Unlikely Couple

This afternoon one of our doctor's is coming to visit us. She relocated to Chicago three years ago. She was just out of school when she started working for us, so in a way we watched her grow up. About two years after she started working, she met a young man in a club. He was a tall, skinny kid, almost waif like. He had no job and wanted to become a hair stylist. She was one of the brightest people I know and a hard worker. After about six months, her boyfriend's visa expired. She decided to marry him so he could stay. She had to go through the green card process and it cost her a lot of money for lawyers and paperwork. She did not tell her family that she married him. Some of my office staff said that he was taking advantage of her. I thought that they were really in love. It has been six years since their wedding. Four years ago she had a real wedding for her family. Three years ago they relocated to Chicago and bought a house. He is now employed in a hair salon. They are so happy together. It really was true love.

Stand By or Stand Up

I am at the age where I will no longer stand by silently and not speak my mind. If you have the right to speak, so do I. Yesterday I was at the town pool with people that I have not seen for a year. One woman there is outspoken in an obnoxious way. She will yell at stranger's children and scream if people play music too loudly. Her communication skills are extremely poor. A group of us went into the water and as we stood there talking, she started to point to a woman sitting on the deck. I knew what was coming. She began to say that the woman was "too fat to wear a bathing suit". As soon as those words came out of her mouth, I told her that I would not stand there and listen to her criticize anyone. That woman is someone's daughter, mother, friend and I bet she is a wonderful person, so who are you to say such things about anyone. Everyone standing with us agreed with me. She told me to stop acting like a life coach. I said it had nothing to do with being a life coach but everything to do with being a decent human being.

Picture Perfect

I am not the biggest picture taker but I love pictures. My daughter in laws give me framed ones of my grandchildren a few times a year. They are the professional pictures so the children look great. Each year I add to the assortment. I am at the point where there is no more room on the end table. Now comes my dilemma. Which pictures do I put away? Even though some are of them were taken when they were newborns, I still love looking at them. If I put them into albums, I will only look at them occasionally.  I can't part with any. I am now debating whether or not I should make a wall display. I like that idea. I will keep filling the wall space until there is no more room, and enjoy every moment of it.

Lola

When I furnished my first home, I wanted to find the perfect picture to hang in the dining room. In those days there were not the stores that we have now, so I was having some difficulty. My mother in law suggested that  I"commission an artist" to paint one for us. I looked in the phone book and called a woman named Lola. My husband and I drove to her gallery and explained what we wanted. I brought a swatch of the carpeting and showed a picture of the type of painting I wanted. Two weeks later Lola called to say that the painting was ready. We went into the gallery and she unveiled the artwork. It was nothing like what we wanted. We were young and embarrassed to speak our minds, so we took the painting home. We put it up and it has hung in our dining room for 35 years. When we remodeled our house this month, we decided to put the painting away and buy a new one. Last night we put back all of the furniture into the rooms after the floors dried from being refinished. The room looked sad. The Lola picture was not there. That painting felt like "home" and without it the room would never feel right. We brought it up from the basement and hung it in its spot. Everything seemed right again. Lola had become a part of the family.

Call Waiting

Years ago the call waiting feature was offered on our telephones. It was a slightly extra charge. I can vividly remember the commercial for it. There was a young girl standing in the rain with a flat tire, calling home. Her mother was sitting in an easy chair talking on the phone. The call waiting beep is heard and the mom takes the daughter's call. She then goes to help her. That commercial made every parent think. What if that was my child? Most of us then added the feature. Call waiting now comes free on all services including cell phones and now it is coupled with called ID, so we can see whose call we are taking or rejecting. There is a pecking order of importance when it comes to caller ID. Solicitor calls are always rejected. Pecking order starts after that. Who is more important the who? Yesterday, I was on the phone with my younger son, when my older son beeped into his brother's call. Within a split second my younger son hung up on me. I saw that his brother's call was more important than mine. I was glad that was the choice he made.

Super Hero

There are many superheros. There is Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman and many more. I have decided to become a new Super Hero. I will call myself "The Reprimander". I will travel the world reprimanding contractors and home improvement people. While they do their job well, they are lacking in skills that are necessary for having complete customer satisfaction. I had to reprimand my bathroom contractor for never showing up on time. The time issue seems to be a common one when it comes to many contractors. The ones that come on time have other issues. While my painter was punctual, he ran in and out every few hours. I can't say for sure, but I think I smelled beer when he came back. The floor men seemed to be normal thinking homosapiens but that was until I went upstairs at night to go to sleep. I paid them to move my furniture out of the house so the rooms would be empty. They put the living room, dining room and foyer furniture in the garage, but they moved the two small bedroom furniture sets into my room. It looked like a hoarder's house and was a fire hazard. He blocked off the bathroom, dresser and night stand. The coup d'gras was when he placed the wall unit in front of the air conditioner on an 82 degree day. I called him up, furious. I  asked if he had any common sense or spatial relation knowledge. I had an empty wall on the right side. Why put everything on the left side and block all things that are necessary for a person to stay in the room. He offered to come and rearrange the furniture at 9pm but I said no. We did it ourselves. I looked at the room, looked at the furniture and placed it so everything was accessible, including the air conditioner. Why couldn't he have done that? Did I need to reprimand him like he was a child? By this weekend things should be back to normal and I can hang up my superhero cape.

Chamelion

I would be a terrible chameleon. I do not like color change. For thirty four years I have lived in a Navajo white world. All rooms were painted that color. They looked clean and bright. When we decided to repaint the house, we went with the modern trend and added colors to the rooms. I quickly learned that there are green grays, pink grays, blue grays and yellow grays. I stood in the paint aisle until my knees grew weak. I ended up with the following color palate. The kitchen is a cucumber green. So is the small bathroom. The large bathroom is a light golden yellow. The den is a blue gray. The main level is a light yellowish cream color. Two small bedrooms are a shade darker than the main level. All ceilings and window frames are white. Now I come to the master bedroom. We did not want to make it the same as the other two bedrooms so we decided to go bold. I chose an orange tinted medium brown. On the small swatch it looked great. When the entire room was painted it looked a bit dark. Maybe I am just not used to it. It is a cross between My T Fine pudding and doody (or is it spelled doodie as some family members think). I am joking a bit. It is bold and a designer look and when the room is carpeted, it will look great. I am just not used to that color change. I will adjust.