Movie Madness - The Deep Blue Sea

So sorry fellow Movie Madness peeps, but this was the perfect movie for me today. After spending way too many hours at the office this weekend, I went to bed thinking nothing's stopping me from Movie Madness tomorrow, dammit. I'd missed too many in a row due to our little office crises and didn't care what happened, nobody calling in sick, no demanding email, no double-booked schedule was going to keep from me from Camelview. Then the challenges came. The "my son's sick and I can't come in" text at 5:15. Fine. After being relegated to my bat cave in the back office, shackled to my chair for weeks, a day at the front desk might do me some good. I put on my elf-y peppy face and faked it. The patients came, the phones rang and by the time I finally got to my email, I was feeling good. Back in the groove. Maybe time to give up on the pity party, chica. We've got a nice practice. Some really amazing patients. The day's schedule was full of a good mix of old-timers and great newcomers, too. No crazies all morning. Everyone walked out feeling better, saying thank-you, smiling. That's got to be worth something. Then my email opened up. One from the guy in billing from the new company. Suddenly the debit card he's been charging for months isn't good enough. He wants my checking account info. Routing number. The works. It'll be easier for everyone, you know. If I didn't hand over the goods, they will start charging an extra 3% per month. I got mad. The rules keep changing. The promises aren't being kept. It all starting creeping in to my up-'til-then calm day. But then I looked at the clock, signed off hotmail and headed for the parking lot. As soon as I snuggled in to the dark, I felt better. I've always thought of Movie Madness like therapy, like that bumper sticker - A bad day fishing is better that a good day at the office. Even a bad movie can be worthwhile. Then the violins started, sort of a migraine-level whine in the back of your brain. The BFFs started rolling our eyes, shaking our heads at the first scene, a suicide attempt. A really slooow suicide attempt. Talk about a pity party. I thought about the pile of papers at work I had to get through. Then back to sad Hester on the screen. To tell the truth, last week I almost gave it all up like her. Chucked it all. Called it quits. On Movie Madness, that is. I even did a rough draft I'm pulling the plug on being in charge somebody else needs to take over these weekly emails note. I'm in crisis mode. My business is falling apart. Who am I kidding? I can't go to a movie. But, instead, I threw out The Deep Blue Sea late in the week to see if I got any bites. And I'm glad I did. I'm also glad the movie sucked, giving me an excuse to leave in the middle and get back to "git 'er dun" as the rest of the peeps stayed 'til the end, swimming all the way through, while I thankfully got to the bottom of my pile, smiled at the last patients and got my desk ready for tomorrow.

Next Monday - a comedy.

I knew I should have gone more lesbian

I had no idea who Tony Tripoli was, just in need of a laugh when showup.com deposited a cheap offer in my email. Turns out he's a comic that works with Joan Rivers. Not a big TV watcher, the last thing I saw her in was her documentary at Camelview. How boring is that? No wonder none of the gay guys wanted to sit near me (Shawn almost got eaten alive as he walked up the aisle, so I put him on the end). But as one of only a few females in the packed Stray Cat Theatre, someone had to do it. Turns out it was two of our favorite guys from Nearly Naked Theatre so at least I had something interesting to say, making it one or two steps up from sitting next to your mom. Tony rallied on and on about growing up in Phoenix, tops, bottoms, county fairs, awkward things in high school, gay cruises, fat people using oxygen on non-gay cruises, Joan Rivers' face, how to speak slowly for a straight crowd, giving us a lot of raunchy fun laughs. Hilarious.

Job Creator

Shana got a job! The kid's never had a difficult time finding work. She's got two jobs right now, even, tutoring the focused-on-other-things-athletes at U of A and also mentoring young minds at the Girl Scouts. So I guess I wasn't really worried that she would find work after graduation. Well, sort of worried. The news out there is bad. The recession is hurting all of us, especially young grads, but I tried to stay positive. In a low moment on Wednesday, as I chauffeured her around town to two interviews, I suggested waitressing wouldn't be such a bad idea for the summer, maybe. She looked at me like I was crazy. So, thank God, three interviews later, she got the call. Come work here. Help us provide ethics education to employees all over the world. Young, hip company in Phoenix doing something important. Growing fast. Great benefits and even a gym!

You go, (working) girl!

Black Cloud

Life in the computer cloud sucks. It's been a year now, this process of moving to the cloud, handing over all of our data, building new relationships with two big companies as they bought out my beloved little local companies along the way. I was happily flying below the radar as we played Getting To Know You, nobody signing me up for the rate increases, the new data plans, the new support agreements, all the gimmie gimmie gimmies. But that party is over. Each new day someone else asks for money - $2,500 here, $1,900 there. $518 a month more here for the rest of my life. You want your data, right? Oh, you want to bill insurance companies? That's extra. Print stuff? Way more. Today I got a quote for $600 to build an HL7 interface, whatever that is. Seems our old one was ancient. What does ancient mean? Who was is charge of age-related Star Wars-y things? Me? Wasn't that included in all those monthly charges? Programs not "talking" to each other, techie people driving me insane, list of issues getting longer every day, taking one step forward and two steps back. I've spent 95% of my time dealing with problems, putting out fires, trying to keep my cool since we're going to be in bed with these yahoos for a very long time, all while untangling the wound up knot in my chest, gasping for breath sometimes when I realize I haven't been breathing.

Maybe it's just all the humidity.

Mothers Who Write Mothers Who Read

I'll be at the Mothers Who Mother Mothers Who Watch Their Babies Graduate event,
but if you're in town - don't miss it!

Once Upon A Time

I don't think I've cleaned Shana's closet since there was a crib in her room. I never had a problem just shutting her door and letting her live with whatever was growing in there. But with college graduation quickly approaching, I figured, if not now, when?

So...all done. Bathroom one, too. 

Shelves washed down, third grade stuff boxed away, a few purses put up and middle and high school yearbooks tucked in the back, ready for Miss Soon-To-Be-Tassled Smarty Pants. I even spackle-d and painted walls, rearranged furniture and dusted bookshelves, making lots of room for the big kid version about to move back in for the time being. I did leave my favorite little kiddie books out, way up high on the top shelf, just in case.  Maybe before she gets a job and moves away and leaves me for good she'll want me to read her another story.

Hal Sparks

My jaw hurts from smiling for so long. I haven't been to The Improv since college. Always thought it was sort of a cheesy thing to do. But fried cheese or not, Shawn, Maggie and I could barely stop laughing as Hal Sparks ran the gamut from moms to politics to dinosaurs - smart AND funny. Wow, a nonstop laughfest.

Senior Pub Crawl

Birthday Bebe

Can you believe Maddie's FIFTY!!

OMG - just look at those legs!

The Ronnie, Jill, Jaye, Lisa and little mini-me Nyomi clan surrounded the Queen Bee at the always spectacular Royal Palms for a few "You Sexy Thing" cocktails, presents and more, more, more. Later on we took the party outside under the sparkly, orangey-lit gorgeous night sky

to check out the birthday girl's way cool friend/neighbor Roger Clyne and some of his Peacemakers as they sang to us,

then watched in awe as this guy spun around a piece of canvas and in under six minutes each, gave

us John Lennon, Billy Joel and the cutie Mr. Roger Clyne. What a night. What a fun bunch.

Cheers!

OK, I Give. I Give.

UNCLE!

As tax money gets sucked out of my bank account today, never before has income inequality been so great in this country. The little guys pay more and more, while the big guys...not so much.

Here - read this.

The gang took to the streets today at the Tax the 1% Rally in front of a Chase Bank to bring a bit of

attention to the whole injustice of it all. 

People waved. They honked. 

This blue-shirted Chase employee walked out to show us some support and we even spotted a few one-percenters, looking straight ahead, diamonds catching the brilliant sun, as they steered to the right on their way into Saks.

Announcing...

One more month!!

A Glass Act

The gang must have been overdue for a little happiness hour(s), because this is about all the glass we saw tonight.

The Eddie's House pre-art walk stretching and hydrating appointment after a long, almost smile-less few weeks

turned into a silly, kissy, mooning in the bathroom with the artsy crowd love fest.

Unphotographed, but still in the house, Ronnie and Jaye and

the Dutch girls

all got back in the groove discovering the inner beauty rather than pounding the pavement, except for one trip across the street where we found new fave artist that did "Beyond the Birches" (or was it sumac?) for another reminder of how it's those strong roots that make everything so beautiful.

Girls On The Rocks

I'm not a hiker. I don't much like anything to do with exercise. I figured the Girls On The Rocks club was some kind of a drinking club. Or maybe a hot stone massage group. With all the haze in the brain lately, though, getting out and going up seemed like a pretty good idea. Fresh air. Nature. Some sense of accomplishment. Today the L ladies - Leanne, Linda and Lisa hit the trail and did the loop in record time, chatting up a storm (wanna sniff my blueberry Cliff Bar?, the slings, the stilettos, the rangers at home, the summit, yay, the summit!).

Cloud Nine(hundredmillionfourthousandtwentyeight)

I used to love clouds. All white and fluffy and soft. I remember my first plane ride (and even more recent ones) staring out the window, wanting to touch, wanting to loll about on them. Or the days in the grass, arms back, looking up, naming animals, shapes or just giving up, calling it all cotton candy and daydreaming. Those days are gone. 

For months now, this is my cloud.

Black and white. Hard. No snowman floating in the sky to be seen. We're moving "to the cloud" at the office. People keep saying cloud, slowly replacing the old noun I knew and loved. I keep buying stuff to connect us to the cloud. My mind races around trying to grasp the concept of a cloud. Something that's not so soft, not so friendly. We've got VPNs and FTPs and networks and terminals and ip addresses and IT guys and tubes and Watch Guards and Cox Cable and EHR and techies and one Director of Support that isn't speaking to me anymore (I'm totally smarter than him) and we're scheduled to float to the cloud on Friday. Friday the 13th. Crossing my fingers that our data will be safe, that the cloud will hold it all and not mix us up with everybody else, that nothing will fall down from the cotton candy sky.

Girls On The Rocks

New Club - Girls On The Rocks

Hiking, Happy Houring, but not at the same time.

Here we are last week.

Up next - Wednesday at 8am. Gateway trail. 

Earth Day stuff

My little trunk full.

Down at the Whole Foods electronics recycling event today - it all adds up...

What's in your garage?

Lunatic Fringe

Blame it on the full moon. Lunar yoga lesson with circular poses - it's the ladies that hold us up. The Kleenex on the couch, the can't go home yet on a Monday lipstick call, the flex, don't point, rule, the Sunday morning coffee catch-up, the Game Change with mom in the Griffeth Guest House, the Girls on the Rocks hikes I and II, the boys showing their girlie human sides during this doggone sad time, the "we don't need them" answers are in there somewhere lightbulb, the voice on the other end of the phone - breathe, breathe.

Sully

Sully's little head sunk into my lap and I knew he was gone. For fourteen years it had been all about me. He watched me come and go, always waiting at the door. He followed me around. He wanted to make me happy. 100% sweet. No anger. No judgment. Just total unconditional love and a never quite unconscious awareness of my whereabouts. He saw things no other creature has seen, getting a backstage pass to a chunk of our lives that was full of love and action and craziness that we'll never have again. He didn't ask for much - some food and a walk every now and then, knowing the difference between walking clothes and other clothes, flying around the place when the sneakers came out. He even knew what the word walk meant, forcing us to spell it out if we weren't quite ready to go. He made it easy to give back. He turned me into a dog person.

And he made it so hard to say good-bye.

Sunday A'Fair xoxoxox

Sunday drive, my ass. When you're in line with a bunch of bad boys like these, it's more like a day at NASA.

Ohhhhh...so shiny!

Shawn whipped out his red racing gloves and I knew I was in trouble, holding on for dear life as he and the gang raced up the hill to Payson, hugging curves, nailing it on the straight-aways and causing pudgy guys in minivans to weep.

Who needs Viagra???

It was a stunning day, cool and crisp (somebody remind me about this in June) up there while we met some great new car freaks, had some amazing pasta and signed up for the next event on Wednesday with the boys.

Hightailed it down the little Scottsdale hill in the not-so-fast mom sedan to hear my new favorite local band, Sugahbeat!! The tunes were perfect, steel drummingly clear on the cool, breezy, toes in the grass, wined-up folks dancing to the band afternoon. Beautiful.

Then, Bueller, Bueller?

Met old and new amigas to join adorable Brodderick at the Montelucia for a couldn't-stop-smiling as the espresso martinis circled the table and took us all back to the 80s.