Does YOUR Cat Do This?

 

I find it strange, but The Hopper likes to lay on his back like this.

I've attributed it to the fact that he's 22 lbs., which in human terms is about 250. He must have a lot of strain on his back, so he finds laying directly on his spine takes some of the kinks out. He lays like this for hours at a time.

Is this normal? Brian says that he's never seen a cat do this, like this, for as long as he does...

Another freak in the family. Great. Just what we need. 

Jules, Pool Shark

Last weekend Brian and I went to Red Lobster for dinner. We sat there for a while and decided the smokeless bar would do (vs. waiting 45 minutes for a table), and we had good service and a halfway decent meal of seafood given the fact that we're 1,500 miles from any ocean.

While sitting there, an old (and I mean OLD) man came in and sat down and ordered some food to go. Sometimes people are so old, you feel compelled to make conversation with them. Well, this old man wasn't just any old man, he owns El Chepultepec, THE jazz club in Denver's LoDo (Lower Downtown)District. We talked a bit about music, and how long he'd owned the place (his Dad bought it in 1933), and I said "I wish there were more blues bars in Denver. I haven't found a good one yet." To which old man El Chepultepec said "Have you ever been to Ziggie's? It's right here in the neighborhood."

So, last night, Brian and I went there for a couple of drinks and to play pool. The blues band was very good, and as it turns out, Brian used to play there (in bands) years ago, and had some fun going down memory lane.

I beat Brian at about 9 of the 10 games we played. One game I even sunk the 8 ball on the break (you win if you do that). Then one guy came over and said loudly but very charismatically "I could beat you at pool". I said "Back it up." He went and sat down. Apparently he's a drunk who gets easily intimidated.

Then a guy named Richard came up and asked if he could play. Brian said "Sure, but you're playing my wife -- not me. I'm tired of losing, maybe YOU can beat her!"

Well, Richard and I played. I shot straight and beat him the first game. He said "You're pretty good, for a woman."

As you can imagine if you know anything about me, I hate that.

The next game, he beat me, then the next game, I sunk the 8 ball by accident and lost. We had half the bar watching us by the time this long game ended, and Richard was feeling pretty good that he was going to win gain. I had 4 balls left on the table while he shot at the 8. But, I came back to win it, even banking the 8 ball (not shooting straight into the pocket, but using one of the side rails to bounce the ball off of at a certain angle) and and it sunk into a specific pocket.

Richard was shocked. The guys at the table next to me were laughing as Richard said "wow, that hurt" (yeah, losing to a girl will do that, especially in public).

But he was a good sport. As I shook his hand when we left, Richard said, "You're good."

No qualifiers.

Thanks, Richard. That's more like it.

Mindless Mindfulness.

I am, what you would call a ruminator. I think, I think, and I think some more. My brother Jeff nailed it when he called us both "processors". We like to process stuff, sometimes to death. Then we want to flip it on its back and look at it some more.

I get a quote a day from thinkexist.com, (sorry for the tangent here, but speaking of irony, that's pretty much the story of MY life Think.Exist.Repeat). Often it has some quote about how life is better not finding the answers, how the trip is more important than getting there, Deep Thoughts like that.

There are days I think "Ah, great quote. I feel better having read that." Other days, I think "Communist. What a load of bull."

There are days I actually expect to find life's answers in all my little ruminating (and of course I don't, at least not for more than a minute before the feeling passes). There are days I take the more Zen approach to life and realize that it is, indeed, the road less traveled that makes the journey more fun.

But when presented with a problem or an idea, sometimes I overthink it on Spock-like levels. Because, I figure (where do I get this???) there should actually be an answer to most questions.

A lot of the time, I use my thinking for fun, including saving information that I get for future reference.

This causes me to called a geek by the occasional friend or co-worker. Like today at lunch, I pointed out that there are more calories in a cookie that's been baked, vs. the cookie dough, since the energy that goes into the baking of the cookie raises the caloric value of it.

Considering the fact that I've always liked cookie dough more than the actual cookie, this isn't just a fun fact, it's actually very, very good news.

Does that make me a geek?

We LOVE Being The Underdogs!

My home team, The Seattle Seahawks, are playing in Super Bowl XL in about 4 hours. I grew up with Steve Largent and Jim Zorn going duck hunting with my friend Darla Wylie's dad at the duck hunting grounds near our house in Skagit County.

We were kids with parents who never drove to Seattle for games, so I never saw Largent or Zorn play in person, but we rooted for them a lot anyway, given that they were the closest NFL team to our small farming community.

The Hawks were always lukewarm to cold at playing -- not red-hot like they are today. After 30 years, they've barely made it to the playoffs, a few times as the Wild Card team, but nothing close to Super Bowl heaven.

So this year, it's been an amazing thing to watch them play so well, to finally make it to The Big Game.

My sister sent me a Seahawks t-shirt just in time for today's game, and I'm actually nervous enough that I don't want to watch all the pre-game hype.

I find myself instead trying to find something else to do as Brian has gone out to play disc golf with a friend, perhaps feeling the same way I do.

I've played numerous scenarios out on Ghost Recon 2, cleaned up the dog poops in the back yard, and now I sit here blogging, waiting for the game to start.

There isn't much to say about the game -- the hype over The Steelers "Cinderella Story" this year has reached fever pitch, and I think even The Steelers are believing that they are the heir apparent to win this game.

But I know that is exactly what will give The Seahawks the best advantage -- no expectations of them to win.

In 1997, when the Denver Broncos surprised the Green Bay Packers, the whole world thought the Packers wouldn't, even couldn't lose this game. After a couple of humiliations, the Broncos went to their third that year knowing what it felt like to be spanked at the Super Bowl, so being an underdog was probably the best thing for them too.

I do think being the under-appreciated team going to the big game is the best position to be in. What a great surprise it will be if the Hawks can show up for this game and give Pittsburgh what they need: a ride home on the short bus.

GO HAWKS!

Oh Boy, I Feel A Tangent Coming On

Ok, this is like my fourth post today. I'm not sure if I should be high-fiving myself, or apologizing to my reader, that anonymous poster who said "Hey, your blog is hard to read."

There's a little danger in the web. Namely, if I wanted to suck all sorts of hours out of my life writing code (more specifically thumbing through my HTML for Dummies book), all I have to do is go out on the Internet and start looking for ways to change it.

It really began the day someone showed me I could put my friends' links on my Blog. I found the Template, found the code there, and a little lightbulb went on, dim at first, but today I saw all 100 watts: I can really MESS WITH THIS.

So, this will be under construction for a while...I'm going to mess with colors, pictures and all sorts of fonts til you don't know what you're going to see each day.

My inner geek just said YAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

James Frey -- The Ex Junkie Cashes In

Ya know, I haven't figured out why Oprah has her knickers in a twist over James Frey, and his "lies" in the memoir he wrote after going to rehab for God-Knows-What Drugs He Did.

I've worked with addicts at a company that does classes, counseling and drug testing for people who have been convicted of various drug charges and DUI.

Um, I figured out, that ADDICTS LIE.

And what they don't actually admit to lying about, may be a lie too.

And some of it they just can't remember.

Frankly, that poor guy, James Frey (and I only call him a poor guy, because I think he's stuck in a firestorm of media controversy that has about as much meaning and truth in it as George Bush's next "State of the Union" address). I think James Frey just wrote a book, figured it would sound better if it said "memoir" and went with it.

I mean, hasn't someone like Liz Taylor written a memoir about her seven or eight marriages and just said "they didn't work out?"

People who write "memoirs" aren't held to the same truth as a reporter following James Frey around and gathering the facts. It's a memoir -- as in MEMORY -- and that can be cloudy at best.

Sure, it would have been nice to know the guy was honest enough to tell the truth without embellishment, but who among us hasn't exaggerated a story here or there?

Yeah. That's what I thought.

Oprah, please move on, and hope this Frey guy doesn't turn back to drugs again after all this brouhaha that means absolutely nothing.

Some Days You Work, Work, Work,

Some days you do all this work, and feel like you've done nothing really.

Thank God my husband decided to take over the housework today. He swept, vacuumed, did a few loads of laundry, and even cleaned the fish tank AND the bathroom.

Meanwhile, I started to deal with a couple of major organizational problems we've had. Well, three.

When we meet with the director of Lutheran Family Services on Thursday, I wanted the house to at least look organized and clean, if not arranged exactly how it will be when a kid comes to live with us.

So first came the back bedroom. It's become something of a storage area since we don't have kids, and we use the front two bedrooms more because they've got better closet space and sewing room.

But I finally got back there today and discovered it wasn't as bad as I thought. It needs some dusting and arranging, but I took a few things out that we don't use, tucked a few things in the filing cabinet, and overall it looks good. Just getting rid of a few boxes, a step stool I don't use, and putting a few things away didn't take that long, but it looks so much better!

The other huge tasks I took on were organizing pictures & paperwork.

The pictures part was a pain in the patootie (thanks, I love alliterations too).

I first had to delete some pictures that I don't want to keep, then I had to burn a bunch of CDs, then I had to go through the burned CDs from months ago that had stacked up as I went through the fun of trying to learn HOW to burn a CD. More than half had files I couldn't open or weren't complete, so they got tossed.

THEN I had to organize my CDs in some sort of order. They've been so badly organized that I wasn't sure if I had everything or nothing of certain trips.

After a drive to Office Depot to buy some more CD sleeves and a new box to put them in, I labeled all of them, put them in nice piles by year, and discovered that I must have bought my digital camera in 2002.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Much better.

And then came the fun part of cleaning out my paperwork. I got this fabulous desk of my Grandpa's and it's quickly become an "out of sight out of mind" place to put paid bills and misc. mail I don't know what to do with. Just filing the bills, organizing the piles, and putting them away just feels so much better.

Some days I feel I haven't done anything...then I sit here and write it down and it feels like a lot.

Why don't I do this more often?

I have a friend who stays constantly organized. She says she just never puts something down where it doesn't belong. I don't even know what to think about that. Is it humanly possible?

Not for me.

There's This Couple I Know

Brian and I went to dinner at some friends' house last night. This couple is someone my husband has known for years, and I only met upon arrival in Colorado.

Brian had lost touch with Doug -- who always managed to find Brian again, usually by seeing Brian's "Clean Machine" (his van, which was anything but "clean").

One time, after having lost contact for a few years, Doug stopped by the house one night in the pouring rain, and that's when we found out they are practically neighbors of ours -- just living about a dozen blocks away.

We got together several months ago for Sunday brunch at our house, and I got to meet his wife Susan. Susan and I hit it off so well, it was one of those times when I came away from having company positively energized.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we kept missing each other to get together again, and we both had trips to Europe in the past year.

Last night, Brian and I went to their house for dinner, and it was another one of those amazing conversations. We talked a lot about our trips and shared experiences, and they enjoyed looking at a few of our pictures from our trip that we brought.

Like us, they've been dealing with some infertility issues, and have recently gone through some treatments for it. As we sat around the dinner table laughing and hooting over everything from sperm counts to the death of a regular sex life while trying to conceive, I just said "you know, it's a short list of friends of ours who can sit and talk and laugh about this kind of thing!"

They all laughed in agreement.

They are a fabulous couple, and again we came away from our evening together just happy to have had the time with them. After everything they've been through, including losing a daughter at almost full-term, they had become much more secluded, and they said this was really their first time to do something social in a long time.

It was so neat that they chose to spend that time with us. I know how hard it is to go out and feel normal again after a loss.

We are so blessed to have friends like them.

Change, Change and More Change

My cat Jack was laying around tonight on my husband, who was reclined on the couch with the remote control in his lap. Jack tried to lay his head down on the remote control, and I tried to move it and he stopped me, with his paw, as if HE has control of the remote in this family.

Ya know, sometimes I think we have enough control freaks -- we don't need the 10 lb. cat to be one too.

Brian's job will be ending soon. It's getting more difficult to do business as his boss has stopped paying the bills. It's getting uglier every day. I'm actually going to be relieved for him (and so is he) when it's finally over.

Meanwhile, we just refinanced the house (this is actually a good thing given Brian's job status is where it is, since we'll have all debt paid off and a lower house payment).

We also called Lutheran Family Services about starting the process to do foster-adopt.

The constant prospect of change of jobs, family status, financial dealings...it doesn't seem like much really, since a lot of good will also come out of it, but it's hard for me to endure big changes, particularly when they come all at once.

The beauty of getting older though, at least for me, is that I have a lot more patience with these things. I realize that I can't control it all, and that I don't even want to anymore. I remember looking at my grandmothers and how easy going they were late in life, and now I see the path on which I'm headed.

I still fight my own self on some things when it comes to patience. Patience is not a natural phenomenon in me, but a learned, practiced and gone-through-trial-by-fire acquisition of the most difficult kind.

I've always in my young adult life, gone through life at "Mach 3 with my hair on fire" -- in a good way -- driven by the most part, and very impatient with so-so results.

But now I find myself thinking that those results come whether you pace up and down the floor or not.

Here's to learning how not burning a hole in the carpet.

Thanks, Seahawks

After my Broncos lost to the Steelers today, it was a sad day at my house. Then, the Hawks played Carolina at home, and it brightened considerably.

If I had to choose between Denver or Seattle going to the Super Bowl, I'd be torn, but I'd probably have to go with the Seahawks, who have never been there before, and have had such a stunning season.

Good job Seattle! Congratulations!

I'm probably going to be the only person at work who won't be moping around all day.

So What Are YOU Doing Tonight?

My husband Brian has a Fantasy Football team owners' meeting tomorrow. His best friend has driven up from Pueblo (about 2 hours away), and he spends the night across town and parties with the boys the night before.

So, tonight I drove him over there so I could have the car and do some grocery shopping, etc. I also made arrangements with a friend to go watch the AFC and NFC Championship games.

I thought it was cute when Brian asked me what I was going to do tonight -- he had a tone to his voice that made it sound like I might be bored being by myself -- then he suggested I call a friend and invite her over.

No thanks.

I enjoy time alone in my house. I thought I'd sit down and blog tonight, get a glass of wine and maybe find a movie or something to watch later. I love spending time just surfing the web, gathering information about whatever I'm most recently curious about, and posting on the board I belong to with you, most of my readers.

I also have some more housework I could do, some sewing I need to work on...I'm never bored, that's for sure.

And I also have time to think about tomorrow's games...My Denver Broncos are playing the Steelers here at home, and my Seattle Seahawks (my adopted home town where I went to college and spent the first 15 years of my adulthood) are playing the Carolina Panthers. I could be in heaven or hell tomorrow -- if both my teams win, I'll be in heaven knowing that I will be happy with whomever wins the Super Bowl. If both my teams lose, I'm going to be losing my interest in football in a matter of minutes.

I even went and bought a Jake Plummer (QB for the Broncos) jersey today.

Ah, anticipation.

Adoption on My Mind

I requested a video called "Finding Forever Families" from the Dave Thomas Foundation (Dave Thomas was the owner/founder of the Wendy's hamburger chain, who was an adoptee, & started the foundation to promote adoption, particularly Foster-Adopt). I also got a small packet from Lutheran Family Services about infant adoption.

The video hit me the most. I tried to watch it on my DVD player on the computer so I could preview it before Brian saw it. Then, he's watching TV and says "WHATCHA DOIN?" so I told him, and we sat down and watched it together. It's aimed more at Social Workers to help them find ways to match foster kids with parents, so it wasn't a big pressure pitch to parents to adopt. But it was cool to see a bunch of kids and adults who were adopted and/or out of the system to see how they felt and thought about adoption. Not all of it was "rainbows and butterflies", but it was very moving.

The other packet was just the basic info for adoption for Lutheran Family Services, the agency we'll probably go through since they're so close by and very good in our community -- and they do both adoption and foster care services.

The thing the blew me away was how open I feel about adopting an older child -- even a MUCH older child than I was thinking of before.

Before, I was thinking "I don't NEED a baby...it'd be nice for all the reasons most people think of -- not having to deal with the same attachment problems & stuff that come with an older child and their baggage from neglect abandonment or abuse, etc.

But I started seeing these kids that are 10 and 12 years old who are still looking for real parents to be there for them, and I keep thinking "I could do THAT."

So, we'll see what Brian and I are up for and go from there. But for now, I just feel like I don't care what age or color the kid is...it just would feel so GOOD to give a kid a home who wants one with us, and their age, etc. shouldn't matter that much.

Tonight I feel like I have at all major turning points in my life...like I'm taking a leap of faith that's both scary and exhilarating at the same time.

Much to think about.

I Am NOT Safer...

I have felt for some time, as one little thing happens after another...that the very definition of FREEDOM in this country is at stake.

Then, Al Gore stood up today and said the President was willfully breaking the law in his pervasive wiretaps of Americans.

It was a surprise to me -- I thought "HEY! There he is! I haven't seen Al Gore in AGES!"

Then, more seriously, I thought a lot about what is being claimed. We have, as part of our Bill of Rights, an Amendment to the Constitution that is supposed to protect me against "unreasonable search and seizure".

Does that mean that anyone with a voice in the wilderness that speaks against the current government's actions should be investigated as "reasonable search" because I might be part of some greater conspiracy to bring down the government or do harm to the American People?

I don't think so.

I was talking to my nephew the other night, and he asked his Mom "Why The Iraqi War is important?" She thought "Well, this is a fun question, let's make Aunt Jules answer it."

So I got on the phone with him and explained that while I didn't think that we should have gone there in the first place -- now that we're there our job is important to bring freedom to a country that didn't have it before.

I explained what freedoms are -- Freedom to Assemble (I can go downtown with a giant sign with 1000 of my friends and say that I don't approve of the war). Freedom of Religion (freedom to go to church, synagogue, mosque, or NO church at all). Freedom of Speech (I should be able to say "I DON'T LIKE THE PRESIDENT'S POLICIES" without someone coming to my house, taking me out of it to jail or to shoot me).

Then I explained how people in that country could never vote for even a dog-catcher before, and now they were trying to vote for a government to make decisions about the stuff governments do -- healthcare, schools, budgets, all the exciting stuff 10-year-olds like my nephew think about.

I've been to Europe a couple of times recently. I understand other countries have more pervasive surveillance than we do. But we're not them. We're supposed to be free in a sense that even the French and British can't and don't emulate.

There is a price for giving up that freedom, and I know that more than anything, one of the reasons I stay here -- one of the reasons I sleep at night -- is knowing that the government has no right to knock down my door, listen to my phone conversations, or scan my e-mails, just because I might be a dissenting opinion.

I do not think for a moment that I am safer as a result of the President's disregard for the 6th Amendment. A judge could easily approve the legitimate wiretaps that need to be made, and the rest of us should be free to discuss what we want to, when we want to, on what media we choose.

I hope that Al Gore's statement is seen as the public service that it is.

Let the investigation begin.

Photo Fun

 

I spent a lot of time playing around with a photo of me today. I took one on the digital camera, then played with it on my Microsoft Picture It! program.

It still amazes me that just 10 years ago, heck, even 5 years ago, if I had taken a picture of myself, I would have had to wait until the roll was done, and take it to a store, where it would take a few days to come back.

Then, I would get the pictures back, and maybe 5 or 6 of the 24 pictures I took would be worth keeping.

It does amaze me how quickly technology moves. When I bought my first digital camera, it would have been about 2002, when I got a 2.0 megapixel Sony. Within a year, as we prepared to go to Europe, I HAD to have a 3.2 megapixel camera, since the 4.0 and 5.0 were more than I wanted to spend.

Today, I could buy a 5.0 megapixel camera for less than what I bought the 2.0 for years ago.

I love being able to play with images. I just played with my headshot so I could get a fun, but not very recognizable one for my new MSN account. By the time I was done I was feeling like quite the artiste.

Love it! 

GO BRONCOS!

 

Yes, Broncos Broncos Broncos.

Let me tell you a story. I was a young girl of about 16 when I first came to Denver to visit. My best friend from the 4th & 5th grades moved back out here with her parents to Brighton, and I flew out one summer to spend a week with her and her family. One of the last days I was here, her Dad drove us to Denver, and to Mile High Stadium we went.

It was 1983, and the rookie John Elway was signed to play for the Broncos -- and the town was so excited about the promise of the young Stanford alum.

I had never seen another NFL game, but I knew that the 22 or 23-year-old John Elway, in the eyes of a 16-year old, was quite the stud. So, I became a Bronco fan without really needing much encouragement.

I didn't live in Denver in 1997 and 1998, when they last won a Super Bowl. But due to my early exposure to Denver Bronco fanatacism, I was a huge fan of theirs already.

Tonight, here I am in my adopted Mile High City enjoying a simple playoff game.

We beat the 2-time champion New England Patriots tonight, in a nail-biting, Corona-drinking fest that has left me with a headache before I even go to bed.

But I'll suffer through any hangover, and the bare knuckles it took to consistently knock on wood (I'm very superstitious, so once something apparently silly appears to work, I keep doing it, like "knocking on wood" each time we're at the line of scrimmage, and talking directly at Tom Brady, who seemed to be able to hear me).

Call me OCD if you like.

But it worked.

Like a charm.

Days like this make me love football. 

Nobody's Business, Unless I Say So.

There is something that happens with people when they have children, particularly after they've had miscarriages and they know you have had miscarriages too. They seem to feel they have a license to ask you nosey questions about what you're doing, and what tests you've had, and what you're going to do "when or if" we decide to try again.

Even after I say "we're done trying", this particular person I'm ranting about thinks that somehow relating the fact that SHE had 3 losses too before popping out X number of kids in a row, that somehow I can or should do it too.

This person is not anyone from the support boards I belong to (so don't worry, my friends, you DO have more license to ask since we've all walked through hell together), but this person is an old friend of my husband's, who I've met all of a handful of times in my life. Upon some medical training, she decided to call me up this morning and pump me for information about what we're doing, all under the assumption that I need her help & support.

Now, I know it's well-intentioned...but this isn't about her intentions. It's about how it makes me feel. This is my blog, my vent, and here it is.

It has taken me a long time to accept the fact that I am not likely to pop out any biological children. I have worked on a lot of my feelings to arrive at peace with it, and have reflected on this for a very long time to come to the conclusion that I will NOT walk through fire (or any other miscarriages) to arrive at parenthood. Why is it that people whose experiences are different from mine can't accept that I am not on the same path as them? What is it about "It worked for me" that makes them think "It'll work for you"?

We do not all live parallel lives, and just because you've had an equal number of miscarriages with the same lack of medical explanation, does not make a magic bullet for it to work for me. We are biologically, emotionally and otherwise very different from each other, so twins we are not.

This gal is not the first, but by far is the most intrusive, primarily because I barely know her, but she seems to feel that her longstanding friendship from college with my DH somehow gives her license to call me up and ask.

I guess it's just one of those days where I wish people would mind their own damn business and not make my fertility part of theirs, particularly when they haven't been through these losses with me, or know me well enough to know that I'm not some victim of the medical establishment, but someone who has armed herself with all the knowledge I could and testing that one person can expect to withstand.

What probably upset me the most, was that I said "We're done, we're moving on, and looking into adoption," to which she started telling me about how THEY started looking into adoption too before they got their first pregnancy to stick, and how upset she was over the way the adoption agency gave lists of how much it cost to adopt kids of different racial backgrounds, etc. etc.

I don't need to hear how adoption was so upsetting and scary. If that's your experience, fine. I ALREADY KNOW it's a scary proposition, and that difficult decisions must be made. CONGRATULATE me that I've even gotten this far, or just put a sock in it.

OK, I'm done. Next time I'll just say "would you like to talk to DH?" so at least it's not me answering any questions.

Some people.

DSL or Adoption?

I'm not sure which is the bigger news tonight. The fact that I got DSL hooked up in my house, or that my husband finally, finally, made a commitment to adopting a child.

Now, you may ask: "Is she insane? Of course adoption is a bigger deal."

However, the adoption will take place if and only if all paperwork gets done and hoops get jumped through. So, it still feels, well, theoretical.

We agreed tonight -- upon deciding to re-finance the house -- to take a little extra money to start an adoption fund. That was a big decision, and one that I'm sure I'll understand the gravity of in the future. One might even call it a miracle.

This theoretical miracle was only competed with by a more immediate one. After seeing a Qwest representative at my doorstep on Monday, I thought I was set to go (Why is it that the Qwest techies always really nice dopey guys who want to chat, whose only credential is a scratched-up ID tag, but who other wise look like they might try a home invasion robbery?). But alas, the DSL line hookup didn't work, so I called the 800 number...then got blown off yesterday when they said they'd be at my house between 1 & 5 p.m. (WHO KEEPS THOSE HOURS?) and then finally showed up today -- a day late, but fortunately, armed with the ability to fix the problem at no charge to me.

Upon hookup, (I had a solid green light on the DSL modem) I couldn't get into the system, and that's when miracle #2 involving Qwest occurred: I called the 800 number again, and got someone who COULD ACTUALLY HELP ME! I talked to "Dan" for almost 30 minutes while he walked me through the various IP addresses, codes and passwords, to finally download MSN to my computer and be able to freely access the internet.

Now, I have the ability to download an episode of Desperate Housewives off of iTunes while talking on the phone with my mother, sister, or anyone else who calls me. That, to me, is something of a miracle in and of itself.

So, big developments at the house tonight.

Good ones, all.

I talked to a friend for the first time...

I've known Tammy for a long time now -- at least a couple of years if not three.

One of my Sistas from the pregnancy loss board I belong to, Tammy lives in Canada and like me, has been through a lot.

She's one of a few gals from the board that I think is living a parallel life with mine, as we have learned so much about each other and our relationships, that we often get to laugh at how similar we are in temperament, personality and all sorts of other ways.

Tammy had surgery recently, and after not hearing from her to know she was ok, I called her house in Canada, and was pleasantly surprised to find out she had just gotten home the night before.

We talked for about 20 minutes, and I was amazed at how comfortable I was talking to her in person. I guess just thinking "I've never spoken to her in real life before", that it would be somehow odd to finally do so.

What a pleasure it was to hear her voice, and to know that she was ok. Her voice sounded strong and healthy -- even though I had nothing to compare it to. It felt like I was calling my sister -- or someone else I've known my whole life.

I love it when stuff like that happens.

You can visit Tammy's blog at: http://canonlyimagine.blogspot.com/

Just Call Me Jules, Bs.D.

 
 

OK, The belly-button contemplation is over.

For now.

I had something of an epiphany today.

A gal I know was complaining about something so trivial, so small, and so insignificant (I think that about covers it) and I wasn't in the mood to indulge this behavior, so I remained, for the most part, silent.

In a small rant to another friend, I said something along the lines of: "I have so many friends going through so much right now, and the anniversary of my last miscarriage is tomorrow, that listening to this person bitch is GRATING on me."

I had a favorite teacher in high school (and he was a favorite before he said this), who one day said "Peterson, you're a Bullshit Detector".

I took it as a huge compliment, since I figure people who can know bullshit when they hear/see/smell it are probably quite outstanding, if not just plain smart. I'm not sure if I qualify on both fronts, but nonetheless, I'm proud of this distinction.

Hypocritical as it may be sometimes (I know I complain about what life has dealt me when there are plenty of people out there that have lost much more), I also feel I have a certain amount of perspective. I am at least aware of the fact that my problems in life, for the most part, are relatively minor. No one I love has been killed by a serial killer, tsunami, or suicide bomber. So, on the whole, I don't think I really have a lot to bitch about.

In fact, I have small miracles that occur every day. My husband often walks to the bus stop to meet me with our dog, Lucy to walk me home. He cooked me dinner. I almost cried when I heard Shania Twains "From This Moment On" on my new iPod as I waited for the bus.

I know I am lucky. I have a job, a house, a fabulous spouse, and many other reasons to live life to the fullest.

I guess that's why I get a little pissed when I hear other people gripe, not just occasionally, mind you, but blindly criticizing every wrong that's been done to them, without thinking of other explanations other than it being a personal affront to them.

Sometimes I say something, sometimes I don't.

But my friend today joked about my "Bullshit Detector" comment and said "Your name is "Jules M., BSD" and I had to laugh.

So I'll go ahead and claim it. With no advanced degree to my name, I sound like I have one now.

Jules, Bs.D.

Why Can't I Be Like Bart Simpson?

Lately I haven't been sleeping well.

Last night, for example, I went to bed around 11:30 -- late for me -- and figured I'd sleep well through the night. Well, I woke up at 3:30 a.m. and tossed and turned for almost 2 hours before being able to sleep again.

I know why...

I've had a lot on my mind lately. The anniversary of my last loss is coming up on Friday, my husband is probably going to lose his job by the end of the month if things keep going the way they are at his work, and the money woes that could come from that alone are enough to keep me awake at night.

I'm also bored. Bored is not good for me. I'm a woman of action -- any time you want something done, I'm your go-to person. I'm also a self-described control freak, so I like to do things in part because it's me doing it. Not having control over things like someone else's job status or the uncertainties of family planning is not easy for me, because there is nothing I can really do except wait on both fronts.

I have a quilt I should be working on right now, but I don't feel like it. This is almost more disturbing than the sleep problem. But then I realize that that, at least, is normal and something I've been through before, but I usually enjoy the creative outlet of sewing, and right now I just don't have it in me to do more than a little every few days. I've made about 6 or 7 quilts this year alone, and I know that sometimes I just need to take a break and sew when I'm ready.

The other stuff is out of my control, and I am not patient about waiting for things to happen "to" me.

I just find myself asking a lot of questions right now -- like "what the heck is next in terms of having a family?" and the deeper existential stuff like "Is this all there is to life?", or better yet and more to the point "What IS the DAMN PLAN?". Not to mention "Is there a God really -- and does He/She/It/They give a crap about me?" Because there are days when I just feel a complete disconnect there, and that bothers me too. Sometimes it just seems like it should be more complex and therefore more interesting than my day-to-day existence would imply.

I keep waiting for the lightbulb in my head to create some enlightenment so I can say "AHA!" and just have it figured out. Then I read some stupid quote like "It's not in the knowing, it's in the questions..." or something like that. Well, I do beg to differ. Either that or I'm a genius because I'm sure as heck asking a lot of questions.

Sometimes I remind myself of Lisa from The Simpsons, and an episode where she sits on a hilltop contemplating the big stuff in life, like the Zen riddle: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" and Bart just barges in and says "Oh, that's easy," and proceeds to slap his fingers against the palm of his same hand, to make that gentle noise that comes from it. She's horrified, because of course it's not a deep or real answer, but it's real to Bart.

I feel like Lisa, but wish somedays I could just be Bart.

I had some fun googling (actually, I used YAHOO), the One Hand Clapping quote, and this was my favorite site on the subject: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_049

Ruts, and the people who live in them

It's midnight, Jan. 1...almost time for Jan. 2 to roll over, a day of 2006 already gone.

I partied until 3 a.m. last night, had the foresight to take a couple of aspirin and drink some water to avoid the Pulsing Hangover, and only slept about 6 hours.

Today, I wish I could say I achieved much. But, alas, 3 loads of laundry, some breakfast, watching football and a 5-hour nap from 4 p.m. to about 9 tonight did nothing but throw off my sleep cycle. I started to clean out a closet of clothes I don't wear, but didn't finish the job. I did clean out some computer files of unwanted photos, but that's hardly an accomplishment, considering this computer is all of 6 months old.

I didn't work on the quilt, didn't walk the dog, and ate a very bad lunch of a rather gigantic cheeseburger and tater tots, in honor of my good friend, Napoleon Dynamite.

I'm amazed at what a rut I can get into. I always notice it when I do something different, like leave Denver's beltway for a road trip into the mountains that I've waited longer than I should have to venture out.

In the past, I've prided myself on being different -- spontaneous for sure. If you call me and ask me to go hang-gliding, I'd probably say no, but if you want to hike a new trail, leave the state for an adventure somewhere new, or check out something I'd never seen before like a rodeo, I'd say yes.

I know I'm not as boring as this weekend so far would imply, but it sure felt like it.

Sorry to not have a good "walk-off" tonight. Apparently I'm too lazy for that this weekend as well...

"I Love It When A Plan Comes Together"

 


I don't remember the name of the guy in that old "A-Team" TV show from the 1980s, but I remember they'd get into all sorts of mission impossible situations, then as the happy ending finished, the Colonel would say "I love it when a plan comes together."

Despite my complaining, and my worry over spending a lot of money on a party, we had a GREAT time last night with our New Year's bash. Several people who were "maybe's" for showing up (depending on whether they could get a last-minute sitter) were able to make it. We ended up with about 20 people over, and had a lovely time. Everyone stayed until about 1:30 a.m., and one friend stayed the night to avoid driving home after drinking.

This morning we got up and had breakfast with her, then I've spent the day sitting around, going through closets, and checking the score on my husband's Fantasy Football SuperBowl game, where he's playing as the defending champion.

I do like being at the top of the calendar, and it's always fun to welcome in the new year with good friends, and I'm lucky to have many of those. 

New Year, New Plans

 


I used to love New Year's. Not that much, not like Halloween where you can dress up. But it used to mean a fresh calendar, fresh starts.

In 7 days, it will be the anniversary of my last pregnancy loss. I feel a little funny about the fact that I didn't try to get pregnant again this year. We just didn't have it in us anymore.

In some ways, it'll be nice to get to that milestone and just have a full year of no pregnancies and therefore no losses -- which have plagued us three times in three years.

I'll be glad to just be not looking forward to another round I guess.

Which brings us to "what's next?"

I told my husband the other night I was a bit sad over the New Year holiday because it means another year has passed, and we still don't have a family other than ourselves. No progress for me is not something I take sitting down. "Driven" is often a word I imagine people using to describe me. When I want something, I generally go get it--whether it's through hard work or just plain sheer determination. Which is why this whole nightmare has been so hard on me I guess -- more than my husband. I am a bit spoiled in thinking that I CAN have what I want if I just try hard enough.

But alas, having a biological child probably isn't in the picture for us. So we have to decide what else to do. And we'll get there. Hopefully sometime this next year we'll start taking steps.

I guess in a way, that does make this next calendar a fresh start...in a whole new direction.

Blessings to everyone, may you get what YOU want in the New Year, whether it's peace, quiet, love or at the very least, the absence of hard times. 

Merry Christmas From The Hopper

Find The Kitty 

We put up the fake tree this year, mostly because this was our other cat's first Christmas, and all I could visualize is him climbing the tree and knocking it down with all my great-grandmother's ornaments on them.

So, up went the ornaments that either a) rolled but were expendable or b) didn't roll and weren't breakable.

Jack liked to bat down the bulbs and roll them around the living room, mostly when we were asleep or at work. Then we'd come to find an ornament under the desk, behind the entertainment center or just laying around.

I'd put them back on the tree, a little higher this time, and slowly our tree started to look like Brian and I were too lazy to put ornaments on the bottom 2 feet of the tree.

But the Hopper just likes to hang out underneath the tree. He likes to hide where he can watch things and be hidden from view.

He's going to be bummed when the tree comes down.

What Should I Do Today?

The Mess On My Dining Room Table 

The mess on my dining room table is pretty much representative of how my day went yesterday. Here's a sampling of my mess and why it shows I had a great holiday:

1) Music tapes I brought in from the car -- realizing that never again will I have to play my cassette deck in the Subaru, now that I have an iPod with all the music I own and an iGo adaptor to play it through the radio, Bob Marley, The Cars, and all my favorite compilation tapes are no longer needing to ride shotgun with me.

2) My Address Book -- I found out my iPod synchs with my Outlook address book, so I put all my favorite people's addresses and phone books into Outlook and voila' -- it' in my iPod too. Now I can be at work without this big bulky address book, and if I want to call a friend or send a card to a friend during my lunch break, I can do it easily without waiting til I get home and look up their information.

3) Mostly eaten M&Ms -- DH and I went to see Narnia yesterday -- I love the tradition of getting off the couch, going to the movies on Christmas and eating popcorn and M&Ms. A little known fact is that if you pour the M&Ms directly INTO the popcorn, the salt+sweet treat is exactly that -- a real treat.

4) 2005 and 2006 Calendars -- I pulled out the 2006 Yellowstone calendar I bought last summer while on a long roadtrip, and down came the old 2005 calendar. Thinking that I would start writing down birthdays, anniversaries, and the like, I quickly discovered that I didn't even write my own birthday down on the 2005 calendar last year. Not that I need reminding, but it helps everyone , ahem, in the house recall each other's birthdays precisely. This year I resolve to write down people's birthdays, including my friends who usually don't get a card because I fail to remember their birthdates.

5) Jack In The Box antenna decoration. I don't remember if I have ever seen a Jack In The Box restaurant here in Denver, but they were quite popular in Seattle. I want to put him back on my car, but I'm afraid he'll get stolen. Oh well...at least he won't be rolling around at the bottom of my storage console in my car anymore. That would be bad feng shui.

6) Cookies, more cookies. I feel lucky to have "only" gained a few pounds this past week. Cookies at work, cookies came out of my oven, cookies came in the mail from my sister-in-law.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas. Now I need to go clean my house for the New Year's party we're having.

It's Christmas -- Dogs Are Allowed On The Couch

Lucy & Julie 

My dog Lucy is very jealous of Jack, our kitten who comes and sleeps with us every night. You can see the look on her face every time one of the cats jumps on our laps.

Last night Lucy came up to me, and I completely surprised her -- I invited her up to lay on the couch with me. She looked surprised, and when Brian came over to pet her, she wasn't sure if she was going to get kicked off the couch or not. But before long, we were both sleeping. I actually heard her snore.

I know she gets on the couch at night when we're asleep. More than once I've heard her get down when I've woken up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. She has that telltale guilty look that she gets, but at least she knows to move.

But yesterday was Christmas. Dogs are allowed on the couch on Christmas, even when I'm looking.

Same video, new way of hearing and seeing it

It's amazing to me...sometimes I think I'm getting old and other times I realize that I'm doing a halfway decent job of keeping up with new technology.

Brian bought me a new iPod for Christmas and I've had so much fun downloading all the music from our library onto it. I decided I didn't need all his freaky World Music stuff -- I kept one album of Turkish phenom Yildez Tilbe, and one of a French musician, but otherwise kept it pretty much "what I like."

I downloaded a video too -- I wanted to see what a TV show would look like on my iPod. I picked out the pilot episode of Desperate Housewives, if for no other reason that to keep from looking like a complete idiot when my friends talk about the show.

Seventeen hours later (yes, 17) after I started downloading the video on my dial-up, it was finally done. It ripped onto my iPod from my computer in about 6 seconds, and before I knew it I was staring at the screen and watching a little teeny TV show on my new toy.

During this long wait, in addition to watching The Denver Broncos beat our nemesis Oakland Raiders yesterday, having dinner and getting 9 full hours of sleep, I also loaded a DVD onto my computer to see if I could get it onto iTunes to show on my iPod (I can't). I watched the first half hour of Lost In Translation on my computer and realized that I was staring at the screen with rapt attention.

Perhaps it was just seeing it on a different screen -- more high definition that my TV -- but it struck me today how some media work well on certain screens, some don't.

One of my pet peeves with new software is that they don't just send you the book anymore -- I had to download it and read it on-screen for my new iPod. Before long, I realized there was no way I would read 69 pages of a manual online, and printed it, three-hole punched it, and put it in a binder.

I guess Old School sometimes still works in certain circumstances.

Merry Christmas

I took the plunge

I did it. I managed to fill out 25 Christmas cards, print an honest-to-God newsletter and some photos, and address them all.

And it's only 11 p.m.

I wasn't going to do this...but somehow I got sucked into the vortex of Christmas once again.

And Charlie Brown said he didn't like the commercialism of Christmas. Meanwhile, for some reason, I feel better knowing I'm getting a big fat present next Sunday.

It's like a race -- not just one where the field is even -- one where I'm happy to get spit out at the end and have survived intact. With the iPod I picked out in November.

Yeah. I probably shouldn't waste bandwidth on this post, but here I am in all my glory.

Merry Christmas everyone.

There are days like these...

When the President of the United States opens his mouth and all I can think in my head is "Oh. There he goes again. I wonder if he says stuff and really believes it, or if he's just trying to talk himself into believing this big lie too."

I wish this war was over. I wish it had never started.

I realize we can't just walk away, or it would be worse than staying.

But I hate the reasons it started.

As I saw on a sign at a protest in New York when I was there last summer...

"George Bush hijacked our grief and flew it into Iraq."

Sometimes The Lights Just Come On...

Let A Candle Light My Way 

I have a friend IRL who is having some serious financial problems, and I felt so bad for her. She didn't ask for anything, but I knew she was in some serious stuff, and with Christmas coming she didn't have anything to buy gifts and the basics for Christmas. A few of us friends chipped in a few bucks to help ease the load, and it felt good to do.

Just after I got back from that -- I was sitting at my computer when something in the house blew. My computer went black, the TV shut down and most of the lights went out.

Since we had heat, we didn't worry about it too much -- Brian went out to the circuit breaker box and started flipping switches -- but nothing happened. Uh oh.

Then, we were making do with what was left of our power, and I was thinking "Wow, what good timing. The last load in the dryer was done, the dishwasher was just finishing up, and well, at least the refrigerator's still running and the heat's on."

I had even started baking a double batch of chocolate chip cookies and the oven shut down just as a batch was ready to come out of the oven. My husband hustled to plug the fish tank in to one of the remaining outlets, and we thought we were at least just stuck with calling an electrician tomorrow.

But then, something else blew, and we sat in the dark. This was bad. It was 9* outside, and in serious danger of freezing our asses off overnight. I thought of the minimum $500 bill to get a new breaker box outside (we figured that's where the problem was since only half the power was out), and great. Just before Christmas.

We quickly talked over what to do. Brian said I had to prepare myself for a big die-off in the fish tank (I've never been around for one of those), and we decided we'd load the dog and cats and take them over to a friend's house and just stay there overnight if we had to.

About 20 minutes later, my husband was on the phone talking to our friend about that, and I was running around finding candles and lighting them. I walked out of the house and "BING!" It's back!

The weird thing is, I didn't panic about it. I thought about my friend who was struggling just to feed herself and her kids, and I thought that my problem was really temporary and minor -- expensive, sure -- but fixable.

Sometimes it takes a big power outage to make you count your blessings and realize that life is pretty good if you have gas and electricity. We are a simple people, really.

I have to go bake the rest of those cookies now.

Jack's Fun Nip

Jack Has Already Opened HIS Present! 

All my friends are sending and posting pictures of their kids for Christmas.

Cute, cute, cute, all of it.

But I don't have kids, so I tried to get my two cats SOMEWHERE near the Christmas tree. The only thing that worked was to put catnip in a stocking and let them go for it.

This was the picture I took after the party was over.

Now Jack has the munchies and is over eating out of the Hopper's bowl, and the Hopper is too flyin' to care.

American Idiot

There are a few things as I approach middle age that give me some sort of comfort.

One is seeing where I've been, and one is knowing there is still unchartered territory. Tonight I got a chance to see a little bit of both.

I went out with a friend to a martini bar in Denver. The crowd was young, but not tooo young -- a mid-twenties crowd for the most part. The DJ and corresponding music video played a lots of '80s hits -- from Madonna to Van Halen. I had a moment when I enjoyed the fact that I finally had long hair to toss around for the '80s hair bands of my time.

I felt a little old as I watched some of the young girls dancing -- realizing that they were probably hearing Def Leppard as a "classic" and not being cognizant of the band the first time they came out.

But then I got in the car to drive home, and my latest favorite band came on the radio -- Green Day. I didn't feel so old as suddenly I realized that I simply enjoy their music so much and realize why everyone from my 14-year-old niece to me loves them. She has a crush on Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day -- not realizing that he's closer to my age than he is to hers -- with 15 albums under their belt, Green Day's American Idiot album is just one of many that illustrates the depth of a great band that's been around for a long time.

As a result, they have anthems of youth that reach into middle age:

"Wake Me Up When September Ends"

"Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends...

Here comes the pain again
Falling from the stars
Drenched in my pain again
Becoming who we are.

As my memory rests
but never forgets what I lost
Wake me up when September ends..."

Thanks Billy Joe.

J

A Calvin & Hobbes Classic

Calvin & Hobs Classic 

I just loved this series of C&H cartoons. Click on it and see the bigger version...it's hilarious.

A Treasure of Mine

Sew Sew 

I don't own a lot of things that could not be replaced, but my old 1960 Singer is one of those things.

Grandma put me on phone books so I could reach the table -- when I was about 7 years old, at this very machine.

Aside from replacing one belt and some of the small rubber rings that help me load the bobbin, nothing has ever broken on this machine.

I've taken it apart a million times, cleaned it, oiled it, and it just keeps going.

I think about buying a new one, but I wonder -- would I ever really use it?

This machine was given to my mother as a wedding gift when she got married. She gave me a hard time about taking it with me -- but in all reality, she didn't know how to sew much anyway, so I bought her a replacement, and then gave her Grandma's old Singer when Gram died this year. Finally, I don't hear any more grief about taking Mom's machine.

Heck it hasn't been hers for more than 30 years. I stole it. But I use it, and I use it well. It's hard to think of it as anything but irreplaceable. I've even thought if there was a fire, what would I take with me? That machine would probably go out the window with me before much else did.

What a treasure.

I See Old People

Lately I've been doing a fair amount of people watching. The bus ride to work in the morning will do that to a person. But I also get a lunch hour out on on the main street of town, and that's where I see most of what I've been noticing.

With a double tall latte and a view from my perch outside Starbucks, I see old people.

I've always been someone who thinks ahead in age. I don't know why, but when I was 9 I was excited to turn 10 because it was a double-digit number. Of course at 13 we all wanted to be 16, and when we were 19 we could hardly wait to be 21.

Now, I look at old people and think "wow, if I'm lucky I'm going to be that age."

I'm approaching 39, which means 40 ain't far behind...I guess it's just one of those midlife thoughts that go through one's head: "How old will I live to be?"

I wonder if people in their 50s feel the same panic and exhiliration that I do over getting older. If everything goes well, my life is ONLY half over.

I find it interesting to watch the little old ladies and men get on and off the bus. I wonder how they feel -- do they feel as old as they look? Life suddenly has started to appear very short to me. Did they realize their hopes and dreams in their relatively short time on this planet?

I think I'm only comforted by the fact that artists like Georgia O'Keefe didn't start painting until she was in her late 40s. And what a beautiful painter she turned out to be.

Yeah, feeling midlife come on is kind of like another teenager-hood. I realize how life is so short that one wants to make the most of whatever time is available. I wonder sometimes how mine will be used.

Hmmmmm.

Standing in Someone Else's Shoes

Rail Fence Quilt 

In a million years, I never would have put these fabrics, this rail fence quilt pattern and these colors together.

But I did it anyway.

I took a friend, who's 7 months pregnant, to the fabric store last weekend. I make my closer friends quilts for their babies, and lately there've been a lot.

She had some ideas for the quilt -- that she wanted to do a "jungle theme", and wanted greens, browns, reds and blues in it. When we got to the fabric store, she picked out the fabrics and we headed out to lunch.

I asked her a couple of times if she REALLY wanted this pattern -- it's so simple I put it together in a matter of a few days. She fortunately is one of those people who know so little about quilting that anything looks complicated. :)

So, I went ahead and did it. As I was putting it together, I wasn't thrilled with it, but then it started to come together, and I started to like it.

Now that the top is done, I think it's great.

It always amazes me how my taste in fabric and patterns is so different from others. It always amazes me how if I don't fight someone else's taste and just do what they ask for, how I can see the beauty of their preferences after it's done and I can see the whole picture.

What a metaphor for life, huh?

Too often, I think what I do, and the way I do it is the right way -- or at least the best way. But oftentimes I shortchange myself by thinking so narrowly.

Live and learn, Gram always said.

Amen.

Forget the Catnip, Silly Cat Pictures

Cat In A Box 

This morning I went into the spare room to find another box. The small Amazon.com box I had wasn't big enough to fit the small quilt I was mailing, so I decided to get another one. As I walked into the bedroom, there was The Kitten Hopper, my 20-lb. bohemoth cat sitting in the tiny box. I had to snap a picture of it, then realized that on this one disk of pictures, I have several of The Hopper in a box. He just loves those confined spaces.

I think he'd take an hour in a box over catnip.

What a freak.

Quote of the Day

"All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt."

- Charles M. Schulz. American cartoonist, 1922-2000

All I can say is "Amen, Brutha."

Thanksgiving

Some of My Favorite People 

My in-laws recently sent their collection of photos to us from our trip to Paris. This one is the last one they took that night we all went out to dinner together, and it has some of my most favorite people in it -- Mom, Aunt Kathy, my father-in-law Armin (one of the most fabulous people ever) and my husband Brian (also one of the most fabulous people I know).

When I think of all the things I'm thankful for, I find myself thinking of my family first, and the other people in my life.

I don't need "things" much. I drive a 10-year-old Subaru, have an old house in constant need of attention, and do without the usual suspects of technology like DSL and cell phones, in part because I love to have moments like this picture captured -- of trips to Paris and wherever else a plane might take me. If travel is a "thing" then I guess I need that, but otherwise I think my life is pretty simple.

I am so thankful today for my family. I have three brothers and a sister -- no two of us are alike, and yet we love each other to death, are great friends, and are fiercely protective of each other. I have a Mom who I can tell almost anything to -- who still says "I love you Pumpkinhead" when she says good-bye on the phone.

I am so thankful that I am married to the love of my life, Brian. When I think of all we've been through in the past 8 years, it amazes me that we can still be silly together, have fun together, and be each other's best friend.

I have a cat named Jack who comes and sleeps right between us all night -- and other pets in the house who all complete our little household.

I live in a great city, and have a job I like right in the heart of it. I love living in a vital, growing city at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.

I have a gift or two -- one of being able to be creative and make quilts. I love to give them away.

Yes, I have much to be thankful for, including my freedoms, my faith, and my many friends here and elsewhere.

Despite my previous post of not wanting to celebrate, I couldn't help but shut up, take stock, and realize that despite not getting EVERYTHING I want, I have much to be thankful for. So I went to the grocery store, bought a small turkey, and decided we're having a traditional meal even if it's just the two of us. I can smell the pumpkin pie baking as I type this, and I think Brian is happier knowing he's going to be eating cranberries and turkey today.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

One of my favorite cartoons

Dilbert Is A Genius 

Dilbert is one of my favorite cartoons. Maybe it's because I'm enough of an inner geek at heart that I get the engineering jokes. Maybe it's because like most people, we run into ineffectual middle management suckups in our daily life, and can't help but identify with his plight.

I copied this off of a Dilbert calendar I had one year a long time ago. I laughed so hard then, I put it on my fridge.

I can still laugh at it now.

Over a cup of coffee.

Why I Hate Thanksgiving

It's such a harmless holiday, I mean really -- most days of the week I can easily name 5 things that I'm thankful for without really having to think very hard. I'm blessed with a loving husband, a warm home, a job, fun pets and the ability to bake a mean chocolate chip cookie.

But Thanksgiving just makes me mad. Not cuckoo mad, although maybe that will follow someday.

It is the due date of my first baby -- my first loss, my first promise of parenthood that has just turned into absolutely nothing.

This year, my baby should be turning 3.

So, I've had the blues this week. I decided in advance that Thanksgiving will be spent not trying to do more than cook a non-traditional meal, watch some football, and bake a pumpkin pie for my husband. To do more just seems that I'm forcing myself to celebrate a day that in all reality, I dread.

This whole holiday season feels wrong to me. Last Christmas and New Year's, I was pregnant for the third time, and still, I have no children to celebrate with because I lost that one too.

So pardon the pity party, but I won't be celebrating much this year. I'll try and keep myself busy, I'll even get a Christmas tree, but I'm in no mood to wish happy holidays in heaps on anyone.

It feels better just to have said it here.

We're Supposed to be the GOOD GUYS

World War II relic seen at Paris' Army Museum 

Warning: Political post, little if anything funny about it.

I saw this picture when we were in Paris. After going to "Les Invalides" - the equivalent (but much nicer) of a Veteran's hospital and church where Napoleon is now buried, we headed on to the War Museum.

As Rick Steves says in a book "Democrats will enjoy about 2 hours there, Republicans 4 hours, Republican Men: All day." I lasted about an hour, so I don't know what that makes me. A little Pinko, perhaps? Nah.

I was an avid history student in college, and had a favorite professor whose Ph.D. was in German Military Warfare, so I took all his courses on World War I and II. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the different relics from the war in Paris and London this time, but this piece of paper struck me. If you click on it, you can read the text of it is a guarantee that any prisoner who surrenders to a U.S. troop member will be humanely treated, and that U.S. personnel is to bring that prisoner to their nearest commissioned officer.

It reminds me of times past when we were the good guys in a just war. Now, it sickens me that we could even be questioned about how we are fighting this war in Iraq, and how we are treating the prisoners -- whether it's within Iraq or not.

Given that GWB's rating is now at an all-time low, I figure I will now only be offending 37% of the population, most of whom I probably don't want to know anyway, and as of yesterday 60% of the people think GWB is doing a bad job. Meanwhile, the White House said "We don't set policy based on polls."

Yeah, we also don't listen to anybody -- no matter how bad the numbers get, or what accusations are thrown at us.

But, I digressed.

There can be no justification for mistreating prisoners. After watching some of a British Broadcasting journlist heading through Iraq early in the war, and seeing how the people are increasingly resentful of our occupation, this whole war just sickens me more each day.

It's just not right. No matter how loud and how often He says it is, I still think of that B.C. comic where the villager says "The King is a Fink."

We Were ALL This Cute At One Point...

Me at 2 Years Old 

A really greasy guy got on the bus yesterday. He thankfully sat near the front, reeking of whatever it is the street does to you when live there and don't have a chance to shower.

What was amazing to me is that despite his thoroughly weathered appearance, his spirits were up, and a woman got on the bus and sat next to him, and he began to talk.

The woman knew him -- she looked like she might know him from her volunteer work at a shelter or somewhere else he went, and was happy to chat with him.

It struck me at the moment the man said he was almost 50 (he looked much older) that "Wow, he was somebody's baby at one time."

Then it struck me how little we realize that we were all cute toddlers, precocious pre-schoolers and rambunctious kindergartners at one time. How quickly our lives change into so many different things.

So often when the world doesn't work out to be what we want, it's almost a joke how often people turn to blame their parents for messing them up.

But when do we thank our parents for what they did right?

I think of how my parents were so poor, and yet they loved us dearly, disciplined us, and expected much of us. I realize without that TLC that I could have easily ended up on the street or worse -- dead before my time.

Thanks to my Mom and Dad has been said in person -- but I have to say it here. Their love and example did much for me, even made me sensitive to others and the outside world. And it helped me today in recognizing that even smelly guys on the bus used to be somebody's baby too.

I'm a "pretty girl"

I used to be cute, maybe even considered pretty at some point. Now, I'm not sure what to think.

While I don't think I was ever the type of beauty who would win pageants (not that I'd ever try), I had a certain amount of confidence from college well into my thirties that I was at least not average or below average. Call it pride, call it vanity, we all have a little -- or at least I would hope we do.

Of course the decline first came when the youngest of adult men stopped looking at me with the same interest. There's always that first time in your late 20s when a teenager calls you "Ma'am" and it rips your guts out. But somewhere, sometime, enough crow's feet showed up in my smile that I get a look, but it's almost a telling registration on their face as they see I'm not some 20-something cutie pie, and I am dismissed.

I think up til now I've taken it with a fair amount of grace. I mean, I don't really need anybody chasing after me anyway since I'm happily married and all that. But you know, it's nice to be seen as attractive, especially in having the first right of refusal.

Well, today somebody made my day.

I was waiting for the bus, which came on time, but as I boarded it, the bus drive started a diatribe (and I mean, officially "going off") about how late he was.

Turns out he was the earlier bus, but had a breakdown and had to get a new bus. The lady who normally drives me to work was hot on his heals, and he was in a blind rush to get downtown and to the end of his route. I started to feel lucky that he even stopped for me, after he blew by a couple of people waiting for the bus under the assumption that they would catch the next one that was close behind.

Well, tonight I got on the bus again to go home, and one of the guys who was on the Morning Tirade Bus sat down near me and said he recognized me from this morning's ride. I said "Yeah, that guy was on fire, wasn't he? I felt lucky he stopped for me at all when I saw him blow by those people at Federal (Blvd.)"

The guy said "Well, I felt lucky he stopped for me, since it was pretty obvious he was only stopping for the pretty girls like you."

Awwwwwww. How sweet.

I'm a pretty girl to some stranger, and he doesn't even know he made my day.

I feel the urge to curtsy: Can I STOP reading Jane Austen now?

I just finished Jane Austen's book, "Pride & Prejudice".

This is my third English Lit book from the early-mid 19th Century, and I have pretty much had it.

I learned a lot about the language and social morays of the time, and for that I am thankful. But Jane Austen is probably the most insipid writer of any real fame that I've ever come across.

Ultimately, all her people find some reason to like each other after hating each other, and of course, the natural thing to do is to marry. No matter how independent of spirit her female characters are, the time dictated that she must fall in love and get married to end the book.

What's funny is that I thought at first that the "happily ever after" ending was one of those Victorian-era things, but then I realized that there isn't a Disney movie (or rarely any movie) that comes out that doesn't result in at least some sort of profession of commitment, if not marriage.

I'm not down on marriage, don't get me wrong. But the Inner Gloria Steinem in me says that it's not the end-all, be-all for many women. I relish the fact that marriage ages are going UP in this country -- particularly for women (men have always married later). It just tells me that they're starting to realize they can do something OTHER than get marriage to have some sense of worth.

In the meantime, the feminist in me just waits for the day equality will really mean something. I'm not talking about being able to bench-press as much as my DH, or expect him to sew as well as me. I mean in terms of basic respect in society, especially in the workplace.

I think that last Austen book obviously struck a nerve. The good news is, unless Jane Austen comes out of her coffin and writes a new book, I'm done. Thanks for the taste, Ms. Austen, but I've taken all the formality, chivalry and innuendo one girl can take from your books.

I'm on to something bright and cheery -- Russian Literature -- "The Brother's Karamozov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. That oughta brighten up my day!

Happy Day

The Approach to I.M. Pei's Glass Pyramid at The Louvre in Paris 

I love days like this. I am doing something that feels GOOD.

This morning I woke up in time for church and decided to play hooky and stay home. I hooked up the better printer to my new computer, and started printing pictures of our trip to Paris.

I went a little nuts and printed about 35 pictures for each of my Aunt and Mom who went on the trip with us. Then I went to Target and found a small photo album and put all the pictures in them.

My Aunt K. bought me a Paris frame, and bought an extra one for herself and my Mom while we were at the top of the Eiffel Tower. I printed pictures and put them in the frames too, so we can all have the same picture.

I am just looking forward to getting these in the mail to them. Neither Aunt or Mom are very much into getting disks and dealing in jpegs, so I am happy to put something together for them. I also have an extra chocolate bar from Paris I've been saving, and I'm going to send that to Mom too.

It just feels good to spoil people sometimes...especially when they don't expect it in the least!

Weird Dreams

I dream often, usually vivid weird dreams like my cat talking to me in a human voice, or of flying, or more often -- driving on a road trip through strange lands -- which has to mean something about my need for adventure.

But last night, I must thank my friend Lauren for this...I had a dream that I went back to my house in Seattle that I shared with my ex-husband. He had kept the house (in the dream, not reality), his 3rd wife had left him, and he was looking for another, since despite three failed marriages, apparently hope springs eternal.

Anyway, I went back to my house, and found it decorated and re-decorated in a very Martha Stewartesque fashion. Other people were at the house, some who didn't know him, and kept commenting on what a great decorator he was. Finally I just said out loud..."There is NO WAY he did this on his own."

I asked about the neighbors to find out who lived nearby if they were still around, and I walked about the house, which (for a dream) was remarkably similar to real world save the decorated aspect.

When I got to the closet, I realized that MY STUFF was in the closet, and he said he had kept it because I had never taken it. Weird. In reality -- I took my clothes, shoes, sewing stuff, and very little else, but even in this dream I don't remember leaving THAT much stuff behind. So the rest of the dream involved me telling him that I was taking that stuff now, thanks, and that no, he wasn't going to make me wife #4. We parted nicely, which was a first, both in reality and in REM sleep, as every goodbye whether it was the big one or the casual run-in in Seattle was always barbed with some nasty parting shot from him.

Yeah, not much of a dream, but as I thought about it -- I realized that I often "work stuff out" in my dreams, and I know I had my ex on my mind yesterday as I was talking to Lauren about her current situation with Mr. Small. It just has a way of bringing that stuff up, and that's ok. I always figure -- better to dream stuff like that than to live it all over again.

Jules

Happy Halloween!

Jules & Brian Go Punk 

We went to a Halloween party last night at some friends' house. It was a pretty good costume party...one guy came as a mad scientist, another as a pirate...there were a bunch of fun outfits and ideas out there.

While I enjoyed my punk clothes (namely the comfy Green Day t-shirt, torn jeans and Converse All-Star tennis shoes), my husband looked especially good with his Billy Jo Armstrong makeup, blue hair and The Clash t-shirt. It was all very convincing, that some of our friends kept remarking how "natural" Brian looked. We all think he should dress like this every day and go get a job at Hot Topic.

Dad.

Dad,

Today it's been 13 years since you died.

Just know you are still missed, still adored, still thought about.

Still wish you were here to see us all.

I love you.

Your Julie

Damn Republicans and other jokes in life...

I don't often rant about my political leanings...I find as I grow older I am more tolerant of others' opinions (namely that they have a right to have opposing views than me, even if I don't agree), and I also find myself realizing that I LIKE my point of view, but I like talking about politics with EVERYBODY even more.

When I think of my first bent towards political anything, I find myself thinking about my Grandma, who died this February at the age of 94.

She would often hear me talk about something, whether it was political or not, and just shake her head with that "been there, heard that, done that" look that only age and experience can give you.

She had the luck of being born on the exact same day, in the exact same year as Ronald Reagan -- February 6, 1911. While President Reagan was President, apparently through the magic of computers and Social Security numbers, she received a printed White House birthday card, allegedly signed by the President.

I was at her house one year for her birthday when she got one in the mail, and she opened it, read it, rolled her eyes, and tossed it in the trash. I was a teenager at the time and oblivious to politics, so I thought it was quite an honor, even if it was a preprinted one.

"Damn Republicans," she said.

This was a first for me on two fronts -- first, that Gram never swore up til then in my presence, and second, I never knew where she stood politically.

I sure found out quickly that day just what she thought, at least I summed it up later.

I really think Gram, like many of her generation, appreciated the efforts of FDR to end the Depression, and that there were others along the line of her life like John F. Kennedy who must have struck a chord with her in their diligence towards bettering society, from Civil Rights to social programs that would stand up for the weakest among us.

Other than that -- I don't think she spent a lot of time thinking about how she would vote, just that she found Democrats more in line with her values as a poor person trying to get by and working hard through life.

As I have now lived through Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush II, I often wonder why our country leans so far left one moment, and so far right the next. I wonder how it is that so many people can swing an election so far one way one year (like Reagan's landslide victory in 1980) and then create such close calls as we've had in the past two elections.

I feel like I need to go take another Poli Sci class...Not just to learn about our system, which is so tragically polarized these days, but other systems like the Brits, who have the Stark Raving Loony Environmentalist Party, or something like it.

Well, I guess I can look on the brights side...at least Bush's ratings are in the basement. He's earned every bit of it, in my opinion.

No need to comment if you can't handle this post...There's nowhere I can go with this...just something I'm thinking about.

Our Favorite Place to Eat in Paris

Meet Philippe 

I don't think Rick Steves, travel guru for first-timers to Europe, can be praised enough for his recommendation of Philippe's place in Paris.

In Rick's review, he writes that Philippe owned a catering business in Philadelphia for a few years before returning to Paris and finding his "niche" in his small one-man-show restaurant. It was upon his recommendation of his intimate restaurant that two years ago, my husband and I went to Philippe's. We were staying about 6 blocks away, and found him almost by accident.

We had a quiet dinner there our last night in Paris in 2003, and when Philippe brought us the bill (he waits tables and cooks the meal in a very intimate setting) we erroneously read the bill to be $50 Euro instead of $40, so we left him a handsome tip of more than $20...we realized this as we left the place, when we heard a "thank YOU" come out of the restaurant when we were nearly half way down the block.

Well, fast forward to 2005...we loved our meal there, and with our in-laws in tow, we decided to take them on Tuesday night to Philippe's, where we were welcomed with gusto, but with no hint (and no expectation) that Philippe would possibly remember us.

Well, Philippe was the first to ask my husband Brian if he knew him. "You look familiar," Philippe said with his beautiful French accent. "Do I know you?"

My husband's response was "yes, we were here a couple of years ago." and Philippe said "Oh yes, I overcharged you!" HE REMEMBERED US! We didn't hold it against Philippe -- after all, European 5's and 4's look very different, and that was on us.

Philippe has a very casual style by French standards. He literally brings you the menu, written on a chalk board, and explains each item to you, and takes your order when you've had plenty of time to think about what you'd like. One night I thought we were holding him up from closing, and he said "Oh no no no, take your time madame, you're in Paris."

I loved that.

Philippe is very good with his escargot -- just for starters. He has a house wine and $15 Euro menu items that are just lovely. I had a puff pastry one night, some lamb another night, and a steak another night. We ate there a total of 4 times in 7 days there, in part because the food was great, but mostly the wonderful hospitality.
My Mom and Aunt loved him so much they went back on their own one night.

Did I mention the escargot was wonderful? I was never a snail eater, but boy, you taste them soaking in butter and garlic, and I'm converted.

By the end of the week, we'd met his 9-year-old daughter, and on our last night, Philippe asked us to take a picture of him with Brian and for us to send him a copy. It's on the way, our friend.

The name of the restaurant is La Varangue ("The Veranda" in French) is at 27 rue Augereau in the 7th in Paris.

Go look him up.

Questions Answered

1) My uncle once: took me camping, and when big ants crawled in my sleeping bag, he said "Praise the Lord anyway!" I was 7, and it was the first time I realized I very might well be capable of murder. ;)
2) Never again in my life: Will I take having children for granted
3) When I was five: We moved to the U.S. and I went to two kindergartens. I loved it because I got to celebrate my birthday twice.
4) High School was: better than Middle School, but not by much.
5) I will never forget: the day I watched that second plane slam into the second World Trade Center Tower on 9/11.
6) I once met: President Bill Clinton.
7) There's this girl I know who: stays with her husband even though she'd be better off without him.
8) Once, at a bar: I got to tell a sorority girl to step off. (She started it).
9) By noon I'm usually: ready for breakfast.
10) Last night I: stayed up late trying to get my CD burner to work the way I wanted.
11) If I had only: not eaten that crab soup yesterday, my tummy wouldn’t have hurt today.
12) Next time I go to church: It’ll be a Sunday. Not THIS Sunday, but maybe the next one.
13) What worries me most: Dying without figuring out what I’m really here for.
14) When I turn my head right: I see my calendar
15) When I turn my head left: I see the desk and dining room furniture I got from my grandma.
16) You know I'm lying when: I don’t sound very convincing. This is a rare occasion on both fronts.
17) You know what I miss most about the eighties: Brian's mullet.
18) If I was a character written by Shakespeare, I'd be: The scheming matchmaker in “Much Ado About Nothing”.
19) By this time, next year: I’ll be pushing 40.
20) A better name for me would be: Julie The Vampire Slayer
21) I have a hard time understanding: Why people can be so mean to others.
22) If I ever go back to school I'll: be so rich I have nothing else to do with my time than to further educate myself
23) You know I like you if: I give you a hard time.
24) If I won an award, the first person I'd thank would be: my husband for putting up with his uppity wife.
25) Darwin, Mozart, Slim Pickens & Geraldine Ferarro are: famous people who should have lunch together in heaven. Well, when all of them get there.
26) Take my advice, never: go to a riot. Tear gas sucks.
27) My ideal breakfast is: a breakfast burrito with eggs, hashbrowns, sour cream and hot sauce.
28) A song I love, but do not have is: “Talk to Ya Later” by The Tubes.
29) If you visit my hometown, I suggest: Getting an airplane ticket. Driving to Brazil is one long ass roadtrip.
30) Why won't anyone: Move over to the slow lane on the freeway?
31) If you spend the night at my house, DO: Make yourself at home.
32) I'd stop my wedding for: Jude Law
33) The world could do without: Britney Spears, or any mention of her.
34) I'd rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: run into my ex-husband ever again. Oh wait, that's almost like the same thing!
35) My favorite blonde is: Oh, maybe Christina Aguilera when she is blond.
36) Paperclips are more useful than: staples, at least sometimes.
37) San Diego means: A great place to escape in January.
38) And by the way: I play a mean game of pool.