First Day After a Long Weekend

It’s time to DANCE.

darn you, Charlaine Harris, and your crack-like Sookie Stackhouse books!  I stayed up late last night reading the latest one in its entirety, and have had a headache all day as a result.

Things that drive me nuts: when people say government workers are treated too well, because they have better benefits, etc than private sector workers. Maybe private sectors workers are treated too poorly.

What’s Been Occupying My Time

I have been a busy little bee the past two months.  On top of my regular goings-ons, I have kicked my wedding rental business into high gear!  Ultrapom Event Rentals officially debuted at the Re-Event, a wedding expo and consignment sale focused on ‘greener’ wedding options, at the beginning of April.

I had read about the Re-Event in the newspaper a week before it started, so Jacob and I scrambled like mad to get the website up and running enough to publicize it, as well as get a booth together and have all the print items needed (like brochures and business cards).

Ever since, I have booked five events and am in talks with several more people! We have also been working to improve the website to include a shopping cart.

There really just isn’t time enough in the day to get done everything I want to do, but I really am enjoying it!  I like being my own boss.  Granted, we’ve got Jacob’s salary to fall back on, which makes it infinitely less stressful.

You can check out my website here!

I want to do it all

Thousands of Moments with My Father and Grandfather

When my grandfather died a little over three months ago, the grandkids elected my sister to write a speech to give at the funeral on behalf of all of us.  She had been struggling with not being able to get home and say goodbye before he died. The outcome of this struggle was this speech (with some input from the rest of us):

We have said goodbye to our grandfather thousands of times throughout our lives: when parting after Sunday lunch, or birthday dinners, or lake trip weekends.

We said goodbye to PawPaw thousands of times because we had that many opportunities to know him.  Thousands of opportunities to take in his history, his wit, his good naturedness, his simple heart and complex mind.  We had thousands of moments for him to help shape who we have become as individuals.

Moments such as:

PawPaw growing okra amongst his irises.

PawPaw taping a picture of his tallest banana plant’s best harvest to the smaller banana plant beside it as inspiration.

PawPaw explaining the divine nature of the ant and peony relationship.

PawPaw explaining how many birthday cake candles we should have if we used a base-ten system.

PawPaw calling us to eat with ‘comida comida ahora!’

Through these moments we have come to understand the legacy that our grandfather has left us and our family: generosity, loyalty, sincerity, hard work, reflection, and humor.

We are thankful that we had so many opportunities to say goodbye.  Now, as we say goodbye for the last time, we know that there is no final goodbye so perfect it fills the loss that follows.  However, in our case, with our PawPaw, there is also no need for a perfect goodbye to make up for a lack of relationship.  All these moments of cherished shared history mean we can say goodbye to a grandfather that we love without regrets of time lost or words unspoken.

We are filled by the legacy that he has left.  We were created out of that legacy and will continue to be created from having known him and remembering.

My sister put into words exactly how I felt about my grandfather, as well as how I feel about my relationship with my father – that our relationship has been filled with thousands of opportunities to know each other.  I’m grateful for both my father and my grandfather, and the influence they both have had in my life.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!  I love you!

(And thanks to Keli for writing such a great speech.)

Different Kinds of Online Conversations

I’ve been thinking about my different interactions with people online, depending on the platform.

I use email for inside jokes, private conversations and things no one but the recipient would care about.

I’m in a Yahoogroup with a bunch of close friends (and people who have become close friends) for behind closed door conversations: things that are inappropriate the general public, like pooping habits, un-PC comments, and lots of beeping and nonsense.

Facebook conversations are generally lighthearted barroom banter (and sometimes heated political discussions) with friends and their friends.

Twitter is for public declarations and short conversations with acquaintances about common interests. I tend to do more calling out of problems I have with companies on Twitter.

With blog post comments, it depends on the blog.  With lifestyle/mommy/design/wedding blogs – it’s always nice! lots of exclamation points!  I agree with you! Like me! With newspaper blogs, it’s almost always a scathing critique of whatever the article was about, a fly-by rant that I throw out in the world without bothering to see what the world throws back. With snark blogs, I’m just a lurker, enjoying the schadenfreude, but too scared to join in.

How do you talk on the internet?

built our raised garden beds!  Now just need to plant the plants…These will be the most expensive vegetables ever.

let’s try out this update thing. testy. testy.

Reflection on a Year Off

I suppose my neglect of this blog means that I am too busy living life to be able to update that.  It’s really a bit lazy to think that, and my lack of posting may just be about not prioritizing the blog, but this is where we are now.

It’s been exactly a year since I moved back to the US (in another week I will have been blogging for a year).  I had high hopes for both my year off and this blog last April.  I wanted to have big adventures and do some deep thinking and studying.  I haven’t bicycled across Kansas, or gone on a road trip across the whole US visiting all my friends.  I haven’t done hardly any reflection.

But I have driven to Rochester, NY, gone to Chicago a couple of times, and stayed at a lakehouse in the North Woods of Minnesota.  We went to Israel for Jacob’s brother’s wedding, and experienced a different way of life that challenged my own value system. Jacob got a job in the architecture field, when we thought he wouldn’t be able to, and was offered a job in IT at the library. Jacob and I did buy a house.  I started a business.  I got to spend 10 months with my grandfather, and be with him (and my grandmother) when he died.

This blog, on the other hand, has been a bit of a wash. I planned on posting several times a week, creating an interesting and dynamic blog design, and developing up a body of work in different thematic streams (synthesizing what we’ve been doing over the past several years, urban design, graphic design and entrepreneurship were the main ones).  I haven’t really given any of these topics a hard thought on this blog, just painted around the edges.  And that’s a shame.

Maybe blogging isn’t for me.  I’m not a writer. (That would be my sister.  I wish she would blog again.  But she is very busy.)  However, for something else, I tried to reconstruct what I was doing in my life at different points over the last 6 years, and how events affected me.  I realised my recollection of events, and particularly what I was thinking at the time, has gotten rather hazy. Having a blog where I record what has happened in my life and what I am feeling could be very useful.  But does it have to be public?

I’ve often read the Age of the Internet has beget the Me Generation, or the Age of Narcissism.  Apparently we’re all too focused on ourselves.  That didn’t sit comfortably with me, and nagged at me whenever I thought about posting something to my blog that is about my life and my thoughts for all the world to see.  But then I think of my journals from high school and college- so overwrought and embarrassing.  Granted, they were written by a much more immature version of me, but I think writing for a public stage helps me to focus and maybe temper my emotions a bit. So public it is!  Onwards, Carolyn!

I’ve blogged about it before, but it bears repeating – having discipline in your life makes such a difference.  So back on track we go!

And I finally got rid of that horrible brown theme.  I think this theme will be better suited to developing different thematic streams of posts.  But it looks like I do need to include a photo with every post, otherwise the homepage is really boring and texty.

Time will tell, and it’s all up to whether or not I stick with it.