Kat's Latest Clay Creations

Me... procrastinating?! Nah -- I just ran into these pieces while cleaning and had to show off Kat's latest pottery creations.

I LOVE these -- and I'm pissed at her teacher who has given her nothing better than a B- on these! Excuuuuse me?! This is sheer creative genius, Mr. X!!!

The platter and the very 3-D plant pot with the scrolling extending above the upper rim are the latest creations.

What grade would YOU give her?

(Yeah, yeah... back to cleaning. Man, this has definitely been an all-day endeavor. I am seriously considering hiring Merry Maids -- and will definitely go that route in a few months so I come home from Germany to a clean house.)

There's a Cat on Kat's Keys!

Looks like it's time to buy this software!

(And if you're waiting for AFTER pictures, you'll have to be patient. This place was WAAAAAY worse that I thought it'd be. Yuuuuuk!)

These are the BEFORE Photos

I've been gone all day, every day for almost two weeks. As much as they try (and I do believe that they try), the other inhabitants of this house don't see messes. They see pieces of messes -- which is why a certain someone will scrub the sink until it sparkles, but leave the rest of the kitchen a complete mess. But they don't see the big picture. (To be fair, I suffer from this malady too when it comes to the dining room table -- my "office".)

Selective vision.

I'm tired and I need incentive today. Sometimes I'm in the mood to clean and I actually like scrubbing and sweeping and tidying and vacuuming on those days. But the last thing I want to do today is clean. So, sad as it may be, the blogging world is providing my inspiration and incentive today. These photos indicate the mess that greets me as I write this, and my goal is to post AFTER photos within a few hours.

My plan is to strap on my iPod, put up my hair, and just GET TO WORK. Wish me luck.

If I'm not back with AFTER shots in a few hours, Skype me to yell at me!! ;-)

It's a Done Deal!!

Actually, there are three "done deals":

1.) Most importantly, purchase of the tickets to Germany has been DONE!

Tom and I will arrive in Munchen on Sunday, Septmenber 9th and spend the next week traveling alone in Bayern -- Traunstein (my mom's Heimat), Ruhpolding, Salzburg, Garmish (my dad's childhood summer home) and the Romantische Strasse. On Sunday, the 17th we'll pick Elisabeth up in Frankfurt and the three of us will visit family and friends in Dillenburg, Koeln and Dusseldorf. Then the three of us will visit LAURA (our adopted sister/daughter) until Tom flies home on the 24th. Then Elisabeth and I will go to Heidelburg, Nurnberg, and where ever else we want to go (except Munchen... I refuse to deal with Oktoberfest crowds, much to her dismay!) before we fly back to Seattle together on September 30th.

This afternoon I bought a big ol' map and "Fudor's German for Travelers" kit (CD, book, etc) so I can brush up on my German and Tom can learn some (more... he took German in high school) before we leave.

2.) I'm DONE at the ad agency as of this morning. Just as I thought they should, they made the right business decision and re-shuffled resources so internal people can do the project management I've been doing. No need to pay expensive freelancers for work that can be done -- probably more efficiently since they know internal processes -- by internal staff. It was the right business decision for the agency. Plus, I could sure use a few days to rest (and CLEAN!) before my niece arrives from Germany (Sonthofen) on Sunday to stay with us for a week. So other than lost income, I have no regrets about that "done deal."

3.) I'm also DONE waiting for word about the position I've been interviewing for. Within three minutes of being told that my services as a freelancer are no longer needed, I got a call from the executive search firm, informing me that "the other guy" had accepted the Director position. That, too, was actually a really a good move. He is eminently qualified and he was very tough competition! It was tough hearing two rejections in such a short time, but I can't say I'm all that surprised about either of them.

And now I can tell you -- my competition for that position is a friend and business cohort of mine!! (He was the Director of Product at the nonprofit where I produced FUEL and CHILL; he worked there before I came on board.) We discovered that we were both finalists for the same position quite by accident when we e-mailed about our prospective job searches and quickly realized that we were both finalists for the Director position and that we both had all-day interviews last Friday! They did an excellent job of keeping us from seeing each other, and had we not discovered it ourselves, we'd have never known who our competition was.

I just left him a voice mail congratulating him and wishing him the best of luck... and telling him that I am certainly available for freelance work with the organization! ;-)

So now I can finally sleep... and clean... and PLAN A TRIP!!

Fourteen Hours and Twenty-five Heart Attacks Later...

...and I'm going to SLEEP.

The advertising industry is insane.

S'all Good!

OK, so here's the plan:

Tom and I fly into Munchen around September 8th. We travel around Bayern (Munchen, Ruhpolding, Traunstein, Salzberg, Garmish) for about a week. Then we travel the Romantische Strasse north to... Frankfurt, where we pick up Elisabeth on the 17th or 18th. The three of us travel together to Koeln, Dillenburg, Marburg and Dusseldorf (where we have family), and then on to Kassel, where Laura, our "dear daughter/sister" lives (maybe a side trip to Berlin).

Then Tom will fly home and Elisabeth and I will travel together (Heidelberg, Nurnberg, etc) for another week.

And you know what? I'm really excited about the whole thing -- as is Tom... as is Elisabeth.

So s'all good! Thanks for all your very wise counsel!

Dilemma

I don't usually write about my more personal issues on this blog, but today I wish this were an advice column and my readers were the Dear Abbys of blogland. So here it is:

Dear Abbys of Blogland,

My husband is hurt and angry because I told him yesterday that I plan to travel to Germany, either alone or with Elisabeth, sometime this summer or early fall.

I have been to Germany many times, before I met Tom when I was 16, while we were dating when I was 23 (on that trip I fell madly in love with a German man -- who is still a dear friend -- and that broke Tom and me up for almost two years), in 2001 with my mom after her cancer diagnosis and when she was in remission, and in 2004, a few months after Mom died, with my dad and my twins. I invited Tom to come with me on one of those trips (ironically, the one in 1980 that broke us up), but the two trips since then were more parent/kid-focused and I left with his blessing, but no invitation. He says that each time I "promised" that I'd go with him on the next trip to Germany. I don't remember promising, but I know that spirit was there -- part hope, part guilt.

Now I'm at a place in my life where I want a short "sabbatical" of sorts -- not from the marriage (we are generally happily married, and also very committed), but from "my life as a I know it." For almost 25 years I've been a wife, a mother, a career woman. My identity has formed more around my role than around my soul -- and I feel sometimes that I've lost my soul and my identity as a person, as a woman. My quest at this unique time in my life -- between jobs, in mid-life, with enough recently-earned money to make this possible -- is to have a chance to re-discover myself, as well as to visit people who mean a lot to me. My dear 90-year-old aunt in Bavaria has been in the hospital recently and I fear that she might die before I have a chance to see her again. My (no, "our") exchange-student daughter has been gone now for a year and I (no, "we") miss her terribly. Maybe I've fantasized this situation, but her family has a small "house in the woods" (or did I make that part up and it's really in town with a few trees nearby?) and I've been invited to hunker down there and write my novel. I envision the sort of cottage that Cameron Diaz lived in when she traveled to England in The Holiday. Surely I've romanticized the whole thing!

Why a solitary (or with Elisabeth, which I'd love but which really muddles my reasoning) trip to Germany and not to, say, Brazil... or Nova Scotia... or Yakima, Washington? Because I have a connection to Germany and people there. Because it's distant enough to be another world, but close enough emotionally to feel familiar.

Why without Tom? Because it's -- yes, selfishly -- about me as a woman, not about me as a wife. (Although, muddling it again, I love the idea of going with my 23-year-old daughter, and wish SO much that Mom and I had done this before we did!) After being together for 30 years and married for 24, I want a break. NOT to "try on" being single and certainly not to have an affair, but to just simply explore a different side of myself on the other side of the world. Beyond that, I can't really explain it (so how should I expect him to understand it?!) other than to say I feel an incredibly strong drive to do this, and to do it now-ish.

But the idea has caused great strife.

In trying to explain myself, I brought up the very fast, very "sexy," very yellow "crotch-rocket" motorcycle that Tom bought last week. I have never wanted him to get a motorcycle and fought it all along, but knowing that this was important to him for some reason I didn't understand (and never would), I transferred 4K from the sale of the boat into a "motorcycle account" for him. I couldn't support buying a fast, dangerous motorcycle, but I did want to support whatever it was in him that felt the need for one. Being more youthful? Moving really fast? Feeling sexy? Clearly, it was more that about just the yellow motorcycle for him.

And clearly, this is more about an Orbitz ticket to Frankfurt for me.

But he doesn't believe that there's any correlation between the drive for a motorcycle on his part and the drive for a trip on mine.

So now I'm stuck. He'll resent me if I go. I'll resent him if I don't. He'll "hate" me if I go. I'll hate myself if I don't. I really believe that having this opportunity now, preferably with his support, would actually HELP our marriage because otherwise my resentment will brew and grow. But his resentment will brew and grow if I do this, causing strife that will grow over time, too. We're in a no-win situation. One of us comes out of this hurt and angry and feeling not supported and listened to. One of us will carry resentment into our future -- and that is a REALLY bad thing for a marriage.

I have a free trip on a domestic airline coming, and I need to use it before mid-September. We also have a $50 companion fare within the US and Mexico... so I suggested that we go to Mexico together. I DO want to travel with him, just not to Germany and just not right now. But right now I don't think he wants to go anywhere with me. He's too hurt and angry to speak much with me right now (which feels like "punishment" and I absolutely hate it!), so I'm sure the thought of sharing a margarita with me on a beach in Mazatlan holds absolutely no incentive at all for him.

So how's THAT for airing my dirty laundry to my blog readers? Some of you might be professional cohorts, making this more than just a little awkward... but oh well!! This is primarily a personal blog, not a professional one and if I can't write about my "real" life, what's the point of having a "real life blog"?

So am I being completely unreasonable? Tell me if I am... I need to hear it! Or is this a justified request? And even if it's not "fair," is it OK to be selfish sometimes and just say "Please understand and try to support this, even if you don't like it, because it's important to me, and when I feel good about me, it helps us..."? Kinda like him and the motorcycle. Or is that a convenient and irrelevant stretch and I'm actually being selfish and unreasonable?

Should I apologize and dump the whole idea or should I stand by this very persistent notion, even at the expense of my most important relationship?

And now, heading back to the ad agency for another insane day. I came home last night with my stomach seizing and I woke up this morning with my head pounding. I really wonder how the people who actually are emotionally involved and financially and professionally invested can put in these hours and live with this sort of stress day-in and day-out. Truly, it's nuts! But I got an e-mail late least night from the VP of Project Management, saying that she put another PM on this for the day today to help me... and she listed four names as PMs for this next week... and they were all internal PMs so my name wasn't on the list. I wonder if she discovered my blog and read my entry yesterday?! (Nah...) Or maybe she's just a really good PM manager (I think she is) and realized that having a freelance PM on this project at this critical late stage is a dumb idea, so she's releasing me for rest of the week. (Damn, there goes over 5K!)

Carpe diem and all that.

Juggling Blind

It's oh so descriptive of this project and my role in it!

This is tough for someone who's used to having her head (and heart) completely wrapped around projects. The biggest danger is that I'm supposed to know far more about internal process and procedure than I could ever learn in a few days, and I don't know what it is that I don't know.

I could be dropping balls all over the place and not even know it -- until things blow up in all our faces.

To have a freelancer in such a critical role is, I think, a really poor decision on the part of management. To put in these hours on an insane project like this, one really should be emotionally invested and deeply involved.

I think it's just about impossible for any freelancer to effectively and convincingly juggle a bunch of identical glass balls flying through the air at warp speed.

One (or more?!) is bound to drop...