The Thing You Do

I just read this in the past 24 hours, "The way you do one thing is the way you do all things". I think the wording is incorrect but the thought is there.

I have given it a lot of thought since reading it. I have been out in the yard fighting back the weeds that have taken over the garden after years of neglect. It's meticulous work beginning with the tallest most obvious weeds, then working on the smaller more invasive kind that have spread entirely over the mulch their roots entrenched under the black ground cover hidden beneath.

Do I attack every chore, every job, every task with such methodical fervor?

I had someone helping me spruce up the house in Ft Wayne to ready it for market. They shall remain un-named. I noticed that when they did not enjoy a task they were assigned, they swept through the job as quickly as possible, regardless of the results. I found myself on the clean-up committee! The cement spread in the cracks in the driveway....I smoothed them over and made them presentable. I took the power washer and cleaned the house and driveway area after the Gutter Cleaning Incident.

I think back on many times when I had goal that I had to achieve and the work itself was mundane and mindless. How I would figure out a way to do it quickly and .... methodically....get it over with fast.

I think the gardening is Zen-like in the comfort and satisfaction it gives me.

The opportunity to allow my mind to explore while my fingers pull tiny weeds from an endless supply.

A little bit of this, a dash of that

Joe is off getting a hair cut, so I am able to stop going through the mountain of boxes in the garage. It was hard to look busy and focused for such a long period. Actually opening the boxes is a bit like the old Forrest Gump analogy about the box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get. Surprise, surprise! I finally found the top part of the blender. Thank God.

I also worked on the garden. A trip to the closest nursery netted me some 50% off terra cotta pots and one beautifully glazed Roman Blue pot. I have to go back, one pot was not discounted!

Tomorrow I take the daughter out job hunting. Hopefully we will find her something that will offer her benefits. Maybe a house-keeping gig. Maybe hotel work. Anything to help that child get off my payroll.

Speaking of payrolls, I did not receive the compensation due me for the vacation and personal days I did not take. That riles me. I hope I was not screwed out of them because I would have liked nothing better than to have not worked up until moving day. Well, almost. It certainly felt like it.

I love not having to go to work. I absolutely love it. The stress that I have learned to live with is gone. Kapoot! I noticed it while driving to Tennessee. I feel so much better. Not that I felt sick, or run down while I was working....just stressed about things. And its gone.

I wake up in the middle of the night and think, "I need to find a job!" then I roll over and go back to sleep.

It's great.

I have been thinking, just a little because I have so much to do at the moment with all those boxes in the garage and the job hunting support I am giving my daughter...I have been thinking that when I decide to go job hunting, I am going to do something I love.

I may even go back to school for a quick 9 month degree, could be even quicker since I have a BSBA already.........

And Omega is ready to hang up corporate life and become an entrepreneur. I should be doing research for "us". It would be so cool to run a business with her.

Just what type???

Life is very fun and interesting at the moment.

Me and my Monkey

I have to tell you the first time in four years of having an online journal and being separated from and distanced from the online community, I didn't care. I did not sweat trying to get on line with the dial up from the Lake House. I did not even think about it once. Not once.

Maybe I am cured.

Cured of what?

You know. I know you know. So, I guess for me, its four years. Suddenly that crevice is leaped over and life as it should be, maybe once was, resumes.

Blogging, or journaling (as we called it as AOL-J-landers) has been good for me. Actually it goes beyond good, it has made me a better person. Life, my life became an opportunity of circumstances to blog about. And so, I lived my life accordingly. I am, after all, the star of my Blog. I have to look good, be good. I could have been no-good and more than likely, certainly would have had a larger audience...yet, this is me, this is my life, my little piece of the world existence...and I have always been the good girl.

Well, most the time. There was that period from 1969 -1979.

Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey.

Sweet relief.

BOOM BOOM (OUT GO THE LIGHTS)

Once again the clan gathers at the Lake House in Tennessee for a long-long weekend of family, friends, a birthday, water fights, Treasure Island, beer and coconut rum, charades, Napoleon Dynamite, sun, tubing, and sun screen. Did I mention beer and a ton of food and fun?

No fireworks. It rained on Saturday. The rain almost cancelled the tubing, but the kids toughed it out and tubed all over the lake. Sometimes in the rain.

But the rain cancelled out fireworks. Darn, the fireworks are the one of the best parts.

Kitsy-Boo and Trouble Maker were in charge of Treasure Island this year. They neglected to make arrangements ahead of time. This includes the making of a map, clues in the form of a pirate poem and of course, hide the pirate loot on Treasure Island.

They went into "town" on Friday and were gone from mid-morning til mid-afternoon. The loot was pathetic! A few rubber animals and a bunch of water balls, about the size of soft balls. These were hung in trees.

Now, the Treasure Hunt has morphed from the early years (we think this is the eight time we have gone down in nine years, we missed one year due to a wedding in the Lake House In Laws family)when it was called Dinosaur Island. Each year it has become bigger and more complicated. Omega's B-I-L made the most incredible map one year, complete with burnt edges and grimy from years floating on the Lake in a bottle to wash in the bay. It was detected by one sharp eyed adult and several kids piled into a canoe (with an adult) and retrieved the old bourbon bottle...(well, we are from Kentucky don't ya know). And they had to follow all the clues after boarding the boat and heading for Treasure Island!

Each year it becomes bigger and better.

One year a bottle of Sammy Hagar's tequila, Cabo Wabo was hidden as an adult "treasure" for the Birthday boy (it is my bro N's birthday, the day after the summer solstice)and one of the very young man-children found it and said, "oh stinky, just an old bottle!" and flung it away. My B-I-L K., who had purchased the delicious expensive elixir, screamed, "NOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and made a dive for it. Literally, he threw himself between the ground the the bottle and made an incredible catch.

I was not there to see it, but it is now legend.

This is the type of excitement that the kids are use to. After all these years, they stampede the dock, drag all the floatation devices into the water and immediately begin to ask about Treasure Island.

They waited patiently on the dock for their captain to arrive and once they cast off, the adventure was on!

They were back in less the 20 minutes, every face expressing the disappointment, but all good kids, not one word of dis-satisfaction was uttered. They showed us the loot from the pirate raid, the balls. Then they went to the house for lunch.

Omega looked at the pitiful pile of balls and said, "We can make a great game of this. We can make the kids get on the water trampoline and rafts. The adults can throw the balls at them. We can have one of them the target and have the others defend him. We will pick them off one by one until last man stands."

She did come up with something like that. Believe me.

When the kids returned we explained the game and into the water they went (after a good period of rest after lunch, trust me, there were a lot of Moms there). We practiced , then practiced some more. Suddenly, the game was on!

We threw the balls at them, they horded them, then a barrage of bullets with deadly aim made us scramble. The addition of butterfly nets made perfect ball retrievers. The game continued forever! Sides were swapped, some adults became helpers and went into the water and tossed balls to the kids on the floats and trampoline.

The TroubleMaker frolicked on the deck shaking his hiney at the kids, "You can't hit me, You can't hit me, You can't get me!" Boy did those kids love getting him.

Once we arrive down at Lake Norris we have an agenda. It includes Treasure Island. It includes the kids going tubing. It is celebrated with fireworks on Saturday night! And the much anticipated game of Charades.

We added another tradition this year, the Water Fight.

I swear, I never had so much fun! Well, not since I was a kid!


(a Pirate waiting patiently to go to Treasure Island)

Louisville 101

I still have 50 boxes to unpack, so I went out and paid a visit to the Antique dealer, Joe Ley. You have never seen anything like this place before in your life. It is fantastic. Full of everything you could possible desire. People come from far and wide to look through the loot housed in this three story building located on Market Street. Most notably, it is visited often by the folks from Hollywood looking for that certain something to adorn a set and make it perfect.


Since I am considering an outside living-type area, don't you think this would look grand?


I love this table. I did not check the price! maybe the next time. (like when I have a job).


I definitely need this in my garden.


The statues are spectacular. I could see they recently acquired the contents of a Catholic Church.


I would love these statues to adorn my front area!


This guy would give me a severe case of Clown-phobia.

Chirping with the Birdies

For the second morning in a row I am wide awake at 3am.

I have so much on my mind that I suppose a four to five hours sleep is okay as long as supplemented with a nap now and then. I have chosen to wear the mantle of worry not only during my waking hours but allowing it to slip into my slumber time. I naturally am worrying about money and being jobless. I am worried about the amount of boxes that lie in wait for me to open and spill their guts everywhere not certain where anything should go.

I worry about spending our small windfall of refunded closing costs on frivolous things because I have a hard time talking about financial matters with the now sole breadwinner.

His frivolous things. My wants are much more important such as hiring my brother, who has been doing this type of thing for over thirty years, to create bookshelves for the enormous front room. I am determined to not have my books confined to another storage building or the garage. He is not cheap. But I think I will get a family discount.

We need additional furniture. Actually I have been having a great time reading and looking through Architectural Digest and similar publications to broaden my ideas regarding decorating a home. The trend towards outdoor living space is intriguing! I mentioned to Joe that I was considering planting some trees (we have no shade in the back yard) and was met with....lets say, the reason I am not sleeping in a normal pattern is because it is times like these that you realize how polarized two people can be.

The house makes strange noises. I was awakened by some distinct roaring coming from the furnace and water heater closet. And their is a third large water containing looking thingie in there. It was the cause of the roaring. I have no idea what it is??

The garbage is supposedly collected in the morning, and needless to say, we have a mountain of garbage! No one has their garbage at the curb as of last night!! I am on garbage alert this morning. Me and the birdies.

I'll end out dragging it all to the edge of the driveway as soon as the light of day breaks and I can see the morning landscape of the neighborhood. Perhaps it is just less garbage attentive than what we are accustomed to. I do have a grass clipping problem here that has yet to be resolved. It will not be collected in plastic bags. I searched several Walmarts (the store I love to hate and hate to love)for paper recyclable bags...they don't have them.

"How do you get rid of your grass clippings in J-ville?" (I am the only person in the world who calls it J-ville).

"I live in Sellersberg."

I turned to the lady who had unsuspectingly rolled her cart towards the check out counter in lawn and garden, "Pardon me, but how do you rid yourself of your grass clippings?"

"I live in Floyds Knob." (damn it!!) "But when I lived in Jeffersonville, I had a compost behind the garage." (damn it!)

I'm going to have to dump all the bags of yard refuse into several cardboard boxes for the collection guys.

No wonder I can't sleep.

The house makes funny noises.

Mishaps & Miss Communications

The Grandbaby was sooooo cute. She was dancing for us, showing off her dancing shoes. She was chasing the dog and petting her, "Daug!" Throwing her tiny head back and laughing. Showing us her boo-boo's. Her plump little sandal clad legs with scabs on both knees. She showed us her "mean" face, which was a scrunched up adorable growling face.

She was precious pretending like she was holding a conversation on a cell phone. Ahh, there never was a cuter 19 month old.

Then she flung my phone on the tile floor and danced away.

My phone was dead. There was no reviving it. No matter how many times I turned it on and off, it did nothing but give me a feeble blink.

I headed to the Cingular store first thing this morning and checked out all the selections of newer phones, much newer than my two year old dinosaur! Incredible what those little power tools can do now. MP3 players, Internet, Blackjack, bluetooth, blackberry, miniature tv's...endless.

I chose a simple MotoRazr...gotta say "Hello Moto".

Why?

'Cause I have a grandbaby who is prone to flinging things.

As he was trying to see what could be salvaged from the trusty little Moto phone I began to tell him about Hurricane Wilma and being in Cancun trapped in a school house with a category four storm raging around us. 20 strangers thrown together by circumstance and karma. I told him how the next morning we found that my Motorola cell phone with Cingular service was the only phone that would work amidst the destruction and chaos.

I told him how our group was so diverse and international. That motorola phone called Denmark, England, Chicago, Switzerland, LA and Texas.

How that phone connected us to the outside world with whom Cancun was totally cut off from. How my Mom told us that CNN reported we were in the eye of the storm and had another night of the back side of Wilma!

I told him how my phone bill was about $300 bucks but it was worth every damn penny.

"You should tell them. That is an incredible story."

As I was gathering up my new phone and box and receipt for the rebate he picked up the old Motorola and smiling handed it to me.

"She's history, she needs to go home with you."

How true.

OVERWHELMED AND UNDERSTAFFED

I'm sitting amidst a thousand boxes (93 to be exact). Some have been opened and their contents liter every counter, every bit of floor space, every surface in sight. The front room is a dumping ground for the empties and the mountain of paper that was necessary to cushion all the "stuff".

As luck would have it, I did find the box with the birthday gift for Omega. I am not certain I want to part with it, but I guess that is what is going to make it an incredible gift. It's my vintage set of the 1979 Taylor and NG naughty animal coffee mugs. They have been hidden deep in my closet since Christmas 2005.....I think she will enjoy them.

I will travel to Central Kentucky with my other sister Kitsy-Boo and her brood for the fathers day celebration festivities at Mom's house. Joe will go on his motorcycle to have the mobility to go spend time with his children.

It feels so good to be able to hitch a ride with my Sis.

Other note worthy events....The Sirius Radio works perfect here! For the past several months I have been having a torrid e-mail relationship with the customer service department of the the satellite radio company. It had terrible reception in the last area I lived. They told me that I had to have it away from trees. I knew that was bull because we used it (my B-I-L's) at the Lake house last summer and that is the most tree concentrated place imaginable. Then they told me that I needed to move the antenna outside....blah blah blah. It works fantastic here.

That makes me very happy.

The back yard is so hot that I find I am moving my plants around the yard looking for respite from the unrelenting sun. Its like an oven...an open fire pit. All that concrete. Absolutely frying them. And the 90+ degrees does not help. The roses are looking puny. I cut back all the weeds...or at least what appeared to be weeds. I worried about that, all of 30 seconds, then decided that if they were not weeds then they would come back next spring and show me the flowers!

I believe neglect has about done them in for this summer, but who knows.

Gotta go cook my spinach souffle for the Fathers Day family gathering.

FAREWELL TO FORT WAYNE

Cherry Fritter & Coffee to go - $1.50.

A little hole in the wall bakery that sits behind the BP station on the main intersection. I avoid it because the cherry fritters are so delicious. I never knew such a sweet treat existed until I stumbled into this place one wintery morning. The last day here I happily gave in to the temptation knowing I will never have the opportunity to have one again.



When I was a very young child my favorite book in the whole world was "Story of Live Dolls". When the book was to be discarded due to age and destruction (some child colored the illustrations and some pages were torn) my Mom saved the book and gave it to me! Every time I drove past Dolly Heaven I thought about that book and smiled, not only about the beloved story but because my Mom is the greatest. I never went in. The last morning, it was very early and not open yet. I will regret that.



The lily's I planted last year are really turning into beauties this summer. Several of the perennials I planted last summer have yet to bloom. I am going to miss the yard and gardens. I truly am.

I was not prepared for the flood of tears that overtook me as I drove out of the neighborhood for the final time.

Something I have wanted to say for a long time...

......Now that's a River!!!

On the Belvedere looking across the Ohio River towards Indiana.

When Life Hands You Lemons - Make a Sour Face

I thought with the closing and the joy of moving back to the South...well, still technically a Hoosier, but only by one mile, things would be on the total upswing.

Wrong.

Someone is angry with me, and that makes me clean. Or drink. In this case, clean and drink. And thank God for small favors, one of the two appraisers for the house in Indiana came this afternoon while I was in the middle of a Pina Colada cleaning frenzy.

I think it went okay. I conveniently stood the the left of the missing pantry doors to draw his eyes away from the gaping hole. It worked. He remarked how beautiful the cupboards looked considering they are original. "A German Sister-in-Law and lemon oil. She convinced me of the necessity of rubbing them down yearly...it works!"

He took video. God, I hope some sharp eye doesn't notice the pantry. He went out into the back yard and included the landscaping and beautiful flower beds. One of the neighbors came over and put in a good word about the neighborhood.

Tomorrow the movers come to take us away. Forever.

So final, isn't it. Forever.

Before the Junk Arrives

or......My New House Sans furniture and furnishings



Back Yard needs attention


Still needs attention from the other angle


Kitchen with Pot Hanger


Even I know this is a horrendous color combination. The carpet has got to go.


When we first viewed the house there was a variation of the Mother Of Perpetual Help on the wall....I knew this house must be it regardless of the carpet.


The Family room sealed the deal ... or did the back yard? Maybe it was the enormous garage....I can't remember.

Retracing Footsteps

Or.....You may be a lover but you ain't no dancer

I am on the campus of the University of Louisville for the first time in nearly 17 years. I came seeking a computer and here I am. In the library I spent so many hours pre-computer days, seeking reference material for papers, studying and having group meetings for class assignments.

I thought I might have trouble finding my way around the school grounds, but it was not a problem. The Business School is right where it was before, 17 years ago a big new building, today it still it still is very modernistic with wonderful sculpture...red! I had forgotten.

I walked past many of the buildings I took classes in and remembered the rush to arrive on time, since I was one of new breed of "non-traditional" students that UofL catered to, allowing us to earn a degree while attending classes in the evening.

Nothing ground breaking now, but back then, it was catering to the needs of your customers. There were more students in the night classes than day classes back then.

And here I am, in the vicinity of the most embarrassing moment of my life (well, one of them at least) when I was wearing this new spaghetti strap red checkered summer dress with a large skirt that would let you spin round and round and you would look like a dancer. Or a nut case. Either way, the back of the dress was stuck in the back of my panties after a trip to the bathroom.

Hahhahahahah.

I can laugh now. I was mortified then.

All seems to be lined up for the closing tomorrow. I am breathing easy today.

RUSH to MOVEMENT

It would be difficult to write everything that has been happening since Friday. I am so stressed that it is ridiculous.

We are closing on our new home in Southern Indiana on Friday and it has been anything but exciting and exhilarating. It has been excruciatingly painful. In a few moments I must rush to my insurance guy and purchase home insurance through him because he is better priced than what the bank offered. I fought about the taxes in escrow!! They had estimated them at 50% higher than 2006 taxes. Then something very ugly showed up on my credit history that I had taken care of long long ago. Like seven years ago!! I am to go to an atty office tomorrow with proof that what the company is claiming is not right. Thank God I am a pack rat, for I have the original loan and loan papers along with payment history!! Yea me! But still, I have to prove I am innocent. Ridiculous, and I am hoping to see if I might have a case for harassment.

Wouldn't that be sweet! I could champion every person who ever got in over their head and struggled to do the right thing!

I am stressed about many more things.....

But I do not have time to tick them off here. I must go gather my hanging plants and take them South to their new home. I am a-feared (good old southern word) they will perish here if I leave them. I was lucky there were storms that came and watered them.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and fretted about them being so far away with no one to look after them.

Off, off again.......

All the weary night-watchers

It's 3am.

I have been awake since an hour ago. Tossing and turning, mind aflame with niggling thoughts that persist in tickling my consciousness. Was my sub-consciousness when I was asleep. All those tiny little details, all those exercises that we allow ourselves to go through....that we will do it tomorrow, another time, always have time. Time is slipping away.

I am officially unemployed. Meaning that when I go into the office tomorrow, I will be a visitor. Arriving in a car I am renting. Driving past my faithful old company car. The one with the gas card tucked in the comforts and confines of the secret place, at attention, at alert for when a fill may be necessary. I miss you already. You reality smasher, keeping the effects of a corrupt government at bay, until this day, the day I must pull out my own cash to fill my gaping hole called a gas tank.

The trains wail softly in the night.

The rain falls intermittently.

All is quiet, except my brain.