Honest Scrap

The lovely Amuirin bestowed this award upon me some time ago. I don’t really know how long ago since this post will be written over time.  Here’s why:

“When you get the Honest Scrap award, you are meant to grace your readers with 10 honest things about yourself, and then pass on the award to other blog friends who write honestly and truly about themselves and events in their life.”

See, the problem is that I AM honest. All the time. So to come up with 10 things which I have not already posted here is quite the challenge. So I am going to have to make notes as I go about my days and think of things and come back here to update until I get to 10  – either that or I bore long time readers with crap they already know

1. As a child, my mother often called me crabby and equated me with Lucy from Peanuts. In my own mind, I’m much more like Charlie Brown – wishy washy. Which, I know, does not match my very opinionated self that I project! But it takes me a long time to get to those strong opinions really.
2. For instance,  I can love/hate being around people with an equal passion. It’s nothing personal. Certainly on my less social days people who already annoy me anyway will loom as larger pests.  Yet even people who I normally look forward to being around lose their glow. There is no trigger. It’s utterly random as to when these anti-social Moody Loner clouds will descend. But because of those days I do not view myself as a true “people” person. And since I am not a Moody Loner all the time I don’t view myself that way either. Wishy-washy!
3. I hate to be the one who has to choose where to eat or what to do for other people. Pick a place and I’ll go along, but I really rarely have strong opinions about it and I don’t want to be put on the spot. One could go into all sorts of deep reasons why -don’t want to disappoint people or be criticized for my choices maybe?- no, I happen to think it’s just that I am LAZY and cannot make a decision! Ya see? Wishy washy! (actually, there’s a lot of underlying laziness going on here)
4. I’m blessed/cursed with the ability to see both sides of just about ANY argument. It’s why I called myself pragmatic on my political site. The hard part then, is choosing a side. I can flip flop with the best of them and I freely admit it. But it’s also why I cannot abide by extremists. People who take a hard line stance with no respect for or desire to understand what drives the other side. If I can predict exactly how you will react to a particular event based on what I have found to be your pre-existing biases/brain washings? Buh bye.
5. I hate coconut.
6. I love potatoes. (thought I’d throw in a few absolutes there )
7. I have a very juvenile sense of humor. The idea of someone farting loud enough to startle and wake up a cat as was reported over twitter a few weeks ago  sends me into fits of giggles. Probably for the best since I have boys
8. In that vein, something we discussed in DC – I will involuntarily react to someone falling by laughing. Once my older son did a complete flip around a metal bar he had not seen outside a grocery store and my first reaction was a loud guffaw, then “oh god, are you ok?!” then more guffaws. My own kid! Yes, he was fine & laughing himself, but still…Given 7 & 8, shows like America’s Funniest Home videos were created for me!
9. I really don’t like fans of sports teams or politics or..anything..whose idea of being a fan is to trash the other team and make the other fans feel BAD. The fan who loves to “dig” at anyone else about results. The fan who gloats and trash talks. You can cheer without jeering, ya know?
10. I *honestly* cannot think of anything else without sort of cheating like I did with 5 & 6 so there. I clearly need to be more mysterious about myself so that when these topics pop up I can actually BE revealing something!!

As for passing it on, well, in order to elicit some actual blog posts from these fine ladies who have grown rather silent over this past year I shall give this award to ALL the August Moms on my blog roll. C’mon now – some of you need to dust off that keyboard and get posting!!

My life is in a computer chip

This is my brain

How in the hell did we ever live without laptops and smart phones?

It’s one of those which came first questions. Did these items come about in reaction to our lives being so packed and thus the need for electronic organization, or did the electronic organization allow us to take on the many tasks that have packed it to the brim?

This weekend I downloaded more apps on my phone to help me get through each day. A To Do checklist (Toodledo) which allows me to enter an item and assign it a due date and thus also set up a reminder pop up. I have another app (Awesome Note) where I’ve kept track of things I need to know like the list of SportBoy’s classes and teachers for this year. Of course it comes with a calendar which syncs to my laptop so that they both have our whole schedule for work/school/football/baseball/board duties/workouts in one spot with handy reminders popping up in both places. It’s got a calculator and an alarm clock (love that the clock function allows me display times in multiple zones so that I know, for instance, what time it is in China where SweetPrince is yet again). It has a Grocery List app so that I can record what I need as I think of it and then just bring up the last when I get to the store. this iphone is so darn all encompassing in what it can do that I have actually not even turned on the laptop a couple of nights this week because it was just not needed.

Basically I am using it as my brain. Because my own brain is a flipping sieve! Stuff flies out faster than it goes in and even with the phone and laptop I forget to do things. Or tell someone something. Or ask so and so about this or that and…ummm…what was I thinking about again?

It’s awesome and scary all at once. I love it and I hate it. Do you think for a minute that as a single mom working full time outside the home I would have even considered volunteering on first the baseball and then the football league boards without a laptop at my disposal? or a smart phone that can get all my emails on the fly? No WAY!  I’ve honestly thought about what my life was like 10 years ago and there no possible way I could have juggled all that + keep up with getting SB to all of his sporting practices and events.

Not to mention – how would I ever have kept up with my obsession with all things Adam? Or been able to access such gorgeous photos:

This is my brain on Adam

I’m sure I am thinking of all this because my time as a volunteer is waning (thank every god in heaven!). I’ve been pondering what I will be doing 6 months from now for instance. One entire email account will be gone. A software program will be out of my life. Another checkbook and invoices and deposit files will be handed off.  I know I will initially catch up on the To Do list (that is on my phone of course!) of things I need to do around the house and yard which have been so neglected since December. I’ve already been squeezing in my workout classes (twice a week). Maybe add a third class? Maybe read a book? Maybe write more on both my blogs? Maybe do something to help my brain get back into shape so that it does not have to be on a phone? Some crosswords or other activities?

Maybe just be.

Adam – take me away.

One of the better quality videos of Adam singing Starlight on the American Idol tour. Because I need an infusion of that joy from him this week. Because the last two days have been…well..rather out of my control and yet feeling as if I am in the spin cycle in a washing machine ya know? One bright light was waking up this morning to a tweet from Adam announcing the release date of his album – Nov 24th. 83 days. Until then I will have to continue to haunt You Tube for concert footage on nights when I need to hear his voice.

Don’t worry please – none of this stuff is about me at all. And it’s all already worked out or will by tomorrow. It’s work and travel plans being messed with (stupid United Airlines changing their mileage reimbursement policies!) and drama on the football board (I swear I could write a book after just a two year stint!) and nearly every small planned thing I had this week getting kicked around. I don’t do well with too much of that. One thing, fine. But everything? Not so fine. This is one of those weeks when life shakes you around by the collar just to show you that you are really not quite as in control as you thought

So, sing to me Adam. Take me far away, if even for a few minutes please.

Mad World

No, this is not another Adam Lambert post

But it IS another edition of (drum roll please)…..A Day In the Life!

It is appropriate that I have a new found appreciation for the song with a line that goes:

When people run in circles it’s a very very mad world.

So this was my day yesterday:

• Take Sports Boy to school. Yes, he can walk, but he’s been feeling lazier as the school year winds down and my deal with him is that if he is ready to go at 7:45, I’ll swing up there on my way in to work.
• While at work, try to solve the mystery that is the People Soft Asset Management system.  I’ve mentioned how I Hate People Soft before and that is just being reinforced as I try to determine how the tables that get populated with *the same data* are NEVER in sync so that no two reports show the same totals. I know, total accounting geek speak, but it’s making the work day particularly frustrating this week.
• Leave at 2:20 to go to the train station to pick up MusicMan. Take him home to grab his work clothes, then back up in the direction of the train station to drop him off to work, then back to my own work by 3:15. Picture it as a looping route with a zig zag in between.
• Wrestle with software program some more. Get no where.
• Leave at 5pm to pick up SportsBoy from home and drive him down the hill to his dad’s so he can pick up a shirt he needs. Lecture SB on poor planning causing me to make this extra trip since he knew he would need this shirt two weeks ago and could have brought it to my house well ahead of time! Stop by PO Box to check mail for baseball and football clubs. Drop SB back at his school so he can be an usher for his school’s Spring Play from 6-9pm.
• Home to make dinner, tend to cats, clean kitchen, put laundry away and catch up on the days football league and personal emails.
• Pick up SportsBoy at 9 (Music Man got a ride home from work from a friend)
• Leave at 9:30 to give MM a ride back to Work Furlough
• Home at 10:20pm for the night.

Those last two bullet points happen every night since two weeks ago and will continue until 6/13. Weeeeeeeeeeee!

Please please tell me now

Are you flashing back to the 80s? Coolio!

When did Daylight Savings Time start so dang early? Ok, I think I am vaguely aware that they changed it up, but really, this was EARLY! Thanks be to twitterland I was not caught unawares but really, I also had NO CLUE until Saturday that it was Spring Forward day. That coulda been disastrous since we had registration day on Sunday. Oooh – which sends me flashbacks to when I forgot a Spring Forward and then had to work a Sunday graduation for NU way back in the day and I was an hour late reporting for my shift! GAH!

Of course, it’s not like you really need to DO anything anymore. As MusicMan responded when I warned him we needed to change the clocks “Uh, what clocks actually NEED changing at this point?” As it turned out, just my watch and the clocks on the microwave and stove. Everything else just does it automatically!

Saw this really cool bird at the Torrey Pines Lagoon on my way in to work today. The drop in there during migration periods and there was a pretty good sized flock floating around:

Canvasback

SportsBoy’s LL team had its first loss Saturday. Still a very good game and SB had 3 hits including another rather booming double. Dare we consider the little guy can push one over the fence this year? That’s twice now in the first 4 games when he got one within a foot of it for sure. I think he’s the last of his travel ball team peers to be a home run virgin

There were no further toilet paper roll attacks this weekend.

The house did get cleaned – just not by me (which is, as always, a bonus!)

I didn’t have to kill anyone at registration yesterday (which is, as always, another bonus!!). Wasn’t sure if that would be the case given some of the rather err..stunningly obtuse questions sent out way during the week, but things went off without any trouble.

I did have to unwind with a beer and pizza – oh man that tasted so good!

So what did you do this weekend?

Patience & curves

The day has not gone as planned. There have been some…curves Which required a lot of patience. Which I don’t tend to have tons of on hand most of the time. It all started Thursday night when sometimes during the last 30 mins of Gray’s Anatomy, the internet went gablooe. It had been going along fine all night, then was just done. Music Man has the modem and router in his room and he tried resetting everything with no success. I went to bed and asked him to just try again while I was at work on Friday. Well, no luck. So once dinner was done last night I got on the phone with tech support for the cable company. Which has always been quite good here (knock wood, but really it has!). I’ve had this same cable modem service for nearly 12 years and it’s been very very reliable. Anyway, an hour on tech support trying multiple things (thank gawd for blue tooth so that I had both hands free to tackle it!) pretty much resulted in confirmation that the signal was fine, it was the modem and/or the ethernet cable that had fritzed. Thankfully they have Saturday in store hours and would be open at 9am so I could get over there and switch it out and hopefully get back online before leaving for Sports Boy’s baseball tournament in LA. Meanwhile though, I felt so out of sorts!! Here it was the night before a tournament with rain already messing things up for sure and my only connection (and thank gawd for that) was my Blackberry. Which also was not acting normal! Messages and my phone log were wiping themselves clear as soon as I hung up or read them. It was so frustrating!! I finally traced *that* problem back to when I had downloaded the Twitterberry app earlier this week so I deleted it and got my phone back to normal (phew!) Then around 10:45pm I get the message that there will be no games today. We’ve been pushed off to Sun/Mon instead. Which means that today opened up for me to deal with these technical difficulties. For some reason my brain took that to me today was kind of a ‘free day’. Unplanned time had opened up. And I felt like being productive. So I did all those chores that build up that are kind one offs which are annoying but not necessary.

Got the new modem (ok, THAT was necessary to get my heart beating back in rhythm!)

Went to the tailor – I’ve had clothes that needed hemming/mending piling in my room for 6 months. With a tailor right next to the dang grocery store and dry cleaners! Oh, went to the dry cleaners too

Laundry (ok, that’s not a one off..but I am doing it earlier than usual for a weekend)

Cleaned out a corner of the garage and dropped off electronic waste to a new e-cycle center than opened up just 5 mins away.

Took SB in for a buzz.

Went to AT&T store to change account settings for MM’s phone and SB’s. Looked at iPhone again…naah, not my style…drooled over Blackberry Bold. Drooled. Wanted. Badly. But we have this bad habit in my family of *needing* replacement phones before the plan is due for a free upgrade. And it just so happens that my mom lost hers this month and already had it replaced. So I would have had to pay out the *nose* for the Bold today. I asked the guy when my plan would reset so that I could get the cheaper price…Aug 3. Aug 3 huh? Less than 6 months. I can wait. I just need some….

Oh yeah, and apparently everyone is having pizza for Valentines Day so again, with the day changed around rather than being out with the baseball team, tonight I will order in some pizza. Because clearly I am a slave to the power of suggestion when it comes to food this week!

The cleaning

Some photos of the annual winter cleaning spree (spring is for wimps, I wait for winter and tear up the house just before decorating). Furniture scattered all over the place so that I can vacuum and treat the floors normally hidden from the light:

I am going to have one tired cat tonight too. Amber is used to sleeping while we are gone during the day, but I’ve messed things all up. In that first picture you can see that she had to patrol the area behind the big sofa. After all, there were cool dust bunnies and even some silverfish (ewww) for her to chase down. Chip scurried upstairs and under my bed at the sight of the vacuum so he is fine, but she has to be in the middle of everything. Then I spread out some catnip for her which I usually don’t like to do since she makes such a mess with it but hey – I was making a mess!! Plus, she is so much fun to watch when she is high:

Back to the cleaning. Lunch break over. More later.

Hello out there in bloggy-land!

Ah…..you hear that? No? Shhhhhh…focus….

There you go. That is the sound of life post-election and post-football season. Me, flopped in my favorite chair watching whatever I want to watch on tv or reading my magazines. Because I can. Well, after tomorrow night’s board meeting that is. Gotta have a post-season wrap up meeting. Plus those dang cheerleaders never really stop. Three squads made it rhgouh *their* competitive levels to qualify for Florida so we have to design a travel budget for them tomorrow.

But I digress…back to me relaxin’……OK, in reality there is going to be a lot of this:

Followed by a whole LOT of this:

If you are new in the last year to my site – Hi, I’m the real life Mrs Griswold. Only there is no Mr. Its all me. The explosion of lights shall commence early this year since I have Wednesday off work (cleaning and furniture rearranging day) and no formal plans for Thanksgiving. Normally we head out to my mom’s, but they are visiting the relatives in New Orleans – well, really Pass Christian Mississippi now which is where they re-settled after Katrina. Sportsboy is most likely electing to travel up to San Fransisco with his dad despite the long car rides (it is his week there anyway) and Music Man claims he has “loads of options”. Not quite sure what that means but…since I personally do not LIKE turkey and have never cooked one, I am not about to start now!! SweetPrince and I will wing it. His family is also not really doing anything (whoda thunk eh? For once there is nothing going on with either side of the family and rather than splitting time and appetite between two places, we have none!) So a-decorating I will go! And I shall post the results here.

Oh – and also the new artwork! FINALLY after almost 5 full years I found paintings to hang on the big red wall! I left it essentially blank all this time just waiting for inspiration (and a bargain) to pop up. And it did this weekend with an art collection display at the umm…err…..(ahem)..grocery store! Yep. Only high class stuff goes on my walls. Hey – at least it wasn’t the gas station!! Seriously though they are just simple oils on canvas done in a style with hints of impressionism by what are most assuredly just commissioned high volume artists – I love them! It’s a series of 3 paintings of musical instruments with violins as the centerpiece. Violins painted in a shade of red remarkably close in color to my wall. You’ll see when I hang them Wednesday – they just POP!

Meanwhile my cat is being a pain in the ass right now and I need to see what she is destroying now – it’s not even a full moon but she’s batting around toys she used to ignore and last night she got into things/places she should not be in my bedroom at 4:30am and I had to toss her out and shut the door. Been awhile since she was a pest like that. Now she is making way too much noise in the downstairs bathroom….sigh…so much for relaxing!

One more wish please….

…if it is not too much to ask?

I mean, the relieving of extreme financial stress worries has been granted.

I appreciate that the early year health scare for my dad turned out OK.

The Democrat winning the White House wish was granted.

The ’something good please happen to get Music Man off on the right foot’ wish has been granted.

Then yesterday the ‘please get this dang non-profit status back for the baseball club thing’ just about came through as the largest hurdle was overcome. (Been working on that thing since last summer. Hours recreating tax forms. Phone calls to IRS and state officials constantly. This has been a cloud over the volunteer portion of my life for two years – and it’s going to be over and accomplished before the end of the year – HUGE relief!)

So tomorrow..please…dear universe that has been so generous the last half of this year just as things were looking kinda bleak….please…can SportsBoy’s team please win? I know it seems so trivial compared to the other things I was wishing for…but gosh in a 12 year old’s life it IS huge…and they’ve been dreaming of this since last year’s season ending loss.

Thank you.

Weekend blurb

I think I’ve mentioned before that I must have lost my ever loving mind to have volunteered to serve on the local pop warner board. Well, that theory has been further verified after this weekend. For the second time this year after spending all day on one of the hottest days of the year volunteering for the league, I was never happier to stand under a hot shower.

Wait you say! Hottest day of the year? On Nov 15? Oh yes my friends. I know I have mentioned before that fall is often hotter than summer in San Diego. This year though, it was a freakishly hot and then cold alternating spring, a very mild summer, and then THE hottest fall ever with a ending (I hope!) with a crescendo this weekend. You may have heard of all the wild fires which are burning up north. Same sort of weather pattern that burned our county last year. Still, this is at least 2-3 weeks later than usual for such a strong Santa Ana wind to be blowing. But, it is. At 8am yesterday when I arrived at the football field it was over 80 degrees and the sun was blazing. The wind started blowing hot at around 10am and the combination of sun and hot, dry wind really made the day all that more fun eh? Wearing my lovely *black* board shirt too. At least it is short sleaved, but it is still HOT. I had to man the ticket sales at the entrance for awhile, then migrated to the stands to watch my son’s game.

And they won again! They have reached their goal – a rematch against the same team that beat them last year 30-0 in the Western Conference Final. This time, the fact that there is no Florida is actually helping them focus. They have had ONE goal all year and that is to get to this game and then the season is over. Finish undefeated, avenge the loss to that team and walk away going as far as you could go at this level. They didn’t play great yesterday – perhaps were already looking to this coming weekend showdown, but this still won.

So after being fan mom for the noon game, I had to get back to work and went back out front to ticket sales during game #3. Then for the final game of the day which started at 4pm, I had volunteered to be on the chain gang. You know, where you carry one of these:

I carried one of the bulls-eye poles. It was awesome to be down on the sidelines so close to the action, even for a youth game. This was the biggest set of boys – 13-14 year olds almost as big as high school, but not quite. It was fun hearing what the coaches told the kids and just being so close to everything. The hits were hard!! However, what I was not prepared for was how much *I* would have to run!! At the end of an already long, hot day I had to run up and down that sideline with that pole. On top of that, we were getting yelled at!! Seriously! There was a measurement that went against the team whose sideline we were on so we then were showered with all sorts of wonderful “compliments” by the parents in the stands, some coaches and eventually even the players! Obviously that team was not the best behaved on the planet and they should not have been so vocal. We stayed cool though and mostly laughed at the ridiculousness of it.

That bit of drama at the end though really zapped me so I stopped off to have some pizza and a beer before heading home for that shower. I fell asleep very early and when I woke up I felt utterly dizzy and still zapped. Kinda like this:

Heehee – love that picture! Seriously, that’s how I felt most of today! I finally figured out that the dry wind had effed up my sinuses and I just could not breathe. Took some Claritin D and dragged myself out of bed to watch SportsBoy’s baseball game and then on to (where else), equipment drop off for pop warner since all the other teams are now done. Two hours there thankfully inside the storage shed vs in the hot sun again and then I was finally able to come home and do some cleaning. Finished right at lunch time and then plopped on the sofa to doze on and off in front of some NFL football on the TV. Still feeling alternately woozy though. SweetPrince came over and while talking to him things would spin and I’d just start giggling and he asked me when I had started drinking Yeah well, I wish, but no, this was all me! I’m all limp and relaxed and just spent.

Damn pop warner football! At least that was the last set of home games and #55 only has one more game for sure. Then I will get another little part of my life back. For a little while anyway.