Reverse

I am leaving tonight to go to Boston for the weekend. I am so excited and cannot wait to see everyone! I am good at keeping in touch and as much a part of everyone's life as ever but I really have been missing my neices and nephews. It is my niece's First Communion and there will be a huge family get together. Man I have been to a thousand family get togethers but I still miss them. So as I head out from home to see this place I truly love, where everyone does know my name, I do so with a huge smile and a wonderful feeling.

Clarification

Some people have were not clear on my previous posts so I thought I would place this one as a summary. My company decided to consolidate my department into the main office back in MA. I fought this decision vehemently but lost and as of 03.31.09 the majority of my team was dismantled. We accomplished a great deal and we all leave with our heads held high but it does not mean it has been easy. I was offered a very good package to relocate back to MA and be part of the new structure there. I toiled with the decision for ages but just could not do it. I declined the offer and if I cannot come up with another position at the CA location then I will be laid off as pf 06.30.09. It makes so much sense - the money and the security but I could not say yes. Although I know I could easily return to my family and friends back there with all I have learned from my new experiences - I just was not ready. I can only say it best when I say I feel my happiness lies out here and I owe it to myself to look for it. Sure I know it will be hard but I was just not done with this journey yet. I am not even sure what my happiness means but I am glad for the first time ever that I feel I am an active participant in my life and my decisions and not just following the path that is there. If I fail I know I have a lot of family and friends I can depend on but if I succeed I know I will be a more complete and happy person. I am excited about my future. I am excited to be in control.

I Will Miss You

My brother-in-law's mother passed away today. I truly loved this lady. She could talk the paint off a wall and I was riveted. Eleanor was always incredibly kind and sweet to me and she just adored that I was a great audience. She grow up and Maine and would tell me all these crazy stories of her summers working on the pier at Old Orchard Beach. One of my favorites was how she met Tennessee William because he summered up there and so she got to know him. According to her he we was always dapper (can you imagine that?) and light as a breeze (now that one makes sense). As she slyly put it, all the ladies swooned over him but he did not bother them too much other than to chat. How could I not be riveted? If the story was solely about working summers at seaside boardwalk pier I would have been thrilled with just that, but Tennessee Williams - simply amazing. She had not done well in the past eight years since her husband passed. She missed him something terrible and was a bit lost because of it. But regardless she never ceased to tickle me with amazing stories at every family function. I love you very much Eleanor. I don't remember so well but I will never forget you, never.

Its Like Butter

When I left MA I left so much behind. Sure what treasures I came in with, I left with but the vast majority of stuff I just left. It is only stuff after all and what I was looking to save was myself and that is the most priceless thing I have. I do get stuck on things though as everyone know and it just drove me nuts that out of all the many, many nice pieces of fiestaware I left behind - it was killing me that I left the butter dish. Can you believe that? An innocuous like thing like a butter dish and yet that is the item that was nagging in my head. It just drove me insane! Every time I went to the fridge and saw my butter sitting there it was like a nagging, neon sign of giving up. Recently I cleaned through a lot of stuff and posted it to ebay. I have made $400 so far and still have some auctions to go but more over it is helping me reduce the clutter in my life. Items are not important and the important items I have I use - those I don't use, I need to clear on out. So I decided that I was going to use most of the ebay money for upcoming birthdays and Christmas for my family. However I chiseled away at myself until I finally decided that I was gonna splurge get a new butter dish too.

I surfed around and then came across the perfect butter dish. It is fiestaware and it is two colors. I like to have bunches of colors in my fiestaware and when I got my salt and pepper shakers I actually went down a side aisle so I could open the box and make the set mismathced of two colors instead of one. OMG I would have died if I got questioned for shoplifting - which I was not. I paid for the shakers but I just wanted two colors - again as I said, stuck. And here advertised was a fiestaware butter dish of two colors - ah I just love when the stars align!

I now have my butter dish and it is the perfect one! I am clearing out my life of clutter and look forward to keeping a neat and organized household, part of my new year resolution. But best of all I did the most important thing and saved myself. In doing that I re-energized myself and I look forward to the new me that I am creating and moving him forward into the future.

My Barber

Sometimes I feel pressure that I need to do exciting or interesting things so that I will have stuff to post here. Perhaps the pressure is from actually having the delusion that I do post interesting stuff here, ha. Well I had a touch of the flu and have been taking it way easy to get better. So the most interesting thing as of late is that my barber sent me an email. No not just to me, to all the email addresses of his customers but it just made me laugh. I love going to see Andy because although he is not cheapest in town he just loads me up with all the local skinny. Plus this cracks me right up because some people act like I live in a war zone. I'm not sorry that I like that my city which has character because it is not just all track housing and yet that is what seems to detract from it for others. Most people have the impression that it is less than the utopia of other cities because it lacks the prefab facade of golden happiness that absolutely litters SoCal. If I get a job closer to the city then I will most likely move to San Diego but if I do then I will do so knowing that Escondido worked well for me and I was happy there. My freaking barber is going on a road trip vacation with his family, how Mayberry is that. Along with the picture came this message - I am so happy to put this on my blog so I can enjoy it for a long time.

Hello all! Just wanted to send a quick note to say our road trip is coming up soon. I will be here through next Saturday, April 25th (the first day of my return will be Saturday, May 9th and I expect to send out a brief reminder.)

As always, I'm available for appointments before I open or, if you're running late, just give me a call and I'll be glad to wait for you.

Human Nature

Matt I could not resist! Everyone else please play and listen!

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15 Minutes

I have been talking with this guy for awhile now. We met up a couple times and he is a nice guy. He is 45 and from Chicago and is Italian American and Catholic - a lot of similarities. One big difference was that he was formerly married and has joint custody of his 3 high school aged kids. The wife cheated and they got divorced. After the divorce he did some soul searching and came out. Kinda interesting. We last Saturday since Dianne could not make it we decided to get together. We spoke at about 2pm and made plans for 7pm. I told him I would call him with directions at 6pm. I called at 6pm and gave the directions and asked if it could be 7:15pm that we meet instead. He asked why and I said because I did not want to be late. He asked why would I be late and I said time had gotten away from me that afternoon and I just wanted to make sure he was not waiting around. He asked me what I was doing that time got away from me. Ok so at this point he has not answered my question but asked me plenty and I did well at first but now I am annoyed! I said, "Look I do not punch a time clock at work, I certainly do not punch one on a Saturday. I apologize if this has made it difficult for you but if you want to cancel then I am ok with that". Stern I know but it was not unwarranted or unprovoked as he really pushed me on this 15 minutes. He changed his tune and was all oh no no no that is no problem, sure 7:15pm is no worries at all. I said, "Good. Thank You".

Later of course it came up, he brought it up and I knew he would. I told him that I did not like how he pushed me and reminded him that he asked me 3 pointed questions without answering mine. He said he did not realize that he did it. I told him that I understand he is the Dad and is used to setting the schedule but I have my own Dad and still set my own schedule. I told him that I thought it would be more polite for me to ask for the 15 minutes instead of just assuming it would be ok if I was 15 minutes late. He got it and apologized. We actually had a nice night other than that. He is very pleasant and a great sense of humor too. We laughed quite a bit.

Kicker to it all is that I got done what I needed to do and was at the meeting place at 7pm anyway. I figured I would be, but had to run to a couple of stores and got myself worried that I would not have enough time. Go figure.

An Invite for Dew

Dew Dropenheimer - I was thinking about you today. I truly think of you frequently and of course always with the utmost fondness. I know that Princess O keeps you quite busy holding court and all those command performances, etc but I came across the Carson files. I have really been down sizing. I actually made 300 big ones by selling some old magazines on ebay - who knew. Well although I have also hauled heaps of other stuff off to the Goodwill (and can I just tell you how painful it is to make a drop off without making a withdrawral!), I will never part with that file. So many people ask me about the name on my email and my blog and there is just no way to summarize the insanity that was Lemon. I have heard that Dieter the Dark Prince has taken up with Lou and together their ghastly forces are plotting some devious heist - all bakeries are on HIGH alert. So please, please sweetest Dew commune with me so that once again we can right this perilous world with the silly insanity that combined we create. Rinks in May???

Text

Ok so I admit it - I love to text. I know it is not the best format for an actual conversation - especially if it is about an important topic but the fact if I am thinking about someone or something I can just beep beep beep and send that info to them - I love that.

The other morning Michael sent me a text that said, "Hey! Morning! Driving to work and thinking of u (at a light) hope ur well".

I immediately replied within seconds, "Red means stop with rhymes which Scott so I get the connection".

I am still chuckling over that one - sometimes I am not sure if it is a good thing that I am my best audience and sometimes I do not care and just keep on chuckling to myself just the same.

Happy Easter - a Lil Late

Well if I was Greek Orthodox it would actually be early but I am not but so it will have to be it ok. So my sister and niece did not make it to CA. On Friday they got out of Boston but all Delta's flights west get routed through Atlanta and there were horrendous storms in the southeast. They made it to Atlanta and almost made it here but then after several delays they cancelled the flight finally at 2am in the morning. Because of the cancellation it sucked up all the stand by seats and they headed back to Boston in the morning. I tease like the below post but would have been very happy to have seen them. But hey no complaints from me - my family flew up and down the eastern seaboard for 18 hours trying their best to get out to see me. Actually knowing all they went through touched me and made me feel special. So of course it would have been better if they got here but I count my blessings when it comes to many things, especially family.

PS I so need to find out who Jesus' personal trainer is!

Oh No

My sister keeps talking about wanting to come back so half teasingly half serious I said for her to get a flight the next weekend my brother in law has a long weekend. Well that is this weekend and so my sister and niece may be headed out this way. I say maybe because you can never 100% forecast the trajectory of a hurricane. In any case I have tapped up my windows and stocked up on emergency supplies just to be prepared. If they do make it we will have a good time. It will be nice to see family, even the truly crazy ones, over Easter. Although she is only coming out here to go to Kobey's giant swap meet on Sunday.

Happy Place

That purple post really riled me up. Now I am bothered that I am bothered - man I hate that. So I have decided with this post I am going to my happy place. Ah I feel better now. It really does not take much does it.

Counter Balance

This Gerardo. He lives in Houston and I posted about him previously. We are still in frequent contact and he could not be any sweeter even if he was actually a giant piece of rock candy. So even though purple still sucks (see post below) I feel that this reminds me that there is always something good to be found in just about anything bad - even the color fucking purple. Ha!

Purple Sucks!

The 31rst was the last day for the majority of my employees. One of them was a supervisor. She and I just never connected nor saw eye to eye. I tried so hard but finally I just gave up. She refused to make any type of decision, big or small, regardless of how much I encouraged her. Of course if you make a decision then possibly you could fail and she was way too far above that. Also she blurred the lines between supervisor and rep and became much too personally involved. It is good to have a personal connection with your employees, however hers hindered from taking the tough actions that sometimes you have to do as a supervisor. All that being said, I am not as much of an egomaniac as to not realize that I can often be someone's idea of a very bad cup of tea.

Well her favorite color is purple. She only uses purple ink, frequently wears purple, got a purple rose tattoo, and even her car is purple so you know she had that baby custom painted. Whatever, guess it is good to have a passion. For this past Christmas I got her a purple leather stitched frame and a gift card. The frame was actually very nice except for the hideous color but she swooned over it and immediately put a picture of a recent family event in it and went on and on about how fantastic it was.

There is no ifs, ands or buts about it - getting laid off sucks. Everyone deals with it differently and she apparently felt I had some personal enjoyment or professional gain by closing the department. I have broad shoulders though and thought to myself, "Go ahead make me Satan if that is how you have to cope with this to get through it and move on". As she was leaving on the 31rst she gave me a very sweet card filled with kind sentiments and looking to stay in contact, it touched me. I was happy to know that although we usually did not see eye to eye she could recognize it was time to let bygones be bygones and move on to a new chapter.

Today as I was packing stuff up and I was in her old cube. It was completely emptied - not a pen, piece of paper, paper clip NADA but in the lower left draw I did notice one thing - the box to the fame I had given her. I lifted it out of the draw to throw it out and that is when I noticed the frame was it in. How incredibly puerile! Obviously this minor slight was of major importance to this incredibly small person and somehow made her feel good. Such a good Christian hypocrite. Fearful to say anything to my face other than her with her oh so sweet card but awful ballsy to let her rudeness fly in the guise of a covert action.

To you bitch I say -- thank fucking Christ I am not going to your good Christian heaven or ever have to deal with your petty childishness ever again. I would say good luck but obviously it would be a waste of breath.

However the positive light is that someone else in the building saw the box with the frame on my desk and raved over the dammed color. I instantly gave it to her and she could not have been anymore thrilled. She told me how it would go perfect with her brightly colored home office and that she had the perfect picture for it. All is well in my world and I have a smile.