Queen of Clean Meets Her Match

These pictures mean that I am happy, 

and that my office is a MESS!

(if you scrapbook or make your own cards, you know what I mean)

Emily and I have spent the past week making cards together and I have loved every minute!

But I think that I've finally made a mess that I can't clean up. 

Yup...I just don't know how to put away this much paper; at least not in any way remotely organized.  Who knew that paper, of all things, would be my demise.

Cockroach Rescue

Saturday Mark and I had the privilege of attending the Whole Blu World event at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago;  a hoity-toity, prom for grown-ups, dress to the nines kind of event.  And for us...it was free, courtesy of a generous investor who is linked to Mark's company and who also LOVES donating to the aquarium.  To this generous benefactor I say: Thank You! We had a ball.

Although I have no idea how much was donated in our behalf, I do know that it was enough to merit our wearing a VIP band on our wrist all night.  I hope that this somehow made up for the fact that we were NOT dressed to the nines, in fact we barely made it past the sixes.  So if anyone asks...we were the 'eccentric' philanthropists at the party.  Yeah...that works.

Tables were strewn throughout the aquarium, offering hors d'oeuvres size menu samples from some of the best restaurants in town. I skipped the caviar table not only because that stuff tastes nasty, but because it's just rude to serve fish eggs at an aquarium. Live music was enjoyed and a dance commenced on the patio that overlooked Lake Michigan.  The dazzling view of Chicago's glittering skyline was even more spectacular than the fireworks show.  

But the highlight of the evening?  For us, it was the discovery of a Madagascar Cockroach that had escaped from an exhibit.  This baby was HUGE and it was just about to enter the main exhibit area and either cause a commotion, or meet an untimely demise.  Well, seeing as we were playing the part of the eccentric philanthropists that night....we rescued him.

Mark scooped him up while I squelched the desire to have a panic attack.  We began to look for an employee but opted instead for a discreet toss of the critter back behind a partition at the Amazon exhibit.  Surprisingly, no one even noticed we were carrying a large cockroach around; maybe he looked like an hors d'oeuvres?

These are the cupcakes we were given to take home as we left the aquarium.
Everyone got one, even people who did not save a bug's life.

For more on Persistant Chemotherapy Induced Alopecia please see: "The Side Effect That Won't Go Away" tab at the top of my blog and be sure to visit  www.aheadofourtime.org

The Funeral, Part I

I walk into my room and kick off my shoes.  I think of everyone else that was at the funeral today and I think of them in their rooms, kicking off their shoes too.  We've all just spent the better part of our day feeling the other side of love.  There is one side of love that you feel in your heart and it makes you feel happy and giddy and then there is the other side of love that you feel in your stomach, and it does not feel so  good. It is called mourning.

So we go home and kick off our shoes for one more day because we are still alive.  Our journey is not yet over, but one day it will be and then all of our friends will put on their shoes and stand around feeling the other side of love as it relates to us.  I hope in my case, that while they are standing around, they realize what I realized today.  We are symbiotic.  There are no one way encounters or relationships.  We touch each other and affect each other whether we realize it or not. Significantly.  When God places someone in our orbit, it is not unintentional.  I will try to be more deliberate in my interactions now because of this awareness. Thank you for being in my orbit.

"The same God that placed that star in a precise orbit millennia before it appeared over Bethlehem in celebration of the birth of the Babe has given at least equal attention to placement of each of us in precise human orbits so that we may, if we will, illuminate the landscape of our individual lives, so that our light may not only lead others but warm them as well." ( Neal A. Maxwell  That My Family Should Partake, p. 86)

Aspen Grove

The Babylonians had it all wrong.  You don't build a tower to heaven...you drive there.  At 6:26 am yesterday morning I left McHenry County, Illinois and drove to Laramie Wyoming. After a good nights sleep in cowboy country, I resumed my journey and arrived at Aspen Grove, Utah at 2:39 this afternoon. 

You're going to have a hard time convincing me that this is not heaven.  When I got here today, I only had to walk from my car to the lodge to get all teary eyed.  I had forgotten the smell of it, but little else.  Now I'm home, even though I've never actually lived here for more than a week at a time.  As you can see from the photo, it's beautiful and serene, but one of it's most charming qualities is how it feels.  It is inhabited by families that, for just one week, have come here for the sole purpose of being together without the interference of the world.   To eat, to laugh, to talk and to play together. Right now, although I am not doing any of those things with my own family, I can still feel the magic that is happening for those who are... and I love it.  It is so pure, that it even works on a stranger who is sitting in the shade all by herself, typing on her blog.  If this isn't heaven, then it's a suburb for sure.

Drive In Theatre

In commemation of the 79th anniversary of the first drive-in movie theater:

This is the lock knob from our 1978 Ford Ltd. It was decapitated by a clunky drive-in

movie speaker that we forgot to remove from our car before driving away. Oops.

The year was 1990 and we had just watched Dick Tracy. We were probably trying to beat the rush of cars that would soon be lining up to exit. Since we didn't have any kids at the time I'm pretty sure we didn't have a good reason to be in such a hurry, other than chasing the pretense that we all tend to adopt from time to time that implies that making it out ahead of other people somehow merits a pat on the back. Well, haste not only makes waste, but it makes it really hard to lock and unlock your door from the inside.

I'm pretty sure that this is the only surviving piece of that vehicle but I'm not sure why I have kept it all these years.  That car was twelve years old when Mark bought it.  For a car that age, it didn't have many miles, but we soon discovered that it also didn't have many oil changes, or wax jobs, or anything else that lends to the longevity of a car .  When our friends wrote on that car with shoe polish the night of our wedding reception, the over exposed paint soaked it up good.  As a result, we never really could wash it completely off.  We drove around with cute little phrases like: "love hoopty" and "Mark's getting lucky tonight" and my favorite "ball and chain" for the remaining life of the vehicle.  It was a lemon...with a message.  Fortunately, it's life with us was rather short-lived.  It didn't even make it to Dick Tracy the Sequel (but then again...neither did Warren Beatty).

Donut Years

One hour in people time is ten years in donut time.

This donut is 18 hours old, and is therefore already a

candidate for the Smithsonian.

But if you took it to the Smithsonian, you would miss out

on the chocolate icing, which is still quite good.

Performing a simple icing-ectomy preserves this valuable asset.

(A custard filled donut after a custard-ectomy)

It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.

Dark Horse Days

"It's the most humiliating thing I know of to run for office."  ~ Lenore Romney
Thank you, Mrs. Romney, for making it okay to feel humiliated.  I was slightly delighted to read of your 1970 campaign for US Senate.  I too was once convinced by party officials to run for public office.  I too had to deal with baffling  rumors and I too lost the election. 

I had popped in on city council meetings a time or two and had worked with the council on a few minor issues, but considered my interactions with them to be largely forgettable by all parties involved.   Apparently, I was wrong.  Somewhere along the way I had made an impression because out of the blue one Sunday afternoon, I got a call from a member of the council with the suggestion/invitation to run for office.  When I cornered him with "why me?" he said that I "exemplified courage".

 He promised unconditional support and coaching from both himself and the Mayor and for the most part he was good for his word.  In fact, things went so well at first that many people I met while campaigning started saying things like "why are you still out campaigning? you've got it in the bag."  And it certainly started to feel that way.  Until...

I said the "P" word.  P is for Privatize.

In Utah, it's not uncommon for a city to decide it's their job to provide recreational amenities for their citizens.  Golf courses, pools, gun clubs, cable television, etc.  Unfortunately, none of these institutions were or are self-sustaining.  Left to the rules of real- life business and free enterprise, they usually fall flat on their bottoms and go bankrupt.  Therefore the general population must be taxed, directly or otherwise, to maintain them.   Remember...a government that is big enough to give you everything, is also big enough to take away everything.  In this case, your choice and your money are the casualties.

No one had coached me on how to skirt this issue.  In all honesty, forget skirting it...it probably should have been avoided all together, but one night at a debate I opened my big mouth; and although I didn't know it at the time, I essentially announced my resignation.  The following day the phone calls began and my campaign ended.  

I learned the hard way just how many of my supporters were golfers and just how much it meant to these golfers that their past-time of choice be subsidized by their unwitting neighbors . I'm assuming there were somewhere around 27 of them because that's how many votes I came up short.   To this day I am still somewhat scared by the fact that part of my fate that night and the fate of that cute little town to this day, was and is decided by people like the gentleman who called me a "socialist pig" for wanting to privatize the city golf course.  Wow...those who know so little, rule so many. Yikes.

I don't know what Lenore Romney did the day after her defeat way back in 1970, but her humiliation sure resonated with me when I read about it today in a magazine.  It instantly took me back to 2007 when  I spent the day after my defeat at home, curled up on the sofa with two darling daughters, watching Ratatouille and eating an entire carton of Breyers together...right out of the carton.

My consolation prize, and truly the best prize of all, was the kind folks whom I would run into from time to time after that, who would not only recognize me in public, but express their support and regrets that I had not won.  Even as late as 18 months after the humiliation, I was reaping the balm of approbation.  Not bad for a loser.

Darn

Three weeks ago I broke up with Facebook.  It was supposed to be really hard or at the very least ...interesting.  Hey...good blogging material is hard to come up with sometimes!  But alas, I've got nothing.  With the exception of this little blurb...the experience has been noticably unnoteworthy.
Sorry FB.  I guess you really don't rock my world, you merely occupied it for a while.

Morning Rain

I hope I didn't wake you up today.  I ordered a thunder storm, with a side of heavy rain and it arrived a little early.  But 5:45 isn't such a bad time to get up when it's a Saturday, and everyone else is asleep. When everything inside the house is quiet and everything outside the house is loud.  It's especially not bad if you keep all the lights off and just go with whatever early morning illumination the rain let's through.  Sublime.  That is a good word for this moment.

Thunder and lightning are like a gripping paragraph in the middle of your novel that you weren't expecting.  That one paragraph that changes everything for the characters in the book and that does not allow you to put the book down or refrain from turning it's pages.  You are alarmed and yet seduced at the same time by the power and magnitude of everything that is out of your control.  And you want more, you definitely want more, primarily because from where you stand...you know you're safe.  Such is the gift of vicarious danger.  All of the adrenaline, and none of the consequences. Such is a Saturday morning thunderstorm, from the comfort of your living room window.