One Magical Place, One Magical Olympian

I mentioned how completely addicted I was to the Summer Olympics this year and though I found myself watching many different events and my favorites have always included swimming and gymnastics, I found myself completely mesmerized by Michael Phelps and his race to win 8 gold medals in one Olympic Game. It was exciting, I was on the edge of my seat, some races won by a finger nail, it was absolutely a dream come true for this sports lover to watch Michael Phelps night after night, win race after race. I cried my way through every one of his medal ceremonies and just found myself interested in his story. Of course he wasn't the only one I followed I was absolutely impressed with Dara Torres and I enjoyed watching Natalie Coughlin swim and I cried when she won her gold too. I also spent many a late night watching Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson flip, leap and tumble their way onto the medal stand (and if you guessed I cried during those ceremonies too you're right!) But in the end Michael Phelps was the story of this Summer Olympics I loved watching history being made right before my eyes. So when Thursday afternoon my dear friend Leslie emailed me to tell me that Michael Phelps would be at the Magic Kingdom the very next morning I jumped at the chance to go. So there we were the next morning sitting on a curb on Main Street, we didn't mind that we would be waiting for an hour and a half before Phelps made his way passed, it was history and we were a part of it. I got chills every time they blasted the Olympic music, the crowd cheered every time they announced that Michael Phelps would appear. The energy was just incredible.

Here are a couple of pictures from the parade! We were right there on the curb and I was trying to wave and snap pictures at the same time but it was incredible!

I have often felt that when we lived in New York we didn't take advantage of all there was to do and see there. There were so many things I passed on because I was nervous about going on my own or we were just sick and tired of commuting into the city by the time the weekend rolled around. So that is one of the reasons I jumped at the chance to see Michael Phelps. It would have been crazy to pass up. As I stood there watching as the Greatest Olympian of all time rolled right by me I knew it was a moment to be savored, it was something so incredible that I feel like I can't stop talking about it or thinking about it. So thank you Leslie for making sure I knew about it and for hanging out with me on one very magical Friday morning in the Magic Kingdom.

The rest of the week was very busy. We ran into some car trouble on Monday but it was nothing a can of Coke and a new battery couldn't fix! Also Monday I spent a large part of the day vacuuming with my new awesome vacuum I don't think the carpets and furniture have ever looked better! I know it must sound crazy for someone to get so excited over a vacuum but when you have four animals shedding all over the place and you're obsessed with the place looking clean all the time a good vacuum is a god send!

Also this week I made another new recipe as promised! I made Peanut Butter, Banana, Chocolate Chip Muffins which I found here. I think they turned out really good and considering Mike has had at least two a day I think he liked them as well. Not sure what this week's new recipe will be but I will be sure to keep you posted. Diana reminded me that I should take a photo of my new recipes, I can't imagine that I didn't think of that. Thank goodness Diana knows me well enough to mention it before I made too many recipes without documenting them!

On Friday my cousin Doreen will be arriving with her awesome husband Orlando and my adorable godson Corey! I can't wait for this. Eight days of spoiling my godson in person and taking him to the parks will just be so much fun!!! Doreen keeps yelling at me because every time I leave the house I buy Corey something but I can't help it that's part of a Godmother's job isn't it? I will do my best to blog while they are here and to keep you up-to-date on the visit and how things are going and I imagine I'll have a picture or two to share ;)

Opening Up

It takes a lot for me to do this but I am going to share a poem I recently wrote. It isn't often that I let people read what I write let alone post it in a public forum on the World Wide Web. After a push from my friend Tam who already read the poem and thought highly of it I am feeling brave so here it goes.

The Phone sits still and silent
The inbox, less full
The ache of loneliness
fills the space
abandoned by happiness
Treasured memories
packed away
kept safe for another day
when tears are less eager to fall
A door to friendship closes
heartbreak creeps through a window
Clouds crowd out the sun
darkness signals this love is done.
8-27-08

So there you have it. I'm not quite brave enough just yet to go into the details that inspired this poem but I am interested to hear your thoughts and any constructive criticisms you might have.

I have not been good about keeping up with the blog this week so today will be a busy blogging day so stay tuned!!

Photo Time

These are two recent layouts I've created. The top one is about my friend Kerry, I thought it was important to tell our story. To focus on the unconventional way we met (on NYC public transportation) and to show that though we fell out of touch for a time we found our way back to being close friends.

The bottom layout is about my friend Matt. I met Matt my senior year of high school, I was in a new school where I didn't know anyone. I was angry that I had to start fresh midway through my senior year and Matt was nice to me and he has continued to be there whenever I needed him and being the good friend he is he's been there at times when I didn't realize I needed him. He's always available to push me out of my own way and support me in my dreams. We might not talk every day or see each other very often being so far from each other but if he called me or I called him at 3AM we'd be there and that is a comfort I could never live without.

I think focusing scrapbook pages on the important people in my life will give a complete picture of the person I am at this point in my life and why I am this person. I look forward to hearing what you think!

Blue Skies At Last

This morning I felt very much like Dorothy waking up in Oz. Yesterday I was in a grey, cloudy world and this morning beautiful blue skies with white clouds with hints of pink as the sun rose! Even though it was 6:30AM and I hadn't gone to bed until 3AM I felt energized walking Hooper and to see that it just might be a nice day after a week of dealing with Tropical Storm Fay. I feel like I've been cooped up in this apartment and I'm excited by the prospect of going out and getting stuff done today.

I'll admit this week Fay left me feeling lazy, and just sort of blah, so I didn't do any writing, I didn't do any scrapbooking, I did a lot of sitting, reading, napping and watching TV. Not particularly productive I know. But the one thing I did do was make a new recipe. I made Giada DeLaurentiis Fettuccine Alfredo. Oddly I had never made Alfredo before and it seemed like the perfect comfort food for the dreary weather. You can find the recipe here or in Giada's Everyday Italian cookbook. The cookbook version makes a smaller portion and this doesn't reheat real well so next time I would be sure to make just enough for one meal. When fresh this was absolutely delicious, reheated this was way to greasy. I felt really motivated to start the new recipe thing after announcing it here so I hope that continues and hopefully it will inspire me to get working on all my other goals as well.

This week I also received the Elsie Flannigan Recipe Box I ordered last week. I went through each card and found that I was inspired to create. She gave me such brilliant ideas on topics to scrapbook, techniques to try and photos I should try to take. I hope it's the boost I need to get me back in the craft room and working. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with ideas and I certainly have a ridiculous amount of photos to work with I have to think of a good system to streamline my process a little bit. The one thing that has helped me is that I stopped scrapping in chronological order I just work on what I feel inspired by at a given time, or by a story I want to tell or by a person I want to focus on. I will share photos in a separate post.

Well if I hope to get anything done today I better get Mike up and get going. I'm sure my late night will catch up with me eventually and before it does I want to make sure I get plenty accomplished. Stay tuned I will post again soon!

What I learned while Mike was away

Mike was in California this week for work and though I hate being alone I had all these thoughts of things I would get accomplished in his absence. I thought I would get a lot of crafting done, I thought I would eat healthy and exercise at least once every day, I thought I would catch up on correspondence with friends and family, I thought I would get a lot of writing done, I thought I would catch up on DVRed shows and maybe a couple of musicals I have on DVD that Mike would prefer not to watch. In reality I did none of these things. I didn't eat healthy most nights and really went overboard when Ruth came over for girl's night in and we ate fried chicken, Oreo cookies and ice cream. I exercised only once while Mike was away usually too exhausted from late night Olympics watching to be bothered with it. Aside from setting up this blog I didn't do any writing and I never made it back to the craft room. This has happened every time Mike is away I have these high hopes of all I'll get done and in the end I become a hermit and don't do anything. I'm just so out of sorts while Mike is gone. It's weird for me not having to get up and drive him to work or go pick him up and without a schedule of having to do something or be somewhere I've found it way too easy to just get stuck on the couch and do nothing. I'm in no rush for Mike to go away again but next time I'll make more of an effort to be more productive while he's away.

Now that Mike is back I have to undo all the bad habits I've developed. I have to stop eating junk again and since I won't have the excuse of not sleeping I'll have to give up coffee (or at the very least slow down) again and wow is it hard for me to slow down or give up the coffee, the withdrawal headaches alone make me dread the whole process. I have to start working out every day again which isn't looking likely for today but hopefully by Monday I'll be back to normal and have a little more energy to do so and I truly have to set aside time where I turn the TV off, close my email and just write. I don't know why I find it so hard to do something I love so much, but I am making a promise to myself and all of you that I will spend more time writing and just focusing on something that has always been so important to me.

In addition to breaking the bad habits from this week next week I want to start making at least one new recipe each week. I don't know what next week's recipe will be yet but I will post it once we figure it out and then I will share the recipe and our thoughts on it once we've made it. I have so many cookbooks, cooking magazines and random recipes printed from online sites or clipped from newspapers and magazines that it's crazy that I should find I make the same things all the time.

Today I placed and order for something I have been waiting to purchase for months now but has been sold out everywhere and this purchase will definitely excite me back into the craft room, though I do hope to get back there before this treasure arrives. This is what I purchased. I am so excited because I love Elsie Flannigan, I find her work and products so inspiring and so much fun. If you are interested in getting to know Elsie better you can find her blog here. While I'm sharing another blog I love and a person I am just truly inspired by not only because she's an incredible scrapbooking artist but in my experience is just a truly wonderful person who takes the time to answer emails and read blogs and give advice is Heidi Swapp. Her blog is absolutely fascinating these days because she's living in Beijing and has attended a few Olympic events.

Soon I promise I will post some of my own scrapbooking ideas and maybe a poem or two I have scribbled in a notebook but for now I should get off this couch and live life so I have more to blog about later!

More Soon...

Here and Now

Thanks to the suggestion of a good friend I am branching out from my MySpace blog and carving out a little place in cyberspace to call my own. Some will say it's about time and others will probably be surprised to find I have enough to say to fill a blog but after my daily pot of coffee I become quite the chatterbox.

These days we have been struggling with fertility issues. This is something that I will bring up time and time again because it is ongoing and at times takes over all things. It has become my full time job and I find that the more the doctors say relax and don't think about it, the more I do in fact thing about it. It's hard not to think about something when that something required surgery, requires I take a pill twice a day, requires many trips to doctors and specialists and an ungodly amount of charting and monitoring - with all that it does tend to weigh a little heavy on ones mind. But I am trying to take it day by day. I have found that I've become angrier, now I've always dealt with my Italian girl temper but this isn't the same. This is anger so deep inside I can't shake it, I pass judgement on people who get to have babies. Not all people but the ones I've determined are unfit for such a privilege. I have been trying to just live in each moment and some days I'm much more successful in this then others.

I do have a lot to focus on. I'm trying to get back to writing at least a little something everyday. I mean afterall a novel won't write itself. In time I plan on posting some of my writings here, I think it will help me get over my fear of people reading my things. A lot of my writings are very personal and I fear letting people see so much of myself but I will make a solid effort to share with you all. I have been doing a lot of scrapbooking lately, trying to tell the everyday stories and to get the people who matter so much into my books. When we do eventually get blessed with our child I want that child to be able to look through these books and find out who his/her parents are and were. It's therapeutic and gives me a creative outlet. I just love to get into my scrap room and get up to my elbows in paints and chalk and paper and then add some of the thousands of photos I've taken and tell a story. It is also another place for me to get some writing in so it's a two for one deal.

My current addiction in addition to the coffe is the Olympics. I've been putting it on first thing in the morning and watching until late at night. I've no doubt watched more of the Olympics this time around then probably any of the previous Olympics combined and I'm enjoying every minute of it. I laugh at myself though because the more I watch I've become a couch judge and I sit here going "ooh that's a deduction" "oh that wasn't a very good dive" meanwhile I can't do any of the things these athletes are doing. I have been enjoying watching Michael Phelps swim, I find it so enchanting to be sitting here watching history being made.

In addition to talking about scrapbooking and writing I'll spend a lot of time talking about things I've cooked, recipes I've tried and restaurants I've been to. I think of myself as a bit of a foodie and cooking and baking is a passion. I will also spend a lot of time talking about the children we do have - 3 cats: Holden, Banky and Alyssa and 1 dog: Hooper. They are spoiled and loved and comical so I share stories about them often. Plus I'm open to suggestions, thoughts, questions I'm not easily offended so always feel free to tell me what's on your mind. I want this to be an interactive spot which is as fun to read as it is to write.

More soon...