Stressssful.

My plate was (and still is) full. I  feel as if I can’t add one more iota of caring to it.

I find myself getting wrapped up in that feeling and (can we be honest) it makes me a short-tempered. Yet, I truthfully have much to be thankful for:

1. For a husband who is on the mend.

2. For amazing sisters-in-laws, who thought to look out for me.

3. For amazing, giving parents, who jumped in with no questions asked and made things easier for the husband and I. And who disinfected my whole house – not once but twice – to make it safe for the husband to come home. And who watched my dogs while I was away and spent hours with them, knowing how much I needed for them to be okay.

4. For having my husband at home. Finally.

5. For an understanding boss, who let me take whatever time I needed and hardly ever nagged about a major grant due less than a week away.

6. For a loving family who cared and who was there.

7. For a sister-in-law who filled the fridge with food that the husband could eat.

8. For a step-son and brother-in-law who helped husband up those damn stairs.

9. For workman’s comp, who will be paying for this huge mess.

10. for my husband – who held me when I freaked out and who is here to hold me at night.

I don’t know if my plate will get less full by remembering those things – I hope so. I hope it will make my plate a little bit bigger because I don’t like myself like this. I like myself much better when I find room to care about others, when I make room to put myself in other people’s shoes.

I like myself better when I can see beyond my own small circle.

“we lay there and looked up at the night sky and she told me about stars called blue squares and red swirls and i told her that i’d never heard of them. of course not, she said, the really important stuff they never tell you.

you have to imagine it on your own.”

from someone brilliant.

{edited to add: I got this off of a website a long time ago and I fell in love with the quote. i realized that this sounded like something someone may have actually said to me.  i wish.}

Randomness

1. eaten the same meal for dinner since Sunday. mind you not leftovers, just the same meal because i’m too lazy to think of something new to make and I have those ingredients on hand.

2. written 2 grants – total pages submitted 1,268 (yep – that’s not a typo)

3. started thinking about this quilt

which really is just code for I-looked-at-the-fabric-for-a-long-time-marveling-at-how-much-I-like-it-but-did-nothing-productive-with-it. And then thought about buying some new fabric – just ’cause

4. realized that July 10 is coming sooner then i think, so started this quilt late Monday night

forgot how many squares i needed- so i just kept cutting thinking that it’s big – it can handle it..

(Yes, I remembered how many and will be back to work on it tonight… i hope.)

5. finished the shirt I’ve been working on for … oh … ever - realized it’s too scratchy and needs some neck adjustments – so put in my WIP pile.

6. went to a training on why development people fail and realized that their idea of failure in no way met mine.

7. ate lots of raspberries lately – wished they were from the bushes I planted, but realized the birds probably liked them more than me… next year it will be a different story.

8. keep thinking that it’s the end of the month – even wrote that on a grant report today – it’s sad to have vacation-brain 3 weeks before you actually take a vacation.

So, i think that’s it… tonight, I’m celebrating that I finished all of my to-do’s today (mind you the grants were the biggest part of the to-dos) and while I have a huge list waiting for me tomorrow, I’m going to enjoy watching trash TV (So You Think You Can Dance? anyone?) and working on the quilt.  And maybe, just maybe finishing the scratchy shirt.

Next sewing skill to learn – sewing with knits – nice, soft knits.

]]> http://www.secondwinddesign.com/laurel/archives/83/feed 3 http://www.secondwinddesign.com/laurel/archives/63 http://www.secondwinddesign.com/laurel/archives/63#comments Sat, 24 Jan 2009 05:00:14 +0000 laurel http://www.secondwinddesign.com/laurel/?p=63 Love the fact that President Obama has a blog. Well, at least his administration does.  Frankly, I love the whole thing – check out the newly revamped whitehouse.gov.  It actually looks like an up-to-date website.  pretty to look at, easy to ready, and a great informal feel (love the bio about Michelle Obama).  I really like it.

I’m going on record that I truly believe that this administration can help engender real change and that the world we see today will be very different in 4 years:

Dr. King taught us that we could no longer view our own day-to-day cares and responsibilities as somehow separate from what was happening in the wider world that we read about in the newspaper and saw on TV. Because ultimately, for each of us, our own story and the American story are not separate, they are shared. And they are both strengthened and enriched each time we stand up and answer the call to help meet the challenges of our new century.

So today, I am asking you to roll up your sleeves and join in the work of remaking this nation. I pledge to you that government will do its part to open up more opportunities for citizens to participate. And in return, I ask you to play your part – to not just pitch in today, but to make an ongoing commitment that lasts far beyond one day, or even one presidency.

From President Obama’s Remarks at the Day of Service Luncheon at Coolidge High School

(And I’m going on record: Thank God for having a president who once again is an amazing orator and that the likelihood that he will ever say “misunderestimated” is nil.)

Congrats John McCain – you’ve managed to convince some people to vote for you out of fear. And how right you are – it is so much better to have people vote for you because they fear the unknown, then heaven forbid, have people vote for you for your beliefs, policies and stances on important issues. No, let’s make sure it’s about obama’s funny name, which of course, ties him to the big bad muslim world. (all, i can think of to say is “really” we’re that rigid?)

Please, please, please people – i don’t care who you vote for – but for goodness sake, educate yourself. Educate yourself about Palin. Educate yourself about Obama and his stance on guns, taxes and the economy.  But for god’s sake – vote for what you believe in - not for what you don’t.

I won’t even talk about how much i enjoyed Bill and Hillary’s speeches.  Wow – did you see him?  Seriously, 3 minutes of applause.

but for those of you bored with politics, we’ll move on to something else.

From etc.: This is a list of the top 106 books most often marked “unread” by LibraryThing users. The rules: bold the ones you’ve read, underline (or italicize) the ones you read for school, cross out the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Anna Karenina

Crime and Punishment

Catch-22

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wuthering Heights

The Silmarillion

Life of Pi : a novel

The Name of the Rose

Don Quixote

Moby Dick

Ulysses

Madame Bovary

The Odyssey

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Eyre

The Tale of Two Cities

The Brothers Karamazov

Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies

War and Peace

Vanity Fair

The Time Traveler’s Wife

The Iliad

Emma

The Blind Assassin

The Kite Runner

Mrs. Dalloway

Great Expectations

American Gods

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Atlas Shrugged

Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books

Memoirs of a Geisha

Middlesex

Quicksilver

Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West

The Canterbury Tales

The Historian : a novel

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Love in the Time of Cholera

Brave New World

The Fountainhead

Foucault’s Pendulum

Middlemarch

Frankenstein

The Count of Monte Cristo

Dracula

A Clockwork Orange

Anansi Boys

The Once and Future King

The Grapes of Wrath

The Poisonwood Bible : a novel

1984

Angels & Demons

The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)

The Satanic Verses

Sense and Sensibility

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mansfield Park

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

To the Lighthouse

Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Oliver Twist

Gulliver’s Travels

Les Misérables

The Corrections

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Dune

The Prince

The Sound and the Fury

Angela’s Ashes : a memoir

The God of Small Things

A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present

Cryptonomicon

Neverwhere

A Confederacy of Dunces

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Dubliners

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Beloved

Slaughterhouse-five

The Scarlet Letter

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

The Mists of Avalon

Oryx and Crake : a novel

Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed

Cloud Atlas

The Confusion

Lolita

Persuasion

Northanger Abbey

The Catcher in the Rye

On the Road

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values

The Aeneid

Watership Down

Gravity’s Rainbow

The Hobbit

In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences

White Teeth

Treasure Island

David Copperfield

The Three Musketeers

Really, i never realized how many of these books I started but never finished.

i think i should read more…

As many of you may know, I voted for the oposition originally and given the chance I would do it again. Emotionally, I’m still saddened by her loss. Strategically, I think either candidate was a good choice. Over the past few months, I’ve spent a lot of time learning about him and I’ve grown to respect him and his vision – but I wasn’t that excited by him.

When it came time for the speech; it felt late and I debated not even watching.

I was underwhelmed for the first few minutes. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed the story about her family and understood why they chose to include it. But, dang it, I’ll be truthful – I wanted a speech that was worthy of an Emmy; something that would make me want to stand up on my chair and cheer. Something that would make me want to talk about it with everyone. And it just wasn’t there.

He talked about “The world as it is” and “The world as it should be.” And he said that all too often, we accept the distance between the two, and we settle for the world as it is – even when it doesn’t reflect our values and aspirations. But he reminded us that we also know what our world should look like. He said we know what fairness and justice and opportunity look like. And he urged us to believe in ourselves – to find the strength within ourselves to strive for the world as it should be.

And there it was. So perfect that my breath caught.

I’ve dedicated my adult life to this – fighting for the world that I believe should be and not the world that is. I fight to change a world that allows children in developing countries to die because they lack clean water and sanitation. I fight for a world that helps children live to their full potential. I fight to change people’s views of themselves and what they can accomplish. I fight against the thought that people can make it on their own and their success is related to the individual and not to the world around them.

The world and our country is destined to be so much more than it is.

My fear is that we will have another 4 years of …  war to resolve issues that were personal, “big man boasting,” destroying natural treasures so we can have more for our cars, politics over humans, and irresponsible spending, shafting those people who are just trying to get by while the rich reap the benefits.

And one day, they – and your sons and daughters – will tell their own children about what we did together in this election. They’ll tell them how this time, we listened to our hopes, instead of our fears. How this time, how this time, we decided to stop doubting and to start dreaming.

Yes.