RIP Stanley

Well friends, it's New Years Eve. The time that people are looking back and looking forward. As I look back on the past year I'm struck by many things, it's been a year of big change for me, and I think I would say that it's been the best year in Denver. However, in these last two weeks of the year I've been sad and I'm afraid I'll always remember 2008 as the year of Stanely.

Granted, he moved in with me in 2007, but we didn't interact much during that year. He spent most of it under the bathtub, and I spent that time trying to ignore him, hoping it would entice him to come out. In 2008 though, I locked the bathroom to him and he moved to hanging out under my bed, and sitting on my blue hand-me-down chair. Little by little he would come out more while I was home. There were even a few times where he would come by and sniff my feet before hopping up in his chair and one frightening moment for him when I was cleaning out his litter box and the two of us were stuck in the bathroom. He was crying to be let out poor guy - too close for comfort.

When I left for Christmas vacation, he was acting a little strange - and so I asked a friend to look in on him more closely than we had talked about. Sadly, he passed while I was out of town and it's been really strange to be back. I find myself continuing my habits of accommodating him even though he's not in the apartment. I listen for him, I watch for him to come out of hiding while I'm watching television, and he doesn't come. If you would have asked me a month ago how attached I was to Stanley, I would have told you that I wasn't really attached to him. I guess I just didn't realize how much he'd become a part of my life.

Here's to 2009. To continuing my habits of living better, and to finding peace with Stanley.

Happy New Year! Love, Maria

Home Sweet Home

A belated Merry Christmas to whoever is still reading this blog! I saw this morning that I haven't posted in about two weeks - it's been a busy two weeks!

After Mia's party, when I started my dress on fire, I finished out the week with a couple more parties and on Saturday morning headed out to the cold cold Midwest. I had a great Christmas with my family - we spent part of a week at my sister's house in small-town Illinois and part of the week at my parent's house in Grand Rapids. I was happy to spend time with my family and to be able to connect with some great friends!

Right now the memory of it all is a bit of a blur. For those of you following my family traditions - my Grandma got the black coal for being pulled over by the police for speeding and for crashing a full dinner table onto the ground. I'm not sure of the entire story, I'm just glad it was worse than starting a favorite dress on fire. I was certainly in the running for that little snafu.

I hope that you had a wonderful holiday.

That's Hot!

I was so hot last night, and sadly, not in that Paris Hilton kind of a way. Sheralee had a fabulous party to celebrate the anniversary of the night Mia came home last December. It was a great soiree with cocktail dresses, cocktails, tons of people, and poor Mia hiding in the closet. I'm sure she was thankful to have that closet as opposed to being outside in the sub-zero temperatures, but she hid most of the night nonetheless.

At one point I was talking with a few people in the doorway between the living room and the dining room and I suddenly felt warmth near my leg. I had been standing right over this great little candle on a stand and it started my dress on fire! My favorite Carnegie Hall dress. There was a bit of flame, but mostly I think the dress melted. I'm very hopeful that a good seamstress can mend this dress. It is my favorite dress!

Don't worry. I'm not hurt. The flame only got my dress and nothing more in the apartment. I did, however, leave little pieces of dress all over the apartment because little hard melted parts kept crumbling off. Yes, my dress is crumbling!

Temperature Wars

Everyone has them. You know, the stereotypical the man is hot, the woman is cold and they keep turning the thermostat back and forth and back and forth. Part of me wishes for that temperature war, at least I would have a thermostat to deal with.

Instead I'm in a temperature war with my landlord, and according to her, some of the other tenants in our building. In the spirit of full disclosure, I don't pay directly for my heat. I'm very thankful for this most of the time because it means my rent is the same every month and I don't have to move my budget around to deal with the gas bill. However, I think (or at least for the sake of everyone else in the building I hope) that my unit is the hottest unit in the building. I keep my window open 90% of the time in the winter and that gets me on average around 70 degrees in the apartment, give or take a few degrees. I don't particularly like this arrangement, but I'm willing to compromise seeing as there are about 30 units in the building and the Landlord claims that she has to buy space heaters for some of the units because they are just that cold. I dream about being in one of those units.

This weekend Santa must have had his fans on or something because it's been frigid. Last night it got down to -18 and at 11:00, I'm not sure we've made it above zero yet. I didn't have the windows open yesterday afternoon and it was perfect - quiet and comfortable. So when I left to go out with some friends I didn't open the window. BIG mistake. I was gone less than four hours and when I got home it was a tropical 79 degrees in my apartment. So I slept with the window open as long as I could stand it, but as you'll imagine with -18 outside, it really cooled off in there. I closed the window around 1:00 and when I got up at 6:30 it was once again tropical - this time only 77 degrees though.

If this keeps up I think I'll have to move before the end of winter. I can't remember the last time I got a full night's sleep. I alternate between waking up in a sweat, even with almost no covers, or being startled awake by someone being loud outside. I've asked my landlord again to turn down the heat. We'll see what happens.

Maria is Looking Forward to Christmas Vacation

I can not wait for Christmas vacation. Today hit a major day in the countdown - the day December 20 shows up in the 10 day forecast on weather.com so I can start tracking what kind of weather we'll be having on the day of my flight. As of this morning, it looks great. I do however realize (even though I want to deny it) that the 10 day out weather forecast has maybe a 10% chance of being accurate.

I'm looking forward to Christmas Vacation this year more than I have since I moved to Denver I think. The past 3 Christmases I've flown out a few days before Christmas and flown back here on Christmas Day. (Or at least that was the plan - the year of the blizzard everything got turned upside down.) It was good to have some time away and yet the function of my having a new job every fall had left me with no time off around the holidays. This year I will be gone 8 days, I will not have to travel on Christmas Day, and I've held down a job all year. (I really never thought at my age now that I'd be proud of holding down a job for a year. Oh, how life changes us.)

So, for this one time, I hope that the forecasters are right when they say that it will be cold in Denver and at Midway. Cold, but sunny!

Maria is impatient.

I miss facebook! It had become part of my morning routine to come into work, turn on the emails and then see what my friends had been up to the previous day. Then my company blocked facebook. If I was in management I may have done the same thing, and that didn't stop a proverbial tear from falling.

Since then I've ordered a new computer! Well - a new computer for me in any case and I can not wait for it to come. It hasn't shipped yet, and when I asked about when it might ship I was told "We're a little backlogged on those at the moment." I've sent a response asking exactly what that means. Backed up a couple days, a couple months, what? I mean - I'm heading nearby there tomorrow around 4:30, could I just stop by and pick it up?

To be fair, I'm looking forward to having this computer for much more than facebook. I'm excited to watch tv and movies online, to talk to my family with the webcam, to have the possibility of editing and sending pictures should I ever start taking them again, to be able to look for directions and check the bus schedule while I'm at home, to be able to check flight status over the weekend and the list goes on and on.

This is why I'm impatient!

Advent

One of the topics I haven't actively been writing about on this blog lately has been my inner journey. I'm still on one (aren't we all) it's just been so much more subtle lately that I'm not sure what to write about it. I know that I am far more content on this slower journey of opening up to new things and examining old ones in a slow and steady Maria pace.

That said I'm trying out a new Advent rhythm this year. Advent for many years for me was full of pageantry and ritual - much of which I either didn't understand, or had become so regular that it lost meaning completely. The last few months I've slowly been immersing myself in a new group here in Denver and I've chosen to celebrate Advent their style this year. It means some of the same ritual but approached in a much more relaxed manner. An approach I can relate to, and connect with. I feel much more of a connection this year with the longing of Israel and the ways in which their world was on the one hand going to change dramatically and yet on the other hand in the time of the advent the actions were subtle.

And so I feel as though the hope I'm living in at the moment is that the subtle world that I seem to be living in today is precursor to dramatic changes that may be coming. As I say that it shares the living hell out of me - I deal with dramatic change oh so well.