What I did this weekend.

Friday night - Worked, came home, ate a lot of Tobin's pizza and shrimp. Fell asleep watching Mr. Sunshine on DVR.

Saturday - Got up with the puppies.  Beaded jewelry for a couple hours.  Made a layered salad and took it to church.  I drove a couple other ladies over to Eastlawn Cemetery.

Becky Seip was laid to rest.  I didn't know her.  But I love her mom and her sister goes to my church and I work with her as well.  If Becky's mother and sister are any indication of the woman she was, I truly wish I had known her.

I came back to church and ate other women's salads at the luncheon in honor of Becky.

I came home and made more jewelry.  John and I had tamales for dinner and I feel asleep while he watched the Bulls game.  (I detect a sleep pattern here...)

Sunday - John got up with the puppies so I could sleep in.  Went to church and to brunch at Swinger's Grille - awesome grub for $13 a pop.  Took the puppies for a walk, because it's 40 degrees and feels like a freaking heat wave.  Made more jewelry.  John and I are currently having cocktails, so I will be falling asleep in front of whatever is on the TV for the third night in a row.

Here is what I made.  If you like something, come to Resurrection Lutheran Church next weekend and bid on it.  All proceeds to to Friends of the Children of Haiti.

The DMV

I'm fairly certain Jabba the Hutt "helped" me at the DMV today.

While there was a "woman" with braids in her hair nearby, she was no Carrie Fisher,

so I wasn't too worried that I had transported into a 20 year old George Lucas film.  But Jabba was so rude and 

robotic, that I wanted to stab him with my Bic. 

I won't go into the details.  Too soon, too raw.

Tuesdays have no soul

I saw that posting today on Facebook - "Tuesdays have no soul."

I think I've always hated Tuesdays.  I'm sure they have been the worst day of the week ever since I started in purchasing.  Salespeople, being the thoughtful people they are, tended to not call on Monday.  I suppose this was to let us poor schleps in purchasing get through a weekend buffer day and let us prepare for the rest of the week.  But then Tuesday came.  The phone would ring off the hook and everything else would hit the fan.  Everything tended to be downhill from there.  Tuesdays were always the pinicle of work headaches.

Since I'm taking a break from purchasing, Tuesdays still suck.  Working for a commodity brokerage firm, I compile and send out the daily newsletter.  I have to put the most work into it on Tuesdays than any other day of the week.  Go figure.  And although the stuff hitting the fan seems a little more evenly distributed, it still tends to splatter more on Tuesdays than not.

All that being said, things have changed here at home.  I am no longer an empty nester since Hannah withdrew from Millikin.  She is home, but upbeat.  She is applying at ISU for next fall, looking for a job, and tending to things around the house.

I don't talk about Jim as much in this blog because, (1) he is away at school and doesn't come home but for big breaks and (2) creates less...  havoc.  BUT...  Jim and his co-news director won the Iowa College Media Award for best radio newscast - for the second year in a row!!!

http://www.wartburg.edu/Article.aspx?ID=4619

We couldn't be happier for him. Way to go, Jim!!

 It feels so good when you're good at what you love.

Beginnings

19 years ago this afternoon, I was at the doctor's office.  He was checking me out for the last time before I would go into labor later that night.  I was really restless that evening and couldn't sleep.  I went downstairs to watch TV.  The movie Bonnie and Clyde was on WGN or TBS or one of those channels that manages to match the running time of a movie with minutes of commercials.  Nothing soothes the soul like a good gangster movie.  I had a lot of braxton hicks (fake) contractions with this pregnancy and thought I was having them that night.  Then they seemed to become rather regular.  I started timing them with the commercials on TV  - the one and only time they have or ever will again come in handy.  About the time Buck takes a shot to the head and Blanche goes ballistic, I timed them at a little over 2 minutes apart.  I went upstairs to wake John.

I said, "I think this is it.  We'd better call Mary Kay" (our neighbor who would tend to Jim when the time came to go to the hospital).  I puttered around in the bathroom for a few minutes and came back to the bedroom to find that he had gone back to sleep.  I don't remember if I hit him or not - but I know I wanted to.  We called Mary Kay, she came over to spend the rest of the night, and we were off to the hospital.

We arrived there somewhere around 3:00 am.  Things went very smoothly.  No almost-emergency C-section like with Jim.  They gave me an epidural, and I watched my contractions come and go on a machine.  Around 6:00 am it was time to push and Hannah, with all of her black hair, was born at 6:31.

A new beginning at it's finest.

19 years later, we're hoping for another new beginning.  We collected Hannah and all of her belongings from college this afternoon.  She hates being at Millikin and can't take another semester.  She wants to transfer to ISU, but it is too late to get into any classes this semester there or even at Heartland Community College.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't upset.  Pick an emotion and I've had it this week.  I threw every argument in the book at her and came at it from every angle to get her to reconsider.  I yelled at God, then asked for forgiveness and guidance.  This is NOT how it is supposed to happen.

Until she starts her summer job in June, the next few months could be pretty long ones for her.  But I know she will find her way.  She will start school again in the fall, probably at ISU.  Ironic, that in just shy of nine months, we can look forward to another new beginning.

Being a parent is the most difficult thing I will ever do.

Period.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am

Stuck.

I am stuck in the flat, frozen corn fields of central Illinois.  This time of year always gets to me, but February is usually worse than January.  I’m really trying not to be pessimistic, but it’s hard not to be.  It’s too cold to take the dogs for a walk, and even though I know I should start exercising again, I have little energy for that or anything else.  John and I have toyed around with the idea of moving someplace warmer, where he would be home more.  But our roots run pretty deep here, and until our kids are out of college, we are here to stay.  So I am stuck, alone, with the dogs.   The bright side of things?  But for the snow blowing and shoveling, there is no yard work to do.

I am stuck at my job as well.  The theoretical promotion ladder doesn’t even exist there, so there is no moving up or down it.  Come to think of it, there is no place to go laterally either.  Things have changed drastically in my short tenure there and not for the better.  The job market is extremely limited here, and unless you work for an insurance company or a university, you’re quite the oddity.  My years of experience in manufacturing purchasing doesn’t get me squat in this town.  That, plus a tight economy means I am…

stuck.

For so many years, everything was moving forward – college, marrying John, then moving forward with various jobs, kids, then getting the kids out of diapers, getting them to their next soccer game, getting them through the next school year…  Now – it’s paying for college.  They are not around to move forward anymore. They are hopefully doing that on their own.

Is that what "empty nest syndrome" is?  You don't have anyone around to help move on to the next thing?  Or is this a mid-life crisis?  Maybe just the winter blues?  You tell me.

I talked to Hannah today, and to a certain extent, I should practice what I preach.  Be happy with the memories of the past, but look for new and exciting things in the future.  Move forward.  For someone in college, the goal is a clear one - maneuver each semester the best you can, graduate, and get a good job.  For me?  Not so crystal.

We had a Christian therapist talk at our church a few years ago. In a nut shell, he said that it was OK to not have a plan - that it was easier for God to guide you that way.  Okay...  Well, I ended up as the purchasing manager at Wildwood, where the company has gone bankrupt and the owners, controller and production manager have since gone to jail on fraud charges... then I went to a commodity brokerage firm where I have felt completely out of place for 2 1/2 years.

 I just don't get it.

I still believe.  Proverbs 16:3 says - Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.

OK - then ESTABLISH!  God's time has never been my time.  I have prayed patience for years, so this may be God answering my prayers - my payback.

Whatever it is, let it be.

My prayer for today, as I was driving back and forth to work:  Lord God, please grant me, my husband  and my children strength, courage and discernment to do your will.  Calm us as we go through troubled times.  Give us the gift of knowing that our efforts are good and righteous.

Amen.

Perfect Saturday

9:00 - woke up, because John got up with the puppies at 6:30
10:00 - ate the incredible omelet that John made for me.
11:15 - went to the eye doctor's to get my new glasses.  They're pretty neat.  Photos later.
1:30 - ate heated chili previously made, that John put on the stove.  Yum, if I do say so myself.
2:00 - 5:00 - beaded jewelry.  Some for me, some for friends, some for the FOTCOH auction.  Again, photos later.

5:00 - 7:00 - made and previewed Tex-Mex dinner club recipe with John.  Pretty good.  Needs some tweeking, but good.  One of my favorite things in the world is making dinner on Saturday night with John, having a couple drinks, and watching a movie on netflix.  Call me old, but it doesn't get any better than that.
Sunday - we're going to be bad and blow off church.  Please forgive us.  We're having friends over, eating lots of meat (the amount of meat consumed has a direct correlation to the Bear's domination over the Packers) and I'm taking Hannah back to school.

Pray for my Hannah.  She needs guidance.  We all do.