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 |  My Blog....Pearls of wisdom and/or foolish mutterings.....You be the judge.... |
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A little of this, a dash of that......epic mood swings.......A LOT of foolish mutterings and occasionally a few words of wisdom. It's a crapshoot. You never know what you'll find in here... |
| My brother called me last night. He was calling from work, on a break, and had apparently been caught up in thoughts and reminiscing about the last several years of our lives and all the turmoil that ruled those years. Mike works nights and his position as a supervisor often allows him the luxury of time to let his thoughts wander. So, it's not surprising for me to get a call from him late at night as he attempts to sort through the detritus of the tumult that has so often accompanied him in life. Admittedly, much of the mayhem in his life has been of his own making, but the events that were on his mind last night were not of that category. The chaos that attended not only Mike’s life, but mine as well, and in turn, our extended families, was of a different ilk. It was thrust upon us with no warning, no sign of storm clouds gathering in the distance, and allowed no time for preparation. The storm that blew into our lives on February 16, 2005 had the force of a hurricane and the devastating effects are still apparent. Neither of us had any inkling, standing there at the graveside of our father on that cold February day, of the hellish events we were about to encounter. We could never have foreseen the bizarre path before us. We had no idea that we would lose our mother, too, in exactly one year, or that his wife was about to begin a battle for her own life against the brain tumor that lay festering at that moment in her body. Four years later, in retrospect, it is difficult to believe that we also survived the avarice that would result in a hostile takeover of our father’s business, or that a small-town-banker and a former business partner would band together with my father’s widow in a plot that successfully framed my brother for fraud, sending him to prison for fourteen months. Four years later, with that insanity behind us, finally hearing the dying gasps of an adversarial and hotly contested probate , we have both emerged, battle-scarred and weary, but miraculously alive and relatively sane. It was these events that were on my brother’s mind last night when he called me. He had a question for me. He wanted to know if I thought we would ever be able to forget all that had happened, leave it behind us and go on with life. Or, did I believe that those events had so scarred us that our lives were forever changed and we would always carry those scars with us? I didn’t hesitate in my answers to his questions, for I had already done battle with those very thoughts. I had wrestled with the inequity of the situation, the disbelief that the God we trusted in had allowed all these things to happen; especially in such rapid succession that we couldn’t catch our breath before another wave hit us. I had railed against heaven and cursed the justice system that I felt had failed us so miserably. I danced with the devil, whirling around each doubt and question in a desperate bid for understanding. Finally, the understanding came. And I wrapped myself in it; I wore it like a custom-made garment until it became a part of me. It was as easy as breathing for me to answer Mike’s questions when they came. Will we ever be able to forget about what happened, leave it behind us and go on with our lives? No, we’ll never forget and it would be impossible for us to leave it behind for it is a part of who we are now. Neither of us is the same person we were before February 16, 2005. We have been fundamentally changed. We are the sum total of our life experiences. But, we have the responsibility to decide how those experiences affect us. We can choose to let them affect us in a positive manner or a negative one. We decide whether we will be better or worse because of what happened. Do we leave it behind us and go on with our lives? Again, the choice is ours. We can choose to let the past be the past, allowing it to stay where it belongs. Having been affected by it, we decide whether to take what we have learned from it and move forward; or we can chain ourselves to it and drag it along with us, thus never allowing the wounds to heal. Either way, we will go on with our lives. How we go on with them is up to us. Yes, we are indeed scarred by the chaos of the last four years. We can choose to wear those scars as a badge, thereby letting them define us. Or, we can allow those scars to be exactly that—simply scars. Battle scars that are undeniably a part of us, but scars that are nothing more than reminders of the strength we gained and the victory that we snatched from the jaws of defeat. I choose victory—nothing more, nothing less. |
| Yikes! I was up late last night - my old friend, insomnia, was paying a visit. I decided to check out Jimmy Fallon's new late night show. Holy crap! I don't even have the words to tell you how bad it was. I was embarassed for him. There is only one word for his opening monologue - CHEESY. His jokes (and I use that term very loosely) weren't even slightly humorous, except to him apparently, because the only thing more painful than listening to his bad jokes was hearing his hysterical, forced laughter at the end of each "joke."Glenn Close was one of his guests. I don't know if she was caught up in his panic or what, but I will never look at her the same way again. It was torturous to watch. I just kept thinking, Oh my God, stop, put yourself out of your own misery. I finally had to just turn it off. It was too painful to watch. I think Jimmy isn't long for late night. But that's just my opinion. Something I'm never short of.... On a happier note, there is good news on the television front. HBO is premiering the first new episode of In Treatment on Sunday, with that delicious hunk of a man, Gabriel Byrne. Now that's something to look forward to. |
** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** I ask you, is there anything sweeter than a sleeping baby? This particular cutie-pie is my grandson, Ray. Today was a Mimi day - all four of my grandkids were here at some point. The day started with this little darling. He stayed with me while his mother took his brother, Isaiah, to a checkup with the doctor, then she came back here and we switched out babies, so she could take Ray to the doctor. Poor little guy has bronchitis. That's just not fair. Poor baby. Isaiah, on the other hand, is doing really well. 19 pounds - fat little guy. He's so cute. Believe me, if you ever want to get an idea of just how old you really are, just get yourself a couple of babies for several hours and you will understand how really ancient you are. Trust me on that one. Later in the day, after I had a brief period of time to recover, (when I say recover, I mean lay on the couch like I was dead and try to stop sweating and gasping for air) my other two grandchildren came over to see me. My daughter actually brought them, they didn't drive over alone or anything. Aiden, who is 6, sat on the couch with me and argued with me about the definitions of various words. I was looking the words up on Webster's Dictionary online and having him read the definitions, but he still insisted he knew better. Every so often, he would get up and run into the playroom to argue with his sister, Olivia, who is 4. He's really into arguing. Then I went with them to Olivia's first gymnastics class. It was awesome. Olivia was very enthusiastic and she had a great time. Not so her brother. He was bored, he was hungry, he was tired.... Finally, the class was over and we all made our way to the car. In the twenty feet between the front door and the car, Aiden had about six meltdowns. He was very tired and everything set him off. He told me I squeezed his finger off when I held his hand. Then he got in the car and jumped over into the backseat (to get away from all of us, especially me because I squeezed his finger off, after all, who could blame him?) fell in the floor and got stuck. Meltdown. His mother rescued him and got him back in the seat. As he was putting his seatbelt on, he told us this was the worst day of his life.(He tends toward exaggeration.) I told him, "Aiden, trust me, this is not the worst day of your life." To which he responded, "Trust you, I'm telling you it's the worst!" I have no idea how I ever managed four, count 'em - 1,2,3,4 - kids all at one time. I must have had super-powers at the time. |
| I'm feeling rather 'random' this morning, so prepare yourself to be yanked from one subject to another with absolutely no warning. In search of some inspiration this morning, I perused the WDC site, reading snippets of blogs that I have never read before. From that exercise, I have deduced that this particular strain of malaise is rampant in WDC at the moment, as none of the blogs I peeked at this morning managed to keep my attention for more than 10 seconds or so. Most of them were in the form of "I got out of bed today, brushed my hair, made toast for breakfast...." Then I had a horrible thought. What if my blog reads exactly the same way?! Speedy-quick, I scrolled back through my blog pages to check, and I'm happy to report that is not the case, but if it ever happens, I give you permission to shoot me in the head to put me out of your misery. I'm also happy to report, at the risk of sounding rather elitist, that none of the blogs I follow regularly read that way either. That's the good news. The bad news is that none of us are blogging very regularly either. My dear friend Nada  tells me these things are cyclical and that this too shall pass and we'll be back to normal soon enough. From your mouth to God's ear, dear friend. Let me turn on the news to see if I can find any inspiration there.....Yeah, that didn't help. Zip, less-than-nothing. Holy crap! I just checked out my list of DVR'd programs and I see that I have a new episode of The United States of Tara to watch. Gotta go! |
| I don't have a lot to say today, it seems. I've been sitting here having a stare-down with a blinking cursor for a couple of hours. Oh, I've written a phrase here and there, but my backspace key has gotten quite the workout. I'm happy to report that it works quite well. You should be happy about that, too, since you've been saved from reading totally uninspired drivel. I did hear something very funny this morning, though. I'll pass that on and then I'm out of here. My grandson participated in a scholastic challenge at school on Saturday. The children were divided into teams and then the teams were read questions which they had to "buzz in" to answer a la' Jeopardy-style. One of the questions went like this: Q: According to a popular children's rhyme, what are little girls made of? One little boy thought he had the answer. The teacher/emcee called on him to respond. Nervously, he looked around, his confidence wavering. Finally, he blurted out his answer. "Meat!" He brought the house down. |
| Silly me. Apparently, I have been sadly misinformed. All this time, I've been saying Amsterdam, when I should have been using the correct pronunciation: HAMPSTERDAM. Aiden and Olivia, my 6 and 4 year old granchildren, came to see me last night and they were quick to point out that the nifty houseshoes I brought back for Aiden have the wrong name on them. They are the cutest little shoes you ever saw, shaped like wooden shoes, red with the royal crest embroidered on them in gold and the name Amsterdam across the top above the crest. Aiden wanted to know why they misspelled Hampsterdam on his shoes. Here is a recap of the conversation: Aiden: Mimi, you said you went to Hampsterdam. Me: No, it really is named Amsterdam. Maybe you misunderstood me. Olivia: Well, maybe, but I don't think so. I think you went to Hampsterdam. They said it with such conviction, they had me wondering before long. Maybe it really was Hampsterdam, after all.  Wherever I went, I met a few really nice fellows in Dam Square. I had my photo made with them. Yesterday, I had the photo of the first one (the snappy dresser in a yellow suit and really white teeth), today I've changed my default picture to the one showing me with the second one. I'm sure you all recognize him due to his amazing crime fighting capers. Yes, that's right. I met Spiderman in Hampsterdam. Really, what more could a girl ask for? Batman was there, too, along with Darth Luke, I am your father Vader, but I didn't get my picture made with them. I couldn't stand around all day getting pictures made with Super Heroes and Super ANTI-Heroes. I had places to go, souvenirs to buy, money to blow. But, I had the most fun of all with this guy: ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** My own personal Super Hero. He has incredible super powers, really useful ones like agreeing to carry my backpack when it got too heavy with the weight of all the souvenirs and surprising me with the idea to go to Brussels for the day. Oh, and a really important one - the abilty to snatch me from the jaws of death every time I didn't pay attention and wandered into the bike path in front of scads of speeding Dutch people on their way to God-only-knows-where. He also has a very keen eye. He's the one who spotted this clever sign and pointed it out to me. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** I told you those Dutch people were a no-nonsense type. Speaking of the Dutch people, here's a rather interesting little side-story. One night during our stay, our little group was sitting in the bar at the hotel recounting happenings of the day. One of our guys, Mike, had struck up a conversation with the concierge a bit earlier in the day and found out that President Obama had stayed at our hotel at some point prior to the election. Okay, that was kind of interesting, but that's not the good part. Mike gets up, rushes over to the concierge and comes back with a postcard. The postcard was from Obama, sent to the hotel after his stay. The message was this: Dear Dutch People, Keep up the good work! B. Obama Dear Dutch People?? Okay, well at least he sent a card. |
** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Incredible, historic, medieval, majestic Brussels – what a delight it was! On a whim, we took the train to Brussels—about a 2 ½ hour trip. The Central Station was a beehive of activity, but it was nothing compared to what greeted us on the street. Throngs of people, cars and motor-scooters darting in and out of traffic, tour buses somehow navigating the ancient streets; the whole city hummed with excitement. We hopped on the first tour bus we saw and rode around the city, craning our necks to catch at least a glimpse of everything all at once. There was so much to see, it was impossible to take it all in. The architecture is breathtaking; there is only one word that does it justice—majestic. We saw the Royal Chateau where the King lives; the flag was flying atop the palace which is the signal to all that the King is in residence. When he is gone, the flag doesn’t fly. We saw the Arc de Triomphe, magnificent cathedrals, the Atomium, the Chinese House, the Japanese House, and too many other sights to list individually. We saw so much during the tour, but the thing that absolutely amazed me was the way the huge tour bus squeezed around corners and glided through the narrowest of openings, never once hitting anything. My words can’t do it justice; you had to be there, holding your breath as the driver magically maneuvered between cars and around tight corners, to really appreciate the skill it required. At one point, we came around a round-about to find a tiny car (all of the cars are tiny) parked at the edge of one of the streets that jutted off the circle. There was no way for the bus to get past it. The bus driver honked his horn a couple of times, then a couple times more, until finally he lost patience and honked long and loud, over and over. On the grassy circle of the round-about, there was a group of teenagers playing soccer; they had looked our way once or twice when the driver honked, as had everyone else on the street. Suddenly, when the driver laid on the horn, it was like a big magnet drawing everyone to the showdown between the tour bus and the absent driver of the parked car. People came from every direction at the angry sound of the horn. There was one man in particular, who came out of nowhere, waving his arms and shouting to the bus driver, motioning for him to stop blowing his horn. A crowd had formed around the car, but still no driver in sight. Then a woman came hurrying across the street—it had to be her car. She pushed through the crowd, juggling her packages as she searched in her bag for her keys. The man who had gestured so wildly at the bus driver now turned his irritation to the woman driver. I wasn’t close enough to hear the language they spoke—Italian, French, Dutch, English—but it was plain to see that he was chewing her out. She started her car and pulled forward ever so slightly, then stopped. She started to get out of her car, but the aggravated man was there before she could open her door, gesturing at the bus and then at the street in front of her; it was obvious he was telling her to move her car further down the road, which she did, finally. As our bus pulled past her, Angry Man was arguing loudly with another man who had stepped forward out of the crowd. Meanwhile, the woman driver pulled away and drove off in the other direction, leaving the two men and the crowd behind her. We continued on our way and finished our tour, ending up back at the train terminal. The one thing we had not seen was the famous little “pissing boy” statue—Mannekin Pis. So we struck out on foot to find Mannekin Pis. But not before we stopped at a restaurant to have… what else? A Belgian Waffle topped with strawberries and crème, with chocolate drizzled over the top of it all. It was delicious! ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** It didn’t take us long to locate Mannekin Pis, as there were street signs indicating all of the tourist attractions. There was a very large crowd gathered around the statue with everyone taking turns having their picture made in front of the famous Mannekin Pis. Of course, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take pictures of each other in front of the famous statue. We left there in search of Belgian chocolates, and found chocolate stores everywhere. We bought our chocolates and then just wandered around the quaint streets, taking in the incredible architecture, snapping photos left and right. I remembered that the flavored beer we look forward to every year at the Renaissance Festival back in Houston is Belgian beer. We found a pub and went inside to ask about the peach beer that we pay $12 a bottle for every year. Yes! They did have it, but it was on the menu under Beer Cocktails. Peach beer, it said on the menu, made of peach syrup and blonde Belgian beer. We weren’t sure if it was the same thing we have at Ren Fest every year, but ordered it anyway. We watched as the bar tender poured a thick liquid from a bottle into our beer glasses about one-fourth of the way up. (I don’t know if it was peach syrup or some kind of peach liquor, but the menu said peach syrup.) Then he filled our glasses with blonde beer from a tap, taking special care to get just the right amount of “head” on the beer. He brought our glasses and set them before us—the moment of truth had arrived. We sipped, watching each other for a reaction. Ahhhhh!!! It tasted even better than the $12 a bottle stuff at Ren Fest; and better yet, we got two beers for only 7 Euros. We finished our beers and wandered outside to prowl the shops a bit more. Unlike Amsterdam—where the people are very matter-of-fact and, while not what I would call unfriendly, they could never be described as warm and inviting”—the people in Brussels were just the opposite. They were charming, with easy smiles; and as we walked down the street, no one bumped into us in their rush to get somewhere. We passed a small band set up in a square. We stopped to listen (the music was lovely) and as we stood there, a couple waltzed past us to the beat of the music. Old-world charm is a phrase that surely must have been coined for places like Brussels. Finally, we made our way back to the train station to catch the train back to Amsterdam. I hated to leave Brussels—in just one day, I had fallen in love with the place. On the train ride back, we marveled to each other how simple it had been to board a train, sit back and relax, and not quite three hours later, step off the train in another country. We decided that another trip to Europe is definitely in order; one with no business, only pleasure, so that we can take advantage of the fabulous rail system and travel from country to country. There is indeed a whole other world out there and I want to explore it. If you'd like to see the multitude (!!!) of pictures I took in Brussels, you can find them here: http://picasaweb.google.com/kayspage/Brussels0309?feat=directlink |
| It's another fine day in Amsterdam. It's a little overcast, but still dry and the weather is wonderful. Just the right amount of cold - not enough to make you shiver, but just enough for me to get some use out of those gorgeous sweaters that I never get to wear at home in Houston. Hubby is at the conference all day today, so it's Girls' Day Out. Woo hoo! We're going to the Waterlooplein Flea Market this afternoon - I LOVE that place. I've bought so many really cool things there over the years. It's a must when you come to Amsterdam, as far as I'm concerned. We'll be going to Delft either tomorrow or Thursday. Party Dude joked that I should take pictures of the hookers in the Red Light District. I had to tell him that although almost everything is permissable in Amsterdam, it is against the law to take pictures in the Red Light District. That's one thing that will get you arrested. Weird, huh? Hookers are okay, but cameras are not. I'll have to make this short and sweet once again, as I need to jump in the shower and get ready to meet the girls downstairs. Back with more pics and more news later.  |
| I don't have much time to write this - my battery is about to die on my laptop, but I uploaded some of my favorite pics that I've taken so far. You can view them on my Picasa Pics page at: http://picasaweb.google.com/kayspage/Amsterdam0309?feat=directlink |
| Just landed about an hour ago at Schipol in Amsterdam. Long, long flight, but on the plus side, I watched two and 3/4 movies that I've been wanting to see. The first one was Doubt with Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. It wasn't as good as I expected, but it's always worth it to watch anything that either of those two are in. And I have to say that Meryl Streep is the greatest actor of our time - she is awesome. Then I watched Nights in Rodanthe, which was totally lame, except for Richard Gere. I could just watch him do nothing for two hours and love it. Then I watched Changeling, but I didn't get to see the end of it because our plane landed. Maybe I'll catch it on the way back. So I'm sitting here at Schipol waiting for hubby's plane to get here and he's not due until 10:40am. It's 7:55am right now, so it will be a while. We flew on different planes because I didn't decide I was going until about 2 weeks ago and to buy a ticket on the same flight would have cost me $2200. Is that not ridiculous? So, he flew Continental and I flew Delta. I like Delta - their planes start like they're supposed and we didn't splash-land in the water. Yay! And, guess what? It's not cold here. Again. It's chilly, but that's all. But this time I prepared for that. I only brought a couple of big sweaters with me and no big coat. I brought my raincoat - minus the lining. Wow - when I renewed my passport two years ago (for the last trip to Amsterdam) I had a really, really really seriously crappy hairstyle. You couldn't even rightfully call it a style of any kind. It was HIDEOUS! I look like a wrestler in my passport photo. Good God, it's beyond wretched. I've been up for twenty hours straight now, so I know I'm rambling, but isn't that what you do after you've been awake that long? I'll stop with the rambling for now, but rest assured I'll be back for another entry before long. And when I come back, I'll bring pictures. |
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I'm so far right the Tea Party looks like a bunch of hippies!