responsibilities be damned, i'm outta here (a fantasy)

People call me calm, laid back, able to handle things with ease.  I guess that's true in some ways, but sometimes things build up and I want to drop everything and take off to places unknown all by myself.  Now, don't get me wrong - I love my husband and son and I wouldn't want to hurt them.  I'd miss them terribly.  But sometimes it would be nice to just be alone for a while with no responsibilities, no debts, no baggage, no stress, nobody else's problems to deal with. 

When I think of running away, I never really think it through.  I never come up with the important things like where or what do I do when I get there?  I thought I'd take a moment right now to do that. 

Let's see...I have no money, so I'd have to wait until I get paid, but still leave behind some money for the men to buy groceries.  I don't want to leave them to starve.  Oh, then I guess I also want them to have a car to drive, so they'd have to have some gas money too.  And electricity.  That's a good thing to have.  Especially for them - they sweat a lot in the summer. Even if they think too hard they break out in a sweat. Air conditioning is essential for them.  And school's starting soon, so I should leave a little money for them to purchase school supplies.  Don't want the kid to be without his #2 pencils on his first day in a new school.

So...what does that leave me with?  Where can I go?

I think I'll get about....here:

One train ticket to Chicago.  I like Chicago - it's a good place to go.  Will need to save up money for food, no money for lodging, so I'll hang out in Millennium Park for a while, lounging, listening to music, watching the people.  Wait - they have security.  A ton of security.  On Segways (they mean business).  So I guess I'll hang out there for a day and then head over here:

Jackson Park.  Home of the World Columbian Exposition (Ooh, history) and the current Museum of Science and Industry.  If it's a free day at the museum, I can always hang out there.  But it's not really the best neighborhood, so I guess I'll try for something more on the north side of town:

Lincoln Park.  Nice area of town.  Free zoo to occupy my time.  Nifty statues to look at.  But after a day or two here after having spent time at the other parks and eating (you know, it's kind of important), I'll probably be extrememly short on funds and have only enough money for a train ticket back home.

Damn it!  I'm not any good at this.

reasons why i'm a terrible person - who knew?

So, from things I've read on facebook and heard from friends and family, here are things I do or have done wrong and why I should apparently be ashamed of myself:

• I was induced when I was 41 weeks pregnant...and then I had pain meds....and then I had to have a c-section.  And it was a damn good thing that I did, because he had the umbilical cord wrapped around him in a very bad position.  I didn't have a midwife or a doula (whatever the hell that is).  I had an OB/GYN that I really liked, and he (yes - HE - probably even worse, huh?) did a great job.

• I didn't breastfeed my baby.  Oh, god, I know.  And you know what?  My son and I bonded just fine.  And he doesn't get sick any more than any breastfed kids out there.  And he's not at all stupid either.  I think that takes care of any reasons I was given while I was pregnant.  I'm not opposed to it, I even tried it, and it just didn't work for us.  Oh, I wasn't breastfed as a baby either, and I still live to tell the tale.

• I only had one child.  No, he will never know the love of a brother or sister, but if you've never had it - how can you miss it?  I've never missed it.  He doesn't have social issues, he isn't spoiled because we can't afford to spoil him, and he's not a snob. 

• I don't buy organic foods.  Why?  Mainly because they're far too expensive for the label "organic"  I'm also a crappy baker and don't have a lot of time to cook, so many of our foods come in cans and jars and are filled with preservatives, chemicals and refined sugars. 

• I don't sterilize everything that raw meat touches. I use the same cutting board for my meats and my veggies.  I take my meat rare and my eggs extremely over-easy.  And to top it all off...I eat raw cookie dough.  Gasp!

• I shop at Wal-Mart.  Sure, I'd love to have the choice to go somewhere else for my groceries, but with the budget that we're on we don't have a choice.  They're simply cheaper and that's what we have to go with right now.  Once I get a huge raise or we win the lottery, I'll switch over to fancy-shmancy Piggly Wiggly and farmer's markets.

• I rent.  I don't own a home.  Our credit won't allow for it, and frankly I don't mind not having to worry about the cost of dishwasher repairs or patching a hole in the roof.  Sure, sometimes it sucks having people so close to us, but for the most part we've lucked out.

• One of my cars was made in Korea.  It runs great, provides all of the space that we need, and we can afford it.  Does the fact that our other car is American balance things out?

• My political ideals run a little left of center.  Not a lot, but a little.  To some people, anything left-er than way right is just wrong and makes me a loony with no brain.

• I'm a heathen.  Deities just don't do it for me.  I'm not into a big guy in the sky controlling everything.  Sorry. 

With all of these things that are wrong with me, some people would think I'm a miserable unhappy human being with a son who has major imbalances and I'm just dang lucky to be alive.  Yet here I am.  We're happy, we're healthy, we all get along, and (I think) people like me.  We're all different.  We all do and believe in different things.  We're all in different life situations.  If another person is perfectly happy, a friend to others, not harming anyone or themselves, yet living life differently than you - why judge them? 

the passing of a great woman

I said I was going to write about the woman I considered my 3rd grandmother, so here it goes.  Sure it's mostly for me, but I'd love to introduce people to a woman who made quite an impression on me. 
I'm trying to figure out how to condense this into a readable blog size, but it's a little difficult.  I've actually tried writing this over and over again, but there's just too much to write.  I'll have to do it informally - kind of like taking notes on whatever pops into my brain, so forgive how it jumps around and the different formats, but for the sake of your reading time, you'll thank me for it.  It's still kind of long, but then, so was her life.

Third grandmother, you ask?  Yes, I reply.  How is that?  Well, she was part of my dad's family before he was even born.  She began living with my grandparents sometime in the late 1940's.  I think it had something to do with living expenses, but she became a vital part of the family.


History
She was born on a farm in Kansas.  Farmgirl through and through.  No electricity, not much income, deep family ties.  Then, she left home at the ripe old age of 17 to make it in the big city - Kansas City.  She worked at Hallmark when they first opened and printed and folded the cards by hand.  She was fired when she got a paper cut and bled on one of the cards. Not long after that, in the early to mid-40's she moved to New York, interviewed with Howard Hughes (part of her interview consisted of walking from one end of his office to the other and in a circle so he could see her...qualifications), and began working with Transcontinental & Western Air (later known as TWA) in their Times Square office.

Somehow, and nobody ever really learned the reason, she ended up in Chicago and that's where she met my family.  There, in 1947, she opened her own business - an employment agency for office help.  Yes, that's right, a woman opened and successfully ran her own business before the days of women's lib.  In a city, no less!  This chick had moxie!  Though her business changed with the times, changing names and locations a couple of times, it survived until about 4 years ago when she finally retired...in her 80's.


Her Character:
Another grandmother, but just not called grandma.  She wouldn't have it that way.  She never wanted to take away from our biological grandmothers.  It wasn't until my father's mother passed away that we all learned exactly how much she did for our family.  There were things she didn't mention to anyone until then.  When my grandfather passed away when my dad was 15, my grandmother somehow couldn't cope with life with two boys (there were three, but the oldest brother had just gone to college), they began having serious problems at school, missed quite a bit of it, and the state wanted to take them out of the home, split them up and put them in foster homes.  She stepped in and became their legal guardian so she could take care of them.   They never knew this.  She didn't want them to think of her as "mom" or think any less of their real mother.  Life went on, it improved, but they didn't know why.

She also cared for her father when he was dying, my father's grandmother, her own mother for years, and my biological grandmother after she had had some serious heart attacks.  She did as much as she could for them until it was time for them to have constant professional assistance.  Even after that, she would visit them as often as possible.  She never complained, never hemmed and hawed over it - it's just what was done.

Everything she had, she shared with others.  When she moved out of her home, she always sent money back to the farm to help support the family.  When her business was successful, she would send family members on vacations that they couldn't afford themselves.  She sent my parents on their honeymoon, and sent all of us to Disney World and Hawaii.  She also helped pay the way for many people to get through college, helping them to find jobs afterwards, and even took in a pregnant teenager (when shunned by her family) and helped her find an adoptive family for the baby.

She was an amazing Christian.  (And I say this as a non-Christian.)  Everything she did was rooted in faith, she was one of the first female deacons of her church - a long time ago, she loved working with youth and teen programs, she rarely missed a service, and she lived by the words of Jesus in the New Testament.  She also accepted everyone, met them without judgement, and never uttered a harsh word about anyone.  If all Christians lived the way that she did, I would have more faith in the religion as a whole.

Memories:
Apparently at some point in my childhood, I had given her a chain that was probably a pen chain and told her that I wanted her to wear it to my wedding.  You know how little girls are.  On my wedding day, she came up to me before the ceremony and asked if I remembered that day.  I didn't, but then she showed me the chain that I had given her that day that she was wearing around her neck - as promised.  I wanted to sob, but controlled myself so my makeup wouldn't be ruined for the occasion, but my maid of honor sobbed for me.  Little but grand things like that were part of who she was.

Going to visit her at the office in the 1980's.  I always remembered the blue carpeting and white furniture in her office, and the picture on her wall of the Earth from the Moon.  Every time I saw a picture like that, I'd be whisked back to her office.  If she had some work to catch up on, she'd give me some paper and let me type on one of the typewriters in there.  I thought it was one of the greatest things in the world - I always felt so grown-up.  I guess that's how I got my start in being an administrative assistant.  I'll never have my own business like hers, but I do have her painting (I never realized it was a painting) taken from this picture.

 It's something I'll always treasure.









Visiting her house with my parents and playing all of her music boxes.  In fact, that's the one thing my son remembers about her - she was the nice old lady with all of the music boxes.  They were always a great idea for a gift for her, so we were constantly adding to her collection.  If she ever got sick of them, she never complained.  She opened every one like it was the greatest gift on earth.

Interesting Tidbits of Knowledge
She was fascinated by the space program and was able to attend the launch of Apollo 17 in 1972.   She used to have groups of people over to her house to watch the launches on television.  She also died only days after the final space shuttle launch - I hope she was able to watch it.

She was invited to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan (not sure which one), but found it silly that she was and didn't go.

She wrote a book about the history of Sunday School.  It's still available on Amazon.com, if anyone's interested. 

Things I'll miss:
Her amazing ability to doze off on any floor, any time, for 5-10 minutes, waking up completely refreshed
How things were HI-larious
Her sticky buns - you know, homemade cinnamon rolls.  Simply to die for.
Her steady diet of Dannon yogurt.  I swear that's all she ever ate unless she went out for a meal or had company.

The Finale
She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's not long after she retired.  It's like she was done taking care of people, so her body decided it was time for her to go.  She lived in a senior living home the last few times that I saw her, and when the effects of the dementia became worse and she had fallen a couple of times, they moved her into the assisted living section of the facility. One of the last times she spoke with my mom on the phone, before she was in the assisted living section, she'd begin talking about one subject and then begin talking about something from her childhood, but realize it and say, "Well where did that come from?"   Her sharp wit and amazing intelligence were fading fast.  When she did remember and ask about me, I was still the little girl from the 1980's, yet she'd also ask about my son (who she considered her great-grandson).  Amazing how the brain works.

Last year, on top of the Alzheimer's, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.  I hate to say it, but we considered it a blessing for her.  We knew that she would not want to see herself the way that she was.  It had to be so incredibly frustrating for her.  She was underlining verses in her Bible along the lines of , "Save me, oh Lord!" and "Make me whole again." She wanted to be herself again.  She was never told about her cancer as she wouldn't understand it and wouldn't remember it, and it was left untreated as the family understood is the way she would want it to be.  Being where it was, she was never in any pain, and for that I'm thankful. 

It was the cancer that she died from on July 11th - just a few weeks shy of her 91st birthday.  She went peacefully early in the morning.  I was sad that my husband and son never got to know her well.  I was sad that the world lost an amazing woman who would be a perfect role model for any girl out there.  I was sad that if she ever had any words that she wanted to say to friends and family before she passed, she wouldn't have remembered them...or us.  But she was finally at peace - whatever your belief system, she was finally without suffering in this life.  How could I be sad about that?

I am so thankful to have had her in my life and though I don't think I'll ever be the woman she was, I hope I can be at least half. 

I started a team for our local Walk to End Alzheimer's this September 17th.  My family and I will be walking in her honor.  If you would like to join our team or make a donation, or like any other information, please click on the link below.

 

ensuring domestic tranquility

As my son grows older, I'm finding out just how alike he and his father are as far as temperament goes.  Eerily similar and frankly somewhat scary.  More and more, both are right, the other being completely wrong, with no room for compromise.  I swear I feel like I'm sitting in a room between the Republicans and Democrats in the talks regarding the debt.  I've warned them for years that once the kid hits teenage years I'd be moving out to let them fend for themselves and learn how to compromise without hurling themselves into WWIII...and they think I'm kidding.

I think some night after one of their butting heads, I'm going to leave a small list of things to remember, words of wisdom such as: "fresh air is a good idea every now and then," "no one person is ever completely in the right," and "can't we all just get along?" pack a small bag for myself, and leave for a few nights. Would they miss me?  Would they survive?  Eh - actually I think they'd be fine, but I'd like to think my absence would teach them a lesson in right, wrong, compromise and how to pick your battles.

It's good to dream.

Everybody sing along....

it can stop any time now, thank you

This week has been nothing but a shit-storm of awful happenings and bad ju-ju.  (Okay, if you count Sunday as this week, that day was pretty good, but then it went downhill instantly as soon as Monday arrived.)

Searching to find the reason behind this plethora of craptastic-ness, wondering if it's a bad planetary alignment,  I've checked my horoscope...in a few different places...and they all say in some way that I have wonderful opportunities presenting themselves today and that I'll be so happy that I'll want to drop everything and run with it, but I should show some restraint.

Really?  When is this supposed to happen?  It's now 3:00 pm and nothing good has happened yet.  What time does the day end in the world of astrology?  Are we talking GMT or Eastern time? Standard or daylight savings?  I'd really like to have something to look forward to here. 

Consulting the moon phase at the side of my lovely little blog here, I see that we're not in the midst of a full moon yet, close, but not quite, so I cant blame la luna this time.  And speaking of the feminine mystique - it's not "that time" for me either.  Plus, these things have been completely beyond my control, so hormones couldn't be blamed anyway.

Let me run you through my week...not counting Sunday which was the annual trip to the Renaissance Faire and will be written about later. 

Monday morning - wake up and learn that my 3rd grandmother has died.  We knew it was coming any day, but it's still not a happy time.  In fact, it's a major bummer.  (I will be writing about her soon though - she was an amazing woman.)  Because of the bummer-nature of the news, I'm a little bit zoned out and running late for work - finally make it out the door 5 minutes late.

Oh - don't forget that while I'm trying to get ready for work, we're hit with a major severe thunderstorm and I have to keep checking outside to make sure nothing's blowing away and there's no damage.  Husband and son sleep through it all...

Okay, on the way to work, talking on the phone with my mother about pending funeral arrangements for previously mentioned amazing woman/3rd grandmother, watching the lightning in the not-so-distant distance, I drive through some branch scraps, and then notice a very odd noise coming from the driver's side tire.  I abruptly hang up with her, pull over and investigate, and find the tire is as flat as a Swedish pancake. 

For those non-Swedes, these are Swedish pancakes.  Much thinner than your flapjacks.

Crap!  At that moment, I had a complete and total mind-fart.  What do I do when I have a flat tire?  Ummm...try to drive home.  Yes, that makes perfect sense.  It's raining, I'm on a rural road not too terribly far from home. I can drive slowly along the side of the road with hazards on.  Of course!  Ker-thunk, ker-thunk.  Or not.  Thankfully I was able to get a hold of my husband and he was kind enough to save me and gave me the crap car to drive while he waited for roadside assistance.

After taking off the tire, they found that it was completely threadbare and could have gone at any time.  They also looked at the other tire and found it was ready to go as well, so we were left front-tireless.  Someone had a used tire that they sold to us for $10, so that took care of one. The other has been temporarily replaced by the lovely runt of the tire world - the donut.  Now we have to try to find another tire...that we can afford...by Saturday when we have to drive to Illinois for the funeral of the awesome amazing 3rd grandmother of mine.

All of that was yesterday.

Today I thought would have to be some sort of an improvement, but...um...no.  Well, it's not as bad as close family members dying, but in the grand scheme of how a day should go - it's pretty dang sucky. 

Driving on what my friend refers to as the "weenie wheel" and not being able to go over 50 mph instead of the 55-70 mph that I usually drive, I have to take a different route to work so traffic doesn't line up behind me and set a whole bunch of Wisconsinites into a rural road rage frenzy.  I made it to work...15 minutes late. 

Donut from Hades

Then I get a phone call from my wonderful husband with some really crappy news about one of his jobs and it's not really sitting well.  Usually I can brush this stuff off with no problems, because it's really not anything to worry about, but because of the way things have been going lately it's just getting to me.  Damn people.

I was so peeved today that I ate a donut (not the tire - the carb-filled sugary calorie wheel) and a cookie (peanut butter = protein), and I didn't even give a flying foutre.  Bring it, bitches!

So, stars, planets, constellations and the like...please get your asses in position and make some good things happen.  I can't deal with much more than this without breaking.  Or am I breaking up already?

P.S.  Don't get me wrong - I'm by no means trying to make the loss of a family member sound funny or seem flippant about it, I loved her dearly, but I'm at my wit's end.  You'll see how I really felt about this remarkable woman in another post.

back with something yummy to share

Pardon my absence, dear readers.  I've been having computer issues at home and time issues everywhere else, so the blog has been neglected a wee bit, but I have returned!  Leave it to me to write my returning post about men...er, a man.

As you know already, I'm a True Blood watcher.  Unfortunately this season has been a bit disappointing for me.  I'm not really sure why my feelings about it have changed.  Possibly the branching off into too many different directions, possibly the fact that there's too much time in-between seasons and I've lost some interest, or possibly it's the fact that my dear Eric (played by Alexander Skarsgard) is no longer as appealing to me as he once was. 

When the show began, he was a long-haired Scandinavian Viking bad-boy. 

Now, this is a vampire I'd be happen to be bitten by.

Once the second season came around, they cut his hair, but he was still bad...very, very bad - and built.

There's nothing I don't like about this picture.

By the third season, he was losing the edge and going all metro-sexual wearing suits and toning down the bad-boy and getting all lovey-dovey, but there was still a glimmer of the naughty side and I could still say "yummy" from time to time.

Eh - not so much

This season, the nastiness is gone (so far anyway), the build seems to be gone, and Mr. Skarsgard is beginning to look the way he did back in Zoolander:

Okay, maybe not that bad...but still!

I was just beginning to lose all hope, when I was perusing Pop Candy as I do every weekday morning, and Whitney had a link to this interview with Alexander Skarsgard in (appropriately enough) Interview Magazine.  When I was greeted by this picture, my glimmer of hope came back:

I have regained my faith in the fact that he can still be a bad boy when asked to do so.  I just hope that this season asks for it.   As I've said before, vampires should play with their food and enjoy it - Eric was the perfect example of that.  If it ends up getting all Twilighty and sappy love trianglish, I'm out.  At least I'll have these pictures to look back at to remember what could have been.





really bad poetry

As I was cleaning out some of my old stuff, I came across some poems that I had written during 8th grade and my freshman and year of high school.  If I remember correctly, my friends seemed to like my poems and, since I had two notebooks full of it, I guess I liked them as well.

Um, they suck.

Let me give you an example from 8th grade:

The Love That Slipped Away
I decided to take a walk today
To think of the love that slipped away.
The dreams I've had almost came true,
I came so close to having you.
If I had just a little time
You could have really become mine.
But time came short, hope left my heart,
And now I'm left with it torn apart.
I wish I'd had more time with you
So all my dreams could have come true.
(At the bottom of the page, I drew a picture of a bleeding rose and crying eyes.)

Wow - true love in 8th grade!  I don't even know who I was writing about, but he must have been something else.  I think 70% of the poems I found have to do with the love who got away scenario.  And those rhymes!  I think I broke about twenty rules of poetry by using the same pair of rhyming words more than once (you and true).

Flash forward to my freshman year of high school.  High school students are almost adults...this should be twenty times better, right?

Wrong.

Dreamworld
Looking at him I see a light,
A light that guides me through the night.
Through my dreams while I'm asleep
Over hills and valleys much too steep
To climb them takes a helping hand
From someone you can understand.
He pulls you up and over the wall,
You know he'll never let you fall.
For he loves you much too much
To ever live without your touch.
You tell him that you feel the same,
And tremble when you hear his name.
He grabs you and he pulls you near.
This is when you have no fear.
You're only inches from his heart, and...
Then you wake and understand
That just for now it's in your head,
But someday you may be there instead.

*Insert facepalm here*

I guess I'm thankful that I didn't have some sort of drawing of a girl dreaming at the bottom, but it's not much consolation for the level of melodramatic sucktitude written on that page.

This came from a notebook with the word "Thoughts" written on the front by using my eraser to rub off the color.  About half of the pages are missing - I'm guessing they were used as paper for notes that were passed during study hall.  Other pages are covered in some assemblage of tiny drawings of things relating to cold study halls and broken hearts, peace symbols, and verses from New Kids on the Block songs.  Vomit.

Were we all like this back then or was it just me? And are girls that age the same now as we were back then?  If so, I'll just say I'm still extremely thankful I had a boy.

why the hell did you do that?

I was writing an entry that just wasn't working for me tonight, so I decided to do something not sentimental, not sappy, not at all meaningful.  Something easy and frivolous.  Here it goes:

The Worst Movies I've Seen My Favorite Actors In


Yeah, this is a good one.

Okay.  Favorite Actor...of course...

1) Johnny Depp.  Oh, he's been in so many movies - great, good, so-so and "huh?" but the one that I'd like to forget he was ever in has to be The Astronaut's Wife.



First off, Johnny Depp is an astronaut?  Um, no.  And then it's some bad sci-fi Rosemary's Baby wannabe movie.  It's a terrible waste of acting power, and by far the worst Johnny Depp movie I've seen.  (Bear in mind I haven't made myself sit through The Tourist.)

2) John Malkovich.  An odd man, but an amazing actor known for his roles in Dangerous Liaisons, Burn After Reading, and...well...Being John Malkovich.  He has a very diverse filmography and though I haven't  watched Jonah Hex (which I am sure would make this list if I had), he's even good in the bad movies.  There is one particular movie that sticks out in my mind and I wonder if he cringes when he thinks about it - Making Mr. Right.



Oh, this was bad.  When the trailer boasts that it's from the director of Desperately Seeking Susan, you know they're reaching.  He's a prat-falling android who falls in love...and a double role as the cold scientist who creates him?  Not the best way to break into the movies.  Maybe he figured he always had the Steppenwolf Theater to fall back on.

3) Bill Murray:  He's done some classics, but there have been a couple complete clunkers.  Though my knee-jerk instinct would be to go with his regret from Zombieland - Garfield, I've decided to go with something that he actually shows his face in.  Osmosis Jones.



While the concept of the movie was unique, it really wasn't very good.  And zooming in on Bill Murray's sweaty armpit isn't something I really need to see on a movie screen...or television screen...or nightmare...

4) Gary Oldman:  One of those actors who can be the bright spot in any movie, but this one was just too bad to save.  I present Lost in Space.



A silly evil doctor becomes a giant spider thingy.  No.  Can't give him any props on this one.  It's just....no.

I could add more actors to the list, but sometimes short and sweet is the way to go.  Do you have any additions to the list?

i'm a barbie girl

Well, I was anyway.  Back in the day.  I played with Barbies, Transformers, Star Wars action figures and My Little Ponies.  (I was a well-rounded child.)  Anyway, most of my time spent with friends was spent with our Barbies.  Oh, the soap operas we created with those things - complete with frequent costume changes, drama, sex, and more and more characters being added all the time.

I started out by playing with my mom's old Barbie, Ken, Midge and Skipper dolls and as the years went on, my inventory grew.  There were 3 or 4 of us girls in the neighborhood who played religiously and we'd go over to each other's houses, dolls and accessories in hand, and would make up scenes for hours and hours.  I don't think our parents minded because we wouldn't bother them for anything while we were there - we were far too engrossed in the plastic dramas unfolding in front of our eyes. For the last year or two that I still played with them, I had them in a huge suitcase that was too heavy for me to carry. I'm sure the adults in the neighborhood were quite amused when they saw me walking down the sidewalk carting a suitcase full of dolls on a dolly.  Ironic, isn't it?

I grew older and outgrew playing with dolls and the suitcase was packed away in one of my parents' storage closets.  And there it stayed...for years.  Every once in a while we would drag it out when it was time to organize and we'd put it back "just in case" I ever had a little girl who would want to play with them.

Well, it was a boy - and he was much more interested in Transformers and Star Wars action figures, very few of which I had kept.  (I'm very thankful for this though.  I don't think I could play Barbie soap opera with my own kid.)  We did have downstairs neighbors with two little girls though, and they loved Barbies - they just didn't have many.  Before they moved out, they were going through some pretty rough times.  They needed some cheering up and those dolls needed a new home.  It was the perfect match.

The dolls in their suitcase ready for their new home.

I picked up the suitcase from my parents, put all of the dolls back in their original clothing, (Yes - I could actually remember which one was which and what they were supposed to wear.) and and gave them to the girls downstairs.  The clothes were a little outdated and some of their hairstyles resembled that of the Bride of Frankenstein, but they didn't seem to care.  The smiles on their faces were priceless.  After a little while of playing with them, they knocked on our door to show me the outfits that they had come up with for them and then gave me a big hug.  Totally worth it.

I have no idea where those girls are now, but I hope they were able to escape into the fantasy world of Barbie whenever they needed to.  Barbie could be anything, go anywhere, have the best life imaginable, and sometimes that imaginary world is the best retreat for any kid.

mind your electronic p's and q's

I've been extremely frustrated by people this week.  I sent emails to five different friends five days ago and I haven't heard a single word back from any of them.  Zip, zero, zilch.  While I realize that they are all busy people leading much more exciting lives than I do, it only takes a second to write a reply of one word like Thanks or Wow, simply letting me know that the message was received.  Instead, it's been dead silence from all of them and I find it immensely irritating.  It's not that I was commencing with chit-chat, talking about the weather, etc.  I was informing four of them about a situation going on around here that they might be interested in and now that I haven't heard anything back I don't know if I should keep them updated or if they just don't care.  I certainly hope they care.  And if they don't, then they should tell me that so I don't waste my time typing to them. The last one I asked a direct yes or no question to...a pretty important question at that - and no time for a one word answer.  Amazing!

Part of me wants to stomp my feet and cross my arms and say, "Fine!  See if I ever send you another email again."  There's also the low self-esteem part of me who thinks that they find me too annoying or insignificant to bother with.  But the more mature part of me is going to give them the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe it's just that they haven't learned proper email etiquette.  Here is where I can help!

I've found a wonderful website called NetManners.com and on that site is a lovely list called Email Etiquette 101.  On that list, at number six, is this courtesy:  Always Respond Promptly (and Down-Edit).  Here it states: Responding promptly is the courteous thing to do. Don’t let folks wonder if you received the email or are ever going to respond to their communications. Think about how quickly you would return a phone call or voice mail. Email is no different especially considering most onliners have expectations of a faster response since email is received so quickly. Outside of any emergencies such as surgery or lack of connectivity, always respond as soon as you can. If you need more time, longer than 48 hours, to gather your thoughts, simply pop off an email stating you are planning on responding in more detail and when.  Sounds pretty logical, doesn't it?  (Of course, they're not very good at returning phone calls either, but let's not get into that.)

I'm learning from this website too!  I didn't know that editing out parts of the email that you're responding to was also a common courtesy, so I'm going to start doing that from now on.  I must have been annoying the hell out of people I was corresponding with.  For that, I wholeheartedly apologize with the promise that it won't happen again.

Hopefully putting this out there for the world to see will help those, like me and my friends, who are still learning as we go through this confusing world of electronic mail.  In the meantime, I will try not to take the lack of return communication personally.  May we all correspond in peace and harmony.