I'm just your average, everyday, divorced 38 year old girl -- overweight, tragically unhip,
and trying to make a life for myself. I live with two furry beasts, Dave and Abby, whose
feline mission in life is to choke me with their fur. Nothing special.
Saturday morning. It's amazing how quickly I've run out of interesting things to write about. (Some might say that I never had anything interesting to say, but I think those people are mean, so we'll just ignore them.) Anyway, in the interest of writing something, let me give you my list of things I need to accomplish today:
Top Five Things to be Completed by Denise Today 1. Laundry (this is always on the list)
2. Go to TCB's and feed Harry and Sally (I think I'll go and eat lunch with them, spend a few hours, and come home for dinner)
3. Take my lipstick pink Longchamp purse to Nordies for repair (I think I actually bought it at Saks, but the people at Nordies are far nicer)
4. Write thank you note to local Assembly Member to thank her for meeting with my Junior League Advocacy Committee co-chair and I (I'm about a week late on this one)
5. Walk on the treadmill and/or get to a yoga class
NaBloPoMo, Day 10 - In which I might make you angry
Friday morning. I frequently mention in my entries that my beloved TCB is a member of our armed forces. To be more specific, he is a sailor who is currently stationed at a Marine Corps base in support of Navy personnel at that location. I shared in my last post that his next posting will be on a ship based out of Japan for three years, and that is certainly something that brings me great pain when I think about it, but it also brings me great pride. The work that he does every single day - no matter how mundane - makes me immensely proud. I love seeing him in his camouflage jammies (that's what the uniform he wears to work looks like), I love going to military balls on his arm, and I love driving around on base and watching the vehicles and the personnel going about their daily tasks. These are the good parts of what he does for a living.
Of course we all know that you must take the good with the bad, and that's one reason why I'm not screaming and crying and begging him not to go. There's also my dignity to be considered and certainly begging would be detrimental to that. Neither of those, though, are the primary reason I'm holding it together. This is his career and the move to Japan will, without any doubt, get him the promotion that he deserves and will allow him to retire at the end of those three years with pride and a deep sense of accomplishment. And so I come to the point of this entry.
Over and over for the last 231 years (the Marine Corps' birthday is today, November 10th - Happy Birthday, Marines...OOH RAH!), the armed forces of the United States of America have stood ready to go and "visit violence on those that would do us harm" (Churchill). Today is also Veteran's Day, the day set aside by Congress to recognize those who have fought on America's behalf. With less than a fraction of 1% of Americans being part of their armed forces, it can be difficult for those who don't have a loved one involved to understand or acknowledge the importance of this holiday and those it was created to honor. To that end, I give you this quote from Frank Schaeffer, in the Baltimore Sun, "The act of volunteering to be sent wherever your country needs you must be acknowledged as a priceless gift from the individual citizen to his or her country. This gift's morality doesn't depend on the rightness or wrongness of any war, but on the soldier's high-stakes commitment to the value of our democratic experiment." My boyfriend, those with whom he serves (and those who have done so in the past) stand ready to fight for your right to live safely, to love fiercely, to worship (or not) freely, and to cast your vote as you see fit.
Veteran's Day is not about Iraq or Afghanistan, it is about the men and women who've fought for their country. This holiday and those it honors are not political, and - in my opinion - it is the duty and privilege of every American, regardless of their party affiliation, to seek out and acknowledge a veteran today for the sacrifices they've made. So, I'm going to ask anyone in the United States reading this now to make a point of saying "thank you" to a veteran - past or present - today. I can guarantee that you'll make someone's day.
NaBloPoMo, Day 9 - I have sinned against you, NBPM!
Thursday afternoon. Blame it on the three-day corporate "summit" at the beach. Blame it on the excess of wine, shots of vodka (and something truly heinous called "Apple Pucker" - apt name, I might add), and margaritas on Monday night. Blame it on the karaoke until 2:00 a.m. on Tuesday night. Nevermind, just blame it on me because I missed two days of posting. I am truly, deeply sorry for my transgression and promise to be a better journaler (is that a word? I hate the word "blogger") from here on out! To make it up to you, I present, for your amusement...
The Top Five Things I'll Remember Forever from this week's offsite:
1. Killer view from my room. Seriously. Follow the link above and you'll see what I'm talking about.
2. Joking about the company having sent limos to pick us up from the train station and finding out that it wasn't a joke. Cowabunga, dude, our recent reorg is looking better and better!
3. Coming home from the "after party" on Monday night to find my bed turned down, a soft jazz CD on the entertainment system, and two bottles of Evian chilling in the ice buckets!
4. Watching my new VP singing "Pour Some Sugar on Me" by Def Leppard at the gay karaoke bar. (Totally not kidding. And, even better, he punctuated the instrumental solos by saying, "I'm hot and sticky sweet!" over and over again.) Once again, I love this reorg!
5. The call from TCB telling me that his next posting (September 2007) will be in Japan. For three years. (I didn't cry. Be very, very proud of me for that. I wanted to but I didn't.)
Sorry to end on a down note, but I guess that's just the way things go sometimes - you have to take the happy with the sad, smush them together, and keep on rolling.
NaBloPoMo, Day 6 - Why you don't leave a 16-year-old home alone for a week
Monday morning. While my parents and I were visiting on Saturday morning, they shared that their next door neighbors had left their 16-year-old son home alone for a week while they went to Mexico to vacation in their timeshare. Guess what happened? Shockingly, the kid through a major rager party on Friday night with his buddies. *gasp* Can you imagine that? An empty house, 50 kids on a high school team, and they threw a party - wow. You know what's worse? When the parents got home, they yelled at my parents for not having gone over there and cleaned the little beggars out. Hello? My parents are both over 65, they had no legal authority to enter that house without the parents being home, and they would never have been able to clean 50 rowdy teenagers out of that house. I'm so angry that I'm about ready to call Child Protective Services on them because I'm a required reporter for child abuse/neglect and leaving a child under 18 at home alone without a caretaker for an extended period of time is illegal in California. (Yeah, I'm mean like that.)
So, my Top Five list for today is Top Five Reasons Not to Leave a 16-Year-Old at Home Alone:
1. Group-think ("everyone else is doing it, why shouldn't I?")
2. Lack of good nutritional judgment ("potato chips aren't a veggie???")
3. General untidiness ("why use the dining room table when the couch is closer to the TV?")
4. The goodwill of your neighbors (no one likes having to call the cops at 10:30 p.m., midnight, and 1:00 a.m. in order to be able to sleep peacefully)
Sunday night. Almost missed today's post - yikes! Anyway, I'm really stressing about someone at work. Because there is no privacy online, I won't say any more than that, but it's not a happy feeling.
Top Five Reasons I Will Not Quit My Job:
1. It pays really well
2. I like most of the people I work with
3. I am well thought of
4. It enables me to live the life I want, including my work with Alcott and his siblings and my trip to New Orleans
