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 Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland |
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Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland  Welcome to the place were I chronicle my own falls down dark holes and adventures chasing white rabbits! Come on In, Take a Bite, You Never Know What You May Find... "Curiouser and curiouser." Alice in Wonderland ** Image ID #1701066 Unavailable **   |
| 30 Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT November 24th What numbers hold special meaning for you? Consider dates, times, ages, years, or anything else you can count. My dates and times would be all the normal milestones I think: April 18th, 2008 - The day I got married, again - for real - to someone wonderful. Jan. 15th, 2010 - The day my daughter was born. The best day of my life, hands down, with the day I found out I was expecting a girl, as a distant 2nd. My 40th birthday...the last one I celebrated with a formal party. The year I felt I had finally reached an age where I didn't have to give two flying f**ks about what anyone thought of me any longer. It was like crossing a magical boundary and on the other side, I was Wonder Woman (a bit chunkier but with great, kick-ass boots). After that, I've celebrated almost all my post-40's birthdays in Provincetown,Cape Cod, vacationing with my family - with my favorite peeps in my favorite place. Christmas Day Morning...hands down my favorite time of my favorite holiday. Christmas morning was the most magical time of the the year. When I was a child, I'd wake up my siblings and we'd all tiptoe out to peek before raucously waking my parents. As I got older, I came to appreciate the other things about that time. My mother always baked muffins and made breakfast and my grandparents would come over. The morning would pass lazily with this contented buzz about everyone. Christmas morning is even better when it is your own child. I love when she wakes us to go downstairs...even though as she's gotten older some of that childish enthusiasm and excitement has burned off a bit. I can see that she is also growing to love the tradition of my sister coming over to have breakfast with us too. This year, I'm hosting both my siblings and their families, as well as her grandparents for a late morning Christmas brunch. I think my daughter is most looking forward to that and it warms my heart. |
| 30 Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT November 25th If you could be a fly on the wall of any living person’s life for one day, whose life would you want to observe? It's Monday of a short week that will end in a holiday where I will eat and drink too much. I chalk that all up to the reason why I am drawing a blank on this prompt. I suppose if I could get one day in anyone's life, I'd like to walk in my daughter's shoes. I think I'd like to see the world as she sees it, with her unique perspective. She and I are very different people, she is more introverted and shy. She is much more reserved than I. I think it would be wonderfully insightful to tag along on her day, watch her interact with her friends and teachers and observe how she is outside the realm of my influence. Is she more outgoing? Does she act silly with her friends like she does when it is just us two? Does she sing along to her tunes louder when no one is listening? Yeah, that would be neat I think and I believe I'd learn a bit more about her. I worry, as many mothers do, that her shyness keeps her from fully enjoying things, that she holds herself back from experiences that would otherwise be fun and enriching. It would give me some peace of mind to know what she is able to let go a bit more than she lets on to me. This is a "fly on the wall" and not a "Freaky Friday" type exchange though, that is an important distinction. I would never want to be 9 again, not for a day or a minute. That was a difficult age, that "not quite a tween but still no longer a child" blend of awkwardness I remember all too well! If I could survey her day, presiding over her like a low-flying drone, I think it would be pretty neat. If not my daughter, then maybe...Trump? I don't think I could imagine a more entertaining 24 hours....watching him, and those around him, react to his own, special, orange-tinted brand of cray-cray.  Or maybe it would not be funny...maybe it would leave me feeling devoid of hope for humanity. So...maybe not Trump after all. |
| 30 Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT November 22nd Write about a missed connection. I'm sure there are plenty of missed connections in my life but I'm drawing an absolute blank this morning. I keep thinking of it in a literal sense. I keep thinking about someone running through an airport terminal to catch a flight for the final leg of a trip only to find the gate empty and the look of defeat as they watch their plane departing for takeoff. Literally, that kind of missed connection... That's not what I think the prompt is looking for though. I think the prompt is challenging me to remember a time when I missed connecting with someone, missed an opportunity for an important exchange of some kind. That is what I am struggling with because nothing really comes to mind, even though I think it probably should. And yet I have...nothing. Nada. Zilch. So....yeah. What else is in my brain this morning that I can share in electronic ink so I don't feel like a total cop-out on this prompt... I decorated early for Christmas this year. My husband's sister was visiting from overseas and she would be leaving before Thanksgiving, when I typically decorate the house. He thought it would be nice to do it early so she could see it, so we did it all...the tree, the lights, the nativity. Our neighbors likely thought we were nuts and I resisted to urge to go door to door to explain ourselves. My sister-in-law loved it though and as a plus, I don't have to struggle through it with a belly full a turkey and a wine-buzz now. The only drawn back...the Elf on the Shelf is back. The all-too-early appearance is giving me heartburn. I don't know if this is the year she's decided to admit she knows its all a sham or if I am expected again to move that damn red-suited creep all around the house from the 1st to Christmas Eve. I loathe the Elf on the Shelf. I am not one of those super creative moms who have a plethora of clever ideas for the Elf to engage in to the delight of a waking child. As a result, our Elf is predictable and possibly borderline lazy. Our Elf, who I think my daughter named Elsa, in an underachiever. Last year my daughter came home and regaled us with all the funny things her friend's Elves did while they were sleeping. Her friends woke to find the Elf had baked brownies, played Monopoly with army men, built a zip line across the living room...Who are these parents? I can't tell you how many times I've been sound asleep only to wake up in a bolt of panic because that damn elf is exactly where my daughter left her. There is very limited creativity in my Mom's brain at 2am so inevitably my daughter "finds" Elsa doing something less than remarkable the next morning like sitting stoically in a poinsettia plant or hanging out of an empty Christmas stocking. Anyway, I have a few more days until Elsa "wakes up" and begins her invasion. For now she sits in her box, waiting... Maybe I am missing a chance to engage with my daughter's imagination? Maybe I am missing the opportunity to participate in the last remaining vestiges of her childhood wonderment? Maybe. See what I did there? I found a way to bring it home baby...go me. |
| 30 Day Blogging Challange PROMPT November 21st What do you value most in a job/career? What about a job makes it satisfying and fulfilling? If you currently hold your “dream job,” what makes it perfect for you? If you are still seeking your dream job, how will you know when you’ve found it? If you are retired, think back to how you felt when you were working. Ugh. This is a tough prompt. This is subject matter I try to steer clear from lately as my "career" is a sore subject. Once upon a time I believed I was working toward something, building part of a legacy. Recent events have revealed things, cracks in the ivory tower so to speak, that have led me to question my decisions and my path forward no longer seems as certain. What I value most in a job or career is the easiest for me to talk about. I want to be challenged in a career that is dynamic and not a tedious slog toward retirement. I want the ability to hone my skills and use them to better the company, really know that I am contributing to the success of the organization. I want to have the opportunity to advance, in pay and in statute based on my successes and job performance. I didn't think I was still looking for my dream job. Now I am not sure. I have too many years until I can retire to even think about such things now. I imagine I will be the kind of person who never truly retires though...I've been working since I was legally old enough too. I don't think you can just turn it off. I can't see myself saying, "welp that's it. Guess I'll move to Key West now and eat key lime pies on sticks and sit on the beach until I get really old." Nope. Now, moving to Key West and running a little bed and breakfast in my golden years, that I might be able to make work....  |
 30 Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT November 20th Do you remember your first friend? Under what circumstances did you become friends? Are you still in contact with them or any of your other childhood friends? It was the first day of kindergarten. We were the only two girls at the bus stop at the end of our rural town road. We eyed each other with interest, each of us too shy to say anything on the twenty-two minute bus ride to Fair Oaks Elementary. It wasn't until we found ourselves making the same puzzle, and ultimately fighting over putting in the last piece, before we actually interacted. The argument erupted, drawing the teacher and sending up both to our corners to "cool off". We glared at each other until the glaring gave way to giggles. Someone in the aftermath of a fight, in the space of ten minutes, we had each found our forever friend. From kindergarten through 6th grade, S and I were in separable. We lived less than a mile from each other and took full advantage of that proximity. Our lives were filled with sleepovers, and hours lost to the worlds we created in the woods or her basement or in blanket forts in the living room. We fell in love with Duran Duran together and perfected all our best roller skating moves in tandem. I remember this wonderful time of having my own bestie and building all the memories of our childhood side-by-side. I also remember the other things, the times she'd seem afraid or break into heart-wrenching sobs or beg me to stay longer with her or to stay another night at my house. I never knew how to help her, only how to be there for her. Always. We were children, we did not know how to talk of such things back then. It would not be until later that I would learn of her life, of the abuse she suffered from her father and how my home and being with me had been a sanctuary for her in so many ways. My family moved away after the 6th grade. I remember it didn't feel like an ending for me, she still came over and stayed. She was still a feature at my birthday parties. Life was moving faster though, and by the time high school rolled around, we had other friends and fell out of touch. I learned later that this was when her life at home began changing as well. Her mother left her father and she and S had begun a new life. I went off to college and the chasm widened. We had our memories though, each of us, and we held onto them, treasured who we had been for each other. By the time I bumped into S in a Blockbuster store, we were both in our early twenties. She tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around, immediately transported back through decades by the same sweet face I had so loved. We hugged and cried, and the years fell away. I can't say we picked up where we left off, because we had each been through so many transformations since we met all those years ago. But some people are linked to you by your soul, and S is my soul sister. She has been through unimaginable hardship and has come out on the other side. Over the decades since, I have learned the truth about all she endured and though my heart aches and breaks for her sometimes, I am so proud of the woman, the wife, the mother she is. She has built a life of love and light from darkness and pain. S is the strongest person I have ever known. S is also the most selfless. She is the first to celebrate my successes and the first to call or text when she knows I am struggling. She is always on my side, unquestionably, and ready to back me up. She finds all the ways to remind me that I am stronger than I think and she is always there if I need her. In turn, I am always ready to listen when she needs me, and when she needs to be reminded about how far she has come and how proud of all her achievements and victories she should be. I am incredibly blessed my soul connected with hers all those years ago. When I moved two years ago, it was the the next town over from hers. She was the first friend to visit and she rushed through the door, excited to tell me that "she had timed it" and we lived "exactly six minutes" apart. It was the closest we've lived to each other since our days growing up on that country road. We were silly and ecstatic, sending selfies to her Mom from my new kitchen. We try, despite the demands of our busy lives, to get together once or twice a month to catch up. She has to squeeze time in between the demands of chauffeuring around teenagers and I have to juggle weeknight piano and horse riding lessons. We manage it because it is important to us. Sitting for an hour, sharing dessert and coffee, catching up on our lives is often the very best part of both our week's. Time connecting with your oldest, dearest friend is like a balm on all the rough places in your soul. I am incredibly blessed to have her in my life. |
| 30 Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT November 19th What characteristics do you admire in a leader? Is there or was there a time in your life when you took on a leadership role? Research different leadership styles and describe which style you would most like to follow. Which style are you? When you are in a leadership position, do you exemplify the qualities you admire in a good leader? I would love to say I researched leadership styles to fully address this prompt but I'm still wondering how I'm going to fit everything I had to get done into today so my time is too limited I'm afraid. I have twelve minutes before my meeting from hell with the man-babies start so I'm going to do my best with what is already in my head  (the quality of what is already in my head is understandably debatable I realize lol)We could use a real leader today...hence the man-babies  The qualities I admire in a leader are thoughtfulness, intelligence, fairness and the willingness to do whatever it takes. I do not admire leaders who deliver directives and then sit back and supervise. I think a leader should empower others first and foremost. They should be appreciative and open to ideas, they should be ambitious and engaged. I have had leaders who were deplorably bad. I have watched them disparage and discourage their employees. I had one boss who was borderline abusive. Luckily, these experiences were few and far between. I am a type A personality and so, I tend to gravitate toward the opportunity to lead projects or group assignments. I really try to be the kind of leader I respect, one who listens to their team and gives weight to their suggestions. I think good leader recognizes the different skill sets available in any situation and tries to find the way to best utilize those resources to help their team achieve the goal. Sometimes I have to check my natural bossy-ness, sometimes I have to pull back and let someone else take the reins when they have a better angle. That is difficult for me but it is something I work on to be effective in my job. I know when I get it right because we are the most productive. I think knowing how to motivate people, how to engage them and make them feel investing in something is very important. I hope I am the kind of leader my Dad was when he first started out. I remember watching him with his employees and knowing how much they all respected him. They would have followed him into whatever venture he chose for the company because they trusted him and had faith in his abilities. |
| 30 Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT November 18th What is something that most people misunderstand or wrongly assume about you? I honestly don't know. These days its hard for me to tell if what I perceive in other's is a general lack of interest in me or lack of concern in my well-being because they wrongly assume I'm fine. I have this one friend, we have been friends forever and she is the most kind-hearted, selfless person I know. I'm blessed to have her in my life. I can not count the times I have received a text in the morning just checking in on me or wishing me a good day, or words of encouragement. This small gesture has made all the difference some days. She knows what has been going on in my life and she has been a real source of comfort to me. Her care and concern magnifies the indifference that others show me though. I don't think I've had any conversation lately with my sister than hasn't revolved around her and her life. My siblings never ask me how I am, I don't think they even consider it. I used to be close with my sister but in the last year, she seems not to see me at all. I thought us having Roo was going to deepen our relationship, that would bring my daughter and I closer into her world but in truth, it has been only to lead me to feeling more isolated and apart. I don't feel welcome very often and though I try to help out and be supportive, I feel her resentment and disappointment like a incoming tide sometimes. At a time when I could really use someone to talk to, my texts and phone calls rarely get answered. She has no real idea of how I've been feeling, how much I am struggling with my life at this time. My mother and I are estranged and my relationship with my father is very complicated for me at the moment. My brother has never been a support system for me. Phone calls and visits with him revolve around getting our kids together and not any real sibling comradery. I don't think he's ever given thought to what I may or may not have going on personally. He just doesn't work that way. This past year my youngest brother and I had a falling out. No, that's being generous. He snapped on me and sent a blistering series of private and public messages to me. He is an addict, and I have come to expect the up and down with him over the last few years. He has frequently said things or behaved in ways that lead to our temporary estrangement. This was different. He broke my heart and what is worse, he made me afraid. I have worked very hard in my life to overcome the imprint of fear left on me by another man...something he has first hand knowledge of. The fact that he brought me to a place of that kind of fear again by his own violent threats...is unforgivable. I cut all ties to him. It has been a devastating loss I have largely born in private. I felt mortally wounded by it all, and months and months later, I still feel the rage and grief of it all. If I had to pinpoint a time when I first felt my spirit weakening, it was when he told me I was a "piece of shit" and he hoped someone would "burn my house down on me". I had no words for how it felt to read those words, no way to equate them with the little boy I loved as if he was my own. I cut him out of life and as a result, I think I lost something of myself...something I will never be able to get back or replace. In my family, I have always been a bit of a fixer. I've taken up the slack for others who are less engaged. I'm never one to ignore the phone or the needs of others in my family. I regularly get drawn into dramas to support or back someone else. However, I have come to understand that I am rarely the person they think about. I am not the person they call just to "check in on". Maybe they assume I don't need anything, maybe they think I've always been okay? Maybe they don't see a world outside their own? I don't know. It is making me dread the holidays all the more because my heart is 100% not in it. I live closer to my two remaining siblings then I have since we all lived under the same roof. I think I believed it would make us closer. I thought, given the parents we share, that it would make us closer. It hasn't. It is seemed only to magnify that the opposite is true. Maybe they just assume I am okay with it all but they would be wrong. |
| 30 Days Blogging Challenge PROMPT November 17th There are 45 days remaining in the year. What do you want to do or accomplish before 2019 is over? I would like to get through even one solid week without falling into the slumps. I would like to get firmly ahead of my depression, at least far enough to see clearly through a holiday season and happy new year. I'd like to stick to my diet, and get all my blog entries written for the challenge. I'd like to avoid having any more arguments with my husband. This prompt is making me realize, even though my decorations are already in place, I'm not mentally prepared for what comes with the season and the fast-approaching end of the year. At a time when I am typically starting to feel festive and joyful, I'm weighted down by anxiety and prone to random days where I wake feeling extremely sad and overwhelmed. I am dreading the next 45 days because I don't feel equipped to handle all the typical family drama and the hustle and bustle of our typical holidays. That's really all I got today. I am particularly out of sorts this morning I think. |
| 30 Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT November 16th If you had to spend one million dollars in one day, what would you spend it on? A million dollars for one day sounds like a movie plot. I think I would pay off our home and all our outstanding debts. I'd put enough into a savings account for the my daughter's college. You never know what life has planned for you so paying things off and preparing as much as possible while you can afford to do it, seems like the smarter way to spend any sudden windfall. I'd make an investment in something for myself, something I could build into a business of my own one day. Self-reliance feels like something I could really get behind at this time in my life. If there was anything left, I would finally take myself on a European Viking River Cruise, the 15 day one...the creme de la creme of them all. Then, I would look for my own modest horse property where I could bring Roo home too. I'm sure there are countless things I could think of to do with a million dollar payday. I could fix the roof of my sister's barn for her or help my uncle with my grandmother's old and aging home. I could sit and think about it for another hour but my coffee cup is empty and I still need to catch up on one more prompt from the weekend as well as settle up with today's prompt too. |
| 30 Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT November 15th In your entry today, write about focus. Use the following questions to guide you. At what time of day are you the most focused? When you need to focus on a task, how do you prevent distractions? How do you manipulate your environment to keep yourself focused? How else do you practice focus in your life? Any tools or techniques you can share? Normally, on the mornings not following a night of insomniac insanity, I have a razor sharp focus. I am, by nature, a morning person. I am up early fussing about, making my daughter's lunch, taking out the dogs and preparing for the battle I must forge each morning to get her out of bed. My daughter is not a morning person. I typically get to work about an hour before anyone else. That is the best time for me to focus on the prompts or polish off pieces I'm looking to submit. The office is quiet and there won't be anyone hanging about my door for a few hours yet. If I have to work on something that requires my focus during the workday, that can be challenging as I am prone to get frequent interruptions. Also, my secretary is a bit of chatty patty who likes to narrate her tasks outside as she works through them. I find I can focus significantly better with my music playing. The only drawback is that when I get in the zone, I will sometimes catch myself singing along out loud. A bit embarrassing when your CFO catches you singing along to Hole or the soundtrack to Wicked when you are supposed to be finalizing closing statements for him to review. As far as other techniques...I'm not sure I have any. Mostly I just blast the tunes and go... |
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