The boy child is on the road today.  He volunteered to take one of his friends back to school in Macomb, which is about three and a half hours away.  He'll stay down there to have dinner with the guys he used to go to school with and won't be home until late tonight.

Our ensemble sang at mass last night.  I was reminded again how much I love those people.  They are my church family.  We laugh and we tease each other, and we join together in prayer for both our needs and the needs of the people we minister to as we sing during the mass.  It is a joy to be in that group.

My newest word to be taped to my computer monitor is "accomplish."  There is a lot I need to do.  That word fits my life right now.

Today is another beautifully sunny day, mild enough to have the window open.  I am going to enjoy it to the max before we get to those days when the snow is falling!

I am going to tell my doctor that we need to be more aggressive on the treatment of my leg.  Period.

Quote of the day: Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have into enough, and more.  It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.  It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. ~ Melody Beattie

I'm grateful for so much today.  Have a great week, my peeps!

P.S.  The Xanga spell check wants to turn Macomb into Mugwump.  Yes, that would be my first choice!  Thanks, Xanga!

When I was growing up, mom and dad would come home from work and dad would mix them both a cocktail.  They would sit down and not want to be interrupted at all by us children.  They would turn the news on and dad would look through the mail and they would talk about their work day.  Dinner wouldn't be started until they finished their drinks and were relaxed.

Last night was a very restless night for me.  I woke up at 1:30 and again at 3:30.  What is up with that?  It was difficult getting back to sleep.  On top of that I was late leaving for work this morning and then had to battle the construction zones that permeate my long route to work.

It seemed like a very long day at work today only because I have been in a lot of pain lately for a problem I am having with my leg and ankle.  I have been in a little pain pretty much every day since August, but today was just a bad pain day.  I called the doctor who I was supposed to see in December for a followup visit, and I will be seeing him next Tuesday instead.

The drive home was very frustrating as well.  It is a 30 mile commute, and I hit a point fairly quickly on the way home where traffic came to a dead stop.  The policeman who had come up through the traffic just a few minutes earlier with his lights and sirens going was now blocking off a major road that I need to take to get home.  I tried to cut through whatever village I was in at the time, but the road I took caught up to another side road that the traffic was being directed on to.  I turned around and backtracked my route, finally reaching a road that would take me to the other side of town.

I drove through town after town and past strip mall after strip mall, no woods or nature in sight.  I love where I live because I am close to a river, so there are some hills and woods to drive through.  I do not like suburban sprawl and the flat vista with nothing but pavement and commercial areas and not much in the way of nature.  Because I had to take a different route home tonight, I missed going through the woods.  They are the buffer that helps to quiet me as I transition between work and home.

I finally got home and felt utterly exhausted.  I had heard the news about the killings at Fort Hood right before I was leaving work, so when I got home I got online to check the latest news and then started to read some of my Xanga subscriptions.  It seems a lot of us are tired and cranky.  And I have a friend who my heart just hurts for, and I feel so helpless.  I'm a mom, I fix things.  What do you do when you can't fix the hurt of someone you love?  I know she is in God's hands, even though she doesn't feel that she is, but that does not stop the hurt none the less.  All of this, the day and the news, just makes for a lot of emotional heaviness in my soul tonight.

My son had got home from work about a half hour before me, and we were both hungry and tired.  We've been a little low on cash this month and so the fridge is a bit bare right now.  We found something in the freezer that we could microwave, and after we finished eating I just sat in my comfy chair, my mind pretty well fried for the day. 

*sigh* 

I can understand perfectly well why mom and dad wouldn't do a thing until they had a drink or two and could unwind.  It is going to be one early night to bed tonight.  Thank goodness that tomorrow is Friday.

I don't remember when it started, but my mother managed to take her birthday and turn it into a week-long celebration.  For years we just had our own family celebration, but somewhere along the line she started to celebrate by going out to lunch with her friends, adding a celebration lunch with her co-workers at the hospital, and then maybe throw in a dinner with some of her brothers and their wives.  The rest of us got one day; mom got a whole week.

I have a friend who refuses to celebrate his birthday.  That was always hard for me to understand, but I finally have accepted it.  He chooses not to explain why, and that, above all else, drives me crazy.  But there is some personal reason that makes sense to him, so I try to honor that.  I try.  In private I always say a prayer of thanks for his friendship on his birthday.   Publicly I leave him alone.  My personal belief is that a life is worth celebrating.  I think mom had the right idea by sharing her celebration with everyone that she knew. 

There were times during the dark years when I couldn't even think of a wish to make as I blew out the candles on my birthday cake.  "Let this be over soon" may have been the only thing I could think of at that time.  My life was far from anything I could even want to celebrate.  But that was then.

This year, especially, I am ready to celebrate me.  November 1st is the start of my birthday month, and this year I am starting out with a real feeling of contentment.  This year it feels good to be alive.  All of my friends are far away, so there will be no birthday lunches or dinners with extended family.  It will be more of a personal celebration of my life; not in remembering where I was, but in rejoicing for where I am right now. 

The first gift of my birthday month was the ability to sleep an hour extra.  Let's hear it for turning the clocks back an hour!  While we woke up to a day that's about ten degrees cooler than yesterday, it also is a day with no rain, so that is quite an improvement on things around here.  The past two weeks have been pretty darn wet, with flood watches and warnings to boot!

This year I am also instituting a new personal policy: no working on my birthday.  I have my vacation day already approved, and while I haven't made any plans yet, you can be sure that I will be using the day for a personal celebration of the woman I am now.  Maybe it will just be a day to hike in the woods to experience peace and to give thanks.  Maybe it will be a day to do some personal shopping.  Whatever it will be, I will take the time to honor myself.  That is something I have not done in the past.  I think I may also use the day to write down some personal goals for the coming year.  I have never done that before, but it is time to have something to work towards. 

Mom may have been the first in our family to turn her celebration into a week-long event, but I am going to embrace the entire month, the start of a new personal year in my life, the celebration of everything possible and of good things to come.

Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and celebrate the journey! ~ Barbara Hoffman