A tad unusual, eh? Well, my top lip still looks like those big red wax lips they have at Hallowe’en…bottom lip is normal-sized, which makes for a somewhat odd appearance. I can’t stay home from work and wallow in my disfigurement and stomach rumbles because I have a few deadlines to meet by the end of the week and they won’t get met if I stay home *resting*.  My stomach seems to have settled some overnight, and my back, which was aching with a vengeance, seems better as well. I have an inflatable mattress pad on the bed in the guest bedroom so that it can be adjusted to whoever’s sleeping on it, and I had DH pump it to the max so it felt like I was lying on a log. I didn’t cook last night - couldn’t stand the smell, let alone even imagine tasting food although I am hungry today, and am even as I type this, nibbling from my trademark bag-o-fiber that I make by filling a plastic sandwich baggie with Fiber One cereal, mini-shredded wheat squares, another kind of cinnamon-flavored square cereal, a handful of raisins, and 6 little cubes of dried pineapple. Probably more calories than I really need, but it’s VERY fiber-filled and keeps me nibbling for a couple of hours every morning which, in turn, I think, keeps my metabolism cranking along despite the fact that my exercise regimen is non-existent these days except when I get it in the course of getting something done - like painting and/or measuring, cleaning, etc.

This is an astrologically auspicious month. Good for new beginnings and change, both of which seem to be on my agenda.

“Come to the edge.”
“We can’t. We’re afraid.”
“Come to the edge.”
“We can’t. We will fall!”
“Come to the edge.”
 And they came.
 And he pushed them.
 And they flew.- Guillaume Apollonaire  1880-1918

 Sorry, I can’t seem to figure out how to change back to a black font, so I’ll just continue on in blue, I guess.

My DH has been hating his job - and even more than the job, the awful commute - for some time, now. It seems that a year or so ago, they brought in a new department head with some kind of Ph.D. in something or other, but in the end, pretty clueless about the mysteries of software and systems design. As a result, this individual set goals that are incongruent with the overall system capacities…blah, blah, blah, so on and so forth…and tends to just get defensive and critical when told that what he’s asking is unrealistic. Now, this guy eventually got demoted, but left the department further behind than where they were when he came. A very frustrating situation, to say the least, and DH, who actually does know what he’s doing, ended up with so much dumped on him that there was no way he could get all those things up and running by the deadlines that were established by some arbitrary “flip a coin” method, apparently. But I’m saying all of that to simply say that what he perhaps should have done say, six months ago, was just resign. But we - we, as people, I mean - are afraid to do things like that. We’re afraid to throw away jobs just because we don’t like them, or because they’re essentially un-doable. So, the universe shoved him off the cliff, and gee whiz…it looks like he’s at least doing some fancy gliding if he hasn’t quite started to fly yet. Sometimes we need a push, eh?

So I discovered Google mapping - the “street view” feature, and while they hadn’t mapped my son’s exact street, they mapped the main street in L.A. that his street runs off, and when I went to “street view” I could see the house - and shrubs and palm trees on the corner - that we drove by every day when I was out there visiting. I could also see the roof of his house - aerial view rather than street view - and dropped a little blessing down on him as he slept in his bedroom. I miss him. I’ll be so glad to see him when he gets here on the 20th. I’m really hoping that we don’t end up with horrible weather like we had when he came for Christmas last year. LAST year, he had a stopover in Denver, and of course the Denver airport was shut down for three days because of the blizzards. His flight was due to leave LAX at 8:00 in the AM, and he’d gotten to the airport at 6:00. His flight was cancelled altogether, and he was at the airport all day long - fnally got a flight out to Chicago at @ 8:00 in the evening. He was at O’Hare for about three hours and then just managed to get the last flight out to Boston before O’Hare shut down. Needless to say, that was a worriesome day for all concerned. He ended up getting into Boston at @ 4:00 in the AM. I sure was thankful that his sisters were up and waiting for him to come in. I fell asleep in my chair in the living room sometime after midnight if I recall correctly. Anyway, I’m hoping for an easier time of it this year.

Sometimes I wish we - DH and I - could just pack up and move out to L.A. ourselves, but of course that wouldn’t be fair to my girls or the grandkids. But there’s another storm predicted for tomorrow afternoon, and then a Nor’easter on Sunday - they’re saying a foot of snow, probably. Winter wonderland, my you-know-what!

Sometimes, here at work, listening to people pontificate about how things are *supposed* to be done, I feel eerily like a little silver skate - or maybe a thimble - on a Monopoly board….what if I don’t really WANT a hotel?

Woods. That’s where I think we may have to end up eventually. A shack in the woods somewhere…peaceful and isolated. We’ll need electricity of course, so that I can keep in touch with all of you. Maybe North Carolina. In the mountains. This might work down the road a pace.

Love,

Z