You Can Quit At Any Time. But This Could Be Your Year.

Well, I missed a few days. Duh.

Did you miss me?

Yeah, I figure you were busy, too.

Funny how you can have great intentions and they can just get shot straight to someplace else. Well, that is what you call LIFE, I think.

Oh well.

Let's get back to California 37 and Train. Can you believe that the concert is only two days away? Me either.

I am absolutely ready for it. It is going to be outside, so I am really hoping that the weather cooperates. Last time I checked there was only 30% chance of rain, so that is good. And it has been cooling down in the evenings... another plus. So, I have fingers, toes, and anything else that is crossable... crossed.

Okay, let's get down to the music. I do believe that I referenced a blog or two back that the band did figure out what the problem was for their lack of ongoing success after they achieved success. In other words, just having a couple of great songs doesn't mean that you will continue to put out great songs. I think that there is a lot of pressure once you have made it to continue to make it. Before you make it, you can write whatever you want. After you make it, everyone seems to have an opinion about your music. And that is aside from the fans.

I found what Pat had to say during this studio session very enlightening.



Let's listen to the whole thing...



If if made you think of Billy Joel's song We Didn't Start The Fire at first listen, you are not the only one. Of course, the listing of events is the only thing those two songs have in common. BJ's song spans decades and isn't remotely personal. Train's song is an intimate look at Pat's life. I look at the timeline of it and I see that at various times there was hopelessness there. Gaping hopelessness. Couldn't you feel it? He even says "this is the time I felt most alone."

I love these kinds of songs because he is offering the entire spectrum of his life to date. There was some terrible places, black places, with sunlight filtering in here and there. However, he kept going and then KABOOM... the universe rewarded all of his tenacity with bounty. Train took off. Train crashed and burned. Train took off again. His marriage crashed and burned, but finally he met the true love of his life in 2004, and it was true and good, and he finally felt at home. The lesson is that you can quit at any time on the timeline, but if you do, you won't get the reward.

So, Journey has the right of it DON'T STOP BELIEVING. And so does Train because MAYBE THIS WILL BE YOUR YEAR.

This is another song I just really like off of the new album. They didn't create a Studio Session for it. And it hasn't been deemed radio worthy... yet. But, it is one of my personal favorites.

If I go before I say to everyone in my ballet

Let me take this chance to thank you for the dance
If I run out of songs to sing to take your mind off everything
Just smile, sit a while with the

Sun on your face and remember the place we met
Take a breath and soon I bet you'll see
Without you I would never be me
You are the leaves of my family tree

Sing together
If you knew me from the very start,
Or we met last week at the grocery mart
Just sing together
It's the least that I can do
My final gift to you
Oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oooo

When I'm past the pearly gate, I will find some real estate
Where we can settle down and watch the world go round
We'll send down all the love we got and let them know we got a spot
For them to be and it's all free,

The sun on your face and remember the place we met
Take a breath and soon I bet you'll see
Without you I would never be me
You are the leaves of my family tree

Sing together
If you knew me from the very start,
Or not at all you're still a part, just
Sing together
It's the least that I can do
My final gift to you
Oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oooo
Oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oooo

So, let's all sing together. If you knew me from the very start, or not at all you're still a part of it all. It's the least that I can do.

Without you, I would never be me.


image found on facebook, yet again
Don't ask...

Blindsided.

I knew someone who used to talk about rollercoasters in terms of stress. When it is really bad it is sort of like this: you are stuck in a rollercoaster park. All of the coasters are unlabeled. You must choose one. So, you get the stress of the choosing, the stress while you wait in line, and then the stress during the ride, and then you get to do it all again. Of course, everyone likes and dislikes different coasters. Give me the smooth ones with lots of up and down and tight curves. The wooden coasters and the ones that go upside down are the ones that alternately make me feel like I need a chiropractic readjustment or just downright sick to my stomach.

Yeah, this post is about my dad. I spoke to him just about a week ago and he was doing well. In fact, he was doing about the same as when he was initially diagnosed. He was still getting up daily and his pain meds hadn't increased at all. In other words, his routine was pretty much the same as right after his initial diagnosis. On Thursday of this past week all of that changed. Bam. No longer did he feel capable of getting out of bed, and he isn't able to eat or drink much of anything. That has affected his ability to speak. His need for pain meds also changed. He went from doing very well to looking like he has a life expectancy of about two weeks.

There are no words to truly express how shocked I am. He was using an alternative treatment that I think might have worked had he found it six months to a year ago. However, I was beginning to hope that it was going to work ~ even now ~ since he wasn't getting worse. You see, I was beginning to disbelieve the original diagnosis. I thought my dad was going to be the person to beat stage 4 cancer.

And then today arrived. My brother called and told me how bad it was and that my dad was not going to beat stage 4 cancer. My dad possibly would not live to see the month of June. Wow.

Hope is the best and the worst thing in the world.

I had to go lie down because it gave me in instant migraine. I know I jumped right in line for the roller coaster. I remember the people in my dream, but I don't know any of them. I just remember my parting shot at all of them being, before I woke up, "I don't have time for your crap and your drama. My dad is dying of cancer." I was literally crying when I came out of that sleep.

I pondered the what to do for a while. Talking on the phone is never good. He can't understand me and now it hurts him to talk. I considered going back up there, but I don't want to remember him like this. That decision was reinforced when I did talk to him today. It greatly upset him when I cried on the phone. He wants me to be okay with his dying. And I will be... eventually. But, I am not sure that it will be in less than a month. I don't want to make his passing worse. This cannot be all about me.

So, I suggested to my brother that I write my dad an email every day and he read it to him. I have decided that it is unimportant if dad remembers our history or not. I remember it. I want him to feel the love in it. And if it jogs his memory, that is wonderful. If it doesn't, than I will be remembering for both of us. It is the last gift I can give him before he goes.

I am thinking that I will post them here. You can read them or not. I will call them Letters To Dad and then give them a subtitle. If that is your thing, read away. If not, come back when it is over. Either way, I understand.

image found at www.weheartit.com

DAY 28: YOU CHANGED MY LIFE

Dear Reed,

I almost decided to not write this letter to you. This letter almost was written to my current doctor (Dr. Julie Dahl-Smith), because this is a letter to someone who changed your life. It didn't specify who changed it the most; it just said someone who changed your life. Dr. Dahl-Smith probably saved my life, which would definitely mean she changed my life. She stuck with me until we got to the root of my migraines. The fact that we haven't been able to knock them out really isn't her fault. I kinda have to look in the mirror and suck that one up myself. She said no stress and I kept the stress, so there you have it. Moving on...

I bet you are now wondering why you are getting this letter. Clearly it is because you changed my life. The weird part about this whole thing is that I didn't even know that you had changed my life until YEARS after the fact. That summer selling books door-to-door in Colorado was hard. In lots of ways it was brutal. That first week I really thought I might die. I hated it. The work schedule was grueling. Knocking on a stranger's door at 8am is just stupid. I thought it was stupid then and I still think it is stupid. No one is in a good mood at 8am. And if they are, it is broken by someone knocking on their door trying to sell them something. It also rained steadily that first week. It was actually cold. Cold and wet. Working a 12 hour day with a brief respite for a sandwich brought from home is not my kind of day. 8am-8pm rain or shine. Come on. I will never forget when the diarrhea hit me after about eight days and I was HAPPY. I was THRILLED. Never been so happy to have diarrhea in my life. I could go HOME. No one can work with that. Ann, my actual manager, called for numbers and I told her the sad truth. I was struck out of the game by a bad case of diarrhea. Her response was, "Why didn't you take Immodium?" Well that was met with silence. The obvious answer was that it would take my precious diarrhea away. I was happy to be on the bench. I was exhausted. I needed a time out. Ann and I never really got along after that. In fact, she stopped calling for end of day numbers when Karen quit and Diana moved to Colorado Springs.

After that, I heard a lot more from you. You were a manager, but you weren't mine. However, you would call me several mornings a week just to see if I was awake. I got really good at sounding like I was awake when I was actually sound asleep, and you had woken me up with your call. However, you never believed me. You always thought I was sleeping. That was irksome when I actually was awake. So, I guess I wasn't as good at sounding awake as I thought. Hmmmm. Sometimes, out of the blue, you would tell me to jump in the car and drive down to your territory. I was going to follow you that day. That was fine. It was nice to have company. Sales is lonely, and you were funny. The thing was this: I never got why you took an interest. You never got paid for helping me. I wasn't one of the people on your team. Calling me didn't financially boost you at all. Making sure that I succeeded didn't help you. I know that you didn't "like" me because you had a girlfriend who was there, and it was very obvious that the two of you were very into each other. But, you continued to kick me in the butt to try and make me better at every opportunity.

I know that I irked you because I got to the point that I pretty much told you the truth. Lying gets tiresome when someone continues to invest himself in you. So, on one those days when I would follow you around and you asked me how I ran my day, I finally told you. I started at about 10am. That is about the time I would be okay with my door being knocked on. I kept at it until I sold something. I had figured out if someone was going to buy the books I was selling, they would buy big. I sold them everything. Why go for the small sale when you can get the large one? Once I made that large sale I could go home and watch my soaps or go to the cheap movies. After dinner, I could work until 8pm and pick up the couple business. Sometimes I accidentally sold stuff. I made friends with my customers and would hang out with the people my age. I was going to a movie with one of them and I hadn't sold the neighbor across the street, but she recognized my car. While I was waiting, the doorbell rang. Turns out the mom talked it over with her husband and she wanted to buy the whole package. I left and made my sale and then I went to the movies with my new friend. Yeah, I am just good like that. I remember you just looking at me and shaking your head.

You said, "Can you imagine how much money you would make if you actually tried?"

I said, "Yeah, but then it would feel like work. I did that for a week when I got here and it gave me the runs. Too stressful. This way, I am making more money than most of the people who are working all day long, and I go to the dollar theatre three or four times a week. Plus I stay caught up on my soap. If you would stop calling me at the buttcrack of dawn, I might could get a decent amount of sleep."

That just earned earned me an evil eye and you didn't stop calling. In fact, I think you called more. You were determined to make me pick up my pace. Looking at it from this perspective, I think that you saw all of this sales potential going to waste and it drove you a little nuts. If it makes you feel at all better, you drove me a little nuts by calling me all the time when I was trying to sleep in. I wasn't going to knock on a door before 10am no matter when you called. You just ruined my extra sleep.

When the summer was over, we had this big party, and we all wrote our names on our Styrofoam cup, so that they didn't get mixed up. You wrote on mine, "Made more $/HR than anyone else." We had all been drinking a bit by then. I am not sure if you meant it as a compliment or if you were still ticked by my lack of incentive, but I decided to take it as a compliment. Anyway, I never forgot it. That was the summer of 1988. Ten years later, my life was going to hit a fork, and I was going to have make the Big Decision: What do I want to be when I grow up? I was an English major who no longer lived in New York, couldn't finish a novel, and didn't want to go back to school to teach. In fact, I didn't want to be a teacher. At that point, it came down to, "What am I good at?" I thought about that cup a lot, and I knew that it was sales. I was good at sales.

It took a couple of different sales jobs to figure out what kind of sales job I liked, but it was sales. I am not sure that I would have known that if it hadn't been for you. You and your constant phone calling when you weren't my manager. When you weren't making any money off of my performance. When you called and said, "You are following me today. Get out of bed, get showered, and get in the car. Hustle." I would hang up and mutter that you had no business telling me what to do, but I still did it. And I always learned something following you. The thing was that you didn't have to take an interest in me and my potential. You gained nothing from it, but you still did it. So, thank you. I admire you more than words can say. I will never forget the words you wrote on that cup; those words changed my life. They gave me a career. When I get well, I am going to have the biggest selling job of my life to do. I am going to have to sell the world on hope. On me. On believing that we can give people the tools to assist them in their journey from illness to wellness. It is going to take millions of dollars. I am going to have to sell the people of this country on an idea. You believed in me. It made me believe in me.

Because of you I know it can happen. All it takes is a few committed people and you can change the world. And that is how you changed my life.

You Are Better Than The Best,
Robin


image snatched from Miss Angie at My So-Called Chaos

DAY 25: THE WORST OF TIMES

Dear Teachers,

This letter is supposed to go out to a person going through the worst of times. Here's the thing about that: everyone goes through the worst of times at some time. It is you, the teacher, that doles out the pain. Granted, it is we, the student, that signed up for the class. You must understand that sometimes you sign up for a class not knowing how hard it is going to be; in theory, it looks not so bad, but the reality is that it slices you open, and you just don't know how you will ever get through it. I know that there are no takebacks once you sign up for the class; no drop/adds. I get it, but teacher, I have to tell you that sometimes your class is a biotch.

For instance, right now I am aware of several people grieving the loss of beloved family members. One of them is grieving the loss of a child, and the other is grieving the loss of a matriarch. Another family is struggling because they have a child who has a very rare disease. At this point, there is no cure in sight because the disease is so rare. Each day is a struggle that transcends tough time. There are so many families who have children with ADHD. For those families it is a tough time all of the time. Another online friend posted that her husband was laid off from his job and she was very worried. Their belt was already very tight. What were they going to do? Times were already tough.

Insofar as I know, there is an online friend who still hasn't been diagnosed, but has been in unbearable pain for months now. She described it as being on fire. I would call that a tough time. A friend of mine in Florida lost four family members to various death/accidents within the last year, two of them were her children, and now her grandchildren live with her. She has a brain tumor, and worries about who will take care of them when she passes. I consider that a tough time.

My mother's best friend has Parkinson's disease and it is getting worse. She also has cancer. The cancer seems to be getting better, but the Parkinson's is not. She is convinced that her husband and children are conspiring to kill her. For the record, they are not trying to kill her. They love her very much. My mom's other best friend's son also was diagnosed with cancer. He had surgery and is now going through chemo and radiation. The cancer was a very aggressive one and so is the chemo and radiation. His ex-girlfriend is taking him to court to try and take away his business and home since he is in this weakened position. Yeah, she's a prize.

My brother and sister-in-law have remodeled the first floor of their house so that her parents could move in. Her mother is ill and was living in a nursing home. Her father was not doing well living alone. This solved both problems. However, it will make life very different for my brother and sister-in-law. My mom talked to him yesterday. They moved in this past weekend and he was already stressed to the max. I really hope things settle down for them soon.

I know that all of you heard about the miners in Chile who were trapped for months and finally were rescued. All of them were rescued! For a long time they had it really tough, but people refused to give up hope. In fact, people were brought in to solve this problem and those miners were saved. The only thing that gets people through a tough time is hope. That is it. You lose that and you have lost the war. So, when the tough time finds you, and it will find you, hold on to Hope and don't let go.

Me





image pirated from Miss Angie at My So-Called Chaos

SOMETHING TO HOLD...

This is inspired by a specific blogging friend, but goes out to anyone who is feeling relationship challenged. I know that watching fictional television relationships may not be the best answer (because they are always so accurate and right on the money). However, we work with what we have. I also know that the friend I have in mind watched this show once upon a time, but gave it up. I still love it. In fact, I have it on DVD, and every summer when I go into withdrawal, and I watch the entire series AGAIN. I am a sick puppy and I know it. I chose this first clip off of youtube because it actually offered some continuity, and stuck to just one relationship, which made it easier to follow. The second clip picks up with just one scene where first leaves off. Oh yeah, you have to scroll down and turn off my music player and turn up the volume on your computer. Sorry....





Well, then I thought that maybe those clips and/or that show just wasn't going to do it for you. The thing is this: if you are single and you want a relationship, you have to have hope. You need something to hold in your hand or in your head. Unfortunately, I tend go for the star-crossed stuff. I look over my TV shows on DVD and they don't feature a lot of happy endings. So, I decided to look at my movies. I had better luck there. I still think that the best movie ever was based on the book by Nicholas Sparks. Yeah, I am talking about THE NOTEBOOK. Although, all of his books make me cry. THE NOTEBOOK was his first novel and was loosely based on the true story of his wife's parents. I was really glad I read that book at home. I started crying about mid-way through the book and didn't stop until I finished it. I have yet to read one of his books that I didn't set me off on a crying spree. I have cried in public several times because I didn't see it coming and "Wham!" there it was.

I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard the rumor that THE NOTEBOOK set Jessica Simpson's divorce in motion. I don't keep up with the stars and their love lives, but I think she was married to Nick Lachey (sp?). Anyway, if the rumors are remotely true, seeing the movie hit a raw nerve. The thing with most movies is you get all of the anticipation and then the grand proclamation of love. Then the credits roll. In life, it is at that point that the story really begins, which is what makes it all feel so misleading. In THE NOTEBOOK, the story happened a long time ago and they weathered it. The "heroine" wrote their story down when she realized she was getting Alzheimer's and made her husband promise to read it to her, because she was sure it would bring her back to him. So, that is what he does EVERY DAY. And every day she wakes up not knowing him. And that is what separates THE NOTEBOOK from the rest. I hope that I haven't ruined it for you if you haven't seen it. I don't think so. Here's the trailer....





And this is the best fight scene ever....