Gifts

I read two blogs early this morning that got me thinking. One was by Miss Britt, the other by a blogger I'd never read before, but her site is thepqnation.com. I may write on this tomorrow. But as I was pondering what I'd come across, I read this one, also by Jaime, the author of thepqnation.com, and the top of the post was a photo of a fortune cookie message that reads "If you wait too long for the perfect moment, the perfect moment will pass you by."

I read her words, and I realized I do the same thing. I'm always living for (and worrying about) tomorrow. I couldn't start having children because I had not made it at least half way through a PhD program (because didn't you know a masters degree isn't good enough?) and I needed a bigger house (how stupid) and etc. etc.

It's time to live. I think I've been working up to this point for a couple months, and this post on thepqnation.com summed it up in a way that kicked me into full gear.

I've been hearing about my Grandmother's cousin, Eleanor, for several months. My grandmother suddenly suggested now that I'm 33 years old that I should meet her. (??) All this time I had no idea how big my family really was, and that I had relatives 5 miles from my home. So each time I've seen Grandma since then, we discuss how we'll have to do that soon. I come from a long line of hard working, busy people who might all benefit from treatment of workaholism. I'm proud to be a recovering workaholic.

I called Grandma, and asked her to call Eleanor, make a date next week, pick out an outfit, and we'll go. Right now. She already had her calendar in her hand. And when she started to chatter on about old stories of when Eleanor and she used to ride the 7 Mile bus to Aunt Lillian's house on Wilshire in Detroit, I didn't multitask. I sat and just listened. Then she'd lost track because she'd start talking about Aunt Lillian's beautiful home and forgot about the rest of the tale of her bus trips with Eleanor, but it never matters because I love hearing her stories. I think I even prefer hearing a hundred bits of stories rather than 50 whole ones.

Hearing Grandma's stories, meeting relatives I've never met, taking any time to actually enjoy my home - not just live in it in between work hours - are just a few of the gifts that I've been missing out on for a long time.

I noticed someone's facebook updates yesterday started with ... is going to paint. Next one said ... not painting - will sew. Third one ... spending time with the new baby instead. Perfect. She's got herself together.

I'm going to learn to take pictures and play the piano again. All the things I've been dreaming of doing some day are starting right now. And even though I'm not even accepted into a PhD program, and don't even have a job right now, you just wait til that man gets home from work this evening.

Maybe that's why they call "right now" the "present."

Sadness

Sometimes the world seems to dish out way more than you can take. After the microwave blew up yesterday, Aaron's truck did the same. It's actually a funny story - but I am not in any mood to laugh.

Running around about the truck took me away from something I was supposed to have done by this morning. That task had already been put off from running out most of Sunday to plan my mother's party. Everything is a crunch.

And then, although I've been making a conscious effort to avoid the news, I hopped on CNN a few moments ago. The first headline to catch my eye was "this is not your father's country anymore." It was well written, but the message hurts so bad. Why can't people get it? I'm out of work because our manufacturing base is going away (or I should say has gone away already) and we are not prepared to make a transition that fast.

So I closed CNN altogether, and headed for Freep to find somehting happy to read. the top of the page screamed that GM & Chrysler are looking at court protected bankruptcies. I give. Uncle. I'm going back to bed.

But I leave you with this video. We saw this guy perform this at the hockey game last week. Please listen to the words. Even if you are NOT a country music fan. I'm not either. But this is important.

Memory Lane Monday

Last Thursday I met up with my childhood best friend. If we had used the term "BFF" back then, she'd have been just that. Lisa and I were inseperable for years and years. It wasn't until junior high that our interests and activities started to change a little, slowly, and then by the middle of high school, our crowds just overlapped a litttle. I always missed her. But she was into other things, like marching band, and whatnot. We both swam, which was our common ground. But only for one year.

Lisa looked amazing. I can't even believe she's still single. We had a great talk about times past, and what we're each doing now. Which of course didn't take me long. Most of what I'm doing now is preparing for a tomorrow that will hopefully come. Gone are the days that I was working with either Australia or China on new development programs. Gone are the days that I'm out gathering "voice of the customer" data and analyzing it all night long. Now I'm a wife and foster mother, and I feel like a nut that fell out of its tree.

Lisa is the reason that I knew who older bands like Sting and the Police were. She's the reason I met the man I'm now married to. She's also the reason I learned that "Sun In" was a bad, bad idea.

This just in.

The cat broke two glasses last night.

My narciccus bulbs have blossomed this morning, but are getting so tall that they don't want to stand straight up, and I can't plant them outside for several more weeks.

The microwave blew up with my vegetable soup inside.

I came into the office to blog just now, and the cat promptly finished eating a piece of curling ribbon and vomited on the floor.

It's not a good day around here.

You can't have just one.

Initially, I said no. We cannot go out today. I have a ton of things to do, all before Tuesday morning, and I don't have time.

But then, I agreed to run out for just one glass of wine. Before we knew it, it was 6 pm. So we stopped for dinner on the way home.

Nothing got done. This week is going to be a bear.

Bad habits

I hosted a party an embarrassingly long time ago, and a friend brought special dips in Pyrex dishes. I washed her dishes the next morning, stuck them on top of the fridge, and proceeded to never have a chance to get them to her.

Today, she was top priority. So I baked her a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies to fill her dishes, and dropped them off at her job. Her coworkers were excited, and I'm not sure any of the cookies made it home with her. But at least she has her dishes.

I'm very poor at following up with this type of thing. I need to get better at it, as well as start remembering and acknowledging birthdays.

Delivery Man

Today was spent in its entirety at two different hospitals, getting x-rays and CT scans of every bone in Aaron's body. The problem is in his foot, but they scanned his entire self anyhow. He is radio-active for the next two days.

Our technicians were a man from Russia and a woman who I believe had eastern Indian roots. They were hysterically funny.

We returned after a 3 to 4 hour wait while the nuclear material spread through his body, and mentioned that we had breakfast at Panera. Our Russian tech asked if we liked the "onion French." The way he spun his words around was reminiscent of a portion of Henry Rollin's Spoken Word.

The other tech told several stories of the funniest things he's said, which he was laughing about harder than anyone. The best story of all:

P: So Gregory, what did you do back in Russia?
G: I was a delivery man.
P. What did you deliver? Pizza? Mail?
G: Babies.

Gregory is actually a physician in Russia, but his credentials are not recognized here in the United States. So he runs a scanning machine and reads books written in Russian every day, and appears to have an excellent time doing it.