My Excuse

So far, since I started this blog, I have missed two days. In both cases, it was because I was out socializing. I suppose that's to be excused, huh?

The first time I missed writing, I was with the Friday night club. We used to be the Slade's group. At least I called us that. We all met through the bar at Slade's, a restaurant at Tysons Corner. I started going to Slade's because I had a friend who tended bar there. Some of the crowd worked at the mall. Some of the crowd worked in the area. Some of the crowd just were looking for a place to have a drink on a Friday night. Somehow, we became a group. Amy and John had a few parties and invited the others, which started us socializing outside the bar. And eventually we became friends. The bartender that I knew left Slade's, but by then, I'd gotten to know the afternoon bartender (who stayed on Friday's through the dinner rush). She took over for the bartender I knew, and one of the wait staff became the other bartender. The group settled in with the new bar staff, and all was well. Then the restaurant owner crossed the line one time too many. And the two bartenders that we had gotten to know decided to leave as well. At that point, we switched bars. So instead of being the Slade's group, I started calling us the Friday night club. Several of the members are regulars - you can find them at the bar every Friday night. I only go every few weeks, but that particular night I didn't get home until almost midnight.

The second time I missed writing my blog was last night. I was out with my colleagues. An old friend and colleague of ours from where we all used to work was retiring. Many of us had been invited to the celebration, but since the party was during the day and would have a bunch of people there from the company we had left, my boss decided that it would be awkward for her to go to that party and so organized one of her own. There are 6 of us at my office, plus the guest of honor, and then a couple of other old colleagues - only one of whom still works for the company at which we all met. Let me just say that I am not good at spontaneous social events. By not good, I mean that they are not on my list of favorite things to do. I'm a planner. I like to organize my days in advance. So deciding to go out for dinner at 4 in the afternoon is not something I do easily. I'm also trying to lose some weight so eating out for dinner when I was also still planning to attend the lunch party wasn't high on my list either. But when it turned out that all my colleagues were going to go, that others were coming too, well I just couldn't not go. It was a fun evening, but by the time I got home about 9:30, I was exhausted.

So I guess I'm just going to have to resign myself to missing the occasional entry. If it's for a good reason - like socializing - seems like it's excusable. At least that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

How To Fit Into Your Genes

Each one of us is a product of the genes from our parents. We get what we get. No choice in the matter.

So you have to make do with what you get. You can complain about your genes. But in the end, they are what they are.

I have been blessed with really good genes in a lot of areas, so I can't really complain. Both of my parents are very bright, and I inherited that innate intelligence. For which I am immensely grateful.

Both of my parents are also reasonably attractive people. Not models, but not ugly by any stretch of the imagination. So I am blessed with nice looks. I'm not a stunner, but you know what? I'm not sure I would want to be. There's a lot of pressure when you're that beautiful. To get over people's perceptions and get them to see past the beauty to the person. Still, I could have gotten bad looks from my parents, and I didn't.

I am, however, allergic to a lot of things. I think the jury is still out on how much of allergies comes from environment and how much comes from genes. But my mother and I are both allergic to feathers, so there's definitely something to the gene connection. My father and I both have hay fever. Is it fun to have these allergies? Not particularly. But there are worse things I could be saddled with.

The only really bad gene I got is a tendency toward obesity. There are several members of my family - my extended family included - that are seriously overweight. I myself weighed more than 200 lbs in college. Though I carried it all over my body, so I didn't look as heavy as those who have a large waist. This gene means that I have to watch what I eat and get plenty of exercise. Otherwise, the pounds pile on. It's not an ideal gene to have. But it is what it is.

The one other "negative" gene that I got from my mom is premature gray hair. But here's an example of embracing what you get. For 22 years, I colored my hair. I started going gray at 17. At 20, I started coloring my hair. Now I'm hardly the only woman who colored her hair for many years. But I could have been really unhappy about getting gray hair so early in life. But even though it wasn't particularly my first choice to get gray hair so early in life, it's at least a beautiful silver gray. It's not a battleship gray. It's not a washed out yellow gray. It's bright and shiny. So when I hit my 40s, I thought to myself, "Well, I could continue to color it or I could just let it go." The fact of the matter is that at some point, when your hair gets too gray, it doesn't really color well anymore. It is no longer possible to have a hair color that looks even remotely natural. So I just decided to embrace my "bad" gene and let the gray come in. Sometimes I think that someone who is meeting me for the first time probably thinks I'm older than I am. But I'm not sure that I really care about that.

So, my genes are my genes. And I've learned to embrace them all. After all, what choice do you have?

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream

Sleeping is one of my favorite things. But unfortunately, I don't do it very well.

Instead, I wake up several times a night. Approximately every couple of hours. It's not that I wake up fully. Usually, I just wake up enough to turn over, to rearrange the covers, to pet a cat, etc. It's not very often that I look at the clock or even open my eyes.

Just falling asleep can be a challenge. About a third of the time, as I'm trying to get to sleep, I can't get my brain to shut off. Sometimes it's because there's something on my mind that just won't go away. Sometimes it's just a thought or a phrase or even a word that gets stuck. They say that if you actually get up - instead of just opening your eyes - you can switch off the obsession and get to sleep. I've never been successful at getting that far. Usually, I get stuck in that halfway point between being awake and being asleep. And tossing and turning because of it.

I have found that Tylenol PM works to put me to sleep. Most of the time. But there are two problems with taking a pill to get sleep. Actually three. The first problem is that it requires thinking about it beforehand. Once I'm in the half-sleep stage, I can't usually make myself get up enough to actually take a pill. Even if I did get up that much, then I have to take out my retainers to take the pill. It's just one extra step that's somehow not worth it. The third problem is that, by the time I think of taking a pill or get to the point when it's worth opening my eyes and taking out my retainers because I'm really not sleeping, it's usually in the middle of the night. And by then, I am afraid taking a pill will keep me asleep past my alarm in the morning.

It doesn't help that I'm such a light sleeper. To give you a sense of how light a sleeper I am, I can hear my cats walk into the room. On the carpeted floor. All car noises. Car lights. People on the street. It's not good. And it certainly doesn't help with the staying-asleep thing.

But I am getting better as I get older. When I was in my 20s and 30s, I had a lot of nightmares once I did manage to fall asleep. So not only did I wake up several times a night, but sometimes when I woke up, it was because I woke myself up. But I don't have as many nightmares anymore. I think it's because I'm generally more content with my life.

So now the only good thing about waking up several times a night is that I remember my dreams. And it's good to dream.

Rainy Days and Mondays

Today is Monday, and today it's raining. It's not a good combination.

Mondays are never fun since it's the first day back to work for most of us. There's something about having to get up and get going after a few days of not having to. At least that's the theory.

In point of fact, my weekends lately have been chock-full. Since mid-June, I've been volunteering every Saturday to try to get my foster kittens adopted. The event runs from 12-3, which pretty much kills the day hours. I get a couple of hours in the morning to do some of the errands that I need to do on a weekend - grocery shopping, dry cleaning, etc. Then I have to pack up the fosters and head to the event. After the event finishes, we have to clean up after the kittens and cats, and put the crates and tables away. Usually, that takes about a half hour or so. By the time I'm home again, it's close to 4. When I don't have fosters and I do this volunteering, then I leave around 3:15 and head straight to the gym - which gets me home by 5 after having worked out. With the kittens, there's no way to do that - I need to bring them home. So assume that it's about 4:30 before I get out for either a run or head to the gym. And home or back from a run 5:30 or 6. By then, the day is pretty much over unless I take a shower - which honestly I only usually do if I have to go out for some reason. If I'm just going home to eat and crash in front of the TV - well, the cats don't care if I'm a little stinky.

So that takes care of most of Saturday. Which leaves Sunday to get all the things done I haven't gotten done on Saturday. But, as yesterday's blog indicated, this past Sunday, I helped my mother. After working out in the morning.

The previous Sunday, I went to the movies in the afternoon. After working out in the morning and then eating lunch.

The Sunday before that, I had other plans.

The bottom line is that my weekends have not been full of sitting on the couch and reading a good book for at least a month.

Sometimes Mondays, even with having to return to work, are actually a nice change of pace!

The Things We Take For Granted

I spent most of the day today teaching my mother.

Let me start by saying that my mother is by no means a stupid person. But this whole computer and Internet thing has confused her. This past January, she and my father bought her a new desktop computer. When they bought the computer, they did not buy Microsoft Office. As many people know, Microsoft was sued for hampering competition by having PCs come with Office in addition to the Microsoft operating system. So now, you have to ask whether the computer has Office installed, and probably have to pay for it as well. So her new computer came with Microsoft Works, rather than Microsoft Word. And the documents that she created were .wps files rather than .doc files, and almost no one could read them. My mother found this very frustrating.

Today, I went to my parents' home and installed Microsoft Office so that she would be able to create documents in Word - the same word processing software that most of the world uses. While I was there, I gave my mother a lesson in directories/folders, files, programs, the Internet, and surfing on the Internet. These are all things I use every day. They are things I take for granted. And they were almost incomprehensible to her.

What you don't know, you don't know. And sometimes what you don't know you don't even know you don't know.

For example, my mother didn't know what a bookmark was. She'd heard the term, but she didn't know what one was, much less how to create one. To me, it's easy. To her, it's not intuitive at all.

I've been running into this myself. For me, it's the next generation of electronic toys - digital cameras, smartphones, etc.

It took me a long time to adopt these new technologies. Or rather, I'm not an early adopter. I got a digital camera about a year ago and an iPhone last month. Like my mother, I know the basics of how to use these technologies. My mother knows how to create a basic word processing document. I know how to take a basic picture with my digital camera. But as she doesn't know how to use styles in Word - because she's never had to - I don't know how to set my digital camera to automatically use the anti-red eye function. I didn't even know it was possible, like my mother didn't know about styles in Word.

So I spent the day explaining about bookmarks, and styles, and hyperlinks, and a bunch of other things that my mother has used but didn't really understand.

Now I need to find a 15-year-old to teach me how to use my iPhone....

Why Are Black Animals Not Wanted?

I don't think it's a racist thing - though others might argue - but for whatever reason, black animals are very hard to get adopted.

I started this spring with five kittens - two light gray tabbies, two dark gray tabbies, and one black with an undercoat of tabby. Who's left? The black one.

Last year, I had three foster kittens - all black. The rescue organization was pleasantly surprised that I was able to get them all adopted in about a month.

I'd say it was stupidity about black cats and superstitions, except that it's not just black cats. Apparently, this isn't just a problem for black kittens and cats, but also for black dogs. When the fact is that black labs are some of the greatest dogs on earth! Makes no sense to me.

I posted a note about this on Facebook, and one of my cousins said that the same is true for horses - the black ones are the last ones adopted or bought.

Personally, I think black animals are beautiful. Charley looks very sleek with her black coat. The undercoat just adds a touch of "flavor" to her blackness. She's beautiful and someone should love her.

To be fair, apparently it's hard to get all solid colored animals adopted. Multi-colors are just preferable. Weird, huh? But of the solids, the black ones go last.

So next time I'm in the market for new cats - which won't be for many years hopefully since my current cats are only 5 - I'm going for the black ones.

In the meantime, fingers crossed that people look past the black to find the loving animals - and give them a good home.

SYTYCD

For those of you who don't follow reality TV, SYTYCD is "So You Think You Can Dance." The premise of the show is similar to American Idol - they do have the same producer - with dancers instead of singers.

Now, I know quite a bit about singing. I like to think of myself as a singer, though the only person who hears me sing anymore is myself - and whoever happens to be driving next to me when the top of my convertible is down. :) So when I watch American Idol, I watch it with some knowledge about who really has the chops and who doesn't. Idol adds an extra element - performance and stage presence - which quite honestly is one of the reasons that I don't sing for anyone but myself. I have terrible stage fright.

When I started watching SYTYCD, I watched for sheer entertainment value. This bunch of kids chasing a dream. I don't really know anything about dance. I didn't know all the different styles.

Tonight was SYTYCD's 100th episode. And those 100 episodes (though I'm not sure I've watched them all, I've watched most) have taught me a thing or two about dance. I still couldn't tell you the difference between a rumba and cha-cha. But I can watch a waltz and tell you whether it's really that good or not. I can watch a hip-hop number and tell you whether the dancers "hit it," as they say. And that's because the choreographers and the judges really talk about what is good versus bad. What they look for in a good dance. And I've paid attention, and I've learned.

But the thing that I've truly learned - and I have to admit it was a shock - is that dance can really move me.

Two seasons ago, Mia Michaels choreographed a tribute to her dad. It was a remarkable dance that moved me to tears. That same season, she was also responsible for a dance around a door. A boy and a girl fighting, loving. It was amazingly danced, and amazing to watch. Wade Robson is another choreographer who has won a few Emmys for his work on the show. He does really offbeat things - dances that I wouldn't have said I would like. For example, tonight the show reprised his Emmy-winning Hummingbird routine. One dancer is a hummingbird; the other a flower just blossoming. Normally, I'm not particularly a contemporary dance fan. But it was a great routine; not in the least ironically danced by a young man named Hok ("hawk") as the hummingbird.

Last night, it happened again. Tyce Diorio choreographed a routine about a woman with breast cancer. It was moving, touching, sad, and uplifting. And the dancing was phenomenal.

So, SYTYCD - thanks for teaching me about dancing, but thanks also for moving me, even if it's sometimes to tears.