Tall Actors

They are surprisingly difficult to find.  You see a lot of attractive actors but not a lot of them very tall.  Well, tall for me means well over 6 feet because I'm tall myself at 5'9" - although I used to be taller until serious back problems robbed me of over 2 inches.  So is this because taller mean less attractive?  I think not!  Here's a sampling to nix that idea:

Gorgeous Hugh Jackman at 6' 2". 

Matthew Fox also at 6' 2" AND also looks good wet.....

Lee Pace at 6' 3" - nice on the eyes if not slightly thick in the brow.

Tom Selleck as he looks now and in his younger, Magnum P.I. days, at 6' 3 1/2".  I had a teenage crush on him (yes, teenage) and he's aging well, if you ask me.

Liam Neeson at 6' 4" but maybe just attactive to those of us over....a certain age.  Love his accent!

And John Corbett (remember Northern Exposure) at 6' 5" - if only he wasn't frighteningly out of touch with reality.

Of course, there are others, I'm sure, but this is my blog and I get to pick 'em today.  Add yours in comments if you like.

Had to Laugh

A little girl, around 6, that goes to our church was at the office yesterday with her mother.  We have a couple of paintings up behind my desk of flowers.  One is of flowers in a clear vase, so you can see the water level and the illusion of stems in water.  She said, "Did they use clear paint so it looks like water?"  It was an interesting idea and I thought it was so cute.  I love the way children's minds work.  But I told her they took Saran Wrap and smoothed it over the vase area, then modge-podged it on.  It made her laugh because she totally wasn't going for that.  Smart kid.

Curbing

What do I mean by curbing?  Perhaps, what are you curbing?  Appetite?  Your current way of life? 

Nope, none of those.  Curbing is what I call my first experience as the mother of a teen learning to drive.  Oh yeah, it was that bad.

Her dad started her out, driving about an hour and a half a few days after Christmas but then left to go back on the road (trucker driver).  I thought, "Shoot, I'll let the people I paid all that money to teach her."  If only......

She needs more practice, I was told after her first session.  She freaked out and actually had to pull over with the instructor because she was so scared.  I totally sympathize with my nervous, cautious child because, well, she gets it honestly.  I can't remember what kind of new driver I was.  We lived in the sticks so I was driving by the time I was about 14 and a half or so.  My very first driving occurred in an old red VW bug with a big rust spot in the floorboard on the driver's side.  If you took a corner and it had any water near it, your leg got splashed.  This sentence makes it sound like I took my corners all wrong.  Well, maybe.  But mostly it's because smooth, paved streets were pretty rare in our parts back then.  Sometimes we had to get out and push it to get it to start again from a stop sign.  But put a buck in the tank and you could drive around town all night.  Of course, part of that was because gas was WAY cheap in the "olden days".  So I don't really remember the part before I was able to drive.  I'm a lot more nervous now than I was as a kid, though.

On to the story of the "curbing" experience.  The instructor told me she was in no way ready for rush hour or downtown driving - the two next experiences with them.  So we cancelled those upcoming appointments so I could practice with her.  I thought a half hour or so every night (if it wasn't snowing or very icy out) would be the best way to go.  I took her that very next night, pulled over to a curb in a residential area and we soon turned a corner.  Now the story from her side is I freaked her out by having her turn a corner right away.  Okay.  Maybe.  But it's not like it was her first.  Thankfully the pedestrian - a middle aged woman walking home from what I suspect was a long day at work from the bus stop - had gotten about 10 to 15 feet in front of us.  Rachel took the corner and....forgot to straighten out the wheel.  I relatively calmly said, "Brake."  No response.  "Brake," I said more urgently as we went up on to the sidewalk and the tires kissed the grass.  "STOP!!!!!" I yelled as we went fully on to the grass, our headlights shining on the woman's form not more than 10 feet ahead and one of those green power boxes less than 5 feet in front of us.  Thankfully, from years of training, she knows when I yell, I mean business!!

I knew I must not get angry, so I quickly calmed myself and said, "Ok.  Don't move until the lady gets further ahead and we have planned how to safely get out of the grass.  You can do this."  I'm not certain if that last sentence was for her or for me.  And I'm thinking I never expected to utter the first one. 

But she did safely get us out of the grass and off the curb without hitting anything!!!
Oh, happy, happy day!!

We continue to drive on, with specific instructions as we slowly took each corner, went a little too fast down slight inclines with a little leftover snow and ice on them and repeatedly stopped in the crosswalk at stop signs all over the area.  There was the center of the road thing, too, but so little traffic made that less a life-threatening experience than the pedestrian issue.

Not the worst experience I've ever had.  I think we have a long road ahead of us and sometimes I really wish I had someone else to do this......

Oh, and a big shout out to the jerk in the little sports car who laid on his horn when he whipped onto the street behind us from a left turn.  Okay, she was going a little slow but you think maybe the repeated horn blowing slowed her even more as she freaked out, not even realizing it was a car behind us, looking from the steering wheel to me to try to understand what she'd done to make the horn blow?  Yeah, nice one, Buddy.  If only I were the sort to use hand signals.
       

The First Christmas

By the title, you imagine you will read my thoughts on the very first Christmas, our Savior's birth, and how I feel about that.  That might be in another post.  This post is about the first Christmas without my mom on this earth to share it.

Christmas was her time of year.  She loved it all - the family together, the decorations, especially the lights, the gift giving, the carols - you name it, she loved it.  And because of that, her children all do, too.  So every year since I've had a home of my own, I've gone all out to decorate, taken time to beautifully and carefully wrap gifts (often accused of paying to have it done by my younger sister), bake and make favorites to share with friends and family and had plenty of lights.  And I kept thinking it would be that way this year, too.

But what I had were false starts.  I kept planning and for the first time since I've had my own home, I didn't have it decorated over Thanksgiving weekend.  A few weeks later, Rachel and I got around to it.  Some lights went up outside, the Advent houses went on the counter, the Santa collection on the fireplace, the Nutcracker collection on the hutch.....and then I fizzled out.  The snowman collection never made it out of the boxes.  The Victorian, cardboard Santa figures never made it on to the wall.  The favorite Christmas card collection never made it up on the wall, either.  We put just two strands of lights on the tree and didn't put much effort into the outdoor lights, either.

It's just not the same this year.  This year there was no conversation with my mom asking how much we'd gotten put up, what we were planning to make - all the things I talked to her about every year.  And it sort of sucked the joy out of it.  I've been a bit down in the dumps for two days.  I feel on the verge of tears every moment.  I wanted to cry after a surprisingly easy run to Walmart for some last minute baking needs - baking I have yet to get started on.  I can't put my finger on it.  It's just not that same this year.

To top it all off, Jay can't make it home for Christmas.  He won't get here until Tuesday.  We're having it on Christmas Day anyway because it's not fair to ask a kid to wait.  He'll be on the phone with us as we open presents because that's the best we can do.  And the days I took off from work are not going to be spent with him because he's not here.  That's made it harder, too.

I know next year will be easier.  I hope it will be down right much, much better.  But this year I'm just going to try to focus on our Savior's birth and try to keep smiling - even though I don't really feel it (and feel like I suck as a mom right now because of it!).

Thank goodness for our friends and all they offer in reaching out to us, understanding how rough things have been for us these last couple of years.  I know we are on our way to improving - better jobs, more income.  Now we just need the set backs to stop and the improvements to keep coming instead of being stagnant.  I know deep down everything will get better.  I just have to keep the faith.    

Maybe I'm Not All That

I do not have a great deal of self esteem.  Deep down inside, I know many positive things about myself but on the surface, I only feel good about two things - being a good mom and being a good employee.  In fact, I'd say I can be a little over confident - at least about work.  I took on so much that I was working 10 hour days, coming home and squeezing in an hour or two many nights, working weekends and I STILL couldn't keep up with everything.

I felt myself falling into a deep pit of despair.  I say this with a flare for the written word but really, I was getting pretty down.  I was feeling run down, disappointed that I couldn't do it all (not that anyone could, but I'd set my standard pretty darn high) and feeling like I failed my boss.

She saw it.  She came to me and said, "I am an over-delegater and you are an over-worker and together, we are not managing it."  No truer words had been spoken in some time.  We hired a part-timer who has worked for my boss before and she's doing the bookkeeping while I keep all the rest of it.

I finally feel like work is manageable and perhaps I can have a life outside of my job.  It's a new concept for me in the workforce.  When I was single, I was notorious for working 12+ hours a day.  I feel rewarded when I work and do a job well, so I put a lot in to it.  But right now, I'm still raising my teenager and she needs me just as much as she did when she was little - just in a different way.  And now I can focus a bit more on things at home and less about work.

I seriously feel much better. 

Time Slips Away

I blog for therapy.  I used to read other people's blogs for the same reason.  One of the blogs a friend writes leaves me laughing almost every time I pop over there.  I monitor my daughter's feelings by reading hers and out of all the blogs I used to love to read, those are the only two I manage to get to these days and even that is so infrequent, I miss out on a lot.

There are two sides to this.  One is that I don't have the time because I work full-time plus some at a job I really enjoy and this makes me a contributing member of the household.  I like that very much.  The other side is that I have little time for the things I love to do - blogging, reading and the one I miss the most, writing on my novel. 

I know that somehow, I have to balance my life so I can fit in daily exercise and daily writing so that I feel good and completely fulfilled.  But I've spent my life making excuses for what I 'can't' do.  I can't work out every day because blah, blah, blah.  I can't write on my novel, finish it and put it out there for publishing because blah, blah, blah.

I think part of that is not seeing me for who I am or what I am capable of in life.  Another friend of mine tells me all the time how strong she thinks I am; how able I am to cope with so much more than the average person and still handle life with grace.  In fact, she just told me this again a few days ago.  But I blush and then say to myself, "there are far more difficult lives than mine and those people persevere despite their problems, too.  I am nothing special."  And I'm not.  But I guess it's kind of nice that someone thinks I am.

I wasn't one of the top kids in my family growing up.  By that I mean I wasn't thought very highly of or given much support toward becoming anything.  That's just life, just the way it is, but I think it instilled a powerful lack of belief in myself that I could do much of anything.  So I just pushed to do certain things really well.  One was in the kind of employee I am.  I work my tail off for whomever I'm employed by.  It's why I moved up so quickly in every job I ever had that allowed such progress.  When I was single and could focus everything on my work, I made a lot of money...and spent it, too!  I think this background also made me the kind of mom I am.  I KNOW I am a great mom.  Even my teenager tells me this all the time.  How awesome is that?!?!?  And she doesn't think that because I let her get away with whatever.  Everyone who knows her thinks she's a great kid.  That's because she is.

So I've got two things I think I'm good at in life.  But I suspect I have a lot more than that and I just don't push myself to be more, do better, improve in those areas.  Maybe it's time to look myself in the eye, get serious and make some efforts in other areas that I've let slide.  Maybe it's time to do what matters to me, too, not just what I have to do or am obligated to do.  Maybe it's time to say no at the right time and yes at the best time.

I think I might try this on for size and see how it goes.                   

Finally, Sunshine

It has been a long, difficult road - especially for my daughter - but the sun has begun to shine again.  Through absolutely no fault of her own, she has struggled for a long time with darkness, sorrow and frightening thoughts.  In her desire to be the good and precious child she truly is, she covered it with smiles and laughter.  But that only worked for so long.  Everything began to fall apart this year.  We endured a lot and it took it's toll.

We lost the only home she'd ever known to foreclosure - something I never thought we'd experience.  My mother, her grandmother, passed away and three weeks later, our dog of nine years did, too.  Jay's behavior had been appalling for far too long and so we separated after letting things go on much longer than it should have - but I couldn't walk away from the mentally ill man I love until then.  He abandoned us in his anger and would not speak to his own daughter while only yelling at me.  And her sickness began to show itself because it was bad enough she could no longer hide it.

She's been afraid of this illness because of what she's seen from her father.  She can scarcely remember the time when things were good; when we laughed a lot and enjoyed each other as a family unit.  He'd been seriously ill with his disease since she was 9 years old.  And that's what she was afraid of becoming.  So in trying to deny it, she hid it until she couldn't.

But things have brightened.  Jay had a medication change that had been desperately needed for 5 years.  He knew he could not live on $9.00 an hour on his own, so he made it happen that he could begin driving again.  He spent time alone on the road and realized some things about himself that three stints in marriage counseling and two trips through the church marriage classes had not helped him see.  He began to regret and felt ashamed of what he had become.  And he began to talk to me without anger, without yelling, without blame toward me.  He just admitted what he'd been responsible for in this mess we'd called a marriage the last 5 years.  And we have reunited - though he is driving over the road, so we only see him for a few days once every month or 6 weeks.  But for now, that's fine.

And I pulled myself out of my shell of denial that this was all happening again, but this time to my sweet daughter, and sought the help she needed.  She's been seeing a therapist, but it was clearly not enough.  I made an appointment through Children's Hospital and she saw a psychiatrist.  What a huge relief to finally have a diagnosis - anxiety with depression.  And a huge relief to find the answer to what she needed - medication and less pressure at school.  I pulled her out of Honors math.  She's still in an advanced math class, but at a much calmer pace.  She'll remain out of honors math through the rest of high school.  We've already mapped that path out with her school counselor.  All her other classes remain Honors, but they are easy for her and she enjoys them.  And we started medication which seems to be working very, very well.  For the first time in a long time, I have my ray of sunshine back!  My little girl is smiling - genuinely smiling - and laughing and happy and so much more relaxed.  She's not all the way there yet as we're still adjusting the medication level, but she is very well on her way.  And I cannot thank my Heavenly Father enough for protecting her until I could get the help she needed.  I thought I was going to lose her and that, I could not endure.

So, we are moving forward instead of backward again.  We are working on all the right things at all the right times in all the right places and I look forward as the light grows around us again and the darkness fades.

We survived.  We persevered.  We endured.