Happy Camper

I am the happiest camper today. All my boys are home!

 

Tides of Change

In the last couple of years, I lost faith in almost all things held dear to me. If somebody had said it was a growing process or part of life I would have screamed in my highest pitched voice F*&% OFF. All areas of my life change. My so called career tanked, my personal relationships were in shambles and to top it off my finances took a huge hit. So there you see, life sucked. And if that was not enough, I watched two of my neighbours lose their homes to foreclosure echoing how vulnerable the economy really is.

As the tides of discontent began receding, I became over cautious, jumping at anything out of the ordinary and with little faith. As I cringed from any little thing out of the ordinary, I lost sight of the fact that my life did change for the better and my faith never really left, it was shall I say in remission. In all the things that could go wrong and did go wrong in my life, there were many that did go right. My new career took off and my personal life is no longer in chaos.

And today, as an advocate of victims of abuse, justice was served in the Penn State child sexual abuse case as Jerry Sandusky was found guilty on 45 counts of sexual abuse and will likely serve the rest of his life in prison. As the verdict came out last night, my son and I were watching the NHL drafts and my phone beeped in a successions that I knew something big happened. I opened my phone to read the verdict and raised my hand in the air. My son was dismayed and not understanding why I was so happy that a man was going to prison. This morning, we talked and I told him the cheer was for all victims of abuse who are afraid to speak out. It's another affirmation that telling someone of abuse is still the right thing to do and eventually justice does prevail.

Boaz What?

Boaz who? Who could forget Boaz Weinstein after reading about him today in the New York Times? Smart, decisive and very profit driven, Boaz apparently outwitted "The London Whale", JP Morgan's Bruno Iksil, the trader behind the massive 3 billion dollar loss. Boaz, apparently, a London Whale himself outwitted JP Morgan's Iksil and came out a big winner in the latest trade scandal on Wall Street. Where there is a loser, there is always a winner.

It's a name that will stick with me a long time for two reasons. One it's a name I can say I never heard of and two the man is a genius in the pocket world of traders. I can pinpoint the exact time I found the world of traders fascinating, my second year college when I took to reading, or skimming the New York Times in my tony campus library. I read in awe as the doors as the feds were closing in on Ivan Boesky, another odd name for me at the time because frankly, I grew up with James, Timothy, Paul, Peter, et al. Ivan Boesky was a new one in my start of life off the reservation. I ate it up. I followed the story for years, even buying a paperback on Ivan Boesky and his ultimate fall as he was busted for insider trading taking Wall Street's upcoming new star Michael Milken with him.

I am fascinated by sheer brilliance and Boaz strikes me as one of those and he is particularly alluring because of his risk-taking skills. Plus he plays chess with the big boys and poker with celebs. Could you get anymore eccentric? A day with him would be like a tour of the Louvre private collection for an art student.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Contrived

Is it just me picking on celebrities or do I see more and more contrived things? This morning I read a tweet from People magazine on who would be the next most beautiful person of the year replacing J Lo, last years winner. All that came to my mind was imaging the hordes of over-worked and under-paid assistants and over-paid publicists clawing at the door of the editors in charge of choosing this year's most beautiful person. Then you have the actual photo of the person most likely air brushed so far beyond normalcy that the photo seriously does the celebrity injustice. That's contrived!

It pains me that we accept this not so natural and fake shit that we would not recognize the person if we passed them on the street. That's contrived. Just saying...........

Sure-ly

I am on the steps of changes that will alter my life in a very, very good way. Something I am not used to. Let me explain, in the past couple of years, when I thought my life could not get any worse, it surely managed to. Plainly, yes plain-ly, my life sucked for the past couple of years, from flooding to disease to lawsuits, I had it all. In the process, I managed to piss off the following but not limited to because I am sure some people just shook their heads and walked the other way unbeknownst to me. Let's see: I pissed off my family, a snarky iron cold boss, my husband, a drug dealer (not my dealer, I am a drug free gal).
I am sure someone could attest to being in a rut or having a slew of bad luck. So that's where life has taken me in the past couple of years and as much as I would like to say I was the victim in all of this it's not true. Pissing off people became my mantra, my inflated way of getting my two cents in and trying to change the world. And boy did I do that in more ways that I would care to admit.
On the upside, bad streaks come to an end and when they do, it's kinda normal to question every good thing that comes your way, even pinching it to see if it's real. So for the past couple of months I have been doing just that. After years at being at the mercy of horrible bosses, stalling my career with nowhere jobs, I broke out of it and accidently came across a new career that I love and apparently I am good at. But it's not limited to that, my thinking is clearer than ever, I am able to see beyond the smoke and mirrors, I am able to see past judgments and look at things in a very different manner. I have cleared my life of anything I don't like and replaced it with things I do.
All this good stuff is at times overwhelming but in a good way. So for a girl who saw the glass half full for the past five years, is now seeing full glasses all over the place and it's an amazing feeling that I like.  

The Message Just Bottled Differently

I attended something that surprise even me:  an evening with Joel Osteen.  I am not a particularly religious person and attend church and spiritual gathering sparsely throughout the year.  But something stirred inside of me the last couple of months, to fill my life with inspiration and hope rather than disdain and negativity.  This was my second church going event since December.  The first was a Christmas concert at a local church and Joel Osteen was my second.

But it's the message that initially garnered my attention, he spoke of setting your life in the direction you want, focusing on positive and leaving negativity by the wayside.  Minus all references to God and Jesus, he delivered the same message that Napoleon Hill detailed in his "Think and Grow Rich."  Mind you Napoleon Hill wrote about achieving success in business and finance and Joel Osteen preached success in you personal life and how that could be transformed in your professional life.

He preached scriptures from the Bible and quoted them.  He spoke of his own personal dilemmas and how he overcame them.  He brought out his mom who battled terminal liver cancer only living to tell of her miraculous recovering through positive intentions and prayer some 30 years later.

But the message was the same, focus on what you want.  You want turmoil, focus on it.  You want success, focus on it.  You want financial success, focus on it.  Surround yourself with positive people and positive messages.  

I remember when I was a young girl being dragged along with my mom and her aunts to religious retreats and disliking them, thinking of a million other things I could be doing than watching the reverend or pastor blessing people lined up.  I didn't believe he had the power to heal anybody and yawned in complete defiance at being there.  I vowed never to attend such silly events when I grew up.  I still do not believe he healed anyone.  I have come to learn no one can be healed if they don't believe, first in themselves and second in a higher being whether it's a tree, a rock, God, the neighborhood pastor or priest or the Creator.  If you have faith in yourself you are more than half way to heaven in my books. Our thoughts are the most powerful presence in your life use them choice-fully.

Have a great day!

The Fix

I do not understand the housing and mortgage crisis. In the news today CBS is reporting states are on the verge of a foreclosure fix that will help the slumping housing market in the U.S. How can this fix help people buy more houses? This is an industry fix. They are fixing the banks that sold dubious mortgages to people who could not afford them in the first place. It's like placating a bully with a free membership to kickboxing. And on top of that they are trying to fix the housing industry by building more homes. It sounds like an artificial solution to boost an industry that is broken.
And if the people buying the homes are still struggling in one of the worst debt crisis since the great depression, where are they going to get the money to pay for these new homes. Is anybody asking what happens to all the foreclosed homes? Not only do the same devious banks that sold these people dubious mortgages end up becoming one of the country's biggest landlords they also get millions in government assistance at the same time. All this with little or no impact on the people who lost their homes in the first place!
When news broke of Obama's Robin Hood effort to stave off more foreclosures, the image that came to mind was homeowners finally getting the help required to keep their homes. The grim reality is that most of that money went directly to the banks without even assisting homeowners.
I have a hard time understanding or even believing the fix will help the economy. So once again another industry got the fix but not the people. The Fix. If governments put that money to good use then maybe the U.S. could get out of this damn depression. It's a Goliath and Goliath world.

 

Starchy!

Is it not sad the only thing on my mind this morning was how could I starch my shirt without starch.  How sad is that?  So, I let the impulse get the better of me and Googled until I found a recipe.  For those of you needing to know this, not, here it is anyway:

• 1 tablespoon of corn starch
• 2 cups of cold water
• essential oil (optional)

1. Mix corn starch and water until dissolved, mixture will turn murky which is ideal.  
2. Add essential oil for fragrance (optional)
3. Pour in spray bottle
4. Shake well with each use
5. Lightly spray over clothing then iron away. 

That's what was on my mind today as I pack my son's clothing for Cub camp and decide whether to jump back under the cover on this second day of my period when the cramps are bad.  Starching triumphed my very inviting bed.

What else is on my mind?  A shit load of negative crap that I carry around like people carry bank cards.  The rest of my day will be spent working from my home office now that I have homemade starch.  

How's the book coming along you ask?  Pretty shitty right now.  It's haunting me.  Every time I reread the first chapter, I hear the inner critic bash it, commas and all.  So until that f&%*ing critic goes on holiday I refuse to open it, even though I have a self imposed deadline of eight weeks.  Tally-ho chaps.  

Kodak and me

The inventor of the camera files for bankruptcy today in Rochester, New York. Founded in 1892 by George Eastman, Kodak brought photos in to our lives first in black and white and later in color. So how could a 120 year company fall to its knees? What struck me was how the mighty fall and how no one including Kodak is off the hook from failure or change. This reminded me how volatile life is and that our perceptions really stamp out our future. Like a picture that captures a moment in time, it's how we perceive events that really mark our future. And this reminded me of my descent.

For years, I thought my life was a complete disaster in all ways. It began the summer I quit one of the most stressful jobs I ever had. I worked in a construction office where one day my boss was there and the next day he was in jail. I was not bombarded by press or police but family and I do not know what is worse. But when it's the people who you thought you could trust really move the earth beneath you. It was here that marked my slide into unemployment and self-doubt.

As I beat myself up at the fact I chose to work for this company, unbeknownst to me, a not so nice guy I questioned all my decisions and actions that lead to this. As I did this, things around me began to fall apart and I spent the summer beating myself up. I put on weight and a very negative outlook and the spiral just continued. When my son failed to get into one of the most sought after private schools, I blame myself for not spending more time with him and his studies. I left no part of myself unscathed.

How does this relate to Kodak, today, while I can admit this trek into beating myself up and being unnaturally hard on myself, I can say shit happens and you must learn from it and go on. Simply that. Don't lull or fret over how things could be different, just make them different. Change your perspective, even if you have to imagine it. Do whatever it takes to move on quickly, I took my time examining each and every decision I made that lead me to end up working for a shady guy. As I spent days, months and a year in my head, I lost touch with what really matter: Life.

Kodak will restructure and pull through bankruptcy by not holding onto things that didn't work in the past, as did I. I will admit cutting the chains that anchored me to the past were difficult and painful but even more rewarding and fulfilling. Gone on with your day.

 

Lynn Samuels

One day while driving I turned on Sirius to channel 107 to listen as I drove somewhere in late summer. I heard this screeching Brooklyn accent of a woman cussing and talking real fast about politics and taking callers. Over time, I became a listener of Lynn Samuels; I will be the first to say she was the type some needed to time to acquire a taste for. For instance, the time I tuned in as she ranted on and on about Obama, not in the mood for politico bashing I tuned her out.

But like wine, the more I tried the more I liked. It was not so much her politics as it was her wit and the fact she spoke like a sailor that entertained me. She made me laugh as I drove around on the weekends and captivated my interests on her broad range of subjects. It was then I learned a little about her: from the Bronx she had a long career on WABC in New York before landing at Sirius on America Left about eight years ago. Always a raunchy left wing on air personality, Ms Samuels apparently hit a few too many hot buttons at WABC that lead to her being fired twice. One time she complained about Sirius regulating her to Stars channel 107 on weekends and let me tell you she was not happy. I thought that in itself would she here fired but she was back the following week onto a new subject.

One of my first runs with Lynn Samuels on Sirius made me chuckle as she cussed her opinion about the Republicans and the last show I caught was her take on looking for a place in Arizona. Like I said, she was new to me in 2011 and I grew to like her and today on this Sunday morning Ms Samuels is missed. Maybe I'll tuned into Gayle King on CBS morings.

2011 Occupy Me

The past year had to be one of the most humbling in my life and showed its unwilling participant, me, what life is really about. And when I was not ready to face it, life found a way to come and kick me into gear. I am not the same person anymore, 2011 profoundly changed me like no other year. Like Occupy Wall Street, I occupied change or I should say change occupied me. I can tell you nothing that I wished for last New Year's Eve came true, instead Murphy's Law of Wishing ignited a firestorm that almost derailed me.

Would I change this year? No way. Despite the pain, it was all worth it, all of it. I am now a better person and truly living with integrity and pride, those my dear cannot be replaced with money, material things or not so good people. 2011 had a way of putting me in my place whether I wanted to or not. Not to brag but I have a new career that I love and loves me. I made a few new friends and love my family.

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha

Kateri Tekakwitha was officially named a saint today by Pope Benedict, although the process is not complete, the people of Kahnawake, Quebec where Kateri lies entombed, waited for over 31 years to hear the great news. For the small community on the south shore of Montreal, Quebec this is one great Christmas present. Saint Kateri was born in 1656 in Upstate New York to a Mohawk father and Algonquin mother, she was better known as Lily of the Mohawks. She died in 1680 and entombed in the Francois Xavier Roman Catholic Church in Kahnawake, Quebec. In 1981, she received beatification in Rome by then Pope John Paul II and she is the first Native American named to sainthood.