Dynamism

Everything's always changing and it's GOOD here.

Our apartment, though small, is GREAT. The location is so sweet - easily walkable to shops and movies and grocery stores (plural grocery stores!); it's closer to work; there are trails and trees all over the place ... Our quality of life has improved so dramatically that it's shocking. Yes, our 2 bedroom, 1 bath apartment is dramatically smaller than our 3 bedroom, 3.5 bath house was - but even that's easy. It's cozy for real - everything is close - it's just good. Our books are all in storage ('cept for some cookbooks) - and I miss them. If we were going to stay small forever, we'd have to at least get room for the books.

We've given up on the quest to get pregnant and that is such a huge relief. We are in the middle of a home study for adoption. And although we don't know how long it will take till we get a baby, we at least know that this process will end with a baby in our arms. It's also a relief to not worry about "am I or amn't I?" I can run as much as I want to, I can drink as much wine as I want to, and I don't have to give up coffee. Somebody else is doing the hard work of carrying my baby - I'll pick up after that.

We went to New York last weekend. We were in the city for 25 hours and we got to connect with three different groups of people who are important to us. We stayed with red balloon and her family - it always makes me so happy to see those two brilliant people who love each other and the brilliant little boy they are raising. There aren't many other people in the world who make me feel so at home. We went out with my friend from Lamar, Jim Sims, whom I haven't seen in ten years. I was very happy to get him and Harris together - they have a lot in common and I think they hit it off well. And we met my sister who lives in upstate NY with her family - she is an incredible mom and her two little boys are so funny and so good. It was a hectic, busy, whirlwind trip, but it was so rewarding. I'd do it all over again.

House Love

Our House = Sold.

The house we wanted to buy this summer (when the losers had the contract on our house) now has a renter in it with a lease that lasts until August. We've been trying to contact the owner to see what we can do to help her decide to get out of that lease and let us buy the house, but we haven't heard from her yet. We love these houses. The are mid-century modern beauties - and we've decided that if we can't move into one by the time we have to move out, we're going to move into an apartment and wait.

On Saturday, we made an adventure with our realtor: We took a letter that she wrote introducing me and Sparklestone, explaining that we have just sold a house and are ready to buy, and inviting anyone who's interested in selling to call us. We knocked on the doors of the houses with floor plans we liked, left letters for people who weren't home, and talked to some people who were there. The second house we stopped at could be good; we are not going to buy the crazy cat lady's house; we may be one step closer to getting in touch with the owner of the house we wanted earlier. One owner laughed when we told him what we were doing - he said that they had bought their house in 1966 (when it was brand new) and they love their home and they are NOT moving. That's what I'm talkin' about.

In any case, we're having some fun, doing some strange stuff. We don't want to buy a house now just because it's available and drive by these houses for the next 20 years, wishing we lived there.

See? I can learn. I'm starting to really get the hang of this patience thing.

High Time

So much good news going on around here:

Saturday was my birthday and it was a significant one. It was the first one that I ever had trouble with, because in general, I love me some birthday. Thanks to some good friends who are excellent listeners, I got OK with it and am enjoying the celebration. Sparkelstone's amazing gift of some sparkly stones certainly take a lot of credit for the happy vibes too.

We spent last weekend in Florida for a big family to-do. I really had a great time hanging with the entire extended family - even before the honoree of the party said that SparkleFlash and I are the coolest of the cousins. When a 13-year-old says that aboutcha, you can't help but feel like you got it goin' on.

My sister just found out that her divorce is final! She's been separated from her ex- for years now and we just weren't sure that he was ever going to make a move. She made a call on Friday and they told her that it's a done deal, effective July 14, 2006. Now she can get on with her life. Way to go, Sisto!

We got a contract on our house last nite. Mind you, we had a contract on our house back in June, but that cratered for real. This contract looks really good and the buyers were actually anxious to hear from us (their realtor called our realtor to just get a feeling for which way we were leaning b/c they loved our house!). And the contract actually provides us with a decent amount of time for house prices to drop a bit in the town where we want to move.

The person in this world who has been my voluntary friend (that is, not my sister) for longer than anyone else on the planet called me yesterday after a long silence. He called to tell me happy birthday. I've missed him so badly and am so glad he called.

What's goin on wichoo? What kinda good news is happenin' in your sweet world? Do tell!

26.2

I've recently started running again and it's going very well. Three years ago, when we moved to this area, I had decided to train for a marathon. I was really enjoying running long distances - and I was well on my way. I had a running partner who lived just down the street from me - she and I would meet at 5:30 a.m. to go for 4-5 miles -- it was often dark at that time of morning, so it was great to have a partner for safety and company. Also during that time, I had a really crappy job where my bosses had no work for me to do, so it was no problem for me to take 2-hour lunches to go run for 6 miles and then lift weights, shower, etc, and get back to work. I was running a LOT.

I was running too much - so much so that I hurt myself really badly. Thousands of dollars of physical therapy badly. Badly enough that my longest run ever was 16 miles and my only race was a half-marathon. It was a real disappointment that I wasn't able to run that marathon. It has taken a very long time for me to heal and to learn how to take care of myself when running - I think I'm there.

It feels really good to run, both when I'm at it and the other 23 hours of my day. I'm slowly working on adding distance - I'm much more interested in distance than speed - and I'm now up to about 16 miles / week. Without pain.

I'm gonna run a marathon at some point, dammit. I want a bumper sticker that says 26.2.

Crisis in the Office

I am out of chocolate.

I keep a bar of dark chocolate in my desk drawer so I can have a little bit every afternoon. I finished it last Friday. I was not in the office yesterday because my hormone levels are out of control and I was feeling really sick.

High hormone levels + no chocolate in the office = it could get real ugly around here.

Catching up

Last week I got an email from someone who knew me in high school. One of my high school pals (one of the few who knows how to find me) keeps an email directory of some of our classmates online and he keeps all the women's maiden names there. Occasionally, some blast from my past will find me there and we get to catch up. However, last week, I got an email from someone and I could not remember who this person was.

I vaguely remembered his name, but couldn't see his face. That led me to want to look in my senior year book. However, when my birth parents divorced and sold the house that I grew up in, the box with all those books and photos in it got lost - I didn't live there any longer and didn't think to rescue it. So before I wrote back to this fellow, I decided that I needed to get my hands on that year book. I finally had the brilliant idea to go to the source - I tracked down the current year book sponsor at my high school and asked if there happened to be any extras of my year lying around. You know what?! One's on its way to me now!

But since this email was growing old in my in-box, I decided to just reply and hope that I could get some more clues about this once-friend. I wrote back, said it was good to hear from him, sent him some brief details of my current life, and a photo of me and Sparkelstone at our wedding (slyly thinking that it would encourage him to also send a photo, while also very clearly setting the boundaries of this correspondence. Sparkle says this guy is doing a Hi Fidelity thing here.). Well, he didn't take the hint about sending a photo, but he did write back and included some details that made me remember him. He was in 11th grade when I was in 9th grade and he actually took me to his prom! I had completely forgotten about that episode!

It was fun to catch up a little and to learn about the path his life has taken. His eldest daughter is now 15 - one year older than I was when I went to prom with him. Most days I don't feel how much time has passed - but damn, that brought it home.

This whole email and the subsequent search for my year book has inspired in me a desire to reconnect with some old friends. I had a group of girls who really meant the world to me for a LONG time in my life and I would love to know how they are. I wonder what they're doing, where they're living, what adventures they've had. The danged thing about looking up old girlfriends, tho, is that most of us don't have the same last name that we were born with. And me, I don't even use the same first name that all those girls would know me by.

The "P" Word

I am a do-er. I'm a planner and director - I'm very good at setting goals and then making things happen so that I can get where I want to be. That is, I've been very good at those things until this year.

This year, I've learned the hardest lesson - that just because I've made up my mind and I like the timing, things don't just happen. And really, I think I get it. Really. I'm not just saying that I get it so the Universe will ease up. I'm cool.

Sparky and I moved into our house just over 2 years ago. When we did that, we immediately started trying to make a baby. Well, it's been 28 months now and there's still no baby on the way. That's had some hard moments. I even had a couple of months when I was trying to talk Sparky into saying that we just wouldn't have kids - that we'd be DINKs for the rest of our lives. I'm so glad that Sparklestone already had a great command of the P-word because he just wouldn't go for it. We're still trying and we've made a deal that if I'm not preggers after 2 more assisted tries, we're gonna adopt a baby. Or four. And then I'm sure I'll get pregnant.

We've also been trying to sell our house in this seriously cooling-off market. Only we didn't have any idea how cool the market was getting when we listed our house - so we had a bit of anxiety over the fact that it took 2 months to get an offer. Then after getting the offer - get this - the buyers didn't settle. That's right, they backed out of the deal after 2 stinkin' weeks of being in default of contract. So our house is back on the market. We had a week of serious bile - serious bile - but what are you gonna do?

July was a tough month, but we're just plowing ahead. I can't control everything. You hear that, Universe? Now you might as well start cooperating b/c I'm not fighting anymore anyway.

And speaking of patience, I'm a little astounded that blogspot still has my blog active. Dang.

More changes

So, I started working for Nils waaaaaaaaay back in August and I've obviously been fairly occupied there. Life is good: the work is good, the family's good, the new PDA is good. There's only one stinky thing going on now and that's our commute.

Sparklestone and I enjoy the fantastic advantage that we commute together. We listen to all kindsa new music and some funny comedians on XM radio, we make plans, and when one of us is feeling generous, we let the non-driver nap. We have time for all these activities: every week day morning, Sparklebaby drives us the 22.59 miles from our door to my office and then drives the remaining 6.75 miles to his office. After work in the office is over, he drives 6.75 miles back to my office and then I drive 22.59 miles home. On a good day, those two trips take us at least a total of 2 hours.

That's right: at least one hour to drive less than 30 miles on a good day. On a bad day, we're in the car for a total of 2h, 20m. It's wrong.

SO, we have decided that we have to move closer to our jobs. It was a hard and sucky decision at first because we've only been in our house for 2 years and we put SO MUCH sweat and bread into the place already to make it ours. And now SOME OTHER PERSON is going to get to cook in my kitchen. However, we've been looking at townhomes in the area we've decided we're going to live (we'll only spend 20 minutes each way commuting to work... we're going to gain at least 8 hours a week) and we've found some very cool mid-century modern designs... very Brady bunch. We're putting our house in the market in 2 weeks.

Now I gotta pack.

Joy (and pain)

Starting at 3 p.m. EST today, I am officially between jobs until 8:30 a.m. Monday morning. Tomorrow, my plan is, "I ain't gettin, I aint gettin outta bed today."

Today my headache is that I am between PDA's. I am a librarian at heart who believes that I don't have to remember everything, I just need to remember how to find it. PDAs have been a salve to my soul since Sparkle bought me my first one for my birthday 5 years ago. Since then, I've owned or operated no fewer than 4 devices, but I had to return my latest companion to my workplace this week. When I reset the thing, I felt like my brain had fallen out of my head.

Sparkle is very kind to lend me his PDA, which he got as a hand-me-down from his boss a year ago. It's not quite the same model as my last love and a far cry from the device I expect I'll be working with soon.

It took 5 minutes to "backup handheld databases." Good thing I don't have much on my agenda this weekend. If I did, I sure wouldn't know about it.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I'm finishing up my last week of a job that I thought I'd be at for at least 4 more years. Unexpectedly, I had an opportunity to apply for a job working for Sparky's sister. Although I expected to stay in my current job for years, I have always told my sister-in-law that I'd love to go work for her. When I said that, I didn't even really know what she did, I just knew that I would dig working for her. She's got workaholic tendencies like me, she's a superstar, and she still knows how to have a good time. In short, she's a good role model for me in my work life.

So one day about 2 months ago, Sparkle picked me up at the metro station, as usual, and when I got in the car, he said, "Now just listen, this could be good. Nils has a job open and I think you'd rock at it." He had already gotten Nils to send me the job description so I could take a look and think it over before he even told me about the thing. Now get this: Nils works in a completely different field than librarianship. True, she works in health care the same way I've been working in health care -- working in the field without actually having much to do with sick people. But I've never done the kind of work that Nils does; I don't even know the language she speaks at work.

The short story is that I competed and got the job and I start on Monday. I have loads to learn -- LOADS. I'm leaving a career that I started about 7 years ago (it's what I got my master's degree to do) and a field where I'm on top of my game and I know how to win. I'm going to a new world where, like I said, I don't even know the language.

When I was in high-school, my aunt-mother (see previous posts about my good family vs. my birth family) put me to work for her. She paid me real money for my work and when work was over, I got to hang out and play. Working for a-m has been, by far, the best work I've had. Working for family is right -- the work part has a completely different kind of accountability and rewards than working for strangers. The real life part is even better -- I'll get to know what's going on with my nieces, my family, I'll get to develop a deeper relationship with Nils. I'll also get to commute with Sparklestone.

So yeah, I've got a lot of changes going on and it's all good. My only question is: should I wear my hair curly or not curly?

Take it where you can get it

I don't often accept that my birth father has anything to offer me, but sometimes I hear his voice in my head and it just fits. Today he told me, Never let 'em see you sweat.

If this is what it means to honor your mother and father, then I can dig it.

A new obsession

Everything has its own special place where it lives.
There is a right way to do it and it doesn't work if I don't do it right.
When I'm done, everything is ordered and tidy.
I can make each one work.
aaaaaaaaaah, sudoku.

listening to myself

Yesterday I took some bad professional advice and I regret it now. Nothing terrible happened, but I made a valuable employee feel slightly less valued because I didn't trust my instincts. It was a silly situation and it's all smoothed over now with no loss of property, but I really wish I could erase about 5 minutes of yesterday.

At first I was irritated with the person who gave me that advice -- that person was minding my business. But I'm the one who took the advice and acted, so I'm irritated with myself. I'll forgive myself and move on -- my employee has forgiven me -- but I have to record my blunder so I'll be sure to learn my lesson. Sometimes I'm just a dunce.

Now I've got that 311 song in my head. I'm gonna have to buy it and put it on my iPod... that'll make me feel better!

Dang, it's been a while

I'm at home sick today and I'm in that place where I can't sleep right now. I watched bad TV for 3 hours straight last nite and I just can't stand one more second of it. I don't think we get Sesame Street here.

How shall I try to catch up? I'm reading a fascinating book titled, How to Say it for Women: Communicating with Confidence and Power Using the Language of Success. Oh, it's good! It deals with writing and speaking and identifies ways that women's use of language makes them seem puny and weak. It's forcing me to look at my own business writing and speech and allowing me to speak more clearly and forcefully. And for the record, my writing here breaks every rule -- this ain't biz-ness. There's another blog for that.

What else? Oh! My job has made me cooler, can you believe that? This smart lady who's working with us wanted to investigate using iPods and podcasting for educational purposes, so she wrote a proposal that funded everyone in my department getting an iPod. Can you dig it? So now I've got a mini and I've put lotsa good music on it and I've found some pretty good podcasts that I can listen to on my long commute to my job. Not too shabby, eh?

The best thing going on lately is that it's finally HOT and HUMID outside. Over 90 degrees and sticky puts me at my best. I've even gotten on my bike to ride with my husband a couple of times in the past weeks. I'm happy to have any reason to be outside in it.

I can't believe I didn't write yet about my neices' dance recital. Both girls (ages 6 and 4) are the youngest girls in their classes and by far the cutest. The 6 year old was born in awe of older girls, so she worked hard to keep up with them and gave a strong performance. I recognized a look of intense concentration on her face. The 4 year old is amazing in that she always has her head in some alternate plane that none of us can really see. When she was on stage and the other girls were dancing, she was very involved with the beaded leash connecting the poodle on her skirt to her waistband. Watching her live her own reality gives me deep joy. I got the news about the recital at the last minute and had to scold everyone around me. Next year, I'll have that recital on my calendar on the day they start classes. Aunt Miss Kate is all about dance recitals. Heck, Aunt Miss Kate is all about the dress rehearsal for the dance recital.

And now, I will sleep.

livin' it

On Friday, our good friend retired from active duty in the military. After 20 years, it's a big deal, so he and his wife planned a big celebration with his birth family and his chosen family (we are of the latter group). His birth family gave him and his wife some reasons to be stressed and cranky, so mine and my husband's job this weekend to was to make both of our friends as happy as possible during all the party-giving and family-transporting. We did our best to give him the celebration he deserves and I believe we were successful.

Later this week I'm going down to Texas to see my good family where one of my sisters is graduating from college. Another of my sisters graduated from high school last weekend. I can't wait to see them and help make celebrations for them.

My husband's birthday is next week, and we're going to start the celebration in a couple of days, since birthdays are really birth months around here. This year I won't wake up with him on his birthday, and I don't like that at all. I'm planning to work extra hard to make that up to him.

My mother taught me and all of my brothers and sisters that we each have our own moments, but that not all moments are our own. Any time one of us stepped out of line and tried to claim another's moment, Mom would remind us, "This is not about you."

But it sure is. Being in it, being behind it, making them feel special, giving them their moments-- that's all about me. She did a good job, my Mom.

the good stuff

I've got this friend in my town with whom I'm pretty close. She and her husband eat with Sparklestone and me (our house, their house, or out) at least 3 times a week. We spend the night at each other's houses on the weekend (even though we only live 6 miles apart). We camp together all summer, and we just started investing together. She and her spouse have a big black doggie, very much like ours. Even though we don't look alike, people get us confused, calling us by each others' names. The cool thing about that is, neither of us minds being mistaken for the other (most days, anyway). She's my business partner at our day jobs and we share an office, so I see her almost every day that we have to go to work. She's also a virgo.

Our jobs are very busy and can get stressful and we really rely on each other to get through the days and to keep each other from killing a lot people who really deserve it. We are both super achievers (see the virgo thing, above) and we work our butts off. We had gotten into a rut where we were working all the time -- even when we were supposed to be having fun and hanging out with our boys, we'd spend hours and hours bitching about the jobs.

But today was good! Sparklestone and the other husband drove out to West Virginia today to close on this condo that we're buying together and my pal and I stayed in town with our doggies. After we got the human boys on the road (the dogs are boy dogs, hence the distinction), we spent all damned day shopping. Neither of us are endurance shoppers and we usually go home after 2 stores. But today we wandered around even did some good coaching on purchases.

Her: Miss Kate, you would look great in this blouse! Just buy it. You'll be so mad at yourself if you don't buy it.

Me: You know, those shoes just aren't the right color. But these shoes are. Do you need me to ask for another size for you?

After we finally gave up and came home, we had soup and salad for dinner and then we watched this chick flick that we would have never been able to watch when the boys are home. It doesn't matter that I didn't love the movie, what matters is that I got to watch it all the way to the end and find out that I didn't love it.

Hanging out with my girl is just good fun.

But now it's midnight-thirty and I'm wishing that my man was home. If I go to sleep now, it'll seem sooner that he gets back.

A little boy I know

Last summer I got to know a little boy who looks just like his mother, my sister. Before I met him, I hadn't known anyone who look so much like he belongs to me. I don't know if it's just because he looks like me/mine that I feel so connected to him, but I do know that the only other time I've ever fallen in love at first sight is when I first laid eyes on my husband, Sparklestone himself.

The joy of my life is that when I fell for Sparkle, it all worked out right. I'm not so sure that everything is gonna turn out OK with that little'un who's related to me. It weighs on me. I want to fix it but I don't have the power to do it.

Since I kicked my mother and my sister out of my life, I'm doing much better. I don't just cry all day anymore and I don't feel like I need psychotropic drugs to deal with my life. I am a healthier person without them. But they have the little boy and I can't even talk to him without going through them.

Does every family have some monumental heartache that they have to ignore in order to move on? Is this just the human condition? Am I being a big baby?

How do I harden my heart enough to keep living and yet keep it soft enough to do the right thing?

I have a video of him dancing and singing. It's one of my most prized possessions.

I yam what I yam

I am a Virgo. All the way down to my bones, I am pure virg. I am the virgiest virgo you will ever meet. I tried for a long time to be less virgo-y, but I'm smart enough to know when I'm beat... there's no hiding it.

We virgos have incredible work ethics. We are often said to be the hardest working sign in the zodiac. People say lots of other not-so-nice things about us too, but no one can argue with the fact that we know how to work. Couple that with a relentless attention to detail, and you've got the stuff to drive people insane.

When I start something, I really hate to stop until I have finished it completely. I mean, all the way, doing it right, no shortcuts, and it's not over until the mess is all cleaned up. And then I just have to straighten this. And maybe that should go over there. And now I can see that this thing should be different. And it goes on. When I do this, my husband says that I'm in the Zone. He gets really nervous when I'm in the Zone and he usually tries to avoid me then. Sometimes that works out for him fine and other times not so good.

We have both fallen into the zone with these house projects that we've been working on. We have been killing ourselves with painting, repairing walls, replacing vanities, changing light fixtures.... The house is looking great, but we're both exhausted all the damned time and we're not having that much fun any more.

So this is it. I am using my blog as an accountability tool. I am announcing to the blogosphere that from now until the weather turns crappy (crappy means that the days are short and the trees are bare), our house just doesn't need to get any better. We're gonna hold right here.

Yes, I am a Virgo and I can't change that. But I'm smart enough to surround myself with people who aren't exactly like me so that I can be a more well-rounded person. And I can take a hint, however subtly delivered.

abiding affections

There is a decent amount of scientific literature on the bonds that humans form during the transition between late adolescence and early adulthood. Apparently we are incredibly malleable during our development between about 19-22 years of age (in Western cultures, anyway. The textbooks I've looked at aren't really concerned with a global view) and the people we bond with during those years greatly determines what we come to value as adults. I guess, among other things, that explains why military recruiters really work on those kids just about to graduate from high school.

I have a love with whom I bonded during that time in my life. She and I went through all kinds of heavens and hells together and we even inflicted some of the same on each other. We took different paths and moved to different cities when we were still in our mid-20's, but any day of the week, I can call her and there's no doubt that I'm still talking to the same person. It's common that we'll go for months without contact, but when we call each other, it's like we've never stopped talking. It's not that we know every detail about each other -- it's that we know the important stuff and all the rest falls into place. There's nothing that she can do that will surprise me -- I know her nature. And I love the luxury of having a friend who can't be surprised by me -- she's not overly impressed when I'm a superstar ("Yeah, I expect that of you.") and she's not shocked when I sink to new lows ("Yeah, you've got sleazy tendencies, so what?"). She is always with me and in some of my best moments, I hear her speaking through my mouth. I am going to Texas next month and I'm making plans to see her then -- it will be like falling into the happy, fun, safe, laughing childhood (pre-adulthood?) that she and I created together.

My husband and I spent this weekend with two of the people (who are now married to each other) that he bonded with during that same period of his life. I didn't know my husband then -- we didn't meet until we were both well out of those phases of our lives. We've spent numerous weekends with these friends of his and I've slowly been building my own friendships with each of them. However, that young adulthood bond is really impossible to crack -- those three know each other in ways that I'll never break through. That's not a bad thing -- it's what it is: just like my husband will always feel slightly on the outside when the Princess and I get together.

This weekend with these two friends was different for me than others before. It's not as though we were all transported back 10-12 years and we had the chance to make those bonds, but something definitely happened. I've already written about how slow I am to make friends -- and I'll use that as a testament to how special are these two people (now three). They have continued to give me chances and chances for years until I think we've finally hit our stride. We'll not be able to say, "We've been friends since we were in college," but (ulp, god willing) we will be there, telling each others' grandchildren, "I knew her before your daddy was even born."

That is worth waiting for.

Y'ate Whut?

We ate paint. and when we didn't have any more paint, we ate paint.