November, what???...

... In some ways it felt like November 4th would never come and on the other hand, how did it become November already. But come it did and November 4th was a glorious, amazing and unforgettable day. I have never been so hopeful, so moved, so proud.

I don't fill my yard with signs, and I don't put bumper stickers on my car, but I have been quietly, steadily telling anyone and everyone how I felt about this election and I realized just how invested I was up on Monday night, 2 am, prowling the house, the internet and feeling a great deal of anxiety. Tuesday was a beautiful, resounding message of yes, we want change and yes we are ready to set aside some of the ugliness, the separateness, and embrace a new tomorrow.

Wednesday brought a call from my oldest daughter. She has never been interested in politics, she has never been one to worry about the situations of others, she has a fairly myopic view of the world. Injustice to her would be if the line at Starbucks was too long for her to grab a coffee before class, not enough money to get a new shirt for a special Saturday night, but slowly I have begun to see changes in her. It is not that she is not compassionate, but she has always been a little, shall we say, self absorbed. The past year has been gradually bringing her to the realization that she is not the only person struggling through life and dealing with issues. This election was a chance for us to talk about some larger issues. She voted for Obama.

Her call started off okay and as we talked, she dissolved into tears. It seems that many of her friends were not for Obama and they were attacking her for voting as she did. It seems that many of her friends had been saying some really ugly things about our President elect, publishing them on facebook, telling her she was stupid to vote as she did. It seems that this previously oblivious beautiful girl of mine, a girl who likes to just have fun, keep it light, party, enjoy life had suddenly been confronted with how ugly people can be and how that ugliness can be hidden from the rest of us until their happy little world of entitlement and privilege feels threatened. It seems she had never seen the face of racism, especially in the words of her friends. Her tears, I could tell, were partly from the mean things they said to her. It sucks to be told you are wrong and stupid, but the other things I heard in her shaky voice were disappointment, sadness and disillusionment. Disappointment that these people she cared about were not who she thought they were. Sadness that she would never again see them and love them as she had in the past, and disillusionment that these seemingly caring and decent human beings could say such nasty things about another fellow human being. I am sorry that her happy little life bubble has burst, but I was so proud to know that she stood her ground, asked everyone to stop the hateful speech and I can tell she made some decisions to move on, to leave these people behind.

I guess she is lucky to have lived to the age of 22 without really encountering this kind of hateful racism and in a perfect world she would never have seen it at all but this world is far from perfect. But after Tuesday, after looking at the faces of the crowd at Grant Park, full of hope and anticipation, after hearing the very gracious speech by John McCain (and ignoring the less than gracious crowd), after listening to President Elect Obama speak, after seeing his beautiful family along with the Biden family, I have hope that the rest of the world will perceive us a little more kindly, that we will begin rebuilding some of the things that make this country great and that we can begin to make changes that will make us richer in all the ways that matter.

Wistful and a little raw....

.....autumn always leaves me feeling that way. I love the change of the seasons, but it does bring along a general malaise that is more about the passage of time, the lost opportunities, than any specific situation. It has been a rough fall for many people given the state of the economy, the election crap and we are no exception as business (less than a year old) has been much slower as people are scaling back, conserving and staying home.

Used to be that fall brought all the things I loved best, football games, cooler temps, sweaters, jackets (I have a serious coat fetish) and I guess it still does, but it also brings the end of another summer, the approach of the holidays (and man do I hate the holidays), another school year, (usually a good thing, but no school for me), and I am feeling tired this year. Tired of switching out the warm weather gear for the cold wear, tired of raking leaves, cleaning rain gutters, tired of kids wanting new boots, new clothes, tired of the election and tired of feeling tired.

So, too tired to think of a good post, and much too tired to link to other blogs today. Just checking in to see if I still remembered my password! Nap time?

One a Month is not going to cut it...

...and I know it, but it is not my fault. (stolen directly from my children)  I am so busy each time I sit down at the computer (or lay down on the couch with the computer on my chest) looking at everyone else's awesome blogs (and even some not so awesome) that I never get around to posting.  I think of really great subjects, and compose wonderful entries in my head while I drive around or lay in bed not sleeping, but when the computer is open and I am on the web, I am way too busy cruising from blog to blog, site to site, to write anything on my own blog.  I am also way wittier and interesting in my thought, but not written entries.  Anyway, I will soon post up some of my most favorite blogs so anyone who might accidentally stumble upon this blog will have something wonderful to read when they realize that this blog is not all that exciting and I only post once in a blue moon, but right now I have spent an hour and a half cruising the net and now I have to get showered and GO TO WORK ALREADY!

Suicide Food

I was sharing with my daughter the other day how much it bothers me when an ad shows an animal speaking for a product and they are the product, and it is to be eaten.  The most recent example is the Burger King ad with the cow following people around, angry, because they are eating chicken.  So let me get this straight, the cow is upset because it is not butchered, ground up, cooked and served to the fast food public.  Am I the only person who finds this mildly disturbing?  Happily, no.  Someone else has acknowledged this creepy marketing approach for food products and has created this website.  

I know advertising has a very tenuous tie to reality but can we all agree that animals would not lobby to be eaten if they had a choice.  Also, why would someone want to make me love the cute little pig mascot for the BBQ Restaurant if I am planning to go there and eat pork ribs.  Seriously?  I am even bothered by the frosted mini wheats that ride on the children's backpack, talk to the kid at the breakfast table and take credit for the kids' success in school due in part to the great breakfast the child consumed which included.... frosted mini wheats.  

Call me old, because I kind of am, but in my day proclaiming to the world "eat me" was not a great selling approach, but more of an insult.  

And now I am going to stop because I just used the phrase "in my day".  

World's Most Pathetic Blogger

Okay, maybe not the worlds MOST pathetic, but definitely in the ballpark. Where have I been? Let me summarize. The business; up and running. The summer; over. The daughters; back at college. This blogger; living in a house needing serious maintenance, drowning in dirty laundry, overgrown lawn, a million tasks for the business and gazing at possibly the worst junk drawer mess I have ever seen.

I have many stories to tell, and will hope to get to them as I begin blogging again. I have not abandoned reading blogs, just writing, so I have been keeping up with all of you (hello crazy, I know I am talking only to myself here). Thanks to anyone who is still here and hey, maybe I will reconnect with some of you or make some new "friends" (this is not an unnecessary use of quotations marks but you can find some here.)

So far as I can tell, being a business owner is not that much different from being a mom for all these years.  There is too much to be done every day, there are phone calls to make that I don't want to make, there are tons of things that are crying to be done (at least not literally crying) and it will never all get done.  I keep reminding myself that it isn't brain surgery.  Nobody is going to die if I don't get the new schedules printed, if I don't get the touch up painting done, if I don't get the retail merchandise purchased and up for display (no, we are not a retail store otherwise that would be pretty important I think).  I go to bed each night knowing I should have accomplished more but am learning not to worry too much about it (except for those sleepless nights...refer to older entries... when everything seems important and overwhelming) 

I haven't decided if I should share my business stories or what exactly it is I do as I want this blog to remain anonymous so I feel free to say whatever I like, but when I do decide, you will be the first to know (again, crazy, nobody there!!)  Anyway, I'm back.  Tanned, rested and ready to blog.  Okay, no tan, and had a two hour nap this evening but still not rested.  We'll see about the blog part. 

What was that password again?

It has been so long since I posted that it took about 30 minutes to figure out what email and password I used. Scary. I don't have time to do much in the way of a post...but suffice it to say if there is anyone, I mean anyone out there still checking in with my woefully neglected blog...hang on folks. I will return. This opening a business thing is way more work than I thought it would be...my mind jumped directly to the "what it will be like to DO the business" and completely skipped over the "what it will take to get the building ready by demolishing and hauling away four truckloads of trash, apply approximately 30 gallons of paint, find and select every fixture, every light, every color.... , set up books, apply for various licenses...." anyway, I hope it will get easier once we are actually up and running. (naive much?)

Legos...

... they are still strewn all around my house and of course in the junk drawer even though they have been supplanted by X Box 360 for quite some time now. I read this blog entry and felt that it would be an important literary blog moment for me to share one of my Lego experiences.

My most memorable Lego related experience involved the Lego gas station. Now I don't know about you all, but my son was never one to jump on the big kits and put it all together. He preferred to have me or his sisters do the assembly and then he would play with the completed project for a ridiculously short time. I wish I had figured out before buying fifty different jets, star wars crafts, soccer fields, gas stations, train stations, etc... that he really just wanted to build the tallest tower possible and then make me repeatedly leave whatever I was doing to look at it, challenging me to continually come up with with better superlatives to describe it's wonderfullness. (Yeah, made that word up one of those times). Anyway, the Lego Gas Station was not the largest kit by far, but took a good several hours of time to unpack, read directions, search for the right pieces ("we just opened this, how did we lose something already??) and assemble. It was finished and placed on the floor in our sunporch where it was waiting for it's one hour of playtime before he reverted to building a five foot Lego skyscraper, again.

One of the cats, (who were typically responsible for batting around the lost pieces to the kits, causing the building projects to take much longer than necessary) was instead this evening batting around a live mouse. Reluctant to kill it (where's the fun in that?) , he brought it onto the sunporch where it proceeded to run under the couch. My husband grabbed the broom and I shifted the couch so that the mouse ran out and under a pillow on the floor. As I picked up the pillow, my husband, broom raised high over his head, watched as the mouse ran out from under the pillow and into the Lego Gas Station. As I was jumping back because really, a mouse can still cause me to scream and jump on a table or chair (and then get down and take care of killing it or catching it), my husband swung the broom down with all the force a 6'2" man could muster, missing my head by a margin so small it really could not be measured (I felt the wood lightly brush my forehead) and slammed it into the Lego Gas Station. The mouse survived (a little longer), the Gas Station did not, and the husband almost did not as I nearly killed him for the attempt on my life. I was more upset about the Lego Station than the boy (he had no investment in the thing) and I don't think we rebuilt, instead opting to make the pieces part of the next "oh my that is the most humungously astounding fantastically wow awesome tower ever".

None of the Lego Kits have survived to this day. They were all assimilated, Borg style, into the giant Lego bin which resides in the attic waiting for I don't know what. My guess is that by the time there are grandchildren, there will be virtual Legos and these will be unwanted, abandoned. At least you can't step on a virtual Lego..can you?