Why can't we all get along???

It's been an interesting day today. I left work with the thought, "Why do adults find it necessary to play games?" I have an acquaintance that seems to go out of her way to cause difficulty for other people. She's somewhat passive-aggressive so she never confronts people when she plays these games, she always goes behind their backs. I've watched her do this to people for several years. She's absolutely masterful. She slowly undermines until she gets her task completed. If someone calls her out on her games, she turns it into a situation where she acts as if the other person is being paranoid. Well, I fell victim to her agenda today.

It makes me wonder what makes a person feel that they need to act like this? Is it a control issue? Is it a self-esteem issue -- maybe these people feel that they need to knock other people down to feel better about themselves....OR are people that play these games just mean? Do they take pleasure in making life hard for others?

I guess the bottom line in my opinion is..........life is too short to play games. While it may be naive of me to ponder the thought........why can't we all just get along?

End of the Weekend

The three-day weekend is over. I had looked forward to it for a month. It was a pretty good weekend. My daughter came home from a ten-day mission trip, I got to see my wonderful grandson all three days of the weekend and had a little bit of down time.

It's funny that I look forward to the weekends and the down time they bring when, most of the time, the down time that I crave happens during the work week in the evenings. There's something nice about the routine and predictability of the work week that I definitely appreciate.

Hopefully this week will prove to be a good week with low levels of stress and frustration and high levels of happiness and peace.

Empty Nesting Over

My teenaged daughter comes home today after a ten-day mission trip. In anticipation of her being gone, I thought about how much reading and relaxing I would be able to get done. I had great intentions of getting into an exercise routine. How much have I read? Maybe 10 pages. How much relaxing have I done? Not much. Did I get into an exercise routine? Nope. What did I do? I have no idea. I've been busy the whole time she's been gone, but when I think back over the last nine days I couldn't tell you what I've been doing.

As I sit here this morning surfing the internet, it makes me wonder how much of my time I spend mindlessly looking at Facebook, checking email, looking at author blogs....the list goes on. Could I have spent the last nine days surfing the internet in my spare time? Surely not. I went to work. I've gone to puppy training class a couple times. I went to book club. I went to an author reading and signing. I went shopping with my daughter a couple times. I had dinner with my daughter, son-in-law and grandson one night. Life.

When it rains, it pours!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Trying to get to church this morning started last night. My grandson's first birthday party was last night and I had some ice cream and a little bit of his birthday cookie -- this probably wasn't the best idea since I've been on a diet for about seven weeks and have not really eaten anything too rich for that long. The gurgles started at the party but got really bad last night about ten o'clock. The gurgling in my digestive system was every bit as loud and volatile as the thunder storm that was rolling through outside. I wasn't able to sleep for more than about an hour at a time.

At eight o'clock this morning, I started trying to wake up my daughter. I got a grunt in response so I asked her if she was awake and got a droopy, "yeaaaaah." I tried to wake her up three more times, before I decided to go back to bed. I sent her a text message that said, "I'm not getting up until you do. I don't feel good and I didn't sleep well. Let me know when you're up." At 8:41, I finally get a text message from her saying, "I'm up." So.............I get up and jump in the shower.

The fighting ensues with my daughter. As I'm getting ready to go, my daughter comes out of her bedroom in a blue and white vertical striped button-up shirt and black, gray and white plaid shorts and tan shoes. I tell her to change her shirt. She gets mad and tells me it's fine. I tell her that she needs to change her shirt because the clothes don't even remotely match. She gets mad and turns around and slams her door.

She soon realizes we're not going to make it to Sunday School on time and she thinks it's my fault. I tell her that if she'd have gotten up when I tried to wake her up four times, this wouldn't be an issue. She and I continue to bicker and I'm turning my blow dryer off and on so that I can hear what she's saying. So....the smoke starts billowing out of my blow dryer. I unplug the blow dryer and the smoke thankfully immediately ceases. I look at myself in the mirror and see that my hair is still pasted to the sides of my face because it is that wet. I grab my brush, my makeup and go downstairs.

We finally get out of the house to drive the 10 miles across town to the church and we're making good time. We're going to make it on time. It's 9:21...we can do it. We're 18 blocks away. What happens??? Detour!! I couldn't believe it! The detour takes us a couple of miles out of the way! Arghhhhhh!!!!

Believe it or not, the story is actually even longer than this if I included all of the things that happened this morning, but.....we made it to Sunday School on time.

Puppies

Life with a puppy has proven to be very interesting! We brought our 1o-week-old Yorkie-poo, Bailey, home last week to the dismay of our two cats -- these cats both weigh a good 10-15 pounds if they're an ounce. One would think that since Bailey weighs all of 2.8 pounds, that she wouldn't completely terrorize these two cats....but she does! Bailey barely ever barks, she plays with her toys and sleeps and then she sleeps some more, but for some reason these two cats are completley intimidated by her. She is, indeed, the alpha dog of the house!! It will be interesting to see how this unfolds!!