I’ve been taking a 5 minute meditation in the morning after my Peloton workout.
In the early part of the class she says “what we look for we have a tendency to find”. Now I know this, but to hear it as I’m mediating was like a lightbulb moment.
I run a business. Most mornings I would wake up with the thought, “oh boy what’s going to happen to day”, and it was never in a “yay! Can’t wait to start my day!”
But over time I decided to try and be grateful. I wake up and thank God for this day and what it will bring me – without the negativity! Some days are better than others, because that’s life. But if I look for the rainbow instead of the thunderclouds, things will be alot brighter right?
Best Job: Programming Assistant at WTNH-8 in New Haven Connecticut. I was involved with every department at the station. I was there for almost two years until I moved to California.
Worst Fast Food Job: McDonalds. It was also my first job. I hated it. I couldn’t add up the orders in my head. I lasted 6 months.
Best Fast Food Job: Wendy’s. We had registers that we punched the orders in and it would tell you how much change to give back! I worked with a lot of great people and the food was so much better than McDonalds!
First Career Job: I started as a receptionist for the American Cancer Society and over five years moved to different positions with more responsibility and money.
Least Understood Job: Executive assistant in the Municipal Bonds Department at Goldman Sachs in San Francisco. Beautiful view of the city from the windows but a very boring job. I lasted there 8 months and thankfully moved north.
Fun Job: Working in the strawberry fields for two summers. In the spring we worked to get the field ready and during picking season we directed people where to pick and weighed and rang up the pickings.
Like a Family/Second Chance Job: I applied for a job as an office assistant for an insurance company when we moved north. I didn’t get the job but they called a few days later offering another one because someone gave their 2 week notice! There were 4 or 5 of us all close in age and we all had our children at the same time! We were all transplants to California and the office manager was like a mother to us all. I was there for about five years until we moved back to Connecticut.
Most Educational Job: I worked part time in an elementary school library for five years. I loved getting to know the kids and reading the books! I left when the remodeling business picked up and I needed to put a full day in the office. Runner up: I went back to the same school a few years later and worked in the cafeteria for a year and a half. That was tough and I finally gave up working part time for good.
Longest Job: 25 years with my husband in our remodeling business. I’ve gone from doing all the office work myself to having a fabulous office person who takes care of all the clients leaving me with the bookkeeping and social media.
Religion: “the service and worship of God or the supernatural” or “a particular system of faith and worship”.
I attended Holy Trinity School from first to eighth grade. Every Sunday we attended 9:15 mass at Holy Trinity Church.
I made my first communion in third grade, and my confirmation in sixth grade, and our eighth grade graduation was at the church.
Through high school, college, and until my mother passed away when I was 27, when I was home, I attended church with my family.
During that phase of my life my religion fell into the “a particular system of faith and worship” category. I felt like I was always being talked at.
About 10 years ago, I began exploring other options of religion. I tried the episcopal church, the baptist church, the local non-denominational church, and even met with the Jehovah Witness ladies who knocked on my door!
I found that I really enjoyed the non-denominational church because it felt like everyone was involved in the ceremony. I read and learned more about the Bible than I did in my years at school. I loved the music too!
This began my “service and worship of God (or the supernatural)” phase. Although I don’t attend the church anymore, I feel closer to God than I ever did before.
I am so grateful I grew up before the internet existed!
I think back to life in my 20s and I would have been a MESS if I had a telephone at my fingertips, never mind being able to text, or swipe, or google, or Find My Phone someone!
Ironically, the internet would have been really handy when I met my future husband in Jamaica in 1987. He lived in California and I lived in Connecticut. We learned about each other through letters and phone calls and at the end of five months I was on my way to live with him. Imagine that! I didn’t learn everything about him on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
What does “having it all” mean to you? Is it attainable?
Today’s prompt is a good one!
Can we have it all? Does the pursuit of something you want – money, a home, a family, a high paying job, better health – cause the scale to tip towards that and create an imbalance of “everything else” you want? Or is the thing you are pursuing going to lead to being able to “have it all”?
I think it’s a really big juggling act to be able to get to the point where you can say “YES, I finally have it all!”. And do we even want to utter those words because you know, that’s exactly when the other shoe will drop and then you will say you jinxed yourself. Oh, is that only me who would do that?
Looking back on the past 44 years, I had a career that I backburnered for family, but I became my own boss. I have a home that I love, but it took a circuitous route to get there. I have a family that I love, that had complications both in meeting my husband, and having our son. I have my health which I am faithful to maintain. I have money in the bank but it came at the expense of the death of a loved one.
I don’t want to jinx myself so I will say – I am happy at this point in my life. Is that Having It All? Maybe the answer to the question is another question – Are You Happy?, and my answer would be Yes, I am Happy.
I guess if I didn’t think they were “dear”, I wouldn’t wear these same four rings every day.
rings I wear every day
The thick band with the diamond – the band was my mother in law’s wedding band. We had a new diamond put in for our 30th wedding anniversary.
The thin band is my original wedding band.
The silver ring holds a Danburite crystal. I found it in an antique store in Sonora California while visiting my father in law in 2022. It was meant to be – I was getting ready to leave but decided to look at the jewelry and this stuck out. The crystal takes its name from Danbury Connecticut (I’m born and raised in Connecticut), and it fit perfectly!
The bottom ring is a worry band I bought while visiting with friends in Los Cabos Mexico. It was a splurge and I have worn it since early 2020.
I have a lot of other rings, but these 4 just feel so right together!
I don’t have collections in the true sense of the word like Beanie Babies, salt and pepper shakers, or baseball cards.
My collections are:
My vast amount of family photos dating back to the late 1800s, and early 1900s on both parents’ sides of the family. Many formal portraits including families, first communions, and wedding parties. Informal photos are in photo albums and labeled with dates and locations!
My mother’s postcard collection. She had a big album with all the cards categorized by location. I hung onto it and finally took them out of the album. Someday I will write some stories about some of them.
My yarn, knitting needles, and knitting books. I have baskets of yarn and a slew of knitting books! I kept the yarns by weight in file cabinet drawers until I repurposed the file cabinet for my ancestry work. I was going to get rid of a lot of the yarn but never got around to it. I guess it’s time to put the yarn away again before any moths get to it!
Do books count? I have a lot of those and I keep buying more!
But if you’re thinking my house must be filled to the rafters, you’d be wrong! All of my “collections” are in a very large room over our garage that serves as our workout room in two-thirds of the room and my “she-space” in the remaining part. We’re lucky to have such a wonderful space!
The garage/workout/she-space built 2006My She-Space
I am cold if it’s 90 degrees and a cloud passes over the sun.
I always wear a coat or sweater out the door in the morning and usually keep it on most of the day because the air conditioning is blowing on me, or if the heat is on it’s still not warm enough.
Does that give you an idea of how I feel about cold weather?
As long as I am prepared for it, I can be ok about it. But I will always turn off the ceiling fan when I sit in the living room to watch tv because it’s blowing on me!
It was a sunny Saturday in September of 1972 and I was 12 years old.
My childhood (and current) home
One of my sisters and a friend or two were performing flips in the front year. We would start from the steps and head towards the flag pole.
I completed a few flips, but on the last attempt I ran, flipped, and landed on the top of my right foot. There was intense pain and I couldn’t walk. We all shouted for my mother. She came out and off the two of us went to the emergency room. We waited for a few hours for X-rays that confirmed I broke a little bone in the back of my ankle. I came home in a cast to my knee and crutches.
My diary entry!
It was a miserable 8 weeks. First with the crutches, and then with a “walking cast” which back then was a rubber block they attached to the bottom of the cast. In my case even with my highest heel on the other side, I was still lopsided, walking like Peg-Leg Pete! I would have been better off with crutches. What a relief it was when the cast finally came off but how weird my leg looked!
But I wasn’t the only one who suffered that weekend….
The incident happened on Saturday, September 9, 1972. My older sister’s 14th birthday and the family party was scheduled for the next day. My mother was in the process of baking her delicious 4 layer chocolate cake with whipped cream between layers and covered with chocolate frosting. She was likely making whatever meal we would be eating beforehand.
Aha! proof that I didn’t spoil the party, just “her day”!
For the past 25 years, it has been a tightrope walk between work and home because my husband and I run a business together. Some of that balancing act involved the two of us but a lot of it, was my balancing.
Our remodeling company started in our basement, an unfinished, low ceiling space with a concrete floor and painted stone foundation walls. I faced crumbling painted walls at the bottom of the stairs and when my husband came home at 4 p.m. to start his estimates, he faced the oil tank.
Having a fledging business at home made both the work and home balance tough. Being home, I would realize there was laundry to do, or something needed cleaning, so I’d get immersed in that. On the weekends, I’d go to the basement to do/finish the laundry and remember a proposal to type or phone call to make and get caught up in that!
After the basement we moved the office to space above our newly built garage and then almost 20 years in, we purchased office space about 10 minutes away. Each step away, made the physical work/life balance easier. However, I found myself determined to put in as many hours a day as possible because once I left for the day, that was it. My husband put in his 7:30 to 4 and I would try to get in at 8 a.m. every day and usually stayed until 5 our shortly past. Now, mentally it was very taxing knowing there were things I was leaving behind but definitely couldn’t sneak into the office to take care of. I found myself bringing files home but letting them sit there and never touching them all weekend!
As far as my husband and I balancing business and home life together, we made a decision early on that work stayed at work. It hasn’t always been easy but if I was mad at “my boss”, I didn’t want to bring it home to my husband and vice versa! It was sort of weird and definitely an act of compartmentalizing but it has worked for us. After a few years, we also decided that our company wouldn’t physically work on the weekends or go to any estimating appointments. People found that strange but we told them, “everyone needs their weekend”.
My husband has now retired, but is still available when my son, who took his place, needs him. I am still working, but now that we have a very capable Client Manager and I have been able to pass all client work on to her, I am able to come in later, leave earlier and take some time off and I finally feel like there is a good and healthy balance for me both physically and mentally.
Thoughts From The Passenger Seat 