It figures

After not having (or watching) TV for 12 years, last year I discovered abc.com. Watching Grey's Anatomy there became part of my weekly routine, and recently I've added a few more shows to my repertoire--Dancing with the Stars, Castle, and Brothers and Sisters.

So today's New York Times has this article. I guess it's inevitable, but if abc.com follows the lead and I have to subscribe to cable to watch TV on my computer, my watching days will be over again, I guess.

Which may not be a bad thing, as I (re)discover how addicitive TV can be.

Signs of hope

Spring peepers! And daffodils pushing up through the dirt.

Spring (such as it is here) can't be far behind!

Exhausted

The last six weeks or so have been extraordinarily stressful, and the last couple of weeks have been similarly busy, what with Lenten activities on top of everything else. I don't think I realized how tired I really was until around noon today. I had gone in to work for a meeting only to find chaos--broken copy machine on the day we were trying to produce both bulletins and a newsletter, wrong dates given in a memo about the spring rummage sale, etc.

Around lunch time I had done enough that I could come home, and then it hit me that I was so tired, so, so tired. I came home and watched last night's Grey's Anatomy (and the extent to which it made me cry may also reflect my tiredness) and then realizing that I couldn't really keep my eyes open any longer, took a nap on the couch. Which helped a lot. But I am still tired. And I have a sermon to write. Among other things, like laundry which is piling up again, and my last week of Lenten activities to plan, and then there's Holy Week to think about.

I feel like I could take another nap right now. I could just go to bed, but 9:30 seems insanely early. Perhaps I can muster the energ to think about my sermon for a bit. Or something.

34 and counting

That's the number of school days left until the Kid's graduation. And they're going by fast. We've paid for his AP exams, his cap and gown, and his yearbook. He's thinking about his prom date.Waiting for that last college acceptance letter.

Tonight as he helped me prepare for an activity at church I realized how very soon he'll be gone. Wasn't he an infant just last week? And didn't I just put him on the bus for his first day at kindergarten? Where has the time gone?

There are a lot of us in my bloggy world with high school seniors this year: Songbird, Cheesehead, jo(e), timna Come June I feel a cyber party coming on.

More radom bits

~It's another one of those days (weeks?) in which there is just no time enought to do all the things one has to do. And so I sit and spin my wheels, making matters even worse.

~I don't know what to do about such times. I just keep plugging away in an tempt to shorten the list but to no avail.

~I'm teaching on the Gospel of Thomas tomorrow--out of my comfort zone on that one! And then leading a Lenten activity for families tomorrow evening. Fun stuff, but I need to prep for that, too.

~I know that I've been incredibly boring here lately, and yet I feel compelled to write SOMETHING--anything?--here every day, no matter what. Maybe I should get over it. Eh....

~And on that note, I'm off to bed

Random bits of Tuesday

~Can I just say one more time how wonderful it is to have a president who speaks in clear and complete sentences and has coherent thoughts? Really, it's so refreshing.

~ I think these ladies are awesome! I want to be a nonogenarian with that much spunk. And I think the rabbi who offered these ladies a bat mitzvah is awesome, too.

~The Kid has been rejected at one school and waitlisted at another. Sigh. Still one to go. (He has been admitted to his safety school). The thing is, the school that rejected him is the one where I used to teach. And I sat on the admissions committee. Faculty read the marginal files, and we admitted students with FAR worse records than his. Their applicant pool must have improved significantly.

~And for the record, he has really good SAT scores and fair to middling grades--not terrible but not stellar. And enough extracurriculars. And good recommendations.

~It was cold and windy today, with snow flurries off and on. Spring, where are you?

~I do know better than to really expect spring while it is still March--or April for that matter.

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl!

Hard as it is for me to believe, today is Baby J's first birthday.

You light up all our lives! Happy birthday!

The Frick and other NYC delights

I went to the Frick today with D and J, especially to see this painting (which is totally not done justice here!) I'd never been to the Frick before, and it was incredible. I cannot imagine anyone ever living in a mansion like that. And of course, the artwork is fantastic. (My adjectives are lame here, but I'm tired and doing the best I can.)

The weather was wonderful, too, and daffodils were beginning to bloom in Central Park---enough to make you believe that spring is really coming. After the Frick we went home and had a lovely late lunch of bagels, cream cheese and salmon, and then it was time for me to head to Penn Station and the train. I got home about 9:45. I love traveling by train--it is the least stressful way to go I know.

Spring is less evident here...and there's even snow in tomorrow's forecast :(

ETAon Monday: I totally forgot to hit the publish button last night (tired, much?), but yes, I am indeed still counting it as Sunday's post...

I love New York

On my way home, spending the night in NYC with good friends, great Indian food. for dinner. What could be better? I'm glad that I soon as I get off the train in Penn Station I feel right at home again. I hope that feeling never goes away.

And there are far more signs of spring here than where I live. It's really not THAT much farther south, but spring definitely arrives earlier.

I'm taking an afternoon train home tomorrow. Even though it's been a whirlwind trip, it's really nice to be away for a bit.

Friday Five~Signs of hope

It's spring....but real spring comes late to this part of the world. Nonetheless, signs of hope...

1. Blankets of crocuses blooming in sunny spots.

2. Daffodil sprouts starting to push up through the dirt.

3. Redwing blackbirds.

4. Geese on the pond.

5. Opportunities presenting themselves.

Leaving on a fast train

I'm off at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning to catch a bus to catch a train in nearby city. I'm off to another large city with a quick stop in my favorite city on the way back. Home again Sunday night--yes, it's a quick trip.

Today has been a crazy busy day. Sitting on the train tomorrow will be a pleasant relief! Maybe I'll even get a nap in.

Bloggy question

I know some of you have switched from Blogger to Typepad--care to share your experiences with me? I've thought of making the switch but I'd be curious to know if people who've made the change are happy with doing so, and why. TIA.

Dancing with the stars

When I was a kid I always wanted to take ballet. My father always had music on on Saturday afternoons, and I would dance and leap around the living room and have such a great time. I just knew I would love to dance. But whether from lack of money or lack of opportunity, or both, I never got to take dance. And I'm such a klutz, I probably wouldn't have been any good at it anyway.

I still think dancing looks like fun, and I still wish I could dance, but I am both majorly klutzy and self-conscious. In my head I can dance, but real life? Not so much.

Maybe that has something to do with why I've been enjoying Dancing with the Stars so much since I discovered it on abc.com. It just looks like so much fun. And all the dancers look great to me. It is a total feel-good show.

So I'm rooting for Shawn Johnson, and for Steve Wozniak--just because he looks like such a big teddy bear out there.

I haven't watched part 2 of last night's show yet, to say nothing of tonight's show...so no spoilers!

Tell me a story about your first car...or your favorite car

Cecily told the story of her first car today, and it brought back a lot of funny memories, so I borrowed the idea, which I suppose makes it a meme--so play along if you like!

Of course, I don't have a short straight answer to this...the car I learned to drive in was my dad's brand new Oldsmobile Cutlass--the nicest car we'd ever owned, purchased after he drove our very serviceable but boring station wagon into a river while waiting for a ferry (yes, there is a story there.) That car (the Cutlass, not the station wagon) had bad karma (but that's another story, too.) The car that was sort of mine to drive was our elderly Corvair---remember Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed? Yes, that's the one.

In truth, it was a cute little car--mint green with the engine in the back, and gear shift was a lever in the dash--never saw another car exactly like that. By the time I got to drive it, it was pocked with rust spots which I covered up with flower decals--very 60s. The. The floor in the back seat was rusted through in spots, too, covered up by the floor mats. There was some little belt in the engine that would come off, making the car stop, and I had to learn to fix it before I could take the car at night. It also burned a lot of oil, only I didn't know this at first, and just ignored the oil light when it came on. Fortunately, I figured that out before I ruined the engine, and after that it seemed like I put more oil in it than gas.

The Corvair sadly died before I graduated high school. My mother was so attached to that car that she went out and bought another used one. It was a couple of years newer and not as cute, but she loved it.

But in truth the Corvair wasn't really MY car. I guess truthfully my first very own car that I picked out for myself because I liked it is the one I have right now...my 99 red Beetle. Oh, I've had lots of cars in between but all of them were either picked out by someone else or because it was the only thing I could afford. Some of my favorites:

~72 baby blue Beetle--the car we drove in Iceland. Nothing like a Beetle. It was great on the rough roads--we even forded a stream in it once. I loved that car, but we left it in Iceland when we came back to the states.

~79 Rabbit--I guess I just love VWs but this was a really fun car. I only got rid of it because once I had three kids, they wouldn't all fit.

~86 Chevy Srint--I got this car brand new, but my dad picked it out AND it was the only thing I could afford. The car I had been driving--a station wagon suitable for three kids I'd inherited in the divorce (and selected by TFoMC) had caught fire and burned when I went to my grandfather's funeral (yes, another story) and my dad was appalled that I was going to buy a used car (all I could get with the insurance money) so he worked a deal with his high school buddy the Chevy dealer. I probably would've never picked this car otherwise,but it turned out to be a terrific car--it got 50 mpg on the highway. It did wear out though, and Elder Son finished it off driving it in high school.

~77 Volvo--I bought this car from a classmate in grad school in 1992, so it was already ancient. And I bought it for $300. I bought it thinking Elder Son would drive it, but he hated it, and I liked it, so I swapped the Sprint with him and took the Volvo for myself. It was a tank, but mostly a good car. I drove it for two years, and the last year I had to always be home before dark because the tail lights quit working and I couldn't afford to get them fixed. When I moved to VT my stepdaughter got the car--and she got $1200 for it in a trade in. If I'd known that was possible, I might have kept it--only I don't think it would've made the long trip to VT very well.

~I had a used Toyota for a while in VT because it was the only car I could afford, and then finally I bought my Beetle--which has had its own bad body karma--it's been run into and damaged at least 5 times; the last time (a hole in the bumper where someone backed into me not long after I moved here) has never been fixed. My car is 10 years old now, but I sure hope I don't have to replace it until the Kid graduates from college!

So tell me about your first--or favorite--car.

Driving lessons

~I've had a stick shift car for almost as long as I can remember--more than 20 years. I can't imagine having anything else at this point (although if you'd seen me learning to drive a 3-speed lo these many years ago, you would not have believed that I'd come to love manual transmissions!) There is one major drawback to this, however: teaching my kids to drive. I can teach many things, but driving is not one of them, and having a manual transmission makes it all the more difficult!

~Luckily my older three kids were able to take driver's ed in high school. And Elder Son and WW benefited from me having a very worn out car that I wasn't too worried about when they were learning to drive, and I don't remember it being too big a deal (nor do I remember riding with them much while they were learning.) NSLS had a much harder time. She was nervous, I was nervous and she had a lot of trouble with the clutch. Finally a friend took her to get her license in her car (an automatic); she finally did master the clutch after college when she had my car for a couple of years while I finished seminary.

~The Kid turned 16 over a year ago, but for lots of not very good reasons he only just got his learner's permit a couple of weeks ago. And because driver's ed isn't taught in the public school he will have to take it at a driving school. Our current state has fairly stringent requirements for hours of training, so it's not a trivial expense. And once he finishes driver's ed, he still has to have more hours of supervised driving. So there's no way I'm getting out of being along for the ride.

~Really, the whole student driver thing makes me very anxious. (Just ask NSLS!) But I'm trying to be better about it. Last week WW took the Kid to an empty parking lot so he could try just starting up with the manual transmission--after all, getting going in 1st gear is half the battle. And this evening I took him again.

~He's not ready to hit the open road yet, but he did okay. Getting a smooth start is difficult--there's a fine line between bucking and jerking and peeling out. The really remarkable thing about today though, and the real reason I'm blogging it, is that we managed to not make each other nervous wrecks--I didnt' get too anxious and yell or nag, and he didn't get frustrated with me or the car. In fact, we both laughed a lot. Let's hope we can keep it that way until he gets his license!

Hospitality

I am such an introvert (and possibly a control freak as well) that it was always difficult to have people over. It's not that I didn't like company, it's just that it freaked me out--I would worry about every detail and worry about feeling awkward and worry about what we should eat and worry about .....well, you get the picture.

When we moved to NYC for seminary we moved into a very small apartment (not bad by NYC standards but small) but in a place LOTS of people wanted to visit. NSLS was in her last year at college and WW was working in Vermont at the time. The first Thanksgiving NSLS invited three of her high school friends to meet her in the city for the weekend. Yikes. We "borrowed" the apartment of a friend who was away, so we weren't all sleeping on top of each other, and it turned out to be fun. That was the beginning of having company far more frequently than I ever had before. NSLS and WW both had friends come and stay, and even when there were people sleeping all over the place, it always turned out okay. Their friends learned that I rarely cooked and I learned that they didn't expect me to be the "hostest with the mostest."

When I moved here I suddenly had a huge house with not one but two guest rooms and bathrooms galore, in another place that people like to visit. I've had company of variousl sorts and here it is so much easier because I have so much room.

But I still rarely "entertained" in the sense of having parties or get togethers. Until a few months ago. Recently I had a "newcomers" reception for about 30 people and then entertained the choir on Christmas Eve between services. And Friday night I had almost 50 people here--church school kids and thepir arents. I didn't know my house coudl hold so many people. Fortunately the weather was nice enough for some of the kids to play outside until it got dark. And I ordered pizza for dinner so that was easy. I think everyone had a good time, and it didn't take me too long to clean up after everyone left.

I guess it's never too late to acquire a new skill ;)

Friday Five~Mid Lent check-in

Can we really be half way through Lent already?

1. Did you give up, or take on, anything special for Lent this year?

I had/have a very complete plan for Lenten discipline this year that ranged from giving up Diet Coke to taking a walk every day to going to bed earlier to praying more.

2. Have you been able to stay with your original plans, or has life gotten in the way?

I have to say in all honesty that I have failed miserably in keeping this discipline and was already thinking about how to pretty much start over.

I gave up giving up diet coke because when I have a headache (and I've been fighting off migraines) it makes me feel better. The weather has been so crappy much of the time that regular walks haven't happened. Going to bed early? Ha! Just look at when I post most of the time! I am getting more sleep, but I'm not making it to bed by 11 like I planned. Praying is going better, but again, not as much as I hoped for.

Can I plead stress and work overload? I know it's a poor excuse, and part of the point (for me at least) of having a Lenten discipline is to be intentional about working through the stress and living the way I am called to be living. Not working so much this year, and perhaps that is something I should think more about.

3. Has God had any surprising blessings for you during this Lent?

Pretty much every day--and that is the upside of this Lent. A surprise visit home from my older daughter, reconnecting with my stepdaughter, the incredible support and generosity of my clergy coach and his wife, kind words from people who know something is going on but aren't sure what, wonderful feedback from people in the Lenten class I'm leading, windows opening when doors close.

4. What is on your inner and/or outer agenda for the remainder of Lent and Holy Week?

I've been thinking a great deal about reconciliation and forgiveness, and I'd like to continue to work on that. I'm rethinking how I want this Lent to finish up. I have a lot coming up in the next few weeks including a road trip (work related) and a heavy Lenten schedule. I'm looking forward to Holy Week, but feeling a bit frustrated because the detailed plan I worked out when i thought my boss would be on sabbatical has been thrown a bit into disarray since he'll be here.

5. Where do you most long to see resurrection, in your life and/or in the world, this Easter?

Last year on Easter Day my granddaughter was born, and this year at the Easter Vigil I'll have the privilege of baptizing her. My older daughter has good news of her own, but it's not mine to tell-yet. The Kid will be graduating and going on to college--all that is resurrection--new life--for me. But beyond that I long for for resolution to the place of limbo I'm in right now. I want to look forward to the new things that are in store for me, wherever they are meant to be.

Bonus: Share a favorite scripture, prayer, poem, artwork, or musical selection that speaks Lenten spring to your heart.

A white post will only continue to be a white post
if it is painted every year;
otherwise it would become a black post.
Our lives are like that.
We need to share in an annual retraining period.
Otherwise our souls become tarnished,
our prayers mere words, our service selfish,
and our giving trivial.
Lent is a time fo renewal, of retraining,
of relearning

~G. K. Chesterton

I'm glad tomorrow is Friday

~but I have 40 folks coming for pizza and games tomorrow evening. What was I thinking?!?!?!?

Blue

~After a couple of weeks of being incredibly stressed and upset about work, I moved on and for the last two or three weeks I've been feeling much better. My clergy coach has been incredibly supportive, helping me process some pretty painful things, and I've been able to reflect on what I can learn about myself and others from what's been going on here. The whole situation hasn't changed, and there's nothing I can do to change it, but with all the Lenten activities I've been organizing I've been able to focus on work I really love and let go (mostly) of the rest of it. But today, it started getting me down again. Not badly, but enough to make me feel a bit blue.

~So here's one thing I forgot to report: The sabbatical my boss was going to take? The one where he'd be gone for four months and I'd be in charge? Is postponed to an indefinte date in the future. (This is mostly unrelated to the still unbloggable other stuff that I will at some point write about here). Now you might think this might be a relief--I won't have all that extra responsibility. But in fact, it's a huge disappointment for me and the rest of the staff--all of us were looking forward to his absence for a while. For a break. He would've been leaving next week. Sigh.

~I'm sick of spin. Because there has been so much SPIN going here it would make you dizzy. About the sabbatical--both when it was planned and when it was put off. About my job. About a bunch of stuff. I hate it. And when other people see through the spin and ask me questions about things that I can't honestly answer? I hate that, too.

Maybe an explanation

Today at work, when I mentioned how crappy I felt yesterday, the parish administrator reminded me again of something she read about a link between migraines and changes in the weather. And you know what? Saturday and Sunday were warm and sunny and yesterday was cold, rainy and nasty. And the last time I felt so bad was a cold rainy day following a nice day.

Of course, two instances do not prove anything. But I googled "weather and headaches" a little while ago, and the link between the two seems to be well documented. And the symptoms I had yesterday were exactly what the articles described.

I am really lucky not to get migraines very often, nor to have them as severe as some people I know. But I think my stress level has made them more frequent in the last month than they have been in a long, long time. Not happy about that, but I'm trying to reduce my stress as much as possible and stay positive and focused.

I will definitely keep track of weather changes and my headache patterns for a while and see if the relationship holds up, too.