Matters of the Heart

I go through periods of time where I cling desperately to anything from the past. Friends lost, places, sounds, smells that are no longer a part of my life. I always attributed this smallish compulsion that sprang up occassionaly, to the amount of times I moved as a kid. It feels like I have lived several small lives. Lately, I have been thinking about times spent with my grandparents. My grandma used to take care of my sister and I during summers and sometimes I feel like I took those times for granted. I know I did as I was a teenager and I hated when they would come to stay with us while my parents were house hunting in other states. I would challenge everything they said or did and I can't imagine how they put up with me.
This past November when I was home, my grandpa was excited to take us to the casino. He had been looking forward to it for almost a year and we were finally all there. We hadn't been there for too long when he collapsed.
He's fine now, but that was a real turning point for me. Aside from the heartbreak of going home in yearly intervals and seeing people you love get older in fast forward, this was a real sign that the life I always knew and the things I always expect are coming to an end and things are going away. Morbid as it sounds, I probably don't have too long left with my grandparents and I simply can't imagine not seeing them at holidays... not ever going to grandma's house. I can't explain what a loss it would be to lose one of them.
Such is life, though. I have been trying to come to terms with the fact that my grandfather may not have too much longer with us. I have made every effort to come home and see him when I can... not an easy feat when the airlines are in the wallet raping business... I know I'll never be prepared if something happens, but I was really caught off guard when I found out that my grandma was hospitalized this week with a yet to be determined condition.
It struck me that it wasn't until the past few years that I have really, REALLY been thankful for my family- for who they were and what I am to them. Wiser with age, I suppose. Its just a shame that I was so ignorant as a kid that it never occured to me to value the people I love as they should be. As a kid you never imagine that you won't see them whenever you want. It makes me feel so old... when did I get old?
As I write this, my grandma is having a test done on her heart so your prayers for her safe return to health would be greatly appreciated.
I hope to lift the somber tone of these latest entries, hopefully this weekend will bring back some laughs.

W.W.R.D.

What Would Ronald Do? THAT is the question of the hour. What would Ronald McDonald do if I actually remembered to pack myself a healthy lunch. I think the entire operation would pretty much shut down.
They just hired someone new at work and as I was coming back from my McDonald's run with my Doublechinburger, I noticed him out walking on the path that I had diligently done for all of three days. He had headphones on. Now there's an idea. Yet another wave of guilt washed over me for my terrible eating habbits. I had forgotten my cereal and granola bar today so I replaced it with an extra 500 calories of grease and crap. This whole week, I haven't really cared, to be honest. I am slowly coming out of my life-hating slump, though, so maybe there is hope for me yet.
I have something to look forward to, as I am hoping to drive home to Michigan with my husband and two dogs for my birthday. I also have next Wednesday to dread and love at the same time. Its the weigh in. You see, people where I work are pretty health concious. Its really nice. It seems a lot of people have had success playing "biggest loser" here at Element, so I am going to give it a try this next go around. You can win money, however, I'm thinking for me, the motivation will be saving "face" in front of my co-workers. At least, I hope. When I signed up, I thought that I would put my nose to the grindstone and try to lose as much weight as possible before next week but I haven't at all. I'm pretty much facing the facts that someone at work is going to see what I won't even let my husband see-- the ominous numbers on the scale.

Despite all this, I think that my biggest problem in life has to be that I can NOT get up in the morning. I am completely and totally a night person. If my bedroom was on fire I'm almost certain that I would roll over and try to face away from the flames-- but that's about as far as I would go. Imagine, if I could seriously GET UP at 6:00/6:30am, I could get in some exercise in the morning, eliminating the trouble of not making it to the gym at night if I am in a state of sheer exhaustion. Having worked out in the morning, I would at least have something to fall back on. Hell, if I didn't feel like going to the gym, I could take the dogs for a walk, even. At the very minimum, it would help me spend more time on myself before work so I don't go in looking like three shades of haggard death, like I do most days.

That said, I found this article about an alarm clock that shoots off this little piece of propelled plastic. You have to catch it and replace it on the base to shut off the alarm. As soon as that happened the dogs would go crazy. I'm pretty sure that I would be awake at that point. My husband is all for it. Who wants to take bets on how fast I would find alternate ways of shutting it off (unplugging, breaking, sleeping through....)

A Species Lost...

If you have ever watched a nature show or attended an elementary school, you're probably aware that there are certain animals out there who go to extreme lengths to protect and provide for their young. The kangaroo carries her baby joey around in a pouch, birds regurgitate food into their babies mouths-- come on, if I had to regurgitate anything, it wouldn't be pretty. Where I'm going with this is that it seems to me that sometimes the animal world has surpassed our human integrity....

Mike and I were leaving Borders last night and it had just begun to rain. A mother had blocked the entire door with her stroller and didn't mind in the least that we had to squeeze in and step over it to get out the doorway, which was entirely blocked. She didn't volunteer an apology or make the slightest effort to move it. More disturbing was the fact that her baby was IN the stroller IN the rain! As she waited for someone to pull the car up for her, the baby was getting wet. "Make way for mother of the year!" She definately has the mom who casually sipped her drink while her children did flips on the metal railing beat. Those kids got rewarded with balloons for their potentially lawsuit inflicting acrobatics. Maybe it was my parents who were crazy lunatics, but my sister and I didn't act out in public and I'm fairly certain that we were never used as a doorstop.

It makes me feel old that I seem to be the only one bothered by society's allowance of manners and basic decency to fall by the wayside. I'm seriously in the minority that it bothers me that people act so self-centered. Most other people I know, don't even notice it, but I just can't believe that I'm being too uptight. Eating at a small Chinese restaurant during my lunch hour today, I got to be a silent observer of the other people who shared this small space with me and I made a mental laundry list of things that I was surprised by or considered rude. I'm open to the possibility that my standards for manners are high and involve old-fashioned language such as "May I please have," instead of "gimme a," or thanking a waiter rather than ignoring them and continuing a conversation.
As I arrived at this great little restaurant there was only one other group of people there, a mother and her two daughters. As I was seated and the waiter was taking my order, the mother called out to him that she was ready to order now as well. To me, this is taboo for a few reasons. The first of which, the man was already talking to someone, there was no one else in the restaurant. Waiting her turn wouldn't have taken more than 15 seconds. Secondly, even if the waiter wasn't already engaged, I would probably wait for him to return to me since I had made him wait in the first place. Obviously, she couldn't have been in a dire hurry.
As he took their order, another woman came into the restaurant and was seated a few booths behind me. She immediately whipped out her cell phone and had an extremely loud conversation in Italian that lasted the entire duration of my time there. Again, I know I am in the minority in thinking that cell phone use in public earshot is rude and annoying, not to mention she was practically shouting. The fact that you are speaking in another language doesn't make it okay and if you ask me, it probably makes it a little worse.
Within moments, a second woman arrived and was seated across the room from us. She proceeded to speed dial someone on her cell and it became absolute conversational warfare in there. I literally couldn't concentrate on the book that I was reading, which didn't matter because my food arrived so quickly.
As I began my meal, I was actually impressed that the two little girls and the mom were able to hold a normal "restaurant-style" conversation that wasn't overly loud or screaming for the attention of the other patrons. We both had our meals delivered and only moments later another mother and child arrived and joined the other family. They brought bags of food from Subway. Call me crazy, but bringing your own food to a restaurant is a little over the top. When they got up to leave, they left their Subway wrappers all over the table. Disgusting.

I know I am no angel either, but at least when I get up to leave, I stack my plates and silverware, leave a large tip, and say "thank you." If only we could be more like those stupid animals...

There's Always Tomorrow

Garfield taught me at a young age to never trust a Monday... so as far as Mondays go, today wasn't too bad. My logo was selected for one of our accounts, which is always a good feeling. I accidently worked a half hour of over time so I have a half hour of extra time for the week if I want to leave early. Even the traffic on the way home was the thing candy-coated dreams are made of. Despite an all around decent day, however, I haven't managed to break out of my funk just yet. A rather out of character move, I had a screaming war with a helpless victim who dared to talk down to me on the phone regarding a late payment to Visa. It took me awhile to cool off from that one. I decided that I wasn't going to go to the gym. I've eaten lousy... why not just make it a lost cause and try to go to bed earlier to go tomorrow.
How often do you say: "I'll start tomorrow," when trying to lose weight or stop swearing or anything else. I've always believed it is a pathetic excuse and that if I'm really going to "start" it will be now. Despite this, I still hope to start tomorrow and carve out a healthy pattern of eating smart and excercising. Wish me luck.