Happy Tears!

The writer of one of the other blogs I read, So, The Thing Is ..., recently moved from Texas to New York with her family, and a casualty of the move was the loss of one of their cats. For six weeks we have been waiting to hear that Edward the cat is back home and today the good news finally came!!! I am still wiping my eyes after reading about his safe return.

Love getting that feeling of "all is right with the world" over something like this!

Seeking Your Thoughts

Hey all -- I am grappling with the idea of workplace satisfaction, and how important it is when making professional decisions.

The thoughts are a bit muddled in my brain, so no doubt they will come out garbled here as well, but hopefully you will understand what I am trying to say enough so that you can offer your opinion or share your experiences.

I have written about 5 sentences right here and then erased them all as I try to figure out how to say what I want to say!

Is it OK to quit a job that doesn't excite you but that you can do perfectly well, without significant reason - i.e., there is no mitigating circumstance making the job unbearable, it just isn't thrilling you daily.

I understand that NO job thrills you daily (or almost no job). And that sometimes sticking with something is worth it in and of itself. And that it could be seen as setting a pattern of quitting if something bores you, which may be a dangerous habit to have.

But then again, why stay with something that is not adding to your life, when life is short enough anyway?

I guess what I am really saying is, is it OK for me to quit a perfectly good job which is kind of blah, or should I stay with it because it's not too bad and it is regular money coming in, and ... I guess I'm out of reasons.

Am I being proactive by wanting to maximize my enjoyment of life or am I being weak by running from even the slightest discomfort? How do you tell the difference?

New favored show

Well, this weekend has been a very busy one and I finally got to sit and put my feet up around 6:00 tonight ... turned on the TV, nothing really was on but I didn't care, I actually expected to fall asleep so the TV was just a minor player in my evening plans.

Then I ended up on some channel doing a House marathon. Five episodes later I love this show.

Whoops. I just admitted to sitting in front of the TV for 5 hours. Wow, I hadn't even realized that until I started typing now.

Perhaps I ought not to blog this.

I did make supper in that time period, do a load of laundry, welcome the boys back and listen to their stories of the weekend with their dad, and ... umm, I guess that's it.

But this SHOW! Carla has told me about it before but I never had the time or inclination to watch it before. Now I fear I may be hooked. Or maybe I can just say OK, I saw a bunch, now I can ignore it. It ended quite nicely with the cliffhanger resolved, so it's not even like I have to watch to find out what happened next. It could have been episodes from 3 years ago for all I know.

I found myself analyzing the hospital set-up they have there. On the one hand they said at one point they have the best neonatal unit in the state (and I don't know what state they are in.) On the other hand, they apparently have ONE oncologist and the medical director of the whole place has time to examine some guy's hemorrhoids. So I don't know what kind of outfit it really is.

But I still liked it, a lot.

Why NOT Kentucky?

Everyone seems to want to know why I want to move to Kentucky. It's because a while ago Calandria blogged about moving there. This was before she decided Barcelona was a good place to live. I remember what she wrote about the rolling hills and small towns and the beauty of the land there.

You can read it here.

And then you can notice, as I did just 2 minutes ago when I went to double-check, that Calandria was talking about Virginia.

Not Kentucky at all.

OK, so maybe I want to move to Virginia now.

You think I'm kidding?

I told the boys the other day that I want to move to Kentucky. They laughed, but today when I woke up - it's April 26, for goodness sake - and saw this, well, now I'm even more serious.

Huh?

Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.--Lewis Carroll

Got this off another blog. I have read it four times and I am still not entirely sure I understand it. But I like being confused by famous authors.

Survivor

I know most of you aren't fan(atic)s like me, but last night's Survivor was truly amazing. The players pulled off a HUGE coup and voted out - blindsided totally - the strongest player in the pack. It was delightful. I yelled, I sat up straight, I wiggled (jumping would have been a tad too much) and I was only mirroring the reactions of the players on the TV.

Amazing. Made it worthwhile to be a fan again.

Accents???

Was just reading comments on the Yarn Harlot's blog, and someone wrote this after hearing her speak ...

I never realized that you had such an accent. I guess I just think that everyone on the internets sounds exactly like me.

And it made me stop and pause and think "You mean they don't?" (when I heard the YH speak, as I did with The Knitting Queen earlier this week, I didn't think she had an accent at all. So clearly all people on the internet do sound exactly like me.)

The Pact

Yesterday I read The Pact, a book by three doctors in New Jersey who made an agreement when they were in high school that they would all rise out of their home environments and attend medical school. After I finished reading it, I handed it to Ben and told him I want him to read it, too.

It was an amazing story. The stuff movies are usually made of. In fact, I am surprised it hasn't been adapted into a screenplay yet - I'm sure it will be fairly soon. These young men truly came from childhood situations that are foreign to a girl from Minnesota... two of the three spent time in jail, all three flirted with gangs to different levels, none of them had a father in their lives, all had someone close ... a sibling, a parent, many friends ... who were on drugs. Yet somehow each of them had at least one adult in their lives who recognized the potential in them and brought feelings of self-worth to their young souls, and all three eventually made it through medical school, and all three are practising physicians back in the area they grew up in.

It speaks to the power of the human spirit. It speaks to the importance of believing in a child, because you never know if your one interaction with him or her could change a life forever. It gives hope to the darkest areas of our nation - awareness that there are good people who want to improve the neighborhoods, the homes, the lives of those who live there. It speaks to the incredible power of friendship, trust, and being there for others. And it speaks to the importance of holding on to dreams, not giving up even when you make terrible mistakes, but forgiving yourself and continuing on.

I highly recommend it.

Bumper sticker for you?

(both from Obey the Purebreed. Have fun!)

Bumper Sticker for me?

Attempts to fool myself into thinking spring is still coming ...

Well, I changed a few colors - after Calandria changed the entire look of her blog, but I don't know how to do the types of things she did so this is a pretty rudimentary change.

Anyway, I thought maybe by bringing in some tulip-pink and robin's egg-blue, I might be able to convince myself spring really is coming this year.

They are saying more snow - big time snow - on Friday.

Sigh ...

Roller Coaster of Life

Wow, life is hard sometimes. I feel like for the past two months (maybe three?) I have just been up and down and up and down and occasionally sideways ... I don't quite know what to make of all this. Menopause? Spring fever? Delayed reaction to the changes of last year? Some days are so great and then others I get all confused about so many things.

I am hoping some of you out there who are my age can tell me this is totally normal ...!!!

In the meantime, to avoid thinking about it all, I knit.

More socks on the way.

Finished late last night

I have been reading the wit and wisdom of The Yarn Harlot lately, and she defines 'knitting jag' as being stuck on knitting the same pattern over and over and over again. Me and socks .... CHECK!

She says the best way to get over the jag is to buy enough yarn to make 100 more of the same pattern. Once you have invested all that money, the previously addicting pattern will bore you, and you will find something new to hold your attention.

Guess I'm not quite there yet.

Finally, it's coming!

September 20.

I've pre-ordered it.

Expectations are high!

New Career Path?

I put store in my dreams (I was going to say 'great store' but really, if I'm honest with you and with myself, I actually use my dreams as entertainment more than inspiration or predictors of the future) so last night's dream has stuck with me.

In it, I had launched a new - and, seemingly successful - career as a swimsuit designer.

Just what you always thought I would be, right?

Fooling with Reality

I see Google Mail has a new feature. It will let you send an email with a date stamp of a time already passed. And it can make the newly-delivered email look like it's already been opened and read in the recipient's mailbox.

Heh. So when you miss a deadline you can quick send a new email with a retroactive time and make it look already read and then say self-righteously "What do you mean my reply is late? I sent it 6 hours ago and you already opened it!" and the recipient will check his/her inbox and see "whoa, how did I forget about that email? It says it's been here for hours! I must have totally blanked it out." And then that person will beg your forgiveness.

Until they catch on.

Then, how will anyone ever know what is real and what is g-manufactured? Now, Google says you can only utilize this feature 10 times per year. As if. Now that the technology exists, you know it will just be a matter of time (perhaps time already passed) until anyone can use it anytime they want.

Methinks this is a slippery slope, indeed.