Tale of a Shooting Star…

No, wait a minute, you can stay… ?

It’s been raining on and off for several days here. To be honest, I have mixed feelings about the rain. I think it’s both good and bad for me.

GOOD: Flushes away pollen (my allergies are worse than they have been in years).
BAD: May be triggering headaches/migraines for me.
GOOD: Seems to have reset my emotional/mental health.
BAD: Thunderstorms and heavy rain freak Phoebe out.

I’m in a programming class all week, so don’t expect any wordy posts from me. I’m also still plugging away on a model that I think still needs 30 hours of work put into it in order to complete it by the end of the month. Yep, nothing but pith from me for a little while…

I’ve been searching for the perfect journal in which to capture some of my thoughts and ramblings for some time now. I was disappointed to find that a huge Hallmark Gold Crown store near work didn’t seem to have a single one. If anyone had a fancy, fun journal, I thought that it would be them. Apparently, journaling has fallen by the wayside and been completely replaced by scrapbooking. *sigh*

I have carried on, journal-less, for months – or maybe even longer because my initial longing to find a journal started sometime last year when I tried to find my old journal amongst the pile of boxes in the basement. I never did find it and it was a fairly nice journal with a blue patterned fabric cover. In fact, it contained an ode that I wrote in my late high school/early college years to the man I would marry someday; something that, at that time, I had intended to recite to that very special person upon our wedding day. And I’m curious as to what I said. The search will continue until I have exhausted all possible locations. In fact, I just had an idea as to another box in which it might be hiding; one I brought from my parents home a little while back. But I no longer yearn to use this old journal. I want to start from scratch, on something with crisp, white, unspoiled, unturned pages.

And such was the long-standing state of affairs this Wednesday. I had long since given up looking for a journal, even a non-perfect one, when I ran into our little, local Hallmark store Wednesday evening, frantic to buy a Mother’s Day card so that I could hopefully get it into the mail in time to reach her this weekend. After we had picked out our cards, one for my mother and one for Terry’s grandmother, Terry wandered over to look at some of the soft, incredibly cute stuffed animals. I managed to resist their fuzzy allure and left them all to reside there, instead of bringing one or more home with me. That took a lot of willpower, believe me. I’m a sucker for really soft stuffedies that I can stroke and in whose softness I can find some comfort when I’m in pain or I’m feeling down. I have a stuffed lion that resides on the back of the sofa near where I sit, within easy reach for just such a purpose, which I bought one day when I was feeling really blue. He’s really soft, plus I like the fact that I can shake him a bit and get his mane to stick out wildly in all directions. Love him!

Anyway, back to my story. I had successfully resisted the calls of the stuffedies at the nearby Hallmark; their plaintive pleas to be taken home with me falling upon mostly deaf ears (especially once I remembered the number of Beanie Babies I have at home, sitting in a box, waiting for a place to be displayed). Just a few feet away, sitting up on shelves against the wall, were some objects that looked suspiciously like mostly photo albums and the like. For some reason, I was drawn to those shelves, though, and I glanced quickly through them. On the fourth or fifth shelf down, a flash of purple caught my eye. I reached down to pick it up and there it was… my ideal journal! Bound in a soft, flexible purple leather cover with the word “Journal” embossed in a script that makes me actually see “le journal” when I look at it, with silver gilt along the edges and a ribbon secured in the binding to mark my place, it is perfect. Glorious! And it even meets my soft criteria because the leather is so soft and flexible that it almost feels like suede, without the high maintenance of suede. So, it in itself will provide comfort in a visual and tactile sense, even as I take comfort in inscribing all of my thoughts and feelings on the beautiful, lined white pages bound within.

Ahhh… it is heavenly. Funny how you can find things when you least expect it, eh?

I messed up. Yep, I seem to do that every once in a while. I forgot to write out the bills and get them posted. You see, I broke out the bills into different lumps this time, which I don’t normally do, because I’m forever in danger of sending out our home equity loan payment and our T1 line bill late because they each come due at an odd time of the month when no other bills are due. Thus, I tend to forget both of them. This month, I tried something a little different and what did I do? I forgot to send out a much larger chunk of bills. (Where’s a smiley for “uh duh!” when you need one?)

As a result, I broke out in a cold sweat yesterday morning at work, realizing that it was the 10th of the month and I hadn’t yet sent out the electric bill, which is usually due around this time. Not being able to do anything about this from work, I waited until we got home and then rushed upstairs to find a pile of bills to be paid. Thank goodness the electric bill is the only one that was a day overdue. So, I spent a while last night writing everything out, plus writing up Mother’s Day cards to send out to my mother and Terry’s grandmother. There was a nice little stack of envelopes waiting in the mailbox for our not-so-friendly postal person this morning.

Let’s hope I don’t do that again!