Weather isn't political. Storms don't see Republican, Democrat, Independent, Green Party, Libertarian or any other political party. Weather happens despite who is President. Storms rage no matter who is President. I don't trust the President, no matter who that is, to tell me what may happen with a major storm or weather event. But I especially don't trust the current President, who is consistently incorrect and lies as much as he breathes, to tell me what will happen with a storm.
NOAA and NWS have a responsibility to the whole of the United States to help share the latest information when weather events are pending to help people to make major, necessary decisions quickly that could result in their lives and belongings being saved. They do not need to be correcting false information given by the President, NOR should they fear for their jobs when said President can't admit he was wrong.
Weather isn't political and the President isn't my forecaster.
Monday, September 9, 2019
Friday, May 10, 2019
A post about dreaming
It happened again last night.
I've been waking up between midnight and 2am pretty much every night and last night was no different. Midnight came around and I woke up, turned over put on a Netflix show and went back to sleep for another hour. I was up at 1am cause I needed to go to the bathroom and then back to bed. I was awake again at 2am with a hot flash. After throwing back the covers, adjusting my blinds to let air flow in and scrolling through Facebook, I was finally able to go back to sleep.
That's when it happened. I knew I was dreaming but I was having a dream within a dream. In the dream within a dream, I saw my Dad standing at my bedroom door in his trademark t-shirt, shorts and Teva's. He was saying something and whatever he said made me aware he was going to leave the room and, on an even deeper level, I KNEW he was going to leave me, forever. I heard myself say "Daddy, don't go, I need you. Daddy, I need you, don't go!" I saw him smile, and move across the room. The next moment his arms were around me and for one brief second, for the first time in 5 years, I was on the receiving end of a Dad hug. I physically felt his arms around me and then I was sobbing, "Daddy...daddy...daddy," as I could feel the moment and both dreams slipping away. I struggled to stay right there with him. I woke up with tears streaming down my face.
I've had dreams of my Dad off and on over the last five years. The last time, he was very unhappy with me in my dream. I woke up devastated that I had let my Dad down, somehow. The tears flowed then, too. Last night's dream was the first time I felt like he was really there hugging me. I've missed his hugs. I miss him.
In college I took a class on Dream Interpretation. It was a weekend course, worth one unit that I took because I needed that one unit to graduate college. This morning at 3:30am, I was wishing that I had paid a little bit more attention in that Dream Interpretation class. I was also wondering, was it just a dream, or was that a visit?
Whichever it was, I wish that hug could have lasted just a little bit longer.
I've been waking up between midnight and 2am pretty much every night and last night was no different. Midnight came around and I woke up, turned over put on a Netflix show and went back to sleep for another hour. I was up at 1am cause I needed to go to the bathroom and then back to bed. I was awake again at 2am with a hot flash. After throwing back the covers, adjusting my blinds to let air flow in and scrolling through Facebook, I was finally able to go back to sleep.
That's when it happened. I knew I was dreaming but I was having a dream within a dream. In the dream within a dream, I saw my Dad standing at my bedroom door in his trademark t-shirt, shorts and Teva's. He was saying something and whatever he said made me aware he was going to leave the room and, on an even deeper level, I KNEW he was going to leave me, forever. I heard myself say "Daddy, don't go, I need you. Daddy, I need you, don't go!" I saw him smile, and move across the room. The next moment his arms were around me and for one brief second, for the first time in 5 years, I was on the receiving end of a Dad hug. I physically felt his arms around me and then I was sobbing, "Daddy...daddy...daddy," as I could feel the moment and both dreams slipping away. I struggled to stay right there with him. I woke up with tears streaming down my face.
I've had dreams of my Dad off and on over the last five years. The last time, he was very unhappy with me in my dream. I woke up devastated that I had let my Dad down, somehow. The tears flowed then, too. Last night's dream was the first time I felt like he was really there hugging me. I've missed his hugs. I miss him.
In college I took a class on Dream Interpretation. It was a weekend course, worth one unit that I took because I needed that one unit to graduate college. This morning at 3:30am, I was wishing that I had paid a little bit more attention in that Dream Interpretation class. I was also wondering, was it just a dream, or was that a visit?
Whichever it was, I wish that hug could have lasted just a little bit longer.
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
A post about nature and me
There was a spider in my hair this morning. My hair was in it's usual half bun/half ponytail, messy from sleeping. I took out the hair tie, felt a knot of hair and thought not much of it since I was headed to the shower. Washed my hair, took my hands out of my hair and there was something stuck on one hand that wasn't hair. I reacted like any startled person should, I violently shook my hand and off flung a spider...dead. It went down the shower drain. I have no idea if the spider crawled in during the night or got stuck in there when I was briefly doing yard work last evening. All I know is there was a spider in my hair and I've been grossed out all day long. I've felt like something was crawling on me and my head has itched. I remembered hearing stories of the spiders that somehow lay their eggs under peoples skin and, eventually, when the eggs hatch a spider emerges from.the.human, which has me a little paranoid! NO, NO, NO!! (Pretty sure this happened to the sister of one of my friends. She was living in Africa at the time, but still!)
The night before the skunk visited our house. It was outside, but I sleep with a window cracked open and that stinker made itself known about 10pm. I was closing windows, lighting candles, turning the air purifier on high and basically doing anything I could to get the smell of skunk out of the house. I finally blew out the candle (cause we all know it's not okay to go to sleep with a candle burning!) and went to sleep about 11:30pm only to have the phone ring at midnight. Phones ringing at midnight in my house means bad news...or, in this case, the stupid junk fax people that keep trying to fax to our home phone. Of course, I was awake then. I got back to sleep after 1:30am only to wake up at 3am, because, well I have no idea. I got back to sleep about 4:30am and then the alarm went off at 5:45am. I was kind of a mess at work on Monday.
Some parts of nature and I are not getting along these days. But then there is nature on the deck that I'm getting along well with. Beautiful daffodils, freshly potted pansies, violas and petunias. Plus the cool new solar fountain I got for Christmas and the other plants that are starting to come back after winter. The front deck is my happy place in nature these days. OH and we had a visitor back in February that we caught on camera. Unfortunately this visitor brought an unwilling guest...but hey, that's nature!
The night before the skunk visited our house. It was outside, but I sleep with a window cracked open and that stinker made itself known about 10pm. I was closing windows, lighting candles, turning the air purifier on high and basically doing anything I could to get the smell of skunk out of the house. I finally blew out the candle (cause we all know it's not okay to go to sleep with a candle burning!) and went to sleep about 11:30pm only to have the phone ring at midnight. Phones ringing at midnight in my house means bad news...or, in this case, the stupid junk fax people that keep trying to fax to our home phone. Of course, I was awake then. I got back to sleep after 1:30am only to wake up at 3am, because, well I have no idea. I got back to sleep about 4:30am and then the alarm went off at 5:45am. I was kind of a mess at work on Monday.
Some parts of nature and I are not getting along these days. But then there is nature on the deck that I'm getting along well with. Beautiful daffodils, freshly potted pansies, violas and petunias. Plus the cool new solar fountain I got for Christmas and the other plants that are starting to come back after winter. The front deck is my happy place in nature these days. OH and we had a visitor back in February that we caught on camera. Unfortunately this visitor brought an unwilling guest...but hey, that's nature!
Monday, March 18, 2019
A post about the friend who knew...
Somewhere along the road of grief there is an expectation that you will just "get over it" and move on. It's not that people think you have to forget that you have lost someone, but that grief has a time limit. Once you have hit the time limit, then they move on...and so should you.
I was blessed to have a friend who knew, from her own experience, that grief did not have a time limit. We met for dinner once every other month and those dinners were a lifeline for me. We would talk about grief, work, church and politics...a lot of politics...and pretty much anything that was on our hearts at the moment. Two hours would pass in an instant and I would leave knowing, once again, I was not alone in the world. My friend never once told me to "get over it" or served up platitudes about grief. She allowed me to be me, without judgement or expectation.
We met up in September for dinner. It had been a lot longer between dinners, as she was now fighting her own battle with cancer. We laughed and talked about everything we could possibly jam into two hours. It was so, so lovely. The next day a text arrived from her son, she had been hospitalized with pneumonia. For the next couple of months there would be an update every few weeks with glimmers of hope for healing and more dinners together, but in my heart I knew the ending to the story. She died on Christmas Eve.
So grief began anew. Only this time, the person who I could rely on to understand that grief never ended was the one I was grieving.
In my email inbox are pages of emails from my friend. Many are about her cancer fight but tucked in among those are emails of understanding, commiseration and hope. I delete emails all around them, but all of her emails remain. They bring me comfort, as well as tears of grief. I'm not ready to let go of them...and I know she understands.
I miss my friend.
I was blessed to have a friend who knew, from her own experience, that grief did not have a time limit. We met for dinner once every other month and those dinners were a lifeline for me. We would talk about grief, work, church and politics...a lot of politics...and pretty much anything that was on our hearts at the moment. Two hours would pass in an instant and I would leave knowing, once again, I was not alone in the world. My friend never once told me to "get over it" or served up platitudes about grief. She allowed me to be me, without judgement or expectation.
We met up in September for dinner. It had been a lot longer between dinners, as she was now fighting her own battle with cancer. We laughed and talked about everything we could possibly jam into two hours. It was so, so lovely. The next day a text arrived from her son, she had been hospitalized with pneumonia. For the next couple of months there would be an update every few weeks with glimmers of hope for healing and more dinners together, but in my heart I knew the ending to the story. She died on Christmas Eve.
So grief began anew. Only this time, the person who I could rely on to understand that grief never ended was the one I was grieving.
In my email inbox are pages of emails from my friend. Many are about her cancer fight but tucked in among those are emails of understanding, commiseration and hope. I delete emails all around them, but all of her emails remain. They bring me comfort, as well as tears of grief. I'm not ready to let go of them...and I know she understands.
I miss my friend.
Monday, March 11, 2019
The road to blogging again starts with a sentence...or maybe two
The words that seem to flow easily through my head in the car or in the shower tend to stop as I get to this page and the blinking cursor. That is, if I make it to a computer at all. Blogging on a cellphone or on a tablet just doesn't work for me. I need the clicking of a keyboard, my fingers working and back and forth spilling out my thoughts onto a blank, white page. But turning on a computer at night, after a long day of work isn't always appealing. So the thoughts, the words, the blog post ideas, wither away within my brain.
13 blog posts sit as drafts. On the rare moments when I sit down watch the cursor flash on this blank page, I get only so far and then I lose momentum. I can't find an ending. Wrapping up my thoughts seems to be too difficult, require too much energy and so I hit "save" and another draft is racked up.
Spending time writing is one more thing that has taken a back seat to work. Writing used to be something that I did for work. Passionate words about God and Faith and Jesus that flowed from my heart. My words weren't always written on a page but written in my heart and spoken to ears that needed to hear. Now, the words I write are about office supplies. They don't really come from my heart and, though I am an office supply junkie, I'm not really passionate about them. Somewhere in this journey of life, I wandered away from writing, and I want to get back there again.
And so, the road to blogging, the road back to writing starts now. With one sentence, and then another, and another, and another...
13 blog posts sit as drafts. On the rare moments when I sit down watch the cursor flash on this blank page, I get only so far and then I lose momentum. I can't find an ending. Wrapping up my thoughts seems to be too difficult, require too much energy and so I hit "save" and another draft is racked up.
Spending time writing is one more thing that has taken a back seat to work. Writing used to be something that I did for work. Passionate words about God and Faith and Jesus that flowed from my heart. My words weren't always written on a page but written in my heart and spoken to ears that needed to hear. Now, the words I write are about office supplies. They don't really come from my heart and, though I am an office supply junkie, I'm not really passionate about them. Somewhere in this journey of life, I wandered away from writing, and I want to get back there again.
And so, the road to blogging, the road back to writing starts now. With one sentence, and then another, and another, and another...
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