Daily Diary

[phoenix13]

Caution: This is not intended to be a one-person blog, but a place for like-minded, friendly people to check in with things, any things, that happened to them during their day.  Mundane.  Ridiculous. Thought-provoking.  Sublime.  If it happened to you today, please feel free to share as little or as much as you want. Respond to others' posts or not, as you wish.There are no rules, other than be supportive and get to  "know" each other.   I'll start in the next post.

[phoenix13]

Yesterday/today:  Go to pick dear son (DS) up from school.  He has finished his AP Human Geography EOC (end of course) exam.  This makes me feel good until he tells me that he finished it in one hour out of the four hours that have been allotted.  And, to make it worse, he actually finished in forty-five minutes, then "triple-checked" his answers.  Either this is very, very good or very, very bad.  Actually, my fear is that it's horrid.

DS had a bad day at school.  He had to buy his lunch at the cafeteria (because I am a slacker) but, when he got there, it turned out that his father, my ex-husband, had put money in the wrong lunch account, so, instead of buying lunch a la carte, DS had to buy the pre-selected lunch plate.  Chicken tacos. Oh!  The horror!!  Call school and leave a message with the cafe staff, to avert TRAGEDY at lunch tomorrow.  On tomorrow's menu? Oven fried sweet potato chicken.  The thought of that dish makes even me shudder.  What is oven-fried sweet potato chicken?  i don''t want to think about it.

To Target (department/discount/variety store) to buy bottle of wine.  DS insists on coming in with me. No idea why, but I am mildly annoyed.  This is a two-minute errand. Grr.  Why compiicate things?  So I stomp into Target right behind him, only to see him surreptitiously checking over his shoulder, then skulking off to the Mother's Day card section. This warms every cockle in my crusty old heart, and I have to say that I have quite a few cockles.

Home and to bed.  Today was emotionally brutal.  From bed, I do the usual drill sergeant Mom act and demand DS does homework.  He comes right back with, "No.  I have exams all week and I'm tired. I think it will do me good to take a night off."  I decide not to argue.  What's the point?

Make DS and me chicken stir fry then remember with a start that my  friend, Larry, is cooking str-fry for dinner at his weekly church supper. *Guilt* but I manage to cough down my food anyway.  

Watch stupid TV show then plan to watch another, but an unexpected Zzzzz overtakes me.  

Blessed sleep ... for five whole hours.  Up in the middle of the night.  Again. Yay.  

Put this time to good use.  Post many random and sundry things in PDO. Watch favorite political shows on the internet.  Ponder how a man can be the hero who rescues imprisoned women and a laughingstock all at the same time.

Check my email.   Wordsmith word of the day is cockshy.  Look it up, but hint: This week's theme is words that look like they're offensive, but that are not.   I love wordsmith. Must be very cool to just look up and talk about words all day.

Back to sleep, just in time to have to wake up. *grumble*

Up. DS to school for more tests.  

Me:Lament rainy, rainy, yucky day. I wanted to take a walk.  Oh well.


More PDOing.

Not sure what's next ...

[phoenix13]

Terrible, horrible, very bad day. 

Ca't give a lot of detail, but let's just say that the phrase A blow upon a bruise about sums it up.  (W.  Somerset Maugham)

Reach angst limit and overdraw. To bed early.   Tomorrow's another day.

[QPO]

sorry you had a bad day. hope that it gets better. remembe you must do something that gives you joy, it is gives hope and well being .... It is hard when children are younger and not yet independent.

[elisedance]

What a great idea P13   Though it doesn't seem to have helped your own karma much yet... Perhaps if we tell you about our disasters it will feel better

Only I don't have one.  Actually opened my email to discover the review for our latest paper, submitted to the European journal, Frontiers in Cellular neuroscience, has 'minor revisions' - which means all but accepted on the first round!  This is the same paper submitted to JNeurochemistry that was summarily rejected after 6 months with three review cycles - and a lot of frustration and anger.

Better journal too...

Today have to clean up as tomorrow we have a party at the house for the visiting Keynote speaker for our Institute research day - just him and lab members ... but I don't think I'll get much work done.

[phoenix13]

 I hope I don't have only disasters to share, but you never know.   

Nice job with getting your paper accepted. Peer reviews are a great idea, overall, but they can be a real bear, depending on the peers.

Yesterday into today:  Fantastic Mother's Day starts with son bringing me breakfast in  bed (eggs, sausage strawberries, apples,milk, juice, tea.)  Very nice and totally unexpected.  He usually waits for me to make my own breakfast, regardless.  Maybe he's finally growing up.

Morning spent lolling about, doing laundry and reading the paper.  catch up with many, many friends.  What the heck.  Mother's Day is a great excuse to chat with long lost girlfriends.  Also talk to guy friend while he's on the way to put lilies on his mother's grave. This makes me cry in a good way.  She's been gone long enough that his good memories are starting to outweigh his sadness.

Call Mom and fight back enormous waves of jealousy. Three of my sisters and two nieces are visiting her for the week. *sigh*  Talk to niece, who has become agnostic and who, for some reason, thinks  I am the only family member that it's safe to confide in.  Yay.  I love burdens secrets.

Dad turns 90. Help plan 65th wedding anniversary party for Mom and Dad.  This raises the hairs on the back of my neck.  It was not long after my paternal  grandparents' 65th wedding anniversary party that both of their health started to fail. It was downhill from there.  Not ready to contemplate mortality of parents. Intellectually, I know that parties and subsequent ill health are not connected.  But emotionally? Well ...

The only noteworthy thing that happened this morning was when I was ordering a cup of tea at the coffee shop. (Aside: I do not drink coffee. Full stop. )  I ran into a woman who was obviously on her way to work while wearing a most festive silver sequined cap.  I can't decide whether I think she's ridiculous. brave or whimsical.  Regardless, I admire her disco hat.

[phoenix13]

Picking up where  I left off ...

Friend shares a truly profound excerpt from a commencement speech. It talks about life as a series of choices..  Actually, not really.  It talks about how often we allow external circumstances to flow around us as if we have no choices.   Little annoyances mount because we never take the time to examine them and choose to look at them positively.  Really profound stuff that I have now butchered in the re-telling. lol.  Suffice it to say that I was impressed.

Very, very slow day.

Pick son up from school and spend the evening helping him study French and AP Geography.  Discuss a schedule change for him, next year.  He's thinking of dropping Digital Graphics and replacing it with art.  Eh. That works for me.  I expected him to drop Comp Sci, which is much harder work, but he decided to keep it.  Well.  Good for him.

Grocery shopping, random housework and Entirely Too Much PDOodling (to be known henceforth as ETMP) round out the day.

[phoenix13]

Haven't checked in in a few days because I was hoping somebody else would. 

Not much to tell, which is NOT to say that nothing happened.

Dear Son is almost at the end of his school year. Three weeks to go and his grades are the best they've been all year. Hallelujah and can I get an amen?  All we have to do is pull through his final French project and everything will be all right.  I kept telling the boy that, at his level, the key is repetition (okay rote memorization, if necessary) of nouns and irregular verb conjugation.  But did he listen to me?  No!  Not until this marking period, when he studied his flash cards and brought his grade up by ten points.  When will he learn to listen to his Mom?

Very, very bad week otherwise.   Negative feedback from several people I care about and several people I don't. Philosophical pondering, during which I realize that, by the time you get to be my age, there's something wrong if your life choices haven't made somebody mad.  lol.   Much deep thought leads to Major Life Changing Decisions.  This has the potential to be good.  It's not good yet, but it will be.

Get test results from doctors.  I ain't dead yet. 

Find out that 82-year-old Mom has pneumonia.  Out of the blue. Pneumonia.  *sigh*

Touch bases w/GF I've known since elementary school. She is well.  Her husband, who has MS, is not.

Widow of my long-ex-boyfriend (who became a friend)  finally sees the condolence message I left on her facebook page, and she likes it.  Whew. I thought long and hard about what to write.  Glad I found the right tone.  (Reminds me of an NPR writing contest.  I forget the exact rules,but the winning entry was a woman's multiple attempts at leaving a voice mail message.  I'll try to find that story.Really well written.)

Much PDOoodling in the midst of it all.

More stuff that I forgot. I really should check in more often.