So Sweet!

Many of you probably know Mr. LB75Player and have seen the excellent new hobby of his! With his new lathe and some materials he can make a bad-ass pen! I should know! He made me one! He asked me what I wanted, PM'd me the choices, and swiftly got to carving. It is amazing. I wish the pictures could really show how smooth that pen is! I still can't believe he made it.

As a writer I am a lover of pens. And I am so grateful LB took the time to make it for me! THANK YOU LB!

If you've not seen LB's blog, go there and check out his cool woodwork!

Enjoy!

How do I love thee...

For Christmas I received a pair of Galileo 12x50 binoculars. They are wonderful. I have only been able to star-gaze a few times since unwrapping them due to poor weather conditions and the like, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the times I have been able to peek through them. Of course I have peered at Orion and the Seven Sisters (or Pleiades as Doorgunner uses the technical words), I have also taken some looks at Cassiopeia and her bouncing Hubbs, Cepheus. But tonight I got a chance to look at the most beautiful object in the sky: The Moon. It was huge tonight and bursting with light, I had to! It was the closest I'd ever seen it, and it was amazing. I didn't quite know what to expect, but it was truly blissful. I could make out the maria and terrae so clearly!

It absolutely, positively, without a doubt made my entire evening.

That's all. I just wanted to share.

I Like Skype

No computer or electronic item is ever close to "user friendly" when it comes to my association with it. It may be that I am just not "user friendly"...that is probably more like it. My father is a computer engineer and my mother is very computer savvy. I have no idea where I went wrong. I can read well, speak well, write well, but when I have to set-up new things on the computer, I am lost beyond all comparison. My six year old son can navigate the computer better than I can. THAT'S IT! It SKIPS a generation. That has to be the reason....

My father and older sister live in Arizona. Needless to say, my family and I don't get to visit often. So, my father suggested I download Skype in order to get more share-time in with the kids and them. So I did it before Christmas. Now, I had not yet figured it out until today. (I know, pathetic.) Mostly because of the mental block I have going on. I think that I have failed so often with the computer stuff that I have seeded the doubt in my mind. Anyway, it turns out that Skype is actually pretty easy to use! My kids had a blast actually seeing Grandpa on the computer. I stole the xbox 360's webcam...that was easy, it only has a USB They sure loved it.

Just wanted to share that Autumn successfully used a new thingy-ma-jigg on the computer! Yeah!

He's Needed...

So, my semester was full of termoil. I just over-extended myself and didn't work hard enough. That's okay, it happens. But, I checked my grades today and have found that I passed with flying colors on all my courses except Spanish. I got a C. I thought I was actually going to fail the class, so a C is a wonderful bit of information for me! So, I need to celebrate with a little love!

And here he is: Robert Frost.

Stars
By Robert Frost

How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keeness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those starts like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

The times you remember

Today is a significant day in my life. It is a day that, years ago, changed my life forever. Today my first born son came into the world. I remember myself as being young, untouchable, and nieve. I was absolutely content managing a record store and had no intention of looking onwards in my life. As a couple, IACO and I were very much living "in the now". When I first realized that I was going to not only create a little being inside my body, but also squeeze one out from the area I had only associated with pleasure at this point, I was devistated. More than devistated: terrified. I can't even put words to the emotional termoil my thoughts propelled me through. I can imagine that some here experienced the same shock and fears that I did, and hopefully can relate.

From the moment of realization that a foreign body had invaded my very personal space, I had to leave my absolute unabsoluteness behind and start thinking about more than patchouli, skateboard decks, and records. Man, that was going to be tough. I loved my free-spirited lifestyle and the last thing I wanted to do was give it up. But, being I had a new variable added to my equation, I had to calculate my answer and damn if I only had nine months to do it.

I have a belief that formed during the gestation period. Nature intended the whole process to be long, drawn out, and uncomfortable. For me the months of pregnancy gave me time to cope and prepare myself for the creature growing underneath my skin. And that is the way I thought of it throughout the entire thing. The creature, the growth, the thing inside me. I know that is terrible to admit, but that is how it was and I am not going to sugar coat the feelings I had at the time. The lack of comfort involved lead me to a state of urgancy about giving birth. It was going to suck--I was sure--to push it out, but it couldn't be worse than the discomfort I had at that moment? Right? So, with that mentality, even with the lack of glamour, it had pushed me to a point of wanting to have the buggar.

When the day finally came I felt the strangest of feelings. I was...excited!? Wait a minute. The girl who was so disgruntled about the entire thing was showing the signs of joy? If not joy, at least a derivative of it? What happened when the water broke? Did all of that anger and discontent flow out with the warning fluids? It must have. The labor was not intense, not as much as I'd imagined it would be. But, as I was told by the nurses attending me, I was a "lucky one".

Everything changed the moment the pressure was released and my son was born. It still amazes me today how someone can instantly fall in love. And I say that with every truth in my body. The moment I saw that little boy I knew what I had done was right. It was going to be okay.

He changed my life that day and every day. I watch him grow into the little man he is becoming and laugh at myself for being so stupid. To think he would hinder me in any way. He has proven not only that he belongs in this world, but that he enriches my life in every moment. And I am still that free-spirited girl I feared losing, only now I get to share that spirit with my son.