Do I Look Skinny to You?

I've been told lately that I've been losing weight. Since I typically lose weight in my face, I usually take those compliments with a grain of salt. However, I actually think that's true as late...my clothes are looser than they were. Don't ask me what I've been doing. I did change up my exercise routine a bit which always helps. As the temperatures continue to rise, it will continue to change. (I can't tell you how much I dread running at five in the morning when the only advantage is there's no sun - it's still 90 out!) But maybe that means I'll continue to lose weight.

I'll never be skinny. I've never been skinny - except when I was a very small girl. But I do want to be healthy. So, I try to eat right, and exercise well, and keep ice cream to a minimum of once a week (maybe twice if an occasion arises). It just seems like whenever people start remarking that I'm loosing weight, they then try to feed me!

This week was Administrative Professional's Week. Which, I guess, I am. When you do a job you can do in your sleep, it doesn't seem professional or noteworthy, but those I work with would beg to differ - to the point of tying me to my chair and never letting me leave. I'm not sure if that makes me feel appreciated or trapped.

Not to say I'm not appreciated (or trapped - but that's another story). I know I am. I got flowers this week - very lovely ones. And food. I should say sweets. Like enough sugar to keep me up for thirty minutes and then send me crashing for three hours. One of the nurses went out and got me a milkshake from Chick-fil-a...and added a cookie. Our new marketer bought me a white chocolate raspberry Nothing Bundt Cake (which I hear are to die for, but I haven't tried it yet). And I got a gift certificate for Chick-fil-a (which I will use for something besides more milkshakes). Yes, I am appreciated.

But so much for the 15 miles I ran this week...or the losing weight. Maybe if I run 20 next week!

Randomness

Okay, so I don't know about everyone else, but this new format to post my blog and look over the ones I follow is a little strange...I have a feeling it's a preview of my week: just give it a little while, Melissa, and you'll get use to it. You always do.

Not much going on in the state of Texas. Would much rather be in Buffalo, NY right now. I could probably find quite a few people willing to change places with me: exchange a foot of snow for a blue sky, 70 degrees and a nice breeze. Don't mean to rub it in, but I mean it. I haven't seen a foot of snow in over a year and I hate it!

As far as work goes...it's a Monday. One nurse is out of town. Two are sick. One has a sick 8-year-old. That leaves me with the on-call nurse who isn't even supposed to work today (but willingly made a visit for me) and one healthy nurse...who has had to pronounce a death, visit a patient who is actively dying, and she's on-call tonight. If I were her, I'd call in sick tomorrow.

I was so exhausted this morning when I got up, I thought about calling in sick - but I don't do that. The one time I was actually sick enough to do that, I worked anyhow and had every nurse telling me to go home. Still am tired and the plantar fasciitis I've been fighting for a month now that finally started feeling great last week is now making my whole leg feel weary. Yet despite all that, I was running at a pace of a 9:35 mile today. Five seconds off my normal pace and five seconds closer to what I would love to run on average. If I run that half marathon with Angela (one of the nurses), I need to plan on being half dead that day. Just think of what my time would be then!

Just four or five more Wednesdays to go teaching the kids at church this year. It's hard to believe the year has gone by so fast! Looking forward to this week. We're going to run the "Amazing Race". (Well, an extremely condensed version of it.) Got to go home tonight and get things ready for it. But I think it's a pretty cool way of studying the hymn "America, the Beautiful"...since we can't exactly take a field trip to the Rockies - which would be WAY cool.

Washing rocks tonight...for my dollhouse. It's laying on it's backside right now so I could attach the rest of the "foundation". While it's laying there (driving me crazy because now I can see the un-painted undersides), I need to actually attach all the rocks to the foundation. Then I can put on the porch, the pieces of which are ready to be attached. Now I can add to my building resume bricklaying. Now that I think about it, my resume would look pretty impressive if I added all the things I've had to do on this dollhouse: electrician, painter, wallpapering, carpenter, interior designer...too bad I have no inclination of getting a job in any of those fields!

This Car (or Runner) Stops for Turtles

When I was a little girl and lived out in the country in Tennessee, if we spotted a turtle on the side of the road, Mom would pull over and catch it for us. She would put it in the back of the station wagon, and Katey and I would anxiously await the arrival home so we could play with our new (and short-lived) pet. Mostly I just remember painting the turtle's shell before sending it back out into the wild...the envy of all it's turtle friends whose shells were green, and brown, and boring.

Of course, there was the one time when Mom stopped for a turtle, put it in the back of the station wagon, and it tried to escape. He was probably akin to the Count of Monte Cristo, for it tried and tried to scratch the vinyl away so it could make it's way to freedom. All that racket scared Katey and I. We screamed it would climb out, and get to us, and scratch us. So, Mom stopped the car and released that turtle back into the wild before we ever made it home. I'm not sure who was relieved more: Mom, Katey and I, or the turtle.

Over the years, my family has had a series of "pet" turtles found in the yard or along the side of the road. There was Tommy, who my sister Jenny adored. She would sit in the cage with him, or carry him lovingly around - upside down. The poor thing saw the world upside down so much when we released it, it circled right back to our home. It did this three times before it finally managed to find a getaway.

In our last home in New Hampshire, some snapping turtle must have laid it's eggs not too far from our house. By the time we finished combing the lawn, we came up with a dozen or more little snappers we raced before releasing in our wetland area. But the only turtle that was truly a pet for many years was Daniel's little snapper Diamond. His little snapper Spike didn't last quite as long, thanks to Abby dropping him into the toy box never to be found again until he had shriveled up and died. Not sure Daniel every forgave her for that...

Well, yesterday while I was out running at the park, I came across a turtle in my path. A little thing I couldn't resist picking up and taking back to the office with me. My excuse was I was teaching the kids at church that night and every kid loves to play with a turtle, right? Dubbed "George" by the other office manager, he has been my pet now for 24 hours. I'll release him back into the wild in a little while where he can wander along and tell all his turtle friends about the ice cold office he nearly hibernated in, the car rides, falling off my desk, and the kids that enjoyed him. He'll be the envy of all his small-world turtle friends...even if I didn't have time to paint his shell.

George hibernating - I keep the office quite cold!

My car was much warmer!

Ask Melissa

I'm not sure how I ever came to be the "go-to" person. I don't think I give off the impression that I have tons of knowledge about a myriad of things (because I don't). Nor do I jump into conversations with sage words (because I prefer to listen). But for some reason if a letter needs to be written, or directions given, or numbers crunched; I get asked. Maybe because even if I don't know, I'll find out. Like why taxes are due tomorrow and not today.

I got asked that on Friday by one of the aides, only she added that someone told her it was some holiday in Washington, DC. I didn't know anything about it (my taxes are in and my refund received, so I'm not keeping up on tax day), but I looked it up. It's "Emancipation Day". "What's that?" the aide asked. I thought about getting up on my soap box to answer that but decided not to. I just told her it was the day Lincoln freed the slaves in Washington, DC.

Today I was asked by Linda, the home health office manager, if it was a bank holiday.

"No," I said. "Why?"

"Because taxes aren't due until tomorrow," she replied.

"Oh. That's because Washington is celebrating a holiday," I said.

"What holiday?" she asked.

"Emancipation Day," I answered.

"Why don't we all celebrate that?" she wondered.

"Because it's the day the slaves in Washington, DC were freed," I replied. "Not the day all the slaves were freed."

"Huh?"

Okay, so now I did get up on my soap box because ever so often a record does need to be set straight. I explained to her that the Emancipation Proclamation "freed" the slaves only in the states that were in rebellion - which, literally means it didn't free anybody except the parts of the South under Northern military jurisdiction. On Lincoln's part, it was a martial act he claimed to have under the Constitution. (I won't raise my soap box on that one right now...) It also did not end slavery or make the slaves citizens - just kind of left them in limbo. In the Union states that held slaves - Washington, DC; Maryland, Kentucky, Delaware, Missouri and West Virginia - nothing happened to those slaves. West Virginia was required to slowly emancipate their slaves upon becoming part of the Union. The other states abolished slavery by state laws. Isn't it interesting that Lincoln acknowledged state rights in the states that didn't secede, but thought only to wrench federal control of the ones that had?

"Mmh," Linda remarked after my morning history lesson. "I guess I don't know much about the Civil War...except what I was taught in school."

I held my tongue in offering her some extremely good resources on what the "Civil War" was really about. After all, even I can take only so much of my soap box at once. But if she wants any further information, I will gladly share. And after that, I can tell you all about President James Garfield, my newest find. Next after that is a book on the Battle of Bunker Hill - or should I say, Breed's Hill...yet another correction for the history books!

Politics Aside...

You have to be hiding under a rock to not know that it's a Presidential election year. Sadly, in this nation, there are probably quite a few people hiding under a rock. For those of us who have even the slightest concern about our nation and are conservative, you also know that the pickings are slim - to the point of non-existent. I'm not blogging to endorse any candidate, but to be honest, it's no wonder.

Most of us who keep up even a little know Rick Santorum suspended his campaign this week. The reasons are innumerable, as they always are. One of major players in his decision is his little girl Isabella, a 3-year old with a genetic disease called Trisomy 18 - a disease most children die from within the first year of their life. Of course, a news report I read stated the disease has been mostly eradicated. Why? Because parents find out their infant in the womb has this disease and abort the child. But in a report I saw with Mr. Santorum, he spoke on the stillborn birth of his son Gabriel and how they have taught each of their seven living children that life - even the brief 20 week life in the womb of Gabriel - is precious. I agree. My life wouldn't be what it is if my sister Christine had not been stillborn now over 27 years ago. Her life was precious - and important.

Later this week Mitt Romney's wife got slapped with the remark that she had "never worked a day in her life". Apparently changing diapers, feeding five hungry boys (boys, mind you!), getting them to school and ball games, helping them with homework, clothing them, refereeing their fights, mediating their disagreements, teaching them to be respectable young men, tending their wounds, crying when they cry, laughing when the laugh, cutting their hair, cleaning up after them and well...everything else a mother does is not work. For Mrs. Romney was a stay-at-home mom with five boys and she now has the blessing of sixteen grandchildren. As any mother could tell you, there is no job tougher than being a stay-at-home mom. In fact, there were probably times when Mrs. Romney, while pulling her hair out, wanted to go out and get a job - maybe with the state penitentiary. It had to be easier, right? But in my book, there is no higher calling for a woman than being a wife and mother. Mrs. Romney WORKED.

So we lived in a nation that 1) practices first degree, pre-meditated murder for no other reason than a life is deemed unimportant and 2) mocks stay-at-home moms who give every moment of their lives to the nurturing of the next generation.

Is there any wonder there isn't a Presidential candidate worth voting for?

National Siblings Day

To Katey, Daniel, Sally, Grace, Jenny, Abby and Caleb:

Despite fights, competition, envy, having to share - and all those other things siblings have in common - truly, I can't imagine my life without any of you.

I know none of you had a choice, but thank you for being my siblings - for making me a sister!

Good News...and Bad News

Good news for Texas: the bluebonnets bloomed this year. They're everywhere! All along the interstates, people are stopped to sit among the deep blue, purple flowers and take pictures. After the drought last year produced hardly any bluebonnets, it's promising to see them this year.

Bad news: First, bluebonnets aren't anything next to the beauty of lilacs. Second, I think all the blooming means is we're going to have humidity added to our summer temperatures. This past weekend hit the 90s. I kid you not when I say I nearly cry every time I think of the summer yet to be suffered through...

Good news at work: The weekend was slow. That means no problems to work through on a Monday morning.

Bad news: Insurance companies are the bane of my life...and they're only getting worse. It's probably all this stupid national healthcare junk. Now I can't even get a claim to submit properly. I won't say what it's enough to drive someone to...

Good news from the weekend: I held a newborn baby for nearly 4 hours! And when I say newborn I mean less than 24 hours old. She is soooo precious!!!!! I thought I'd just drop in and say "hi" to my church friends who had little Jillian Grace on Friday, but they were happy to have a visitor and I was more than happy to sit in a rocking chair and hold the precious bundle for nearly 4 hours. It's a shame she had to eat...I could have held her all day long!

Bad news: At my age, even if I were to get married tomorrow and have a baby right off, I can't hope to have a dozen of them...I would just love to squeeze in 6 or 7. Although if I have a couple sets of twins...triplets anyone?