• 21:05 Wow. So much going on with so many. I am very thankful for all of my blessings. I have it good! #
• 08:55 I am SO thankful for my amazing husband. He's funny, smart, works hard for us, but most importantly, he's a Godly man. I <3 you, honey!!! #
• 11:58 @fourwall Jealous!!! #
• 11:59 Gearing up for a long, full, aromatic day of baking! I have some pumpkins and bananas just begging to be made into goodies!!! #
• 15:02 Banana bread and muffins: DONE! Moving on to pumpkin scones and muffins. I love fall. #

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• 21:56 @ezack60 Are you gonna share? #
• 21:57 Stuffed from the 1st grade Thanksgiving feast. SUCH a fun time tonight! Gotta love what 6 year olds list on their "thankful for" list! #
• 10:20 To workout or not workout? Tummy says no, for some reason. I'm inclined to listen to the tummy and hope it's just grumpy - not sick. Blah. #
• 11:25 Tummy's winning. Going to stretch out on the couch and listen to the rain. That should help. Right? #
• 15:56 Hoping that my tummy and I will be on speaking terms before the day is done. #

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I haven't been posting entries (other than Tweets) for a while because LiveJournal's "rich text" has decided that it's not going to communicate with Safari - my web browser. Apparently Safari said something about Rich Text being a snob and Rich Text took it to heart. I've been trying to get Safari to apologize for several days now, but it's just not happening. The LJ staff said that they are working on Rich Text on their end, but so far it's not budging either. I don't really like typing in HTML because I'm lazy and it's too complicated. Yeah, I own my laziness!

So . . . there you are.

I'll try to suck it up and post something with HTML later. After my nap. (Ha!)

I may have done it now. I showed Buddy some parkour videos on YouTube. What was I thinking?!?!?

I am thankful for all my fun friends-near and far-who make my life so rich with fun, sweet, silly and encouraging FB comments.

I'm exhausted. But I didn't do much today. Go figure.

PB&J on banana bread is so good it should be outlawed. Oh. Yum.

Sidelined this morning by a sinus headache. NOW I'm ready to hit the ground running. Laundry can run, but it can't hide!

Dear Pandora, Why would you play "Girlfriend in a Coma" on my "Dance and Be Happy" station? That belongs on "Brooding 80s"!

Just heard Princess exclaim, "He's doing acid!" Meaning the robot she was playing with is launching acid bombs on the city. Am I relieved?

Going to get the kids up at 2:30 a.m. to see the Leonid meteor shower. It's predicted to be a great show and a clear night!

@justgina Chinese chicken casserole. The only thing I can think of is that the bamboo shoots tasted woody or something. Gotta love it!

Sweet time at 2:45 a.m. - the family in the backyard lying on a quilt huddled together under many blankets staring up at the stars.

Almost Christmastime. Must. Resist. Urge. To. Make. Crafts. But . . . the glitter! The gluesticks! Pipe cleaners! Paint! Arrrrggghhhh!

• 07:17 Hello world!!! I see a great Thursday ahead! #
• 17:01 Feeling a meltdown coming on. Again, I have the idea that there should be a margarita delivery service. #

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@ezack60 I SHOULD be there! But I'll be here - on a date with my daughter! That's one of the few things that trumps NYC!

You know you're a stay at home mom who needs a break when you view a mammogram as a way to be alone for a while.

@jeanneklaver Heh. Ya think?!?!? At least I have DDIC tonight! At our house! I'm serving chicken tortilla soup. Wanna come?

Thank you to all who served and who are serving now. The words "thank you" are not enough. But they are all I have. Thank you.

Oh! "Here I Go Impossible" can bring tears to my eyes. LOVE Erasure. Just . . . many hearts!

Get out your Kleenex! Dogs Welcoming Home Soldiers tinyurl.com/yc5xmvd #

I really should go to bed.

Buddy is having one of his "nights" where he grunts and yells in his sleep. Prob'ly a reaction to the allergy meds. He's fine. I'm up.

Really rough day today with Princess. Holy cow. I need a break! Can I get a margarita delivered?

@justgina Right beside you!!!

Oh, I'm just done. Done.

My name is not uncommon.  Uncommon means "not ordinarily encountered" which implies that one may encounter it, just not frequently.  My name is not really rare (seldom occurring or found).  My name is downright different.  It's virtually one of a kind.  From Googling my first name, I've found that there is a little girl somewhere in Georgia (I think) who shares my first name - same spelling and everything.  But she's the first and only I've ever heard of.  

Growing up with a unique (strange? weird?) name has its pros and cons.  Pro - it's mine and mine alone.  I never have to identify myself with a last name.  The first is always sufficient.  Con - as a child I could never go into a gift shop and find a little keychain with my name on it.  Pro - it's a conversation starter.  How did I get it?  (My dad.)  Where is it from?  (A vampire movie called "Blood and Roses".)  Do you venture out in daylight?  (Ha ha.  Never heard that one before.)  Con - I always have to have a conversation about it when I meet someone for the first time.  Complete with spelling.   

I have had a love/hate relationship with my name throughout my life.  The vast majority of my life I have loved it.  It's fun to be different!  But there was a time - junior high and high school - when I really hated it.  

Those early teen years are hell anyway.  The main thing that you do in your early teen years is try desperately to figure out how to use the body that you used to know how to live in.  All of a sudden everything is different - from your height to your shoe size.  Where once you knew how everything worked, now the rules seem different.  It's very unsettling.  One defense mechanism is to make sure that you get all the attention off of yourself as much as possible.  This could mean anything from positioning yourself in the back of the classroom and not saying anything to being the class clown by way of making fun of everyone else.  My name happened to be the target of one of these jokers.  

Think about it - at a time when your body and your emotions are seemingly rebelling against you, someone on the outside paints a bright red target on your chest and then lobs barbs at you as often as possible.  At a time when I wasn't quite sure of my identity anyway, someone takes pot shots at the one thing that should be the cornerstone of that identity:  my name.  Of all the unpleasant things I went through during adolescence, that was the thing that hurt me the most.  Someone attacked my name.  And once he saw that it got to me, it seemed that he did it constantly.  

Looking back, it was probably only a handful of times, but it seemed like forever.  Most likely what made it seem constant was that I was always waiting for it.  After the first time or two, I was on my guard around him.  I was always on the defensive and if I had cause to glance his way, I looked at him with a cross look.  Now that I think about it, I'm sure that served as bait!  And he was good at just throwing off the most hurtful comments as asides so they didn't look like full attacks.  Oh, he was crafty.  (In actuality, he was just another scared kid trying to make people look away from him and at someone else.  He came out of the closet a couple of years after graduation.  I cannot imagine what hell he went through in high school keeping that secret.  No wonder he deflected attention to others.)

That whole thing, though, affected me deeply.  (As you can tell.)  For years I would shut down any conversation about my name with a sharp comment like, "I was named for a vampire so you should probably be scared."  And God forbid anyone bring up that my name is uncomfortably close to a swear word in another language.  That would make me literally hot under the collar.  Any person who brought that up was automatically on my "never speak to again" list.  (Even now I have to bite my tongue when someone informs me of that fact.  Really, do they think that I could make it 41 years with this name and NOT have heard that?  Besides, I now prefer to counter that with the fact that my name is strikingly close to the word that means "angel" in Swahili!)  In college, several of my friends had different nicknames for me.  (All given in affection!)  When those nicknames stuck, it was very hard to smile and answer to them.  Yes, they were given in love and friendship, but I had such baggage when it came to "messing" with my name that it was frightfully hard to overcome.

But I have mellowed.  I've gone back to really loving my name and being thankful for the way it can melt the ice and open up conversations with new people.  I continue to be disturbed, however, when I hear anyone deliberately mispronounce or bastardize someone else's name.  To me, that is a sign of extreme disrespect.  It's just rude.  A name is important.  A name is personal.  Someone put a lot of thought into whatever name that person is carrying around - whether they were named by their parents or whether they took a stage name for themselves.  To me, a name is sacred.  You don't mess with it.

My feathers are still ruffled from a comment posted by a friend last week.  He referred to Lady Gaga as "Lady Gag Gag".  With great effort I refrained from becoming the mama bear that is on my LJ user pic.  I know that the intense emotions that the comment stirred are not warranted.  But really, we're adults.  Can we say things like, "I really don't agree with the way she expresses herself" instead of reverting to middle school name calling?  (And, for the record, I think that Lady Gaga is amazingly talented and a wonderful performer.  I would NOT let my kids listen to her lyrics and I don't agree with some of the things she does, but that woman knows how to work it.)

A rose by any other name would definitely smell as sweet.  But don't call it anything but a rose around me.  Please.  

• 20:22 Terribly busy weekend - but a whole lotta fun! #
• 14:30 @ezack60 I would be, too! Blow a kiss to Soho for me! #
• 14:31 Watching some awful movie called "Revenge of the Sith" with Buddy and Evan. Claims to be a Star Wars movie, but it just can't be. #
• 16:48 @RachelFineMusic Tease! Can't wait for more! #

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We had a slight problem at Disney World.  The last day in the park - the last HOUR in the park - Princess fell head over heels in love with a stuffed Eeyore.  I have to admit, it was a great doll.  It was about 13" long, incredibly soft and very floppy.  And did I mention soft?  Wow.  Feather soft.  She saw it and immediately started lobbying for it.  However, we had already spent all of our souvenir budget and the price tag said $21.95.  After all, it was our LAST NIGHT in the park.  She carried it around the store for about 5 minutes before she finally put it down and we were able to leave. 

( The history of Eeyore at the Cabin. And beyond. )

• 08:57 Sore from basketball yesterday. I actually scored ONE GOAL!!! That's huge for me! Can't wait for next time! #

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This photo rounds out the Eye am Me trilogy.  (Although there may be more in the series if I am so inclined.)  

( The Glamour Eye )

• 12:40 Playing basketball in the new DDIC league today. The only requirement is that you have to play poorly. I can do that! #

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• 09:11 @RachelFineMusic Can't wait to hear more! Have a great time tonight. Pics coming later, I'm assuming?!?!?!?! #
• 11:13 Busy day - STILL doing home school from yesterday, trying to get my schedule going for the rest of '09 and going to give blood. Whew! #
• 13:49 Drat! Iron 1 pt too low. Can't give today. But the Blood Ctr is REALLY busy! #

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