Ten Things on My Bucket List

Have you ever been to a Bucket List party?

One of my co-workers went to a Bucket List party recently and we’ve been talking about our bucket lists around the water cooler (yeah, we actually have one). I thought it was a rather cool idea.

So, let’s have a virtual one!

The buffet is to your left. The beer and pop are in the cooler by the patio door. Wine is on the counter. Help yourself. Pull up a seat. Who knows, we might find something to add to our lists

In no particular order, my top ten bucket list items:

1. Go on a honeymoon with That Man. Believe it or not, we never got around to it.
2. Extensively travel Scotland, Wales, and England. I want to trace my family trees.
3. Learn Scots Gaelic.
4. Cruise across the Atlantic and come into New York. I want to see the Statue of Liberty from the deck of a ship.
5. Actually learn Belly Dancing. Not the thing I call belly dancing, LOL
6. Become a published author.
7. Write a letter to each of the wee beasties telling them about my life and the lessons learned.
8. Create and maintain a Happiness project.
9. Get all of the wee beasties’ scrapbook albums done before they graduate high school. (I better get on this one! Oldest only has four more years.)
10. Actually meet, in real life, all the amazing people I’ve met online!

What’s on your bucket list?

Hiking with Beastie Girl

The other day, Mum and Dad packed the pups and me into the car. I still don’t trust car rides but Mum assured me we weren’t going to that nasty place for shots.

We went hiking!

Mum oohed and aawed about the view.

Me, I was more interested in the horse poop on the trail and herding the pups in the right direction.

See that little bit of white in the middle of the picture? That’s where we started.

I’m not a mountain goat!

But apparently, SOME dogs (not that I’m saying I am a dog, mind you) ARE mountain goats!

Do see her?

She’s half-way up a cliff face! Her human couldn’t even follow.

While watching that Austrian Shepard, it seemed like a good time for a break. Mum handed out water and snacks to the pups and poured me a nice bowl of water.

I don’t think Dad trusted me NOT to go after that Aussie :shakes head:

What would hiking be without someone getting hurt?

Poor Mum.

I didn’t do it. Honest. The pups didn’t either. I was watching them.

No, Mum slipped climbing out of a wash. She said, “Loose limestone plus the wrong foot gear equaled ouch.”

I’m really glad I have four feet!

I’d never been hiking before. Have you?

What’s your favorite dog friendly hiking spot?

Dress for Success

Ladies, when was the last time, if ever, you wore a suit?

For me, it has been over twenty years. The last time I wore a suit was in the 80′s and not even for interviews have I needed a suit…until now.

Why?

Perhaps it was the change in location. Miami, Florida verses Portland, Oregon. Perhaps it was the change from a big corporation to small, more family run, businesses. Perhaps it was just the natural evolution of business wear to casual business wear. Or perhaps, the e-trade world we live in where people are a voice, an email signature, rather than a face.

Joely Sue Burkhart talked about dressing for dieting and writing success last year. Loved that post. And, as I mentioned in my comment, getting dressed each day is part of my Flylady routine. I’ve never been a slob but my last two positions (not counting the animal hospital) were more jeans/Dockers and blouses than skirts/dresses/suits!

Yet here, in Sin City, it seems to have shifted back to the professional dress code. Perhaps that isn’t so strange after all. Miami = tourist destination. Las Vegas = tourist destination. Portland, not so much.

I have an interview this afternoon so this has been on my mind, thrust into the foreground with my continued job hunt. Like many, I’m in a catch-22. I don’t have the funds to go out a buy a business suit yet I need to dress for the position I want, not the one I have…well, had.

Apparently, the current thinking is to focus on suits and/or separates (jackets, slacks, and skirts) in gray, black, navy, or tan. Stay away from open-toed and slingback shoes, keeping the heels under four inches, in fact, kitten-heels are recommended.

What is business wear in your neck of the woods?

Balance vs. Imbalance

Chakras.

With my yoga experience, minimal though it is, I’ve picked up a rudimentary knowledge of chakras. And I’ve been thinking about them this last week, quite a lot. (Perhaps due to the stress That Man and I have been under, which is resolving. We’re in a much better place than we were on Sunday).

The idea of chakras feels reminiscent to the idea of humors. Balance and imbalance. Hmm…that goes back to my word for the year. Maybe it isn’t so odd I’ve been dwelling on this.

There are seven main chakras.

Starting from the bottom and working your way up the spine, you have:

1. Root, located at the base of the spine, Red, Earth, grounding and survival.
2. Sacral, located just below the belly button, Orange, Water, sexuality and relationships.
3. Solar Plexus, located just above the belly button, Yellow, Fire, personal power.
4. Heart, located at the center of the chest, Green, Air, emotional zone and the masculine/feminine of self.
5. Throat, located in the hollow of the throat, Blue, truth and willpower.
6. Third Eye, located between the eyebrows, Indigo, intuition.
7. Crown, located at the top of the head, Violet, divine consciousness.

Bet you don’t look at a rainbow the same again, LOL.

As you can see, the lovely elements we’re used to seeing with the tarot are present. And, of course, there are tarot cards associated with the chakras.

Root: The Emperor, The Devil, and The World
Sacral: The High Priestess, and The Empress
Solar Plexus: he Chariot, The Tower, and The Sun
Heart: The Lovers, Justice, Strength, and Temperance
Throat: The Magician, The Hierophant, and The Wheel of Fortune
Third Eye: The Moon, The High Priestess, and The Hermit
Crown: The Hanged Man, The Star, The Fool, and Judgment

The simplest way to use the tarot with the chakras is with a spread. However, this kind of spread is very personal, and potentially controversial, so I’m not going to post an example.

The easiest way is lay out a straight line. Focus on each chakra individually and draw one card per chakra. Each card reflects the main issue at the moment for that chakra.

If the card is upright, the chakra is open, balance. If the card is reversed, or upside down, the chakra is weak or closed, imbalance. By looking at a card’s keywords, you have a road map to fixing the chakra — focus the card’s ‘energy’ and work with it to turn the card right side up again.

What do you think, do chakras fit into your life?

You might also like:

Chakras, Tarot Majors, and Archangels — if you click on each chakra, you’ll get detailed correspondences as well as positive and negative attributes.
Seven Chakra Spread — from the Aeclectic Tarot Forum.
Chakra Spread — this is a more detailed tarot spread involving the chakras, also from Aeclectic.

Patient Painting Parent

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Some years it feels like I live for the after Christmas sales. That Man and I typically hold off on major purchases just so we can take advantage of the sales.

Need a new set of knives for the kitchen…55% off after Christmas.

This time it was beds for the wee beasties…15% off.

We seem to buy A LOT of beds for the wee beasties.

Four boys.

Need I say more?

Bed trampolines. Bed forts. Stunt man air bags…for breaking their falls off the roof of a building (high-boy dresser). Not to mention the usual ships and cars and trains beds become with a fertile imagination. Then there are the fights when one brother kicks the other out of the bedroom and someone ends up dragging their mattress down the stairs to camp out in the game room. Sigh. Beds just don’t last around here.

So, this was a long overdue purchase.

I even splurged, buying new bedding for them. After all, Spongebob just doesn’t cut it for a soon to be high-schooler and soon to be middle-schooler. And the younger two, I don’t think we had a complete set of anything for them.

New beds. New bedding. New paint. Right?

Beds arrived a week ago. I told the wee beasties to get their rooms ready so I could paint. Saturday arrived, had anything been done? Nope. I muttered aloud, “I guess you don’t want new beds. I’ll go see what charity could use four brand new beds. I’m sure there are some kids who’d LOVE new beds.”

What do you know? The younger two had their room cleaned out by dinner time.

Sunday was painting day for their room. An all-day process with “helpers”

Now to entice the older two to get their room cleaned out.

Who wouldn’t want a brand new room?

Sometimes this parenting thing is tough. What have you done to trick — er, encourage — your offspring into doing what you need them to do?

2013 in a Word

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One of the things on my goal/to-do list I haven’t put on my ROW80 goals post, at least not yet, is to get back into reading blogs. That poor Google Reader is just stuffed to the brim.

I managed to get a bit of reading in over the weekend. Shock, I know. Especially if you’d been a fly on a wall in our house, assuming you escaped death and destruction from the four wee beasties. Anyway, a theme, if you will, kept popping up.

Resolutions…bah!

The name of the game is to select a word for the year. A word to strive for in your day-to-day life, not just one area of said life.

I LIKE IT.

It got me thinking, as I didn’t have anything planned for today’s post anyway, “What would be my word for the year?”

I need to juggle my work and personal life better. Not just my writing work but my EDJ work with the family, friends, and hobbies personal life. And not feel guilty about me-time.

My word for 2013 is

BALANCE

Have you heard of this before? Do you have a word for the year?

Can We Keep It? Pretty Please.

There’s a story in my family from when my sister was just a wee thing. She might have been three or four.

Our father had one of those Lazy Boy recliners all good fathers had in the late sixties or early seventies. He worked long, long hours thus when Sunday rolled around you could find him planted in that recliner watching whatever sport happened to be on. Usually doodling house plans (my parents still live in the realization of one of those plans).

My sister sneaked up next to Dad one day while he was in his sports-zone. “Daddy?” She must have received the ‘yes’ grunt. “Do you like doggies?”

“Yes.”

She wondered away for a bit only to tip-toe back up to him. “Daddy? Do you like puppies?”

At this, Dad is said to have cracked open an eye and hesitatingly reply, “Yes.”

“Mary has a dog and she had a puppy! Can we get the puppy? Pleeaassee.” (Of course, I’m picturing Puss-in-Boots as I hear that drawn out please.)

Needless to say, we got the puppy. An adorable black Toy Poodle named Tiffany.

One of the wee beasties’ favorite books is An Octopus Followed Me Home by Dan Yaccarino. I don’t remember how we stumbled across it but our copy is well loved.

In the spirit of the book…

A rabbit followed #2 home Wednesday night!

Apparently, #2 was playing with a friend up the street. They saw the rabbit but it ran away when they tried to get close. Yet when #2 started home, his friend called to him…the rabbit followed, traveling from bush to bush. By the time #2 reached our house the rabbit boldly hopped about a foot behind the kiddo.

It’s obviously a pet. A neighbor saw it a couple days prior to this. We’ve done what we can (put up flyers, notified shelters and animal hospitals, etc.) and now it’s a waiting game.

However, That Man and I are hearing…Can we keep him? Pretty please.

If no one comes forward we will. Introducing BUGS…

The picture doesn’t do him justice. He’s most likely a Chinchilla mix and about two years old. Other than being on the skinny side (we estimate he’d been on his own for a week before we took him in), he’s healthy.

Thus the menagerie grows, and grows, LOL.

Has an animal ever followed you home? Do you have any bunny tales?

Sunday Summary

In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya…”Let me ‘splain. [pause] No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”

LOL

Backstory:

About two years into our move to Vegas for That Man’s job, he was laid off. Luckily for us, he was able to land another job within a month. However, he took a pay cut to do so. At the time we were just happy he HAD a job and figured with belt tightening and some creativity we would survive until the industry picked up and he was once again earning a decent wage.

That Man is extremely generous, with his time and talent and often monitory. I love this about him. He’s also somewhat old fashioned and has always dreamed of supporting our family so I could be a stay-at-home mother. The amount of his pay cut prevented this from being a reality yet he struggled, often silently, to maintain it.

Fast forward to this summer:

In a week that could have been a scene from the old Airplane movie, y’all know the one, “I picked a bad week to quit X,” it was hammered home just how much That Man had been hiding.

Thus began my job hunt. Oy. The economy sucks. There’s not a lot out there, especially for someone who has been out of the work force for five years. Positions I was more than qualified for weren’t interested because of the employed gap. Positions I was qualified for but in an industry I didn’t have experience in weren’t interested because of that lack of industry experience. And then there were the scams!

I’ve never encountered so many scams. There were an extremely depressing couple of weeks where the only responses I received were scams. PSA: while there are some legit reasons for a business to run a credit check on employees it is NOT something that should ever happen PRIOR to your interview. Ugh. I lost count of the number of “positions that would require me to handle large sums of cash and it was company policy to run credit checks.”

I got mad too. I flagged every last ad that resulted in one of these scam like responses.

This week:

Finally, while I was in Oregon no less, I was called in for a legitimate interview. Whew. I had a first interview on Thursday, a second on Friday, and on Saturday I picked up my uniform. I start Monday!

So, now I’ll have to juggle my writing around not just family stuff but work. However, it was like the entire house sighed in relief when I got the call back Friday that I had the job.

That was some of the personal stress going on behind the scenes. The stuff I hadn’t been ready to share.

ROW80:

I’m still on the fence about ROW80 R4. I think I’ll get this first week of work under my belt then see where things stand.

Coyote Con:

The panels are in place. I’ll be working with Joely this week to finalize the schedule so be looking for it to appear on the Coyote Con site soon. The chat rooms are up, you can register through WordPress, Facebook, or Google. It’s coming together!

What’s happening in YOUR world?

Friendship

Today, I am up in Oregon.

This afternoon will be Dennis’ memorial service.

I spent a good part of Thursday this week looking for a picture. Sadly, I couldn’t lay my hands on it. It was a picture of my dad and Dennis, side by side, leaning against the railing at my parents’ house with their backs to the camera.

I’ve seen them stand this way too many times to count.

They aren’t talking in the picture. And as the date of the service neared, I found myself thinking about this picture more and more. Why? Because Dad and Dennis were best friends. A friendship that spanned 47 years.

That picture speaks to me of the strength of friendship. The quiet you share with a best friend. It also makes my think of my own BFF. We’re well on our way to a similar life-long friendship.

“A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.” ~ unknown

I’ve known BFF since seventh grade but it wasn’t until high school that our friendship developed. We’ve been friends for 30 years and counting.

How long have you known your BFF? Is there a quote that sums up your friendship?

Distracted

I’ve fallen off the proverbial wagon.

Perhaps, in part, because I didn’t take part in ROW80 last round. I love that challenge…the writing challenge that knows you have a life. And while it is great for accountability, I found myself actually writing less and just trying to keep up with the social media, the blog reading and commenting, and simply maintaining my blog.

And then it happened. Life. Things got crazy, priorities shifted, and the creative well hit a drought. I started doing Morning Pages in an attempt to at least write every day. Even that is hit and miss.

We’re back to stating our intent with ROW80 for the final round of the year. I’m on the fence. On one hand, the accountability is awesome. On the other, if I’m going to ever publish…I have to write.

As I mentioned Sunday, I have opened my WIP files for the first time in what feels like forever…which I know is closer to a month by the modify dates on the files, LOL.

The thing is, I have discovered from past experience that accountability goals are easier to do and meet when I’m drafting. Revisions and rewrites and edits, not so much.

That life thing, still crazy. Most of which I’m not in a spot to share. And I’m distracted.

Stands.

Dusts off bum.

Grabs the tailgate.