wear occasionally that are pre-15 🙂 Same with shoes. Sure, some of it is money but even when I might have had a more generous clothing budget I still didn’t shop much.
6. Home or garden stores though? Oh yeah – let me loose!! There’s a frustrated interior and landscape designer inside me, I swear! Maybe that’s why I have no trouble doing content writing for a DIY pergola site 🙂
7. (dear gawd, how happy am I to see that 7 pop up finally?!!) I’ve reached the age when, if I don’t write it down, it aint gonna happen. Well, it *could* be age, or it just could be the nature of how much I have to juggle but whatever – it’s my reality. And I’m talking some incredibly basic things too. Like remember to pick UP the dry cleaning you dropped off. I have to make a To Do list every Saturday morning for the upcoming week or I am lost. I love that my new phone has Siri because I’ve already asked her while driving to remind to do something when I got home (Put new pack of gum in car, take chicken out to defrost etc etc). Without Siri or my own To Do list notes I am pretty sure I would just sit in front of the computer reading and writing and watching videos and then wonder why my gas tank is empty, I have no clean clothes or food and for gawds sake why are the cats howling like that?!

And now, paying it forward:

The following bloggers are in my Reader or Subscription list so that means I liked their writing enough to not want to miss a single post, ok? OK! So give them a click please.

1. Diatribes and Ovations
2. Be Gay About It
3. Child’s Play x3
4. Juggling Life
5. Mel, A Dramatic Mommy
6. Miss Music Nerd
7. museikchik
8. My Imperfect Truth
9. Old Blue Socks
10. Broken Condoms
11. The Unintentional Mother
12. Dinosaurs Can’t Eat Pizza
13. Visionary Gleam
14. Three Cat Yard
15. The Journey

Hey, it was easier to come up with the 15 than it was to come up with the 7!

And if you read all the way down to the bottom of this letter Shirley, I applaud you. Also? Cross your fingers for me OK? This is the afternoon that we go to the Dee Em Vee to get both 15 and 26 on the road to being fully licensed drivers.

I am still not entirely sure how I feel about that!!

But I am sure I will need a blueberry beer when I get home.

Love, me