Test

There's been a lot of talk about will they or won't they. Last I heard, the debates will go on. However, it is very interesting to see how the two candidates have dealt with this.

One says "I may be a candidate, but my current job is US Senator, not Presidential candidate and my country needs me."
One says "Hey, if there's anything I can do, call me."

This is a great test of leadership.

There has been a lot of talk about looking for an excuse to get out of the debates or it's a publicity stunt. Right now there is an urgent situation going on and something must be done. I'm not sure that what they're planning is the right thing, but I pray that enough are listening so they will know the right thing to do. We can't freefall, but we can't rescue every financial mistake we've made either.

Most of the people I know who lived through something like this before are now gone, but I remember many of the stories of things they would do to make ends meet or get by. Our society has become soft lately. I hope we can learn to adapt to our new normal really quickly or we're in trouble.

Weeds

I pulled some weeds yesterday and left them in a bag in the front yard so that I could finish filling the bag before trash day. Well, the wind had other ideas and sent the bag flying across to the neighbor's yard and the bag ended up across the street.

Yeah, I know it wasn't the smartest idea in the world, but then again, I didn't know that there would be a windstorm today either. It came up out of nowhere.

How many of us thought that what happened last week could happen? What does this week hold for us? Were there signs we missed? How does it relate to us here and now?

I don't know a lot of the answers to those questions, but I do know that we all live our lives one day at a time and we need to remember to find balance in our lives so that we can be whole and healthy. Maybe we can learn this from the current financial situation.

Cover Up

I just found out that I was a victim of a coverup. When I bought my house, I had to replace the roof. The fascia board had been stuccoed over and the attic couldn't breathe right. This shortens the life of any roof that is put on the house. As part of the order, the roofers were supposed to remove the stucco and install proper fascia boards and vents. Well, they put the boards and vents on, but today when a friend was helping me fix some loose boards, we found out they just covered up the stucco.

This is very disheartening for the reasons above. There was a contract and I had a reasonable expectation that the service I was paying for was going to be performed in the way I had requested. Instead I got a counterfeit cover up that looked right on the outside, but inside was still not correct.

A definition of integrity is how you behave when you know nobody's looking. My house does not have the integrity that I thought it did 3 years ago.

I'd like to think that I do. Yesterday at work, I had an escalated issue and when passing it on to the person who would take over the call, she was having system problems. She told me to put in my notes that I had accidentally disconnected with the caller and she would go into a system outage mode. It took me a while to hear what she was saying. When I snapped, I told her "I'm not going to lie, I'll get someone else" and I did.

I don't share this to say "here I am, praise me for being honest." I share it to say that cover ups take many forms and sometimes you don't see them coming until it's too late.

A time to....

Today my mother would have been 73. Certain days are hard for me. This was one of them. Since I usually let these things sneak up on me later in the day I thought I would try acknowledging it at the start of day. It didn't help. The workday still stunk on ice! I have a year to figure out how to deal with these days the next time.

On the upside, it IS Talk like a Pirate day! :) What kind of movies to Pirates like to see? The ones that are rated ARRRRRR!

A Toastmaster friend passed away recently. I just found out yesterday. The news rather blindsided me because he was living his dream. Of course, the dream he gets to live now is even better. He gets to be reunited with his wife who preceded him in death. I'm sure that was quite a reunion!

I know death is part of life, but it still gets to me at times.

Back to Blog

After much struggling with this program, I got my blog back. I'm grateful because I've missed it. At first I thought maybe I'd outgrown it and in some ways I did. However, I also have missed writing things that may or may not matter to someone other than myself. I'm relieved that I found it.

I found myself reading some of my earlier entries. I am a different person than I was then, but on the other hand, I'm the same person, with that much more life experience.

Right now, we live in scary times. I was discussing this with some friends and have come up with a solution. Don't ignore the news completely, but treat it like aspirin. You only take one or two at a time and then let them work. Remember the serenity prayer that talks about changing the things you can, accepting the things you cannot and needing wisdom to know the difference. This is a MUST in order to survive these times. Worry about what you can control and let the rest go.

What's lost is now found

I have decided that it's time to revive the old blog. More later.