I could blog. I could.

But I’d rather listen to Anna Nalick tonight.

Besides, Lost is on in two hours. It’s far more entertaining than this blog. Go watch it. You’ll see.

Call me a slow learner.

My sister called tonight. We hadn’t talked all weekend and she wanted to chit chat and catch up.

Exactly two minutes into the conversation she starts talking to Bear. Apparently he has lost his cell phone. So, my sister picks up the house phone and starts dialing his cell number so they can listen to it ring. But they don’t hear it. So then she has to call her friend that they went to dinner with tonight to see if it’s at her house and ringing. But it’s not. So this whole time she back and forth with me on the phone, “Sorry, I’ll be right there….I’m so sorry…” Bear decides maybe the phone is outside since he was working on the wood pile today. So she goes back to dialing and dialing and dialing. And then she’s yelling at him through the windows because he’s flashing the light at her and she doesn’t know if that means he found it or what. I say, “I think if he found it, he’d answer it.” Just a thought. After much yelling back and forth to tell her to keep dialing, he finds it. In the leaves. Which he nearly wiped out on cause they’re slick and all.
And silly me, I thought we were back to our conversation after this 15 minute intermission.

But I was wrong. Remember, despite my four point in college, I’m a Slow. Learner. The oven timer goes off and she needs to get the nuts out of the oven. She’s in charge of snacks for Little Bird’s class tomorrow, so she makes these yummy nut things. And then she starts yelling at George because he wants a cookie, but she’s in the middle of taking hot stuff out of the oven. And then she explodes the sauce in the microwave and it goes all over the place. George still wants a cookie and she screams that she’ll be with him in FIVE minutes.

We try to have a conversation. I try to introduce a couple of things from my life to her. (With an eldest sister, I’ve found it’s best to ease into the ‘big’ ticket items in your life. She’ll come around to the concept easier that way.) But I can’t even spit three words out and we’re interrupted, so here I am trying to say something significant like…”So, Jules, there’s this guy that wants me to move to Aruba…” and she’s not even hearing me. Ugh.

She asks, after all of this, if she can call me right back. George is hysterical and she can’t find Bear. Sure, why not, call me right back. I’m SURE it will be better then.

She calls back, talks to me for about three minutes to finish up the story of my Saturday night (worthy of a blog in and of itself), she tells about how they went to three different Lowe’s to find Christmas candles for their windows and put them all together only to discover she doesn’t like them and now she has to take them all apart and return them. And her friend calls to find out if they ever found the phone. And then she has to go. Little Bird’s hair isn’t dry and George needs to be rocked and she’s got her hands full…..

Ah, yes, always nice catching up with Jules…

To say I’m crying wouldn’t even scratch the surface. It’s been so long since tears have poured like this.

My brother, G was 13 when my mom died. He has spent the years since begging for us to tell the stories again and again, trying to find memories of her locked in his mind, envious of my sister and me for the long memories we have of her, including the years before cancer. He doesn’t have those, he was only two when her world and ours changed.

I decided this summer that I wanted to do something, create something to give him parts of her that I have only from the luxury of being 8 years older. I decided I would make a scrapbook and include photos of mainly him and of him and Mom. I would write down some of the favorite stories for him to read anytime he wanted to. I would give him this book, this collection of memories to call his own. For him to own and hold and pour over and read and cry upon, and grieve. To finally grieve.

I had to ask for help. I asked my sister and my dad for any photos that they might have that would be useful to this purpose. Neither of them is nearly as sentimental as my brother or I am, but they were more helpful than I had anticipated and both sent me boxes of photos about a month ago.

Just this past week I worked up the courage to open them. I know this is for G, but I knew it meant digging through photos of when I was little, and when she was healthy and it’s all I can do to get through it sometimes. To cope with seeing her. It’s been 12 years, but sometimes it only feels like a day ago that I heard her laughing.

In my sister’s box were 20 photos or so and a stack of envelopes. There must be 100 letters in this box that my mom wrote to her parents over the course of 10 years or so. I’m sure it’s not all of them, but it covers an enormous span of time. I have been pouring over them with the objective to find snippets about G that I can copy and include in his book.

As I sat her tonight reading letter after letter in no particular order at all, many not even dated, I realized that these pages are absolutely the greatest gift I will ever hold in my hands. They tell me of things I never knew and things I know all too well. They tell her side of the story. They tell of things she found important and things she found joy in. They tell of her faith and her struggles with it at times. They tell of us kids and how she felt as a mom. These letters have become the scrapbook more so than the photos. These are her words, and G will treasure them as much as I do.

I just sat and wrote a letter to my grandmother. God bless her, she has buried two of her three children. I told her what an incredible gift these letters are. I thanked her for saving them for all of these years and for giving them to us that we might know Mom this way.

And with the tears still rolling, as I was writing to G’ma, I realized that if my mom were alive, she would have a stack of letters from me about my life, and my child and my loves and my faith. And someday she’d give them to my kids.

I miss her so much tonight. Having her writing in my hands brings her so close I can almost hear her voice. I can almost see her expression. I know she’s in Heaven, and while I don’t know that she’s spending her time watching all of us down here, I know that God had a hand in these letters all along. God made her talk through writing for a reason. God gave her such a warm, tender, caring mom for her to turn to, and He moved them far enough apart to have record of their conversations on paper. He knew I would need them someday.

It’s all I can do not to call G and fly him up here from Atlanta this very minute and sit on the floor and read through every single one of these letters. Just him, and me, and Mom.

My sister called a bit ago. She was planting daffodil bulbs alongside her driveway (using Bear’s drill to dig the holes – THAT will not be a wise choice when he finds out) and talking on the phone to me. Such an over-achiever. She was telling me about how their mailbox has been knocked down for about the 10th time since they moved in last year. Bear hollered for George and off they went down the driveway to fix it. When they came in there seemed to be some giggling and some whispering and when she asked what they had been up to, they both said “nothing” with a little too much practice behind it. When pressed, little 5 year old George said, “Daddy and I put boards with nails sticking up around the mailbox and hid them with leaves.” Julie said, as calmly as possible, “Why did you two do that?” George said, “So that when the people try to knock our mailbox down again they will get a flat tire!” and laughed and laughed. Julie glared at Bear and George said, “Daddy wants them to get a flat tire so he can SMACK them!” Julie gasped, “WHAT?” Bear looked all stern at George, knowing he had just shared a bit too much with Mom, and George, knowing he had said something wrong tried to save himself and said, “He didn’t say he’d ‘smack the CRAP’ out of them, Mom, he’d just said he’d smack ‘em!”

I told her she had officially achieved White Trash status as far as I was concerned.

I wish I liked coffee. Or tea. To me they both taste like you plucked something off the ground, crushed it up, ran boiling water over it and strained it. Oh, wait, that IS what you do. At any rate, I have moments when I envy those who relax with a cup of hot bean water.

This morning, due to the shift in the clocks this weekend, I am up earlier than necessary again. My body didn’t get the memo that the time has moved so I find it difficult to keep my eyes open long enough to watch football at night, and difficult to believe the alarm clock when I wake before it does. I’m sitting here this morning, fresh out of the shower with oodles of time to get dressed, watching the birds at the feeders and enjoying the morning light. A cup of joe seems to be all that’s lacking for a more picturesque moment. Coffee is like the wine of the morning.

Today feels filled with promise. Slowly but surely I am getting things in my life sorted out and arranged better. Last night Edmund in Texas helped me get one step closer financially to some of my goals. Today I will make another phone call that will help in that regard. Pieces to the bigger picture.

All in all, I know that life is good. I know that the things I want to accomplish are attainable. But I recognize the time between now and the realization of some of those goals. I might want a house in the country with all my heart, but I know that I’m a few years from being able to make that happen. I might want to plan a vacation of my own choosing, but I know that won’t happen in 2006.

I might also want to be in a relationship again, but I am well aware that I’m not even close to being ready for one. I have a great dislike for myself and an extreme mistrust of others that makes a relationship more than just a challenge, it makes it impossible. I am the queen of sabotage for anyone that tries. I will get there. I will get to the place where I feel like I have a lot to offer someone again, but I’m not there now. While we are all works in progress, I’m still building the foundation. I need time. I don’t want to carry all my issues into a new relationship. I want to resolve them first.

Winter is coming. Far from my favorite season, but this year it reminds me of the self-inflicted hibernation I’m in. It’s a season of the year and of my life when stepping back and regrouping leads to an incredible springtime. I look forward to the day when I feel like I have some of my ducks in a row. When I feel prepared to face the world knowing I have already faced my demons and won.

To that, I raise my non-existent cup of java and say “cheers!”

This morning over breakfast, LM was telling me about a project his class was working on in Art. It involved creating quadrants of the same image by using printer’s blocks and rolling ink across them. I started to tell him a story about how my dad used to take me up to the high school printing room and layout posters for school plays and “print” them using that very same technique. I said, “This was all before computers and such.” LM said, “Before electricity, you mean?”

I put the sign out for the gypsies this morning. “Free. One nine year old boy. Slightly beaten.”

I do not want to blog today.
I have nothing good at all to say.
I’m tired, I’m sick, I’m grumpy, I’m mean.
I’m so sick and tired I’d like to scream.

My job still sucks, that’s nothing new.
I’d like to have something fun to do.
I finish my work in ten minutes flat
The rest of the day is spent bored off my ass.

It might be payday but I’m already broke
I have enough left for the month to buy me a coke
Bills to pay, presents to buy
My visa bill makes me want to cry.

The dog wants out, the kid wants fed
There’s a pain in my side and one in my head.
I can’t go to bed it’s only ten past eight
But it’s dark outside and it feels so late.

I wish someone were here to bring me some snacks
To hold my hand and rub my back
To bring me some soup, say it’ll be okay
It’s almost over, it’s just a Monday.

Tomorrow will be better, it has to be I’m sure
But for this case of the doldrums, I’m afraid there’s no cure
I’ll suffer through, I’ll try to survive
A better blog tomorrow, at least I promise to strive

So goodnight fellow bloggers, goodnight to you all
Sleep well on Hallow’s Eve, sleep well through it all
Tomorrow is a fair Tuesday, a better day I hope
If nothing else it’s not Monday, and with that, I can cope.

The Pats pulled off the win. Not that there weren’t a few tense moments in there, but even if they had lost, the return of Tedy Bruschi to the line up tonight was a lesson to be savored. As Tedy put it, “Life’s biggest regrets aren’t things that we did, but things we didn’t do.” Death does not always announce it’s arrival at our doorstep. As Tedy teaches us, let it at least catch us doing what we love. And doing what we love with passion. Thanks for the reminder, Tedy. Even if the Patriots’ season doesn’t improve, even if they are unable to defend their Super Bowl championship in Detroit this year, we have been reminded of what it all should really be about.

(For those of you who don’t follow football, Tedy Bruschi is a defensive lineman for the Patriots who suffered a minor stroke three days after the Super Bowl last year caused from a small hole in his heart. He had surgery to repair the hole and had not intended to return to the playing field this year, but instead was cleared by more than 10 doctors to return to the game that he loves. Tedy is the heart, the soul, the attitude, the leadership, the wisdom, the direction and the passion of the Patriots Defensive Line.)

Welcome Back, Tedy!

What a great day! First of all, getting an extra hour just for the sake of some daylight rocks! It means sleeping in without really even trying. I finished up the work that I brought home this morning, took a shower and headed to the Bark Park with Gabers. We saw Tucker, Molly, Mackenzie, Killian, Cole, a whole bunch of newbies and three miniature Pinschers with hoodies on! It was a GREAT day at the park. Gabe impressed everyone with his ability to drool, winning the “gross award” from three brothers that were there. Job well done, Gabe!

On the way home we stopped for a quick dog-bath. It was gorgeous outside, the perfect day for a quick scrub down. For the rest of the day, Gabe has not moved from his spot next to the couch, snoring so loudly at one point that I could feel the vibration through the furniture. THAT is a happy dog.

Came home for some Nascar and football. Despite his busy schedule with Halloween and walking under ladders and such, my big ball of black fur, Jonah, snuggled up with me on the couch and convinced me a nap was in order for the day. Great idea!

Now I’m watching the Eagles lose, a precursor to the Patriots great win tonight, I hope. (There is no better day in football for a Pats fan living near Philly than when the Eagles lose and the Pats win.) If nothing else, it’s the return of Tedy Bruschi on Sunday Night Football. It doesn’t get any better than that.

It’s time to light some candles, light the pumpkins, fix some dinner and um…oh, more football! I hope everyone out there enjoys their Sunday as much as we are!

It’s raining again. But, I thought I’d focus on the positive today.

Things about my day that I found a new found adoration for:
1. The little button on my keychain that unlocks my car doors before I’m even there.
2. An umbrella that not only pops open with the push of a button, but collapses with the same push of a button.
3. The internet on my office computer
4. A hottie in line at Panera’s.
5. Making LM blissfully happy by spending $3 on a new Star Wars comic book.
6. Dropping off the mail and depositing money in the bank without ever leaving my warm, dry car.
7. Frozen dinners that cook almost on their own and are ready to eat in 20 minutes or less with little to no effort.
8. A phone call from George thanking me for the movie “Wobots” for his birthday.
9. A voice on the phone that tickles my soul.
10. Watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” for the first time when I’m 34 and my kid is at his dad’s.
11. Knowing payday is 24 hours away.
12. Warm, soft, comfortable jammies, a blanket and kitties to curl up with.
13. Watching The Amazing Race.
14. Not having to do the dreaded work I thought I would be doing tonight.
15. A dog with a big enough bladder to handle only going out a couple of times in the cold and rain.
16. Did I mention the hottie in line at Panera’s?
17. Half a tank of gas.
18. New wellies for walking the dog in the rain.
19. A hot bowl of popcorn.
20. Going to bed early.