Happy Belated Birthday

Tuesday was my Matty's birthday - the big 33! I surprised him by having a few friends meet us at a new(ish) Sushi place in our neighborhood. I'm not a huge sushi fan but even I found tons to eat. Everyone raved about the food and the service was excellent. They comped us 2 dishes, 1 cocktail and sent Matt home with a set of shot glasses for his birthday!

I also surprised him with his gift - a thule roof rack installed on my car! And a gift certificate to Rack-n-Road so he can choose his own cargo box. This is so he can haul around his windsurfing gear (when he finally buys it!) and be able to hit the wind on his own time. The place I had it installed in San Rafael was terrific. The manager didn't even laugh too hard when I asked about first getting a rack installed on his car - a 95 Honda del Sol. I told her it never hurt to check and see if it was an option!

It was nice to give him something he can really use; espcially since the season is starting to open up and the wind is starting to power up.

On a sad note, our friends Lori & Andy lost their cat Noah last night. He was at the vet for a urinary obstruction and was set to come home. As they were on their way to pick him up he passed away. The vet said he had a genetic heart problem and that it could have happened at anytime. I'm so heart broken for them :*(

Finally, I'm getting my knit on! I'm working on/off on a clapotis (my second) and I just cast on for a quick hat to send to a friend's friend who will be going through chemo soon. Perhaps I'm even finally motivated to finish Matt's sweater! And speaking of finished, this is what I sent off to my nephew right before Easter. It was supposed to be an Easter gift but I sent it way too late (to Canada) so I hope it arrives soon! It's a book bag so he can carry his library books by himself!

Happy Fifth Anniversary

This was written by someone I know and posted on Craigslist. It's in the Rants & Raves section and I think it deserves calling out.

Has it really been five years already? Wow, time really flies with the distractions of life. So many things going on that sometimes it’s pretty easy to forget about you. I remember way back when you were projected to be this little $50-60 billion "conflict." But my how you’ve grown! It’s hard to believe that now you’re projected total cost is $3 trillion... that’s a lot of zeros! Your ability to suck all the resources of this nation is quite something. The infrastructure of our nation is suffering in innumerable ways because of the lack of available money. It will likely take near an entire generation to recover from you... whenever you stop.

And how do we even recover from the human losses and tragedies? You know damn well we’ve created another generation of mentally ill war vets, just like those from Vietnam we all see wandering the streets of our major cities. Over 200,000 have applied for disability benefits. Then there’s the 3990 fatalities in the US forces, and by extension 3990 families that have been changed forever. So many of them seem to be young parents. I don’t want to forget the other 308 coalition deaths, the 29,314 US wounded, or countless Iraqi deaths and injuries. And by countless I mean countless. Nobody really knows. But since they started trying to keep track in 2005 there have been 47,000 fatalities.

So war, I really think it’s about time you and I went our seperate ways. I don’t think I can handle another year of you. But to be realistic I know how tricky it can be to end these kind of dysfuctional realtionship, so I’ll just hope that next year at this time we’ll both have moved on and have started the healing process.

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Flying Time

I'm not being as good about this as I hoped (but then again I can say the same thing about going to the gym & eating healthy too!). February was a tough month for me and I think I'm starting to see a little more clearly now. My dear momma sent me a book called Unattended Sorrow by Steven Levine and I've started reading it in little bits. You can definitely only read it in small pieces. So far I'm seeing a lot of valuable information in there and it's speaking to me.

On better news, I just finished a dishcloth exchange with one of my Ravelry groups. It was so much fun to make something and send it off. I can't wait to see how she likes it! I of course forgot to take a picture but she promised to take some for me and send them so I'll have some record! I was excited because I created a pattern for one of the dishcloths based on an image. I think the pattern is pretty great but I wasn't able to end up making that cloth in time to get it sent off. I've not done any colorwork (except for stripes) before and it wasn't coming out very well. I'll take some time to make it right and then will just have to send her a bonus one :)

Windsurfing season has started for Matt. He's gone out a couple times and I think he's finally made the commitment to buying his own gear! That way he can go whenever and where ever he would like and isn't limited to when the Shack/Coyote Point are open. Guess that opens up a whole new world of gift opportunities for him now! And it's pretty convenient that his birthday is next week too!

I begin my EMT classes two weeks from today. I'm so excited! I've been trying to read as much as possible in my text but it's pretty intense. I'm on Chapter 7 - Airway Management and it's 60 pages! I presume that's because airway management is very important, but still - 60 pages! I got my black shoes last night and need to go find some navy blue pants & a black belt too. I'm going to have to buy at least one more shirt (they gave us two) because there is no way I can go through three classes a week on two shirts. Especially since we only get clothes to the laundry about every two weeks! In conjunction with the EMT class I'm taking my work schedule down to part time. Now if only I could pin my boss down to actually talk about this I could check it off on my ever present, internal "to-do" list.

Good Grief

Well, not good but definitely grief.

I attended a memorial service for a co-worker's father today. I never met him but heard many stories from her. There had been trouble over the past year with his health and as shee said, his spirit was too big to be kept in his earthly body.

The memorial service was so lovely. The "family trio" sang two songs - one original written for the father and Amazing Grace; full military honors by the navy with the folding of the flag; lovely poems, readings, photos & memories shared by all of the family members. Even though I never met Al it made me wish I had.

What it did make me do was cry, cry, cry, cry, cry. In fact, it's 5 hours later and I'm still teary-eyed. I think it really brought up lots of my own grief for me. In the past two years I've had a lot of loss; in the past 5 years even more. Attending this memorial made me think back to those that I've lost and bringing back those sad feelings and happy memories. I almost felt embarrassed for crying so much. I know it's because I'm a person who feels things very deeply and crying is how I deal with lots of different stuff - sadness, anger, fear, anxiety, happiness.

So I think tonight I will go home and reflect on those that have gone: Ella, Granny, Tara & Niki, Scot and Alice. All of them are my guardian angels and even though that's a comforting thought, I would still give anything to have them here with me rather than watching over me.