Embrace The Suck

[See Part I below] "Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best." Theodore I. Rubin That's my girl. I don't have the exact time but I think she finished at or about her desired time of 3 hours. Woohoo, Weneki! Woohoo! You Rock! I swear you Rock! Who loves you more than a cold slice of orange after a hard fought race? Today I'm grateful for cell phones and Iphones and computers and whoever invented the technology to keep me close to the action even though I'm about 3000 miles away. I'm grateful to friends and relatives who were there to cheer Weneki on. I'm grateful for a big plate of Mexican food smothered in guacamole, sour cream and cheese which made me feel the tiniest bit better about not being in Seattle this morning. Wishing for you success in all you do, Merry ME

"Victory isn't defined by wins or losses. It is defined by effort. If you can truthfully say, 'I did the best I could, I gave everything I had,' then you're a winner. Wolfgang Schadler My daughter, Weneki, is about to set out on what I might call a trepidatious journey. For her, however, it is the culmination of months of exploration, determination, and hard work. At 7:30 Pacific time she will participate in her second Triathlon. It's a little more strenuous than the one she did back in Sept. of 09 , each event will be longer and harder. Sadly (for me) I won't be there to watch. Back when I was making the decision not to go it made sense on a lot of fronts to wait til another time. Right here, right now gotta say I think it was one dumb decision. When Weneki was about 10 or eleven she entered a mile road race and to everyone's surprise, because she had never run before nor trained at all, she won it. She zoomed by not just her age group, but all the ...

maybe you do to. Today I'm grateful for wise words wherever they come from - email, other queens looking for their truth, blog friends, my husband, prayerful priests, songs on the radio, strangers in the grocery store. I'm grateful for this time I have. Even though some days seem to drag on to infinity and beyond, I am free to explore and process the next part of my life's journey. Wishing you an inner compass that will lead you to your dreams, Merry ME "A little bird told me" - your Daily Truth from The Brave Girls Club a target="_blank" href="http://www.bravegirlsclub.com"> www.bravegirlsclub.com

"What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance." Jane Austen Last night around 10:30 I opened the door to take the dog for a walk and was blasted by a steamy blanket of hot. The sweat beaded up on my brow and under my breasts before I was across the lawn which is not like walking across Scarlet O'Hara's Tara, but more like 10 feet if that. The mosquitoes danced around me like I was the bug version of the Golden Corral. They couldn't decide which part of my body's tasty smorgasbord to savor first so they took a little of this and a little of that. All the while buzzing with mosquito delight around my head like a Kamikaze pilot circling his target before making a free-fall dive. The temperature hadn't changed much when I opened the same door this morning. Last evening's rain left the air so thick you could almost touch it. I'm not by a nature a morning person. When my alarm clock, i.e. Miss Suzi Q, stand...

"Blood is that fragile scarlet tree we carry within us." Osbert Sitwell I got a call yesterday from my vet, Dr. Barbara Kempf, with an unusual but not entirely unexpected request of my Boy kitty, known at the clinic as "Him." Him has a disease called polycythaemia which is a fancy way of saying his body makes too many red blood cells. A year or more ago, Boy Cat woke me up by doing somersaults across the bed. Seriously, he appeared to have channeled Mary Lou Retton during her Olympic floor exercise routine. You know the one, where she starts at one end of the mat and flips herself forwards and backwards and all around until she gets to the opposite corner where she stops on a dime with no part of either foot off the mat. Well that was Boy Cat, except he didn't stop. I had to grab him and when I did he could hardly breathe. We rushed him to the vet who took one look at him, hooked him up with an IV, put an oxygen mask over his face and pondered. First things fir...

Sweetie and I had people over for dinner last night. The first in our newly decorated and painted dining room. For me it was a bittersweet moment. It felt good and sad at the same time. Mom and Dad and 2 beloved sisters were absent, but my Jacksonville sisters and Br/Fr. Georges filled the room with love and laughter. Pork chop juice was spilled all over Georges' niece, Angela, officially making her one of the family and baptizing the furniture. Tomorrow Georges will bless the house and with that I think it Sweetie and I can officially call it "home." I hope it will always be a place my sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins and grandkids will want to visit. It may say Ellington-Cook on the mailbox but it will always have the heart of Casa de Reynolds. I must say that even though I thought my Family Tree was exquisite before, adding the pictures brought my idea to life. I love it. Love, Love , Love it. In the end, I didn't even think of an order. I grabbed a picture, loo...

"To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of an artist." Schumann I'll be the first one to admit that I've been on the sad train lately. Chugging in and out of Melancholy Land, with a bandanna full of Kleenex tied on a stick that I carry over my shoulder. The good news is that I'm not completely closed off to moments of joy or laughter. I think it is true that this wave of grief will end. Someday I will look back and say, well that stunk but I'm a stronger person for having lived through it. The thing about stinky things is that they, well ... stink. And sometimes it takes awhile to get the bad stuff from offending your nose. Grief, I've found, is like that. Yesterday was a good day. One I'd looked forward to for a couple of weeks. Yvonne Lozano of yclart was coming back to finish up my family tree mural. Even though most of the tree was already done and Yvonne was just adding finishing touches, I was chomping at the bit ...

"If you could send one meal through a time warp to the people of the year AD 4022 - one meal to tell them who we were and what mattered to us - tell me that meal should not be pulled pork with vinegar sauce. " Craig Kenneth Bryant For no reason other than dawdling like a kid whose bedtime has come and gone, I found myself in the magazine aisle of Publix this evening. I stood there waiting for something to catch my eye or whisper, "pssst, pick me." I try not to acknowledge whispering magazines or two for one packages of Oreos, or the whole Blue Bell Ice Cream freezer for that matter, but after first looking around to see if anyone else could hear the "psst" my eyes fell on a magazine I have not yet made the acquaintance of. Like the Southern Living I spoke of in my prior post, the cover of this one was decorated with mouth-watering food - a life sized pulled pork sandwich dripping in slaw, sitting on a red and white checkered tablecloth. (Note to self: ...

[Photo: http://www.awwproject.org/] "I believe as these women write, they also begin, in way only they know, to take control." Masha Hamilton* I recently began an 8 week workshop facilitated by my favorite Queen, Dani. That in itself is a story I can't wait to share but not the one I want to tell you about tonight. As part of the supply list for the course I was instructed to cull through various magazines for pictures and words to use in creating collage pages. I really don't remember the last magazine I read. No I take that back, it was a Southern Living magazine that tempted me by putting a picture of a perfectly woven top crust on a juicy peach pie on the cover. I really don't even like peach pie. However, every year I swoon at the undoubtedly air brushed but delicious-looking pies that grace the cover of SL. When Dad was alive it would inspire me to make one of his favorite desserts, peach cobbler. And every year I had to ask someone the difference between ...