Seanna (n. shaw-nuh)

Autumn in Middle Tennessee

 

See my house peeking through the trees up on the hill?  Pretty soon it will be the season when it's much more visible.  I took this yesterday after my jaunt down 111 toward Chattanooga.  I think I missed the peak of the fall colors but the fall smells were divine.  The views were not too shabby, either:  Could not believe the sunbeams.  Wow.  It must be pretty neat to live in that valley.  It's just breathtakingly beautiful.  And it's only 60 miles from my house!  I am acutely aware of how fortunate we are to live where we choose and not where life takes us.  I think that is a rare thing.

More later, gotta get to work!

"These little town blues..."

"...are melting away..."  We sent Fina off on her trip to Manhattan with some Sinatra, and she was inspired to do a little dance right in the kitchen. 

Of course, this was not the impromptu dance.  This was the "hey, you grab the broom and I'll grab the camera" dance.  It's kind of a long song, what can I say?  Link for Fina's parents.  See the swept pile of leaves and stuff in the corner of the photo?  Yeah, been there for days.  I can sweep all day but getting down and getting the piles is not something that agrees with my back. I keep waiting for someone to snap out of it and take care of business but alas, this has not come to fruition.    She will be back on Monday, I think.  She is on fire to go to something called "Top Shop" and even researched its location in Manhattan and maybe printed out directions to get there on the NYC transit system.  We told her not to miss a Broadway show if they had the opportunity, and to wear a lot of black.  Then I played my favorite Billy Joel New Yorker songs on the way to drop her off at the meeting point, and off to the office I went.  By next Friday, I will have worked 14 consecutive days without a day off.  But that's OK because a lot of them were only half days and that's probably actually a better scenario to help my poor injured back limp its way back to health.  However, my Christmas Club check came this week and it's burning a hole so that is a little irritating to not have days off.  Did I mention that I feel like a full-blown genius for participating in my company's Christmas Club program this last year?  It's completely ridiculous for me to feel this way because the truth is, geniuses would be able to manage to set aside Christmas funds without having it force-deducted from their checks as if they were nitwits and too undisciplined to make it happen otherwise.  However, I do feel like a smarty-pants nonetheless.  And I increased the pot for next year when I re-upped for 2010.  While I was there signing up, I also snooped and looked at what other people, total strangers I have never seen before, were doing.  One guy puts aside $175 per paycheck for his Christmas Club.  That's almost $5000 a year.  I'm clearly just an amateur next to such Christmas prowess.  The fact that he probably makes twice what I do is irrelevant.  Not that I have a clue what he makes, or even what he does.  He is just an anonymous coworker in the corporate jungle that employs me.  

I suppose I should be off now.  It's Saturday and I have...an afternoon of work awaiting me.  WOOHOO!  I wonder who is having more fun today, Fina or me?  Hmmm.  Manhattan....middle Tennessee humdrum suburbia...

How to keep up with your neighbors if you are on a tight budget

 

Hahahahaha.  I came across this on a message board I used to frequent way too much.

Quiet Tuesday

Got up this morning, looked down to the bottom of the staircase for the dog and got ready to wave if she was looking up.  I did that almost every morning, and almost every morning, although less often toward the end, she would look up at me and raise her ears.  Toward the end she was asleep most of the time, I think.  I hope it was sleep, anyway.

If I ever wanted to hide from people in my house, it would have been a tough job.  Everywhere I went, downstairs at least, Nugget followed.  Bathroom?  She'd pick me up just outside the door as I came out.  Kitchen?  She would make the rounds to see if I had dropped anything tasty, and then settle down in the middle of the kitchen floor.  If I left the house and no one else was home, she would wait just by the door for me to return.  When I went upstairs to work or sleep, she would usually settle at the foot of the stairs until I came downstairs.  It's just how things were. 

I am off in a bit to go to my office and take care of some administrative stuff and pick up my part-time gig.  My boss took it over for most of September and almost all of October but now we are back to sharing the load.  I was going to make chicken soup for dinner but I think my fabulous husband is going to take over those duties for today.I don't think I mentioned that I hurt my back while we were on our cruise last month.  Yup, woke up the second day of the cruise and could hardly move.  This lasted until...well, it's still going on.  But it is much, much better at this point, at least.  I even went to see a doctor (well, nurse practitioner) about it, and she gave me steroids and muscle relaxers and painkillers and the advice that it takes about three weeks to clear up.  Three weeks was this past Sunday and, all in all, it has mostly cleared up.  Not 100%, but I would say 80%.  We take what we can get.While I was on hiatus from the blog, I read a lot and was generally not on the computer as much unless I was researching something (like the cruise).  I'll bet I've read 20 or 30 books in the last few months.  I still have more in my "to be read" stack, too.

Hmmm, photo time.  I have many photos other than cruise photos, but while I am on that subject, here are a few more...  It's windy way up at the highest point on the ship.  Pretty much all the time.  Dancing at dinner. 
  Our waiter, James.  From Jamaica.  Ya mon.  The night before the formal dinner, he advised us that the following night was formal night but that over the years it has gotten more casual and that we should just wear what we wanted, and it would be okay and not to worry about it if we didn't bring formal outfits, just to come to dinner and not miss it because the featured main course was lobster tail.  I just smiled at him.  When he saw the girls in their finery he stopped short and his response was a most eloquent "Wow."  He made the formal dinners a lot of fun each night.  Other than when he saw the girls all dressed up, he was never at a loss for a snappy comeback.  My favorite was the last night, when P decided to mess with him a little (after he had teased her first), hold up her water glass, and insist that he refill it and not his assistant.  "She is my enemy," he said in his Jamaican accent. 
  The pier at Cozumel.  Apparently the week before we were there, a strong wind blew up out of nowhere and caused one cruise ship to briefly smack into another.  I kind of wish I could have seen that. 

It's 10:32 in the morning, and I suppose that means it's time for me get my errands out of the way.  Thanks for the nice comments about Nugget yesterday.  She sure was a good dog.

 

Not such a happy Monday

We have to put our dog, Nugget, down today.  The vet came last week and said he thinks she has bone cancer.  It's causing her a lot of pain and she can hardly move, so it's time.  He gave us a week of Rimadyl (I think it's like ibuprofen for dogs) and said maybe it will help, and it did, but not nearly enough.  It's clear that he was right and "her time is drawing near."  He will be here soon.  Gosh, this is sad.  But she was 15 years old, or almost, and that's a very long life for a very good dog.

Did you miss me?

I have been meaning to update this thing for well over a month.  Lots has happened, but not so much that we can't catch up over the course of, say, a week or so?   The family has been to two other countries since we last met (never going to get to say anything like that ever again), there have been a few birthdays celebrated, a little orange cat has grown larger, although not as much as one might expect, and the season has miraculously changed yet again to my favorite, colorful fall.  I would say we are just about at peak fall foliage here in middle Tennessee.  It's time for the annual trek down 111 toward Chattanooga.  I wonder if it's warm enough to do that with the top down?  Maybe!How about a photo or two?    The first one is sorta self explanatory and the second one was taken in Cozumel, Mexico.    I should have taken them up on the free shot of Tequila.  By this point in the "shopping experience" we were all pretty annoyed at the constant haranguing and obnoxious pitchmen.  And pitchwomen.  Blech.  But it's how they make their living so I guess you can't really hold it against them.  Even though you really, really want to.

OK so today is Sunday and I have to get to work, so that's all I can manage for one day.  I have many things to share, so I will be back, hopefully tomorrow evening.  My fabulous husband is loaning me his computer because the cats broke mine, and all my photos are now on this one, so I am at his mercy if I want to post photos. 

This dress is 200% Barbie

Can you hear that in a cute little mellifluous German accent?  That's it.

Cue the girl in the background:

Who is also, coincidentally, the girl in the little cameo photo being held by "200% Barbie."

At first I was like, "What a tiny little bratty girl, just like a sister to do that when the subject of the photo is unaware" but then I thought about and remembered something:

 

 

Hahaha.  Oh and this was cute:

Isn't the background pretty?  It's part of the Christmas decorations.  I'm sitting in my chair at my work desk as I snap this.  I missed the other two gowns that were tried on...a red one with a train that has been featured on my blog before, and a pink beaded one that has an orange underslip.  That one goes back a while...to Florida circa 2003 or so...maybe even earlier.

And I leave you with the poor abused cat photo:

It took her a while to realize she could protest that kind of treatment. 

And we got a postcard from Europe last week.  Actually we've gotten two in the last two weeks, one from Fina's family and one from Cordelia and her family.  THANKS!  They were really COOL!!

Last weekend was a Birthday Weekend

Last weekend we had birthday festivities.  We will do this two more times before we retire the birthday season until next year.  It seems like they are mostly all clustered together in this house:

Look at Fina.  That's the look that says, "I really cannot believe I am sitting here with this strange American family.  And I can't get away from them because I live with them.  For ten months.  What have I gotten myself into? "

Then she got over it and decided to go with it. 

Awww.

Happy 20th, Baby Beth!  We love you more than you know.  She is sick today, poor thing.  Remarkably swollen lymph nodes under her jaw.  Looks like mono to me, but what do I know? 

I have more photos but today is shaping up to be a busy Sunday so I must be off.  Lots to do!  Oh but the temperature here in middle Tennessee at almost noon on a late August day?  71 degrees.  That is freakish and wrong.  But we opened up the windows and turned off the air conditioning just the same.  Happy cats all around...

First day of school photos

OK, the first set is from Monday, technically the first day of school and the second is from this morning, which was the first day of classes.

Wardrobe change...

So, I broke my toe

That's my excuse for not posting for a while.  Really, it should have made me more prone to update my blog since a broken toe tends to serve as a grounding agent.  But, I was mad at myself, and mad at the toe, and mad at the chair which broke the toe upon the toe's accidental and unfortunate kick.  It still looks horrifically ugly, too.  Purple and blue and almost black, really.  Amazing how much pain a broken toe can cause. But it's better now and I can put on a shoe (granted it's my Avia sneaker) and not gasp with pain, so...progress.  I can also drive again.  I didn't drive for over a week but I think I'm good now.

I have first-day-of school photos of the girls, but they are downstairs and I'm comfortably ensconced upstairs in my bedroom on my husband's chair at the moment. It's blissfully quiet and peaceful.  The first day of school was technically Monday, but that was just a two-hour affair where the children were to pick up their schedules.  P&E took J to pick up hers, and surprisingly, they managed to get it right for J at the school. Then yesterday was, inexplicably, a day off for the children.  Then today, the first full official full day.  P has an orthodontic appointment this afternoon, so I've already gotten a call from the attendance nazis ladies confirming that I did, indeed, write the note requesting that her absence be both granted and excused.  I know that parents are often the last to know and seriously, they could be horrible miscreants when I am not around, but my children are basically cute little nerds, driven to perform at school by virtue of their own internal set of forces and not by anything their parents foist upon them.  It cracks me up that they are treated like dangerous potential prison escapees. 

Speaking of nerds, that reminds me.  J (I think I can call her Fina here without identifying her, so that's what I will probably do)...anyway, Fina says that the definition of "nerd" in Berlin must not be the same as here, because in Berlin it is a very bad thing to be a nerd.  Here, it's just a benign lifestyle choice for the most part.  When we told her we were mostly nerds (my husband excepted), she was rather shocked.  We told her that it's not even all that uncool to be a nerd anymore, at least not here.  That led to the following:  "OhGodOhGod--I'm living in a Nerd Village."  HAHAHAHAHAHA That was very entertaining.  I discovered yesterday that Fina really really likes her closet.  She went over and turned the light on and off, and exclaimed about how the doors could be drawn shut to hide everything.  It's not that impressive of a closet even, so it is nice that she appreciates such simple things.

What's new since I last wrote?  Hmmm, let's see.  B got a job working at a local Japanese restaurant as a server and bartender. This scandalized her grammy, but B has to wear black dresses to work, so how bad can it really be?  So far, B seems to like it.  She is there now, working the lunch shift.  I think she definitely likes the work uniform.  She has four black dresses she can rotate (so far).

Things have quieted down some for me work-wise, but the big boss has put me on a launch team for the second phase of a new software implementation.  I was told that I am to fulfill the "cheerleader" role, talking up the new system and allaying fears by being positive about it.  That seems like kind of an easy job because it's actually a pretty cool system.  It does involve once-a-week 8 AM Tuesday meetings, though.  Yeek.  This will last for about 2-3 months until the official launch date.  The meetings consist of about an hour-long conference call while we sit in front of computers and they show us stuff. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  I had already read all the stuff they were showing us, silly me.  Anyway, it's a cool system and I think it will ultimately be a great thing for my company.

My fabulous husband went back to work last week, not that he really stopped working all summer.  He's been tired, getting adjusted to the new schedule again. 

I guess that's about all I have to report, unless I want to get all political about what's going on with the government.  But it turns out I'm really not in the mood for that, so you're off the hook.

I will be back with photos soon--I'm sure Fina's Folks will be anxious to see them!!