Saturday 9

Saturday 9: Melancholy Man

1. Are you more melancholy on occasion? I don't know how to answer this. I get melancholy on occasion, but it happens less often than it used to.

2. What did you think you looked like when you were a teenager? I was pudgy, with zits around my nose and a long, light brown ponytail.

3. Whose advice are you least likely to listen to? Either of my sisters.

4. Tell us about a job that you liked when you were younger. Babysitting. Once the kids fell asleep, I could just eat potato chips and watch TV. And I got paid for this!

5. Would you lie to someone if you knew the truth would end your friendship or relationship? Depends on the lie.

6. What do you have little or no patience for? People who take up too much space with their stuff. As in, why does your water bottle deserve a spot on the bench in the locker room?

7. What is there never enough hours in the day to do? Really scrubbing down the bathroom. Gee, I wish I could squeeze it in. It's looks like such fun.

8. What is the most productive thing that you accomplished in October? Got the cats up to date on their shots/vet trips.

9. What have you always wanted to learn but haven't yet? Spanish. I tried over the summer but got distracted.

I Want Wednesday

I want to remember how I got this big, ugly bruise. It really is rather massive, yet it causes me little discomfort. (I know because I poke at it.) Still, how could I hit something this hard and not notice it? And how did the photo get flipped?

¡Mi vida es un misterio¡

I've just gotten to the part about professions

Soy escritora. Mi mejor amigo es hombre de negocios. Monica es artista.

Spanish remains slow going for me, but I won't give up!

A presitigious award!

She over at a Kwee Life has deemed this humble blog Irresistibly Sweet. How cool is that! She tells us: "Now, as I understand it, for this award one is to list seven pieces of information not commonly known about themself, and fifteen recommendations."

Well, I'm going rogue here. I'm going to list 15 pieces of information and recommend seven. (Yes, call me "maverick.")

1) Whenever I hear Van Morrison sing, I wish I was in love.

2) I like the color yellow very much, but I can't wear it because it does hideous things to my complexion.

3) "Yellow" is "amarillo" in Spanish. I'm still working on learning Spanish, even though it's not really much fun. I like thinking that it's something I'll be glad I know, even if the learning part has been muy difícil.

4) On June 1, I celebrated my (gulp) 30th anniversary as a professional writer. I still enjoy crafting copy, so I consider myself very lucky.

5) My cat Joey, a shelter rescue, is approximately 13 years old. Perhaps older. I hate this fact. Every morning, shortly after I open my eyes, I call out to him because I'm afraid he's gotten sick overnight. You see, he's the kind of good, sweet boy who keeps his problems to himself. I worry that he won't let me know if he's not feeling well.

6) Sometimes I look at my mom and feel rather the same way. When I realize how frail she's become as she approaches 80, I get a little scared and even a little angry because I don't want her to get sick and die.

7) I don't remember my first kiss and I feel very bad about that.

8) I have been getting headaches more often in the evening as I wean myself off Lexapro. This is to be expected.

9) I just found out my FICO score is well over 700, so I guess I shouldn't worry as much about money as I do. But I feel like my new, commonsense approach to finances helped me avoid a fiscal disaster.

10) I believe in God and Heaven. It gives me so much comfort that I feel bad for people who don't have similar faith.

11) My shrink tells me that I get so frustrated with my oldest friend because she's not more like me. There's a lot to that. I see so much potential in my friend, and yet, at every turn, she makes the wrong choice. If she was more like me I'd understand her better, for sure, but she'd also be less troubled.

12) My cat Reynaldo really is a badly behaved beast. He's affectionate, sweet and gentle, but he is soooo destructive, and I have given up trying to stop him. We'll just be slobs together. But when I got home yesterday and found that he had torn down not only my drapes but the entire assembly, leaving three holes in the dry wall, I wondered what fate would have befallen him if he'd been adopted by someone else. I think that's why God put him in my life.

13) My rabid hatred of Kathie Lee Gifford has cooled to mere annoyance. Now I want to scream whenever I see Whoopi Goldberg. Madonna still makes my skin crawl. I have no real explanation for this.

14) It amazes me to recall that, when I first met my best friend I could not get his name right. In my head I referred to him as, "The Guy with Glasses."

15) This year, Father's Day will be a sad one for me, as it's the first one without my godfather, my uncle, who died last November.

NOW HERE ARE MY CHOSEN SEVEN.
These seven bloggers share there lives with us with generosity and grace.

Book Mama. She loves books, hubby Tim, and her three fabulous blond urchins. But since she's gone back to work she doesn't post enough! So here's a nudge.

Jenny McB. She's baaaack! After a vacation from blogging, she's got some new posts and I want to catch up on her life.

Kwizgiver. We share a love of books and pedicures, and she's about to start posting about her summer break.

Snarkypants. She's on the verge of some exciting changes in her life, and it's neat to follow her chronicles.

Silver Neurotic. She's getting married! C'mon now, who doesn't love a love story? Go over there and follow hers.

Mimi Writes. Oh, yes, she does. But she also takes great photos. Check her out.

Vivian. She has a ginormous heart, uncommon commonsense, and a great visual sense. If that's not reason enough to love her blog, she also has an imaginary cat.

Words to live by ... in any language

Two new phrases I will teach myself this weekend:

Libros y gatos. Vida es buena.
Mientras haya vida, hay esperanza.

OR
Books and cats. Life is good. and Where there is life, there is hope.

Feeling virtuous

We're busy at work. It's a good thing, I know. But it's made getting to health club at lunch time difficult. That's why I'm enormously proud of myself that I not only spent 20 minutes on the treadmill on the 40th floor, I listened to the Spanish alphabet over and over through my headphones as I paced. AND I had baby carrots with dinner!

Are you impressed? I am!

Mi Día

The day started with me in Spanish class. Honest. I'm taking a two-day crash course in Spanish this weekend, three hours a day both today and tomorrow. My head is spinning! It's harder than I thought it would be and I'm not sure I recall a thing I learned this morning. Oh, well. There's still tomorrow's class and I have foreign language CDs, as well as friends who can help keep me sharp.

And then there was the repeat of last night's graduation. After the ceremony, my brother-in-law, nephew and I spontaneously ran out onto the field looking for The Graduate, my niece. My older sister took it upon herself to take my mother (who has difficulty walking) out to the parking lot and their car.

Now she's mad that she doesn't have any pictures of her daughter with her classmates. That's not my fault. It would have made more sense for my mother to stay on the bleachers when the rest of us circulated and snapped photos. Instead, she and my mom left the stadium and there was no re-admittance. We didn't compare notes beforehand, I wasn't purposely seeing that my sister was excluded from her daughter's graduation.

Afterward, my brother-in-law kept trying to get me to take the SIM card out of my camera so my sister could download my pix. Um ... no. It was 1:00 AM! My sister didn't need the photos right then and there. I said I'd download the shots and send them to my niece -- who gets photo approval. Apparently that's not convenient for my sister, who was being all pouty and passive-aggressive. Um ... I don't care.

This evening, when we were chatting, my mother told me how hard it was for my sister to print photos from the internet and would I please, please send my kid sister a CD with the pictures.

Je-sus! She can look at them all right now (my niece has downloaded them all to Facebook already). Take a chill pill. Or figure out how to print from internet. Or wait for the disc sometime this coming week.

It's not like my sister is thoughtful of my time. Ever. Nor have I ever promised to do anything like sending along a CD and not done it. And it's not like I did anything to keep my sister from photographing her daughter's graduation. I didn't even think about my sister when I was taking photos of my beloved niece on this special night with her friends. Nor, to be honest, did my niece ever say, "Have you seen my mom?"

Tengo pregunta: Por qué es mi hermana loca