Life with a squeaker…

Last week when Suzie spent a day at the office with me, she discovered (again) how much she loves toys with squeakers. Craig gave her his dog’s office toy and she squeaked away on it for a bit in my office, reminding me of our own quiet home… not a squeaker to be found. It comes to this: Maggie un-squeakers toys even faster than she can un-stuff toys. So… in this home, we don’t buy dog toys of the squeaky or the stuffed variety very often, just isn’t worth it. 

The last one was one of those currently trendy toys that look like a dead animal but they don’t have any stuffing (hello right up our alley). But they are great fun to squeak and toss about as though they are a real raccoon. Somehow Suzie managed to keep it away from Maggie for over a week. But that one day she turned her back… yeah, 2.5 seconds later, the head was ripped open and the squeaker was gone. Done.

My last trip to Target I found another non-stuffed toy that holds a water bottle, so it makes all kinds of fun bottle squishing sounds when you chew it. I thought I’d give it a try. Suzie is pretty excited, tossing it in the air, squishing and chewing the bottle part, and finding some squeakers. Maggie is pacing, trying to figure out how to lure Suzie away from it so she can unsqueak it… and I sit here tiredly entertained at the whole scene and the joy caused by a cheap toy with a water bottle and a squeaker.

At the beginning of this post, I am pretty sure there was some correlation to my own life, but now I’m so distracted by my ridiculous dog chasing a toy with a squeaker I’ve lost all depth and have seriously just written a blog post about dog toys.

Maybe I should make this one of those “choose your own ending” stories:

The moral of the story:

A. Enjoy the squeaker while it lasts.

B. Don’t put all your squeakers in one basket.

C. Enjoy the simple pleasures in life and keep your squeaker away from Maggie.

D. Yeah….

Okay, somebody put me out of my misery now

Community

I am coming to a deeper and deeper understanding and appreciation for the gift of community. I don’t mean “the community” (as in an ecumenical community like the one I spent some of my young years as part of). Rather I mean community in a broader sense. Certainly a good part of my community is my parish. It is people and families we have known and rubbed elbows with for many, many years. I also have community among other groups of friends, old friends, new friends.

Just before Christmas, a young man in our parish died. He was 18, the same age as my sister. I don’t know him personally – other than seeing his sweet face fairly regularly at Sunday Mass. I don’t know his family well, and really they probably don’t know who I am. I wasn’t able to attend his funeral, but there was this deep sense of loss that whole week. Not a personal loss, since I didn’t know him, but loss nonetheless. Part of "us” has left. It’s a community loss. But his death was such a poignant reminder to me of what a gift community is, living in communion with one another, being the hands and feet of Christ for each other. Community. 

Some of my good friends came into town over Christmas. As always, they stayed with her parents and family and as always, I landed myself over there for a visit. I don’t see my friend’s family all that often these days, but I just absolutely love them. It is such a joy to land on their porch and be welcomed with open arms, not shooed away because I’m cutting in on precious family time, but welcomed into the family time and usually fed some delicious meal too. Community.

On New Year’s eve, my plans were of the last minute variety. Earlier plans had fallen through and so I was suddenly free. My friends invited me to their celebration—good times, lots of crazy munchkins. And from there I stopped to deliver a moment of encouragement to a friend who was home sick. And then on to another friend’s house for a game night and ushering the new year. I am so blessed by the friendships in my life—Community! 

The other day I came home from work to find a pan of sticky buns on my counter from a friend who lives a few minutes away. Community. (Erin – you rock!)

Today my second mom stopped in to drop off a Christmas gift and we got to catch up – something that doesn’t happen often enough. I am blown away at the depth and the gift of this woman in my life. Her honesty, her wisdom, and the faithfulness that she lives as an example to me. And the fact that she takes a few minutes in her busy life to pray for me, to buy me Christmas towels, and more than that, that she shares her life with me. I am blown away. Community. The love of God made visible.

This evening I made dinner for some friends who just had their first baby. They are very close friends of my brother and the new dad’s sister is one of my closest friends. As I was trying to figure out what to cook, it hit me again, THIS is such an important part of community! I may not see these friends often or hang out all the time, but they are nearly family to me. And I am certainly going to cook some chicken when they have a baby! And the arrival of such a sweet little person warms me all the way through—little Michael is part of this amazing bunch of people that I call community. What a gift!

Today I am blown away and thankful for the gift of community.

Resolutions

My niece Lucy recently told my mom, in her very matter-of-fact way, “I am the kind of person who needs a project.” I can relate. Lately I have been in survival mode (let’s be honest, most of 2011 felt like survival mode) and I recently told myself (outloud even) “Reenie, what you need are goals.”  Like Lucy, I am a person that needs a project. Goals. So here are my resolutions so far:

1. Fit work into my life, and not vice versa. I will not continue to sacrifice for a job that just sucks the life out of me. I will not continue to investing overtime hours I am not paid for. I cannot save the situation and the best way to survive it is to set healthy boundaries and walk out the door. (Much easier said than done). Call me on this when I’m not following this though--- I’m going to need some help! 

2. Add a weekly Adoration hour back into my life. Just make it happen.

3. Lose weight.

4. Simplify.

5. Say NO (Hello NO-freaking-12)

6. Make time for creative outlets.

7. Finish the 90% done projects: the kitchen trim, paint the last cabinet door, touch up cabinets, etc. So many projects I just stop at 90% and never finish. I want to finish a bunch of those before starting new ones.

8. Branch out.

9. Survive the winter blues by making lists of fun things to do during the winter and then doing them!

Now I need to turn my resolutions or goals into an actual plan… stay tuned

HAVE YOU SEEN MY EYE?

Usually stress makes my face break out in an unpleasant mess of acne. This time around, I’m blaming stress (and more specifically my job) for this eye nonsense. Nonsense you ask? What eye nonsense?

This eye nonsense:

We’re on to week three with the eye nonsense. It started just feeling like dry skin under my eye. And then started to get flaky, and red, and a little puffy. Now it is all three at once and with the deep set wrinkles under there, it’s a mess. One friend asked if I’d been crying… just out that one eye. Nope, just this weird eye thing. It isn’t really painful, but it doesn’t look great and it does sting some. This week it is spreading to my other eye. Oh great.

There’s been a lot going down at work the last few weeks (no surprise there) and thus I blame the eye nonsense very specifically on work drama. At home I always joke that I want to say to my boss that I need less drama and then say, “HAVE YOU SEEN MY EYE??” But of course in person, I don’t say it. I beg for less drama or beg to be out of the middle, but leave out the comment about the eye. Although I did think perhaps looking like I’m crying all the time might help my cause…

So after a particularly dramatic day at the end of last week, one of the bosses and I were standing next to each other looking for something. He suddenly looks at my face and says “What happened to your eye?”

Me: “It’s the stress, man, it’s definitely the stress”

He chuckled. “No seriously. Did someone hit you?”

I then had to explain that it’s some sort or rash or dry skin issue of unknown origin. So much for the sympathy.

I went to the drug store 2 weeks ago to get under-eye cream. Wanting to reduce the signs of aging (and stress), wrinkles (and puffiness), I even spent what I consider to be too much money for a brand name under eye cream claiming to have all of those magical powers. And yet, even using that 3 times a day, the flaky, dry, red nasty look continues. “HAVE YOU SEEN MY EYE?”

Last night, in a moment of insanity, I applied my Burt’s bees natural chapstick to under my eye figuring maybe, just maybe, that whole medicated stuff for dry skin would help. Instead the minty freshness of the chapstick just made my eye water and the medicated chapstick stung the sensitive under eye. It’s a no go… or maybe I just need different, non-minty chapstick. Or a better story… some kind of bar fight story perhaps… because seriously, HAVE YOU SEEN MY EYE?

Christmas Tidbits

Lessons I keep re-learning

1. Caffeinated coffee is STILL a bad idea after dinner…. even at a large family party. Duh.  I was still up at 2 am the other night a little wired. Oops. 

2.  The dogs are still better behaved when they see enough of me and I wear them out often enough.

3. Going to bed at a reasonable hour when you wake up at the buttcrack of dawn is just a good plan. 

4. Mass makes any and every day better. Get there.