Tale of a Shooting Star…

First, I want to take a minute to thank everyone who has posted such lovely birthday greetings. I’m officially 30 years old now and I am perfectly content to be so. 🙂

I had a wonderful birthday weekend. While I didn’t necessarily enjoy my Friday off, it did give me time to continue cleaning up the house and to visit with my parents for a bit.

Saturday, though, was WONDERFUL! I cleaned up a little bit in the morning, but then Terry took over and let me relax by handling everything else left as far as cleaning went. I was able to play video games and generally relax. Then I took a long, leisurely shower that ran the hot water heater out of hot water. 🙂 Having company in the house and a timer on the hot water heater to save electricity happens to do that to a gal. 😆 I got out of the shower and ready for dinner at a nearby restaurant with my parents, Terry’s dad, Terry and me.

Terry’s dad arrived before I came down, all decked out in a nice blouse and matching silk skirt, with dark pantyhose and black heels. I pulled my hair up partially with a pretty new hair clip, put on a good bit of makeup (which is unheard of for me) and was ready to go. It was chilly out and I had on short sleeves, so I got to use the off-white cashmere cardigan that I picked up last year for just $20 on clearance. 😉

I had been having this vague feeling that maybe there was something up with the dinner that I didn’t know about. When we arrived at the restaurant and were shown into a private room, there were three of our best friends. We’ve known two of the three since college and we all work in IT (Information Technology) at the same company, so it was a very comfortable setting. I have no idea if I looked surprised or not, but the feeling that had before been vague was so strong before we walked into that room that I was nearly in tears by the time we got there. We had a wonderful dinner and then afterwards, we all went back to the house for a little bit (except for Terry’s dad, who left after dinner). Two of the friends had actually never seen our house since we built it nearly 4 years ago. Hence my frenzied cleaning of the house. 😉

I was able to grab some sleep overnight and then was up in the morning to see my parents off at 9:30 AM. An attempt at an hour and a half long nap met with mostly failure before I had to get up again and get ready for the arrival of my birth father and stepmom. Once they arrived, we sat and talked for a while and then went out to Applebee’s for lunch. A pleasant lunch was had by all, after which we returned to the house and spent some more time talking. All in all, it was a nice, unhurried visit and it was very important to my growth as a person. I won’t explain right now, as it is a very long story of what has happened with that relationship over the years…

By the time Sunday night arrived, I was starting to feel a little down, probably from the end of all of that excitement. I didn’t have anything scheduled for work today, so I decided to take the day off to recuperate, which turned out to be a good idea. As far as gifts go, no real stash enhancements, sorry! Terry did build me a nice prototype stand to hold my scroll frames, though. He’s quite creative and had fun engineering his own design according to my needs. Other than that, though, we apparently had a communications breakdown, so I’ll be taking some of my own money and having some S.E.X. later this week. I just need to take a close look at what I want to schedule for stitching early next year, and determine what materials I may still need to work on those projects.

I’m sure I’ve made this post quite long enough for now.

This post is from Jenna’s mom. I hijacked her blog. 😉

On midafternoon of October 23, 1975, an extraordinary event occurred: A comet was seen dancing across the skies and a beautiful new soul took form. Her name was Jennifer Lynn, and she was a dark-haired beauty.

Fast forward to Jenna (as she now called herself–and insisted that everyone else call her) to the night of her one-time-only dance recital. Though her little group of girls consisted of maybe a dozen kids, Jenna might as well have been the only one on the stage. She played to the audience, right out in front — she was having a ball and the audience loved it.

Fast forward again and once again she is performing again—this time in “acapella”, a little singing group some of the local teens had created for themselves. The audience was larger than we had expected and nearly filled the church. They went from one piece to another and then one jazzy number broke into a “skat song ” by Jenna, pleasantly surprising her mom and (step)dad. Fluid and high in pitch, her voice once again made one think of her heavenly and cosmic beginnings.

On the day she took her vows to wed our second son, Terry Magee, she was an ethereal Being. Rustling, silky sounds surrounded her when she moved. It was, of course, one of the most joyful days in her life. But the funny part is–it was one of the happiest of mine. My heart was so full, I smiled ’til my face hurt.

These little cameos are just some little memories that I carry within me, to be pulled out over and over like a favorite photo. Of all the thoughts I hold of you, Jenna, these are just the ones that come to mind now. I won’t tell the world the stories of how you spent your entire allowance on candy at “Leslie’s Corner’; of how you bought Swedish fish candy then ran around in circles laughing’ til you’d run into something, then drop to the floor, crying. (How were we to know that red food dye made you crazy?)

Remember our apartment where you and I lived together, alone, watching Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, and L.A. Law? We were bachelorettes for a year. Kinda neat, huh, despite the changes we were learning to live through. We became good friends then, partly due to our need for each other, but eventually becoming even closer as you grew up?

All her life she has been an extraordinary soul-expression. With everything she touched she met success. But more importantly, she became such a loving, sensitive, and giving person. When you are around her even for a short time, you become aware of her intrinsic sweetness.

To say that I am proud of you, Jenna, does so little to cover my feelings as you near your 30th birthday. I wish you could see you as I see you. Lovely, generous, multitalented—there is nothing about you I would change even if I had the power.

Thank you, sweetheart, for coming into my life and gracing it so.

Love

Mom

Woohoo! I’m leaving work in about two hours and won’t be back in until lunchtime on Monday (if at all; might work from home that day). I’m so excited, which is a good thing because the endorphins from my excitement are helping to override a headache I’ve had since this morning. 🙂

I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve, waiting for my birthday on Sunday. That seems silly and it feels odds since I have felt pretty blah about my past couple of birthdays. I think the fact that I’m actively going to be celebrating with friends and family is part of what has me wound up. The other part is that my parents are coming in tonight and will be here until Monday morning. I don’t normally get excited about parental visits (even though I’m very close with them), so again, I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’ll take it! 😉

So, I will probably line up a couple of automatic posts over the next few days just to keep my readers entertained, unless I feel like logging on and blogging. I still have a lot of housework to do so that everything looks nice and clean and as organized as possible for company on Sunday. I officially gave up last night on painting any more trim. It doesn’t look like Terry’s going to have the time to put it all up in the rooms before Sunday anyway and I was really draining myself of energy by coming home every night and painting for hours. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep on Tuesday night, so by the time I got home from work last night, I just wanted to lay down and take a nap, so I did! I reminded myself that this weekend is about ME, not about my house! LOL

I’m also bouncing around in my chair because I’ve had a totally successful day at work in a very short time span. I know most of you won’t understand, but it is SO satisfying when you write a bunch of code and it works on the first try! It’s a geek thing, I know, but it makes me feel REALLY good to get things working quickly and painlessly. I had two such events today, back to back. Things that I thought would take forever to figure out took no time at all and within about 2 hours, I finished everything I had on my list to do today. WOOOHOOOOOO! Makes me feel better about taking some time off. 😀

So, now it’s time to go home, clean up, eat and wait for my parents to arrive.

Recently, I overheard a mother and daughter in their last moments together at the airport as the daughter’s departure had been announced.

Standing near the security gate, they hugged and the mother said, “I love you and I wish you enough.”

The daughter replied, “Mom, our life together has been more than enough. Your love is all I ever needed. I wish you enough, too, Mom”

They kissed and the daughter left. The mother walked over to the window where I sat. Standing there, I could see she wanted and needed to cry. I tried not to intrude on her privacy but she welcomed me in by asking, “Did you ever say good-bye to someone knowing it would be forever?”

“Yes, I have,” I replied. “Forgive me for asking but why is this a forever good-bye?”

“I am old and she lives so far away. I have challenges ahead and the reality is the next trip back will be for my funeral,” she said.

“When you were saying good-bye, I heard you say, “I wish you enough.”” May I ask what that means?”

She began to smile. “That’s a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone.”

She paused a moment and looked up as if trying to remember it in detail and she smiled even more. “When we said ‘I wish you enough’ we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them .”

Then turning toward me, she shared the following, reciting it from memory:

“I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.
I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final good-bye.”

She then began to cry and walked away.

They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, and an entire life to forget them.

TAKE TIME TO LIVE!

To all my friends and loved ones, I WISH YOU ENOUGH!

I’ve been out of work for 4 days – it’s driving me nuts and I’m bored out of my mind! Dressed in sweatpants, a sweatshirt, with a blanket on my legs and a scarf wrapped around my neck, I must be quite the… erm, unique… sight. I haven’t been to work, haven’t been out of the house, haven’t really been away from either the bed or the couch. No stitching, no computer time, not much tv time, nada. Just a lot of sleep and as little focusing of my eyes as possible. *sigh* I don’t know when the last time was that I was sick like this…

But hey, like the title says, at least it’s not that asian bird flu! Here’s hoping for a decent weekend of feeling better so I can actually get up off of my butt for a little while. 🙂

Today’s “Stitching Blogger’s Question” was suggested by Outi and is:

How do you `non-hoopists’ who use a rotation system handle it (as it seems to be lot easier if you are in good terms with hoop)? Do you have several scroll frames? Do you use Q-snaps or maybe something completely different? Or do you just have one or two big projects and others are small enough to be kept in hand while stitching?

😆 Do I have several scroll frames? That’s an amusing question, as my house is littered with what seems like a ton of scroll frames. Seriously, I might have ten frames in total, but it feels like a lot. I also have two Q-snaps and a few little hoops still in use for small ornaments. In addition, I do work some projects in hand, but I prefer some sort of artificial tensioner so that it’s not so hard on my hands.