Well,today is the last day of my conference. With me leaving the Board positions that require attendance and with the dreadful economy it's not likely that I'll be able to attend any of these in the near future. I'm grateful for the opportunities I've had to attend them in:
New Orleans (and also met up with some Leaky peeps at the airport after a Harry Potter Symposium there that was ending just as I arrived). I'd never been there, and it was really fun to have that experience. We saw some pretty cool stuff (including a little hut that looked a lot like Hagrid's Hut) and went on a River Boat cruise.
Atlanta this was a cool trip because my mother's people came from Georgia. We went on a Gone With the Wind tour that was very entertaining and educaqtional, but the most fun was getting to meet Ed's Uncle Farrell, who lives in a small community not far away. Ed found out that some of his German ancestors were gypsies.
Chicago this was also an interesting trip as we got to attend a lot of the cultural museums they have there, including a Harry Potter movie touring museum that was a lot of fun. The best part of this event however came after the conference when we drove 4 hours into Michigan and spent the Memorial Day weekend with Ed's cousin Mary Jane and Aunt Mary. Those two ladies are too much fun!
Reno this year's event is only two hours away from Sacramento where my Dad lives, so we'll be leaving here and stopping by to see him before heading down to Fresno to visit with Ed's brother and his family. We went to Virginia City yesterday and got to experience some of their history.
I've walked away from every one of these conferences with great connections with peers from all over the country and even the world, as this is an international conference and several other countries are represented. It's interesting to see how people doing my job do it in the UK or Bulgaria or Nepal, etc. And I've managed to bring back with me something I could use in my office, whether it was a nuts and bolts skill or a different way of looking at a problem I've been dealing with.
I'm grateful to UMCA for giving me the opportunity and to my City for supporting me.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Wisteria in Bloom
I'm so excited. After a number of years of working on my Wisteria to get it to bloom (for some reason it didn't like being in a bucket on the front porch for five years--go figure), I finally got a bloom or two a couple of years ago. Then last year I got maybe a half dozen.
This year:
Woot! And all those blossoms smell SO good!
The rest of my garden:
This year:
Woot! And all those blossoms smell SO good!
The rest of my garden:
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Enduring to the End
It's funny that we usually think of enduring to the end as holding true to our beliefs and standards. Yet, I'm finding that enduring to the end can mean much more in a close and personal fashion, such as dealing with a spouse with ongoing health issues.
I remember when I was fourteen, and my mother was dreadfully ill. We were living in a city that was 90 minutes from where my father worked, so for one year my father commuted home only on the weekends, leaving my mother to handle most of the challenges of three children. Unbeknownst to my father, my mother had a brain tumor, and she hid from him how bad her symptoms were. It was in a day and age when medical technology was very limited. For two years she suffered from increasing pain, but the X-rays showed nothing. At one point, her doctor sent her to a psychiatrist, who in turn talked with her for a few minutes and sent her back to her regular doc with instructions to tell him to find out what was really wrong with her.
She was trying to endure to the end--to hang on for my brother's graduation from high school, when the rest of us would be together again. We had lived in our home for four years before my father was transferred to the Philippines for two years. It was there that she first manifest symptoms. When my father's tour overseas was completed, he was stationed on a base only 90 minutes away. As my brother was going into his senior year of high school, my parents opted not to have him attend a completely new school but returned to the old neighborhood and school system of two years before.
However, her condition continued to deteriorate until she was no longer able to hide it from my dad. That was a terrible time. She had always done the mom things like laundry, but now she was bedridden, in dreadful pain, and I found myself having to do things I had no experience with. The hardest thing was watching someone I loved and admired suffer, while I was completely helpless to do anything to bring her surcease. Fourteen is too young to find out the hard truth that there is very much in life we have absolutely no control over, and there are many things--too many things--we cannot make better.
My parents made arrangements for her to see a specialist at a Naval hospital in the Bay Area. Once they made the decision to hospitalize her, my poor father was in an untenable position. His wife was in Oakland and his children in Sacramento. So he got keys to new quarters just made available on base, drove to our old house and told us to pack up because we were moving. My brother helped us with the move the next morning and stayed in the empty house for the couple of weeks until he was done with school.
It was a scary and lonely time. My father had his job and visited my mother while they ran tests. My little sister was enrolled in school since she was only in first grade. I was close enough to the end of the school year that they just counted it as good. My existence was solitary, because school is the easiest way to make friends. The hospital creeped me out, and I didn't go with my father to visit my mother as often I should have--a decision that I was soon to regret.
They found the tumor and operated on Friday, June 6th. My maternal grandmother came for the surgery. I remember waking the next morning at 6 a.m. to the sound of the phone and my grandmother's crying. When my father passed my room, I called to him, and he told me the hospital had called to say my mother had taken a turn for the worse. He said it meant she was either dead or dying, and he and my grandmother were driving to the hospital.
I got up and tried to watch some Saturday morning cartoons while I waited. It seemed like an eternity. I remember laying on the couch as I heard the door open, and I leaped up and stood waiting to hear. My father, tears streaming from his eyes, said only that we'd lost her, and we clung to each other and sobbed. I will always remember that moment, with the sound of my poor grandmother crying that her baby was gone. I feel bad now, thinking that we didn't reach out to her at that moment, consumed with our own grief. She must have felt so alone.
I find myself in a similar position now. My poor Ed is suffering so much, and once again I am helpless to assist. He's trying so hard to endure to the end, but each of his days are filled with so much pain, I don't know how he does it. I think I would curl up in the fetal position and check out, yet he perseveres in spite of it. I get frustrated when his pain overcomes him, and he lashes out completely out of proportion with the irritation. But I wonder how I would act if I had to carry the burden he does every single day, every hour. He is such an inspiration in his adversity.
But I'm only human, and the challenge of one member of a family is never that person's alone. It becomes the challenge of everyone. While it can help us to be stronger, it also drains us of energy and, sometimes, hope. When someone hurts so badly all the time, there's never a time when my own pain or depression has any meaning. I am forgotten, alone. So I find that enduring to the end for my sweetie means enduring to the end for me as well.
I remember when I was fourteen, and my mother was dreadfully ill. We were living in a city that was 90 minutes from where my father worked, so for one year my father commuted home only on the weekends, leaving my mother to handle most of the challenges of three children. Unbeknownst to my father, my mother had a brain tumor, and she hid from him how bad her symptoms were. It was in a day and age when medical technology was very limited. For two years she suffered from increasing pain, but the X-rays showed nothing. At one point, her doctor sent her to a psychiatrist, who in turn talked with her for a few minutes and sent her back to her regular doc with instructions to tell him to find out what was really wrong with her.
She was trying to endure to the end--to hang on for my brother's graduation from high school, when the rest of us would be together again. We had lived in our home for four years before my father was transferred to the Philippines for two years. It was there that she first manifest symptoms. When my father's tour overseas was completed, he was stationed on a base only 90 minutes away. As my brother was going into his senior year of high school, my parents opted not to have him attend a completely new school but returned to the old neighborhood and school system of two years before.
However, her condition continued to deteriorate until she was no longer able to hide it from my dad. That was a terrible time. She had always done the mom things like laundry, but now she was bedridden, in dreadful pain, and I found myself having to do things I had no experience with. The hardest thing was watching someone I loved and admired suffer, while I was completely helpless to do anything to bring her surcease. Fourteen is too young to find out the hard truth that there is very much in life we have absolutely no control over, and there are many things--too many things--we cannot make better.
My parents made arrangements for her to see a specialist at a Naval hospital in the Bay Area. Once they made the decision to hospitalize her, my poor father was in an untenable position. His wife was in Oakland and his children in Sacramento. So he got keys to new quarters just made available on base, drove to our old house and told us to pack up because we were moving. My brother helped us with the move the next morning and stayed in the empty house for the couple of weeks until he was done with school.
It was a scary and lonely time. My father had his job and visited my mother while they ran tests. My little sister was enrolled in school since she was only in first grade. I was close enough to the end of the school year that they just counted it as good. My existence was solitary, because school is the easiest way to make friends. The hospital creeped me out, and I didn't go with my father to visit my mother as often I should have--a decision that I was soon to regret.
They found the tumor and operated on Friday, June 6th. My maternal grandmother came for the surgery. I remember waking the next morning at 6 a.m. to the sound of the phone and my grandmother's crying. When my father passed my room, I called to him, and he told me the hospital had called to say my mother had taken a turn for the worse. He said it meant she was either dead or dying, and he and my grandmother were driving to the hospital.
I got up and tried to watch some Saturday morning cartoons while I waited. It seemed like an eternity. I remember laying on the couch as I heard the door open, and I leaped up and stood waiting to hear. My father, tears streaming from his eyes, said only that we'd lost her, and we clung to each other and sobbed. I will always remember that moment, with the sound of my poor grandmother crying that her baby was gone. I feel bad now, thinking that we didn't reach out to her at that moment, consumed with our own grief. She must have felt so alone.
I find myself in a similar position now. My poor Ed is suffering so much, and once again I am helpless to assist. He's trying so hard to endure to the end, but each of his days are filled with so much pain, I don't know how he does it. I think I would curl up in the fetal position and check out, yet he perseveres in spite of it. I get frustrated when his pain overcomes him, and he lashes out completely out of proportion with the irritation. But I wonder how I would act if I had to carry the burden he does every single day, every hour. He is such an inspiration in his adversity.
But I'm only human, and the challenge of one member of a family is never that person's alone. It becomes the challenge of everyone. While it can help us to be stronger, it also drains us of energy and, sometimes, hope. When someone hurts so badly all the time, there's never a time when my own pain or depression has any meaning. I am forgotten, alone. So I find that enduring to the end for my sweetie means enduring to the end for me as well.
I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much. ~Mother Teresa
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Star Wars + Grandkids + JibJab
What a combination!
A New Hope
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
And I have to add something with with new grandbaby, so here are the two youngest doing the Disco!
A New Hope
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
And I have to add something with with new grandbaby, so here are the two youngest doing the Disco!
Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Tribute to Mothers
With Mother's Day just around the corner, I thought I'd share this little tribute to mothers. We come in all shapes & sizes and temperaments & abilities. The one thing we probably all share is our love for our children.
We never received a handbook on raising children (at least I didn't!), and even if we had, it wouldn't have accounted for the very unique individuals we've all been given to raise. I've learned that treating all your children the same is to do them a disservice even when they cry 'foul' for the different treatment.
My own mother has been gone since I was only 14, and I pay tribute to her because she managed to take the daughter she thought would end up in the gas chamber by the time she was 16 and helped provide her with the moral compass needed to make a decent human being (I hope I am anyway!).
Love ya, Mom!
MOTHERS
Real Mothers know that their kitchen utensils are probably in the sandbox.
Real Mothers often have sticky floors, filthy ovens and happy kids.
Real Mothers know that dried play dough doesn't come out of carpets.
Real Mothers don't want to know what the vacuum just sucked up.......
Real Mothers sometimes ask 'Why me?' and get their answer when a little voice says, 'Because I love you best.'
Real Mothers know that a child's growth is not measured by height or years or grade... it is marked by the progression of Mommy to Mom to Mother.....
Moms
This is for all the mothers who froze their buns off on metal bleachers at football games Friday night instead of watching from cars, so that when their kids asked, "Did you see me?" they could say, "Of course, I wouldn't have missed it for the world," and mean it.
This is for all the mothers who have sat up all night with sick toddlers in their arms, wiping up barf laced with Oscar Mayer wieners and cherry Kool-Aid saying, "It's OK honey, Mommy's here."
This is for the mothers who gave birth to babies they'll never see. And the mothers who took those babies and made homes for them.
For all the mothers who run carpools and make cookies and sew Halloween costumes. And all the mothers who DON'T.
What makes a good Mother anyway? Is it patience? Compassion? Broad hips? The ability to nurse a baby, cook dinner, and sew a button on a shirt, all at the same time? Or is it heart?
Is it the ache you feel when you watch your son or daughter disappear down the street, walking to school alone for the very first time?
The jolt that takes you from sleep to dread, from bed to crib at 2 a.m. to put your hand on the back of a sleeping baby?
The need to flee from wherever you are and hug your child when you hear news of a school shooting, a fire, a car accident, a baby dying?
This is for reading "Goodnight, Moon" twice a night for a year. And then reading it again. "Just one more time."
This is for all the mothers who mess up. Who yell at their kids in the grocery store and swat them in despair and stomp their feet like a tired 2-year old who wants ice cream before dinner.
This is for all the mothers who taught their daughters to tie their shoelaces before they started school. And for all the mothers who opted for Velcro instead.
For all the mothers who bite their lips--sometimes until they bleed--when their 14 year olds dye their hair green.
Who lock themselves in the bathroom, when babies keep crying and won't stop.
This is for all the mothers who show up at work with spit-up in their hair and milk stains on their blouses and diapers in their purse.
This is for all the mothers who teach their sons to cook and their daughters to sink jump shots.
This is for all mothers whose heads turn automatically when a little voice calls "Mom?" in a crowd, even though they know their own offspring are at home.
This is for mothers who put pinwheels and teddy bears on their children's graves.
This is for mothers whose children have gone astray, and who can't find the words to reach them.
This is for all the mothers who sent their sons to school with stomachaches, assuring them they'd be just FINE once they got there, only to get calls from the school nurse an hour later asking them to please pick them up. Right away.
This is for young mothers stumbling through diaper changes and sleep deprivation. And mature mothers learning to let go. For working mothers and stay-at-home mothers. Single mothers and married mothers. Mothers with money, mothers without.
This is for you all. So, hang in there.
"Home is what catches you when you fall -- and we all fall."
We never received a handbook on raising children (at least I didn't!), and even if we had, it wouldn't have accounted for the very unique individuals we've all been given to raise. I've learned that treating all your children the same is to do them a disservice even when they cry 'foul' for the different treatment.
My own mother has been gone since I was only 14, and I pay tribute to her because she managed to take the daughter she thought would end up in the gas chamber by the time she was 16 and helped provide her with the moral compass needed to make a decent human being (I hope I am anyway!).
Love ya, Mom!
MOTHERS
Real Mothers know that their kitchen utensils are probably in the sandbox.
Real Mothers often have sticky floors, filthy ovens and happy kids.
Real Mothers know that dried play dough doesn't come out of carpets.
Real Mothers don't want to know what the vacuum just sucked up.......
Real Mothers sometimes ask 'Why me?' and get their answer when a little voice says, 'Because I love you best.'
Real Mothers know that a child's growth is not measured by height or years or grade... it is marked by the progression of Mommy to Mom to Mother.....
Moms
This is for all the mothers who froze their buns off on metal bleachers at football games Friday night instead of watching from cars, so that when their kids asked, "Did you see me?" they could say, "Of course, I wouldn't have missed it for the world," and mean it.
This is for all the mothers who have sat up all night with sick toddlers in their arms, wiping up barf laced with Oscar Mayer wieners and cherry Kool-Aid saying, "It's OK honey, Mommy's here."
This is for the mothers who gave birth to babies they'll never see. And the mothers who took those babies and made homes for them.
For all the mothers who run carpools and make cookies and sew Halloween costumes. And all the mothers who DON'T.
What makes a good Mother anyway? Is it patience? Compassion? Broad hips? The ability to nurse a baby, cook dinner, and sew a button on a shirt, all at the same time? Or is it heart?
Is it the ache you feel when you watch your son or daughter disappear down the street, walking to school alone for the very first time?
The jolt that takes you from sleep to dread, from bed to crib at 2 a.m. to put your hand on the back of a sleeping baby?
The need to flee from wherever you are and hug your child when you hear news of a school shooting, a fire, a car accident, a baby dying?
This is for reading "Goodnight, Moon" twice a night for a year. And then reading it again. "Just one more time."
This is for all the mothers who mess up. Who yell at their kids in the grocery store and swat them in despair and stomp their feet like a tired 2-year old who wants ice cream before dinner.
This is for all the mothers who taught their daughters to tie their shoelaces before they started school. And for all the mothers who opted for Velcro instead.
For all the mothers who bite their lips--sometimes until they bleed--when their 14 year olds dye their hair green.
Who lock themselves in the bathroom, when babies keep crying and won't stop.
This is for all the mothers who show up at work with spit-up in their hair and milk stains on their blouses and diapers in their purse.
This is for all the mothers who teach their sons to cook and their daughters to sink jump shots.
This is for all mothers whose heads turn automatically when a little voice calls "Mom?" in a crowd, even though they know their own offspring are at home.
This is for mothers who put pinwheels and teddy bears on their children's graves.
This is for mothers whose children have gone astray, and who can't find the words to reach them.
This is for all the mothers who sent their sons to school with stomachaches, assuring them they'd be just FINE once they got there, only to get calls from the school nurse an hour later asking them to please pick them up. Right away.
This is for young mothers stumbling through diaper changes and sleep deprivation. And mature mothers learning to let go. For working mothers and stay-at-home mothers. Single mothers and married mothers. Mothers with money, mothers without.
This is for you all. So, hang in there.
"Home is what catches you when you fall -- and we all fall."
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
28 Days
Wow, I marked it on Skype this morning that it's only 28 days before I fly to Hawaii to babysit for Erin, while she flys to Montana to attend a dear friend's wedding. I have a conference to attend prior to that in Reno and from there we're driving to Sacramento to see my folks and then Fresno to visit with Ed's brother and family. The day before I fly really west, I'm going to be driving 15 hours east. It's going to be crazy for a while.
But I can't wait to see some of my grandchildren again. This is the longest I've been away from them since they came into the world. And then when she returns, I'll have several days to enjoy my Erin (and her sweetie Spencer). *sigh*
But I can't wait to see some of my grandchildren again. This is the longest I've been away from them since they came into the world. And then when she returns, I'll have several days to enjoy my Erin (and her sweetie Spencer). *sigh*
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