NaBloPoMo is No Mo'

Today is the last day of NaBloPoMo, and again I find myself feeling enormously pleased with myself for having made it through the month without too many "cheater posts" (a cheater post being one where I said nothing interesting, or just posted a link or whatever). And as per the last several years I've done this, I finish with the intention of continuing on because I like the intellectual pressure of having to come up with something to say on a daily basis, I like the therapeutic nature of blogging, and frankly I find it all just a bit of fun (and an ego stroke that there are people who give a shit about what I have to say.) Each year I promise myself that this year, I'll keep blogging daily. This year, I'll set myself a 365 posts challenge. This year, I'll bring back the weekly activities I used to have (namely baking recipes you are meant to go and share with other people.) This year, I'll be a better blogger. This year, I'll edit every post (for grammar, spelling AND content) before hitting the publish button.

I'm not going to say ANY of that this year - because the year is about progress, and I've learned that sometimes progress is knowing when to say no, or knowing when to just say, "What I'm doing is good enough for now," or just plain old, "Fuck it." So in the spirit of progress, this year I'm going to say I'd *like* to blog a bit more often (and to a higher quality), but if I don't always get to it...well, that's okay too. I did not start this blog with the intention of being on the scale of the Mommy Bloggers who quit their day jobs to write full time. I never thought I'd have any readers beyond my husband and my in-laws, never thought I would use this as anything other than a chronicle of life as a wife, mother, lover of all things sugary and baked, and person for whom sarcasm is a way of life. Of course, it's been ALL of that - and far, far more - but there is some itty bitty teeny tiny part of me that wishes it was all that and then all that PLUS all that and then all that again. The only way to achieve ALL THAT would be to blog more often - because writing is a skill like any other, and it requires practice and perseverance in order to improve at it.

Not surprisingly, being insanely competitive with oneself does not only apply to exercise or business or weight loss. Like everything else in my life, blogging is something I expect to excel at - actually, I work DAMN HARD at excelling at. Good enough...isn't good enough. Ever.

However.

As I mentioned earlier, in the new year (word yet to be determined, although some of the suggestions have got my brain ticking over) I'd really like to be more about what I AM doing rather than the endless beating myself up over the "coulda shoulda woulda wanta needta. RIGHT NOW." So - let me leave you with only this promise: I'll do my best to write more often, and continue to be mostly witty and soul-baringly honest. Sometimes, I'll be boring. Sometimes there will be long gaps between posts. Sometimes I will fail and sometimes I will succeed ...but always I will be grateful to the 6 of you who keep reading, and I'll keep on writing for the six of you and the one of me because we all seem to enjoy it.

And that, as they say, is that.

Those Crazy Kids

I found out about a project which pairs up local businesses with students doing their degrees in IT at about the same time I needed some IT work done.  The basic idea is that the kids involved get some real life experience, and the business gets an inexpensive (eg free other than time) product which hopefully they can get some use out of. They are very careful at the start of the partnership to let you know that NOTHING may come of it at all, that these are after all students, and that it's not a matter of getting free labour as much as it is a potentially beneficial activity. There are no guarantees that you'll end up with anything at all but of course the hope is that you will.

On Monday morning I went to my group's final presentation of the system they designed for the business. They designed a cloud based customer database (or if we're fancy, CRM system- Customer Relationship Management system), which among other things can keep track of our clients and their orders and payments, produce a bunch of reports, auto-send a bunch of reminder emails (to various templates), generate invoices, track income, and a bunch of other pretty cool features. The final presentation was just fabulous - my band of merry nerds had gotten all dressed up (as had I), they gave a really great presentation and everyone was suitably impressed with them. So they should be, those kids worked incredibly hard and produced a great piece of work which I believe I'll be able to get a lot of use out of. It's not entirely done - it's about 90% there - but I've hired these same kids to finish the job for me, so I will get it working for us probably by the end of the year.

So here's the thing I found most amazing - literally every time I had a meeting with these kids and their supervisors, and today at the presentation, a bunch of people THANKED ME for being an outstanding client. It actually got kinda embarrassing there for a few minutes with all the gushing and photo taking and carrying on. Literally, the kids themselves, their teachers, a bunch of local Council representatives, and other academics kept telling me what an amazing client I am, how seriously I took it all, how much the kids appreciated my professionalism, and so on. So either I'm really that fabulous, or they've had pretty bad client experiences before, or maybe both of those...but the part which really bothers me is, SURELY these kids *deserved* to be treated with kindness, respect and professionalism. OF COURSE they did. OF COURSE. That anyone - and anyone in small business - would think or behave otherwise is just, to me, appalling.

From the minute I started this project, I basically treated it no differently to any other business relationship where I need a product or service and another company is providing it to me. That I was dealing with a group of pizza-eating, Coke-swilling, messy jeans and t-shirt wearing young men made NO difference to me at all. For their part, my group was professional, organised, pleasant ...and unless I knew I was dealing with 19 year olds, I'd have assumed I was dealing with adults working for a normal, professional consulting firm. In a word, they were totally awesome and worked damn hard for me (added bonus, they practically orgasmed every time I walked into a meeting with a box of cupcakes for them.)

That they needed to thank me so much for simply behaving like a grown up...well, that just proves that maturity clearly is not related to age or experience.

That Dance Show

This past weekend was DD2's dance recital. I'd like to carry on about how horribly cruel it is to make parents sit through 3.5 hours of dancing, but The Neighbour's Wife took care of that one for me. Instead I'm going to ask the question: Is the 3.5 hours about what the kids want, or what the parents demand?

My daughter was in 8 different dance pieces - and there were *46* pieces all up in this one concert. Yes, she does 3 sorts of dance (ballet, jazz, tap)...but I've got to be honest with you, I would have been quite happy to have seen her in only 3 pieces and that's it. DD2 told me that some girls were in as many as 13 dances. Let's digest that for a second here - we're asking a 10 year old kid to perform in THIRTEEN dance pieces. Ridiculous! Who is it that wants to see so many, and who is it that is demanding so many in the first place? I adore my DD and I'm proud of her achievements, but for me her dancing is much more about fitness, confidence and fun than it is about some overblown performance at the end of the year.  I simply don't understand the logic behind this - which again makes me ask, is this about the KID or is this about the PARENT? My own kid, who feels that dancing is a vital part of her very survival, was herself pretty stressed out about all those costume changes and how much she had to remember. She too was asking why she needed to do SO many of them, and unfortunately I had no (reasonable, without curse words) answer for her.

I imagine the owner of the dance school feels the pressure to give parents what they pay for, and at something like $1500 a year (I'm including shoes, etc in that), and ferrying your kid to class twice a week for weeks on end...you're going to want to have something to show for it. I understand that. I also understand that the owner is trying to keep stage mothers happy by showing off Little Ballerina A LOT...but 3.5 hours of ANYTHING involving children is just ridiculous. Yes, I want my child to perform, but NO I don't need it to be the dance equivalent of War & Peace.

At the end of the performance, the owner gave out some awards - and by some, I mean TOO DAMN MANY. Literally I think it was 40 of them (out of about 100 kids. You do the math,) and a bunch of them were for 'encouragement' and (my personal fave) 'enthusiasm.' I understand she wants to honour these kids and their achievements...but I'm not sure how honourable it is to say that, "this award is being given to the child who has not only been blessed with a dancer's body, but also has the enthusiasm and potential to go really far in her dance career." Fabulous, I think girls don't get enough negative body images, let's now give AWARDS for it as well.  I also do not understand how valuable it is for either the parent or the child to realise that they're exactly as enthusiastic as the 30 other kids who got the same award. Aren't awards meant to be about exceptional achievement? How exceptional is it to be enthusiastic about doing something you really like anyway? She also managed to say pretty much the exact same spiel for each kid...so again, exactly WHAT is so special about these awards that so many of them were necessary?

If you're wondering if I am bitter about DD2 not winning anything, let me assure you I could give a shit if she won, just so long as she is getting the fitness, confidence, and fun which is all I ever really wanted for her in the first place.* Much more importantly, SHE could give a shit (actually, she said she was kinda glad she did not win, since winners have to do a solo and she doesn't want "yet another dance to remember!").  I don't understand the need to make these children perform so many pieces (for whose benefit?) and I don't understand why we need to give a 3 year old an enthusiasm award (again? for whose benefit?).

My Mom made an interesting observation- that the owner gave out the jillion awards and then immediately reminded everyone that 2012 re-enrolment forms are due. What parent still in post-award glow would deny their kid re-enrolment? I'm not nearly as cynical as she is...but she's got a point, doesn't she? When your kid runs up to you clutching their plastic gold statuette says and eyes all shining says, "Oh please Mum, can I come again? Can I? Can I? Can I?" I'll bet that re-enrolment form gets burned from the speed of the pen filling it out.

For what it's worth, I'll keep on keeping on - meaning as long as DD2 is happy dancing, I'm happy supporting her. I've just come to realise that dance concerts are a little like childbirth, in the months between giving birth and getting pregnant, we somehow forget the pain and suffering bit.

It's That Time of Year

Last year I crapped on (sorry, 'waxed lyrical') about choosing my Word of the Year. I ended up choosing the word - progress - and swear on a stack of cupcakes, I actually USED my word of the year all year long. There were several weeks when I forgot about it entirely, but there were several weeks when I used it every day (mostly to motivate my ass to the gym or for a morning shufflin' session). Seeing as how I am - or more accurately, have become less of - a sceptic about all things woo-woo and "Universe" and "affirmation," it wasn't so easy to come to the WOTY party. But, I believe that when you play at someone else's house, you play by their rules so I ended up embracing this whole woo-woo Universe affirmation word thing really well (because over achievement does not only apply to tangible things). You know, it's been a pretty amazing, progress-fuelled sort of year for me and mine. A year ago, DH was not (yet) working, the whole lease on the shop thing had blown up in my face, my kids were utter pains in the proverbial, we were in hock about a squillion dollars, and everything was just...shitty.

This year, the year of progress - DH is working (and volunteering, and getting fitter, and looking hotter than ever before, which is pretty fantastic for a nerdy bespectacled love-handled engineer), the kids have loved their new school, the shop and the business have come along in leaps and bounds, and while we are still in hock a squillion dollars, on the whole me and my family are much happier, content people. We have ALL made an enormous amount of progress this year. I'm in no way saying that all this has come about  just because I chose to make my focus "progress," I'm simply saying that the combined forces of intent, hard work, determination, perseverance, the restorative powers of sugar and doonah-therapy and the support and love of an entire crowd of people has made this one of the best years my family has ever had.

The coming year is STILL going to be about progress, as all the foundations laid this year will continue to reap further reward and benefit - but I need  new word to reflect what I've got planned for the coming year. My plans for 2012 include (but in no way are limited to), a reasonable amount of travel for purely adventure purposes, some increased demands on my own fitness goals (I'm SO going to give that Zumba thing a try, and I'd like to learn to roller skate), increased success for the business which enables me to continue along my 5 year business plan, some goals for DH and I as a couple (just between you and me, I'd like to hang out with him NOT while in front of Top Gear or Dr Who), and some other things involving the children, our home, and some other bits-and-pieces stuff. With all that I intent to do, but being mindful of the words of the neuro guy (and all the friends who seem to agree with his advice), my word of the year needs to be something which reflects my desire to continue to move forward but perhaps not at such breakneck speed.

I'm struggling with this - is there any sort of word which means 'kick life's ass' and 'slow the fuck down' all in the one word?

I'm thinking maybe "gratification" - because one of my problems is that I FORGET to just stop and ENJOY all the things I work so hard for, but then that seems a little...selfish? Self satisfying?  I've rejected: Gratitude (because I practice that every day anyway), Achievement (well, duh...), Serenity (too boring), Measured (again, boring!)...and a couple others but so far nothing is fitting right.

Suggestions welcome - and feel free to share if you 2011 word worked for you, and if you've thought about one for 2012. Come and join me on the woo-woo band wagon. It's fun here.

Slowing Down

Stuff I did today, in no particular order:

• Apply stage make up to DD2 for her ballet concert,
• Watch DS play basketball (who knew my kid could hustle so well down that court?),
• Clean up yet another flood at the shop, this time somewhere totally different to the other two floods I cleaned up this week,
• Drove well over a hundred kilometres,
• Made lunch for my family,
• Apply DD2's stage make up again (for concert two),
• Answered work emails,
• Answered work calls,
• Will sort out some sort of dinner for all and sundry (but I probably won't cook it),
• Put on three loads of laundry,
• Did several bits of washing up and putting away,
• Sorted out some mail,
• Delivered 4 orders,
• Folded two loads of laundry,
• ...and probably some other stuff I have yet to do (it's only 2:30pm as I write this.)

Somehow I think this whole "slowing down" thing might be just *wee* bit harder to do than I thought.

This Time

My words escape me only because I've had a really fabulous, happy day but one which left me no time for blogging. Rest assured my words will come back tomorrow, but in the meantime I leave you with my favourite kids' joke:

Two muffins are baking in an oven. One muffin says to the other, 'Geez, getting kinda hot in here, isn't it?" The second muffin screams, "ARGH! A talking muffin!"

Slow The Fuck Down, Would You?

My life runs at double speed. Heck, sometimes triple speed - I always seem to be on the go, I have a million (at least!) things which need my attention, I've always got the phone ringing and the email pinging, and basically my life is completely insane. I love it (most of the time) - because I like being busy and needed, and I like having things to do and people to see and all that. The old adage of, "if you want something done, ask a busy person," totally applies to me.  I fill as much stuff into my life as I can because I enjoy living each day to it's fullest, and lots of things are important to me. So I make the time for the gym, for work, for friends, for STUFF.

It sounds a little nuts, but I live my life as though my time will run out, as though I am in a race against a hourglass filled with sand. I not only LIKE to live my life as busy as I can, I also feel I NEED to. For reasons I can't exactly explain, I just feel like I need to GO GO GO all the damn time. If I don't succeed NOW, if I don't pay back the business debt NOW, if I don't do everything NOW....well, I don't even want to think about the consequences of that. Will anything happen if I don't achieve, do, be, go, have all those things right this very second? Probably not, but I don't plan on finding out, either.

Sometimes, living your life at maniacal pace gets (a lot) exhausting, and sometimes that exhaustion manifests itself in funny ways. For the last several months, I've been struggling with my words - I trip over them, mis-spell them, forget whole phrases, and in general feel as though the words in my brain do not match those which come out of my mouth. It's very disconcerting because I am such a word-oriented person. I read - no, I DEVOUR - several books a week. I read and write blogs, talk a lot, handwrite notes, and so on.  I just adore words...so to be losing them is horrifying to me. Strangely, NONE of my family or friends have noticed this peculiar thing happening. It finally got irritating enough that I went to the GP, who although she felt it was just stress-induced, sent me along for a neuro consult anyway.

Today was the consult - and although things seem to have settled down a bit, I thought it was worth going along anyway. The doctor and I had a good long chat, and he did a whole bunch of tests, both physical and cognitive, and we had another long chat about what is going on. The good news is, there is not a damn thing wrong with me. There is no mysterious organic brain disease, I'm not suffering early dementia, no signs of anything at all untoward. He did take all of it very seriously, but smiled when he said most patients who present with brain troubles generally do NOT engage in witty banter between the testing questions, nor do they stop to tell him why the questions are flawed in the first place and suggest ways to make them better. He was particularly amused with my answers to one of the questions - which was - in 60 seconds, name as many words as you can which start with the letter 'p.' Apparently most people do not come out with words like 'polycystic' 'perpendicular' 'positively' 'prehensile' and so on - but being the professional that he is, he carried on with ALL the testing even though it became pretty obvious there was nothing wrong with me.(...and for the animals one...apparently 'tree frog' 'rhinoceros' 'wallaby' 'seahorse' and 'sulphur crested cockatoo' are not common answers either. Go figure.)

We got to the end of the consult and he looked me in the eye and said, "Okay, well, I think we've established there are no brain issues here, but there is no doubt that you are being driven a little crazy by what is happening with your words. So here's my suggestion: SLOW YOUR LIFE DOWN."

"That's it?"

"Yes. That's it. MAKE the time to have quiet time every single day. Learn to meditate if you need to,  listen to relaxing music, swing in a hammock, whatever it takes to make you just STOP for an hour a day and just learn to BE."

"You make it sound simpler than it is."

"Actually, it IS simple. The human brain is only capable of making ONE decision at a time, no matter how much the current social norms would have you believe we are capable of more than that. It's yes or no, on or off, but it's only ever ONE of those at any given time. Remember that - you are only capable of making ONE decision at a time. ONE. I never, ever want to see you in my office again, so I'll say this again so you cannot ignore me: SLOW YOUR LIFE DOWN."

*sigh*

Bad News: I probably need to actually take his advice.
Good News: I'm the only patient he has ever had who managed to get more points on the damn test than it was actually worth.

Totally Shit Day

I had an extremely crappy day today - filled with lots of sad and yucky things like funerals, floods, migraine headaches, broken equipment, late deliveries, and a bunch of other crap. So I am not much in the mood for blogging today - and I'm sure you'll forgive me, won't you - but I did want to say this:

Everything today was kinda shitty. But I'm still counting my blessings, and I'm still grateful for so many things...that tomorrow, when I wake up, I just know things will be okay. And even if some of them are not...well, it's what keeps life interesting, isn't it?

Best Gift Ever (from DH)

I feel the need to rescue my poor DH's gift reputation by telling you all about the best gift he's given me - in terms of actual tangible gifts. The intangible ones are too numerous to blog about. (Awwww....)

I can't remember if I've blogged about this before, so forgive me if you've heard this story already.

Since I was old enough to do so, I've worn a gold chain around my neck. At various times it's had various things on it - but it always has a gold letter "M' which my Mom gave me, a small diamond and sapphire charm my Dad gave me, half of a 'best friend' heart my sister gave me (she has the other half), and at the moment there is a small opal DH gave me for my birthday several years ago, plus the item I'm going to tell you about in a minute. When I was pregnant, I hung my wedding rings on it because my fingers were so swollen, at times it's had charms from friends, and so on...it's a terribly useful piece of jewellery. I very rarely take this necklace off, and it's extremely important to me because it hangs right above my heart. I love that the people I love are symbolically close to my heart and so this chain pretty much is as much a part of me as my hair or my skin or anything else. Anybody who knows me in real life knows how much a part of me this necklace is.


The day the children were born, I lay in that hospital bed (feeling rather blech indeed) and DH handed me a tiny jewellery box. Inside of it was a small gold medal - basically a round disk. On one side it had engraved the words, "Citius, Altius, Fortius" and on the other, "17 May 2001."

Not surprisingly, I burst into tears, put it on my chain and it has not come off since.

Here's the backstory. DH and I went through the lovely process of IVF to have our children.  It was not the most pleasant experience (although compared to some, really not too bad either.) I struggled with the whole experience emotionally - I felt like a failure, resented that we needed it at all, and so on. Believing that knowledge is power, I attacked this experience like a project which needed me to whip it into shape. I researched, I read, I took notes, I asked questions, I demanded answers, I challenged the status quo on almost everything, I made phone calls, joined online forums and so on.  In short, I was the biggest pain in the arse patient my doctor(s) had ever encountered. I advocated not only for me and DH but also for the children we were yet to have, and I was determined as anything to be successful at this (but I did have a "no more treatment" cut off point in mind.) DH and I went through the main part of our treatment right in the middle of the Sydney Olympics, and pretty much that is all that was on TV, radio, news, etc. Olympic fever had taken over Australia in a big way. On one of my darker days, DH told me I needed to treat this experience like the Olympics - meaning that like an athlete, it may take us years and years and years of dedication, preparation, special treatments, etc...but in the end, making it to the Olympics (getting pregnant) and then maybe even winning (bringing home a child) would make the long haul to get there totally worth it.

The Olympic motto is "Citius, Altius, Fortius" - or "Faster, Higher, Stronger" and so we adopted this as our mantra. I'd whisper it to myself every time I had an injection, suck down a pill, or sniff something (nobody tells you about those nasty nasal sprays.) I'd repeat it in my head while going through yet another embarrassing and demoralising internal examination. I'd scribble it down while writing down the notes from the (endless) lectures we got from doctors. DH would squeeze my hand and  whisper it in my ear when he saw I was going to (yet again) burst into tears.   Basically I lived and breathed that expression and I hung onto it like a lifeline because if I just believed in it and stayed the course, we'd get through it, surely. Giving up was not an option for me. I'm no athlete but in this case, I was as prepared and organised for that race as any of them are.

Once we got pregnant, I hung onto the mantra still.  Every time I had a pre-natal check up - because triplets are high risk, and we still needed all that strength to make it through the pregnancy we both wanted so much. We really NEEDED those kids to be faster, higher, and stronger than most triplets are - because more often than not, higher order multiples are born prematurely, need hospital stays, and are in general in need of more care than your average baby. So I swallowed enormous amounts of vitamins, drank oceans of water, litres of milk for calcium, ingested as many calories (of the good variety!) I could possibly, and basically again treated this pregnancy like I was in training for an Olympic event. These babies were going to come out happy and healthy and well because I was going to work damn hard to make it so.

On May 17, 2001 - the most amazing miracle babies were born. All of them a very healthy weight for triplets, none of them needing very much special care, all of them then meeting their developmental milestones either on time or even a scrap early. By the time they were 6 months old all three of them had not only grown enough to be on those stupid baby growth charts, but were the right size or a bit over what would be expected for full term singleton children. In short, all that preparation was well worth it.

The best tangible gift I ever got from the love of my life was the gold medal he gave me on the day our children were brought into this world. It's a gold medal we both earned, but I get to wear above my heart every single day to remind me that together, we can do anything - and that almost everything in life worth doing takes patience, time, and perseverance. The gift of the gold medal was in fact about much, much more than just a piece of gold.

The Art of Giving

Thanks to Marie's lovely comment, I thought I'd write about me as a gift giver...because it can't always be about receiving, nor should it be.

I'm not a huge gift giver - meaning that more often than not I totally forget about needing to give gifts at all. Not that I'm selfish or inconsiderate, more that I'm a social retard who never seems to know who is meant to get gifts and when. Luckily I am friends with The Neighbour's Wife, who not only reminds me of gift-appropriate events but also shops for me! I actually am a far more prolific gift giver when it's NOT an event - so I'll see a cute card and send it to a friend for no reason, will cut articles out of newspapers that I think are of interest and will send them on, will go out to dinner with a friend and offer to pay just for the heck of it. Or I'll be out and about somewhere and will find something - a book, some foodstuff, whatever - which will remind me of someone I love and I'll give it to them for no reason at all. I'll send flowers, send cupcakes, write "I'm thinking about you" emails and texts. I'm far more about the smaller, more often gifts than I am about the big showy once-a-year gift. I want my friends to know I am thinking of them and love them even when it's NOT their birthday. Many times the gift I give is just one of time and love - so I'll give a friend biz advice if she asks, will take time out of my chaotic life to have a chat to a friend on the phone, will put 500% more effort into a cake they've ordered from me, will go for early morning walks (on a Sunday) and so on. Sometimes it's not really the gift of 'stuff,' it's just the gift of time and love which is important.  In many ways my friends are my family, and I want to honour that by being a gift giver when no gift is really necessary.

That being said, when I *do* remember the big gift events, and I do take the time to think about it - I LOVE giving gifts and especially those which the recipient does not expect, and one which is totally tailored to them in every way I possibly can.  Perfect example of this was our recent wedding anniversary - DH and I are anniversary nerds and so therefore follow the "first year is paper, second is wood" etc Hallmark rules. We do have a "creative interpretation" rule, though - so for 'tin' he got a 30-can box of Pepsi Max.  Why? Because he is totally addicted to that stuff, in Australia cans are known as "tinnies" and they're made out of aluminium, which is the closest I could get to actual tin.  For 'paper' he got a paper bark tree and a note about how we, like the tree, would weather many storms and still be standing. You get the idea. (Although god help me next year, which is crystal.)

This year was ivory - and since I'm not into harming elephants, I had to get creative. You can actually buy mammoth ivory (which is okay, environmentally speaking) but again, I wasn't all too happy with that option. So DH got an enormous (and I mean huge), sculpture of an elephant (wearing shoes) which was made out of white chocolate.

Let me dissect this gift for you. First, white chocolate is not white, it's ivory in colour. Second, elephants produce ivory. Third, for a very long time now we've had an inside joke about elephant shoes. If you see someone across a crowded room and mouth the words 'elephant shoes' to them, it looks as though you are saying....wait a sec. Go find a mirror and try it. You'll see why it's our inside joke. :) Lastly, my DH's favourite treat is white chocolate, and this was the expensive European couveture sort so I was being especially nice.  So this gift was appropriate on a number of different yet very personal levels. Exactly the sort of gift I love to give.

If I'm going to get a gift for someone, it's going to be the end all and be all of gifts - not just the gift voucher you picked up at the department store (although they too have their place). I've given friends all sorts of crazy things - because to me, putting in the effort and love to make it truly personal is SO much more important than what you spent on it, or when they gave it to you. I absolutely ADORE giving someone something which they are not expecting, which comes at a time when they are not expecting, and which really and truly says, "I've been thinking about you, and you are a part of my heart."

As for gifts I've received which meant an enormous amount to me...well, there have been a lot of those. The earrings which belonged to my Mom, the ones I'd always admired - the ones which even now when I put them on I suddenly feel extremely grown up. The beautiful vase a friend brought into the shop right after I opened it - she knew it would look perfect, it was one of her own special collection and yet she chose to pass it onto me. The flowers my SIL brought me, also when I opened the shop. The paintings a friend gave DH and I for our wedding. The various people who have contributed small charms to the gold necklace I wear every day of my life. The personal time Biz Guy makes for me even though he is not one for friendships. The funny parcels which appear on my doorstep from The Good Doctor - parcels which he sends at random times with his family members so they look as though they have appeared out of thin air. The stuff my sister sends - the drawings her children have done, the pictures she has taken of them, the picture frames which she sends for me to put those pictures in. You get the idea. I suppose for me the giving of the small stuff is wonderful, and the things I get which I love are those which are sent with love.

Ultimately, gifts are wonderful to give and receive - we all like getting stuff, right? For me it's remembering that not all gifts are given wrapped with a bow that is the most important of all.

Nostradamus

This week I received a package of new business stickers from my graphic designer. In the package was the stickers, a really nice note from her...and a laminated card with a photo of some creepy old guy on one side. The other side had this circle thing with a bunch of other circles inside of it, with numbers and the star signs and symbols and other stuff on it.

I have NO IDEA why that was in there. No idea who the creepy guy was either, so I asked my resident Catholics (just in case it was some bishop? Deacon? Religious dude not of my flavour?) on there. One person looked at it and said, "Yeah, no freakin' idea who that dude is," and the second person said, "I'm pretty sure that's Nostradamus and some sort of calendar on the back."

Now I'm not terribly religious, nor superstitious...but why on earth was there a laminated creepy old guy in amongst my stickers?

I should totally have emailed the graphic designer to ask, but exactly how does one say that delicately?! Ummm, excuse me but I think you may have misplaced some quasi-religious dude inside of my label bag?

Anyway I stuck Nostradamus (or the artist formerly known as him, since we did not have a positive ID on this guy yet) on the shelf and tried to forget about him. I couldn't forget, of course...those damn eyes kept following me around the room. He really creeped me out! I couldn't just throw it out, isn't that messing with my juju? Or karma? Or...something? I just couldn't chuck it out all willy-nilly like that! It seemed somehow sacreligious, or tempting fate, or...something to throw out this guy. For all I know we could have thrown him out and he comes to life, or...something. All I know is, I was not happy about him being in my kitchen, and I had no sage with which to smudge the place once we got rid of him.

Anyway after several days of me freaking out about ol' Nostry (if that's even who he was) Brave Employee got exasperated with me and chucked his ass right into the bin.

No points for guessing who has had crappy days at work since.

Update: OMG I just Googled it and she was right! Here's the picture we got...and OMG his full name is Michel de Nostredame. Coincidence?!

Worst Gift EVER

Since it's "the most wonderful time of the year," the conversation on the radio (and subsequently at work) has been all about gift giving. In specific, the worst gift you've ever been given.

I've actually got two of these.

The first one was from my DH - who in addition to being the most fabulous man on earth, is also the worst gift giver on earth. He always radiates good intention but pretty much fails miserably. I'm not going to repeat the whole birthday cake saga, but suffice to say he is a shit gift giver (sorry my love. But this is not new news for you.)  Anyway, the first year we were married, he gave me the strangest gift for my birthday - an enormous A3 sized Ahskenazi Haggadah. (Translation for anyone who wants one: broadsheet sized religious book.) To this day, I've got no idea why he bought it. Sure, it was nice..but a) I'm not terribly religious and in fact hate Passover most of all the Jewish holidays, b) I don't find sitting at a dinner table reading a broadsheet sized book all that comfortable, and c) are you for real, DH? What the hell were you thinking?

ANYWAY.

Second worst (actually the WORST but chronologically after the Jewish Book That Ate Manhattan) was from DH's Uncle and Aunt. For my 27th birthday (I think? In my 20's in any case) they made a big song and dance about my gift. How they put a lot of thought into it, thought I'd enjoy it, how they really thought it was appropriate for me, how much use I'd get out of it, and so on and so forth. They presented me with said gift at the dinner table and encouraged me to open it in front of everyone, so with some excitement (new car? mortgage paid off? clothes voucher? vacation?!) I opened the gift.

It was a personal blood pressure device.

I totally thought they were kidding and so I started to laugh. It took a minute or two before DH leaned over to me and said, "Seriously, it's not a joke gift," when he realised before I did that nobody else was laughing. The Uncle and Aunt in question then went on to say that they really thought someone of my size (eg FAT!) needed to be aware of these things, should look after themselves, and how important they felt it was that I use this thing. I basically got a "You are fat and will die early," lecture at my birthday dinner in front of my family.

I've never been so humiliated in my life, not even the time I fell down during the big "Beauty School Dropout" number in high school and popped all my balloons on my costume as the curtain rose on Act Two. I literally wanted the world to swallow me up right then and there.

I did try to see if there was some OTHER gift hiding somewhere - maybe in the card - but there wasn't. That was it. A blood pressure monitor and a lecture. I know they were coming from a place of love and good intention...but it was just plain horrible. My brothers in law saved me, though, because they immediately wanted to grab it and give it a go and play with it. We soon discovered the damn thing was crap, because the same person could do a reading 3 times in a row and never get the same answer - one minute it would be wildly high, the next very low. Not enough they gave me a horrible gift but the damn thing was crappy quality as well.

I'd love to tell you all that I'm over this gift, but I'm not. I totally appreciate their concern for my health, but are they so socially inept that they had NO idea just how horrible that might make me feel? Needless to say, I generally refuse to open gifts in front of other people now.

In case you are wondering, I came home and chucked it in the back of the cupboard for a while...and eventually threw it out. Not because it's not useful, not because it's not a nice thought - but because no medical device needs to make me feel so horrible about myself.

...and for the record, should you ever be in the market for a gift for me, please may they not:

- be smelly. No soaps, no perfumes, no creams, nothing of the "stinky stuff" variety. I really hate that crap and on the effort scale it's a minus five.
- require either ironing or dusting. "Dustables" irritate me, and ironing is against my religion.
- imply in any way that I am fat or thin or anything in between, the size of my ass should not be reflected in my gift in any way
- have the word "medical device" anywhere on the packaging unless we are talking about a vibrator (oh yes, I went there...)
- ugly handbags are also out of the question and for the love of god:

NOTHING CAKE OR CUPCAKE RELATED! :)

Consider yourselves warned. Less than 6 shopping weeks to my birthday.

Brain Malfunction

I tried to write a blog post from my phone but the damn thing did not want to cooperate with me! It's now 11 minutes to midnight and I'm posting purely to make sure I don't miss a NaBloPoMo day...but I've got nothing to write about at this late hour.

Instead I'll post a quote I read today - you can't move on to the next chapter of your life if you're spending all of your time re-reading the last chapter. :)

Until tomorrow (where I will be more awake and infinitely more witty, I hope).

Friends of Friends

So .... what happens when your friends (who you love and adore for so many reasons) have other close friends which you simply can't stand?

Do you...
- just be grateful you don't need to see those other friends much?
- say something? (not sure what the purpose of that might be....)
- suck it up and pretend to like your friend's friend? Even though you are very bad at pretending to like people, and they can probably see right through it?

....because here's what I'm wondering. I think the whole 'birds of a feather' thing is really true, in so far as we are attracted to certain personality traits and so all our friends have at least a few common threads. Assuming you like your friends for personality traits X,Y,Z...is it that you don't like their other friend(s) because those people are too much like you? Or do they like *different* personality traits in those people to the ones they like in you? Shouldn't it be a simple if you like them, you should probably also like their friends, because theoretically all of you share personality traits, which is what attracted the person in the middle to you and the person you don't like?

Enlighten me.