"Free" Time

The company for which I work has some pretty cool benefits for being such a small organization...I get to keep my airline miles (which makes vacations easier); When I am working in the office, I come in at 7:30am and leave at 4:30pm (I can pick back up tomorrow); if I need to leave for something, I have a no-questions-asked personal time off policy (with 10 days of PTO to use in 15 minutes increments); we have lunch-and-learn once a month during which we learn something useful, get a free lunch, and get to leave one hour early; and, my favorite (at least today) - cookouts once a month during the summer! We each brought in a side dish or dessert, the managers bought the main course (today was chicken), and we have a social hour (or two) on a Friday during the summer. Then, we all clean up and the president of the company tells us when we can go home - today it's 2:30pm! Two hours early!

Ah. Free time!

Wait. Is it "free?"



What am I going to do with those two hours? Well, first I am going to drive home. While I am leaving earlier in the afternoon than usual, it is Friday, and there will be people on the road. So, there's about 40-45 minutes. When I arrive home I'll decide to relax, but I'll see the dishes in the drying rack from last night's dinner. I'll put those away, wipe down the counters, wipe down the stove, sweep the floor, realize the rest of the floors need to be swept, remember that the tub needs to be cleaned, etc., etc., etc. until about 4:30pm. Okay - that's still about 90 minutes before I would usually be home. I'll sit down to read. Then I'll remember that I need to go to the library to pick up some book about some vampire and some girl and some werewolf... I'll head out to the library, hunt down the book, think of a few more I remember I want to read, check them out, and get back home by 6:30pm. Just as I would have anyway.

So, that time may not be "free," and I may not have been able to really relax, but I will have accomplished some things that will allow me to sleep in tomorrow!

Woo hoo!

The Niece Chronicles

I have some ideas for short stories about my nieces...here are the titles and plots, stories to come:

Courtney and the Alligator Whiskers - girl can speak with water creatures and has vivid imagination about all life under water.

The Amazing Growing Rebecca - girl can tug on her ear and grow taller, which is helpful when she needs to get her magic shoes off the top shelf.

Katie Feeds the Fishies - girl provides magical nourishment to all animal life through her smile and warm heart.

Jessica and Lola - a girl and her bunny save the world.

Samantha the Zombie Hunter - awesomely strong-willed, strong-minded, strong-bodied girl takes on zombies and kicks butt.

Amanda at the Speed of Light - 9-year-old Flash-like girl rushes around the world to save puppies from bad families.

My Latest Read

I was looking through my bookshelves on Sunday night (now that they are all unpacked, organized by category, and alphabetized by author) because I was ready for a new book to read. Having finished the first in the Anne of Green Gables series, followed up with Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs, I wanted something different.

I scanned the sections of my personal library:



Antique Books: No, I fear damaging the pages too much to pull one of those out.






"School" Fiction: (books I've read for grades since junior high, and I reread them because I like them...) No, I've read all those at least twice, some four or five or ten times. I want something different.









Anthologies: Like those above, this is a collection of collections of works which I have read numerous times...no, this is not exactly what I am in the mood for, but close...








Mysteries, Suspense, etc.: Kinda my "other" section...Dean Koontz, Stephen King, a couple Danielle Steel novels for good measure, and some random hard cover novels that I don't believe go with my school fictions. No, these are of the same vein as Kathy Reichs, and I want something different.







Comic Books and Related Texts: Yes, comic books. Wonder Woman, Spiderman, Justice League of America, random comics from authors I know and/or like, anthologies of comics, etc. No - I'm in the mood for a deep read, not a quick read.








Business and Self-Help Books: Why Good Girls Don't Get the Corner Office, Negotiation Skills, Men are from Mars..., etc. No, I am not in the mood to improve my negotiating skills or determine why it is that I am still in a cubicle at age 35.







Books for Which I Was the Developmental Editor: What? If your name was on the inside of a book, wouldn't you want to keep those you put blood, sweat, and tears into? The shelf includes the first text I ever worked on, which won First Edition of the Year for the company, as well as some that I was so proud just to get into print. The majority of that shelf, however, holds my pride and joy, in every version I published, as well as all its supplemental works: The Gregg Reference Manual, Tenth Edition. Go find it in a bookstore and check out the Copyright Page. I'm on there (maiden name). No, I don't really want to read the rules for using commas right now.







Books about Writing: For some reason, I have a whole collection of books that are supposed to teach me how to be a writer...No, not in the mood to ponder why it is I can't sit down and right the next great American novel.









Writing Manuals: This section is different from the above...APA, MLA, Harbrace, Chicago Manual, etc. Style guides. No, I don't need to know how to put in the correct citation right now.










Reference: Still different from previous categories. Includes dictionaries, thesauri, language dictionaries, etc. No. I don't want to know what the Spanish word for "imagination" is right now, or what all the different definitions of the word "strike" might be (but maybe later).






Finally! I found the section that called out to me, as it were:

Bibles: An entire section. All the Bibles I have ever owned, from childhood through high school through college and into adulthood. I remembered that many times I've tried to read the Book completely through, and many times I've failed...so, I wanted to try again.

I'm not even through "Genesis" yet, but here are some "Things That Make You Go Hmmm" moments that I have re-discovered:

"Genesis" has many sections on the "begets." If you can make it through all those, you can make it through the rest of the book.

When God created the firmament (Heaven), He made it to separate the water from the water...so, there is water in Heaven.

When God created land, He put it all in one place - historically known to us humans as "Pangaea" before the great Continental Drift...cool, huh?

Did you know that Noah was directed by God to collect SEVEN of every clean animal, a male and his female, and TWO of every unclean animal, a male and his female? So, that would mean 14 of every clean animal and four of every unclean animal. Also, SEVEN of each bird, a male with his female. Another set of 14...sure, they walked in two-by-two, but there were more than two of each animal!

Here's to learning and re-learning things I've been learning all my life...

The Rooms in My House

I think that each room in my house represents a different part of my self. Now that the house is cleaned, organized, and mostly decorated, here's my self-analysis.

The master bedroom: My subconscious, my heart, my romanticism. I share this room completely with my husband. We are intertwined in this room. It is the place I feel safe. It is the place we share all our secrets. It is the room in which our souls combine during our sleep...I love this room.

The guest room (aka "Dee's Room"): My past, my need to hold onto my childhood and my roots, my get-away. I decorated this room in a sort-of country-girl chic. Pastel greens with pink- and rose-colored accents. A very girly "shabby chic" bed linen set, stuffed animals, ballet art work, candles, and dried flower bouquets everywhere. My antique sewing machine table, with my new model sewing machine, and a closet of gifts, wrapping paper, and gift bags Martha Stewart would be proud of. I've always wanted a room like this. I feel it makes me closer to my baby sister because she has a room like this, and she calls it my room. Yes, I have my own room in my sister's house in Tennessee. Now she has her own room in my house in Illinois.

The master bathroom: My solace. My thinking place. My planning place. I like the simplicity of this room. Whites with lavender accents. I ponder life in the steam of the shower. I refresh my body and mind. I recharge myself here.

The kitchen: My comfort, my warm fuzzy, my life. I love to bake. An entire section of cabinets is dedicated to that love. I feed more than my stomach in this room. JR and I share breakfast and conversation in this room. It is a great room for casual conversation over a cup of tea. A radio in the corner allows me to sing and dance like nobody is watching (even if they are) while I cook, bake, and clean.

The "Great Room": This is a room in progress. It will be the ever-changing room, I can feel it. Currently, it is a fabulous wide-open room with many comfortable seating choices. A set of bookshelves in a corner offers visitors a myriad of reading materials, each section offering a peek into my and my husband's hobbies and interests (an entire section of writing manuals, another of comic books, another of antique collectible books, and yet another of mystery novels, to name only a few). With a fireplace, I am sure this room will provide a great place to have a wonderful visit with friends, sharing a glass of wine and a vivacious discussion. In the future, this room will transform...into what is the unanswered question.

The downstairs bathroom: The place where all life's problems end up. Currently, according to the downstairs bathroom, life has no problems. Over the last few months, life was ankle deep in poop. Now, everything is working well again.

The basement: The fun, the entertainment, the togetherness. This is the most-used room in the house. This is where we laugh during comedies, cry during love stories, hide under the covers during horror fests, and work our butts off to video games. This is the room where the board games are pulled out and played till exhaustion sets in. This is the "family" room.

The laundry room: The room where the cleaning happens. Therapy takes place during the laundry process. Life is sorted out, and all the bad stuff from the week is washed away (including the inevitable food stains on my shirts). I am so happy to finally have this room!

The office/my closet: This is the secret room. The room nobody is allowed to see. The mess. The boxes. The clutter. The clothes and shoes and shoes and shoes. The computer is in there somewhere. Despite it serving as my closet, my husband spends more time in the office than I do. He kills zombies on the computer into the wee hours. This room holds his solace and relaxation.

The patio: The "ahhhh" place. Where we go to rest after yard work. Where we make the neighbors hungry from the wonderful aromas of the grill. Where JR's pet Zombie "Morty" lives with his pet lizard "Lexie." (I'll update this with pictures, I promise.)

The garage: The holder of things we don't know what to do with...for now. That's all I'm saying.

Every room is important to the whole of the house...Every piece represents a different part of our lives...I love my house, and I love my life.

The Measurement of Success

With less than 24 hours to go before our first big party in our new house, I walked in the door at 6:30pm Friday night to see that I still had a lot of work to do before a party could be had. A. LOT.

I dug in, and by 1:30am, I was ready for bed. After a shower. The great room (with all the boxes still piled up) was completely unpacked, organized, and decorated. The bedrooms were clean. The basement was clean, and the kitchen was getting there...

I woke up Saturday morning at 7:30 and sprayed some weeds to get my blood pumping. After an awesome bad-for-me breakfast supplied by my sweet husband, we started up again...Made the bed, cleaned up the clothes, scrubbed down the kitchen, vacuumed the basement, sanitized the bathrooms, and swept and Swiffer-wet-jetted the floors.

With one hour till the party, JR was finishing up the shopping and I was jumping into the shower...the first guests arrived promptly at 2:00pm while JR was showering.

People came and went all night - lots of great food, great drinks, great conversation, and many compliments on the house. We feel very lucky to have such great friends and family who could come share the fun of a new house with us.

The success of our housewarming party was measured in the smiles on faces, the hugs and laughter, the conversation always moving, and the completely relaxed feeling I have today as I clean up from all the fun...

For TGJ: I DID do it! Thanks for the motivation, as always!

Woot! When can we have another party???

Deadlines

I work with deadlines every day in my job...in my personal life, I tend to let things slide a bit. My husband knows this, and he sets deadlines for me to get things done. He sets these deadlines by planning things which require a specific action by me - usually to do with cleaning, packing, etc.

We have been in the house since the end of February. I still do not have everything unpacked. Two rooms in the house are still utter disasters with unpacked boxes and clutter...it is driving me nuts.

I thought that a scheduled visit from my brother and niece would get it done. Nope.
Then I was sure that a visit from my sister, brother-in-law, and 2 nieces would motivate me to finish. Negative.
Surely a visit from my PARENTS was just what I needed to get it all done. Not even close.

My husband decided on a date for a housewarming party...he is certain we can get the last two rooms done and do a good cleaning on the rest of the house before then. Uh-huh, sure. I hope so, since the party is THIS Saturday!

Keep in mind, he made the decision about a week and a half ago...right before my parents came to visit. So, last weekend was out for getting all the unpacking done because we had a full weekend of plans with the folks.

Monday night, I had a work dinner. We did some more cleaning last night (and got quite a bit done, really), but it is not finished. I am leaving this afternoon for Milwaukee for a meeting...I will not be home until Friday NIGHT. I have until about 1:00pm on Saturday to get the house ready...get some caffeine ready! I will definitely need it!

Recurring Nightmares

When I was young I had a recurring nightmare...it lasted for many years, and occasionally it will pop up again. It never changes. I can never keep it going, I can never stop it before it ends, and I can never manipulate it in any way.

That is different than some other recurring dreams I have. I have been able to start a dream again the night after the initial sequence so I can see the outcome. I can change somethings in a dream when I have it a second time. I dream in color. I can read in my dreams. I can have different points of view in my dreams. Some people claim those things are not possible. I disagree.

My childhood recurring nightmare goes a little something like this:

My family is going camping. I am very young...only my parents and my middle sister and I are in the dream, so my brother and youngest sister were not yet born. We have the tent set up, a campfire ready to go, and fishing poles set out. My dad has a conversation with the troll who lives in the zip-up window in the tent. Yep. A troll...we live amicably with the troll. My dad reminds him that the rule is, "We do not bother you; you do not bother us." Mom is staying behind to organize things and get the campfire started so that when Dad, Teresa, and I get back from fishing we can cook up the catch.

When the three of us traipse back to the campsite, I notice something weird. Mom is picking up some bread, and she has a blank expression with glassy eyes. I ask, "What's wrong?" "Nothing, Dear. Everything is fine. Just fine," she replies while slowly putting the bread on a paper plate and reaching for the butter knife. I freak out when I realize that is no butter knife. That is the troll from the tent window! He has transformed himself into the butter knife and put Mom in a trance! I scream it at the top of my lungs, "That is not a knife Mommy! That is the troll! Don't touch it!" She replies, "Everything is fine Dear. Nothing to worry about," in a sing-songy manner. She reaches for the knife, and I WAKE UP!

Every time. That is the point at which I am jerked awake. I have tried a hundred times to see the rest of the dream, to change the outcome, to get rid of the troll... he haunts me, and I have no idea where that dream came from.

Omens

Not the evil kind. The kinda funny-when-you-think-about-it omens. I saw one of my least favorites this morning, so I decided to break down some of my list of omens:

1. Seeing a news chopper hovering right over your route to work. It inevitably means that if I left even a minute late I will be late to work. Luckily I left a couple of minutes early today, and I made it into work with a smile on my face.

2. Getting home to a dark house when you know you left a light on. Hopefully it's just a burned out light bulb. Likely the electricity is out. On Sunday, our house was the in the middle of a 7-block radius outage. We went to the movies for an unplanned date night. It was awesome.

3. Noticing that your vehicle is leaning to one side. Maybe you parked on a weird hill. Maybe the tire is low. Maybe it is completely flat. I made it 5 minutes from the office when my truck was at about a 30 degree angle left compared to the car in front of me. I pulled over, didn't panic, called my husband, called the tire store to let them know we'd be coming, then started lifting the truck with the jack so it would be ready for JR. It took several hours (since JR was a good two hours away in rush hour traffic, but he came because he loves me), but we got 4 new tires for the truck and had an impromptu dinner out at a local deli. Good times.

4. Hearing running water in an empty bathroom. Sure, somebody could have accidentally left the sink on. In my case, while someone took a shower upstairs the toilet downstairs was overflowing so much that it was pouring into the floor. Sigh. The plumbing problems we've experienced over the last 3 months have been AWESOME (sarcasm intended). We did finally get it taken care of (tree roots removed!), and we learned that being home owners is fun, exciting, scary, and expensive. We were able to laugh it off together, though.

There are many, many more "omens" like these...what are some of yours?

The Exes

So, I have a few exes...yes, we’ll say “few.” They’ve each meant something different to me, and they are important parts of my PAST. Those relationships helped me become the loving, honest, open, and caring wife I am today. Here’s a recap:

The very first high school boyfriend
The obsessive, abusive high school boyfriend
The wishy-washy college-aged boyfriend
The very first college boyfriend
The passionate love of my 20s
The fiancé

Being in Sync

My husband and I are in sync. We can be thinking the exact thought at the same time. It’s weird sometimes. For example, on our way up to his family reunion on Friday, I was playing iPod DJ (which is a big honor). I picked out a few songs, and he asked, “You know what would be an awesome next song?” I replied, “Well, I have one picked out, but what would you like to hear?” He gave me the song title, and I gasped as I showed him the highlighted song on the screen...the exact song he wanted to hear. WOW.

Now, some of you might just mark this as coincidence. Some might say it was the next logical song choice, so of course you both picked it. Instead, I say it is because we are perfect for each other. He is absolutely my other half. I do not want to think about a life without him. He is my soul mate. He is my best friend. He is the person who knows me like no other can. He is my rock (and my roll, and my punk, pop, country, soul, blues, etc.). We finish each other's sentences. We say exactly the same thing at the same time. We freak each other out when we have the same idea about something. We laugh at each other when it happens.

I know it seems disgusting. I even find it nauseating at times. We are so shmoopy. We cannot help it. I am madly in love with that man!


During our weekend, I ventured off with JR's older sister and a cousin. We had a fabulous time sharing some drinks and participating in karaoke. Well, I sang while they watched and laughed. That was on night two of the trip, and JR's cousin said to me, "You know, I have learned a couple of things this weekend. You like to have a good time, and you absolutely love JR." I just smiled, nodded, and replied, "Yes. Yes I do. With my whole heart." I meant it for both things. I love to have a good time with my whole heart, and I love my husband with my whole heart. They go hand-in-hand...in sync.

A Poem

May
Your

Days
Always
Dawn

Happily
And
Serenely.

Cherish
All
New
Challenges,
Ever
Ready.

-------------------

I wrote that poem on August 26, 2009. The day after I found out my dad had prostate cancer. The first letter of every word, reading down, was my inspiration for the poem.

My dad has always been a very healthy man. He worked a full-time,manual-labor job for 35 years. He worked on his farm and yard in his "spare" time. He drank a lot of water and no booze. He like ice cream and candy and salty foods, and those were his only weaknesses as far as I remember.

He started going to the doctor in his late 40's/early 50's for regular "I'm not getting any younger" visits. He had a physical, and he did learn he needed to cut down on salt...his sugars, however, were fine. Go figure. The man eats ice cream and candy like it's going out of style, and his sugars are normal. I wish I could say that. His blood pressure was a bit out of whack, but he is treating it medication and seems to be controlled. He goes in for his regular visits, and his visit last fall showed something a little not normal.