Outside My Window

Other apartment buildings, cars, the Vietnamese store where I get my rice noodles, eggs, bean sprouts, baby bokchoi, onions, sometimes tomatoes, sometimes coffee drinks.  It is not the nicest store, but the rice noodles are great and very cheap.  There are mailboxes, gangboxes they're called.  It's very overcast and cold here today, bleak-looking, actually.  No snow, no rain, just an icy wind and almost no one is out and about.

I Am Thinking

That I should be working, that I want to go out, but it's so cold and I have no money but am expecting some, what I should have for dinner, Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes probably.  Do I want another cup of cocoa? No.  Thinking of how much I love the trivia in my life so much more than the real substance of it, that as I read posts on OS, I realize just how much of my life I want to keep secret.

I am Wearing

Clean socks that I washed in the sink last night because it's too cold to walk to the laundry room.  Eddie Bauer jeans that I got at Goodwill, my son's navy blue thermal underwear top, a bra.  I had my step and tone sneakers on to check the mail, but took them off to work.  (This is work--ha!)

I Am Working On

Doing yoga and pilates every day, getting my driver's license back (expired more than a year ago), taking a painting and/or writing course, or just something that gets me out of the house to do something that I love.  It shouldn't be as hard as it has been, but it has been difficult.  I am working on getting Fayard his own apartment, which is slow going.  I don't mean to push him away, but honestly living with your mother won't make you grow up, so it's good for him.  And for me, I grew up with 5 siblings, have had 2 husbands and 4 kids.  I really would like to live alone at the age of 52.

I am also working on getting my teeth fixed which is expensive, but not as bad as I had anticipated. 

I am working on learning to upload photos and use paint, which sucks.

I Am Reading

I just read Alice Munro's Too Much Happiness, which was pretty good, read Antonya Nelson's In The Land of Men, pretty good.  If I finished it and I did, that means I liked it.  I started a book of short stories by Eudora Welty and hated it so didn't finish it.  I bought a book called Crow Lake at Goodwill and it is boring, so put it aside to read Someone I Love by Anna Gavalda and it's boring, so I think I'll return to the Oregon Driver's manual, then to Goodwill and I have a list of authors I am going to check out.  Reading suggestions are welcome. 

I Am Hoping

For radical changes in how our government is run (this is about hoping, right?)  I can hope for anything I want, like being able to save money, getting a raise, hoping my daughters grow out of their Cinderella complex and realize that the only people who can make them happy is them.  They're young, it could happen.  I hope I get to move to a smaller southern town in Oregon to be near my best friend, and can live a little more cheaply.  I hope life in the US does not deteriorate anymore than I have seen in the past 30 years.  That's my big hope.

I Am Listening To

My son clap his hands in the next room, it's a tic he has.  It's unbelievably loud, and the local news on NPR, and my dog scratch her neck and jangle her collar.

One of My Fave Things

Can I list 2?  Well one of my fave things is going to the SE Goodwill where they have books listed alphabetically by author, finding treasures there.  I bought a homemade green ceramic bowl there the other day that I think is just beautiful but I don't have a  camera to show it.  The other fave thing is lying in bed late when no one else is here, rubbing my foot against my dog's back, who is just so silky and warm.

A Few Plans For the Rest of The Week

I plan to to work really hard, for my production at work is linked directly to my pay, so I really need to produce this week, and yet can't get away from OS.  I also will go to Goodwill tomorrow (was waiting for a check that didn't come today, so will go tomorrow hopefully).  It's going to be a boring week, quite frankly.

Random Photo from Computer File

I can't upload a photo from my computer because it says the file is too large and I can't fix it.  Sorry.   This large one is much more the color of my bowl, but it is more the shape of the smallest one.  Tedious, I know.