I was at a women's retreat at the coast this past weekend, which had one nice, sunny day and two that were more typical of Oregon (i.e. grey with rain), relatively good time had by all.

My fave part? A sign at a marina just down the road with small boat rentals, a business managed by a woman, I might add:

* * *
Husband Daycare
$10 hr.
Until 5pm

* * *

Feel free to reply here or at DWth - http://primsong.dreamwidth.org/135705.html .

I've just been pondering the concept of the 'five love languages' (i.e. Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch) - mine is essentially 'service', something I'd generally already known - that I feel loved when people help me out or work alongside me - with a bit of Affirmation sprinkled in occasionally.

Whether or not I get gifts, big or small, really isn't that important to me, which is what brings me to greeting cards.

My mom, for instance, LOVES getting a nice card. She really takes to heart the words printed on it, notices the effort that went into choosing it for her and keeps them. She tucks them into her books as bookmarks, for instance, because they make her feel loved.

I...er, keep them around a while but if they don't have something significant like a genuine handwritten letter inscribed on them worth reading again later they get tossed. The ones I keep are the handmade, hand-drawn ones in the same way I would keep a work of art. I have almost no use for mass produced cards. And near as I can tell, neither do my immediate family members - only my son keeps his, and then only if they had a good joke in them.

SO - I'm thinking of sounding it out with my family to consider not buying cards anymore. They're so expensive, and so often they're bought last minute and presented out of guilt. Let's free ourselves from a needless modern ritual, perhaps... I would rather have someone send me a random thing in the mail because they were honestly thinking of me than to get a pile of mass produced cards that mean no more than remembering to say "Have a nice day" when you see them at the store.

Thoughts? Are greeting cards important to you? Do they convey love? Or do they make you wish the person hadn't wasted money on a card? Is it an important part of connection in our lives, or a useless gesture? There are no wrong answers.

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In about an hour I have to do one of those rotten Grown Up things and be the one to take in one of our parakeets to be put to sleep... or whatever they do. I'm not sure if the avian vet has something like a little birdie gas chamber or what...

Gradually over about four months her abdomen swelled up until she was a miserable bird-balloon, so we took her in to the vet who drew off a huge (for a parakeet) amount of what is essentially egg white - a malfunction of the bird innards that are supposed to make the occasional useless egg instead filling up the whole bird. She was back to her svelte, bright green and otherwise happy self but I knew we couldn't keep on 'draining the bird', it all depended on how quickly it came back.

One month later and she's a bird balloon again and a very miserable one indeed. She's been well loved and had a good life, but she's only 6 so we had hoped to have her longer than this - still, it serves no purpose to have her panting and fluffing and trying to waddle around full of albumen. Poor little Sherbet. I'm glad Freckles and Millie, her cage-mates, are happy with one another so they hopefully won't miss her for very long. Freckles has been nursing her, cleaning her feathers and feeding her seeds, dear little chap.

Drat.

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I must confess that I have an irrational fear of riding city buses, which makes me a terrible hypocrite when I blithely tell my kids that they can get where they need to go because we're right near a bus stop and "it's not that complicated."

When I was a kid, we moved a LOT. This meant multiple rounds of being put on a school bus and not only having to hope IT found the new school, but to hope that I could A) get on the right bus after school and B) remember what the name of my street was and C) remember what my house looked like. >_<

Leftover echoes of that anxiety have made my inner child flail about in fear I'll catch the wrong city bus and end up in some godforsaken and unrecognizable place and NEVAH FIND MAH WAY HOOOOME...!
0_0

SO - having conquered my earlier fear of drinking tomato juice, I think it's high time I get some bus tickets and go riding around in a bus from time to time. Even though I'll probably need someone to (figuratively) hold my hand at first - and lots of bus schedules in my pocket. And a teddy-map to cling to. Even though I know my way around this area really well. And emergency granola bars. And a watch. And a GIANT INFLATABLE RAFT AND A PARACHUTE. (er, well, maybe not. But that would be comforting, wouldn't it?)

Feel free to reply here or at DWth - http://primsong.dreamwidth.org/135075.html .

Spent yesterday and today packing and hauling and driving etc. to help in the end of year college-kids-come-home thing, very grateful to sit down for a few minutes... until memories of a slice of chocolate cake I saw at a cafe kept coming back to haunt me. A Ghost of Dessert that May Have Been.

Baked a chocolate cake. Rationalized it as being a 'sort of holiday' because there was moving boxes involved and after all, it was 'kind of healthy' (non-fat, with fructose to boot). With extra chocolate. Lots of it. Daaarrrk chocolate.

It is now dinner time and all I have cooked for my family is a large chocolate cake.

Um. Yeah. Heh.

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Time to shuffle people around again already, as my eldest's college gets out earlier than others (starts earlier too, to their annoyance when it's summer) - they are in finals...seems the next three days I get to be driving over to the city whenever I have a sufficient block of time, taking empty boxes scrounged from the grocery and coming back with whatever my car will be filled with.  Thank heavens we already got a heavy bed and a futon moved, I think I can manage the rest by myself if I need to - which looking at other family member's schedules may be exactly what I'm looking at.

Eldest is going to inhabit the 2nd bedroom of a condo we have a disabled friend in, it gives her a place "of her own" for the summer, instead of having to feel like she's moving back in with parents, a sentiment I completely understand.  A friend of hers will be taking up the resulting empty slot at our house, however, so we'll still be pretty full up.  I am so grateful that we have a house big enough for them each to have their own room.

In other news, I am yanking out an English Laurel and in it's spot will go a much better-mannered native, a Strawberry Tree along with a bit of Salal.  Much nicer, and considerably less invasive.  My yard is awash in its annual carpet of bluebells, tulips, forget-me-nots and columbine and everything is looking just lovely in spite of it being a cool spring. Mm!

Feel free to reply here or at DWth - http://primsong.dreamwidth.org/134586.html .

For any who may have Who among their interests, evilawyer is hosting a basic Doctor Who friending meme over at gallifrey_times - always a good chance to find a few folks who share a love for the Whoniverse.

Come on, don't let me be the only one!

Feel free to reply here or at DWth - http://primsong.dreamwidth.org/134213.html .

Being one of those people who needs quiet time and (even better) "alone time" to recharge from the demands of life, the universe and everything I am often frustrated by how rarely truly *alone* ever happens.  This is one of those rare days when my DH is out of town and the kids are in school and I don't have to be anywhere at all.  I am almost agog over this mysterious shiny sunlight-through-clouds opening of nothingness and am soaking it up like a dry sponge.

Ahhhh.

Made one of those "chocolate cake in a mug" microwave oblongs of self-indulgent chocolatey chocolateness to celebrate, along with a pot of tea.  Painted a bit, glued a chair that's been in need of gluing for a long time, watered plants... Puttering on small things and not being interrupted is an opulent delight.  I could get used to this.

Are you a "I vant to be aloooone" person, or someone who is recharged by being in the middle of activity?

Feel free to reply here or at DWth - http://primsong.dreamwidth.org/133930.html .

Ohmigosh, we just discovered Adagio teas - they let people make their own custom blends for other people to purchase and....Cara McGee is a genius.

SHERLOCK is amazing, he's all....ooooh, smoky and intriguing and fascinating and dark and addictive.  Much better fresh and hot than after he's been sitting in the pot for a while, though.  We've ordered Moriarity (Moriaritea?) next, oh yeah...ginger is good. I want to try Watson too.

And the TARDIS blend is jolly good too, with little blue flower flecks and speckles of wood in it so it looks like it really has some TARDIS bits in it.  Tastes kind of like a nice blueberry muffin, if it were a tea.  Kind of fruity, not unlike its inhabitant can be.

Now I want to get them all.

Feel free to reply here or at DWth - http://primsong.dreamwidth.org/133699.html .

Thanks to tree-and-leaf, I've now spent the past half hour playing around with a meme, but I can rationalize that I haven't done any memes for long enough I'm surely overdue.  Besides, it made for some fun memories.

Here we go..

Embolden the ones you did before you were 11 ¾ (as far as you can remember!)
Italicise the ones you have done since then.

( I've done more of these than I expected )

Feel free to reply here or at DWth - http://primsong.dreamwidth.org/133424.html .