for me when I don’t post on here for 3 weeks. It tells me that it’s time to clean up my 43T, that my list doesn’t adequately reflect me when I have no motivation to write here. I still love all of the things on my list, but I’m definitely feeling I need a reinvention of sorts. So…it’ll be on my mind the next few days, and hopefully I’ll be back with my broom and mop to clean up this list!
Although she was only my boss for a couple of months, thanks to an unexpected move back to Ohio, I think I learned more from her about managing people than I have from all of my previous working experiences combined. She was the best boss. She gave you the tools to succeed, and then the freedom to shape your own work experience. She did not micro-manage me, or check and double check everything I ever did. Instead, her door was always open, beckoning me and encouraging me to come talk if I wanted to. She was lavish with praise, and careful with constructive criticism. She asked after each every special occasion I might have had—just a quick, “How was your trip this weekend?” or “did you enjoy the new restaurant you tried last night?” She epitomized a good manager for me, and I hope to remember the example she provided me wherever I go in life.
Check! I did this today with husband, and we had the nicest afternoon. Yellow Springs has such a hippie heart (home to a liberal arts college like my beloved Otterbein!), and I loved the unique, eclectic, all locally-owned shops. We lunched at a 107 year-old tavern, and I bought some apple butter at a local dairy farm, and then I found some beautiful little Tibetan prayer flags at a…you guessed it, Tibetan gift shop. It was a sunny, beautiful day, and walking around in Yellow Springs today, admiring the local theaters, floral and jewelry shops and eateries, reminded me that even a city I’m less than enthusiastic about living in has a few surprises in store. I just have to be willing to look around…
She is the only person I know who makes the word “hi” a three syllable greeting. She is from Knoxville, Tennessee and every inch the Southern belle (she is in the pink sweater, in the middle in the picture). She is a great cook, a very funny and devoted wife to her husband (another one of mine and my husband’s favorite people), and is loyal in her friendships to the extreme. We lived together in Oklahoma for six months, and our friendship was forged through the mutual misery of being pilots’ wives. She is great at sharing a laugh and a glass of wine with, or as a co-conspirator in dressing up your dog for Halloween (especially when your husband is appalled by the idea). She has an awesome head for business, and she’s an absolute whiz at all things electronic or technology related (solved many a DVR or computer crisis for me…) She loves a good bargain, and always spills her shopping secrets so that her friends can share the joy of a good deal. I miss her so much since I moved away, and I can’t wait to see her again in a few months when she comes back to Knoxville for good—only a five hour drive from me!
take a picture of my lovely herb garden, before it dies with the first chill. It was an inadvertent foray into gardening, the herbs just showed up in my CSA box one week, and I had to do something with them! My sister helped me get them potted, and they have THRIVED! It’s been such a joy to tend to them. I feel like a nervous parent, fretting over them when they look droopy, overjoyed when I see new sprouts.
The tomatoes didn’t fare so well. Rest in peace, little tomato plants. I’m sorry I didn’t keep the bunnies away from you :(
with two local businesses. The first is “Fairborn Natural Foods,” a health food store located about a mile from where I live. It’s an old house, converted into a store, and owned by the same man for over 20 years. The place has character. Its hallways are cramped, and the rooms are a twisting and winding maze of treasures: I never know what I’ll stumble upon in his castle of all things unique and unusual. The owner is a former body builder, and is intensely knowledgeable about supplements and all natural products of all shapes and sizes. He still staffs the front desk, which I find very endearing and also helpful. I know that when I come into this store, and I have questions about the difference between fish oil and flaxseed oil, this guy’s gonna have an educated opinion on it. He also gives a 20% discount to Fairborn residents, just because.
I then went to a camera shop today, also in Fairborn. It is also locally owned, and three older gentlemen were staffing the place when I popped in this afternoon to see if they could test a memory card from my camera that I was pretty sure was corrupted. The three of them chatted with me about what kind of camera I had, ways to preserve memory cards, and how to reformat memory cards over time. I was really impressed that, although my visit didn’t result in a sale for them (the memory was corrupted and they were unable to retrieve any of the photos from it) they spent a good 15 minutes of their time showing me different ways I could be sure to avoid a future memory card catastrophe. I was so impressed the level of expertise AND customer service these men were able to provide, that I instantly resolved to use them for future camera needs, like battery replacements and accessories and such.
I thought to myself again today after running these errands what a difference it makes to shop with businesses who embrace their customers as individuals, and to be greeted with true masters of craft instead of underpaid teenagers. The difference is HUGE! I love being treated with dignity, and actually walking away feeling like I learn something instead of wasting my time. Experiences like these really make me happy that I’ve tried to commit to buying local. Very worth it!
I had some bad news and it instantly knocked me flat on my ass. The kind of news that makes you wallow on the couch and cry all day. I talked to my friend Lori, and not only was she a good shoulder to cry on (appropriate mix of optimism and realism—and thank GOODness she doesn’t tell me “everything happens for a reason”), but she has good and sound advice. Besides that, she called me back five minutes after we got off the phone to tell me that we were having a spa day next Thursday her treat. With good friends like this, life seems bearable during the darkest of times.
a little Buddha statue for my bookshelf for our third anniversary yesterday. We had already agreed to not exchange gifts, since our trip to NYC was our anniversary gift to ourselves, but he came home with one anyway. I have been mentioning for months that I would like some sort of Buddhist symbol in our home, a little something to remind me to continue probing my budding interest, and he picked out the perfect thing!
Oh, and he washed and cleaned out my car the other day, too. Good man.
We DID have the best time in NYC. We did so much in 4 1/2 days I can hardly believe it. The Empire State Building, the Met, MoMA, walked the Brooklyn Bridge, went to Chinatown, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, met up with our wonderful friend Liz and my husband’s cousin another night, Times Square, the Ellis Island Immigration museum…just to name a few! What a wonderfully fascinating and spellbinding city. I could never get bored there.
And this is the reason I haven’t been on here much in the last week. Well, that and the fact that my mother-in-law is getting married this Saturday (wedding #4, although it is the first that I’ve witnessed personally). And I started another master’s class last Friday. And I traveled to Toledo for the weekend to attend a baby shower, and celebrate my best friend’s 30th birthday. And Alexa has chemo and radiation this week. And I had vet appointments for the pets and a doc appointment for myself this week. Life has been CRAZY the last few weeks, and I’m barely hanging in by a thread. Guess that’s why it’s good that I’m getting away to NYC for a week! Can’t wait to come back and share pics and stories…
that would certainly help me deemphasize the focus on all of the bad in life right now. I talked with my friend Tarah today about going to visit her in Oklahoma next month. It’s about a 13 hour drive, but I’ve done it before so I know what I’m in for. Anyway, she is lonely because her husband is stationed four hours away for the next six months due to training, and I am in need of a visit with my good friend right now. I think it would do us some good. Plus, our dogs love each other, so my little beagle would be happy as a clam to see his girlfriend again. Maybe, just maybe…
and I’m so excited! I need some time away to recharge. Still haven’t completed my list of things to see yet, but that’s ok. I don’t want to plan it out TOO much.
and WOW! It was so much fun! She didn’t really understand the concept at first, and so we explained how it would be like freezing a day in time to try to remember for later. We spent hours on it, collecting headlines from the newspaper, coins minted in 2007, a first class stamp, a list of her favorite things, napkins from her favorite restaurants, favorite photos, a stuffed animal and other little family things like that. It was a great way to spend a rainy Sunday, and I love memory making activities like this.
My CSA continues to surpass expectations. The tomatoes last week made me remember tomatoes of my childhood out of my mom’s garden. And it pissed me off, thinking of the shoddy fakers that pass themselves off as tomatoes in the grocery store now. These tomatoes were amazing, as was everything else this week. I continue to have to send parts of it home with friends we’re getting so much.
She is in week two of radiation, and she’s a total champ! I can’t believe how well she’s handling everything. And, while I take it day to day and know that it can change in a moment, I cherish that RIGHT NOW, in this moment, she’s doing amazingly well. If there’s anything I ever imagined I would learn from Alexa being a part of my life, I wouldn’t have guessed it would have been courage, endurance, and living life for the moment. She has taught me so much from this trial in our lives that it’s hard to put into words.
is the END of class number three (hence the skimpy entries as of late). It’s business law, and, let me say, it’s been a real scream [insert sarcasm]. Next up: ECO 515, Collective Bargaining and Labor Law. Please, oh please, let this class be more interesting than the one I’m in now. Labor law should, in theory, be fascinating as this was my original major in college, and is still something that inspires me deeply. It’s the meat and potatoes of my childhood, coming from a union family, where we were always active in issues that affected workers.
We’ll see. Grad school has been less than inspirational thus far.
a surprise trip here for our third anniversary next month (maybe I should be writing this entry under “appreciate my husband!”) and I am SO excited to go! Of all the places I’ve been in the US and beyond, somehow NYC has escaped the radar. I have been gorging myself on travel books and the New York City tourism site and I don’t know how I’m going to fit in all the things I want to do! At the top of the list:
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Walk over the Brooklyn Bridge
Central Park
Chinatown
Statue of Liberty
Empire State Building
Grand Central Station
Museum of Modern Art
Walk around in Greenwich Village
It’s a rather touristy list, but my husband and I usually manufacture such lists before we travel, only to find in the pursuit of the list that we wander off the beaten path. We have had such great experiences this way.
If anyone has any other must-sees please feel free to share!
6. The Oregon District (don’t know much about it besides that it’s a bar and restaurant area).
7. Second Street Public Market
My mom had a serious creative streak. She was excellent at engaging us in unique, sometimes unusual but always brain and creativity stimulating activities. One year she took us to a kite making class at the metro parks. For a few years at Christmas time, she would go out and buy industrial sized rolls of white newspaper so we could make our own wrapping paper. She would cut potatoes in half, and use Christmas cookie cutters to stencil onto the potato half and create a stamp. We would then dip our potato stamps in various Christmas-y colors and make our own wrapping paper by stamping the white rolls of paper. She would also have us help her make different types of Christmas cookies, and then we would place them in brown lunch bags we had decorated and take them to neighbors.
One year about two months before Thanksgiving, my mom placed a big glass jar on our coffee table, and cut up little white strips of paper and placed them next to it. She then ceremoniously announced that each family member was charged with writing things they were thankful for, and placing it in the jar, to be read at family dinner on Thanksgiving. It is a great memory of mine, sitting around and greedily awaiting my turn at the Thanksgiving dinner table that year to pull out a slip of paper and see what everybody was thankful for. It ranged from the profound to the humorous…my brother was only about six at the time, so he was thankful for things like gum and his bike.
We were always busy, and our little hands were always engaged in something. My mom led by example as well. She learned how to basket weave and piled our house to the ceiling with various kinds of gift baskets, bread baskets, and easter baskets. She took a stained glass class, and the following year our house was filled with stained glass sun catchers. When she got a little bit better, our house started filling up with stained glass lamps. She made ornaments from dough and baked them in the oven. She made sugared, candy Easter eggs every year that were hollowed out in the middle and filled with Easter scenes and bunnies in gardens (I was obsessed with creating worlds out of these little scenes and spinning them into tales for my brother). She cross-stitched, crocheted, and knitted. She made our Halloween costumes by hand (see picture in which I’m made up, appropriately, as a little witch. Conversely, my sister is looking very angelic and pink as a princess). I can’t even repair a hem, but this is beside the point…I sometimes think she found crafts for us to do just to keep us out of her hair and her own craft supplies. Whatever her reasons, I remember her craftiness and creativity with us as some of the best times of my childhood.
My mom was never big on a Christmas ham or turkey dinner. In fact, our Christmases were always very intimate and private, because my mom just wasn’t big on getting in the car and driving around to family dinners. I grew up like this, and so this is generally the kind of holiday I like as well. I always feel kind of overwhelmed by my husband’s big, raucous and loud Italian Christmases with lasagna and homemade liquor being passed around. He has accused me in the past of being antisocial at such functions, but really I’m just accustomed to a different kind of family gathering. Not to mention I’m not much for sausage lasagna at Christmas. Instead, my mom always made a Christmas Eve brunch. My grandma and her lifelong “friend” Karl would come over around 11 am, and by then the house would be full of the smell of homemade cinnamon buns (no pillsbury in my mom’s house) in the oven, sausage and potatoes and onions on the stove, and various kinds of egg-y quiche breakfast dishes and sweets. It was always just the seven of us, my grandma and Karl, and my mom and dad and us three kids. It’s such a pleasant childhood memory of mine from each year, and it forged in me a love of more intimate family gatherings.
