Life is short. Sometimes it is shorter than you expect.
One of my coworkers from my alma mater went in the hospital last week for surgery. However, they found that she had cancer everywhere and that her heart function was down to 20%. She went into hospice yesterday.
I didn’t know Vicki well, but it just seems wrong. However, I know that she will be much happier on the other side of this dark vale.
Okay, this is premature, but I am really having trouble just shuffling off this topic.
Go:
1. Dream job for me
2. Son can better afford college (and he wants us to go with him to college!)
3. H can pursue his professional goals.
4. Have friends there and could find other like-minded people.
5. Being part of the school is cool.
6. Easier to be more spiritual.
Stay:
1. Financial issues: 1/3 to 1/2 income if we move. Sell old and buy new house, moving expenses.
2. No photography, or little anyway
3. Have a good job here, with very supportive administration.
4. H has a job here
5. Here is pretty. There is not.
6. There is a lot to do here.
When I think of the job for me there, I think, “Yes.” But when I think of the rest of it, I am not so sure.
Of course, the school hasn’t agreed to interview me yet, so it may all be moot.
We officially have too many science fiction and fantasy books.
I can’t fit them all into the three bookshelves in the dining room without double stacking and I don’t really like to do that. I know Chris does it, but I don’t like it. When I go in to find something to read, I have to be able to see it.
But the dining room is really full, so I’m not sure what I am going to do about more bookshelves.
We had the powder room done. It looks very nice, but it is very brightly white.
I put the shelf back in and I don’t really like it there. But if it’s not there, the bathroom looks like everything is very short. So I guess I will leave it.
The blue pieces I put up there really look nice but I need one more piece and I don’t have one I want to move from anywhere else that I think looks good.
Inside the chicken wire, (the shelf is country) the blue doesn’t stand out as well. I was going to get yellow hand towels to go with the white, but the yellow of the sink is kind of green-yellow and the edges of the door are brown-yellow. I like butter yellow, which is what I would get in a towel. So I don’t know that the color would really go. I did find some towels I didn’t like the color of while I was looking that I think would match. But why would I bring more color I don’t like in?
I don’t know if I should try the butter and see how it looks or just stick with white. I also don’t know what blues will work in there. I guess I really need to just move stuff around and see how it works.
The new stuff looks very elegant, which the pine and chicken wire shelf does not. But I don’t really want to buy another shelf for the bathroom right now. If we stay here, maybe I’ll buy myself one this summer.
I had high tea today at the Millenium Biltmore in LA. Very pretty. All the bready-things were not particularly good, but the tea was delicious, the service was excellent, and the table setting (including the individual yellow rose) was beautiful.
As I sat there I thought that Mom would enjoy it tremendously, just for the ceremony. That was one thing mother was particularly good at, not creating ritual, but indulging in ritual.
I also thought that I should consider seriously what I hope to accomplish this year. Not as I did on Facebook, just a quick riff of “to do” in answer to a question on resolutions (which I did not make), but thoughtfully.
God has been very good to me this year, despite the loss of my mom (and maybe even, though I am sorry to say this, because of it). I have a full-time job, which my brother is convinced Mom arranged with God. I wouldn’t doubt it. If there was ever an advocate for her children, it was my mother. I want to be anywhere near as good as she is at that.
My list of RSS feeds I read on a regular basis is gone as my computer crashed.
So what am I going to do? It will be hard to reconstruct that list. I have significant lists that I read to keep myself up on various streams of interest.
Update: Hurray! It’s so wonderful to have a tech genius husband. He saved my preferences and I was able to get NetNewsWire for my computer again. Didn’t lose any of my blogs.
I forgot how uncomfortable the presentation of Republicans and half the nation as anti-intellectuals who were evil becomes when you are at a conference.
The speakers assume that everyone is a strongly left liberal. They use “we” and “our” in response to hate of Gingrich and Palin. All about how stupid the people are who believe these things, also including the mainstream media (what are they reading?), it is very frustrating.
It really frustrates me when I am trying to listen to something that has nothing to do with politics.
My mother called this morning.
Apparently when I did the sync with my phone and computer, it “fixed” the deletion of my mother from my phone. So I wasn’t even sure who it was… my dad or my sister.
After the phone call I thought, I should think of some wonderful times with my mother.
You know one of my favorite most recent memories is when she was confined to a wheelchair. She really couldn’t walk, though she tried. We went to PFChang’s for lunch or dinner. She needed to go to the bathroom before we left, so we went in. She needed help to get on the pot. So I went in to the handicapped stall with her, stayed with her. We talked and laughed and basically had a party in there. When we came out a lady was standing there with her baby who needed to be changed. I’m sure she thought we were taking up the stall unnecessarily, though she didn’t say anything. But the laughter and conversation from that bathroom stall makes me smile, even when I am crying.