Sisters

Thank goodness for sisters.  I am finding such joy in my sisters.  One sister is getting married and we have been planning, partying, reading, and idea-generating.  The other sister is a new mom and we have been cooing, reassuring, playing and adoring.

My sisters and I are not genetically linked, but yet we are sisters to the core.  So much of us is similar, but yet we are so different.  It's fun, it's like having a best friend because at first glance a stranger may not assume we are related, but yet we are.  We may not look alike, but we act alike, understand each other, and love each other.  It's great.

Last night my sister cracked me up by sharing an embarrassing story of herself.  It made us laugh so hard.  It was nice that she felt comfortable enough to share it & laugh in retrospect about it with me.  It also made me feel like I'm not alone in the world & I'm not the only one who has mishaps.  Her story was something that I would feel is always and inevitably something I would do...it was nice to see I'm not alone in the world...and thanks to my wonderful sisters, we have someone to share in the laughter and keep the chaos of life and mistakes we make in perspective.

Happy, Rainy Day

The weather changes all our moods 'whether' we like it or not.  Rainy days, however, do not necessarily mean our day has to be droopy and weary.  True, we are not able to hang outside, al fresco and enjoy the summer weather like we did yesterday with my great cousin and his fantastic wife (whom we all adore).  Instead, here is what I like to do which makes my rainy days nice:

1. Wear a skirt.
Your pant legs won't get wet and you look cute.  Look good = feel good, right?

2. Treat yourself to something fun.
I had the kids drop me off at the train today which always brightens my mornings, but to make today special, I treated each of them to two Dunkin Donuts munchkins.

3. Choose to be sunny.
Every conversation I'm consciously trying to be upbeat and happy.  Almost like generate my own sun.  I like to believe it rubs off on everyone.

4. When outside, breathe deeply and look around.
The air is nice when it rains.  It smells wonderful and the moist air feels good in your lungs.  Also, rain makes the colors of everyday look beautiful.  The grass and trees are so green, all the plants are standing up straight from the good, natural nutrition.

These are some of the things I choose to do for my rainy days.

Moving offices & being nice

Well, I was starting to write about how fun my weekend is going to be, until I just received a phone call from my eldest's first optomitrist office.

My eldest has ADHD, offically.  So, it's hard for him to follow instructions and figure out what adults mean.  Most of the time, he needs to be physically shown what you mean, then it clicks for him.  But how do you show someone where to look and how to keep your eyeball straight for an eye doctor's assistant to take a picture of your retina?  You really can't - trust me, we've tried.

Well, this first eye doctor that we went to was good (the doctor, that is), however his office staff wasn't - they were the exact opposite, which is bad for a pediatric optomitrist.  The office staff is made up of a bunch of old ladies who treat you like you are constantly bothering them.  They get clearly annoyed with my son who can't follow what they are trying to have him do, and to top it off, they have old raspy voices.  They have names like Artie...just not friendly, pediatric like.  You'd think they would have the Fantastic Sams stage names like Susie or GiGi or something to help them along.

Well, after a year of being annoyed, we tried a new eye doctor & liked this new one much more.  For one, they bill our insurance correctly.  The former place was actually telling me it was MY problem that the insurance was not being billed right...all the while it was them who were putting the wrong birthdate on the bill...but I regress.

Just last week, I had received a post card for a reminder to setup a follow up appointment with this original eye-guy.  I didn't call.  Just now, I just got a "friendly" reminder call from Artie about the post card I didn't call about.  It was time to break the news: I had switched doctors.  I said it as nicely as possible: 'Oh, Hi! Yes, thank you, we got the post card, but we have moved offices.'  That was how I put it, nice, polite and direct.  Well, she said 'ok.' and hung up.  She didn't even say 'good bye' or 'thank you'.

This is a reminder to me: customer service is always important.  Being nice to people is important.  You should be nice even if you personally are having a bad day

My mom, sisters and I often comment about how crabby old people like 'Artie' were probably crappy young people.  I'm going to continue trying to be nice (it doesn't always happen, but I will try).  And I will always say 'Thank you' and 'Goodbye' to people on the phone.  You are welcome, Artie...thank you for reminding me I don't want to be a crappy 'young' person, so I can try to avoid being a crabby old lady.

Goodbye already

I already mentioned how I like the 'voluntary simplicity' movement and how I find cleaning things out is therapeutic.  I do have to recognize tossing things is not meant for everyone.

Right now I am dealing with a situation that is teetering on difficult, but in perspective, only for me. The two people I worked with on my team have both left my group to move within the company.  One of these girls is a pal of mine and will continue to be.  But there is something to be said about moving on...and for me, it's therapeutic to get rid of everything & move on.  A fresh start.  For both of my former teammates, they are hoarders.  Their desks have tons of stuff, they admiditly don't toss anything in case they may need it in the future and even their inboxes are a mess.

So, is it any wonder that even though they have moved 6 floors down, they still have crap up here?  For them they don't see a problem with it - it's all sentimental & gooey for them.  They are excited about their new position & melancholy about leaving our group, so that is understandable.  For me, it's quite the opposite...I want them gone gone gone...and all their junk too.  I have to recognize that I need to ignore this.  In the grand scheme of things, this is temporary and not that big of a deal.  We all deal with clutter differently; there are tossers (me) and hoarders (them).  I will be counting down the days until every last bit of their files, unused plasticware, tee shirts, other crap is gone from our greige minicity, otherwise known as an office cube.

3 wishes?

I have a lot to pray for.  There are many people in my life who can use prayers, myself included.  Though, I find it hard to pray for myself.  It's hard to pick the right prayer, and to me, it seems greedy to ask for something for myself or something really specific.  I come to face a challenge with praying for my children, I feel like sometimes praying for them, is the same as praying for me.  It's my wish, it's my request...it may be to make their challenges easier, but is that also to make my own life easier?  Is it that God believes I would be able to handle these certain trials & I shouldn't challenge him, but yet embrace them?  I struggle with this often.

I believe in miracles & I believe in prayer.  I believe if you pray for others, those prayers are super strong.  There are a few opportunities that have the opportunity for very direct lines to God and have more weight than the average prayer. I truly believe giving up a birthday wish is one opportunity.  I have seen more than 2 birthday wishes come true right after someone has given them away.  I honestly envision the smoke from the candles going directly to heaven with that special wish.  I also believe in the special prayer when you first enter a new church.  My mom believes in this more than anything & I think she has visited more churches than anyone...I wonder if she has kept track - she'd probably be impressed with herself.

It's the same for non-religious types, like wishing on a star.  Even as a kid, I never wanted to wish just for something for myself, so I'd always feel better wishing for a general thing or for someone else, but never too specific.

I'm facing a genie in a bottle situation...my cousin is going to Medjugorje in just a week.  I was told I can write down my petitions for the Virgin Mary and they will bring them with.  This is huge! I feel like I've never had a direct line to Mary.  Can I put a bulleted list?  A long list?  A short list?  Can I ask for only one petition?  One petition per person?  How many requests is asking too much?

This petition is something that I'm adding to my list of things to do.  It's an important one, so with focusing on work tasks for today...my soul has to work on getting it's petition together, and it has to be a good one!

Voluntary Simplicity

It's a trend I've been wanting to explore & think I have been at it for a while...as Oprah would say 'leaning towards' it.  Just little bits, but I'm finding the less I want, the more I acknowledge that I want less, the happier & more worry free I'm becoming.

Is this possible?  For quite a while I find it therapeudic to throw things away.  I am turning into my own mom.  I remember how I used to be annoyed that she would toss so much, but now I do the same.  I don't want to be tied down, I want to live within my means, I want to be sustainable.  Sustainable financially, emotionally & responsibly to the earth.

Giving things away is a good feeling, freeing up a corner in my house, even better.  The less I'm making of my baggage, the easier it is to walk across the tightrope.

Wonderful husband still hasn't mentioned one word to me about the free-standing punching bag that I got rid of on freecycle about 3 years ago.  My friends couldn't believe I did it, but still, either he has just accepted that after almost 11 years I toss things he doesn't use, or he really, truly hasn't noticed...it's a wonderful thing.  It's how we live in harmony and appreciate each other.  This is how we root each other on for our own feats and acrobatics.

If I had to label wonderful husband as a circus act, he would be a lion tamer...calm, sure of himself, and centered...I'm the tightrope walker, balancing everything on a fine line, somehow figuring it out how to get it all done without falling off.

There are lots of things that help me keep my balance...people in my life and the love from these many different people.  It's love that is simply the thing we all need.  I want to voluntarily give it back to these same people.  After all, love makes the world go round...gosh, this is the theme song from 'Carnival', my senior year play...funny that I just realized I'm still in the theater with an circus theme.

The definition of a weed

I heard once that a weed is simply a plant that is not where it is wanted.  This could mean that a pretty flowering plant, but not where you wanted it to reside, would be a weed.  So, I've been disappointed in myself for not getting my beautiful built-in planter on my front steps filled with the pretty annuals that I usually plant.  I also bought a free-standing tomato and herb planter.  Both sit empty, but with some things in them (the free standing planter has 2 pots of herbs, waiting for soil).  What I realized one night this week, while I was sitting on my porch with my neighbor, after the kids were in bed, I made mention on how I have to plant flowers.  She looked at the 5 feet of the planter and asked, you didn't plant all this stuff?  She was referring to the flowering weeds that are in there...maybe it was the beer, but maybe people just don't notice & I shouldn't sweat not having beautiful begonias, geraniums, and other colorful flowers in there.

The tightrope walking is getting easier these days, but that is sometimes when I get side-swiped.  I think some of this is thanks to my manager leaving our team, it's removing a lot of responsibility from me and I'm starting to see the acrobats get a little simpler.

This week I never got to the grocery store for the full list...but I did clean my bathrooms last night.  I did get bread & milk, so we are fine.  But I realized that the babysitter's friend was over & the bathrooms were less than ideal.  I think this is the second time the friend was over with my house as a disaster.  The clean bathrooms make me feel accomplished...and I feel like my attitude is as shiny as the sparkling tub I showered in today.

The score: Dreams 2 vs Me 0

So in a week, I've gotten a lot accomplished: finished the eldest's school and had a picnic with him, his classmates and his twin sibs to celebrate.  The weekend was great, got a new & fantstic haricut, attended a minor league baseball game with the family, threw a wedding shower for my sister and ended the weekend with a romantic afternoon date with wonderful husband.  We cooked a 4 course French meal with 4 other couples, then enjoyed the feast together.  Then, we took the family to the local pool before having a nice dinner with minimal little kid fights.  It was a FANTASTIC weekend!

So, this weekend my dreams have been haunting me with the activities I have in line for tightrope walking every day.  Friday night I dreamt all about the activity we had for my sister's shower.  Last night, I had kept dreaming about the leaking bathroom, noticed by a quarter-sized water puddle in the basement.  I suppose that these dreams help me figure out and dress-rehearse what I have to do to get the job accomplished.  The problem is that they wake me up.  When I return to slumber, I have the same dream and wake up.  Repeat...a few times.  So I suppose the score is: dreams win.

I ended the great weekend last night putting away lots of laundry and reflecting on how much I accomplished this weekend both personally and from the amount of clean laundry I had finally got around to folding.  It was just then that I realized that I didn't go grocery shopping all weekend.  Oh well...this is the part of the tightrope walking that you have to let one thing drop off the tightrope balancing pole in order to get to the end of the rope.  The babysitter will be fine with some PB&J...gosh, now that I think about it, do we have any bread?

The tightrope feat for this week: grocery shopping, fix leaky shower, 3 consecutive nights of tee ball games, attend a social support group meeting, visit with the ENT, take child to do different 2 therapy sessions, a doctors appointment for myself, root on wonderful husband in his 3 consecutive nights of basketball league playoffs, figure out how to get 5 grandkids in a professional picture for father's day, and we will end the weekend with 7 graduation parties...yes SEVEN Graduation parties.  Logistically this last feat will be easy - just simply put: expensive.

Gosh - that task load isn't TOO much...I'm thinking I still have to get going on my garden & flowers for the front yard....I can see those falling from the balance beam for 2011 completely & disappearing out of view, falling to bottom of the circus tent right now...maybe I'll get those on the circus act for 2012!