My Thanksgiving Rant: On Always Being Late!

Today is definitely a good day for a rant.

It’s not like this is the first time this has ever happened, or only by this one person. But I want to get this off my chest so I can go on with my otherwise calm and peaceful mood – and life!

Before I really get into my full blown rant, let me say that being punctual is something I take very seriously. If I’m suppose to be somewhere – anywhere – at a certain time, I’m usually early. I leave early enough so that any unforeseen circumstances do not interfere with my punctuality. I’m always – barring something truly beyond my control – on time. Whether it is for a job, an interview, a party, a family gathering – whatever – I will be there if I say I will at the time I’m suppose to be. If I can’t – I call. Simple.

I think it shows a person’s dependability. And, at the very least, I know that I am dependable – you can count on me. It creates trust, which I very much value.

Being late is a betrayal of trust.

People who are habitually late, are those who often are not included on my list of people that I count on for anything. Or on my invite list to any party I plan where being on time for a meal or scheduled activity that must go on without a flaw. Being late – beyond “fashionably” is one of the rudest, most disrespectful things a person can do to another. (Even “fashionably” late sometimes pisses me off! What is “fashionably” late anyway?)

This past week I was in North Carolina visiting my Mom and Dad, and our whole family was coming home for Thanksgiving. Big event this year. We’ve not celebrated Thanksgiving at our parent’s home for many years, and this year the new daughter-in-law of my older sister was coming for the first time.

My younger sister, who has a natural knack for good cooking and planning meals was pretty much in charge of the program. A buffet style, with food warmers and everything. We each were assigned specific tasks and recipes to make – which we all dutifully prepared (on time) – but she was the Queen in charge of the turkey, as well as the “event”.

While it’s nothing new to us that she is habitually late – we’ve learned to just start without her. However, being in charge of an event is different than just coming over for a casual get-together. It is like any other job. And to my knowledge – she is punctual for work. When you’re in charge, you need to be where you’re suppose to be early enough to see that everything works and is going according to plan. At the very least, you need to be there when you say you’re going to be.

I’m not sure who changed the time from 4pm to 3pm, but I imagine it was to get “J” there early enough to get things done. She had called earlier that day to say that she would arrive at 2pm. I thought that was cutting it kind of close, but she did call with a time. I asked to please leave at 1:30, so that she would have time to do everything she had planned.

The night before, she decided that I would cook the ham. She sent her husband with the ham to our mother’s house. Not really a problem. Got up early, got it done, ready on time. Then, it was the rolls. The rolls were the type that needed to rise 3-5 hours – till double in size. So again, her husband arrived with additional items, including the rolls, which – by the time they arrived, were actually cutting it close as to the time needed for them to rise properly.

Yeast is a funny thing. It makes bread taste so good, however, at the point they double, it’s time to get them in the oven. If they continue to rise – the yeast keeps on growing till it exhausts itself – and then they fall flat.

She insisted on making the mashed/creamed potatoes. No problem. Already peeled, cut up and in the pot, we just needed to turn the stove on. She was to arrive at 2pm, so we started them 20 minutes earlier.

2pm came and went – no “J”. The rolls had quadrupled in size. At 2:30, going on 3, she waltzes in – directing – ordering me – to make the potatoes.

Now, my sister “J” likes to create “whirlwinds” of trouble. For her it truly is “always something”. I stopped playing her games a long time ago. So when the opportunity arose – at that moment – for my older sister and me to leave and take a quick tour of our home town with my nephew and his new wife – we took it.

No need for us to stir up the trouble that would certainly have boiled over if we had stayed. Game averted. Thanksgiving saved.

The rolls however, were not so lucky.

It’s Always Something

Wouldn’t it be nice if everything in life ran smoothly. That the things we plan to do, or decide to do happens without a hitch. That appliances always work, cars always go, and computers and their programs always function as they are suppose to.

Can you tell, I’m trying very hard to say this in a way that you know I’m going to rant, without affecting the laws of attraction in a negative way . . .

A few days ago, I opened up my email, and to my delight – a product I had created a year or so ago at Zazzle.com – had sold! It was a poster with a mandala I had designed using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and I had all but forgotten about it.

It’s not that the $.95 that I made was that much, but it was exciting to know that someone, somewhere in the world – Loved it! It truly made my day.

What is even more astonishing is that just a few days before, I had found and organized a lot of my graphic media and I knew exactly where most all my other design images were!

So I got busy. Creating new things. Mugs, T-shirts – even Ked’s canvass shoes! I was in heaven.

Last night, a new design idea came to me and I started to work on it. Using some images that were unfinished works in progress, led to new ideas about things that would look good on some of the products they offer at Zazzle.

This morning, however, one of the graphics I worked on didn’t look that good – the quality – to me, wouldn’t reproduce well, so I thought I would try using Illustrator to get a cleaner, vector graphic as well as create a nice little border of text wrapped around a circle. No problem.

Or so I thought.

For some reason, the text would not wrap around the image in a manner that could be read. For example say it was the words “WE WE WE”; they wrapped around the circle looking similar to “EM EM EM” if you can imagine the E being a sideways W and the M being a sideways E. I tried everything I could – settings, different text tools, searched the web and the Adobe support site – nothing addressed my particular problem. I wasn’t even sure how to ask the question.

I don’t know why these things seem to occur at moments when I expect things will go smoothly. I try to live my life not thinking about having problems – and for the most part I don’t. However, when I do encounter something that interferes with my life running smoothly, it’s always something that seems to be just a little bit more unusual than most people experience.

The types of things that just don’t happen very often. The kinds of things those who are there to help me have to find somebody else to try and figure it out. Why me?

Breathe deep, seek peace.

But the Universe does sometimes provide. At least I am hoping it does.

In my search to find an answer, I had taken out several booklets that a past instructor had written about these programs. No answers there. I even tried to log into Adobe to be able to ask the question – but for some reason they don’t acknowledge me or my email address – even though I’ve registered about 6 of their products and have often logged in to their site!

See what I mean?

Thinking I might have some log-in info in an old email, I decided to look there. No such luck. When I searched my emails, a very familiar name did pop up – the same instructor who I’d taken classes with and written those booklets had sent me an email about a month ago – apparently by mistake. I had missed it – it hadn’t even been opened.

It was an odd little message that made no sense: “Try number 2″ was all it said. She had sent this in a mass mailing to every student she ever had I think, but I was so happy to get it. She’s a certified Adobe instructor – if anyone knows, I’m hoping she does.

Please God, Creator of our most wonderful Universe – please let her have the answer.

And soon.

Blogger Woes Update

Quick update to my last post:

It’s been a couple of days now, and as of this writing the image still does not appear on my family blog. Without going into the exhaustive details, the customer service rep at WordPress has done, I believe, whatever she could to get it back up, but it still does not appear on my page. I still have the same problem with trying to upload – it uploads, but quickly vanishes with only the button to crop. The problem still exits – but only on that one blog. I’d change themes, but there aren’t any additional ones that are as functional (otherwise) as the Prologue Theme for quick responses from a large group of people. The photo would be nice, but I’ll just let it go.

Breathe deep. Seek peace.

Blogger Woes: It’s been an exhausting day.

Today’s post is going to be a rant.

The day started out great. I was just going to check into my blogs, to see if anyone had dropped by to view them. I love looking at the stats. Then I was going to get to work getting the house clean so that when I leave to visit my parents and family in another state for Thanksgiving, the house would look good for the family I’m leaving behind on this trip.

Then I got sucked into my blogs, first by a couple of interesting comments and then I saw that my sister had posted to our private family blog. All I needed to do was approve her comments. Her first posts were about the problems she was having changing her profile image from an auto-generated one to her own personal one.

That’s when things turned ugly.

A couple of days ago I had a great idea to set up a private family blog, where we could all get together and contribute to the conversation and keep up with what we’re all doing. Being a design nut, I had been looking at this one particular theme Word Press offers for group blogs and thought it might be fun to set one up for our extended family and friends.

So I named it, set it up and saw that it had a provision for a custom header. Going to my web image file – the one I spent a day going through all my free dreamstime image downloads to resize for web usage – and selected one I thought would look good as a header. I chose a lovely image of an apple tree in bloom. Uploaded it. Cropped it. And it looked beautiful.

It so reminded me of the apple tree in my grandmother’s back yard. The one my grandfather had planted for her years before I was even born. The one she loved so dearly. I thought the rest of the family would probably be thinking the same thing, and that it would be the perfect image for our family blog.

As it turned out, one of my sister’s comments was about the lovely apple blossom image I had used in the header.

See, I knew it was a good one.

After doing my thing by approving her message, I went to view the blog.

No lovely apple blossom image.

No problem, I’ll just go upload it again. That’s not hard. I’ve done it a million times on my other blogs. For me, an image does speak a thousand words and getting just the right image for the header is important. It makes a statement. It reflects something about the person who writes the blog and their perspective.

So I went to my trusty dashboard, clicked on design, waited for that page to load, clicked “Custom Image Header” and waited for that page to load.

On that page is an input box where you can browse your computer for the image you want to upload. You find its location, click on its file and it loads the file location in the little box. Then you just press “upload image”. Easy enough.

No image appeared. Only a button to crop the no image.

I don’t even know how many times I tried uploading the image. Every time – no image. I did see that the image was being uploaded because, I could see a tiny little green image icon in the upper left corner and – as quick as a wink – it vanished and only the crop button would appear.

I tried resetting to the original image, then trying to upload again. I tried logging out and logging back in – going through the process. No image. I decided to check the section where you can view all the media uploads you have for that blog. There were about 10 uploads of the same image. Each one re-numbered each time it was uploaded. Maybe the file had somehow been corrupted. So I went to my original file and duplicated it. It now has a new file name. Uploaded it.

Still no image.

I then decided to delete all the apple blossom images and try again. Guess what – no image.

I went to the forums and found that maybe it was the image size. While the size I had before worked fine – and wasn’t any larger than others I’ve uploaded that still work fine, I decided to resize it anyway. I had cropped a lot from the top and bottom of the original, so I decided to trim that part of the photo. Saved it for the web. Tried to upload.

No image.

Went back to the Word Press forums, new search for topic: custom header disappeared. Found other bloggers have had this same problem. One suggestion was to change and then reload the theme. So, I did that. Tried to upload.

No image.

I’m getting exhausted just re-living this nightmare!

And there’s more to this story.

But, It’s now 6:54 pm, and I’ve been at this stuff since about 8:30 this morning. I’m going to call it quits for now and will – maybe – finish it up tommorrow.

CBS, Obama and Football

I hate sports.

A couple of days ago, I found out that the Obama’s were going to be on the CBS show “60 MInutes.” I don’t usually watch that show, however, I was very interested in seeing Barack and Michelle, so I set up my tv to automatically tune into the show so I wouldn’t miss it.

I had totally forgotten about it when – BAM! – some football game in progress is now playing on my tv. ON MY TV! In overtime I guess, so I won’t get to see the show I’ve been anticipating, a show I want to see. Which is definitely NOT football.

Will it be shown after the game? How long will that be? Now I have to continually click back and forth from watching something else to see if “60 Minutes” has started. I hope I don’t miss it.

How dare they schedule a foot ball game before something I want to watch!

I don’t like football, don’t care about football, don’t watch football.

Enough said.

Last Night’s Performance

Last night, my husband and I went to see our son perform in the play “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller. He, as well as the entire cast, were marvelous!

One of the best things I think I’ve ever done was to encourage him to take drama.

High school is a difficult time for most kids, the awkwardness and shyness, and the often brutal way some kids treat others. I knew that he needed to have a release of negative frustrations and learn to come out of his shell.

I also knew that kids interested in acting develop good friendships, and that he would have fun. Learning how to act, in front of others just as self conscious as you are in the beginning, helps you learn to laugh at yourself as well as understand how fragile we all are when we make mistakes in front of others. The world seems a little lighter, and brighter – and many teens need that.

Over the past two years I’ve seen his confidence grow. While he still has some self-doubt, (he wasn’t sure he could remember all his lines in the beginning), he hung in there and as the cast became a “family”, they together created something magical. Having helped him with his part (Rev. Hale), of the script – I was transformed last night when I watched his performance.

He has a great presence on the stage. I think that if he were to choose theater as he enters college, he could become very good – maybe great!

Theater lights are not always flattering. However, they seem to favor some more than others, and fortunately, they truly favor my son. Now I know I’m his mother, but I can be harsh critic. I do know when something is beyond the ordinary, and when it’s not. I’ve seen a few plays on Broadway, and some people have it, and some don’t. I think he’s got it

I’m not blind, even in the abilities of my children. I do keep negative types of opinions to myself when I think it would hurt someone’s feelings, especially my children’s. But I can point out weaknesses with a gentle hand. And I can applaud when I think they’re great.

He’s a senior this year, and still searching for what he wants to pursue as a career. Whether he want to pursue acting as a career is totally up to him, but I do think that if he makes up his mind to do this, he will be great. Theater is still a fantastic career, and there is more to it than just acting. I think he’s a good fit for it if he wants to pursue it.

The format of this play was similar to a theater-in-round type setup. Audience on both sides, and they did the play in the middle. His was a major role in the production, with a lot of lines. This was a three hour play. Quite an achievement. Six performances. Last night was the 5th. I actually wanted to go during the last ones scheduled, as I knew, with each performance – it would get better and better.

I think their drama teacher has another play scheduled for the spring, and I can’t wait for it.

I just hope I’m not still making costumes until the actual day of the first performance!

Cleaning the Kitchen Floor

OK, I left briefly to clean the kitchen. As I was mopping the floor, my teenage son comes home from school and asks me why I do that when he’s just getting home.

You see what I mean? Believe me, when the mood strikes me to mop a floor – I’ve learned to go with it. So, I’m getting ready to go and finish mopping the floor. I’m not going to log out, it will only take me a minute, or two. Hold on.

OK, floor done. I feel better when the floors are clean.

You know, I have a unique way of cleaning my floor. A few years ago, when we had some money to burn, my husband – at my request – bought me a Hoover Floor Mate. I have tiled floors throughout my house except the bedrooms and my office and dining room areas. I’d tried some of the new floor gadgets from the supermarket, but the problem with tiled floors is that the grout lines are recessed and these lovely mopping gadgets only clean the surface. And – as in my case – you have a pattern in the tile, sometimes it doesn’t really clean dirt that makes it way into those depressions.

So, I chose the Floor Mate because on the box it specifically showed a tiled floor. Perhaps this modern cleaning machine would have something nifty that actually cleaned the tiles and the grout.

Surprise, surprise. It didn’t. However, what I did like was that it sucked up all the water.

My Dad was a Navy guy. He was the only person I ever remember mopping the kitchen when I was growing up. He was a true “swab the deck” kind of guy. And our kitchen floor was truly clean. Unfortunately, my husband barely knows what a mop is.

So, with the handy water sucker-upper, I could lavish the floor with water. The cleaning part of the machine was no better than the other handy mopping gadgets. So what I use now is a Mr. Clean bathroom thingy. I just put a goodly amount of water on the floor, and I can use my big toe to push on the thingy to get the hardened stuff off that the kids drop- and leave on the floor. Plus I can usually get anything out of the grout areas that doesn’t belong there.

So that’s my adventure of the day. I’ve got to go get my clothes ready. My son is in a play at school, and my husband and I have tickets for tonight’s performance.

Later.

My Daily Blog

I recently started blogging. It has officially become by newest addiction. I started three blogs last week, but each one are for specific interests.

The first one, Late Boomer Views, has evolved into my views and opinions on current events. Like politics and hot topic issues. The Metaphysical Romper Room is to explore and share my experiences and knowledge on a variety of metaphysical topics, and the third one is about the 101 Things to do in 1001 Days project.

Since these are very specific areas of interest for me, I wanted a place where I can come and simply unload what’s on my mind at any given moment, for no special reason. For me, about me.

I’ve often started journals, and for the times I’ve stuck with it, it does create a more positive mental outlook. The problem is, I sometimes forget where I put the journal, and with each passing year my handwriting gets worse and worse.

I like typing – though this keyboard sucks.

Anyway, I am comfortable with having a blog I can say anything I want. While, at the moment, I’m leaving it open for all the world to see, it’s nice to have the option to keep certain posts private if I want.

Another great thing about blogging on Word Press – online in general – is that I can always find my computer, and if – for some reason it crashes, I can still log into my blog from a new one. In fact, I see now how much I would enjoy a Mac notebook. The only thing I use to do when I wrote in a journal by hand was that I could go to Starbucks, sit outside and write.

The only way to do that now would be with a notebook computer.

I really want a Mac notebook!

Another thing I might do is share this blog with my family and friends, so they can keep up with what I’m doing and thinking and we can share ideas and stuff. Maybe be could even set up a family blog, with everyone able to to be authors in the blog – how cool is that!

I love Word Press. It’s the best thing in my life right now.

Anyway, I’ll close for now. Will probably be back later to unload some of my issues.

Juedz