most lights per square inch

snaps on saturday

MyFavoriteKid is buried in the back there somewhere... 

At the "Be A Blue Devil For A Day" workshop. Auditions on the 5th!

every night

Every night.
It's my very own personal bedtime story.
Dog battles.
In my bed.

blech.

I honestly don't remember the last time I have been this sick.  It's just a terrible head cold, thank goodness...but man, am I wiped out.  I wake up every morning hoping to feel improved (because I am doing all the right things to get well), but instead I wake feeling just as bad as the day before.  I've passed on several things are important to me, including missing improvisational Circle Dancing with the dance troupe tonight.  I'm taking a pass on the Friday knitting group as well. I have to get over this! I have elfing to do!!

interesting.

My neighbors (YeOldHaus) are a constant source of entertainment. 

a little nuts

I'm tired. I'm still sick with a cold. And I still did a little bit too much today when I probably should have tried resting.

That's not keeping me from staying up too late searching for hand embroidery patterns for tea towels.

Because, ya' know. I need a knew hobby or something. 
Just before midnight.


Like I said. A little nuts!

meh.

I get a little (a little?!?) whiny when I'm sick, and guess what. I AM SICK.  *sigh*

I started feeling the tickle Friday night.  Saturday I knew I should try to get ahead of it by laying low, but I had a focus group to go and I had already paid in advance for tickets to take MyFavoriteKid and a couple of his buddies to see the new Hobbit movie. By Saturday night I felt even crappier (despite vitamins and zinc and all the rest of the homeopathic whatnot I have in my little apothecary).

By Sunday morning I felt like I'd been punched in the face, plus my throat was hurting a bit, too.  I laid low (finally) pulled some homemade soup I had stashed in the freezer for an emergency just like this one, and by the afternoon I felt improved and did a few tasks. A few too many tasks.  Was wiped again by Sunday evening and now here it is Monday, and I'm still a wreck.

I'm off to bed now (a little too late) after a day full of not getting a whole lot of anything done, and can only hope tomorrow will be better!  I've got things to do, man!!

snaps on sunday

Should have been a snap on Saturday, I know....but I've got a nasty head cold, and was down for the count a bit early last night. Fell asleep before posting!

So tonight I bring you....

....the Princess and The Pea.

date night in napa

partay

A lilltle wiped out. Tonight was TheMostImportantGuy's company holiday party and that meant many hours if travel by car and train, us everything in between....like the party part! 

I have no photographic evidence of the evening 

Thank goodness. 

LOL

scenes from last weekend

On Sunday, TheMostImportantGuy was Chicago bound on a business trip and MyFavoriteKid was at a drum corps audition. I had the day to myself to decorate for the holidays.  Being alone meant I could enjoy an eggnog and listen to all the Holiday tunes I wanted to! 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... 

high school winter concert

MyFavoriteKid's first time performing with the Jazz Ensemble :-)

And then first time doing percussion for the Wind Ensemble (rather than playing clarinet like before)....

 ...which means now I only get "top of head" shots!

testing testing

Posting using my phone using a new (to me) app.  

Here we go. Crossing fingers! I really need this to work for me!

 

Photo taken yesterday at an Open Studio event. I spotted it on an artist's inspiration board in her workspace!

i'm not sure exactly what is going on here

Long time no blog, eh?

I'm not sure exactly what is going on with me.  At first I thought I was just frustrated with technological issues and the lack of ease of posting. Then I thought I had things to say but was just too busy to say them.  Then I thought I had nothing to say at all. Then I thought I did have something to say, but it sounded rather depressing or whiny. Then I ended up being too depressed to post at all.  THEN I finally realized that maybe part of my feeling depressed was because I stopped posting in the first place.

Well, however I got to this spot, here I am.

If you were to look at me from the outside, there's not a whole lot going on with me. Pretty much the same ol', same ol'.   But it feels like my internal life is exactly the opposite of that. Way too many thoughts and feelings about all sorts of stuff. Sometimes when there is that much going on in my crazy inner world I start looking like a deer in the headlights.  I freeze in my tracks.

At the forefront of my crazy-brain:

~ I have some anniversaries happening, and contemplating marking them creates an overly sentimental me.  TheMostImportantGuy and I just celebrated 10 years together last month.  That was a good one. The best, actually :-)  And February marks 20 years of dancing, also good (except see the next item on this list, and you'll maybe understand why it's a little emotional), and....next March it will be 10 years since the car accident. I'm not sure exactly where that fits in to the scheme of things (ie my mood), but it has me thinking about it more than usual, so it must be doing something to my mood.

~ I am planning on taking a break from teaching dance (in its present form) in the spring.  For a couple of years I have felt like I need to let it go and make room for something else, and I keep waiting for that something else to appear first so that I'll know when it's time to quit teaching.  I've been waiting so long for that thing to appear though, that I think I might the order reversed. I think I need to let go and make space first so something else can come in.  You know, when one door closes, another opens, and all that.  It's like I'm trying to wait for the next door to open before I close this one, but that usually isn't how it works for me. Usually the door has to shut, and there is time spent in the corridor waiting for the next door to open.  I've always been keen to point out that, "the hallways can be such a bitch."  But they don't need to be. So I'm working myself up to be HappyInTheHallway for ahwile.  Sometimes "Not Knowing" is a really clean place to be.
  
~ I'm watching MyFavoriteKid grow into his own very awesome young man. I am in awe of him, to be honest with you. I know I'm his mom and all and we all think most highly of our own kids, but I swear to you, if I wasn't his mom and I met him somewhere randomly, he'd impress me.  So what's happening now is that I'm dealing with that thing I guess almost every mother has to deal with at some point: that happy-sad thing as you let them go. It's a beautiful and awesome feeling. And at the same time it hits me in the chest in a way that makes me want to sing achy-breaky country songs. LOL  I know y'all know what I'm trying to say here. 

~ I'm worried about James (the guy at the convalescent hospital that I volunteer visit), and my responsibility for his care has shifted, and I'm really muddling my way through it all, to be honest.

~ I've been in therapy for a few months now, both solo, and in couple's counseling with TheMIG. All is well between us.  Really. It is. Fear not.  We are doing great. We're just getting some help learning how to understand where each other is coming from, 'cuz lemme tell ya'...we come from entirely different backgrounds and we grew up with some extremely different family cultural norms, and it's like we speak different languages sometimes. It's been a real gift to have someone (our therapist) translate for us, and even better, teach us how to do it ourselves so we're aren't dependent on the guy. Love it.  In my own personal therapy, I am learning how some behaviors that I learned (or perhaps was taught) very early in life pretty much pop up in every. single. place. in my life. that I look.  I'd really like to write about it, but because it involves my family (who are readers), I'm not sure I can.  I've been deeply considering another blog about it all elsewhere and being a ghost-writer or assuming some crazy pen-name (like there is anything crazier than AmpuTeeHee..??)

~ I am seriously struggling with what it is taking me to manage two households (TheNewDiggs and YeOldeHaus).  It's going to take me a much a longer post to dive into that, but I will eventually because quite frankly, I'm probably going to need advice.  But for now, I'll just say that it's weighing on me far more than it probably should be. I'm probably making things more complicated than they need to be.


So. That's where I'm at.
A whole lot of mulling things over, basically. Not a bad thing really, except you pair all the thinking and feeling with the cold snap we're having, and I'm just quite happy huddling up in my cozy little hidey-hole over here, and that's why you haven't seen much of me!

Now that I've broken my own ice, let's see if that puts me back on track again.

can't win