Friends

Over the last few years I have acquired several really good friends. I don't know how this happened, as I've never been able to make and keep many friends. My oldest friend has been my friend for 17 years now, and that alone boggles my mind. Granted, the first 7 of those years we were a couple, but still. That counts. She's still my friend, and that amazes me.

But recently I realized that I now have several friends that I consider to be close friends. Some have been, or are, clients, and for that I am very grateful. To create a lasting friendship out of a business relationship has been very rewarding. Others are from my bible-study group, and the nature of the group has turned an unlikely group of women into an incredibly tight and trusting group of friends.

Facebook has introduced me to several new friends. Some new, and some renewing of old friendships. These have been exciting and heartwarming.

That doesn't include the friendships I've made in past jobs. These are fewer, but no less important.

I've always been good at casual flirtation, but have never really mastered the art of deep, close friendships. However, recently I received a surprising call late one night to come help a friend who was distraught. I immediately got up and went to her. I ended up staying the night, and coming home in the morning, since it was a work day. Driving home I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that she'd called ME!

That thought got me thinking about all of the really good friends I have. I am truly blessed. I feel slightly guilty because I don't spend as much time as I would like with any of them, and inevitably I've fallen out of contact with some. As I scramble to keep in touch, my focus changes from one to another. I don't know how to hold everyone in my thoughts at the same time.

Making and keeping friends was a lesson I missed when I was young and moving around all of the time. We never stayed anywhere long enough to make it worth the effort. This new discovery strikes me with awe and wonder and I am truly grateful. Friendships truly add the color to a black and white life.

Depressed...

I've been in a slump lately. I've always struggled with cyclical depression, and I guess its my time. I've been blah. I don't have the luxury of staying in bed all day, but I do the next best thing. I'm doing only as much as I need to do to get by. Nothing more, nothing less. Everything is just a few days behind schedule, a little sloppier than it should be.

Hence the lack of posts. For the last couple of months I haven't had it in me to write unless I absolutely feel compelled to. Even then, I've let half of those slip away.

I've been down the anti-depressant route. I've tried a few, settling on the one with the least side affects. I took that for a little over a year before letting it go. It didn't have bad side affects, but it didn't seem to be making much of a difference either. I don't think anyone really noticed when I stopped taking them, so I guess they weren't as effective as they should have been.

I don't know why I get into these slumps. I keep telling myself I don't have time for them. I have so much on my plate, and adding more every day. I work with kids, and they are the ones that lose when I don't feel like doing all the fun stuff that makes the day interesting for them.

I really don't know how to combat this. I feel like I'm watching myself being glum and sour, and telling myself to snap out of it, but without the desire to really do anything more. I feel like I'm letting my life slip through my fingers in large chunks. What a waste.

Disneyland

I just came back from a long weekend at Disneyland. I went with my son, and his girlfriend and her mom. My son's birthday was last Monday, and his girlfriends was this last Sunday, so it was kind of a combined birthday trip for both of them.

It's about an 8 hour drive south from my home, and I have a friend who lets me crash at her house in Modesto, which cuts about 1.5 hours off of the drive on the way down. I have to say, even 6 hours in a car is a long drive. And my son talks non-stop. And his girlfriend appreciates peace and quiet... So you get an idea of how the drive went! At one point, she started meditating in the car, and stayed like that for at least an hour!

It was supposed to be a "surprise" for the kids, but after 5 hours heading south, they pretty much guessed where we were going. It was still fun. They were still thrilled to be in Disneyland!

It was a fun-filled, sleep-deprived weekend! We crammed so much into the hours we had. It was a typical Disneyland weekend, but with the added benefit of sharing it with two girls that LOVED every moment. I have to say that it was fun to watch them having a good time. Especially the mom, who was so over the top excited!

And one little girl got the added bonus of being in Disneyland on her birthday! She was treated like a princess all day! Granted, the day only lasted until 4pm when we had to pile back into the car and drive 8 hours to get home in time to show up for work Monday morning! But still. I've never been in Disneyland on my birthday!

What a great weekend!

Living Life...

It always amuses me when I hear someone blaming their childhood for how their life turned out. Life is a choice. You can choose to live or you can choose to just exist.

I get that you may have had the cards stacked against you. Your parents may have been losers, or you may not have had parents at all. You may have been surrounded all your life with people who were just existing, and you may think that's all that's possible for you. That's your choice. You can't blame your parents for that.

Living is hard. No one ever said it was easy. Some people just don't have the knack, if you know what I mean. They are the ones that see the glass half empty, that think everyone's out to get them, that the government owes them something. You can't help those people. They are so far removed from living they don't know that what they are doing isn't it.

Then there are those lucky ones that just get it, and don't even have to try. They are the ones that go through life exuberant, loving every moment, and taking advantage of every opportunity with abandon. They just know they are alive, and you can't help but watch them move through it with stark adoration, or you just want to shoot them for making it look so easy.

And then there's the rest of us. We know the choice exists, but it's a choice we have to make every day. In the middle of washing dishes, mowing the lawn, cleaning out the garage, we have to consciously stop whining and thank our lucky stars that we have dishes, a lawn, a garage. No, thanking isn't the right word. We ENJOY the fact that we have those things.

But more importantly, when an opportunity shows up that we actually recognize, in the moment, as an opportunity, we're the ones that have to consider the wisdom of pursuing it. Instead of jumping in with both feet as would the natural-born livers, we weigh the odds, discuss the pros and cons, and tentatively stick our toe in. About half of the time, we manage to step through that proverbial window in time. For the most part though, the window gets slammed shut with our toe still in it.

That's the rest of us. Cautiously living. Squinting into the sunlight.

Birthday Massage

Friday, June 26th, was my birthday.

One of the incredibly nice things my husband got me for my birthday was a massage with a friend who has been doing our massages for many years. Although we both had used her services regularly in the past, I haven't gotten a massage in quite a while.

It was the best massage I've ever gotten. I don't know what has changed in the intervening years, but this massage actually felt relaxing and nice, as opposed to the torture device it had been in the past. As I was groggily laying on the table, I was thinking about how good it felt, and how relaxed and quiet I was. That got me thinking about previous massages. Like I said, my masseuse is a friend of many years, and I haven't seen her in quite a long time. We should have had so much to catch up on. I should have been talking non-stop!

I thought about massages in the past where the 60 minutes seemed to fly by because we got started on an animated discussion that wasn't nearly complete by the time the massage was over. I considered the quiet and reflective place I must be in to not have anything to say, so I told her how good this massage was feeling.

She laughed. Apparently, she was contemplating the same thing as I was, but along slightly different lines! She was thinking about how still I was being and commented on the difference. When I said "animated discussion" I truly meant animated! She laughed about how she didn't have to chase my limbs around the table because I would pop up suddenly to say this or that, or fling my arms around to punctuate a point.

I couldn't help but laugh. These are the details of life that one so easily forgets! Having her remind me made me realize just how impossible it had been to get a relaxing massage when I never quieted down enough to enjoy it. I've come a long way, baby!

Computer Issues...

My computer has been in the shop for a week. I can't begin to tell you how painful that was! It felt like I was missing a limb and feeling phantom pains. I kept wandering around feeling like I was forgetting to do something. So strange.

The worst part about the whole thing was that I intentionally scheduled the service during the time I was going to be on vacation for a long weekend. My husband and I went to Calistoga for a short vacation last weekend. We left first thing Saturday morning, and returned late Tuesday evening. I took my computer in to the Apple store Friday morning, knowing I would be leaving it, anticipating that four days would be plenty of time for them to do whatever it is they needed to do.

Friday without the computer was weird, but as I was out running errands all morning, it was only weird once I got home. I thought about this blog, and the people I chat with daily, and remembered that I had forgotten to let anyone know I was going to be incognito for a while. Oops.

Saturday was great. We drove to Calistoga, which is approximately a two hour drive, checked into the room at the bed & breakfast, and commenced with our plan of relaxing by the pool for four days. I pulled out the first of the five books I had brought to read and set out to soak up the sun.

By Sunday I was definitely feeling an itch in an unknown location. There was nothing I NEEDED to see online, but I was definitely feeling distanced. I borrowed my husband's laptop, which he had faithfully brought with him on vacation, and quickly checked Facebook. It didn't appear that I was missing too terribly much, so I logged off and went back to sunning. Later in the day I snuck back in to write a little piece in my personal journal that I will publish here later.

Monday was distracting. We had met two very nice couples who were also staying there for the pleasure of laying by the pool, and we had great conversations. I had finished two and a half books and had actually been loaned one by one of our new friends. My tan was progressing nicely, and the weather was divine. The pool felt great, just the right temperature to cool off from the blistering sun, but not warm enough to stay in for long. This was bliss, but I was restless. Shouldn't I be doing something? I mean, it's Monday. There should be work. It's month-end, that always means paperwork.

Whatever. I let it go. I was on vacation. I thought about a friend I recently reconnected with on Facebook that commented that I was cool, except that I spent too much time on the computer. (I may be paraphrasing there.) I went back to reading and sunning.

Tuesday was our last day. We had planned to check out after breakfast but then hang out by the pool until early afternoon. The owners of this B&B are really relaxed, and have no problem with the guests staying as long as they want to the day of checkout as long as they can clean the room for the next guests. I ask them when we need to be out of the room, and they told me they didn't have anyone coming into that room until the following day, so we had all day. It's easy to keep coming back here.

By Tuesday I'd definitely gotten enough sun. My skin was pink and tender, and I had progressed to being under the umbrella with sunscreen. I had finished four of the five books I'd brought, as well as the one borrowed. I started the final book, and it wasn't nearly as interesting as the previous ones. I've begun to think about all the things I need to have completed by the end of the week, since Tuesday was the last day of June.

I finally gave up trying to read and went inside to start packing. We had planned to leave by 3pm to get home in time to pick up our son and give the grandparents a break. However, just about then my husband got hit with a stomach bug and spent the next few hours within feet of the toilet. At this point I was beginning to think we might have to stay another night and leave early the next morning, but after a few hours he felt like he could make it home. We only had to stop a couple of times for bathroom breaks on the way, but luckily we missed most of the rush hour traffic.

Wednesday was a light work day and I had time and opportunity to pick up my computer. I called the Apple store as soon as they opened, but when they checked the status, it wasn't done. They had received the necessary parts, and hoped to have it completed by the end of the day, but they would definitely call me. At that point I started panicking. It was the first of the month. I had a short window of time to get month-end paperwork submitted, time cards turned into the accountant, and the calendar of invoices prepared for clients that pay at the beginning of the month. I decided that if I pick it up after work, I would still have lots of time in the evening to get all of that done. I spent the day updating all of the children's files. This is all manual work that I've been putting off for a year because I have always had the computer as a distraction. I got through all of the completely handwritten paperwork that is required by the state.

I called again at the end of the day. It still wasn't done. Maybe Thursday. Ugh!

Thursday I HAVE to have it back. It's the second day of the month, and everything was due by the third. However, I also had a full house and couldn't leave. I called the Apple store when they opened, and sure enough, it was done and ready to be picked up. Go figure. I asked my husband to pick it up at lunch, but then he wouldn't get home until 6pm.

When he handed it over that evening, I was like an alcoholic getting a long, sweet taste after a drought. I'm a junkie.

I can't begin to tell you how good it feels to be back online! I'm terribly sorry you have to be a part of my problem, but I have to admit to missing you terribly. Even when I'm not writing I read your blogs, I check your status, I feel connected. What did we ever do before the internet?!?