I’m currently on a meandering journey through Washington, Oregon and California to visit friends and family. May has been a busy month. I shut down my business which I created and toiled at for the last year and a half. My day job with the school district ended for the school year but not before I interviewed and got another job within the district to begin next fall. My daughter graduated from college. My son gave us a scare and a trip to the hospital. My husband finally bought the boat of his (compromised) dreams after a five-year search. We started to live within a budget and the process of downsizing our other assets. I took a personality/strengths test and found out I’m just like I thought I was only now I believe it because a book told me so.  I feel a new turning in my heart, new beginnings in the works, a renewed confidence in my abilities, and a focusing of my beliefs and convictions. I feel June and July will be restorative months with the hope of freedom from plans and day-to-day commitments and the worries of what’s next. I really have no idea of what’s next but I’m at peace with that for the time being. Change is on the way and I have so little control over any of it that it’s just not worth the worry. I’m firmly in God’s protective hand and I can feel His gentle push from behind as He is guiding the events before me. My responsibility seems to lie in listening, swallowing the fears and pride I struggle with, and obeying those gentle prods. For now as I’m traveling away from and to family and friends I’m filled up with an immense love for those that have been and will continue to be the connectors and sources of joy in my life. 

Summer approach-ith

Well, I'm ending another chapter in my life. My two crazy jobs that kept me so busy and tired this year are both coming to an end in the next week. I decided to sell my espresso stand business and walk away from it. I wasn't making any money and it was wearing me down with mental to-dos when I wasn't there, and long days when I was. I gave it a shot for two years, it was successful, and now I'll move on to something else I guess. I decided that my school district job with benefits and working toward retirement benefits makes more sense in the long run. I will be trying for a job there with longer hours to accelerate that process - that was another reason for selling the stand. Don't exactly know what I'll be doing next school year but I definitely don't want to be doing what I do know. It's only budgeted for five hours a day, but I get up by 6:30a.m to get my assignment and many days work from 7:30-2:30 then I have to pick up my kid at 3:00 and get home at 3:30. So I'm away from home anyway for 8 hours a day I might as well get paid for it. I'm not sure I'll stay with the food service job. I love the fast pace and never stopping to look at the clock and of course serving is fun for me. But it's heavy work on my back and if I go for a manager in an elementary school I will be working alone, which is great in the sense I'm my own boss, is lonely. I enjoy working with people. Of course I'm so over qualified for all these job,s really, but not so on paper, so I'm stuck applying for nearly minimum wage positions . It's depressing but I guess it's just a job and something getting me toward retirement benefits so I'll press on. But I'm looking forward to the end of school and summer and relaxing for a couple months. Yahoo!

Gratitude

Last night I went to see "Monsters vs. Aliens," a 3D animated film by Pixar, with my 20 year old son. Just him and me in a half-deserted theater with a smattering of young families. It was cool and funny and goofy, and I drove home almost in tears filled with gratitude.  He's my kid-movie buddy. No one else will go to those movies with me anymore, certainly not my 15 year old or husband. We've recently seen "Bolt" and "Coraline" just really fun movies, no drama, or gratuitous sex or language.  But that's not why I was grateful. I was thinking how crazy blessed I am just to be having this time with my kid, my kid who was never suppose to live past two weeks, who has actually coded and had to be brought back to life with CPR three times, who I've prayed and cried and prayed and cried and prayed some more for through the most desperate and dark of times of my life. The prayers were simple - please just let him live, let me see him grow up and see who he'll become. And here I am last night sitting in a movie theater with our goofy 3D glasses on just laughing and enjoying ourselves. And I've gotten to spend every day for the past 20 years with him, and they've been mostly good, normal days of living, punctuated with a few horrific trips to the hospital, but on the whole he wakes up with a smile on his face each morning and shares his love of life with everyone around him.  God has not just answered my prayers, but has lavished me with the purest, most joyful person I'll probably ever have the pleasure of spending time with on this earth. My son.

the fantasy foreign tour

I'm sorry Mr. Obama. This is a Christian country. And you did bow to the Saudis. You sir and your administration are liars.

Cut it out

Wow, I haven't posted for a while. I've just been working long hours. I put in four 14 hour days in a row last week and, yeah, I was tired, but my young employees just couldn't stop complaining about how tired they were after two days of six hour shifts. Aye...I even cut my finger open during one of the 14 hour days and had to go to the hospital for stitches, and went back to work for another seven hours! My son wouldn't even offer to take a couple hours of my shift for me (which he was perfectly capable of but, again, he was just too tired). I could have made him but I'm so sick of pleading with employees and children to zip it up and just work. What's with this younger generation? Will they every have a work ethic?

Mr. Redoubt's fury

Check out this latest picture of the Mt. Redoubt volcano from the Anchorage Daily News. It's of lightning strikes during a nighttime eruption. Look likes hell to me. It's playing hell with Alaska Airlines flights which may end up canceling my daughter's return trip from Spring Break. 

Our hull is pressed deep

This guy was amazing. Do Brits just sound more intelligent because of that cute accent?

Could this guy just have Obama's ear for 3 minutes?