Early bird reflections

Dragon Mood? -- energized

Aperfect example of an inverse relationship is our current weather: as the humidity goes down, people's energy levels go up. We have experienced such a change in the past 36 hours and oh my, what a difference it makes!

I hit the sack early last night after a bout of insomnia on Sunday night. It's been over a week now since I saw S, the longest time (I believe) we've been apart in all our years together. I miss her and I miss having my bed partner. Hence, the insomnia. Or so I think. It could also be hormones. Or anxieties. Or change in the barometric pressure or alignment of the planets or who knows what! I slept poorly Sunday night and exceedingly well last night. Thank goodness!

Anyway, last night I was out front of our pied-a-terre watering the flowers and attempting to give the poor yellowed, exhausted-looking grass a drink of water from all the consecutive hot days we've had. During the steamy heat, our street had been deserted. Everyone was inside, air conditioners on high, avoiding the Louisiana-style heat.

But last night, with cooler air, our neighbors, Mike and Amy, came by with their two strollers holding 18-month old Lucy and newborns, Adam and Kara. Moments later, Jan came streaming out of her house, wanting to see the babies. Tom remained in his forever perch on the front porch. I saw other people wander in and out of their houses, intermittently, checking the streetscape and their neighbors' activities. Kids raced by on their bicycles, apparently aware that summer is slipping away, school classrooms just around the corner, waiting to capture and hold their energies. Cooler air certainly invites more movement and more activity.

And I awoke this morning, just after five, rested and energized by the notion that I could have almost TWO FULL HOURS to read email, check Facebook postings, write here and simply enjoy the luxury of time to myself, a commodity that has become much more dear in the past two weeks with this new job.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you . . .

REcycling

Dragon Mood? -- tickled

Feeling in love with spring, the beauty of the Earth? Try recycling to show your love and care for our Mother Earth.

One of the things I LOVE about the community where we work is its awesome recycling service! We can recycle just about anything in our weekly curbside bin. We recycle plastic, cardboard, aluminum cans, glass, junk mail. I enjoy looking for new things to recycle.

What day is it?

Dragon Mood? -- a bit confused

Because I traveled down here to the pied-a-terre two days later than usual, it feels like it should be Tuesday or Wednesday. Certainly not Thursday!

Yesterday, I contacted my former employer about a mix-up on my paycheck. Thankfully, I knew the HR person I spoke to, she was sympathetic and said she would try to get a new check cut for me ASAP.

I also revamped my resume, including my latest employment and the skills I used there, giving much less attention to my automotive product design skills. Funny, but with all this news about two of the Big Three facing bankruptcy, I don't think there's going to be much market for automotive designers any time soon.

And my confusion about the days is just a confirmation that I'm relaxing, letting go and actually trying to enjoy this time off. I'm giving myself permission to grieve the loss of my job and, unlike last time, I'm taking my time jumping into job-hunting. It's just feeling too soon, too early. Working on my resume was enough; actually, working on that felt just about right. Now, I know how Goldlilocks felt inside the three bears' house. FELT JUST ABOUT RIGHT.

Last night, S announced around 10 that she still had to mail her federal taxes. We took the five minute ride to a post office that was open until midnight. There were orange cones, police directing traffic and postal employees wearing special orange vests at the mailboxes taking the tax returns of the most hard-core procrastinators in metro Detroit. That's my honey: HARD-CORE!

Whoo-hoo

Dragon Mood? -- elated to have the source of my embarrassment at NOT remembering GO AWAY!

Whoo-hoo! Yippee-ki-YAY!

S found our long, lost box of checks for the pokerdog account.

slaying giants, one at a time ...

Dragon Mood? -- proud of us

My partner, S, and I struggle constantly to balance between work and leisure time, between being productive and having time to recharge our batteries. Sometimes, it feels like we are more successful than others.

In the past three weeks, we've accomplished several BIG tasks, akin to knocking several 500-lb. gorillas off of our backs.

First, we FINALLY settled things with our roofing contractor from the remodeling we started eight months ago! He had one dollar figure in mind; we had a lesser one in mind (surprise!). We negotiated and settled on splitting the difference ... hopefully with everyone satisfied and feeling okay about the resolution. With that agreement, we got several pesky, lingering issues resolved and promptly wrote him a check.

During our week of vacation over the Fourth of July, we FINALLY met with a financial planner, something we've been talking about for some time now. Olivia is an energetic and enthusiastic young woman, whose father I know from 30 years ago (hello, Cherry Lane apartments, Rich and Mickey, in labor with Josh at Sparrow!). More recently, S has made some investments through him. Olivia now works in concert with her dad, which gave S and I some added peace of mind. Through Olivia, we are going to consolidate our investments and 401(k)s, making it easier to track them and to make future decisions. We are hoping as are most boomers, that we are not at the edge of a precipice, preparing to watch our retirement savings be washed away in a tide of Wall Street pessimism and nosediving funds. Let's be hopeful.

And, our third giant was cut down just this past week, in the front yard of our pied-a-terre. It was the tree that was split in half by the OTHER falling tree. S cut all its branches off last fall, rendering it the quintessential Halloween tree: completely leafless, stark and scary-looking. While intentions were good, the follow-through was not and our Halloween tree was threatening to close in on its first birthday in such a state. This past week, S and I and our neighbor, Jan, felled the thing, FINALLY! S wedge-cut and sawed and shaved it down as Jan and I gamely pulled on two ends of a rope, trying to steer it away from the house and cars and anything else we didn't want damaged. Thankfully, S notched it and cut it just right. Then while she removed its limbs, Jan and I yanked and pulled and finally rolled all the pieces into one, lumpish-looking pile. Hurray for the three Amazons!

Stay tuned! More giant-slaying to come ...

Hoping it's not too late to say ...

Dragon Mood? -- rusty and uncertain

Happy New Year to everyone! ....... I have been SO OUT OF IT with regard to blogging, I hardly know where to start. Curious, isn't it, how rusty and unfamiliar my blogging skills have become?

S and I returned from a brief vacation to Washington D.C. early New Year's Eve. We had time to order some Chinese take-out, pick up a couple of videos and settle in for a quiet celebration before 12 inches of snow began to fall. Whew, that was close! We both felt immensely grateful that we didn't have to drive the 570+ miles through snow and slippery roads to get home.

Other updates: I am currently in my seventh month of the new job, in which I am feeling much more confidence, as well as comfortableness with my coworkers. My boss wrote a letter of recommendation that I be hired direct about a month ago. The wheels of the Human Resources Department grind slowly so I've heard nothing yet, but I'm hopeful.

Update on our pied-a-terre: The remodeling that was supposed to take a couple of weeks is now approaching two months. Our builder, Paul, sadly had to layoff his crew for lack of work, so the work is being done by Paul and his friend, Tim. A crew of two builds more slowly than a crew of five or six. Also, Mother Nature has blessed us with several good snowstorms as well as some unusually frigid temperatures that would chase even the hardiest outdoors person inside to a warm room.

Here are a couple of pictures of the latest and greatest on the house:





Suffice to say that we're pleased with the results and dealing with the slowed pace of progress on the house. We're both looking forward to sitting on our new porch when spring arrives!

There's lots more to tell, but I'll call this good for now and hit the "Publish Post" button. It feels good to return to blogging.

Wild night

Dragon Mood? -- slightly embattled

While putting together the previous post, I also was watching the local TV weather guy reporting on an oncoming storm. It looked big, substantial and in some areas, downright nasty. Turns out, we got the nasty.

Still at the pied-a-terre in Detroit, S and I heard the distant rumbling of thunder coming closer and closer. We stood outside on our front porch, watching the western sky. S pointed out that the clouds were going one direction and the trees were blowing another. While out there, the wind suddenly picked up speed; the storm was literally "blowing" in.

We headed inside to check the weather report again. S suddenly yelled to open the windows (we had the A/C on) to provide some pressure relief. As I opened the window, another gust blew by. The force of it felt downright scary. The rain was blowing sideways. S ran upstairs to open the windows on both ends of our gable-roof second story. I heard a curious "whooshing" sound and ran to the front door. When I opened the door, there was our street tree, suddenly embracing and enclosing our front porch and the aluminum awning over it. It had blown down on our house! I was stunned!



The rain continued to pour down, sideways, and the wind blew like you see on TV when they're showing hurricanes. Amazing! We wanted to go outside and see what our house looked like, but the rain and the lightning were too much ... so we waited.

We heard a voice yelling, ran to the front window and looked out. Our neighbor, Ryan, was standing there in a windbreaker and flip-flops, drenched. "Are you okay?" he asked. We ran out to join him, but didn't stay long; the rain was still too heavy. And the lightning was still too frequent, one or more strikes a minute.

After a while, we ventured out again, the rain lighter by now, and scoped out our fallen tree and damaged house. The front awning is definitely crunched on one side. The tree was literally lifted up, sod, roots and all, and laid down on our roof. There is a giant earthen bulge in the area between the street and the newly-laid concrete sidewalk, tree still attached to the bulge. Weird-looking!



By 8 or 8:30, we could hear chain saws going in the distance. Shortly after dark, we could see truck lights down at the end of our street. There was a tree across the road there. Just four houses north of us, another tree had been uprooted and laid across the street, grazing and damaging a brand-new Mercedes Benz and some other late-model car. With regard to that, I felt especially fortunate. While the storm was uprooting our tree, my car sat parked on the street, literally within three feet of the destroyed tree. Wow!







After the initial shock, the street acquired almost a party atmosphere. People were walking and bicycling by, stopping to take pictures of our tree and the other ones on our street with their cellphone cameras. People are funny! There were big truck rigs, burly guys with chain saws cutting up the trees blocking the road, the smell of diesel fuel and sawdust everywhere. We talked to city officials hurrying in in their official city pickups, hey, we've got a tree on our roof. They checked it out, said sorry, we've got worse situations that we need to take care of first. We'll be back later.



And they were. Around 3:30 this morning! Yup, a crew of at least 8 to 10 guys and one woman showed up at 3:30 and by 4:30 they were done. The tree was down, the big logs cut and piled alongside the street on the earthen bulge, and all the foliage and debris raked up and fed into a giant wood chipper. S was so envious. She said she'd love to have a chipper that size!

I headed to bed around 5 a.m. I was just starting to drift off when I heard these deep rumbling sounds. I touched S and said, "It's starting to thunder again."

"No," she said, "they're picking up the logs."

I ran to a front window, and sure enough, she was right. There was a huge truck with a giant claw attached to its back. A worker was maneuvering the claw to pick up each 4 to 6-feet-long log and drop it in the back of the truck. Hence, the deep rumbling sounds!

Finally, about 5:30 this morning, I fell asleep. What a night! It's one I won't forget for awhile, you can bet on that!

[I hope to post pictures tomorrow. For now, I'm pooped and still need to drive to the other house, the one with ALL the trees. Ha-ha.]