Dreaming Paris

Hi, A.  I ordered and received a copy of your text Essentials for Successful Tutoring a few weeks ago.  I LOVE IT!  You and your tutors have done such an excellent job of developing a very readable and useful handbook.  My directors think very highly of it as well.

I would like to ask permission to reproduce, in part, your chapter about The Way We Communicate for inclusion in my tutor handbook.  I could pair it down to a bulleted list of main topics and sub-topics, but I love the narrative so much that, with your permission, I’d like to keep it.  Will you please let me know what you think at your earliest convenience?

Thank you so much for this wonderful contribution to tutor training literature.

It’s nice to receive messages like this.

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My last day today. They gave me a nice party yesterday. I felt very loved and appreciated. I have a poster that they made for me and everyone who came signed it. I’m going to put it up in my home office, and one day it will be in my office at my tutoring cafe.

It still hasn’t sunk in yet that I no longer work there. I wonder when it will. I didn’t have to cart too much home because I’ve been bringing things home little by little over the last few weeks. I left everything so organized it makes me wish I could at least spend some more time working just to know what it feels like to have nothing to do at work. All projects completed, everything updated.

One of my original tutors, who has become a very dear friend, stopped in to see me and we had a very good chat. He graduated with a finance degree. He travels all over the country (and sometimes out of it), spending weekends here at home, though his company is based in New York, and he’s doing quite well. He is beginning to collect “toys”. His latest? A red Porsche. And his latest assignment? Las Vegas. Remember when I took my entire staff to Las Vegas for a tutoring convention in 2002? He was there, the youngest one, 19 years old. It’s so amazing to consider that he’ll soon be 26. He’s only a few months older than my oldest son.

Monday my younger son comes home from the army for a visit. I can’t wait. I’ll spend the weekend getting the house all in order and then just enjoy the time I can spend with him. I’m glad I won’t be away at work. I will be working, though. I have a lot to do to be ready for my virtual grand opening in September.

The kittens are growing, spending more time playing and less time sleeping, although, being cats, they still sleep a lot, of course. They’re very good natured. We were very lucky when we found these two. Tiger, my daughter’s cat, is finally beginning to play with them. He’ll even go so far as to wrestle a little with Numa. Numa is determined to turn Tiger into another playmate and is always attempting to get him to participate in his games with Maddy. Maddy is a little more temperamental. Sometimes she’ll want to include Tiger, sometimes not. Now that I’ll be home more, I’ll get some pictures of the three of them to post.

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The kittens are such a big part of our lives now. I could talk about them endlessly. They’re providing so much entertainment and laughter.

We’ve named them finally. Mademoiselle (Maddy) and Numa (the lion in the Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs). They fit their names quite well.

Numa keeps trying to play with Tiger, my daughter’s 8 year old cat. It’s taking him awhile to get used to the interlopers of his domain. At least he lets them near enough to sniff noses now. I can’t ever seem to capture a picture in time, though, before Tiger takes off to another room to get away from them. Every time he comes in from outside he sniffs the air and looks all around as he walks, wanting to know where they are so that he can go somewhere else.

Numa is bigger and heavier than Maddy, and he can be quite rough in his play with her, but she holds her own. She has a temper and can be vicious if he gets too mean. He’s very easy going and easily amused. It’s as though they already reflect the personalities of their owners.

Here they are cleaning up after dinner.

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Not one, but two kitties. One hers, one his.

Hers

His

Playful

Awwww

Sleepy

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Okay, so like my daughter and I resolved to be serious about this so that we can both go in on her 18th birthday and get belly button rings together. I’m certainly not going to get a belly button ring if I don’t have a decent belly to show it off, right?

My daughter has been losing weight by leaps and bounds. I see her changing before my eyes, and it pleases me because she’s so beautiful to me anyway, but now she’s more beautiful, and it gives her the confidence in her appearance that she so sorely needs. At the same time, I’m so bummed that all my hard work of a year ago is destroyed and I have to start over.

So, I’ve started back at the gym, and I found this really cool website that’s even better than the program I got to keep track of things because it sets up menus and shopping lists for me based on my goals and eating preferences. Setting it up in the beginning is a bit of a time consumer, however it offers point incentives for every time that you log in and every time that you track your goals, so it’s kinda cool to see the points rack up.

Yeah, I know, that wouldn’t work for everyone, but I’ve always been a chart/point rewards sort of person. When I was in third grade I actually spent my own money on a chores chart tracking system and proudly showed my mom how it would help her to keep me on track with my chores. I liked putting the stickers into the squares of completed chores. It even had one for brushing my teeth, which I wasn’t so good at. It didn’t last very long, but I haven’t changed. I still like the idea of organization and tracking with rewards. I probably should do something different, though, because the day always comes when I get bored with the tracking and quit. I’m going to try not to quit this time.

I joined the vegetarian team, my age group team, and my pounds to lose team, along with the team of all those who joined at the same time that I did. They have all sorts of teams so that you can hang with people who have your same likes. I’m really not going to participate much in those, but you also get points for reading articles on nutrition, fitness, healthy living, etc. Those might prove helpful, or at least continue to keep me thinking about controlling myself. So the teams email articles for you to check out.

Self-control, that’s my biggest issue. Making myself do or not do things. I’m a mood swing induced doer. If I don’t feel like doing it, I won’t do it. If I do feel like doing it, I’ll do it to the max. I’ll overdo. And hurt myself in the process, like straining something.

Happily, my hip is feeling well enough today that, though I won’t be able to do leg exercises, I can work out my arms, and I can at least walk the treadmill if I take it easy.

At last I sent my book in, though I still have half of the last chapter to write, the questions for each chapter to come up with and the reference page to complete. That will be finished by this weekend. But I wanted the director to see the progress.

Feb. 3 I start my next class toward my second master’s. I only have to take 2 classes because I completed a core curriculum and electives for my last one that can be used toward this one.

OMG! I just received an email from my husband with a link to an article about my son completing basic training. They even spelled our names right! But jeez, what a shock to see yourself being reported about, right down to the street you live on and the high school your son graduated from. Is that right? No one spoke to us about whether or not we wanted this information broadcast. How dare they tell what street we live on! Not that anyone couldn’t find it if they wanted to, but, well, it’s just WRONG.

Okay, well, I have to get back to organizing my diet and the exercises I’m going to be doing. Ciao.

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My son is now at Ft. Lewis, WA. He has been assigned to a brand new brigade. What that means is that he won’t be deployed anywhere for at least a year because they have no equipment and need time to pull everything together. Maybe by the time his brigade is ready, there will be no war to deploy him to.

At least I can breathe easy for a little while longer.

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Decent sleep, once I finally fell asleep. Didn’t wake up too late to miss most of the day. Ate a bowl of Kashi Crunch cereal and drank a cup of orange juice. Took my vitamins. Went to the gym with Astrodude (my husband) and J-chick (my daughter-she loves everything Japanese and J-pop can be heard throughout the house at times) and had a good workout. Came home and made a list of things we needed. Went out to the store and brought home more than we needed. Just finished my evening meal of a veggie chili dog with a handful of Natural Cheetos and a Coke Zero. So far, all sweet cravings are under control. After this Coke I’m switching over to Sprite Zero from now on mixed with water when I need that carbonated sweet taste to soothe a craving. I need to lessen my caffeine intake.

Sunday is my day to treat myself at Starbucks, Borders or Barnes and Noble, depending upon how I feel. I can eat a sweet, drink my almond mocha and write in my journal. If you’ve read Julia Cameron, that’s my idea of an artist’s date. I ought to mix it up and do other things for my artist’s date, but right now, a morning writing in a coffee shop is exactly to my liking. Although, I did shake things up last week by ordering a cinnamon dolce latte. From now on, I’m going down the menu until I’ve tried everything. Why have I not done that yet? I guess some things just become a thing of comfort and it’s hard to change when comfort is what you want. What if I order something that turns out tasting nasty? It totally spoils the mood, you know?

And now? I am settled in snugly on the couch, my tummy full, and ready to watch a DVD I rented from Netflix. It’s not my usual fare, but what the heck. I like Juliette Binoche.

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you wouldn’t keep on about it.

So said my daughter after she read my Christmas letter. Obnoxious child.

Your kids can keep you honest, can’t they? She’s wrong, though. It’s not bitterness so much as a sense of loss and sadness of sorts. But enough of that.

A new year is almost upon us, and I intend to make the most of this last year of the first half century of my life. And that’s all I’m going to say about that, too, because I’ve found that when I tell of my resolutions, they go by the wayside. So no resolutions, just a determination to make this be a year as different from the last one as possible. What that means, I really don’t know. But since I joined Blog 365 as Paula suggested, though I have no intention of blogging every single day (are you kidding?) I am back in the mood to blog, so I guess we’ll all find out together what making this coming year different means, eh?

I stayed home this Christmas holiday (meaning I didn’t go visit my mom and stepdad or go up to Jax to see family) and I discouraged visiting because we intended to do home improvements like we did two years ago when we scraped the ceiling and put in the wood floor, but things just didn’t go as we intended. I think that maybe my husband and I simply needed this break to not do anything but sleep because that’s pretty much how it panned out. We have been exhausted, and every day we’d start out with good intentions, but after running errands that had to be run, and buying the things we needed to do the work we intended, we’d get home and crash.

My husband has NEVER slept past nine unless he was sick. Usually he’s up by eight on days he doesn’t have to work. He has been sleeping until ten some mornings, and rarely gets up before nine. He falls asleep while watching television. And me? Thank goodness the depression is gone, but there still is very little energy. I sincerely tried to go to the gym, and I set up appointments with my trainer twice a week. This week, I completely forgot the one and slept through my alarm on the second. It was, perhaps, stupid of me to make the appointments for the morning, but I was trying to make the most of my time and try to energize myself for the day.

I’m listening to I’d Rather Dance With You by Kings of Convenience. “I’d rather dance than talk with you…”

Sometimes that’s how I feel. Talk, talk, talk. Forget that. Let’s dance.

Oh, that sounds like a wonderful mantra for this next year. Will you join me? Will you dance through this next year with me?

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You Had a Bad Year

Your year was horrible. There’s no other way to say it. A lot went wrong for you, and you’re still recovering from it. The good news is that things probably won’t get worse for you. So look forward to the new year, where things will hopefully be much better!

How Did Your Year Rate?

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I was working on this last night when my blog program froze and wouldn’t let me continue, so it’s a little later than I’d intended. I wanted it up for Christmas Day. As it turns out, I slept much of Christmas Day away as I have caught a cold. Too much sugar gives me what I suspect is similar to a hangover sort of feeling (I can’t say for sure, having never had a hangover), so I thought I was just suffering from an overindulgence headache this morning. But as the day wore on, it was clear more was going on as I developed sniffles, a scratchy throat feeling and started sneezing. Alka-Seltzer Cold Plus made the day bearable. That and a nap. Still have the headache, though.

Overall a wonderful holiday. It’s always fun to have the whole family around the dinner table. There is so much laughter when we come together, which is so infrequent now.

Just some snaps of our Christmas Eve. We decided to open all our presents this year instead of just one and saving the rest ’til morning like we usually do. Santa filled the stockings after everyone went to bed.

This is dad:

A space calendar. He loves all things astronomical.

The oldest son:

This is his happy face when he sees his wireless headset for his PS3 (no, we did not get him a PS3-he got that for himself).

The younger son:

Younger son and mom, thrilled over her gift from both sons-The first season of Beauty and the Beast DVDs (you can barely see the spine in my lap hidden by the bag) and a gift card to Borders. They know me well.

Saying thank you to those who know for the lovely sweater:

And then comes the daughter, who, after a very rocky first 2/3’s of the year, finished it out quite well. We’re all rather glad to see such a good end to a difficult year. Okay, so the green stuff has a way of putting the sparkle in a person’s eye as well.

So there you have it. Christmas Eve at the Janz’s. Hope your Christmas was very merry, too.

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