Another vacation

I have a short vacation coming up next week. Nothing big and fancy like the last one. I am just going to visit my sister and "play" with her children and mine. I have two boys and she has two stepsons. The four boys just love each other. So I am visiting her and taking all the boys to a science museum, the zoo and plenty of swimming. I am looking forward to getting off work for a week and going to another city. And maybe it will be cooler next week.

This 90+ degree weather is killer. We do not have air conditioning at home and the house gets up to 85 or so. Fans, cold water, etc. At least it cools off at night.... and I work in an air conditioned office.

Take back the night

There is a program in my city that's called "Take Back the Night". It's basically an anti-crime program trying to make the streets safe for people to walk.

I have my own program called "Take Back the Night". I have decided to not kill myself at work. I am not going to work SO hard that I am dead tired at night when I get home. I want to use my evenings for more than sitting on the couch.

With the American work ethic, you would think that the harder I worked, the more rewards I would reap. Well, it doesn't work that way in my office. If you work hard and get all your work done, you will be given more work, usually from a person who is goofing off.

Let's see if I have this right. I work my butt off and get my work done. Do I get a raise? No, I get more work. So now I am doing one-third of another's person work. . . . and she is getting paid the same as me.

What----am I nuts?

No. I am going to do what is necessary and not a minute more. . . . . and maybe sneak in some writing, too.


Will I get in trouble? Heavens no. I'll just stand around and complain about how much work I have. . . like other people do.

Chill Out!

Was I on meds when I wrote that last post? Geez, could you feel the anger? I need to chill out.

In all fairness, I was tired and sleep-deprived and the boys wouldn't be quiet and go to sleep.

Coffee...... trees..... birds......

Think mellow thoughts.

I have some great ideas for the next few chapters of my book. My heroine Selina, is reading her mother's diary. For weeks, I have been trying to decide what I wanted her to read. I know that Selina will find out that her mother, Annabelle, really did love her father, George. But I needed more to that story.

So, Selina will also learn that her mother did not leave willingly. She was threaten by her husband's father. Her in-laws, the earl and countess at that time, didn't want their "impeccable lineage" destroyed by a common actress. They tried giving her money, they tried making her life miserable. When those schemes didn't work, they threatened her. Annabelle still wouldn't leave. Then they threatened the baby. The child was a girl and expendable. So Annabelle left Selina to save her life.

Her husband knew nothing of this. Annabelle couldn't tell him. He wouldn't believe his parents capable of threats and his parents would deny it, making Annabelle look like a fool. His parents thought that if Annabelle left with a man and went back to London to acting, George would divorce Annabelle and find a new bride.

Selina knows that her father never sought a divorce and never remarried. And she also finds out later in the book that her father loved her mother and felt horribly betrayed when she left. The betrayal ran so deep that he could not marry again, not even to secure an heir.

What do you think? I've already started the story of Selina's parents as a subplot in the book. I will add their reunion as a second "love story".

Noise ! ! !

I hate noisy fireworks!!

It's 9:30 at night and I am trying to get my boys to bed and someone in the neighborhood is lighting firecrackers. How in the h3ll are we supposed to sleep with such noise going on? It's summertime and the windows are open. No, we don't have air conditioning.

Every year it's the same noisy crap. For about a month, the neighborhood goes nuts with firecrackers, M-80s, Kat bombs, and other crap I've never even heard of. And the only objective of these dangerous, illegal (did I mention that this sh!t was illegal) crap is to make NOISE!!! Until 2 or 3 in the morning!!!!

Don't bother calling the police. The perpetrators all hide it and deny everything when a cop car trolls by. The cops don't care. Yeah, they're all busy with real crimes like bank robbers (Ha ha ha...) They're really late for donuts at Beaners.

So we have to put up with noisy crap all night long, every night, for a month.

And they don't stop on July 4. Oh no. the noise continues for a week after that.

I need to get even. I need to buy my own firecrackers and light them at 5:30 in the morning in front of their house.... if I can figure out who is doing it.

As I am writing this, I am thinking of all the ways to get revenge. If I find the houses that are doing it, I need a camcorder to record them. Maybe that'll make them stop. Or, I can park my car in front and lay on the horn while their lighting them. A big spotlight. Hmm.... I wonder how much it is to rent a big spotlight? Imagine that. Three or four cars blaring their horns with a big spotlight turned on their sky to ruin the display. Shit... I am laughing so hard....

Don't get me wrong. I love fireworks.... for a half hour display. Then stop it. Not hours and hours and days and days of noise noise noise noise.

Getting old

It's hell to get old, really. Okay, maybe I'm not eighty and barely able to walk, but I am in my forty's and losing my eyesight. I have worn glasses since seventh grade. Luckily, my eyes were never that bad, I didn't need coke bottle bottoms perched on my nose to see the blackboard. When I turned sixteen, I was able to pass the eye exam part of the driver's test without my glasses. But in the thirty years since, my eyes have slowly deteriorated. I find myself getting a stronger prescription everytime I go to the eye doctors. It's normal, he reassures me, just the aging process of the eyes. But, now I've hit big time, READING GLASSES!!!

I find it funny that when my distance vision is corrected, I need reading glasses to see close up. Oh it's not that bad yet. I can read most things, menus in restuarants don't thwart me yet. Newspaper and magazines can be read, but when I need to read a medicine bottle or the fine print in a magazine, I reach for my reading glasses.

If do not have in contacts for distance, I can read just fine. But I find myself squinting at other things. For example, if I try to do anything on the computer without contacts, my nose must be six inches or less from the screen to see it.

I am up this morning, coffe in one hand and dana in the other. If I sit at a confortable position to type, I can't read the screen. Mistakes abound!

If I hunch over to read what I am writing, by back hurts and my fingers hit my nose.

Oh, but the fredom of going without contacts. I feel I am naked in the wind.

Is laser surgery in my future?

We live in a forest

Not really but almost. It sure seems like that somedays.

We are blessed by owning an acre of land with tall mature trees, something that is very rare being minutes away from a major highway on the outskirts of a city.

We have trees that are green and sweet smelling, birds that are busy gathering food and other woodland creatures. This morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for my morning cofee to brew, listening to the sound of the coffee maker, smelling the coffee, but other sounds invaded my space. More pleasent sounds, birds. Many birds. Our cat heard them too

I had opened the sliding glass doors to the outside. I coud hear many birds singing their morning songs.

What peace.

Tweets and twitters, pleasent trills and music. How blessed I am. Some people cannot hear the birds. Not because they don't have them near their house, but because they never stop to listen.

The only thing better would be a deck to sit on. Then I could truly be in the middle. But if I were outside, would the birds stop?

Good Morning

I need coffee. I need it like air, like water, like sleep. It's my wake-up potion and my morning ritual. I lust not only for the caffeine, but for the hot bitter beverage that delivers the stimulant. There is something timeless and comforting about a creamy cup of java and jelly toast. I am home.

Welcome to my blog, my ritual, my comfort, my stimulant. A place to empty my mind and allow thoughts, just random thoughts about stuff, to fill a page. A place where there is no judgment, no pressure, no urgency.

Just floating on a sea of thoughts.