congratulations papa

Friday we traveled to the big SA to honor my father-in-law at his retirement. i have never been to a retirement ceremony so it was pretty cool. He was retiring for the second time. he retired from the military after 24 years in January 1986 and then he retired from the civil service on August 29, 2008 for a grand total of 46 years of military/civilian service. it was pretty neat to listen to everyone tell stories and honor a man who has given so much of his life to the service of our country. of course the family joke is he will take about 3 months off to pacify his wife and then he will find another job. he was already talking to some people about some consulting work. if you know my husband then you know the work ethic that runs through the watson men and it is just not in his nature to fully retire. so here is to you papa and your new career whatever it may be.

wierd conversations

warning this blog contains my wierd and dark sense of humor

~~~~you've been warned~~~~

i have decided my husband and i have the strangest conversations. today we discussed that if he dies before me i am going to bury him in the plot beside my first husband since its already paid for and i would hate to waste it. i could even change the markers to read #1 and #2. mark doesn't have a problem with this. he actually stated that i could just throw him in a hole in the backyard. but of course i told him that i get to die first. and that i want to be cremated and i want him to put me in a very pretty urn so that i would be with him always. but since i'm dead he could do whatever he wants because i won't care because i'm dead.

is this too wierd?

do other people talk about this stuff?

i'm sure if you do you do it with more reverence

see i told you i was weird.

i'm not ready for this

squirt likes a boy and he likes her back.

i am soooooo not ready for this.

we are just "liking" right now because she is not allowed to date until she is 21. just joking.

but i am sooooo not ready for this.

she says he is a nice boy and goes to church and runs cross country and wants to hold her hand.

where did my baby go and why does she want to like a smelly ol' boy anyways. 2 days of public school and this is what happens. i'm not naive i knew this would happen eventually but i just wasn't prepared for it to happen right now.

ponderings

i'm in a thoughtful mood this morning so beware i don't know what direction this blog will go or where it will end. remember you've been warned.

my work was in the news again this week. more layoffs. this brings the total up to 76 plus 8 that were not announced to the news media. so we are looking at 84 people that will be losing their jobs. oh and i almost forgot my office is offering voluntary packages to 6 people. these 6 will not be forced so i will not include them in my total head count. these 84 people have many options. one of those options is to bump me out of my job. since i am 44 from the bottom there is a very good chance by christmas i will be out the door. which causes me to consider my options. will i be sad if i lose my job. not really. i like what i do but i no longer believe in the company i work for. over the last few years. well to be honest since gte was "bought out" by bell atlantic and renamed verizon (they told everyone it was a merger but lets be honest it was a buy out) the company has lost something. they used to care about its people and about the quality of work. now it has become very apparent that all they care about is the bottom line. i'm not just talking about the layoffs there are other areas that for privacy reasons i can't talk about but the whole direction of the company is different. it has become a company i don't want to work for, a company that i no longer believe in, a company that i no longer have pride in and that makes me sad. i spend 40 hours a week at my job and i want my time and energy to count for something. i want to make a difference. i know i can still have pride and make a difference and this is my goal everyday to do the best and go the extra mile for every account i touch. every phone number is not just a number its a real person who deserves to be treated with respect and integrity. but they make it so hard, if you've never been in this situation its hard for me to describe the atmosphere in my office. everyone is just waiting for the announcement that they are closing our office and moving it to the east coast (bell atlantic territority). morale is very low and its so hard to not let it affect you. so this leads me to ask myself "why stay". believe me i ask myself this question several times a day. so why should i stay. i keep coming back to a free college education, good pay, and benefits. this is the only thing that keeps me there. if i hang on till december i will have 24 college hours and be completely debt free except for our house payment. if i can hang on for 6 months longer (summer 2009) i will have our house paid off and 36 college hours. this will enable us to live comfortably on marks salary until i figure out what i want to do with my life.

this is the next pondering moment.

what do i want to do with the rest of my life?

i don't know. i've always just worked at whatever job i found myself in. i have never had the luxury of really sitting back and thinking about what i truly want to do with my life. other than the obvious job of raising my kids. i ask myself the question "if i could do anything what would it be" and i answer back "i don't know". i am rather envious of those people who just know what they want and go for it without hesitation or a second thought. this has never been me. i know what my likes and dislikes are and what my strengths and weaknesses are so i will just pray that over the next months God will show me what i'm suppose to do when i grow up. until then i will keep my eye focused on God and do this job for His glory because that's what He has called me to do and i never want to forget His will is way more important than mine.

don't cry shopgirl don't cry

i just finished watching/napping through one of my favorite movies. You've got mail. i love this movie and i love meg ryan and tom hanks. they are just one of those perfect movie couples. as the credits were rolling at the end i realized they had 4 stunt people. why? i don't remember any stunts in this movie. i just might have to watch it again to try and figure out just where they snuck in the stunts. weird.

i woke up very crabby today. i'm not sure why. i took a nap so now i feel much better. i guess my mom was right. go figure.

i realized the other day that i think in questions. how did i realize this? i was thumbing through some old sermon notes and the whole page was question after question and the funny part is as i read through the questions it brought the sermon back to my mind. strange.

colored jeans are so eighties

this is what the girls just told me. of course i had to follow that remark up with the fact that i had just about every color of jean they made in the eighties. and all my socks matched my shirts. and yes i pinch pleated the bottom of my pants so that you could see my matching socks. so there and i had big permed hair and lots of black eyeliner. we were so cool in the eighties.

feeling better

a little bit...for those of ya'll who haven't heard monique is moving away to kentucky of all places. for those of ya'll who don't know monique is just about the best friend i've ever had. we have worked together, laughed together, cried together, and played together for the last 13 years. she is the person that knows way too much about me and still loves me. i know this is God's perfect will for them but it still hurts.

kinda sad

feeling kinda sad tonight and i really can't talk about it or i will start crying so hard that i'm afraid i will never stop. so i've added a few songs that will express my mood.

afterthought

a large bottle of light italian dressing is not a good weapon of choice when you encounter a large bug in the pantry.....nuff said.

can of consequences

as a mom of teenagers i have learned to be creative with my discipline. i was crying out to God the other morning because my peaceful home is about to be not so peaceful. and by peaceful i mean no bickering and fighting teenagers. you see moe has been gone most of the summer, and freddie has been working and squirt has been the social butterfly. so with everyone doing their own thing they haven't been able to bicker and fight. well last weekend they weren't home one hour before it all started up again. luckily for me squirt went to stay the week with kimmie and moe went to to stay the week with his mom. but that one day of everyone home together gave me a little taste of what hell my life will be if we don't get a handle on the bickering, fighting, and hurtful words being thrown at each other. so as i was crying out to Jesus, He gave me a wonderful idea. i'm calling it the can of consequences. it is an actual can full of little slips of paper covered with lots of fun things for the children to do when they say hurtful words. a few examples are wash the dishes, scrub the toilet, laundry, trash etc. it also has thoughtful consequences like say 5 nice things about the person you're mad at, do 1 nice thing for the person you're mad at, write a letter explaining why you're mad, hug the person you're mad at in the middle of the street. ok that last one might be stretching it but you get the picture. i don't know if it will work but at this point it can't make things worse and it may help them to realize that bickering and fighting is not the answer and a kind word turns away wrath. i'll keep ya'll posted on their progress.

pure evil

as i was leaving work yesterday there was a man riding his bicycle and talking on a cell phone. the unusual thing was that he was doing all this while riding/driving down the center of the street. so me being a thoughtful conscientious person slowed down behind him so that he could become aware of my presence and move to the side of the street. well that was what i thought would happen. instead he startled when he realized there was a vehicle behind him and ran his bicycle into the curb and then fell over into the grass. so what do you think i did at this point.

did i stop and render aid?

did i say a prayer for his safety?

no i giggled. all the way home.

it wasn't a mean i hope he hurt himself laugh.

or even a that should teach him to ride a bike and talk on his cellphone laugh.

no it was a that would be so me laugh.

i'm the one who doesn't watch where i'm going and runs into things person. just ask monique. she watched one day as i ran my cart into a pole at sams because i was looking down an aisle for something. did she try to stop me. no. she just watched to see if i would actually run into it and i did. and then she laughed. and then i laughed at my own carelessness. so there you have it documented proof of my evilness. i laugh when people fall down. i just can't help it sometimes. i don't know why its funny...it just is.