Peace after War

I was reading this story of how this American pilot that 62 years ago bombed a city in Japan, went back and met one of the survivors. Amazing to think that he landed in the city that he bombed and destroyed 62 years ago. But what is more amazing is the fact that he actually shook hand with one of the survivors, they sat down and talked about that day, viewed in different prospectives, one from the air and the other from the ground. The Japanese guy deserves all my respect for being so cool and not killing the American right there where a lot of people died because of him.
See, I am not that nice! I can get angry with people for much less, so for example, I got a letter at the door 2 days ago telling me that there was a package shipped for me and since they didn't found me home, they send this package to one of the mail centers. The problem is that they send it to this center that is about 30 minutes drive from where I live. So I call them and ask them to bring the package from the far away center to one that is very close to me. The girl typed a lot of stuff for about 10 minutes and at the end she gave me this confirmation number. And when I come home today, I find another letter at my door telling me that the package is still at the far away center waiting for me to pick up!!! I call and I was hoping it was a problem as it really should have been to the center close to me. Nope, not a mistake, the guy really didn't read at all all the notes the girl wrote for him but just kept the package back. Because it is Friday, the chance to have the packaged moved to the close center was Monday! Very angry I decide to drive to that place and just pick it up myself. Get there and the guy looks at the letter and tells me that it will be available at 7 pm ( was 6:30) off course I started telling him how incompetent his pairs are, idiots that don't know how to read and I was kind of glad there were some other people there to hear how much that postage service sucks! Waited there for 30 minutes, my daughter started crying and I didn't bother myself at all. At 7 pm the guy goes to the back office and I get in the front desk again and started ringing the bell they had there. The guy came back and asked for all the things he needed, asked me also to sign and passed the thing to sign to me like I was going to fetch it, very rude! Well, I did the same, sign it as bad as I could and just push it to him. I am so angry with these idiots that are not capable to read notes, have very little school, but work for some sort of Union, have a steady salary and just think they are someone!! I can't have the Japanese attitude and be cool, I am hot blood and I want to make sure that someone will pay off my anger! Is it bad? Maybe, but I am not the kind of person that gives you the other cheek if you slap me. Nope, I will very much want to brake your nose and hear you being hurt! Something is going on, even the palm reader (at the work's Halloween party) told me that I am a nice person but I will toughen up as I get older because I will realize that life is tough. Maybe I am getting older and tougher. It is in human nature to be angry and let it out. Look at this picture and tell me that we should not be angry! And by the way, is not my kid!

Some poetry I liked

So I found this website that has condensed versions of a lot of books. You can find it at http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/ , it's funny. One of my favorites is Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

But this one is just a poetry that I heard about and when I read it, I liked it.

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Feeling like an idiot

Somebody take the e-mail away from me!
I have been busy lately, at home and at work. Worked till late from home to finish some work that I am not able to finish at work because I can't concentrate there with all the interruption. That means that I have slept not as much as I would have liked to. At home, I am also working on setting this routine with my husband that he is that takes care of the kid in the morning and I'm the one that does it on the evening. So every morning has been a battle to leave home without doing anything else but get myself ready. My husband complains and creates reasons why should I be the one to take care of the child in the morning and I'm the one that closes the ears and leaves the house, so he is forced to leave bed and get the kid ready for daycare. Lat weekend I had over some visitors that are very nerve racking. She is such a bitch that is impossible to have her around for more than one hour and not do something to piss her off and turn on the bitchy side of her. On the other side, my family is asking me to go visit them for Xmass and I want to but it's expensive and cold to travel over the Ocean with a small child. Sometimes I think I should go by myself but I know that they are 60% interested to see the child and 30% for me and 10% for my husband.
So in short, not a good week, feeling tired and busy. When I am like this, the button that activates "I can take care of anything" mode is turned on inside my head and I can become a complete annoying-chatty-silly-idiot person. My husband would also say bitch-frigid as well.
And one of things I should keep away when I am like this is e-mail, the thing that makes me write things that can't be modified or erased or have a chance to re-interpret. And today I sent this e-mail to my whole team and of course the big boss included there. He sponsored to pay for our XMass lunch and I made this comment that it feels like a charity case!! How idiot am I?!!! Idiot to write this on an e-mail!!
This will make me shut-up for a while but the thing is that it is said and send and it shouldn't have to!I have to learn to prepare the e-mail, keep it minimized for 15 minutes and then re-think if should I send it or not!! That's it, but, how hard is it?! Oh man, I just feel like a moron!

3 is the new 2

Oh the pressure! All my friends are having their second kids and I'm behind!!! In the last month I have called 3 friends and they very happily have told me they are pregnant with the second child. My birthday just passed and everybody wished me another child. When i talk with the moms that have 2 small children, none of them is sane. One of them was complaining about some other moms she meets in a moms-get-together-thingy place, where a lot of mom in their 40-s, well set financially and professionally (that's why they have had the children so late!), tell her that she must have another child because "three is the new two"!
The only thing these moms are happy about, is the fact that they are on the way of having the children out of diapers. And I haven't started yet... so they put some more pressure on me about that.
The last one that told me was expecting a child, is this ex-student of mine, 8 years younger than me. He already has one child and now he said "I passed you :)", and all I could say was "I wasn't racing!!".
What is the problem with the world?! Why do you have to follow patterns or otherwise you will be reminded that you are behind with the plan?! These are the steps you have to follow in order to be not bothered
1- finish school, better a Master degree
2- get married in your 20-s
3- have one child and look happy
4- have the second child and keep looking happy
5- somewhere in between, make carrier
6- start pushing your children with bullet one and continue in order

I know I want another child just for the sake of the first one, but I will start on my own time. Why people want me to have another child but no one offers any help around. Why no one wishes me more help, more peace, more sanity and more time for ME!
No one asked me what did I do on my birthday... but here is what i did:
1- my daughter in the morning didn't sing happy birthday to me because there was no cake around
2- I took the day of from work so I could enjoy my birthday but my manager asked me to take it as a day of from my vacation
3- my husband expected me to keep the child at home since I didn't go to work. But I didn't, I sent her to daycare just like any other day. He made sure to bring it out of his chest as the next day when I was buckling her up in the car seat and the strap was not set properly, he said 'at least pretend that you care about your child'!
4-I spent some time taking care of myself, just like a woman should do often, you know, waxing, facial, shopping for nice clothes. And that was the best time of my day.
5-I felt guilty and I took my child early from daycare and with here I went to buy a cake for myself. We picked the cake she liked. Later that night, when there was a lit candle on the cake, she made sure she was the one to blow up the candle but finally she did sing happy birthday to mommy!

And now I have to have another child because "I'm late with the plan". I do not know about the other couples but I am not ready mentally to have another child. Work load does not help but I do not want to be left behind with my work and my finances. I wish I was doing better with my carrier and make steps but for now just working the load. I don't know how the other do it, seriously! What am I doing wrong or not doing at all that I am not like them? I am not stepping up with carrier ,I am not having the second child.. oh, and my weight is not going down after all the care that I try to take... I better make a good list of objectives for the next year as this one didn't bring more than failures until now.

Me, today

This is the e-mail I sent early this morning to my team:

Last night, on my way home, my car stalled on Gardener, just didn't want to go. I discovered that the variety of honks on the cars around me was very wide! Luckily, I was able to start the car, exit Gardener, park at the parking lot of an Anglican church (was empty and free to park :)), called road assistance and watched my car being towed away to my dealership from a red pickup truck! The driver of the cab I took to get home was 52, had 9 children with 4 different mommies and was expecting another one from his 6-th wife. I went home and had 2 Advils!
All this on the day of our 4-th wedding anniversary! I just feel like the main character on a British comedy!
This just hasn't been my week. Needles to say, I'm just staying home today.
Yeaaah, yeaah.. I hear you... "My beautiful new car" just let me down! All I can think is "Must be running Vista"! :)

Have a great Thanksgiving guys!

Making birthday cake

So my child turn 3 last week and I decided to be a good mom and make the birthday cake from scratch. Since there would be 2 parties, one at the daycare and one at a playground with close friends, I had to make 2 of them. In order to make a cake, I found this little book with ideas for kids birthday parties and I picked the one that looked more fun and easy, "The Mountain candy cake", which was a cake covered in gum balls, very colorful and fun! So I went to a specialty store and bought all the tools you need to decorate a cake, a big cake pan and lots of sugar, eggs, flour, butter sticks and lot and lots of icing!
So on her birthday I made the cake for the daycare. I made it with whole grain flour which was a big mistake as the cake didn't raise, was very heavy and was not white. I followed the recipe for the icing and didn't come out sticky at all so I couldn't do the decoration like the picture on the book. And then I came up with my version of the cake. My child wanted a Diego cake and not a candy mountain, so I made the Diego cake with some gum balls. Ta-taaa, here it is:



Kids at daycare called it "Diego party" instead of Birthday Party :) Not bad as a first cake! Now I had to make another cake for more people and some of them adults, so the quality had to be better. So my husband and I decided to make it with layer of chocolate and vanilla. He made the chocolate layer and I made the vanilla one. Then we made 2 big batches of icing to cover all these layers and then we had to make the decoration, of course with Diego again! After all this, I had the second cake made from scratch and look like this:



At the playground, there were a lot of other birthdays going on but they declared our cake "the hugest cake of the day"!
So, I did check one more thing off the list of the things to be a mom, - Able to make birthday cake from scratch!

Dating...How?When?Where???

So, I've been married for a while now and as you might guess, I'm not in touch with the "market" out there. But I have a friend that is not married and is looking to get into my side of fence. But how can you do that now days?

1- Quick Introduction
is the case when someone takes someone by hand and tells : Jenn this is Ben, Ben this is Jenn. Jenn has 1-2-3 good things and Ben has 1-2-3 good things. Ben and Jenn say :OH! Interesting! And then the person leaves and Ben and Jenn are supposed to work things out themselves
2- Long Introduction
is the case when someone tells to Jenn everything she wants to know about Ben plus some good feedback about the fact that Ben is one of the bachelors that all the girls are after. This person tells to Ben as well everything he wants to know about Jenn and also mentions the fact that there is another guy that is trying to get close to her. After this both Ben and Jenn want to meet and this person gives them the phone numbers and Ben calls first and so on...
3- Blind date
Someone tells to Ben that knows this girl called Jenn and thinks that it might work between them. Ben asks this person to check if Jenn wants to meet him. Jenn says: "Oh what the heck, ok!" and they go out for a coffee or a bier and goes from there.
4- Online dating
Where people can pretend they are someone else, chat, call and then meet.
5- Family findings
When someone related to you comes to you or your parents and says that has met this person that fulfills all the condition the family is looking for out of the future in laws and after some questions they decide if the girl and boy should meet, how and where and when.

Depending on your personality, number of limits and conditions you put, urgency and family pressure one of these works better than the other. So I made the mistake number 3 with my friend and got stuck into getting a "No" from her. So she actually didn't even want to go and meet the guy for a coffee while he was ok. I got so confused and shocked and a little angry with the fact that she actually wanted to know much more about the guy before she mets him and she wanted this info from me. So I was supposed to get all the answers from the guy, get to her and maybe she would accept to go and have a coffee with the guy and find out on her own most of those questions!! I thought this was just terrible! But another thing I learned is that my friend is geographically limited and the country from where the person is is very important to her. The number one on the list is the country where we are born. Guys from other countries were in the list only if she would fall in love with them by herself... right, I forgot one of the options:

6- Fall in love
is the case when two people fall in love without any external input

I can not believe that a single person would not want to go to meet someone that a friend is recommending. This because I know she is totally against on-line dating and the chance that she will fall in love is not high in my point of view. What makes me angry from all this is that at this point she does not evaluate my opinion, the fact that I think that guy might be right for her is not good enough. BUT, if she would like the guy and I would talk bad about him, pointing out his bad sides and I would say that "I don't think this would work!", she would totally listen to me and maybe give up to the guy!!!
So ....
WHEN
do we listen to other peoples opinions and when do we stop listening to them and stick to our own ?
HOW
are we suppose to meet new people if personality wise we are not very outgoing and the wall of conditions is thick?
WHERE
are we expecting the introductions to come from when friends and family are saturated in their connections?

I guess the first thing should be to have an open mind. I like to think that I have an open mind...maybe that is the one that married me when the pressure from family was at the peek ... not that this is the most important thing you will do on your life... ohhhhhh nooooooooo... but is one of them.