Fathers, in 4 Parts

This is my contribution to the Father's Day Boggect that Kara is putting together. I had one mom but I have 4 very important dads for four very different reasons.
Father 1 - The Shakeperean Tragedy
My mom and my dad had me and my brother a little bit later in life. They both wanted kids, thought about their prospects and chose eachother. Once they had my brother and me, they realized they didn't really like each other and proceeded to fight for 4 years, often drunk. That is my memory of being a young child, the fighting. It broke my mother's heart when she asked me as an adult what I remembered and I told her that. My father never asked. My father died when I was 25 physically but in many ways had been killing himself for years. I see him as the Shakesperean tragic figure, the guy from the movie Falling Down, the brilliant, flawed man. He, by everyone's account, was given a short end of a stick pretty much from birth by his father. I think getting beaten down (figuratively) for the first 25 years of your life can really screw someone up. He tried to do what he though he was supposed to do: for a long time he held a job, he had a family, but then he lost the job and basically lost the family. When I was 20 he tried to kill himself, when I was 25, he succeeded. Needless to say I have a lot of mixed feelings about my dad but I can tell you this: he loved me with everything he had, I never doubted that. He also taught me that life may throw a lot of crap your way and you can either react or act to it. If you wait too long to act instead of react it gets harder and harder to act.
Step-Father 1: This is What Relationships Are About
My first step father was a guy named Hugh and he was VERY different than my dad in some ways and very much the same in others. He was the same in these ways: he loved me a bunch, he was very smart, he was sciency (my dad was an industrial chemist, Hugh was an Engineer). Here is how he was different: he didn't let tragedy overwhelm him, he taught me how to behave in a relationship, and he supported my decisions as a young adult. He is the reason I don't think parents should always stick it out, that divorce can be ok. If my parents had tried to stay together my brother and I would have grown up in an emotionally violent world. I want to say I didn't like the guy for a very long time. As a kid I saw him like this: he was this guy, in our house and my mom paid more attention to him than me (I was about 8 so I can sound like a impetuous little kid). It took until I was about 15 to realize he wasn't the evil step-father. Right around the time I realized he was ok he got cancer. When my mom married Hugh I was able to see how a relationship can be. He wrote my mom little love notes and left them in places for her to find, it was so sweet. They had issues, they fought, and then they worked it out. I saw him as an interloper for a long time, and unfortunately, by the time I realized he was cool he became sick. He was also very loving to me eventhough I was basically a brat to him and my mom for years. In a lot of ways I know that my daughter's adolescence will be ok because I had a good teacher.
Step-Father 2: The Walking Russian Novel
My first step-father passed away in 1989, I was 17 at the time. Ten years later my mother met and eloped with Jacob, whom my mother nicknamed her 'walking russian novel.' I have blogged about him before, he is a wonderful man and a fantastic addition to our lives. One month after they eloped she was diagnosed with leukemia. That sucks, there is no other way to dissect it. I will be honest, when they were first together I sort of thought 'Hmmm, Ok, some guy, I hope he doesn't get in the way of my relationship with my mom.' He never did, he added to our relationship and he was so supportive of my mom. Although I didn't refer to him as my step-father until after my mother died, I realized he really is that. I will always stay in touch with him and I love to see him and talk with him. He adds value to our lives just by being him. He is funny and insightful. He has moved back to San Francisco and we are looking for a condo for him to live in. This has made me a little sad, I wanted him to move to Asheville, but I support his decision and now we have a reason to go to San Fancisco every year! Yeah! I love that city. I hope he comes to visit us too, since, you know, planes fly both ways (hint-hint)*.
Father 4 - Daddy Bear
The final father is Noodle's father, my spouse. I wax poetic about him all the time because basically, I couldn't have lucked into a better father for my daughter. He is smart, thoughtful, patient, funny. He is overprotective of me and Noodle. Noodle totally takes her dad for granted and he lets her, he doesn't get pissy when she refuses to hug him or doesn't want to play with him. He loves her so much and he is demonstrative about his affection, he allows her to figure out what she wants to learn and shows her everything he can. When she turns into the Tasmanian Devil he almost never loses his patience, even when she is kicking and biting him. My kid has got it good. I hope when she is older she understands this. Since day 1 we have have always had dinner together, almost never in front of the TV. This was his idea and I agreed with it. Now it comes out that families that do this are far less often dealing with all the evils that adolescence can stir up. He innately gets family (eventhough his family are a bunch of whack jobs). I am so thankful he is the man he is, and the father he is. Yeah, Daddy Bear!

*He reads my blog.

Tuesday

I saw this over on Roc Rebel Granny last week and had to try it. Hubby and I read this book to eachother on our first trip to my mom's house. Little did he know he would marry Inigo Montoya...


Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti


I really like my family, I mostly suck when it comes to staying in touch with most of them but I love them to pieces. The women in the family are pretty crafty. I always thought it would be cool to open a shop called the Sams Women Style and just sell our stuff there. As far as I know all of us do arts and crafts of one type or another: stained class, needlepoint, counted cross stitch, quilting. The biggest problem I see with the store is:
1. creating stuff to sell (I can't really carry my stained glass supplies on the plane, now can I?)
2. finding the perfect place to open the store (Atlanta? Asheville? Dillsboro, NC?)
3. staffing the store and
4. making a profit.
So besides those things, we could probably open a store. The amount of quilting that goes on alone could keep the store open. Here is my cousin K (mother of cousins K8 and R, and grandmother of cousins C & S) with her newest pride and joy:

Yep, that's a first place ribbon for that gorgeous quilt. She got it last weekend.
There are more pictures but blogger doesn't seem to be in the mood to post more than one picture right now, she only got second place for the other quilting piece anyway...only. This woman's got skills. I think everyone in the family has got a quilt and she is pretty smart about these quilts, the quilts in my household can get thrown in the washing machine and dryer. She made a king size quilt for my mom's 60th birthday which is about to move to our house. That one is getting hung up on a wall because it is a hand stitched, king size, gorgeous quilt and it has Noodle's favorite colors. I can just imagine Noodle trying to make a tent city from it (I shudder to think). We are going to put it up in the hallway on the way to Noodle's room and probably paint the hallway so it matches the quilt better but maybe not since there is still a gaping hole in my kitchen ceiling and I have received a promise (from Hubby) that the leak will be fixed by the time Hubby's grandmother visits in 2 weeks but he won't promise to it being painted because, for some reason, it is perfectly fine to have a ceiling that resembles Frankenstein.

I should be happy to have a roof over my head. jeez.

Back to the cuz...she's got skills. Her older sister does stained glass, she was actually the person who inspired me to do stained glass and we both stopped because we didn't want to expose our babies to lead. We're hip like that. I think we both need to start again, we probably both need a place to do stained glass again (it's not like you want to solder lead on the kitchen table, makes the food taste funny). Hubby is working on that for me (thanks Hubby!). I could actually do stained glass in our basement, there isn't a lot of light but there is some space and it has a level cement floor. hmmmm. Now I just need the time to do stained glass (ha ha ha ha ha ha - time, good one). Cousin N did 2 pieces of stained glass for my mom, those are both moving to our house in 3 weeks.

I tried to take a picture of the woman when I saw her, again, in the breakroom. She was wearing the Chloe Sevigny wrap around disco dress. I had my cell phone with me but I think she figured me out because I am not very smooth with a cell phone, much less the camera on the cell phone. She high tailed it as soon as she saw me try to use the camera. Maybe I could find a blue tooth headset that I can wear in my ear like I am a member of the borg and somehow magically take the picture through the headset and then post it.

Where Did That Rascally Weekend Go?

Friday Noodle and I left Cousin K8's after an action packed week at her house. I commuted to and from work everyday and Noodle entertained Cousin C and Cousin S. I feel like I spent as much time in traffic as I did at work. I would leave the house no later than 6:30 and I would spend and hour in traffic and then I would leave no later than 5 and it basically took 2 hours to get back to their house. everyday. I understand road rage now. I was only driving about 23 miles. And my car radio couldn't get NPR all that well (it could however get horrible conservative AM radio... I smell a conspiracy). Staying at my cousin's was GREAT! Noodle asked last night if she could go to work with me this week. I said soon, but not yet. She doesn't think it is fair I get to go play with the cousins but she doesn't.
We got on the road Friday morning and then proceeded to take 8 hours to get back to Asheville. We hit traffic on Rte 20 in Atlanta, we stopped at the J to get sunglasses for me, we stopped at a chicken joint to eat in Clayton, GA (which is the town I lived near when I started raft guiding). If you click that link and look at the slide show you will see a guy with a big grey beard. That guy is my friend Snuffy, he gave me my 14 year old cat, Rabun. That is a funny story for another time. We then went to Franklin, NC and stopped at place called the Fun Factory and had fun and didn't get force fed religion like some of the other 'fun places' in the southeast. We then stopped to get Hubby a father's day present which we already gave him because I thought father's day was last Sunday. We finally got home to at about 7 pm. It was a long drive and there was no food in the house and the house was a disaster.
One of the reason's Noodle was going to Atlanta with me last week was so that Hubby could open up the ceiling in our kitchen, find the leak coming from the upstairs bathrom, fix the leak, patch the ceiling and maybe even paint the ceiling. It would have been great if the kitchen had also been cleaned. I was being starry eyed and dreamy thinking all that would happen and there would be a bottle of champagne in the fridge to boot. I would have even been happy with the ceiling opened, the leak fixed, the ceiling patched and the kitchen cleaned (with champagne in the fridge). I would have tolerated a hole in the ceiling, the leak fixed and the kitchen clean and champagne in the fridge. I came home to very messy kitchen and a gaping hole in the ceiling. The leak wasn't patched (although it is better) and there was no champagne in the fridge. And it is actually ok that there is still a hole because there is still a leak so there is no point in patching a 3 foot by 2 foot hole in the ceiling yet. Hubby gets to try to figure out where the remaining leak is after Noodle goes to sleep which isn't his best time of day. He (like all of us) like to watch TV and read in the evening because we are exhausted. But he promised me after our last house I wouldn't have to live in a house that is being 'improved' because, I have a gentle disposition and it stresses me out too much to come home to chaos so he HAS to get it fixed so I don't have a breakdown. (a breakdown. really. please. fix it. please. ASAP. please. I am not whining, really).

All this took place in 2 minutes of arriving home, we have another hour to go people, bear with me.

So I went upstairs to check blog work email and as I was walking back down the stairs I smelled a horrible smell. I was amazed at how bad Hubby had made the house smell in such a short time. This is a totally unfair statement about Hubby. His feet smell better than mine and he is a fairly neat person. It was a totally unfair statement to think and it made me happy to know there aren't thought police. I went back downstairs and told Noodle to go play in her room because I didn't want her to watch TV. She disappears and we quickly hear a wailing coming from her play room. We run upstairs to find dog diarrhea all over the opening of her room, all over a ballon she had and all over one of the throw rugs. We quickly diverted her to the computer to go play PBSkids.org and started cleaning. When we walked downstairs to get cleaning supplies Hubby said 'there seems to be some dog poop on the rug in the dining room too.' Our dear sweet 100 pound german shepherd had the runs on Wednesday morning and this was Friday night. Hubby had gotten some of the ick cleaned up on Wednesday but had missed some of it too. It had sat on the carpet and in the play room for 36 hours and Hubby DIDN'T notice. Since I still had no sense of smell from that frigging cold I told Hubby to shower while I cleaned. She is my dog too, I don't mind cleaning up dog pooh but I mind cleaning up 36 hour dog pooh but it was a logical decision for me to clean (no sense of smell), him to take a shower and Noodle to play on the computer. I scrubbed the finish off the wood floor and the stain is still there. Nasty. Most of the stains on the carpet are gone.
Now we have a clean Hubby, a hungry daughter and not really amused Arwen. So we decide to go for sushi for dinner, at Noodle's favorite haunt, the place where the celebrity seems to be stalking me (and yes, I was prepared to say hi to her if we saw her). On the way to the car Noodle tripped over a hose and took a header. She has bruises and cuts up the entire right side of her body. We brought her back inside and comforted her. Hubby brought her a chocolate milk (nothing makes boo boos feel better than a milk box of Horizon organic chocolate milk) and he got me a liter glass of white wine. She is fine now. We then ordered take out and he went to get it. Before he left we sat down on the couch and he looked at me lovingly and said 'welcome home.' I looked at him and said 'I want a do over.'
Saturday I cleaned the kitchen and cried my way through trying on bathing suits (I shoved myself into a Land's End Tankini 2 sizes bigger than last year). Mariah lost 32 pounds in 4 weeks. Kara thinks it is because she paid someone to smack her hand everytime she tried to put something in her mouth and then forced marched her through the desert for 15 miles a day. I think I believe her.

On Saturday I realized I am the only person in the world who can get the house as clean as I want.
End of discussion.

We went to a birthday party and the pool so we had some fun on Saturday. And I cooked which always makes me happy. I like cooking and I like cleaning and I like gardening, none of which you can do when you travel for work. I am a walking oxymoron.

Sunday I did laundry and gardened. In memory of my mother I bought a rose (on mother's day) and finally got around to planting it. It is called a Chrysler Imperial Tea Rose and it is very fragrant and a beautiful shade of red. I planted it next to a pink Hollyhock (singles, not doubles). I also figured out that the last people who lived in our house planted Gooseneck loosestrife, a horibbly invasive flowering plant. I wouldn't give this plant to my worst enemy and now it is taking over my perennial garden. I think nothing short of a small nuclear incindiary device will kill the stuff.
I think the spirit of my mother noticed that I finally planted the rose. It started raining while I was working out (for the first time since I got sick and I think I am back to square one on the whole running thing). It rained and rained and rained and rained so we went to see Cars. It was cute. I am not sure why John Lassater can import wonderful complex anime movies from Studio Ghibli (example: Spirited Away) but can't create kid movies with complex story lines. This story line was about compassion and there were good cars and bad cars, nothing ambiguous. I will say it was great supporting media for teaching compassion, which we have been drilling into Noodle's unfortunate skull teaching Noodle about.
And now I am back at work (at least there is free Starbuck's) and wishing I had a day to recover from the non-stop weekend.

The Anthropologist Loses Her Objectivity

Today I am going to show that as an anthropologist I am actually very human. I notice a lot of similarities at the different offices where I toil and trouble collect data for my thesis on the plight of Corporate America (this thesis is yet to be titled and I am not actually affiliated with any school...it's a free lance thing in blog form). The current site I am shackled to collecting data at has a glaring exception that the other sites I have visited do not: the Office S l u t. I try not to pass judgement on the communities I am researching but this one example seems so rare to me I had to document it right now.
First, I would like to say that earlier this week Hubby was telling me about a news article he either heard or read about a study of the words w h o r e and s l u t. I wasn't really listening when he told me about this and I tried to call him this morning, at 7:30 in the morning, to confirm the story but he didn't pick up the phone. This study was done and the concensus was that
w h o r e s are s l u t s who get paid for what they do. I may have the term 'office s l u t' incorrect. It may be actually be the 'office w h o r e' because the etymology suggests that a w h o r e is paid and the woman in the office is paid, but not necessarily to look as cheap as she does. Her boss may actually pay her for this apparel by insuating she should wear it, I have not been able to study the two people together...yet. I have noticed the subject on a few occasions so far and both behavior and apparel supports the definition above. First, her clothing: the first day I saw her I noticed immediately that she wore excessive eye makeup and had her eyebrows tweezed to a thin line of suprise (think Charlize Theron in the female serial killer movie). She would look startled all the time if her heavy eye make up didn't make her look a little innebriated. And she does the hair flip, which annoys most people when a teenager is doing it. When a 20-33 year old does this activity you think they have a nervous tic of some sort. Next are the outfits I have seen her wear. The first day I saw her in a white blouse with a PLUNGING neckline and a Allie McBeal skirt. Mostly I thought 'how very 1999.' She also wasn't wearing stockings which is very revealing when a skirt is that short. The next time I saw her she was wearing a disco wrap around dress without a slip. Sort of like the one on the right but in dark purple and not as cool looking. Here is the magic of slips: they smooth bumps, they make sheer cloth less sheer and the hide body 'imperfections'. This woman's body was ok but she could have a real knock out body with aerobics. I am not one to talk but I also don't wear clothes that allow people to see all my bumps. This woman was wearing a sheer disco dress with another plunging neckline and I saw ALL her bumps on her body. I don't really want to see that. The next day I saw her and she was wearing a red stretchy tube top under a cropped business jacket with a pair of slacks. And she had a camel toe. GROSSSSSSSSSSS.

The tube top under the cropped jacket is weird but add the camel toe and I think I may need therapy. Are there women who think this is alluring? Or do they just not realize it is happening? How could a woman not feel that? Are there men who think this is sexy? Probably, some men are just pervs, no matter how you try to redeem them in your eyes they are just pervs.Next is the noticeable behavior: she flips her hair, she bats her eyebrows and she giggles like a school girl while she leans forward for no reason (other than to maybe expose her plunging neckline a little more). I have seen her in the break room each time I have come across her. I have become addicted to the coffee machine, that's my reason to be there. I have yet to figure out what she is doing in there besides fliring with all the men who enter the breakroom. The behavior is quite strange. She seems normal, a man enters and she makes a strange comment (weather, weather or weather) and then giggles. The weather in Atlanta isn't funny, it's hot. The comments she makes about the weather also aren't funny so I am not sure about why she is giggling. I have not been at this office site long enough to bond with any of the native subjects enough to broach the subject but my fellow consultants have made comments about the subject and they are ruthless. I seem to be one of the guys to them and I have heard some stuff that made me blush. As an anthropologist I have to wonder: what made this woman? As a woman I just think WTF?

Countdown

Countdown #1
Father's days rapidly approaches. First I have to say there is no way I can outdo Hubby for a parent's day present. he got me this, in the 60gb size. Noodle come up with some ideas for him and I got the ones that made sense (I didn't get him any faeritopia dolls or polly pckets or pretty ponies) and then we thought up something else but since he reads this blog, I can't tell you all but I will say, it is very creative and supports local artists and may just be perfect for me and Noodle. I am not aware of a bloggect for father's day, that is too bad. I have had one biological father and 2 step fathers (three times the fun). All three have taught my invaluable lessons so I am glad I have had all three. I think about how diffreent my life with my father was to how Noodle's life with her father is and it makes me very happy. Not to say my father was awful or anything but I think Hubby is really top notch. I am probably going to wax poetic about him over the next couple of days, because really, he is a great dad. here's why:
1. He is a baby whisperer, a pied piper, a baby's kind of guy. Kids dig him. He can get kids riled up, relaxed, all listen to him. It is amazing. I had no idea he could do this before Noodle came along because we didn't hang out with children. I found this out at our baby shower a few weeks before Noodle was born.
2. He is wicked patient with Noodle. I get a really sharp tone in my voice really quickly with her when she isn't cleaning her room as quickly as I want or she isn't putting dishes away as fast as I want or whatever, you get the picture. He doesn't, he puts a condition on the chore and lets the cards fall. See, he's good.
3. He is really good at stopping and explaining good life lessons.
4. He emotes but not in and emo way, in a 'I am a big strong guy who can laugh and cry and smirk and whatever... what are you going to do about it?' kind of way.
5. Finally, he puts up with me as a mom.
Countdown #2
The Bermuda Triangle known as my birthday. I do not celebrate my birthday, when Noodle turns another year older I add 30 to it and keep going but my birthday is actually in June, sometime. There are a lot of reasons people don't celebrate: Mortality issues, religious issues, etc.... My reason is none of those typical reasons. I don't celebrate because really weird, messed up stuff happens around my birthday. Hubby and I celebrate the day after when nothing has gone wrong. Last year we got to celebrate. The year before that my mom died a few days before my birthday so we weren't celebrating much. A few years ago Kara, Noodle, baby Buffalo and I didn't celebrate up in Maine. We had a great day. I told her at the end of the day it was my birthday. She knew is was at some point around that time but wasn't sure when, she forgave me fast (and gave me a cool shirt from Huot's which I still wear. One year I ate at Ryan's for lunch on my birthday and that was the thing that went wrong. That place is scary. My brother almost died boating 2 days before my birthday one year. He has boating incdents from time to time but he was visibly shaken by the event and put a damper on our evening or going to see Los Lobos (this was right when Collosal Head came out and it was a small venue, it was a great show, despite my brother having big issues on the water). A few years before that I got to i.d my father's body in a morgue. Yes, on my birthday, yes, it sucked, big time. So much for having a sweet 25. These stories go on and on. So I don't celebrate my birthday. This is the time of year I rub the buddha's belly, I do nothing too exciting, I try to stay close to home. It's a little nerve racking.
Countdown #3
The house up in Boston is going to be sold in a little over a month. I am singing praises all over the place. We still need to pack some stuff and move some stuff and if anyone in the Boston area wants a master bedroom suite of furniture or a cool art deco style vanity or some cool single beds please let me know. You have to take them between July 1 and July 7 and you have to cart them away but they are all yours. I also have some home office furniture ala 1989 in great shape. All yours, just make them go away. This really is a huge thing off my shoulders. I will miss lobster dinners in this house and I will really miss my mom, it was her house, but I will not miss having it looming over me and having to be thought of.

Surrealist Meme

West Coast Arwen had this on her blog and I thought it sounded fun.
It’s an electronic update of the classic surrealist questions game “the exquisite corpse”. The idea is that you answer all the questions by typing your answer into Google Image search and post the answer in the form of an image that comes up. For poetic license we’ll say you can choose from the first 10 results but the idea is, of course, to work with the randomness of the responses.
1) What makes you happy?

(if you don't know the kid's nickname by now, you are lost)

2) What are you most ashamed of in yourself?

or maybe:

(not really my stomach)

or maybe

3) Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

4) What is the first thing you remember?

5) What has gotten you through your darkest hour?

6) What did your parents’ house smell like?
Dad’s house:

Mom’s house:

7) What word do you use far too often?

8) One word that you associate with your best kept secret?

9) One word describing a recurrent theme in your dreams:

10) What disgusts you in others?

11) What describes your first lover?

(this is what came back for polish baseball player)

Tag!

It's What Grown-ups do

When I was younger I don't think I did much drinking and dialing but I may have and I don't remember it because I was drunk and you don't remember much when you are drunk.
As an adult I think the equivalent is having a fever and leaving comments on blogs. I should probably leave the favorite blogs alone and just go to random blogs, at least then the damage is on unsuspecting victims. I was so sick last night I was that person on the plane that made you think of the movie 12 monkeys. The guy next to me was so clearly upset but I had lost my voice and couldn't even apologize. When I got home last night I had a fever so hubby drew a bath and that helped until the tylenol could break the fever. In North Carolina you can get codeine cough syrup without a perscription (I will take orders for you if you want) so I thought about downing some of that (on top of the heavy hitting tylenol pm cold and sinus medicine). This morning I am still feverish but I HAVE to be on a con-call at 10:30 so I am sipping warm drinks and making funny faces trying to open my ears and reading blogs and leaving comments. It's drinking and dialing for the grown up set.
Needless to say I am disclaiming any emails or comments I post today as well as all bad grammar, syntax and spelling. I also really hate summer colds and fevers and being sick in general. i think after the con-call I am going to go watch TV, to me that is the ultimate luxury, watching TV in the daytime.

It's Thursday and I only Have Random Thoughts for You

The house we are trying to sell in the Boston area is under contract, the closing will be in July. I won't even have to go to the closing, I am going to have my lawyer do all that. He will fedex the check to me after it is done. This is a big relief for me. I don't want to meet the people buying the house. We still have to get all this stuff out of the house. That may be a logistical nightmare, I am not sure. The moving company will move all the stuff we want to take but then there is all that office furntiure from the 80's we don't want and other whatnot. I had had suggestions from people about what to do with it. Noone suggested a bonfire yet. I like the bonfire idea but the wood isn't real, it's the heavy particle board stuff. I don't even want to think about what chemicals we would inhale if we burned it.
I have a really bad head cold. I was feverish last night and didn't have any cold medicine. Simply Sleep didn't help. I thought it might, it didn't. I had a king size bed this week and I some how managed to thrash all the covers and 8 pillows off the bed last night. I was telling this to Hubby this morning and he asked 'Why didn't you just call down to the front desk, they usually have packets of medicine?' I was actually too sick last night to think this through logically. The worst part was that I fell asleep around 9 and thrashed and thrashed in that weird, not awake not asleep, fever world. I become completely awake at one point and thought 'phew, I will be able to wake up soon.' Then I looked at the clock and it was only 11:30. It was a long night.
I watched part of a show the other night about armegeddon and the 'Final Days.' It interviewed Hal Lindsey, who wrote the Late Great Planet Earth. It was frightening what this guy (and many other people in this country) believe. He basically said we should be careful of intelligent, charismatic leaders since that is how the anti-christ will come back to earth (as a charismatic world leader). It is quite worrisome to me that a large group of Americans read and absorb the premise that intelligent leaders are bad because they might just be satan. It does explain a little bit more about why our current fearless leader was re-elected (he may be charismatic but doesn't seem to be really intelligent). People voted for the person they KNEW wouldn't be satan. Of course, I think other people would say evil is relative.
I want to go home. Being on a plane this evening with the amount of congestion my head has may be absolutely horrible. My ears are completely blocked but I really want to be home. NOW!
The Sox and the Yankees are tied again. I watched the 2 nights the Sox lost and I was too sick to watch them last night and they won. Maybe me watching them is bad luck. That would suck.
One of the closest people in my world is staving off foreclosure and it kills me because this person is smarter than me and more creative and yet I am successful and this person is about to lose their home. And I am not sure what the hell to do. Is it enabling them to help them out?
So much for the random ranting of me, time to get on the plane.

My Own Personal Ground Hog's Day

As you all know I live in Asheville. It's a Hamlet in the mountains of Western North Carolina. We have one celebrity living here who is alive. Thomas Wolfe came from Asheville but not many people still know who he is (go, read, you will enjoy). Moog used to live here but he passed away about a year ago. Please don't tell me you don't know who Moog is. We may have a lot of celebrities in the celebrities to humans ratio, but maybe not a lot in the big city celebrities to human ratios. I am not sure. I never looked at the statisitcs on that kind of stuff. So we have our one celebrity.
I think our one celebrity might be stalking me. No, really, listen to the facts:
For about 2 months we took the same flight to and from Atlanta. when I was ready to finally say hi to her she stopped taking that flight. Most of the consultants in Asheville at least know eachother by sight and most are pretty friendly with eachother. She saw us all talking but we are too respectful of a famous person's space to talk to her. Maybe she stopped taking the flight because we hurt her feelings, maybe she felt excluded, I am not willing to rule it out.

Next: She atarted showing up at OUR favorite sushi place and she sits behind us with her youngest daughter and a friend every time we are all there. It is our restaurant. When we get there the waitresses hug out daughter and have since she was about 3. In fact, it was the only restaurant we could really take her to for awhile (since it was all we wanted to eat). We sit in the same place when we are there and she always gets there after us and always sits behind us. Our child eats raw fish and loves it, my husband is a very good dad.
BTW - Our child will not eat tunafish. Doesn't even really like tuna tataki.
Next: We brought Noodle to see the Wizard of Oz at the community theatre and guess who was there? Yep, her and her daughter. She has started smiling at me, I think she realizes I know her game. I can be really nice, she could just come over and say hi and I would be friendly and I wouldn't even charge her*.
Another BTW- Our celebrity is actually prettier in person than on TV and I thought she was quite pretty on TV. Oh, and she has REALLY big feet. And she is really skinny. Maybe her feet aren't that big but she is so skinny that they look bigger. Her hair looks the way I wish my hair looked but I don't really have envy becuase she can pay gets paid a gazillion dollars for her hair to look like that and I don't get paid anything to look stellar all the time (yet somehow I do). When she talks she sounds a bit fake but I am sure she is sick of people talking with her. Her daughter is very pretty and very well behaved. She played with Noodle at the sushi restaurant one night because she had these sequined shoes that Noodle couldn't stop staring at. Our daughter, seemingly hypnotized by the shoes wandered over to the table and they played. Noodle gave her stickers. Ithink this was Noodle's first brush with fame.
All told, I think it is a bit strange that I see this one person more than any other stranger in the city. If I wasn't going to embarass my husband to no end I would definitely just go up and talk to her, but not like 'Hi, you are so great, blah blah blah.' More like 'Hi, stop stalking me, you could just say hi and we could make small talk like I do with about 200 other people in this town and go our merry ways. I don't want your autograph.' I am not sure if she would see the humor and I am not sure I really want to piss off a famous person who is stalking me.
I do find it strange that she keeps showing up where I am. I think if she gets a membership to the JCC pool then I will be truly worried, because she lives on the other side of town, she isn't jewish and she probably has a membership to a swanky country club if she doesn't have a pool in her backyard.

I like to remember that even if though I am paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.

* During the few weeks I was home I came up with wonderful little sayings like 'I am paid to be clean and nice.' This was after I hadn't showered for days and couldn't seem to smile. My husband really is a saint.

Get Ready For Some Jealousy

I was a bit upset at the premise that I was going to work for a franchise food establishment for my next consulting gig. I don't like fast food and we don't eat much at home except for a certain chicken company (with waffle fries and real chicken breast meat). And I was a little upset that I would be doing a lot more work than I should in a super tight time line. And I was a little upset that the person giving me all the information had been laid off and hired back as a contractor and lives in in florida (and we are in Atlanta) and doesn't seem to be willing to come to Atlanta but noone else knows the data this person knows.
Then I walked in the break room and saw this:

Do you know what that is? It is a Starbucks machine. Look closer:

A free starbucks machine. It brews the coffee one cup at a time. It makes regular, half-caf, decaf and cocoa. Did I mention it is free? This is Corporate America nirvana. I don't drink caffeinated coffee anymore but I can do some damage to decaf (and I will).

Also, you may notice I added some buttons on the right. I have added all my regular reading to my Google page and now I can see when a blog is updated immediately (along with Oddly Enough News, Quote of the day and the word of the day). I love it. You can do it it too. Just click the button over there. You know you want to. Go on.

My own strange news: I am training for a half marathon next January. I started about a month ago. That isn't the news though. I have gained 7 pounds since it started. So much for slimming down from running. I did run 2.2 miles in 22 minutes last night but it was on a treadmill. It was sprinting for me. Sprinting.

I leave you with the quote of the day: The trouble with jogging is that the ice falls out of your glass. - Martin Mull

Cheesecake Factory

Asheville doesn't have a Cheesecake Factory. If it did I may not go anyway. I try to eat local when I am home, I don't always but I try (Carraba's has these mussels that are in white wine and butter with garlic, I just can't resist them). Usually when we go out to eat we go to basically one of 4 restaurants: a sushi joint, a burrito joint, an indian joint or a sushi-thai joint, all local. I do not buy grocieries from a local place. I am not cool enough to shop at the Co-op so I shop at 2 supermarkets, both chains. Why am I not cool enough to shop at the Co-op? I don't have as much attitude as the people who ring up my purchases so I don't bother. I am paying for the food, I want people to be nice to me, not over the top, just a simple little checkout courtesy. I know, I am nuts. I live in the south and I want courtesy. When I travel I go to places I don't go at home: Cheesecake Factory, Chipotle, etc.... I go to places that I know what the quality will be and don't have to worry. In fact, I feel like I could write travel guides like the writer in the Accidental Tourist, I keep things so safe. When I was in Norfolk I got a salad from either the Boston Market or Cheesecake Factory Cafe every day. When I am working with people who are at all adventerous we will do a lot of local dining but I won't on my own, I am just too cautious. So last night I had dinner with 2 of the Atlanta Contigent, traded cookies for cupcakes and had a great time. Noodle may come down here in a few weeks and we will stay with one set of cousins for a few days. I will go to work, she will play with her 4 year old cousin (cousin C) , while her mom (cousin k8) reads my blog watches them play. It is a win-win-win for us because I get to see my daughter every night, my cousin k8 has someone to keep her daughter company and our daughters get to play play play. I was telling my cousin k8 that I just spent two weeks at home and didn't get enough of my child. She told me she was thinking about renting a kid (jokingly) to play with her daughter to keep her amused. So if I bring my kid to play with her kid then she has a rent-a-kid and I see my daughter. I think this would be cool. Hubby has to work out getting our bathroom plumbing fixed, the painters in and kitchen ceiling fixed while cousin k8 gets the final approval from her Hubby. We don't need approval from the girls, they more than love eachother. Noodle is cousin k8's daughter's second cousin, once removed. How do I know this? I keep track with powerpoint presentations. Not kidding, here it is: As you can see, Cousin C and Noodle are almost the same age (Noodle is 6 months older than Cousin C and 2 years older than Cousin S). I am a little older than Cousin K8. Her mother, my first cousin, is actually a little older than I am (but just a little), she had k8 when she was like 6 (maybe a bit of an embellishment). So by looking at the chart you can see that Noodle and cousin K8 are second cousins, making Noodle and cousin C second cousins, once removed. Follow that? Good, there will be a test. The black hole over on the right of the powerpoint is not me ignoring that part of the family, they are good people over there but I ran out of room on the powerpoint and they live all over. I am the youngest of my generation, I think Noodle is the youngest of her generation (that right side of the powerpoint can really get me confused so she may not be). Cousin S is the youngest, and will probably stay that way until Cousin E ramps up and multiplies... in at least 10 years....unless one of the cousin L's reproduce again since they are still of child bearing age or if hubby and I adopt or have another accident (no plans on either at this point). While I am in Atlanta there will probably be a lot of family stories since they are all of this town, hopefully I won't bore everyone to tears. Please note in the family tree up there we need no support from here. We are not that kind of family.

Why Can't Corporate America Be More Like A Miyazaki FIlm?

I have been remiss in my blogging, but I have been home, which doesn't feel like work, even when I am working from home. Tomorrow I have to leave to start my new project in Atlanta, which is a three and a half hour drive away. And this week I get to stay here so I really shouldn't complain. Except I really dont want to go. I have become quite disenchanted with the company I work for and was hoping I could give notice yesterday but it didn't pan out the way I would have liked. So I am going to help a company figure out the best way to collect royalties from their franchises. And this is when I wish corporate america was a little more like a Miyazaki film. If you don't know who Miyazaki is then you need to go rent (or buy) Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service and Porco Rosso RIGHT NOW! There is always a whip smart, young cute heroine and she isn't always saving the universe, sometimes she is learning not to be a brat, sometimes she is a plane engineer, sometimes she has been cursed by a jealous witch. Always the characters have a cool way of traveling around and I think my commute to work would be MUCH more fun if I could switch a dial in my castle and voila, I was in a new city. Or, it would be pretty cool if I could ride a flying broom to work. I could ride a non-flying broom to work but the commute would take awhile (I just envision walking from Asheville to Dallas with a broom between my legs on the interstate...that might draw some looks). Also the story lines are often fairly complex, not just a good guy / bad guy kind of scenario. In Princess Mononoke it was hard to say who the good guys were and who the bads guys were. This isn't what I expect from a cartoon. I definitely enjoy watching this more than some of the other movies Disney is distributing. Maybe this week I will pretend to be Fio from Porco Rosso where I am a brilliant 17 year old plane engineer instead of a sort of boring 35 year old IT consultant. A plus to being in Atlanta, I have a lot of family here (my husband and I refer to them as the Atlanta Contingent). I have a pretty cool, slightly quirky family. Quirky, you ask? They dress up in white for croquet and drink alcoholic beverages in long stylish glasses while playing. My mom had a contract out on my aunt's parrot since he was a violent, crazy animal. My aunt's parrot also taught me how to swear (he is deceased now but NOT because of my mom, it was absolutely natural causes). It is always a pleasure to see them, they are a great big mess of fun and there are 4 generations here in Atlanta so I will stay busy. I was looking for this famous picture of my cousins in their hats and croquet mallets but I do not have one that is digital. And I would have to get permission from like 6 people so I will just say, it is a great photo, they are great people. Although, they did threaten me recently. At Noodle's very fun 5th birthday party we had cake and cupcakes that were quite good. When I called the family to tell them I was coming they said that they wouldn't make me peanut butter cookies (a famously good cookie) unless I brought cupcakes. I used to get cookies just for showing up. Now I had to trade. Can you imagine...my own family extorting me for sweets? So I have 6 chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting sitting in my fridge at the hotel, the will power not to eat them is amazing.

On Being a Motherless Child

I thought if I titled this something that sounded really academic and smart then it wouldn't hurt.
I was wrong.
I want to start by saying that I am not a motherless child.
I am someone whose mother died much too soon.
She died of a disease that sapped her strength slowly over five years.
She chose when to die after this disease mandated she would die. This June will be the second anniversary of my mother's death. She called me the first week of June, 2004, and told me she couldn't fight anymore, it was too hard and she wanted to go. She told me to get ready and that she loved me and my husband and her granddaughter. She told me it was ok and to call her if I wanted to talk. Except, I couldn't call her. I had to pull away because even though I had talked to her for almost everyday of the last three years, I couldn't talk anymore. One week later she entered the hospital and less than a week after that she passed away in the early morning with my brother holding her hand. A day before she died I was in her room, they had just moved her closer to the nurses station so one of the nurses could always be with her and I started crying. These nurses had been taking care of her for the past five years, not all the time but with growing frequency year after year. One of her nurses came up to me and started hugging me, a nurse I had nicknamed The Battleaxe, and she just held me and she got weepy too. She told me she would miss my mom too and she was happy to have known my mom.
My mother first decided it was time to go, then entered the hospital when she was in pain. Then, in the hospital, she became anxious and talked about so many things she had to reconcile in her own mind. She worried about the relationship between my husband and my brother, my husband and myself, and then her relationship with her sister and her relationship with her first husband and after awhile many people I didn't know. She was working through issues and it didn't really make sense but she was doing it and it made sense to her. It turns out she had a stroke and soon her left side of her body didn't work anymore. My brilliant mother, who had not 1 but 2 degrees from Harvard, no longer made sense. And then she stopped being anxious and stopped being in pain but started to fade. We were with her all the time and started to tell the family that it was time to come to Boston. Some people came to the hospital and we had to warn them that she didn't make sense anymore. That was what was difficult for everyone, to see a woman who did the Sunday Times in pen no longer make sense and some forgot that she wasn't hurting, which was a good thing. All they just saw was that she had just kind of checked out. They knew that they no longer connected with her. They left a little confused. Then she died.
She had a beautiful memorial service that she planned herself, because that was my mom's style and she had five years to do it. She picked the music and she even picked the poem I read (which was perfect, by Sara Teasdale).
I do not believe in an afterlife and my mom was a bit vague about her beliefs but some interesting things have happened since she passed:
1. The morning of her memorial I smelled roses in a room with no windows and I suddenly felt very calm. Roses were her favorite smell.
2. The fall after she died the Red Sox won the world series for the first time in forever (do I need to mention she was a Red Sox fan?)
3. One year later the entire school commitee of a town in PA, which had been advocating teaching creationism in science class, was ousted. My mom felt the only place creationism should be taught was in a humanities course. She had been on the school commitee of the town I grew up in. She would have really cared about this issue.

I think I may miss her more now than in the few months after she died. I miss her insights and I miss her wit and I miss her intelligence. I miss the fact the she loved me no matter what and told me she was proud of me no matter what I was doing, whether I was in college or raft guiding or trying to earn a living making stained glass or selling out to corporate america. She loved me fiercely and I loved her the same. Daily, I try to remember what she taught me and I try to emulate her best traits, because that is how I immortalize her. My mother was a force, she was smart and strong and beautiful and as we aged we became closer and closer. I named my only child after her because I could not think of a better way to to tell her how much I loved her.
I am not a motherless child, I am a mother who lost her mother.

A Prayer

Until I lose my soul and lie
Blind to the beauty of the earth,
Deaf though shouting wind goes by,
Dumb in a storm of mirth;
Until my heart is quenched at length
And I have left the land of men,
Oh, let me love with all my strength
Careless if I am loved again.

Sara Teasdale

Elizabeth Sams Hawes, 1935 - 2004
I love you , Mom.

The Domestic Blisster Continues

My Poor Child
I am still home (and it is still supposed to be until June 12th) but they have piled work up on me which so far I have not been able to get to. I have had a really good reason though, Noodle has a rash. A big rash, it covers her arms, it covers her face, it covers part of her legs and part of her back. We thought it may be allergies but now we think it is viral. I have been given permission to give her benadryl. We have been to the doctor's twice and I picked her up early from school yesterday because it is a lot easier for me to distract her from her itching than her teachers, who are distracting 13 kids from all the things 4 and 5 years try to do to get introuble. When she even looks at benadryl she falls asleep. Where is she right now at 2:30 in the afternoon? Asleep in her bed. And now, since it has been days of this rash she gets a topical steroid cream too. The doctor wanted to give her an oral steroid but I said no, topical is fine and if it isn't better by next Monday we will go plan E.
Here are the plans with the results a la 'The Office' conflict resolution
Plan A: topical benadryl during the day and oral in the evening (when the itching seems to be at its worse)
Result: the lotion worked for about 30 minutes at a time and could only be applied 3-4 times a day
Conflict Resolution Status: Lose-Lose
Plan B: topical benadryl and I play with her in the afternoon to distract her from itching
Result: I don't get any work done this way so it may be effective for Noodle but not for me
Conflict Resolution Status: Win-Lose
Plan C: half a benadryl before school and a full one at night
Result: still itchy
Conflict Resolution Status: Lose-Lose
Plan D: Full benadryl every 6 hours and Locoid lotion wherever she feels like itching her sandpaper skin
Result: I will let you know how this pans out
I am also giving her Aveno baths as often as I can get her take one. My child smells like oatmeal, I hate gruel but love my child.
Conflict Resolution Status: Win-Lose
Plan E: oral steroids. I really hope we don't go there.

Why I do Not have an Only Child
Yesterday after I picked her up early I wanted a cup of coffee and was too lazy to make a fresh pot at home thought it would be a nice treat to get Noodle a treat from our local bakery and she picked out a sugar cookie with lemon icing and a strawberry danish. The danish, in her opinion, was the healthy afternoon snack while the cookie was the junk food treat. The danish had two pieces of fruit on it while the cookie didn't, thus the danish is healthy. I kept thinking of Bill Cosby's chocolate cake routine. Eventhough she had eaten all of her lunch 45 minutes earlier she devoured the cookie and when we pulled into the driveway she was ready for her 'healthy snack.' I left her in the backyard with the 100 pound german shepherd to get my laptop so I could work and she could play outside when I started hearing shreiking, like maybe someone had cut off her leg or was trying to abduct her. So I ran outside to find her curled up in a ball disdainfully holding her danish and shooting daggers at the dog who was sitting a few feet away, trying to look innocent. I asked Noodle what happened and all she could stammer out was 'she licked my danish.' I turned away so she wouldn't see me laugh. I remember being a kid and licking all the pop tarts so that my brother couldn't have any. I actually opened the bags and licked them and then put them bag in their bags and put a note on top of them stating 'these have been licked' just so I could have them all to myself. I thought the dog was just a dog, instead she is teaching Noodle all the valuable lessons a sibling can teach.

A Night Out With Hubby
Last night Uncle Hobbit (aka Hobby, aka Hobble-Wobble, aka my older brother) came over to teach my child new bad habits babysit so Hubby and I could go see a movie. We had sort of agreed to see Thank you for Smoking since I really enjoyed the book and tobacco is the state flower of North Carolina (or is it the state vegetable?). When we got there we decided to paper-rock-scissors to either see the movie or go play pool. I lost, we went to go play pool. he beat me 2-1. We both stink but we have a blast. Then I convinced my husband we should go to the bar down the street and watch the Red Sox - Yankees game. He liked the wings there so we went. And I had a wonderful night. Red Sox decimated the Yankees and the bar was defintely rooting for the right team. It was a great date. It was date night and it was great. And although this chick thinks date night is a joke and women should just put out, I think date night is really fun (and I would put out anyway). At least with date night we get to go out and remember all the reasons we like eachother OUT of the sack.

Welcome to the World of Domestic Bliss

I am home until June 12th. Hubby already told me the TV line up for the night (which is why I am right here blogging instead of watching). Speaking of entertainment, the Red Sox, my beloved team, is behind the Evil Ones by .007 of a point. Beware, Chag, we start again tomorrow night and I will lovingly mock you when we win (do you hear the maniacal laughter?). I sent you a very reserved email last time WE WON BIG but I will have a bit of hubris this round. My Hubby, who actually doesn't care about sports unless there are some class V rapids involved, is actually a fan of that evil team, and eventhough we were already pregnant and pretty much told to get married, I would have had grave reservations about marrying him if I had known about his allegiances before we entered into a nuptial agreement. Now it is too late and I accept his foibles.
So I thought I would wake this morinng, walk Noodle to school, run my 2.5 miles and take a shower. Funny how domestic bliss can get out of whack. Instead, I noticed the rash that had been only on Noodle's face on Saturday was now ALL over her body. I was a little worried she may have fifth disease and she is around kids who have moms who are pregnant so I called the doctor and they said 'hurry up, come in!' so we drove to the doctor and Noodle itched and I fretted. The poor kid has the same sensitivity to everything with fragrance that I do. We don't even know what new fragrance she came across. She didn't have fifth disease and she didn't have strep so it is probably allergies. I got to bring her to school and tell her teacher 'if she seems to start having respiratory distress call 911 and then call me... thanks.' So she got topical benadryl during the day and oral benadryl at night. The kid is passed out hard right now.
Speaking of Noodle, she was accepted to our first choice for schools. Core curriculum seems cool and I hope it helps her adjust form having us as parents. Oh wait, what is a blog without a great picture...

That was taken about a month ago. She is just the most beautiful thing in the world.

Back to my foray into the world of domestic bliss. After I left Noodle at school I came home and decided to sneak a peak at my work email, which I hadn't checked since Friday. My clients had issues. One went live and eventhough I haven't been there for a year they were having issues so I helped them as much as I could. The other one, the one I just rolled from, is doing UAT (user acceptance testing) testing for the very complex approval hierarchy I set up for them and there has only been one set up issue. Yeah for me. They call it user accpetance testing but usually managers who don't really get it do the testing. They have had a ton of functionality issues though. It was all stuff we reviewed but until you are doing it, you just don't get it. So I answered questions for awhile and went to lunch with a friend that I never see enough and her perfect 3 month old baby. No really, he is perfect. He smiles and gurggles and eats and smiles some more, and has a cool baby trick, if you rub the back of his head he falls asleep... everytime. And he has red hair and he is cute as a button. Not that I have baby envy (in spades) but this kid is really quite amazing. We sat in a restaurant for and hour and a half and he didn't care. Then we went shopping and he was happy and then I went home, read blogs for 20 minutes, made a marinade for the tuna steaks and went running. I run right past Noodle's school so I got her and then we walked home listening to my iPOD. We listened to 2 of her favorite songs: Lucious Jackson's Naked Eye and Jack Johnson's Upside Down. Noodle has this thing called Nakey Girl Power, it is about being naked and powerful. So to her, 'In My Naked Eye' is really an anthem. She has asked what the lyrics mean:

wearing nothing is divine, naked is a state of mind, i take things off to clear my head, to say the things i haven't said, i live inside the elements, the earth and sky are my best friends, water is the evidence that washes me from end to end

I tell her it is about taking a bath. And we sung together and it was really nice (except we are both tone deaf). Our house is 3 songs away from her pre-school. I am going to make a Noodle playlist tonight for tomorrow's walk. I was suprised she didn't want to listen to Really Rosie or Rachmoniniff's piano concerto #2, two of her favorites. She told me you had to sit for the piano stuff, you can't walk. I'll give her that. She probably doesn't like that I cry every time I hear it either. Just an aside (like there hasn't been a few dozen already), who the hell owns the rights to Really Rosie and why isn't it out on DVD yet? Fuckers. We don't own a VHS player and you can't get the tape anyway.
So I got home and started making dinner because I agreed with Hubby I should be domestic goddess for the time I am home since I don't have much else to do and getting dinner ready is a good thing for him. He is sort of in wicked crunch mode, almost done with one house and another house right behind this one so they can get on the market during the height of the real estate sales period (April to September). I feel like I can totally pretend to be stay at home mom for a few weeks while he kicks the renovation work out. It's the least I can do. Except tonight, I sort of forgot, I had put together a conference call to discuss a new utilization bonus plan. So the director I invited to join the call had to ring me up to ask me where the fuck I was. I told him it was his fault since I am normally so on the ball when I am billable*, I screw up a lot when I am not billable. It was a good call, he liked what we had put together and I am sure the it will go into effect, even if I was a total goofball forgetting the call.

I am looking forward to the next couple of weeks. I hope my family still likes me in the end.

*In consulting everything is about whether you are billable or not. When you are billable the sun shines directly on you and the people who own the company love and cherish you because you are a cash cow. When you aren't billable it is called being on 'the bench' or if you live near the ocean it is called being on 'the beach.' Then you are seen as a pariah, and evil leach on the face of the company, bringing all members of the company closer and closer to bankruptcy. You think I am kidding but the first consulting company had a little unofficial saying 'Your first week on the beach should be nerve racking but your second is fine because you will be getting unempoyment.' The company I am at now is much more generous.

What is that sinking feeling in my stomach?

Today was a weird day for my blog. Normally I take the weekends off and so do my 12 trusty readers. So my statcounter goes kind of wonky where Tuesday and Wednesday I get hundreds of hits and then on the weekends I gets about 8. Often people are searching about cat urine being toxic and sometimes I get some weird ones about e.l.f s.e.x, but hey, too each their own. Today I got a gazillion (which is more than a google, and I hope you all knew that a google was a number and not just a website). Same URL over and over reading everything, back to January. An that's is just a little weird for me because I am not that interesting I tend to keep this for myself. My family and friends can always find out what is going on with me and I can use my user ID to leave comments over at Kara's. Oh, and I have become friendly with some really cool people which is a fringe benefit (I hope you got that, Kristen). But the IP address was a prep school and I can't imagine a teenager would be interested. So I start sluething. I know a lot of smart people and some of them have taught at different prep schools so I thought it might be a friend. I click on the staff link and almost right away I see a name I never thought I would come across again.
And voila, a knot in my stomach formed. The same nauseous feeling that I had 17 years ago came back like it never left.
One time my husband asked me if there were any ex's I wasn't friendly with (he was amazed I seem to be friendly with so many, not really tight, just amicable). I told him yes, there was one. I told him I was so angry at this ex I poured honey inside his truck. I told my husband that it was a sucky time in my life and I did some horrible things to this individual. I saw red all the time when I was 18.
The sinking feeling in my stomach is guilt, not unrequitted love.
If this individual reads this blog again I hope he can accept this: I am sorry, I am sorry for causing you the amount of pain I did and I am sorry I poured honey in your truck and I am sorry I could not have been a better person at that point in my life. You received the brunt of Hurricane Ari and I look back at that point in my life with incredible shame. Please accept my apology.
Sincerely.

This is Going to be a Problem

I got an email today and that is the only thing it said. It came from a person who makes Change Management Consultants earn their keep. I am not a change management consultant but am very good at getting people excited! to have their little bit of corporate america change. The person who sent me this email wants nothing to change. She works 60 hours weeks, she looks like she hasn't slept in months, she obsesses about fixed assets. And she likes it this way. I am helping this company CHANGE their ERP system so that they don't have as many people working 60 hours weeks, so that thier P2P system is more efficient, so that people don't chase other people down with paper, so that employees actually know why their requisition has not been approved yet. Will there be BIG changes? Yes, but they are good or I wouldn't advise them. And the response I get from one woman, who seems to hold the accounting department hostage with her ability to handle FA the way no other can is 'this is going to be a problem.' So instead of emailing the woman to fucking relax I set up a meeting with her and the financial controller and the senior accountant and I coax her issues out so that we all know what they are. I mean, I know all are suprised that I couldn't figure out exactly what the problems are from a one line email stating 'this is going to be a problem.' Usually my telepathy is so much better, the plane incident must be negatively effecting me. So we have the meeting and we list all the issues out. And then I had the Controller explain why 8 of the 9 issues are not really issues (if it comes from a member of the company and not the consultant employees will listen a little more...especially when the controller is her boss.) I conceded the last issue, we needed to test it out so we knew whether it was a big issue, a little issue or no issue at all. So I tested it and, guess what, not an issue. I am sure she will find more issues. What this woman's issue really is: change. And maybe, she is a little worried about only working 40 hours weeks.
I am horrible at change so I definitely feel her pain. I can tell others what to do but am not great at it myself. Except I don't really care about work change because it's work. Blah, work. I don't do well with my life paradigm making big shifts, I often tend to wind up a a little overwhelmed. I can do fine with work change (or I change work so I am happy again) but home change freaks me out. When this kind of stuff happens I usually have Hubby saying things like 'Fucking relax.' Hubby could have his whole world change about every ten minutes and he would 'ride the chaotic wave' (that's his quote, not mine). Of course, I think if he wanted to go into Change Management consulting he wouldn't last long because he often has the attitude of 'I don't understand your issue here' (thus the comment). So he gets a 10 when it comes to handling change and a 3 on being empathic about change (sorry, Hon, you know its the truth). I get a 3 when it comes to handling change and a 10 for the empathy involved to get people to change. I think I get about a 4 handling Hubby handling me. He gets about a 6 handling me handling him handling me. (did you follow that?)
I roll off this project in 1 day and I am counting the hours. I can't wait to get home and have Hubby handle me for awhile.

I just have to Share

First of all, I am sort of back. This project is ending abruptly and I am trying to wrap up the loose ends. I should be 'working' from home starting next week so I will be able to share all the whacky stuff I have been going through. I have lots and lots of blog fodder.
But I had to share this...
I took the red eye from San Francisco to Norfolk via Atlanta last night. (an aside: I learned I am much more effected by jet lag than I used to be). I sat down and was ready to dose off to sleep until the fairly attractive 60'ish year old man sat next to me and started chatting...at 11 pm at night...west coast time so really 2 in the morning since I never acclimated. And he was quite charming and so I chatted back and he offered me 'special' chocolates his daughter made him and I happily accepted because there is nothing better than yummy and delicious chocolate. It had a very earthy quality to it, like coffee beans or something. I couldn't place the flavor. Then I started getting giggly and we were talking about how ridiculous Corporate America is and then he said 'The chocolate won't get you in trouble, will it? They don't drug test you, do they?'
Huh?
The earthy taste was the herby taste of specially prepared butter...strong butter. His daughter gave him 'special' chocolate and he was kind enough to share.
And the giggling, that was me baked out of my gord.
And fortunately we don't drug test at the company I am at.
If I had had a freaky hippy sitting next to me I would have thought twice about eating ANYTHING they offered but this was the president of a company (we were in first class) and he sort of looked like a grandfather, not a stoner. And the chocolates were from his daughter. This guy was obviously enlightened.
My spidey sense was completely caught off guard.
It was really fun.

Sabbatical

I am on sabbatical until further notice. I love blogging but I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TIME IN THE DAY.

Today is Noodle's Fifth Birthday

Today I met Noodle and her Dad in Boston, where we will start packing up her grandmother's house. This is the grandmother whom she is named after, it is my mother's house, although it isn't my home. Noodle remembers her Mimi and tells me that she can't wait for her to come back. We had steak and corn on the cob and lobster and apple juice for dinner (with champagne for the adults) because that is what she wanted for dinner. She remembers last year's birthday, she says she remembers her trip to Maine, although it was when she was barely three. She only remembers her mother leaving home for days at a time for work. She remembers her dad being the person who soothes her when she has a bad dream and that he hit every major milestone with her (sitting up, talking, crawling, walking, complex sentences). Her life is so different than any other child I know.
I remember the first time she told me something that we didn't teach her. It was about maple syrup.
I remember the first time I heard her say a complex sentence (5 words), she was nearly 3 but decided not to talk for the longest time.
I remember the first time I saw her walk, I remember the first time I saw her crawl.
I remember the first time I heard her say ma and look at me at the same time.
I remember the first time she smiled at me and I knew it wasn't gas.
I remember the first time I held her in my arms and new for the first time in my life I could kill ...to protect her.
I remember when I told my husband we were getting married (so romantic, I know).
I remember when I told my husband, but he was my boyfriend at the time, that we were going to have a baby.
I remember being alone when I found out I was pregnant, my boyfriend was 3500 miles away without access to phones, electricity, running water (there was a river, does that count?) and beer.
I remember when my boyfriend and I decided to buy a house together.
I remember the first time I told my boyfriend I loved him.
I remember the first kiss.
I remember the first date, we went to see a batman movie.
I remember the first time I met him, 13 years ago.
Happy birthday Noodle, Happy birthday Hubby. I love you both with all my heart.

My New Wallpaper

I love this photo. I adore this child.

Love.Angel.Music.Baby or Blood,Sugar,Sex,Magic or Travel,Friends,Family,Work

Oh, I know, Gwen and the Red hot Chili Peppars sound a lot more interesting than me... Life for me is a little over the top right now. If my anxiety was a simmering pot it would be boiling over. It will pass, we are working to make the anxiety pass and to be honest I AM REALLY SICK OF IT SO I AM GOING TO IGNORE IT FOR AWHILE. My travel schedule is going to be a little weird this month, I home this weekend but I am going to Boston next weekend to get my mother's house in shape to be put on the market to sell. The next weekend I will be home and we are celebrating Noodle's birthday, although it is actually the 13th, we will all be travleing that day. The weekend after that I am flying to San Francisco to help my step father find a new condo.
He and my mom met on the internet about 7 years ago, one year after hubby and I became an item. We were all pretty sure that he was a leader of an internet vampire sex cult but we were all VERY wrong. They eloped in April (that is a story in and of itself) and in June my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL, for short). Jacob, my step father, could have totally ditched her, he barely knew her and here she is getting sick. But he didn't. And because of him I feel we got a lot longer time with my mom than if she had been single. And those 5 years weren't easy, her quality of life slipped a little at a time, more and more restrictions were put on her because of her health, we got to the point we were worried about how many blood transfusions she could have (give blood, people!) and finally she decided she couldn't fight anymore and she died 12 days later. And he stuck it out, he said he had no choice, she was his soul mate, and I love him a lot. Here is a picture of them the fall after they eloped and before the first major hospital stay: I still wear that turtle neck sweater. It sort of hangs on me but tough. So Jacob is moving back to San Francisco and we are selling one house and buying another and moving some stuff to San Francisco and some stuff to Asheville and it will all be fine but it is a little stressful right now. We will also move my mom's cats to Asheville (my brother is coming to help and he will move them). One of my best friends and her family are going to help us next weekend. We are going to get the house in Scituate in order, 'stage' it and hopefully sell it fast. Here is the ONLY picture I have of me and this person: The picture is a little dated (12 years). We have known eachother since we were 13. We go back. She used to come out and visit me when I was at UMASS and we would watch Dangerous Liasons and do art and weird stuff like that and party a lot. She and I were both in crappy relationships at the time, except she didn't totally realize her guy sucked ass until she had moved far away from everyone who loved her. Fortunately, that didn't last and she married a great guy (I know, I was his roommate for a year right before they got married, which is funny because she was my first roommate at summer camp). Anyway, she would come visit me and let me know from time to time that my boyfriend at the time was really an asshole. And he was. He was in a band and really insecure and projected all that insecurity on me. When I finally got out of the relationship I didn't think anyone would ever want me to date them again. She was very supportive of me leaving him. Did I mention I weighed about 105 pounds back then? I looked sick (about 15 pounds less than the picture above). It was pretty bad.
Another person who really helped at the end of the relationship was a guy named Gregory. I am not going to post his current picture because I have not asked him and I don't feel comfortable just posting pictures without permission (unless it is the chica above). In college I worked at an art center and he would come in and and do art (I am not sure I mentioned this before but I really don't belong in corporate america, I am an artist who can hide my true self). Gregory would come in and flirt and I was flattered because he was hot but then I realized that he and I were becoming really good friends. We saw Jello Biafra speak and Kurt Vonnegut and Dave Brubeck play and really enjoyed each other's company. I taught him how to garden, how to start seeds and make sure his greenhouse had the right conditions. I helped him with his bees since he was a novice and I kept bees growing up. He made me feel good when my ex-boyfriend made me feel really really bad. He helped me make the break and I don't think I ever thanked him. He lives in San Francisco with the same woman he was dating when we went to school together (I think that is cool). I get to see him in a few weeks. I get to thank him. And that is a really good thing.
And work, I am getting to a good spot but there will be a lot of pain before then end of May when I roll off this project. At that point I have to decide whether I stay with the same I company I am with now. Not an easy decision.
Travel Friends Family Work

jobs

I have noticed when work is remarkably stressful I tend to go here and here and here instead of actually working. More importantly, I have noticed many other people in Corporate America do that too.
It is pretty easy to find job sites and reosurces for working outside the home. So I figured I would try to do a resources search. When I ran this:"stay at home" resources I got a a bunch of work from home links. When I did this search: "stay at home" resources so you don't kill you children, I got this link, among others, whom I read regularly already.
Ok, back to the thing I am trying to run away from.

PS- When life (not work) is really stressful I eat. Actually I eat a lot when work is stressful too. Honestly, I just like to eat. Recently I have surrounded myself with things that are really bland and gross low fat and healthy. I found cracker jack rice cakes and I love them. They are sort of like cardboard popcorn balls but without the fat.

New Romance Service

For all the singles out there...Happy 4/1.