And So the B'day Destruction and Mayhem Continues

Everyone keeps asking me how my birthday went yesterday. I keep telling them the b'day weekend was way better than the b'day itself. Don't get me wrong, my birthday is essentially a good day, celebrating my arrival and continued attendance to this party we call life. Mr. L took me to dinner, my dad took me to dinner and a movie, and I got a bunch of cards.

But I could have done without the trail of mishaps, accidents, and breakages. I'm hoping this doesn't set the tone for the rest of my year...

First up, I had extreme difficulties getting out of my own way yesterday morning getting up and getting to work. Always big time fun when the inanimate objects conspiracy-ize against you.

Then at work, I knocked over a huge pile of paperwork and resources, busting several folders and mixing up the papers well.

Some computer hiccups.

Learned there was some miscommunication and the meeting I thought was scheduled for yesterday, the client thought was scheduled last Monday and considered me a no-show. I love coming across as inefficient and a slacker. Worked hard to rectify the mistake.

Then back at home, I was fixing the cats' dinner whilst simultaneously talking to my brother via speaker phone, I dropped the phone and Moomin's dinner. Moomin's 3 tablespoon's of water mixed with food dinner dropped directly onto the handset, filling every crack and crevice with watered down food and liquid. I hung up with him and spent the next 45 minutes cleaning and drying it off. Bro called me back and let me know the handset had a high-pitched buzz coming thru on his end, same on my end. Thank goodness I have a second handset in the bedroom. Used that for the rest of the night.

Learned from Mr. L that all of the main street going thru town was without power late afternoon which negatively impacted his ability to do his job effectively and he basically had a suck-a$$ day himself.

This morning, I woke up and preceded to break the thing holding up my bathroom fan so I had to take 20 minutes to dismantle the apparatus, clean the fan, and find a new hanger. Did and done.

Spilled the water for Moo's breakfast.

Managed to get to work in one piece, work day was fine despite two power outage hiccups, and got myself a b'day present after work at Target.

So all's well that ends well.

Closer to Being Older

(J says I'm the only person she knows whose laugh you can feel coming right off the picture.)

Or closer to reverting to back to childhood due to senile dementia.

Or one day closer to death. (thanks PinkFloyd)

Whatever, gonna get there either way...

Anyhoo, as I sit here typing and drinking my cuppa choco-doctored green tea (which is going down fine every morning thank you), I'm thinking about how fortunate I REALLY am, especially in the things that make life meaningful and worthwhile tho we tend to take them for granted and forget how important they are when bogged down with the day-to-day shit: family, friends, cats, home of my own, books, interests, employment, transportation, overall health, and what passes for sanity nowadays.

I'm going to add a new "habit" this birthday to the other ones I started on other birthdays in an effort to keep things in perspective which the other two are helping me do.

The original two are: 1) finding the golden side of the coin and 2) counting to ten to stop the knee-jerk reaction of saying "no" immediately when asked or invited to do something new or outside my comfort zone. So far I've done fairly well with both although I have to admit my "inflexibility and rigidity" (description courtesy of friend J2 which she uses on both my pseudonephew and me) does still trip me up. But I have gotten better, I have.

The new one is going to be to learn something new everyday or at least identify something new I've learned, even if it is very small and seems insignificant, it might not be later on down the road.

So starting just this week, I learned:

• 1 & 2) Safety-Care - a two day course on safe behavioral interventions, so that takes care of Mon/Fri.
• 3) If the bread is dense and chocolately enough, I can eat zucchini bread. And zucchini brownies ROCK! And I HATE zucchini!
• 4) Safflower oil has a high burn doohickey (unit, rate, ratio, limit, something technical which unfortunately did not stay in my mind) so it is much better for you than all the other cooking oils, especially for frying stuff.
• Aside: Someone told me olive oil is better for you and when I tried it, it tasted the way grass smells so I've not done it again. I'm hoping safflower oil isn't the same case, we'll see.
• 5) Organic dark agave nectar is way better for you then the light or any other sugar due to the low glycemic index.
• 6) Mr. L explained some building stuff to me in regards to the house he is sitting and while I got the gist of the heat/cooling premise, I have to admit I did not retain the more technical aspects:(

Wonder what I will be learning today?

I did see two shooting stars Thursday night, so that makes a grand total of three shooting stars I have seen in my entire life. No, I did not make any wishes. I read a story way back in my impressionable days about a boy who had a choice to keep/use his wishes or give them to charity (to ones who were in need). He chose to keep and make his wishes and things did not turn out well, at all. So I decided then and there to give all my wishes to charity. And I continue to do so. Besides, true change comes from within when you are ready and make the decision to change and I'd like to experience what it takes to make my wishes come true for myself.

Mr. L wants to take me to dinner tonight to celebrate my birthday since we both work long days Monday. He had his boys wish me happy birthday too when I ate dinner with them last night. Those are some seriously awesome kids and I don't say that very much in today's world.

I need to think about where I want to go have some birthday dinner - where we had our first date, second date, somewhere we go alot, or somewhere new. I have all day. Maybe it will come to me while baking in the sun before dogsitting or while I'm walking Mr. RileyPants.

Slowly Getting Back Into Experimenting

I figured if I was taking mundane pics of my garden, I might as well take some other plant photos and play around with them. These were done by tweaking the temperature, tint, and saturation in iPhoto. The fuzzy pics are mold on one of my weekend harvested squash. Unbeknownst to me the baby squash had been harboring the mold and I just noticed it today.

I am LOVING the color intensity!

Garden of Mini Delights

So this is my pumpkin plant. See how it is lush and green and filling my back landscaping bed up nicely. I did not have a pumpkin as of last week but there was a tiny unfertilized one I was going to keep my eye on. Lo and behold, today I looked and Houston, we have fertilization. I gotta pumpkin! Finally.

It's amazing how much they grow in a week. This one started off as big as my thumb. Now it's almost two softballs-big. Not to mention it's in a great position to grow unimpeded and big. Fingers crossed.

SunBaked Moomifer

My Moomin knows his sunbeams and how to maximize their potential sunny goodness. That's a window he's got his head against which makes him look like an earless wonder.

I'm home having a mental health day today. Dental appt which involved appliances this afternoon and was too much of a basketcase til the appt to even think of being able to support others at work and afterwards, which is now, I'm exhausted and sore like I've just run a marathon which I kinda did with all the fine motor tremoring/shaking I did for the past hour and a half. Waiting for the Novocain to wear off so I can eat something to settle my stomach and then it's off to bed with loads of books. Thank goodness it's over and my dental buddy took care of me. The valium worked until I got into the chair, then all the adrenaline burned the shit right out of it. I'm going to have to take a break from listening to Depeche Mode - Ultra for a while, coz that's what I had cranked to 10 while the dentist did his thing. Again, it's over, I'm still here, and I have a filling to get used to. Gotta go make sure I'm not drooling...

Sun Day Doodlebug

Doodle and I had the same fabulous lazy idea today... sunbathing to the fullest extent possible. I was outside in my portable hammock and she was in the window. I crisped everything but my pink bikini and she crisped all of her pink bits.

Gotta love a sunny summer day in the high 70's with low humidity and a nice breeze before the dog days of summer come.