While you around here play
Wild on the warm and far away
While you around here play
The days keep scrbbling themselves
In tidy lines

What great fun! I went to two new places and one new beach. I went to Jekyll Island and St. Simon’s Island. John and I left on Thursday evening and got down there in the middle of the night. Our friends were already there and up late playing cards. We stayed in a suite on the beach. Oh, what a wonderful thing. There was a huge jetty and John and I played in the rocks to smell the sea, it was high tide so we couldn’t walk down it the actual beach its self.

Friday was great. We slept in and dilly dallied around the condo until about two o’clock. Then we tooled over to the historical district (Later renamed the hysterical district due to the amount of laughter that would erupt every time we entered it!) to look around. There were beautiful Cape Cod style homes turned into museums, but they were closed until Saturday, so we stopped at the oyster bar and went into the dolphin shop. I was able to get gifts for my girlfriends for under $10! Go Rachel for being a smart shopper! Then we hung out at the “Rah” bar for a while. I don’t eat oysters, but I loved the company of all the people and the diet coke tasted just like it did in north Georgia so I could stand it. From there we went back to freshen up a bit and out to dinner we went with MORE friends! I had my all time favorite: boiled shrimp with cowboy ketchup. From there it was off to the convention center for a speaker and dancing and more fun. I had to turn in after all that fun, but the rest of the condo stayed up late and played cards.

Saturday, I slept in and watched dog shows: who would guess they were so interesting? Then I went to brunch at the Fourth of May on St. Simons Island with a group of girlfriends. We did a little shopping while we were at it. I came home just in time to meet up with the golfers who had left early that morning to play in a tournament. John and I took some time on our own and went back over to the hysterical district to visit the previously closed museums. They were awesome. One was the house of the Rockafellers (sp), which was actually closed, but we peeped through the windows. The other was opened due to an artists sculpture work being on display. It was a man named Fiore? Anyway, what was there was cool. Then the third house was full of photography art. It was cool too. It was an actual art center and the upstairs was used for class while the downstairs was used as a gallery. We had great fun wandering around and learning. From there we went back and freshened up for a really nice dinner at Latitude 31. Again it was shrimp, although this time it included scallops and a cool salad with white linen and a great over look onto a bay.

Sunday was a rough day. Milton went to the hospital. He came for the weekend because he said that he wanted to see the ocean again. He has lung cancer. He pulled out his oxygen hose out of his nose while he slept. His blood oxygen levels are supposed to be above 90 and they were at 40. Needless to say, it was an ambulance ride at five-thirty in the morning to the local hospital for him. He is still there. We had to leave him in ICU. They have to drain one of his lungs and they said that he would need 24 hour care, which means either a nurse in the home or a nursing home. He won’t be back up here until probably Tuesday or Wednesday. They haven’t released him to hospice or anything, but apparently it means that he won’t live much longer: like less than a two months. That’s sad. We didn’t get home until almost ten o’clock. I was glad that I didn’t drive because I got to sleep.

What a great weekend. Even though Milton is sick, which he has been sick for a while, it was still a good weekend. Milton got to see the ocean. The rest of us got to play. Whew, vacation is good.

Buildings and bridges
Are made to bend in the wind
To withstand the world,
That's what it takes
All that steel and stone
Is no match for the air, my friend
What doesn't bend breaks
What doesn't bend breaks—ani defranco

Today was a hard work day. I am not really big into being picked on and I was picked on by my super boss. This is the second time in about two weeks that I have been chewed by upper management and I snapped. I cried. With in about thirty seconds of me unleashing the first tear, the whole office knew. It hit me like a ton of bricks that I didn’t want to be here any more. I have wanted for so long to hold down a job, a good job for a year, at least one year. Now I know why I haven’t been able to do it. It is really hard. I don’t want this job and it is a good job. It pays my bills, it gives me insurance, and there are people here who are just like me in age and in mind, to some degree. My brother tells me that I have never realized how great I am. I think it is because I have maintained jobs like this one. I guess once your get your year, which I did on 10-10-04, you are assumed fussable. All the charm that you had and potential is swept to the side and the defects go into overdrive. I want to say drop dead please, but somehow that doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. I recognize that the benefits are tying me into this company and I also am becoming painfully aware of the shortcomings of it as well. I think it might be time for me to find out how great I really am.

Cast me gently into morning...

So finally, this weekend, I slept. I didn’t think I would ever rest. There was no work. There were no people from work. There was nothing work related in the least. This morning I woke up beautiful and refreshed. More was done today than ever in the Marketing Department. I love feeling good.

Friday night was dinner at Milton’s house. We had some type of pork and sweet potatoes and apples. It was delectable. There were crescent roles and salad. It was John’s turn to cook because I cooked last Friday, but he cheated because the dish was left by someone and all he did was reheat the food. I actually boiled the shrimp and cooked the chicken and rice.

The weekend was delightful. The trees are all bursting with color. The peak weekend is on its way. John and I went yard sale-ing. With his new job came a new office. It is totally sleek and urban with that touch of mountain feel. We went to see if there was any office furniture in the sales. We ended up with no office furniture, but tons of winter clothes for Iris for five dollars! I love yard sales. Our friend Tony pal-ed around with us too and he got a couple of good books for fifty cents! Did I mention that I love yard sales? I think I get it from my Papa. He loves yard sales too.

Then Saturday night we ate yummy dessert and coffee at the Nachoochee Grill. Mmmm. Butterscotch brownies and ice cream and high dollar coffee. Sunday was a fairly lazy day. There were no children in the nursery so I sat for the adult Sunday school class which meets for the first hour in the same space. They are studying “The Purpose Driven Life” which is about enhancing your spiritual walk with God via the author’s suggestions. Most of the people here in my office have read and done the book and many outside of the office that I know too. Just being an outsider looking in to the class, I am not impressed. It teaches similar values to those I have already learned in the past several years, so I just listened; then, no kids for big church, so I went home. The afternoon was filled with movies and cleaning and art renderings and the like. Very peaceful.

I’ve been working on the railroad….all the live long day….

It will be too soon if I see this office again. Oh my goodness, I work too much. I haven’t blogged in forever not to mention write anyone email or snail mail or watch movies. Well, that’s not true, I have been watching movies. I feel like I am constantly behind. My boss is even gone and I am behind.

Good news, Iris is standing. She hasn’t given up on the whole crawling thing, but she is standing. She is holding her own bottle and says bye-bye and uh-oh. She also says it at the right times. She is totally fascinated by our fall weather, as am I. I bought my annual Sweetwater sweatshirt and this year they are hoodies! Hurray! We sat in front of the coffee shop yesterday and played in the leaves and the dirt and with the new puppy that belonged to a friend (Talk about a Hallmark card!).

I have begun working on my Christmas gifts already. I am very proud of them and love the holidays. I have found a Halloween costume on line: Wonder Woman with red leather boots! It costs too much though, so I am just going to be wonder woman with the things that I already have. I got a Wonder Woman t-shirt the other day from the ten year old that spent the week with me. It is a beautiful shirt and says “AMAZON PRINCESS” across the top of it and since no one in the office knows the story of WW, they didn’t get it. I did though. My WW collection is growing by the day.

I went to Savannah for a weekend and got all dressed up and went to a couple of fancy dinners on a company junket. That was fun. It was a little scary because I have never done anything like that. But it was fun. Although, since that week, I feel like I haven’t slept. My boyfriend even said something to me about not seeing enough of me! Who would guess? So hopefully, this weekend, I will slow down a bit. I am going to Jekyll Island the third weekend of October for fun and excitement. Rest is on its way. I know I am not going to Australia or Peru or Greece, but lately I have been quite the little traveler. I am grateful to travel.