Calm as the Moon

Wedged between my Mom and Dad in the WMU library catalog

Wow. Not everyone can claim this when they search for the title of their masters thesis on their alma mater's library catalog search...

I am found right between my Mom and Dad in a catalog search. How awesome is that?

Props to my former employer Waldo Library for coming through on the catalog update. This is so cool...

Choosing the guilty pleasure and living with the consequences.

Life in Kalamazoo is delightful these days. The sun is shining more often. The birds are singing. Flowers are blooming in our yard despite my need to make a quick early morning dash to the garage in shorts and a down coat. The quick dash is for two reasons: the early morning chill that is still present in it's awkward spring time way AND as an attempt to get to pilates without feeling too guilty about being many minutes late, yet again. It's a biweekly act in having compassion for myself and accepting that I will always be hopeless just barely on time if not late. It is my burden and I bare it with reflective dignity. Life could have worse difficulties and it sometimes does.

Today, I am [anxiously--but don't tell my sister-in-law Amy this] awaiting the arrival of the latest member to the McKenna clan. My nephew Leo will be coming soon, hopefully it will be sooner than not. I am really excited about this little guy. I LOVE babies and all their potential. This morning I wonder how much influence I, as his aunt might have on his life and how little things that I might say to him someday may change his life forever. I have an uncle like that. It's not so much that I talk to him every day. In fact, I've only seen him a few times in my life but he conducts himself in his everyday life in such a way that inspires me to be a better person. I hope that the choices that I make daily might inspire the little people in my life. Even if those choices mean that I'm able to take the 45 minutes that I had intended on getting up early to prepare for my day but use those minutes instead to lay in bed reading a guilty pleasure book. The act of not allowing my guilt for being late [which is ever present] ... again... to consume me and to live compassionately to myself first and to the others around me second, is the act that I hope my children and my nieces and future nephew can learn from me. It's taken me a long time to develop this skill and I hope they might be able to acquire it sooner than I have.

Mercy. Mercy me.

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.