Rainy Days and Mondays

After the very relaxing and quiet Sunday we had, waking up to Monday was a little hard. My Bob especially gets stressed on Mondays. The start of the work week and the pressures puts him in a foul mood. And his office is in our home, so I hear about it all day. As the week goes on he settles back down. There are a lot of pressures on him and I wish I could make it all calm down for him, but there's not much I can do other than listen to him and understand. He's a Financial Planner and does well, but this has been a very trying year. What used to be a good and fun career is now very difficult with many changes. I don't know how he does it and I'm amazed at how knowledgeable and intelligent he is, but I hope it becomes fun again some day soon. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I work with him doing mailings, paperwork, bookkeeping, etc.

Mondays for me is busy, but I actually enjoy it. I keep a pretty tight schedule for myself during the week days. Mondays I wash the sheets and clean my bedroom and bath. I do the laundry and some ironing, clean the guest bathroom and usually I clean the hard wood floors and vacuum the main floor. Today, though, I knew more rain was coming later this afternoon so I worked outside trimming more of my row of hedges in the front of the house. With all the rain, they are just out of control and the weeds are ridiculous.

With Bob taking on the responsibility of income, I try to take care of everything else and make our home and life as comfortable as I can. We have a large house and a big front and back yard so I need to stay on a schedule or I can't keep up with it all. I am cursed with being a perfectionist which causes me more work than is probably necessary, but I have no control over my neurotic ism.

Austin, my oldest son, came out for lunch. He starts his new job as Air Force Recruiter on Wednesday. So today he was out taking care of some things he needed to do, then wanted to work out so he came to our house. Bob has weight equipment in the back of our garage. People come here all the time to work out. Bob is a part time personal trainer, pro bono. He loves it. I always told him that was his natural calling. He should live in Hollywood and be a trainer to the stars instead of dealing with all this financial mess. Yea right - that's not going to happen!..Or he'd be great as one of the trainers on "The Biggest Loser". That's not happening either, but he really would be good.

I just listened to the weather for the week and it's supposed to rain every day through Friday and temperatures in the upper 60's to 70. Great fall weather, except it's summer. Doesn't really feel like it.
Hopefully tomorrow feels a little more positive, especially for my Bob. When he's down, I'm down. You know you love someone when you wish you could take their pain, or misery on yourself so that they would feel better. Of course, all the rain and clouds don't help.

Just a Few Quickies

I've gotten a little behind in my blog reading and writing. Life gets in the way sometimes. So first of all, I have spent this rainy, gloomy Sunday reading and getting up to date with all my friends out there. I can't possibly take the time to comment on all, but I want all of you to know I've read them all and I'm all caught up.

Second, I feel so bad about all the celebrity deaths this week. I'm sad about Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett. They were both ill and it's not that these were so shocking as they were a loss of reminders of my childhood. I watched the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Ed as often as I could and in my opinion, there's been no one yet to replace them successfully. Farrah Fawcett was an idol to this young Nina. I had the Farrah hairdo as a teenager and even did some amateur bathing suit poses trying to look like her. I always thought she was beautiful, until the day she died. Then there's Michael Jackson. That was a shock. He was a little crazy in later years, but I loved watching him perform. No one can deny that he was a musical master. Such a sad life, though. Now today, Billy Mays. I don't know much about him, but it seems everyone knows his name and face. And again, only 50. They say these deaths come in threes, but the list seems to be growing fast beyond that.

Third, this weather around here stinks. We have about one good summer day and then four or five cold and rainy. Summer in Western PA is too short to have this many bad days. My flowers are getting too much water and my brain is not getting enough sunshine. I try to make the best of it and get caught up on inside projects and hobbies.

This has been a relaxing, do what I want, and sit on my butt all day kind of day. And I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I needed it. Nobody is calling, nobody is stopping by, and I may just have cereal for my Bob and me for dinner. Good thing I don't have too many days like this or I could get real lazy and fat.

Attitude Adjustment

When I sat down tonight to read the new posts for the day, I already had in mind what I was going to write in my new post. But I'm happy to say I've changed my mind. I was all set to complain about some things that were bothering me and that I was mad about. Then after reading some very inspirational posts tonight I've changed my attitude. In particular, I'd like to thank Joan at http://50somethingwoman.blogspot.com/ and Stephanie at http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/ . And then I actually inspired myself after reading Amber Rose at http://opinionatedarewe.blogspot.com/ I gave her some words of advice in a comment, and I made myself realize that I needed to take my own advice. Sometimes knowing something and actually doing it are two different things. But I'm going to make my actions speak now.

I was very upset after hearing that my DIL's brother, Ronnie, is moving back here upon his release from the hospital tomorrow from his very serious car accident with my son's car. But now I've decided I need to pray for Ronnie's health and recovery and hope that this doesn't affect Austin and Melissa's life, marriage and happiness. There, now I can release it. That's all I can do. It's not my problem.

As I told Amber, a rule of life that I try to follow is to eliminate all that is toxic in my life. Whether it be food, people, thoughts, habits, etc. Doing what you know to be best can be difficult and you need to be reminded once in a while. So my thoughts need to turn to the positive. I can feel the weight lift a little already. I'm still being troubled by these headaches and I think a change in my thinking and attitude may help this. I may even sleep a little better, too. I'll let you know tomorrow how this works out.

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there. And I want to acknowledge the Fathers in my life. First there is my Grandfather. He's 94 years old and I wish I had a picture to download for all to see. He's still very handsome, but more importantly, he has been the best Grandfather anyone could ever have. It all started with him being a great father to my father.
My father is the best father a daughter could ask for. If you were able to choose your own father, I would still choose him. He even loves my Ellie Mae (black toy poodle) as his own.
My Bob is such a good father to my two sons. He's also so loving and very close to his grandchildren. (Sorry these pictures are a little blurry. I need to work on my photography skills)

My oldest son, Austin, never planned on being a father at soon as he was, but he certainly learned how to be a good father from the best, his own father. It is the strangest thing to watch your own children become parents.

My youngest son, Brandon, is a brand new father, but I can already tell that he absolutely loves the role of father to his beautiful little girl, Riley.

I believe the best thing we can do for our grandchildren is to be good parents and role models to their parents. It's not always been an easy thing to do, but we always try our best.

And to have Father's Day fall on the First Day of Summer made it a very "feel good" day.

Hope it was the same for you.

Too Much!

My posts seem to get so long winded. I need to shorten them up a little. There just seems to be so much going on in my life right now and I feel this need to go into too much detail, I guess.
Little Fergie boy is doing much better. He's back to his hyper little self. Thank goodness.
Melissa, DIL, went back to New York to visit with her mother and check on her brother, Ronnie. He's still in the hospital and about the same. Austin (my son) stayed home with the boys. Because I'm his mother, I feel bad that now he is without a car due to no fault of his own. The poor guy gets back from San Antonio after 8 weeks away, and was so excited to come home, and has to come home to all this chaos of no car, brother in law in the hospital, and his wife leaves. No matter how old your kids are, as a mother you always want to try to fix all their problems, but you can't!
I visited my grandmother in the nursing home yesterday. We're pretty sure she's had another mini stroke. She has no use of her left side, she weighs 75 pounds, can barely speak and says she has constant pain in her abdomen. It's so sad. She's 93 years olds and tells us she wishes she would die. It's very hard to witness.
I had my monthly hair appointment. I keep my hair very short and usually go for a reddish brown color in fall and winter and then lighten up with blond foils in the summer. Because of my place in life now I'm just tired of messing with the color. I told my hairdresser to let it just go natural and she said she wouldn't let me do that. I guess my real color is a very boring brown with gray. So we compromised and just did about 10 foils in the front only. I like it for now. I'll have to get a picture to see what you think.
Today was spent helping out with the First Annual Modern Day Soap Box Derby race in our small town. My dad started it up again after over 50 years. He raced in the Soap Box Derby in the early 50's. I'll put up pictures and more on this another day.
It's after 9:00 pm and I've been up since 6:00 am. But now we're awaiting some friends that have come into town for the night and have asked if they could spend the night at our house. Of course we said yes, but I don't think we'll be able to stay awake. I feel like Motel 6 and I'll "leave the light on".
Is it considered rude to not answer your phone or your door? I'm tempted!