What To Do....

I am constantly struggling with finding my path in life...my purpose....my raison d'être. This is something that I've been struggling with since college and my current spot in life is really one that I basically stumbled into. My choice in colleges was based on a football game. My degree was based on the fact that I just needed to pick something and get a degree since I was doing it all on my parents' dime and they were only so patient in letting me dilly dally around in school trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I got my first real job because I needed to have insurance. From there, for the most part, jobs came to me because I knew somebody who liked the job that I did and would hire me away from my previous position.. I really only sought out a couple of jobs....everything else just kinda happened to me, not that I can really complain because it has allowed me to have a pretty good life. 

However, that doesn't really help with my search. I mean deep down, as many of you are aware, I want to be an artist...but how to do that and continue to earn a living and not become a drain on the rest of societ in my later years. So, for the time being, I've implemented a mandate on my own time that inset aside a certain amount of time every day to be creative and to feed that inner artist. Primarily, I set a timer mid-morning and go up to my studio and sew for 25 minutes each morning. I know I should probably feel guilty doing this, but I justify it by telling myself that if I were going into the office that time would have been spent visiting or, if I were a smoker, going and taking my smoking breaks...I just take sewing breaks. 

So, along with these thoughts, there are so many other things that are on my mind....do I find a way to downsize....do I move....how do I find my zen? Today, I watched a couple of documentaries that made me stop and think about these things again. First, I watched one called "A Mile, Mile and a Half". This movie was about this group of hikers who hike The John Muir Trail in Yosemite. Watching this makes me want to get all athletic and outdoorsy and take up camping and hiking and take a month off and go rough it through the mountains....won't happen, but I can dream. 

The other documentary that I watched was on tiny house movement and this is something that I could actually consider...okay, maybe not a tiny house, but downsizing to something more reasonable and getting rid of so much of my stuff.... This movie really made me think, again, about how ridiculous it is the way I buy things...I have way more than I ever will need or use....except fabric. So, do I start taking steps towards downsizing? And if yes, what to do first...

Criminal Minds

I've been binge watching the television show Criminal Minds over the last couple of weeks while working. I just started Season 8, which is when Jeanne Tripplehorn joined the cast and Paget Brewster left. There are a couple of things that come to mind as I am saturated with this show....

• Two of their main characters have the same name. Aaron Hotchner, the team lead, and Erin Strauss, his boss. 
• The writers of this show are sick, sick, sick....Who is able to come up with and write this stuff? 
• I really need to update my dental records for possible identification, if it comes down to it. 
• I would never hold up to any form of torture. 
• Maybe it is because I'm watching these, but I really think that people are idiots....they always get into cars with strangers, or leave with strangers, or pick up strangers, or leave their kids alone, or run upstairs instead of outside....why do they always head towards the second floor? Oh, and there seems to be a lot of men out there that cheat on their families. 
• I want to be Penelope Garcia...she is totally cool and smart....oh and she has a really special relationship with Derek Morgan (hubba, hubba). 
• I always love the quotes that they have at the ends of the episodes. 
• If these stories are based on real stories out there, this is a truly weird and broken world. 

I'm going to have to find a much lighter show to binge watch once I'm finished with all of these. 

Bad Blogger

I know, it has been a long time since I have posted...yeah over two months, but I've had other things going on in my life that I haven't really wanted to dwell on out here, although I may at some point.

However, I did feel that I needed to post something this year (even if it doesn't really feel like my year has started yet). I've been working almost exclusively from home these past couple of months, which has been great because I don't really have to make an effort to get myself around and be presentable, even though I do make the point to take a shower every morning. My project that I've been working on (an application implementation) continues to get pushed out, which honestly does not bother me one bit. It seems to be a comedy of errors in this whole implementation and like so many projects the scope seems to constantly be changing. It is frustrating and annoying and part of me really wants to just flip the switch and start using the system and then hammer out the issues as they arise....yet, that probably is NOT the ideal way to implement a new system, especially since so many of the problems that we are having would literally bring our account to its knees....ah well, I just keep doing what they tell me to do.

In the meantime, when I'm not feeling frustrated with work I've been doing a lot of reading and have taken up knitting again. I used to knit a long, long time ago when I was in high school and in the past month or so decided that I needed to do something with my hands in the evenings while I'm watching television. I don't really want to get into making really intricate sweaters or anything fancy, so I'm making scarves and primarily infinity scarves:

NOT ONE OF MINE, JUST PICTURE I FOUND

These are a lot of fun to make and so far in the past 1.5 months, I've completed 5 scarves and am now working on my 6th....who knows these may very well become presents for people out there, so if you have a color preference, let me know.

Other than that, my life is pretty mundane and I'll give more details as to what has been happening some day. 

The Right Thing?

Hopefully I did the right thing yesterday......

Let me start by saying that I am NO Gladys Kravitz. In fact, I could not tell you the names of any of my neighbors and would not be able to point them out in a line up.

Early Wednesday morning at about 2:30, Leo wakes me up barking, which he never does. He usually doesn't need to get up and go out in the middle of the night and when he does, he is good about ringing the bell by the door and somehow no matter how softly he rings that I can hear it and will zombie-like stumble from bed and let him out. So, when he is barking it definitely wakes me up and scares me a bit. I got up and let him out, but he continued to bark and it got through my addled, sleepy-hazed mind that the lighting outside was not right and I could here large trucks running. So, I pulled a Gladys and peaked out my windows to see what the heck was going on. Turns out there was a fire and an ambulance truck at my neighbor's house. They had arrived sans sirens, which makes me think that they are actually considerate of people and unless there is traffic that they need to warn of their approach that perhaps emergency vehicles don't just willy-nilly run their sirens...but I digress. I couldn't really see what was going on with the ambulance and, although I was curious, I didn't want to be THAT nosey of a neighbor and put on clothes and shoes and investigate. Instead, I cleaned off Leo's feet and we went back to bed.

I didn't think anything more about my neighbor until Thursday afternoon when a winter storm hit the area and ice started building up on anything that didn't move. I noticed that my neighbor had a couple of packages sitting on his front porch. They had been sitting there on Wednesday afternoon as well and were still there 24 hours later. So, I went over and took those packages and brought them into my house. One of them had already formed a layer of ice, so I scraped all of the ice off of it and now both packages are sitting in my living room. I left a note tucked into his door (I know it is a him because I did meet him one time out by the mailbox) and I think I found him on Facebook and left a message there for a complete stranger.

We shall see if I hear from him.....If I don't, what do I do with the packages? I don't know if he is in the hospital and for how long. Do I just wait until the weather clears up and then take the packages back over and leave them for him? Do I call the police in a couple of days and find out from them what I should do? I don't want to be arrested for mail theft. I don't want my neighbors to think that I go around taking things from people's porches. I would hope that somebody would do something similar for me if the need ever arose.

Really?!?

Has it really been two weeks since I last blogged?!? Wow, time sorta slipped away from me and sadly, I'm not expecting it to get much better in the coming months, so just bare with me.

Work has been crazy busy with my project finally taking off in full force. My deadline hasn't changed any, just the start date got pushed and pushed and pushed, so now we are having to make up a lot of lost time. I'm spending a ton of time staring at the computer building workflows in the system, so when I get a break about the last thing I want to do is write...that's the excuse I'm sticking with.

However, I guess I should give a little insight into what has been going on.

Leo - He managed to pick up a new cough while at daycare a couple of weeks ago and while he was on antibiotics, which concerns the vet that he has become resistant to the antibiotics. With this in mind, we are going in to see a diagnostic veterinarian on Monday to have some more extensive tests performed and hopefully get a plan of long-term treatment in place for him. However, because of this new development, I will not be purchasing a new car as of yet since my down-payment dollars are now going to tracheal washes and lung scopes.

Quilting - I managed to finish up a baby quilt for a friend of mine at work, which I will take into him next week. I have plans for my next small art quilt, which according to my challenge is due at the end of this month....and all I have are plans for it. Luckily, it is a small quilt and I think I should be able to whip that out over the next couple of weekends.

Other - I have signed up to facilitate a bi-weekly study group at my church, which I'm looking forward to. I went through the same group last year and found it to be very interesting and insightful, which is why I am participating again this year. There is a lot of reading involved, but I figure since I've done it before, it will be more of a refresher for me. Luckily, I'm not actually teaching the class, but basically just guiding the participants through the discussions.

So, like I said, some areas in my world are going a little crazy, others are quiet, but sitting and writing isn't really top on my list...even if I did give myself a challenge to follow. I'll try and keep things updated, when I can....it would be really great if I could figure out how to just think my blog posts and then they would magically appear and not actually require me to sit and put fingers to keyboard....

What A Site!!

A couple of weeks ago as my sister and I were driving down to La Grange, I look out of the window and I see these fields of sunflowers.


Not My Photo

I had never really noticed these fields before. Typically, when driving through Texas, you would see corn or wheat or soybeans or cotton or some other grain that my Dad could name from a glance, but I would have no idea what it is. But, there were fields upon fields of sunflowers.

Then, last night as I was driving to meet Sara for our recurring pedicure and dinner catch up discussion, I look over and see more fields of sunflowers and cars pulled over with people getting out and taking their picture with them as the Texas sun was setting (and yes, Texas has a completely different sun than the rest of the world...deal with it). Seeing all of those sunflowers opened and blooming and faces up to the sky made me so very happy and I got to thinking about what joy simple flowers can bring to me...especially the unpretentious sunflower.


Not My Photo

I think if I ever get married, I wand to carry sunflowers in my bouquet.

Wild Life in the 'Hood

I've been seeing lots of wild life recently in the neighborhood. A few weeks ago, I was sitting on the couch and heard a tap tap tapping at the door. I looked up and saw:

Yes, that is a roadrunner sitting on the ledge of the window above my door. I, obviously, grabbed my camera took that picture and then went outside after she jumped down and got another picture of her in my yard:

We have also been seeing an over abundance of rabbits around...I haven't bothered to get any pictures of them, although they do seem to enjoy teasing poor Leo as they will sit in the backyard while he is trapped in the house.

Today, as I was driving out of the neighborhood, I turned the corner and saw this strange mass in the middle of the street. The mass then started to move and as I got closer it made its way to the curb:

Here is another shot of the momma duck with her babies following behind, doing as they are told.

Gotta love Mother Nature....

You Are Getting Very Sleepy

I have been listening to self-hypnosis and/or meditation tracks as I fall asleep for the past couple of weeks. I admit that they are primarily focused on weight-loss, eating healthy, get motivated to exercise, or, in the case of the meditation, just ways to calm your mind in order to meditate. I will play one of these at night, after I've read a chapter or two of whatever book is handy and I turn out the light to prepare to go to sleep.

I can't say that I've actually noticed any changes based on the hypnosis. I mean, I still eat about the same and  I'm not losing any weight. I still binge eat at times, which is terrible I know and an issue that I'm addressing (sorta via self-hypnosis, but whatever). And, I certainly am not more motivated to workout...I mean, Sara can't even convince me to join her team to possibly run and drink beer...primarily because I don't run NOR do I really drink beer....maybe they need to do a run where you stop and have a glass of bubbly along the way...but I digress. What I can say about listening to these tapes is that I sleep GREAT! I'm really relaxed and feel very rested when I wake up in the morning. I'm not even disturbed by the dog's movements in bed and don't realize that I'm slowly getting shoved out by him.

My one real concern, though, is that I'm wondering what effect these recordings are having on Leo...I mean, he has gotten more picky about what he eats and he seems to want to be more active.... 

RuPaul's Stream of Consciousness

So, I admit that one of my guilty pleasures is watching RuPaul's Drag Race and RuPaul's Untucked.

Sadly, I really shouldn't watch these right before I go to bed because last night my dreams were totally peppered with drag queens. I'm completely enamored with these ladies and, I know it is probably hard for some to understand, I find them to be incredibly strong people to be able to live the life and be the people that they are. If only I had that sort of strength of character. I also learn all sorts of terminology like "T" and "throwing shade". For those of you NOT in the 'know', "throwing shade" is talking trash about a friend or acquaintance or to publicly denounce or disrespect a person. I have to admit that I have been guilty of throwing a little shade in my day, but nothing like how these ladies roll with it.

Now for "T", I actually learned about that when I read and then watched the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

In that movie and book, there is a character, Lady Chablis, who is a preoperative transsexual woman who is also a full-time drag queen.

The Lady Chablis spoke about her "T" and hiding her "candy", which references the truth about who she is (a man). This, of course then makes me think of the movie The Crying Game.

See, I titled this stream of consciousness because everything seems to make me think of something else and so on and so on...

Credit Card Drama

In the past two weeks, I have had to replace two of my credit cards. One the credit card company called me and said they noticed some bogus charges on my card coming from London. They wanted to know if I was there. When I said "no" they said they were wondering since the card was being used but the three digit security code was not being included. They then canceled my card and backed those charges out sending me a sparkly new card.

Two days later, I'm looking at my bill from another card and see a couple of charges that occurred on Christmas Day and I KNEW that I had not used my card on that day. When I Googled the listed company I came up with a long string of sites that declared it to be a fraud site and people all over the place were getting charged small amounts ($50 - $100) in sequential days from this company, which was the case with me. I immediately got on the phone with the credit card fraud people and they too canceled my card and backed those charges out and sent me a sparkly new card.

The problem that I have now, though, is that all of my automatic bills were applied to that card and I now need to go back and reset those up....or do I? I've already found myself NOT auto-pilot shopping on Amazon.com from my Kindle because I no longer have a credit card in the system...perhaps this is a good thing.

Perfect Ending

Yesterday I had the perfect ending to the perfect day. To start with the day was just generally a bad day. It started off bad when I woke up at 3:00 AM thinking the Ross Perot, the one time owner of my company, had passed away. I know, weird but I still got up and Googled it just to make certain that I had not suddenly been blessed with psychic abilities and foresight. Next, the day just went bonkers because it is approaching the holidays and pretty much all of my team took the day off, which means that is the day when everybody needs something....so I was crazy busy switching gears all day long.

The one thing that I was looking forward to was getting together with my group from church to have a potluck and celebrate the Winter Solstice. I was to pick up a meat and cheese plate. I, of course, waited until the last minute to do this and was sorely disappointed in my selections, however, I found something at the grocery store, grabbed it and ran.

The church is about a 20 minute drive from my house, so I left in plenty of time as I wanted to get there early and help set up. I had brought some candles as I thought that would be nice to help set the mood. However, that was not to be. As I'm driving along at about 70 miles an hour, I start to hear the wubba wubba sound that just keeps getting louder. I at first thought it was a car next to me that was passing me but soon realized that there was nobody there. My car then started to handle strangely, which I initially thought was just the wind pulling it, however, I quickly realized "nope, that ain't the wind". I was a little over a mile from my exit and decided that I could make it as I didn't want to pull over on the side of the highway in the dark. Therefore, I put on my hazards and eased over to the right hand lane and eventually made it to my exit. I saw ahead a Quaker State sign that was all lit up with lots of cars and thought "Oh Yay! A garage right where I need it!!" Turns out that it was a restaurant. (Who knew that there was such a place a Quaker Steak and Lube...)

I get out of my car and walk around to look at the tire expecting to see a flat....It was completedly shredded and I had been driving on the rim. Luckily a nice lady approached me almost immediately and offered her husband up as pit crew.

You will notice in the picture that the tire is still on the car....or rather the rim is ther and the tire is sort of wedged up under the car.

I was so happy to have this person come and change my tire, and another couple of folks offered assistance, which is one reason why I am very happy to be living in Texas and the South where there are still lots of gentlemen out there to always offer a hand. The manager from the restaurant came out as well to see if I just needed air, as they have a air machine on site for free, being a car themed restaurant and all. He quickly realized, and chuckled, that obviously air wouldn't do a whole lot of good at this point. So he offered some coffee to warm me up. I declined as I'm not a coffee drinker.

As my good samaritan worked on my tire, I took the following picture of the path of destruction that my car left as I was pulling into the parking lot:

Yeah, that whole black streak is my tire dissentigrating.

After the tire was changed my GS and I took the car over to the air pump and the men gathered to get air into my spare and make certain that I was okay to head off. I offered to buy my GS and his family dinner, which is what THEY were there for, but he refused and told me to be on my way and be safe and that I would be spending that money on a new tire instead.

I then made it to my church thing about 20 minutes late and then started shaking. Needless to say, this morning I will be heading back to the Firestone place to have them replace this tire and make certain that the other tires are all fine as well. You will recall that I only purchased these tires at the end of September (New Tires).

Anyway, thank you to the nice people who helped me out. I really don't think I could have done that all on my own. I will definitely be sending good karma out to you and will pay this all forward. We have to remember to look out for and take care of one another....
 

Kismet....

It is funny how things sorta happen. For example, Tim Curry has popped up recently in a couple of places in my world.

First, I was watching Clue - The Movie last night.

Don't ask me why, it was just on and I couldn't help myself. Everytime I watch this movie, it makes me think of my BIL Graham's sister and BIL's wedding. I house sat for Graham's parents during the wedding as they wanted somebody to be there as they had read that often times burglars will break into houses and steal wedding gifts because they know that the family will be at the wedding. Well, they said I could bring some movies over to watch while I was killing time and they had a BetaMax player (not VHS) and Clue-The Movie happened to be one of the movies at Blockbuster on BetaMax that I actually wanted to see. So, now, whenever I see the movie I think of Brant and Angela.

Now today, I'm catching up on reading blogs and I come across Jane's reference to her husband being mistaken for Tim Curry. Which, I can totally see!!

Tim Curry

Compared to:

Jane with Husband Tarzan

Although I really hope to never see either of them dressed as Dr. Frank-N-Furter ever again....

I Got Flowers

First the guard at the gate called me and asked which lobby I was closest to so that the delivery person would know where to bring my flowers. When I got this call, I hung up thinking they probably had the wrong person, but whatever. Then, the guard at the front desk called and said that I had flowers, so I was convinced that it was really for me and had to walk down there to get them.

As I'm walking down, I was thinking "what could these be for? who would have sent me flowers? do I FINALLY have a secret admirer or stalker?"

When I get to the front desk and read the card, it says "Thank you for all your wonderful hospitality!! Melissa"....Being the lack of short term memory person that I am, I'm thinking "what?!?" Then it dawns on me....Melissa.... My friend who came down and stayed with me and went to Texas Renaissance Faire with me.....duh!!

Now I have lovely fall flowers in my office with a big reminder: ADD WATER NOW!! I'm lucky to have folks who remember me with such kindnesses. 

National Custodial Workers Day

Yesterday was National Custodial Workers Day, according to my calendar of random holidays. This, and the recent actions of my ceramics teacher started me thinking about something my mom taught me.

My taught school for decades, including the years that we lived in Mississippi in a time when racial segregation was still frequently observed. Much of the custodial staff was black and often times overlooked by many of the white teachers and administrators. Mom, however, always spoke with the staff when they would come to sweep her room. She made the effort to get to know them. She let them know that she appreciated the job that they did and they respected her for that. This is when I learned the importance of appreciating all people. Mom never had a problem when something in her room needed to be fixed or moved, as the folks that would perform these menial tasks were willing to go the extra yard to help her out because of the way she treated them.

I recently saw this same attitude in my ceramics teacher. As we were walking to the classroom, we met one of the custodial staff at the school. My instructor introduced herself, made certain that she remembered the person's name, and apologized for the state of her room and thanked the cleaning lady for the work that is done.

I try to do that in the office as well. I try to smile at our custodial staff. I say hello and goodbye to them. I try and stay out of their way when they are in the midst of a task as they have a job to do. I think it is important that we acknowledge all of fellow humans on this earth as we all have worth.

New Tires

I went and had new tires put on my old CRV yesterday. I made an appointment with Firestone for 7:15 AM and was there right on the dot. They took my baby, put the tires on and after about an hour came out and said, "um, we normally check the alignment of the wheels when we put new tires on as well, free of charge... Would you like to have this done?"

I reply with, "Yes." Internally, I'm saying, "What do you think?!? Why would you even ask me that if it is your normal practice?" I then go back to reading my book (I'm reading Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic, which is totally different than the movie, but that will be another post).

About 30 minutes later, the technician comes out again and says "There is some misalignment. Would you like for us to fix that? It will be $XX.XX." (To be honest, I didn't even listen to the cost.)

I reply with "Yes." Again, internally, I'm saying, "Of course, fix my {bleeping} car. Do you think I want to pay the money to buy new tires and then ruin them by having the car all out of alignment?"

Another 45 minutes go by, and they finally call my name to let me know that my baby is ready. I pay and go get in my baby and leave.

I have to say that she drives great and I'm very happy with the alignment. I probably waited a little too long to get those tires addressed, but I'm very glad that I finally did. 

What Next....

First there was the boyfriend pillow:

And the girlfriend lap pillow:

Now there is the Hug Me Jacket:

Just weird....

Just Because

One of the guys that I work with sent me the link to a restaurant in Dallas that I want to go to now (he actually said "This is a place you and Sara should go to"). It is called Oddfellows and they were voted Best Mac & Cheese in Dallas 2011.

What really caught my interest, when looking at their menu on line, was the titles of the following two sections:

Pests I Don't Need

I checked my mail last night and when I reached into the mailbox I was assaulted by the familiar touch of a spider web, which promptly gave me the heebie-jeebies. I slowly pulled the mail out, now knowing where said spider might be. At the bottom of the pile I saw something that was similar to this:

After some research, I have determined that it was a juvenile black widow. I say "was" because I promptly smashed the bejeezus out of it. I had a similar experience in my mailbox when I first moved into Casa ABBA but with a more mature BWS. I'm going to have to be very cautious when checking my mail from now on.

Oh, and just in case anybody is wondering, I have complete ickdom going on right now as I've been looking through spider images trying to figure out what I had and all I see now when I close my eyes are those danged eight-legged freaks....

Animal Observations

I've been noticing some interesting (to me) phenomena lately about the dogs in my life...

• Whenever there is a doorbell (or any bell) ring on the television, Leo jumps up and runs to front door barking trying to welcome whoever is there. He can't quite understand why Mom isn't getting as excited. 
• This also happens when there is a squeaky toy squeaked on television. This happened last night and he woke up to look around and count all of his toys to make certain that there wasn't somebody else in the house playing with them OR that there wasn't one that he missed. 
• When visiting his friend Bailey, he gets SOOO excited...as does she. We were over there this past weekend and they practically knocked all the humans over in their excitement to get to one another. We sent them into the backyard for about 15 minutes so that they could burn off some of their energy. It also turns out that they will hide any injuries so that they will not look weak in front of their peers. Bailey has a strained or torn shoulder ligament and when she is on her own and/or Leo is distracted she does tend to limp but when the two of them are together running and playing there doesn't seem to be any noticeable limp.
• My friend Jennifer's dog Luke (Jennifer would be the person who found Leo for me and Luke is like his godfather) is a Great Dane and the most sensitive dog I've ever seen. When I was visiting Jennifer recently, the television was on without the sound and she and I were chatting and I looked at Luke and he had the most concerned look on his face as he was watching TV. I looked at what was on and it was one of those Sara McLaughlin commercials for ASPCA. Jennifer quickly changed the channel and said that Luke does get very upset when he sees those commercials and sees other animals that are in distress. If you haven't read the book The Art of Racing in the Rain and are a dog lover, I highly recommend it. 

Blog Cleanup

I have recently come to realize that my blogs are very unorgainize, or rather if I want to search for and actually find anything that I want to reference back to it is nearly impossible. With that being said, I have grand plans to go back and read through my blogs then update and pare down my labels.

I need to do this also if I ever want to pull out applicable blogs for when the time comes to publish my masterpiece they will be easily identifable.

In face, I have great plans to organize and label lots of things in my life in the coming months....perhaps that will be one of the new and improved blog labels: "Organization"