Calm as the Moon

Welcome to our life... Ace's Cycle.

A few months ago, I was walking downtown to meet Doug for lunch. Knowing for the last year that he had been hating his job at his former place of employment and that he had a particularly difficult morning (thus meeting for lunch), I had a thought (a repeating thought that we've both had for years). So simple. So obvious. 

*Doug needs to open his own store.* 

He needed to be in charge of his own destiny and have the majority of control of his own life. When we meet on the street the first thing he said to me was... "Mike and I want to open our own store." Yeah. Things like that happen to us all the time and we don't ever ignore them. When our brains are aligned and we're clicking on the same thought processes it makes life so much easier.

So here we are, in partnership and we're opening a store with our friends Mike and Adrienne Applegate. Downtown on the mall. The place where my Grandma walked with my Dad and Uncle Pat (Don't you love those shoes!! awesome!). Where I had my first ride on public transit with my Grandma and we went to Gilmore's to shop for shoes. Then we would walk along the pedestrian mall and go to Kilwin's for a hot fudge sundae and play on the concrete animals in the middle of the mall.

At the time it was a calming thought and seemed the only thing that could be done to alleviate the situation that was disrupting our lives so much. The essence of the idea is still calming, the reality of it is both exciting and terrifying at the same time. 

We are days away from opening the doors and changing our lives forever...and I can't wait one more minute! It's insanely good. Ace's Cycle is about to born.

Bottle rockets

One way to get the last kicks out before the summer fades and school takes over is to get giddy watching Daddy shooting pop bottles over the house with a bike pump. Those suckers were clearing our (at least) two hundred year old oaks in our yard... that's pretty high.

Here's what Doug looked like when it took off:

Dude! I was like... WHOA! Happy Labor Day y'all!

Reunited and it feels so good.

OK. So I had no idea that getting back together with my classmates from high school would be as enjoyable and honestly as liberating as it was. The first sentiment is understandable. It's easy to enjoy a party. The second, to feel liberated is something entirely different. For me this was an exercise in letting go.

This may take some explanation.

A high school reunion...you walk into a room of people who knew you at your most vulnerable time in life. They know you before you were "YOU." They remember your mistakes and they may have been part of some of your worst memories. They also remember you for your honest self. The person you were before life bombarded you with the hurt of the world to which you built your highest walls in your psyche just to contain the pain. Granted, the foundations to those walls were laid in high school and junior high. I can't think of a safer place really.

We were young and stupid and learning and scared and crazy and unfocused and filled with curiosity. As we should have been! We hurt each other and loved each other and grew up together. These are the people who know me. Some may not like me, some may be my dearest friends, some may love me more than I know, some may not even be aware of me, even if they just knew my face from passing in the halls for well over a thousand days together in school. The time spent with these people has imprinted them into my memories and they are forever with me.

It's intimidating to think about returning to that tender, vulnerable time. To open yourself up to the memories that haunt. To see our selves in a whole new light. The time that has passed has allowed those memories to become something different. To reconnect with the people has allowed my memories to have new context and therefore new meaning to me, something deeper. It's like there is a new anchor that is allowing me to let go of some old understanding and to give a whole new context and therefore new meaning of what those people had done for me. They helped shape me into the person I am today. It is liberating to let go of the anxiety that I may have felt about things that had happened in that life that has no context now. I am a new person because I have reconnected with my past and allowed myself to love the person I was then and to love those people that surrounded me.

It sounds so corny to say it like that but it's true. I lead a charmed life and I think that because of the love that I feel everyday from my husband and my kids. I also feel charmed because I allowed myself to feel the love from the old friends that I saw and heard and felt (I miss the bear hugs!!) this weekend.

Time can be a brutal thing but it can also sweeten memories that were very good as well.

Thanks to all my friends from the Class of 1989 Mount Pleasant High School!

The collar! Oh my goodness.

Doug Knudsen, circa 1976? Classic!

How I transferred my purchased music off my iPhone without automatic syncing

This may be one of the easiest things to do in an Apple Expert's eyes but everything that I googled on transferring music from my iPhone to another computer was saying...too bad. So I called Apple this morning to figure out the answer to my problem: How do I transfer music that I purchased on my iPhone to my new computer that I don't currently have my iPhone synced...without erasing my music!
 

I'm glad I called and am doing my part to keep the Apple Experts employed.

Here are the steps in case you don't want to go through the trouble of talking to those lovely people:

In iTunes, pull down the iTunes menu -->select Preferences-->select Devices-->click box next to "Disable automatic syncing for iPhones and iPods" --> Click OK

Here's what it looks like:

In the iTunes window, find your iPhone (mine's allielune) under Devices and right click (hold the control button and click the mouse at the same time); this will produce a pull down menu. Click on "Transfer Purchases."

TA DA! That's it. I knew Apple couldn't be so evil to deny me a way to move my music that I already paid for with my hard earned money!

But then there's this too!

The cuteness...it's killing me!

We bought a new computer a couple weeks ago...several months after the iBook broken screen issue. Thanks to this new technology in our house I have started to, gasp! ORGANIZE our old files, including our old photos. Look what I found. I love looking at older pictures of Eddie. It's always so surprising to me how much he's grown up. How quickly we forget! He was two years old in this picture. What a handsome little man.

Sassy face

Sorry Claire the answer is still no.

The mice will play...

I had to stop in at work today for a couple minutes. I am officially on stay-cation so the kids are at home with me from camp. I asked them to keep themselves busy in my office while I went to a quick meeting. My first mistake was turning on the computer. I came back to my office to find about 100 new pictures on Photo Booth on my work computer, including this one...so cute. I will, however, spare you of the pictures of Eddie's butt. We're only in day 2 of 14 days of stay-cation. Heaven help me.

Our friend the caterpillar

Claire has declared herself a "bug hunter." She seems to handle caterpillars fine. Spiders are quite fascinating. Ants...those are terrifying.