Perpetual Motion Machine

Thank Goddess for Skype. I miss the kid and the grandkid and at least Skype lets me see and hear them.

Joel is exhausted, as you can see. Landon seems to be channeling demons. He's now crawling, pulling himself up to standing, and climbing out of his crib when no one's looking. His personal mission is to remove any objects from any flat surfaces by flinging them to the floor. He has teeth above and below now, all the better to chew through your cables.

Joel says Cindy wants three kids, and then he says she must be out of her mind.

Wow - it's been a while!

I've been incredibly busy with work over the last couple of months and have not found the time to keep up on my blogging. My apologies to you who are avid followers. Both of you.

In addition to work-work, I've been struggling to (pardon the pun) keep my head above water with the pond. We've had disaster after disaster. As of this writing, I really should be outside repairing the filter. I'll get to it.

Steve and I just returned from a mini-vacation. We left a little later than we'd planned Friday morning so had to cancel plans to have brunch with Cory & Url in Modesto. We made our way down to Fresno by about 11:00. I drove to Roeding Park hoping to show Steve the gutted airplane I clambered all over as a kid, but it's not there anymore. Next to Belmont Memorial Park where Steve screwed his patience up a notch and accomapnied me in locating my grandparents' graved. I photo'd them and we left. Short and sweet. (I miss Grandma.)

When in Fresno, one must dine Armenian, right? I'd had a curiously difficult time locating Armenian restaurants via Google before our trip. Not because they don't exist on every freakin street corner in Fresno, but because the folks who run them are about as tech-savvy as my ex-boss. Maybe less so. So I followed the map to one of the two places I'd found that had few but glowing reviews. It was so crappy we didn't even order food. Used their bathrooms, then went to the next one. That turned out to be a good call, even though it was clear the hell across town. No lamb at the first place (wha-wha-whaaatt???) and yummy lamb at the second place (thank you Goddess!!!).

After lunch we toured the Forestiere Gardens. I'd done so a few years ago and have been anxious to get Steve down in those caves, sure he would enjoy it. He did. Go, if you're ever nearby.

From there we drove another almost-an-hour south to Visalia and got checked into the Holiday Inn just in time to connect with the kids. Joel wanted a little time to feed Landon and get him to nap, so we had a cocktail before heading over to their house. Cindy was at work but we got to hang out and play Peek-A-Boo, Suck The Toes and Bang The Table with Landon until we were all exhausted.

Next morning Joel's phone call woke us up. We got cleaned up and met Joel, Cindy and Landon downstairs for breakfast. Cindy hadn't slept all night, and had a job interview at noon, so after a hearty breakfast she took the baby and headed home to get them both a little shut-eye. Joel stayed with us. We chatted and had coffee downtown before having to get him back home. Then we found that Cindy didn't have to go to the interview after all, so while she slept we again just hung out with Joel and that perfect little brown bean of a child that is Landon.

Steve works Sundays, so we had to leave fairly early in the afternoon to allow time to drive back home and get him to bed at a decent hour. In his job, there is no room for error. He must be well-rested and able to focus and remain safe! On the way back we stopped in Sacramento for dinner, then just came home and crashed.

A quick Central Valley vacation, but a good time nonetheless.

Car Wanted

I'm putting this out to the universe because I know if I do that it will come to be.

Joel needs a car. His old RX7 has finally thrown in the towel. Since he's a dad now, he needs something that won't cost too much money (say, under $1500), sturdy, reliable, good on gas, and with four doors.

Please spread the word.

If you haven't failed, you haven't lived!

Loved this.



Thanks, April.

Knitta Please!

I have had personal experience with paranormal beings more than once in my life. Now it's happening again.

Mystery crochet artist making a colorful splash in downtown Bay City


POST SCRIPT 3/5/09:
Yes, this is my best blog post title yet, but I must give credit where it's due. Knitta Please is a guerilla knitting organization with a great web site showing "installations" around the world. Check them out HERE.

I know I'll never lose affection

My friend nakedjen recently blogged about how each of us should have a theme song. While I'm sure it's true for most that a "favorite" song may change from time to time, it is my opinion that a theme song is more lasting, more evocative of one's true Self.

My theme song is one that is a favorite to a lot of people I know. It was the song Dino and I danced to at our wedding reception. It is on a cassette recording I have, immediately preceding the recording of my first child's fetal heartbeat; every time I listen to it I expect that squishy little "thump-bump, thump-bump" to follow. While mourning the death of my marriage, it helped me to eschew bitterness and put one foot in front of the other with a peaceful, loving heart. It came on the radio and caused me to weep with joy as I drove home from the birth of my first grandchild. I hope that it will be played at my after-death party when the time comes.

Here is my theme song. For added love, listen to it while checking out the cuteness below the video.

Positivity is Weird?

That's sad. No, not that someone is hugging their shipments before sending them out into the world. It's sad that something that's intended to send out positive energy is thought of and referred to as "weird."

I was "blessed" with very good brain chemistry. I'm a "glass is half full" kind of person. Although I do try to be sensitive to others who have more negative synapses bouncing around, I think of my encounters with them as an opportunity to spread some of my good juju.

As long as I can remember -- not always, but more commonly than I would hope -- my positivity has been met with either suspicion ("What's she hiding?") or condescension ("She's nuts if she thinks everyone can just flip a switch and be happy.")

Why is it you're crazy if you're smiling, singing or humming while pushing your shopping cart?

Why is it so zany to wave all your fingers at your neighbors?

Why is it offensive or insensitive to speak positively about your finances, your child's birth, your relationship with your teen...?

It would seem to me that it is because SOME PEOPLE LOVE TO BE VICTIMS. Not me, and I'm sure not you, but most people. And if you even suggest to these people that they can magically eschew victimhood, negativity, depression, they scoff. At the very least.

If my mood or my words, which are clearly not shooting out of me like weapons, seem to you at first to be crazy, unusual, offensive or insensitive, is it because they threaten a paradigm you hold about yourself? Can you not just try them on to see if they fit?

I'm not saying that everyone has to be like me (although that would ROCK!). It's just that I know this concept has been true for me in my own experience. When I felt offended or threatened by someone else, it was an opportunity for me to dissect that experience. Try it on. Keep it if I like it; return it if I don't. No big deal.

NOW SMILE!

"We live in an amazing, amazing world, and it's wasted on the crappiest generation of spoiled idiots."

More In-Your-Facebook

Hey, I'm not waging any kind of anti-FB campaign here...just keeping my public informed.

Dave Winer posted this about our mutual friend, NakedJen recently getting booted from FB without so much as a by-your-leave. That article leads to this one, in which it is noted that 2009 will be a make-it-or-break-it year for FB.

We'll see.

Bye-Bye Facebook

Since one of the (many) reasons I deleted my Facebook account this morning has to do with the amount of time it was sucking out of my day, I won't spend a lot of time on this post. Besides, it seems as though everything I could say about Facebook's suckage has already been said...and more.

In the end, I really don't need an application like Facebook to stay in touch with my friends and family. We can, as my friend NakedJen pointed out in her own blog yesterday, maintain contact the old fashioned way: by email...or phone...or chicken scratches under a postage stamp.