Its Pouring Rain...AGAIN!!

Which honestly, would be fine, if I was at home on the couch with a long movie list for the day. But, being in the office, its hard to find motivation to work in this kind of weather. However, on a positive note, im sporting my cute Michael Kors Splash Wedge Rain Boots today. That makes me happy, everyone should have a pair!

Wednesday Song

Something about this very much reminds me of the scene in "Shes Having a Baby" and you see Kevin Bacon waiting in the hallway awaiting news on his wife who is giving labor. Kate Bush's "This Womans Work" was playing...

Face of a Faith - Nellie McKay

Rainy Day Thoughts

First and foremost I want to share that my good friend Stephanie, (who was not a fan of my blog because the last post she read was ages ago when our other good friend Mary came to visit and Steph couldn't make it and I had posted pictures of all the fun times we had together that weekend.) Needless to say when I sent her the link it bummed her out, of course, because she would have loved to have been here with us.

Anyhow, she sent me an email today saying she read it last night and i quote:

"so, i guess it doesn't matter how long i spend away from you, i feel connected even though we are states apart. -i liked knowing what you were up to even if i couldn't talk to you."

The reality of it, is that it is completely true. Good friends are hard to come by, Good friends are the ones you know, even though you don't get to see eachother every day like you might have done in the past, life seems to pick up right where it left off when you are together. So to Stephanie and to Mary and to Sheila: Eventhough sometimes we go years at a time without seeing eachother, we know through our 'once a week emails' or 'our once a month phone calls' that we are still intertwined in eachothers lives and after all these years, I'd like to think we always will be!

So tonight, its pouring rain and I went grocery shopping afterwork to find myself with a post-it of a list provided by Mike on our refridgerator needs:  Why does he manage to spend a quarter of the time that I do in the grocery store and still come home with the same amount of groceries? Maybe because I like to gander, check out the sales, read the labels, make sure the levels of sodium arent sky-high, etc.

Anywho, I get home and first proceed to let the dog out on her lead from the front porch, which in my new hot FRYE boots, I slip, my legs come out in front of me and I plumet hard to the ground in the rain and mud with my back landing 1/2 on the lower deck and 1/2 on the ground with my arm stuck underneath me. I swore, just for a second that I had broken my arm and I was all alone in the rain with a helpless dog watching me!! I managed to get my bearings and straighten out my sore back and continue as planned. Taking off my muddy ass coat I had just washed! & Putting away the groceries, in my fashion, slowly, wasting energy with the fridge and freezer door and all the cabinets WIDE OPEN. 

Confession: and I've been most honest about my idiosynchrotic ways regarding my refridgerator....I am COMPLETELY ANAL when it comes to the fridge. First, I like to scope out the current state, second, remove anything that's gone bad and discard, third, re-arrange existing food/produce, etc. & then finally put in my newly purchased items.

I can easily get into a state of anxiety and shortness of breathe when I watch Mikes procedure for putting away groceries, (a far cry from my own) he simply opens the fridge, and jams every new product into wherever he finds space....still leaving the carcass of a chicken roasted 2 week earlier in the bottom shelf covered with foil.)

To end off, I am watching my sweetheart roast a chicken at approximately 8:00pm which is far too late for my liking and against my better judgement, however since he did get suck at his parents house after work with a car battery that didn't start and got home too late, still craving roasted chicken, with mashed potatoes, corn & homemade gravy & noodles.....I try to relax and let him have his fill....even if that means I eat at 9:00pm only to fall asleep on the couch not shortly thereafter and never score a real chance into fitting into a wedding dress smaller than the size I am now!


I hope everyone enjoys their rainy or for those in LA (jealous) not so rainy evening!
With Love-Me

 





 

It isn't so bad!

Well, my boss called me in to his office this morning... I was hesitant to go and quiet when I got there. He thanked me for the organization I did yesterday, he puts things everywhere!! & Thanked me for the lunch on their long-ass 8 hour drive yesterday.
Immediately, I apologized about the proposal, and he said "You did the right thing, I hadn't approved it."
Phew. I knew it damnit!!
 Glad he said that. So, today, not such a bad day afterall.

Just found this quote on a fellow blogger site and I am stealing is as today's motto.

"what lies behind us and what lies before us

are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Oh, Did I mention it was BEAUTIFUL out today and this weather makes me feel happy and alive?
Well, it is. It's just gorgeous...and...in exactly 8 minutes I am OUT OF HERE!!

Mike and I are taking stella for a long walk when he gets home. Then, its taco & movie night.
My 4 favorite things: Mike, Stella, Movies & Tacos!! & Yes...IN THAT ORDER!

Gut instincts and reactions

Normally, when it comes to life in general, I have decent luck with trusting my first instincts. This same factor applies to my work, well had applied until yesterday when I clearly made the wrong decision by reacting with my gut. Long story short, as the details are really not necessary, I spent my entire evening beating myself up about it.
To put it into perspective, and lightly, I did not respond to a client with something they were requesting due to the fact that my boss had not approved my budget yet, therefore, in the event he had changes and I made the mistake of sending it, that would be an issue, we are talking big bucks here. So, I waited for his contact, which came, apparently an hour too late (due to him stuck in a meeting somewhere in bumf&*$% pennsylvania.) And I get an email saying "PLEASE TELL ME YOU SENT THIS" at 5PM, well No, I did not. I had to turn around and submit it, an hour later with an apology, thus looking like an irresponsible ass!
Any how, I have 2 points to this story: (1) My boss clearly had a shitty meeting and wasn't in the best of moods so he took it out on me. This is not acceptable. (2) The fact that I allow an error at my job to ruin my entire night and get me feeling all sick to my stomache, is a problem that needs to be addressed. Because really, in the grand scheme of work and life, is it really worth it?

Therefore, all that stated, today is Thursday and I am going to try my damdest to stop getting emotional and realize I did do the right thing. I figured either way I was going to lose in that situation. Had I sent it with errors, perhaps would have been worse than me sending it withOUT his approval.
I dont know, I tell myself, I AM OVER IT, but clearly I am not.

Boring post, but thanks for letting me vent.
To a good day! I promise!

Old Articles seem to find their way back to me

I was speaking with a friend yesterday and for some reason, as she was telling me about her relationship with a man that unfortunately has ended, my mind went back to an article I read so many years ago (part of me stopped listening and remembered detailed lines from the article.) Today, I've managed to find and will share with you.
Two lines really jump out at me and did back then.
I remember I tore it from the magazine, I must have been 19 years old and I held onto it through a life across the country and back, the page withered through the years.
What's funny is I always remembered the writers name. Elizabeth Berg, and one day, years later, in my waitressing days, a customer had left a book behind...Talk before sleep, by Elizabeth Berg. I remember thinking, she wrote that article, that article that meant so much to me. I waited until a month had passed and no one had come to claim the book and then I was allowed to take it home.
Long story short, I wonder how many woman can relate to this story?


THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY
(c) Elizabeth Berg

There comes a time in every woman's life when she feels compelled to dig up some bones. Thus it is that I called an old boyfriend on the phone last night- shut myself in my study, put my feet up on my desk, leaned back, took a deep breath and dialed an old number to see if he was still there. He was. I opened the conversation by saying who I was and asking if he remembered me. Yes, he said, he certainly did. Then I said "Fifteen years ago you told me to never call you again. But I thought Id take chance. You're not going to hang up on me are you?"

"Where are you calling from?" he asked, and I knew then that he wasn't going to hand up on me, and I relaxed.

This man, lets call him J., and I were romantically linked when I was 18 years old. On my nineteenth birthday, he gave me a matching green skirt and a sweater. It seemed unbearably sophisticated. It was the wrong size, and when we took the outfit back to the store to exchange it, I was caught directly between pride and embarrassment: my boyfriend had bought me a skirt and a sweater! How was this?

He also sent me a dozen red roses, on Halloween, shortly after Id met him. It was a consolation prize, because he was going out with some of his male friends that weekend so we couldn't go out. The florist delivered those roses- in a long white box with a huge red bow, just like in the movies-to the crummy apartment I shared with my roommate. My share of the rent was $37.50 a month. It had no bedroom, that apartment. We slept on a mattress pushed up against the wall of the living room. The bathroom was shared with four loud and careless boys who lived in the adjoining apartment, whose primary entertainment was looking through the keyhole whenever my roommate of I (quickly) bathed.

It seemed miraculous for me to get long-stemmed red roses there- to answer the door in my jeans and T-shirt and not-real-gold earrings and be handed such a prize. The beauty of those roses astonished me. I couldn't bear to take them out and put them in a peanut butter jar when they looked so lovely against the dark-green tissue paper, in the almost silky box. So I left them in there, but I opened the box to look at them several times a day, thus receiving them and receiving them and receiving them. I still think is a fine thing to do with flowers, but I have never since received a dozen long-stemmed roses in a long white box.

We planned to marry, J. and I. We talked about having two dogs: German shepherds, one white, one black. We wanted a fireplace in our living room, made out of fieldstone. We wanted children.

J. was a rare blend of practical and poetic. He went faithfully to his statistics class at the university, bent on being a good businessman, but he also wrote me wonderful, long romantic letters. He believed in behaving himself, was generally rather conservative, but when I insisted he drive me to a certain factory after hours because I wanted to steal its Christmas wreath (I know, I know, but it seemed right then), he sighed and took me down there in the dead of night. When I couldn't get the wreath off the door, he got some tools out of his trunk and helped me.

We disintegrated, of course; I was only 19 and not yet ready for a serious relationship. He took it very badly. He called me on the phone, helpless and I was cruel to him. He wrote me one more letter, beautiful, pleading, and I did not respond. We went our separate ways.

I saw him out once after a few years. I called him; we went out to dinner; he told me over some Chinese good he'd been heavily involved in drugs but that he was better now. And then, just before I got out of the car when we pulled up in front of my house, he told me I was still beautiful. I liked hearing this—it isn't so often I'm called beautiful—but it was hard hearing it too, because it was so obviously painful for him to be saying it. He told me he wouldn't like not to hear from me anymore. It was too hard.

I called him anyway, though, after several years. A woman answered, someone very protective of him, who said he was busy and couldn't come to the phone. I called again later that night. He answered and, rather brusquely, said not to call him again, ever. Please. Well, all right, I said. God. Wasn't there something nice about trying to keep in touch?

And now, at 42, I called that old number again. He told me he was divorced, but that a good thing had come from the marriage: his 3-year-old son, whom he adored. "He's about the only good thing in my life," J. told me. And then there was a kind of awkward silence. "I'm not….very good," J. said. I said if I asked him anything that made him uncomfortable he was well within his rights to refuse to answer, but…why? I asked. Why was he "not so good?" What had happened to him? Long pause. "Well," he said, 'I guess for on thing, I'm a recovering alcoholic." I said I had a friend who'd been sober for seven years and that Id gone to A.A meetings with him to see what they were like. I said Id admired the honesty of the people Id heard speak, and their determination. "Oh yeah, it's a really good organization," J. said." They help and awful lot of people." I asked if he still went to meetings. Long pause. Then, "I got tired of hearing how everyone was doing so much better since they stopped drinking," he said. "My life just got worse and worse." There was such sorrow in his voice.

As he went on, I remembered being at a party where his band was playing—he played guitar and sang in those days—and I went and stood directly before him, watching him, and teasing him a little, too. I stood way too close to him, probably smirking a little; full of the confidence he had given me. The right kind of love will do that for a woman—free her up to tease a man without worrying that shell lose him. The right kind of love will make a woman soar and not cower. But I thought I was strong all by myself, and I gave him no credit for my sense of well-being.

J. had blonde hair and was quite tall, 6'2", I think. He bore a startling resemblance to Gregory Peck, everyone told him that. My mother loved him. He had a dark-green car, and when I quit college to start working downtown, he picked me up in it every night. He was never late. He was always there, waiting for me.

J. talked a little more about the bad things that had been happening to him: business problems, the untimely death of two of his good friends. The he said, "But how are you?" Long pause. And then I said, "You gave me a skirt and a sweater for my nineteenth birthday. Nobody had ever done anything like that for me before." And then we both started talking at once, remembering, saying things we had done together, felt about eachother. I heard his voice lighten a little, and I knew his spirit had, too.

J. told me that one thing helping him feel a little better lately was this church he went to, and he told me the name of it and asked me to try one like it in my town, I said I would, in his honor. At one point, he said, "Gosh, this connection is so clear." (He really does say "gosh." Its something I always liked about him.) He said, "You could be in the house next door." I said I wished I were. I said I would come over right now and make him and apple pie, cheer him up. And I wished with all my heart and soul that I really could, too. Over 20 years had passed and all of a sudden I just wanted to sit at a kitchen table with him, see him, put my hand over his, say, Oh, its said, its so sad that you have had these thing happen to you. Because you were a good person then, and you are a good person now. I know that. I can tell. I wanted to say, Listen J., you remember all those night things I told you when I was lying next to you, calm and full of love? I don't take anything back. I just want you to know that. I remember everything I said, and I don't take anything back.

Once, during my conversation with J., my 15-year-old daughter came into my study. She was holding the cat, smiling. I looked at her she was a ghost. I waved her out. "Later," I mouthed. And I meant it rather literally. I was in 1967, with J., and I wanted to stay there for a while.

Who knows why? When I hung up, I went upstairs to lie on the bed with my husband, who was watching television. I told him Id just talked with J., and that he'd been having a hard life. I said, "You know, he was even worse then I am. Thin-skinned, I mean. He felt everything so much."

My husband, a very practical man, a man who will never in his life write me a romantic letter, a man with whom, it turns out, I don't have a lot in common (but who is, nevertheless, a good mate for me), looked over at me. "Humph," he said. "Why didn't you marry him?" Then he turned back to the screen smiling a little. I started to smile a little too, but I stopped.

Why didn't I marry him? Because I was 19, and I buried bones in the careless way that young dogs do: quickly, one eye on the lookout for other action, interested mainly in finding new bones but thinking to keep those old ones around in case they were ever wanted again. Turns out that sometimes they are. 

I am sitting here today thinking there was something I forgot to tell J., which was this: I wasn't ready to be cherished then, like I am now. And I'm sorry.

Rainy Day Tune

This song always reminds me of the rain.

Goodbye My Lover - James Blunt

Shutter Island

For $10 a ticket and an extremely long movie.......Not at all worth it. Dissapointingly bad. Lack of continuity with the filming for a Scorsese film, I was surprised!

On a positive note, We got the LARGE bag of popcorn with extra butter and even dumped in a few peanut M&M's into the mix. We didn't eat it all, but came quite close.

Sunday was a LAZY day, in fact, I fell asleep in my party dress from Kathleen's surprise 30th the night before (a perfect blast!) and didn't feel much like getting out of it until very late afternoon yesterday. Which meant, I had breakfast in my dress, even took a long walk with John and Sarah.
What a loser and it felt great!

New favorite Song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aePWkeDxRjE&feature=related

Yes I understand that every life must end, aw huh
As we sit alone, I know someday we must go, aw huh
I’m a lucky man to count on both hands
The ones I love

Some folks just have one,
Others they got none, aw huh

Stay with me
Let’s just breathe.

Practiced are my sins,
Never gonna let me win, aw huh
Under everything, just another human being, aw huh
Yeh, I don’t wanna hurt, there’s so much in this world
To make me bleed.

Stay with me
You’re all I see.

Did I say that I need you?
Did I say that I want you?
Oh, if I didn’t now I’m a fool you see
No one knows this more than me
As I come clean

I wonder everyday
as I look upon your face, aw huh
Everything you gave
And nothing you would take, aw huh
Nothing you would take
Everything you gave

Did I say that I need you?
Oh, Did I say that I want you?
Oh, if I didn’t now I’m a fool you see
No one know this more than me.
As I come clean

Nothing you would take everything you gave.
Hold me till I die
Meet you on the other side

Winter on its way out!

Soup was here in January visiting from Maui and took so many great photos! These 2 are my favorite!

Out of the Office

I love that phrase. But mostly, I love the action that follows that phrase. In fact, I love Love lOvE being out of the office and that is exactly what I did today!
I had some "things" that needed taken care of! Mom, Sarah & I had a great day of shopping!! & Lunch was delicsioso! It was a perfect March day in Connecticut. Our goal was to get Mom a dress for John & Sarah's wedding. Approximately a hundred dresses later and alot of good ideas, there was no big purchase. But hopefully Moms got the style that she is looking for. & there is still time.
I was home in time to make my sweetheart dinner before his practice tonight. (That rarely happens.) I made a simple pork tenderloin in the oven stuffed with garlic and potatoes on the side. Easy Peezy! I need to do that more often.
Now, finally some time to myself while him and John are rockin' out next to me at the kitchen bar. Ive got some pictures to download and organize and catch up on some emails to friends. I even made myself a bracelet. I am finding myself more inspired lately. Probably because Mike and I are having so much fun at our meetings with Cathie. (She is making our custom wedding bands!) and each time we see her, I learn something completely new about the techniques of jewelry making and in those moments I feel truly at peace. I wanted to use the new clasp she taught me how to make over the weekend, but somehow lacked the patience to string a long necklace so I opted for the bracelet. I think I might tackle that idea now that I have taken a break:)
Bottom line. Good times & a great day! Well needed and deserved.