Just a sleepy smile.

It is a weakness, I know.

Ok, only one little story. Daughter, C, called this evening to tell me that Xman was smiling in his sleep, which he sometimes does, only this time he 'giggled, chuckled' a little. He is only four weeks old, now. He definitely has the personality of my daughters mother-in-law. She is such a sweet upbeat person! I will post a smiling shot soon. I will also keep these cute stories under control. Think back to that first love affair where you doodled in your notebook, you paced in your room and if you were driving you had to drive by his/her house whenever possible. (Unless you were a really lost soul and your first love affair was with a celebrity.) Anyway, you can forgive me.

Happy Mother's Day!

(Thought I would share this from my office email)

Somebody said it takes about six weeks to get back to normal after you've had a baby .........

Somebody doesn't know that once you're a mother, "normal," is history.

Somebody said you learn how to be a mother by instinct ...

Somebody never took a three-year-old shopping.

Somebody said being a mother is boring ......

Somebody never rode in a car driven by a teenager with a driver's permit.

Somebody said if you're a "good" mother, your child will "turn out good."

Somebody thinks a child comes with directions and a guarantee.

Somebody said "good" mothers never raise their voices .....

Somebody never came out the back door just in time to see her child hit a golf ball through the neighbor's kitchen window.

Somebody said you don't need an education to be a mother.

Somebody never helped a fourth grader with her math.

Somebody said you can't love the fifth child as much as you love the first.

Somebody doesn't have five children.

Somebody said a mother can find all the answers to her child-rearing questions in the books ......

Somebody never had a child stuff beans up his nose or in his ears.

Somebody said the hardest part of being a mother is labor and delivery ....
Somebody never watched her "baby" get on the bus for the first day of kindergarten.

or on a plane headed for military "boot camp."

Somebody said a mother can do her job with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back .....

Somebody never organized four giggling Brownies to sell cookies.

Somebody said a mother can stop worrying after her child gets married ....

Somebody doesn't know that marriage adds a new son or daughter-in-law to a mother's heartstrings.

Somebody said a mother's job is done when her last child leaves home ...

Somebody never had grandchildren.

Somebody said your mother knows you love her, so you don't need to tell her ......

Somebody isn't a mother.

The Constant Traveler

Full Fathom Five’'s recent post was about travel. She was ‘looking back’ sort of freeze-framing her life before her travel to England to visit a sister. She was reviewing all the negatives and positives about travel. I have traveled so much in my lifetime and to many different countries, sometimes for a short business trip or vacation, sometimes for a longer stay (a month) and sometimes to live (years). In each instance there was some negative and some positive experiences. Even today I will still get a little concerned about missing the flight, getting a seat, finding my destination when I arrive. But if I have traveled within a few months, this concern is very small and at the back of my mind.

If it has been almost a year or longer since I traveled, my concerns do have a tendency to grow. If I travel with my husband, the concern lessens greatly, because there are two minds on the details.

Travel in some ways is easier and some ways more difficult than it used to be. The new security measures where you have to remove jackets, shoes, handbags is a hassle. Those of us who are older try to get the shoes and jackets back on speedily - but it is with some effort. In addition, having to keep a boarding pass and ID out and ready increases greatly the chance that you will drop it or leave it somewhere. (Several times I have actually put the damn things in my mouth in order to put on shoes or jacket. This is something the security people just love to see, as you can imagine.)

The easier part of travel has to do with the technology. I actually made my recent reservation to visit my family after my mother’'s death by talking to a computer at United via telephone. I was able to get a ticket and give it my membership number and VISA, etc. without much problem! When I arrived at the airport passengers now check in at an electronic kiosk and don'’t get to a human being unless you have to check bags (as some of you now know). The only other time you talk to an airline person before boarding is if you need to get a seat assignment or if someone frisks you. I envision a future where we deal with NO staff until the stewardess appears at our seat.

The travel process changes so often that I am amazed people seem to get through it as easily as they do.

My boss just returned from a conference in Belgium. She was delayed by weather to New York and missed her international flight along with a number of other people and had to stay overnight in a nearby hotel. She told me about an Arabic woman (elderly) that traveled from Florida and was heading back to her home in Saudi Arabia. She spoke no English. A young man from Africa took sympathy with her, seeing her struggling with the flight changes and the lack of Delta Airlines support, and actually got her bags at another area, rechecked them and her into another flight and sat with her until she could board, before he headed off for a hotel since his flight was also delayed! I guess this little story shows that in spite of the technology, human citizenship is still an important element.

Travel is always an "Alice in Wonderland" experience. The stress either makes you grow or shrink. Remember that!

Back on that swing called LIFE

I am back from the memorial and may post on it when I have digested all that happened. It was NOT sad...well, not lots of sad...just little times. It was actually very therapeutic. I am closer to my baby sister and my baby brother and still like my Republican other brother in spite of his schizophrenic approaches. You can read about parental death and talk to others about their experiences, but it is just like getting married or having children. Until you do it, you don't really understand what it is all about and even then each person's experience is so unique that it is hard to translate to others. (This is why I am hesitant to discuss spirituality--it is so unique and private.)

I do so appreciate the comments and emails from those bloggers in my neighborhood. They are most comforting and let me know that there are still people in the world who actually think about and care about others...including ephemeral souls that only exist in the bytedom to me.

I am having dinner with friends that we haven't seen in months tonight.

Tomorrow I am taking dinner to the parents of that new love of my life. What an affair I am having with him and how I missed him when I went out to Colorado!

I wish you all falling pink petals and cool breezes. (Whoops, is that a little to Oprah for you?)

Another Milestone

I never read anywhere that when you hit your late fifties or early sixties in age, after the kids move out and start their own lives, you get five minutes of down time. You get a weekend to assess where you are in life and where you want to be. Then you are thrust on the life time roller coaster called "Milestone a Minute." Because stuff happens so fast, you don't get much time to dwell on the meaning of it all. Maybe next year...

Mom passed away at 4:00 AM this morning. I am relieved, of course. I keep running scenarios through my mind of how hard it was for all the siblings and wonder who was there, etc. While she had difficulty breathing, it was a peaceful passing. Of course, I regret that I was not there to say goodbye, but I am not going to beat myself up over this. This regret is all about me, not others. I was there for my mother-in-law years ago, so maybe I helped someone through this gate.

Dad wants me out (at least that's what Sis says). So, even though there is no funeral or memorial planned, I am flying out this late afternoon to go through another milestone in my life. I get to be a bulwark or maybe a better word would be a stanchion? My philosophy is always One Day at a Time and one more long airplane ride.

Free Tuesday

When 'one' gets busy with back-to-back meetings at the office, 'one' should not eat the yogurt in the early afternoon that was brought for breakfast eating. If you do, you will find yourself up all night with a belly ache and 'pooaereah.' The good thing is that now it is almost 11:00 and I feel much better.

BUT, I am not going into work. One, I don't want to. Two, it will take an hour or longer to find parking at this time of the day--even though I have paid parking in the garage! Three, I have a life. Right now it involves more packing. (I want this second to the last move (for a while) done, done, done.) I need interior decorating, I need gardening, I need space for hobbies, I need a yard to play with my grandson! I will hold my breath for another 10 months, but I should be on a totally new track by that time or I will be going crazy. I am not good living in limbo and waiting for distant deadlines. I am one of those annoying people that get stuff done ahead of time so that I can hurry up and wait. I am a nester and need a long term nesting place.

Then again in a second thought, I keep wondering if I will adjust to the sound of quiet broken by the little birdsong or wind in the trees, and the view of trees and more trees out my window. Or, will I miss the sound of my neighbors children playing in the street, the sound of morning traffic on the nearby freeway (and sirens) and the quick walk to the Post Office or grocery store?

This is what spring is all about. But, it lasts only a few days here.

The Old Apple Tree

More future apples. These apples all go into the tummy of the resident squirrels. I had pruned it hard last year, since it looked diseased and this year it is rewarding me with tons of blossoms.

Future apples. This is one of the apple trees outside my kitchen window. I have yet to eat an apple from it.

Firefox is a little too foxy for me!

I am not losing my mind and my son is not a sloppy surfer. I found the problem here. Unfortunately none of the extension downloads are working for me! So now I am going to Opera and will keep that as my browser with links so when this happens again with Firefox, which for some it has, I will be safer!!!!

My work of art from Color Me Mine. The day I spent with daughter two weeks ago. This is pretty primitive, but since it is the very first bisque pottery I have ever glazed, I am proud I got it done. Lesson learned is when they say three coats and let it dry between three coats, they really mean that! I have lots of rough spots.

Strange Saturday Morning

I sat down at the computer this morning after getting Hubby off to Hawaii and decided to surf some blogs on the net. I brought up my Firefox browser and lo and behold got that first-time user window asking if I wanted to use the 'default' profile. I clicked yes and then got a response that the default profile is ' in use do you want to create a new one?' Heck,yes.. lets just get on the Internet here. I put in my name as the new profile and then discovered that I no longer have access to the thousand or so bookmarks I have carefully created on my PC because I am a new user of the browser.

I went 'exploring' for them across my harddrive without luck. i imported bookmarks from the IE browser which I rarely use and got back about 30-40% of some of the stuff. Can't find my blog friends links, my garden links, shopping, reading, writing...UGH!

So I went on my blog to at least add the commenters from the last year or so. It was then that I discovered two of the older blogs which I hadn't visited in a while have gone into the black hole of bytedom. Another blogger had said goodbye last month, so there was some closure to that, but it is strange to find that bloggers whom you shared ideas with are now gone, and it is really forever, because you are not going to accidentally bump into them again and recognize them like you do neighbors who have moved away.

What the h.... did my son do to my computer yesterday that lost all the bookmarks?

This little mockingbird was too shy to pose forward. But I took his picture anyway!

And now an afterdinner walk to work off the calories.

Salmon dinner cooked by husband. He made it up! Tasted great.

Real Simple, if only it were...

My daughter got me a subscription to the magazine "Real Simple' which is the new, younger generation's version of Good Housekeeping or Redbook I am surmising. It is thick with lots of ads as well as articles (although most of the articles are about stuff you can buy). When I was in Junior High we had a project where we got our favorite magazine (mine was probably Seventeen) and we were told to paste paper over all the advertisements. It was a good illustration of the huge percentage that any magzine devotes to ads and the very little bit of information articles for the money you spend. But, I digress.

My daughter makes lots of money ( I am guessing about $9o,000 or $100,000 when you add bonuses. She has only been working about four years! Her husband makes a little more.) Those golden handcuffs are hard to give up. She is planning on going back to work in three months, but I already see the pain in her eyes when this is brought lightly into the conversation. We live in an area where a standard three bedroom house is about $400,000. There is lots of pressure to work. I wish that I was going to be living nearby as this would make the decision easier, but I am not.

In the May issue of Real Simple it is fortuitous (maybe) that there was an article titled "What's a Mother to do?" It covers the debate over whether a woman should return to work or stay at home after the birth of a child. They interview four women with their grown daughters and each have chosen different paths. I find this article so interesting because it really touches a sensitive cord with me. I stayed at home with both children until the youngest was ten. I was not rich, but I was also NOT poor. I didn't have to work. We didn't eat out, go to movies, and I only had two outfits for church. But these were not sacrifices in my mind.

The sacrifices for me were falling behind in my career and never really making the better salary, spending time without adults for endless days which is really hard, missing out on a creative side of my self that I had to shelve and the long hours - working seven days a week. The good stuff was knowing my children were being raised by someone who would die for them, someone who was close to their gene pool and therefore understood them, and getting to see all that wonderful special stuff that children show as they reach each new challenge.

There are no good choices. The magazine article seems to make it appear that there is no wrong way. But I think that oversimplifies. There is really no right way either. Whichever road you choose, you make important and long-term sacrifices. And the idiocy in this debate is that most women do not have a choice!

Sweet to the point of sickening

Yeah, yeah, grandmothers can be so annoyingly in love. Get a grip, there is more to life. (No there's not!)

Today her in-laws are driving in from out of state to spend the night. Brother-in-law is staying with his family at a nearby hotel and mom and dad-in-law are staying with them. So I am giving them lots of space to enjoy and I will be running my own personal errands (of which I have many on this beautiful Saturday) and then on Sunday we go down late P.M. and I will clean the house for her. Aren't I just the best ;-)?

I promise next blog will be about something important and will have my usual succinct and insightful thoughts.

The most beautiful person in the world today!

I can see! I can see!

I felt like the invisible man the last few days, but lo and behold, Blogger has redeployed my 'One Day" website. I can view it! I was afraid to try a complete re-do of the website thinking it would do some weird reformat or something and all the files would go into the nether regions of bytedom.

While technology was glitching, I do have a real life and was busy with my daughter and new grandson! He was born at 8:23 PM on April 5 after 9 hours of labor. (Obstetrician said due date was April 10 and it would not be born on time, so they set a date for induction on April 20. Even with all this new science doctors are still just making educated guesses.) My son, the baby's uncle, has nicknamed the little guy Xman and since the parents don't seem to mind, that is what he will be for a while. I cannot begin to describe all the feelings going through me. Watching my hulking son hold his tiny nephew was priceless.

It IS just like riding a bike. All the baby stuff comes flooding back and I feel very comfortable going into grandma mode for my first one. I spent all day yesterday baking casseroles, desserts, vegetables dishes, etc. and then we packed it all and took it to the new parents' house. They were discharged from the hospital around noon and when we got to their home at 4:30 PM all three were out like hibernating bears. The baby fell asleep in my arms and I held him for at least 2 and half hours, just couldn't put him down.

I think the new daddy is in the most shock. He had no idea that this would involve so many details in life and so much lack of sleep. But he is so much in love with this new person, he has no complaints. My daughter, on the other hand, seems a little more laid back. She is working hard on breast feeding, and when I remember the ups and downs I had with that, I can empathize. Fortunately, it all worked out and I was able to breast feed both of them for almost a year.

Today hubby is back at work full time for the first time since his operation. I think he got a burst of energy from holding his grandson.

We are going for a drive this afternoon to me with our builder and look at the draft of the adjusted plans. Things are going slower than we hoped and I will blog why on my house building blog.

In between all of the above and my work I am driving around the city looking for a condo or coop with my son. He did bid on one condo in a nice young area of town, but lost out to someone who bid 30% over the selling price with an added escalation clause. Is this real estate market ride ever going to end?

Well, this weekend, I hope to get some of my own stuff done.