Category: Life

Life

Airport Crazy

Mary C

Airports are not for the faint hearted especially when one is under renovation/construction which always seems to be the case. Orlando airport, Southwest terminal is a veritable mess and at first glance, seems like organizational mayhem. Thursday morning I dropped my dad here and the plan was for me to park and meet him inside to help him navigate the system – get his ticket and check his bag.

If you’ve been following along, as we were leaving for our trip, he told me he could never fly alone because my mother was the “brains of the operation”. Fast forward to Thursday morning, just getting curbside was an exercise in extreme automotive manipulation, and he said, while we were in the middle of the road, “just drop me here”. I was hesitant but after convincing me he could do it, I quickly jotted down all the flight details and told him to ask someone for help if he needed it.

He did make it to his gate (he called me to let me know this 45 minutes later) and he sounded quite proud of this accomplishment. As I navigated my way through the mess of Terminal A this morning I am doubly proud of him. Fortunately, I too made it to the gate seemingly against all odds. Goodbye sunshine and hello snow.

MC

Life

An unexpected funeral

Mary C

Vacation can certainly get you off your schedule. As I mentioned previously, my dad likes to go to daily mass so the two things I planned to do in the morning have gotten lost in the shuffle: writing and exercising. This morning there was a funeral as part of the daily mass so that was interesting. It’s the second random funeral we’ve attended in Florida. Last year on the anniversary of my mom’s passing we also attended a stranger’s funeral at daily mass.

For today’s funeral, we sat in the front across from the family. The person’s ashes, photo and a dozen roses were on a small table in front of the altar and I had a pretty good view of everything, especially the deceased woman’s photo and she looked to be in her early 60’s if the photo was recent.

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Life

Shopping for Sneakers

Mary C

I realized once we got to Florida that I didn’t have a pair of sneakers down here. I had bought an extra pair to keep here but I guess I brought them home with me when I was here last summer. I was planning to keep up with my running/jogging program this week because if I take the week off from it, it will be too hard to start back up again. I also gave up shopping for Lent so this presented a bit of a conundrum.

I wanted to go to the gym so I decided I needed to buy a new pair of sneakers and after breakfast, we headed to Dick’s Sporting Goods. It is dangerous for me to enter a store of any kind but as we entered the shopping center Dick’s is in, a wonderous, almost astral vision appeared before me. A brand new HomeGoods!

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Life

Traveling with Dad

Mary C

We are barely minutes into our trip and I’ve got my first dadism. Dadisms are phrases I wouldn’t expect to hear pass through anyone’s lips. Except my dad’s. The first one is pretty innocuous as he tells me he could never fly alone because my mom had been the “brains of the operation”. The second one, about 10 minutes later was about the bathroom so I’ll keep it to myself.

I have an older and younger sister so we share them via text as they come up because we have all experienced them in their varying forms. I am currently in re-entry mode so I hear them every few minutes until eventually, they become part of the background again. My older sister who has been living with him for a couple of months will only share the doozies because she’s been highly desensitized to them.

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Life

Relationships under a microscope

Mary C

microscope

Assay: to determine the contents or quality of (metal or ore) or men

This could sum up my very long dating life! Did I assay through a long list of boys and men to find my ever after love? I sure did.

I liked boys far too early for my mother’s liking. By sixth grade, I had my first steady boyfriend. We didn’t actually speak to one another and I avoided face to face contact with him as much as possible. Our relationship conduit was my BFF and his cousin. She would say George (real names protected!) says hi and I would say tell him hi and then my face would turn red and I’d go back to whatever I was doing. Sometimes he would call me from her house and we’d sit on the phone in silence. This was the way things went until about ninth grade.

I went from a small Catholic elementary school with 20 classmates to the only high school in town and increased my class size by 400%. Freshman year I had a giant crush on one of the basketball players a year ahead of me and wrote his name on most of my notebooks. This was pretty brazen now that I think about it since he could have found out about my crush (and probably did). Well, one day in Earth Science, the teacher caught me doodling and picked up my notebook and started reading the boy’s name to the class. I probably don’t have to explain how mortified I was. I found out many years later when we became Facebook friends, I never had a chance.

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Life

Never Nothing to Do

Mary C

Another day off from work and I’m wondering why I never seem to have a stretch of time with nothing to do on these magical days. Why are there always errands? Why is there always laundry? Today I dropped Liam at taekwondo camp and Jim dropped Murphy at the groomer before heading to work which left me with a house to myself.

I ended up going to the gym but was exhausted when I got home. I cleaned a bit, did some laundry, cleaned the kitchen and it was time to shower and head out again. I meant to write something earlier but before I knew it, it was time to get Liam and run to a hair appointment. The day disappeared before my eyes.

On Friday I’m heading to Florida with my dad and I had meant to pull out my spring/summer clothes and do some packing but it didn’t end up happening. I’m so excited to have this week with my dad. We did this last year for the first anniversary of my mom’s passing and we’ll be there for the second anniversay. Last year we went to daily mass and there happened to be a funeral on her anniversay which was a liile weird. We’ll be visiting my mother-in-law and going to a baseball game but no other plans but to relax and read by the pool. I am freeing myself from housework and laundry for the week so hopefully I’ll get some more writing in! The nice thing about vacationing with my dad is that we’re both pretty easy going so we won’t have to compromise much. It will be nice to have a few days off from that too.

MC

Life

Still Running

Mary C

Today’s blog comes to you from the gym where I just completed my workout. Liam had a basketball game today where there was another crazy incident involving a ref, one of our players and the coach. This one had racial undertones which was incredibly inappropriate on the refs part. It was an unfortunate end to a great game where our boys gave everything they had.

The rest of the day was pretty lazy, spent napping and reading, and more napping. Today is a gym day but I hadn’t gone yet. I was going to blow it off and go tomorrow since I have the day off. But then I figured there is no time like the present! So at 5:30, I grabbed my sneakers, phone and Kindle and headed to the gym.

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Life

I am the Rube

Mary C

0b82b438b8b5d558a1e34090b1a153b1.jpg

I grew up in a town of about 8,000 people, nestled in a quiet corner of the Adirondacks in upstate New York. It wasn’t always quiet because a major battle was fought between the British and Americans here in 1777 at Fort Ticonderoga. The details are a bit sketchy since I’ve been away so long and school is many years behind me, but my grandmother and mother spent many years working there.

From the time I was in high school, I knew I wanted to get away. I managed a few trips to New York City with my dance school and something about city life was very enticing to me. I applied to schools all over when I was looking at colleges: Boston, MA; Providence, RI; Albany, NY and a couple in small towns like the one I grew up in. I was all over the board with what I wanted to be “when I grew up”. I went from wanting to be an interior designer to working in fashion to being a chef or an author.

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Life

Thoughts and Prayers are Failing Us

Mary C

The latest school shooting is heavy on my mind. I started a full post about it this morning, but words failed me. How to adequately convey what many of us are feeling today, after seeing video and hearing first-hand accounts of the gunfire? Anger. Hopelessness. Disbelief. Grief. Horror. Helplessness. A former student sets off a fire alarm so he could get as many students in the hallway as possible so he could shoot them. That this is not an isolated incident is beyond awful.

Our politicians have become adept at sending thoughts and prayers and have shown themselves unwilling to work to take action on legislation for mental health and gun control, both of which are needed in spades.  The Dalai Lama says prayers are not enough. They are not enough.

dalai

Let’s not make school shooting become a normalized aspect of our lives now. When we send our kids to school each day, let’s not wonder where and when the next one will be.

MC

 

Life

The Rhythms of Life

Mary C

life-is-a-rollar-coaster

I tend to get suspicious when life is going along just fine. After a while I get used to it and then when an issue comes up, I’m unprepared and knocked back just a little bit. Oh, right, life isn’t supposed to always be easy, I remind myself! This is an important life lesson that I keep trying to instill in my son Liam who is elven. He seems to be coming home with different issues from school these days and I try to give him my best advice to help him along.

Sometimes it has to do with academics – a poor test grade or missed assignment. He will get very upset when he doesn’t do well on a test even if his grade is in the low 90’s. I do not want him to put so much emphasis on one grade or one assignment. I simply tell him to learn from these situations and just to always do his best. We can never be doing everything perfectly.

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