Haiku Friday-Black Friday

Just on a whim, I'm participating in Haiku Friday over at ThinSpiralNotebook.

Black Friday madness

I never understand it

Stay home, drink wine, sleep

Gratitudes

I think everyone knows that I believe 2013 is the Year of Suck. It's pretty much universal with everyone I know. 

However, just because this is my truth doesn't mean I am not grateful each and every day. Though I haven't daily posted my gratitude, I've tried to list more than 30 things right here and right now that I feel grateful for each and every day.

I am grateful for having basic necessities. A warm comfy bed, a roof over our heads, jobs that keep the bills paid and food in the pantry. Because we haven't always had that.

I am grateful for small, simple things. Coffee that gets me through the day. Tissues that don't make my nose hurt. A cell phone that works better than most of the computers I work on.

I am grateful for those who give without asking and who take without expectations.

I am grateful for the seasons, sunsets, sunrise and the promise of each new day.

I am grateful for the people in my life. A husband who makes me laugh, not cry. Parents who love me and still think of me as their child. Friends who know just what I need to hear and aren't afraid to say it.

I am grateful for everyone who moves through my life. Because even when people hurt me, disappoint me, anger me or betray me, they are helping me grow and learn and get through this journey toward being a wiser, more understanding human. And those who bring me joy make me a person worth knowing.

I am grateful for science and medicine and doctors and research. Competent professionals have saved my mother's life this year, kept me from getting strep another 7 times this year and eased the pain of other family members this year.

I am grateful for new friends who know the real me and get me. I am grateful for how comfortable I feel with them because of that, and how I can act, say and do everything that is just me.

I am grateful for my sense of humor. Because many times this year, being able to laugh at everything I was going through was the only thing that kept me going.

I am grateful for my ability to read. Being able to create a world inside your head from words on a page is, to me, the most amazing thing. Reading has gotten me through some rough times, helped me pass long, boring weekends, helped me be a better person, helped me become a more informed person and allowed me to do my job.

So, yes, for this and for so much more, I am so grateful. 

I hope everyone has had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day.I know I personally will NOT be leaving the house on Black Friday. Rather, I'm going to be as lazy as humanly possible. Because, y'all. I have the day off work.

Today

Today's post is for Stream of Consciousness Sunday over at Jana's Thinking Place. Join us if you will!



Today is the day. A new week. Begin anew. Reset my brain.

The events of this week have kept me in a state of anger, and I hate being that way. Life isn't just so I have to sit back and watch someone do to me exactly what they accused me of doing.

But from today on it's like it never happened. I am going to forget it and realize there just isn't fairness or justice, particularly when you are dealing with irrational people. The only satisfaction I have is to know that this person will still be angry and stewing over it and I will have moved on. Starting now.

I'm feeling the effects of the weight gain I've had over the past 6 months. 25 pounds. I need to lose about 80, but at least if I could get where I was last summer I know the foot pain, hip pain and back pain will go away, as will the body issues I've been suffering of late because every item of clothing is too small.

I don't need to be skinny, skinny is overrated and I like my full figure. But I do have a very generous number in mind where I'd like to be and I know I can make it. But it's not going to happen with diet and exercise, that's been proven to me. There's more than that going on in this body and the first step is to figure that out, then move on from there.

What the eff

I don't enjoy using this blog as an outlet for my negativity. Really I don't. But sometimes things happen, people are so unreasonably stupid, it's impossible to be ok with it. For me, it's impossible to think of anything else.

You know, I am not going to lie. I do and say things. A. Lot. of things. That could piss people off. Sometimes intentionally, usually unintentionally-only because I am just not that wiley.

But when someone who is rude to me turns it around and goes not just to my boss but my boss's boss? That my friends. Is effed. Up.

Someone who was rude to me is trying to get me fired and saying I'm rude to her. Great.

Mondays

Tagging on to JanaA's Stream of Consciousness Sunday.


Because the holiday was on Thursday, my newspaper/work deadline was Monday rather than Tuesday. So I just started the week off with a day missing. Then I was off work on vacation the remainder of the week, which made every day feel like a Saturday.

This week, though, since I was off last week my Monday is going to be rough. I will have 4 days worth of work to get done in one day. Talk about the Mondayest of Mondays!!! I'm glad I have an intern for the next few weeks to help me out or I'd never make it.

The time off was awesome, though. Even though it was only 3 days, it's the most consecutive time off I've taken in a long time. Months. It's good to unwind.

Thursday night around 10 p.m., however, someone I know just HAD to send me a text and complain about her little league tournament and why didn't we have anything in the paper and we are not being "pro community" or working for the kids. This despite the fact that we had already made plans to have pictures and stories in the upcoming paper, and the tournament was still going on when our Monday deadline came!


****Getting that call on Thursday night ruined the next two days of my vacation because I kept getting angry about it. Now I'm irritated at her and myself for stealing my vacation.******

Half a year

Five Minutes on a Sunday morning. With Jana's Thinking Place and Stream of Consciousness Sunday.



My thoughts are spinning this Sunday morning. So much has been going on this week. I find it harder and harder to keep up with it all.

This has been one hell of a month, actually hell of a year. I remember white knuckling it to finish out 2012 with hopes that this would be better. But no such luck.

Mom surgery, twice. Me surgery. Sis in law and mom in law surgery. Friend died. Friend diagnosed bi-polar. Friends divorced. Editor fired. I now have 2 jobs to do until further notice.

However, this year, for some reason, I feel that I've come into my own. Finally. Embraced who I am and what I stand for and embraced the fact that if people don't like that, they don't deserve to be my friend. I've met new people and forged friendships with them based on who and what I really, truly am.

2013 may go down in my history as a very complex year, or a very terrible year depending on how I choose to see it. Only time will tell.

Callie P.

Callie P. Herndon 1993-2013

She got quiet. She became withdrawn and avoided us. She swayed when she walked and couldn't get up on the sofa to cuddle anymore. She started sleeping almost all the time and stopped eating.

I took my 20 year old cat to the vet to be put down yesterday. By 5 p.m. I was driving aimlessly through my small town, uncertain what to do next, my dead cat in a crate in the back seat of my car.

At the age of 45 and 3/4 I am pet-less for the first time I can ever remember in my life. We always had a dog or a cat or a bird or a hamster throughout my childhood. When I got my first apartment, I adopted a sweet little black cat who I named Spaz. For obvious reasons.

In 1993 some kids in my apartment complex pulled a teeny tiny kitten out of one of the dumpsters. Well, I couldn't just let her die, could I? Or live in a shelter?

She was terrified. Spaz tormented her, and she basically stayed under the bed all day, coming out only to eat and use her box. Eventually, she became braver and more personable, but she always was relatively shy.

Once Spaz was gone, he died in 2007, her personality really changed. She became bolder, friendlier, as if she realized that she was the queen of it all. It was like having a different cat.

Callie was a great pet, aside from all the shedding. She never jumped up on the table, didn't get on the kitchen counters, didn't get into our food. Spaz did all of those things and so much more. She was totally easy to live with and wanted not much more than a lap to cuddle when she was in the mood. She loved to chase the laser pointer.

We buried her at my mom and dad's place, where Spaz rests along with my childhood cat Simon and another cat that I raised from a kitten, a yellow tabby named Bailey. The cat graveyard is now complete.

It's crazy how attached we become. However, after the suffering Spaz went through in his final week of life, and the grieving I went through, Mitch and I decided that when it was time we'd accept it and let Callie go. I didn't want her to suffer.

I can only hope when I am old and I can't eat my favorite food anymore, can't get into my favorite chair anymore and can't walk by myself without great effort....well, someone will be so compassionate with me. Honestly.....

My last look at the cutest speckled ear ever. 

By the way, ask me sometime about how I ended up driving 12 hours with a dead cat in my car.