Spring...

A Few Words

As usual, it’s Saturday night, and I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. But this week, it was a truck full of customers.

We had our first back-to-back $1000+ days since we took over the café. And almost made it back-to-back-to-back—missed it by fifteen bucks today.

So this is not the desperate, frustrated, one-step-forward-two-steps-back kind of tired I’ve been slogging through for the past eight months. This is the "We just might have finally turned the corner" fatigue for which I have been thirsting all these 273 days.

And I am just too damned beat to write any more. J

A Reprieve...

Oh, how I miss my laptop!

Much as I have cursed the thing, and called it a glorified doorstop, now that I don’t have it, I WANT it.

I had to take it to the ‘puter doctor the other day. I needed to find out why it refused to connect to the internet through my cable connection at the café.

‘Puter Doctor told me I had most likely picked up some kind of "malicious software" from the internet. Told me all kinds of scary stories about why "hackers" would want to control MY computer… Something about how a hacker recruits a whole legion of computers so that they can do his dirty work...perhaps shutting down "Amazon" for a day by flooding it with requests.

All I could think of was, there are too many people out there with WAAAAYYYY too much time on their hands…

And then, I thought (and I SAID to the computer geek…) that the only reason I HAVE a computer is that one can hardly function without one these days. But I have neither the time nor the inclination to have to BABYSIT it all the time. I mean, he gave me a list about ten miles long of all the things I needed to do to keep my computer "safe" from internet ne’er-do-wells.

I pay a decent chunk of money for Internet Security and "Spy Sweeper" programs. I guess I just expect them to do their jobs and leave me out of it. But, noooo…. I’m supposed to spend about a jillion hours a week safeguarding my computer from hackers. BLEAH!

I swear, after hearing all that, I was ready to just heave the thing into the Columbia and be done with it.

But then there is my journal. And AOL.

Interesting thing about AOL. Apparently, those in the know will refuse to load AOL onto a computer.

They think of it as the next best thing to a virus. My personal computer geek said that AOL infiltrates WAY to much of one’s hard drive… So, while they were contemplating having to cure my laptops ills by completely wiping out the hard drive and reloading it from the ground up, they told me they would not reload AOL onto it.

Hmmmmmm…. Gives one pause, doesn’t it? I have been paying monthly, for the past almost ten years, for a virus?

Still, I don’t have time to try to figure out how I would maintain access to "Coming to Terms…" without AOL.

So it was a relief, both to me and to AOL (or not...) for me to learn today from the computer geeks that they did not have to, after all, wipe out my hard drive and start over.

AOL has gotten, at least for the time being, a reprieve.

Do you think they care?

Teach The Children...What?

Here I am, back in the position of managing young people. This time, the age gap between myself and the people I am supervising (mentoring? guiding?) is easily 1.5 decades greater than the last time I was called upon to fill this role.

Fifteen years ago, I was nearly old enough to be the mother of my youngest employees. At 36, I could (biologically) have had a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old of my own. I was superficially cognizant of that fact, but it didn’t really register. I felt like an overgrown eighteen-year-old myself sometimes, back in those days. I was able to establish a sort of mentor relationship with my girls; the fact that I was almost twenty years their senior never seemed to be much of an issue—to me, anyway.

Fast forward to 2007. Other than my 38-year-old cook (who has a thirteen-year-old daughter of her own), my oldest employees cannot even claim a quarter of a century on the planet. So I am WAY old enough to be their parent. It’s an interesting dynamic. Having never had children of my own, I don’t see these girls as "children." I’m sure I have an entirely different attitude toward them than their (younger than me) parents have. Most of the time, I don’t give it too much thought. But then there are times when I wonder…exactly what DO these children think of me?

For one thing, I don’t think they realize I am older than their parents, most of the time. Not being a parent myself, I don’t act like a parent. Which is not to say that I don’t sometimes come off as a complete old fart. I’m sure that when I’m back in the kitchen grooving to my "tunes" on the radio (I found the greatest radio station out of Portland—they play all sixties and seventies music. The music of my childhood…!) my employees are thinking of me exactly what I would have thought of my mother hopping around to "Big Band" stuff when I was a kid. Come to think of it, my mother never did that. Was there (is there?) a certain dignity to being a parent that I completely lack? Or some rule in the Mom Handbook that says you should never let your kids see that Once Upon A Time you might possibly have been just like them?

The other day, I found myself expressing my spiritual ambiguity to one of my girls. She’s college-grad age, so I don’t feel guilty of poisoning a young mind with things of which her parents would heartily disapprove (I’ve met her parents and I’m sure they WOULD disapprove…but she’s old enough to make these kinds of decisions for herself.) But this is a small town, and this girl was brought up in a strictly religious family. So I wonder, really, how my lack of reticence about my beliefs colored her opinion of me. I try to think back to myself at that age…what would have shocked me? What would I have considered TMI from someone old enough to be my mother?

Then again, times were WAY different when I was a young twenty-something. Much as we would like to have thought we were so hip and so liberal and so enlightened… Let’s face it: I was an almost-affluent child of the lily-white suburbs. What today’s kids don’t give a second thought would have shocked my socks off. Here at my own little café we’ve had an openly gay cook, girls working on their second or third out-of-wedlock baby, tattoos, pierced everythings, the dark specter of methamphetamine in several employees lives… And this, as I said, is a small town. So imagining what might have shocked me at that age is totally irrelevant.

And even if I did suspect that I should keep a tighter rein on what I betray of myself to my employees, I doubt that I could actually DO that. I am who I am--almost completely without pretense or guile. It just doesn’t occur to me to be secretive about who I am or what I believe. Which, I concede, is not always a good thing. It’s certainly not "managerial" or "owner-ial" behavior. I suppose I should give great consideration to the persona I intend to create for myself, and project that and only that image. I’m sorry. I have about as much chance of doing that as I do of crawling back into my mothers womb and calling for a "do-over" of my entire life.

So god knows what kind of reputation I am creating for myself in this little town. If only to give myself one less thing to obsess about, I will choose to believe there is nothing about me that my employees won’t be better off for the knowing…

Yet Another Treatise on the Blogging Experience

In a recent post, I remarked how journal land has been experiencing yet another shrinking fit. More long-time journalers, some nearly dug up with the foundation of AOL j-land, have hung up their spurs.

I hate that people are losing interest in the blog experience. I feel each loss personally. I’ve learned so much from blogging. I’ve learned about the lives, feelings and beliefs of people all over the country and beyond. I’ve learned that, regional demographics aside, there are people everywhere just like me. People who love to write; people who want to write. People who have to write.

I broke onto the blogging scene back in September of 2003. So I’ve been doing this for 3½ years. And the experience has been so different from anything I might have predicted going in. So many of us have remarked upon the surprise aspect of blogging—the community that grew up in the infant blogosphere. Especially among the pioneer journalers on AOL. That community…it has served as both carrot and stick. It has been, at various times, the best thing and the worst thing about blogging.

Ahhh…that unanticipated experience of "Comments…" Dialogues and critiques inspired by MY writing…by the ideas and opinions that had mouldered for so long only inside my own head. That was the fix to which I became instantaneously and hopelessly addicted. And it soon became obvious that, like any addiction, blogging would become a roller coaster spin of euphoric highs and belly-scraping lows. The highs kept me securely chained to my modem…the lows sent me grasping for the nearest heavy, sharp object with which to hack those chains asunder.

Of course blogging is a fad. And, as such, it inspired some people to blaze in and burn out of the scene with astonishing speed. And then there are those who found themselves treading the ethereal waters during the calm, uncomplicated doldrums of their lives. As soon as more engaging activities stirred up the waters, they swam on. Still, some of us—the dogged few—remain. Why?

For me, contrary soul that I am, the experience has been much the opposite from most. As was true for others, I dove into the journal pool when my life held little else. I became blog-o-centric; journaling was the only challenging, colorful, engaging thing in my life. But the dark side of the blogosphere—the hit and run relationships, the venomous "friendships," the pretenders and the liars and the criminals—make the ether a treacherous place. It can promise redemption and slit your throat in one swift motion. A sad, desperate, scary place to be when one is in a vulnerable frame of mind. Compelling and repulsive at the same time. But now…now that I have a life outside the blogosphere, I can truly appreciate its benefits without being poisoned by its miasma.

Benefits? Oh yes…they are there. In spades. Is it the friendships—those internet relationships that can be as frail and inconstant as the ether upon which they are carried? Yes, and no… the very fragility of the ethereal foundation of those bonds makes them forever straddle the line between blessing and curse.

No…the friendships are an arguable bonus, but they aren’t the real prize.

The big thing, the ultimate reward of which I became aware only recently, is the market. The showcase. The unprecedented opportunity for people like me—those who have always been writers but, for whatever reasons, have been unable to do anything with our compulsive scribblings—to be read. Heard. Appreciated. With the explosion of this great open-air market of communication known as "the internet," anyone—anyone at all—can set up a stand and display their wares.

Consider the plight of the writer: There are traditional showcases for almost every other left-brained activity. Painters, craftspeople, musicians… It’s easy for them to share the fruits of their cherished talents with other human beings. If nothing else, they can display their art on any old street corner. They don’t have to fill pages and studios and warehouses with work that no one else will ever see. Where is that kind of outlet for those of us who wield the pen as our creative instrument? Try standing on a street corner and reading poetry, or handing out copies of an astute political analysis to passers-by. Street-peddling words and ideas would more likely result in a ride in the back of a squad car than a chorus of "oohs" and "ahs" from appreciative pedestrians.

But now…NOW we have it. A place. A bazaar. Somewhere to get our words out there. Without the interference of a middle-man who sets himself up as judge and jury, and tells us our words—our ideas—are not good enough. Believe it, create it, write it, post it. And someone, somewhere will read it. How amazing, how utterly cool is that?

So that’s it. That’s the hook—the thing that will keep me chained to the blogosphere. Not the wonky relationships, nor the serial-drama allure of peering into the intimate lives of people I don’t know, nor the desperation for some kind—any kind—of human interaction. It’s the market. The place to set up my easel and display my stuff to other human beings. The place where someone outside my own head can read, and consider, and conclude, "That’s good writing."

Even if I touch only one other person in this way, it’s worth every gut-spilling keystroke. So here I am. And here I will stay. For as long as my fingers can make any sense at all out of the harpies flying around in my head.

Tags: writing, why I blog

A Saturday Night's Reflection

I feel like I’ve taken a step backward in time. Here I sit, ensconced in my bunk in the trailer; flashing back to the essence of what was the sum total of "My Business" less than a year ago. The 8 ½ months of nearly overwhelming work and worry that have been the story of my life since July 1, 2006 have, for at least a few hours (with me wielding the biggest mental eraser I can lay my hands upon) faded into the background. For this short time, I have returned to what was definitely a simpler life.

A far less challenging life.

A far less frustrating life.

A far less rewarding life.

For what great reward was ever gotten without sacrifice? Without a massive investment of time? And energy? And blood, sweat, and tears?

Life is not the lottery. It is not a matter of buying the winning ticket and having it all handed to you on a silver platter. We say that’s what we want. The easy life. Instant success.

But what would we be, really, if that was what life was all about?

Could it really be called "Life?"

Back to the Usual Fare

Now that I’ve chased everyone away with a couple entries that spotlight my, shall we call it "spiritual ambiguity"… I think it’s time for a more traditional "Ten Things" list. I’m wondering, though, if these are ten good things, or just things I wanted to write about but I’m so tired I can hardly form a coherent thought…

1. Another Sunday off! And this makes, what, five or six in a row? Can I finally say I have enough of my shit in one sock that I can take one scheduled, predictable day off every week? It will probably jinx the whole thing to mention this, but things might be (dare I say it?) starting to gel at the café. I have employees who are happy, motivated, and enjoy their jobs. I can take a day off without wondering what kind of damage control I’ll be performing for days afterward. I always knew this day would come, but it seemed for awhile as if I wasn’t going to physically make it to this point. Hallelujah and pass the rolaids…
2. On the subject of the day off, we took Ms. Dog for another walk on the dike, and were treated to sightings of both our eagles, and possibly a third (which I think was a young eagle, since it looked the same basic shape and size, but lacked the white head and tail.) This time, one of the eagles was being very vocal. Quite a piercing, wild sound, the call of the eagle resounding up and down the length of the channel. Gave me goosebumps.
3. After our walk, we headed back to our restaurant for lunch. Weather was pleasant, and we had the dog with us, so we sat out on the sidewalk. How odd it is to be a small-town business owner and a total introvert at the same time. We have lived in this town for almost six years and literally do not even know our own neighbors by name. But, there we were, sitting out in front of the café, and getting honks and waves as regular customers driving by recognized and hailed us. Not something I’ve ever experienced, or ever thought I would. Just goes to show, even when you’re older than dirt, life can throw in a few surprises if you open yourself up to it…
4. In the course of an employee performance appraisal today, the "appraisee" went on at length about how much she enjoys working at the café. She remarked that the crew and management are so nice, and everyone gets along so well, and everyone is so willing to help. And that the customers seem genuinely happy to be there and to be having a good time. Did that ever crack a smile somewhere deep in my soul! The trials and pitfalls of buying this restaurant and dealing with the horrific staff issues have had me questioning everything from my management skills to my worth as a human being. To have someone say in so many words that they think MY restaurant is a great place to work probably added ten years back on to my life. <BOSEG> (BIG Old Shit Eating Grin…)
5. Between the unwelcome time change and a turn in the weather, it’s obvious spring is truly on its way to the Columbia Valley. Daffodils are smiling, camellias are bursting forth, the flowering apples, cherries and plums need only a few more days of sun and higher temps to pop their fat buds into full bloom. Of course, I can hardly enjoy all this while steadfastly averting my eyes from the ever-lengthening grass and burgeoning population of weeds I barely encounter in my poor yard between twelve-hour stints at the restaurant. I have no idea how we are going to keep the property from looking like an abandoned rental this summer… The husband and I spent an hour yesterday searching for a little scrap of paper that had been stuck under our front door, touting the reasonably priced landscaping attentions of "Manuel." Surely small businesses keep the economy turning by creating work for one another!
6. We have another event coming up this weekend which will require my absence from the restaurant for three days. I’m so tired, I barely have the energy to pack…but can I say how much I’m looking forward to the break? Poor hubs will be stuck at home on café duty, though. We could sure use an actual communal vacation.
7. I ordered a pair of shoes from QVC. J
8. Bought fabric and trim for curtains at the café. Now all I need is someone to sew them for me ( I SUCK at sewing.)

Can you tell I’m falling asleep? My "things" are getting shorter and shorter…

9. I posted the first piece of decent, thoughtful writing I’ve wrung out of my head since before we bought the restaurant. Of course, no one read it… Seems like our little blogosphere is doing the shrinking act again. In just the past few weeks, several more people have thrown in the towel. It’s gettin’ kinda lonely around these parts…
10. 2008 is getting closer and closer. All good things come to an end; and thankfully, so do the bad ones. And the end can’t come to soon for the Bush Administration. What a toilet of stupidity and arrogance!

Okay. I’m all done for tonight. Sweet dreams!

 

 

Tags: Ten Good Things

A Somewhat Different Ten Things

Awhile back, NPR ran a series called, "This I Believe." Listeners were invited to submit essays describing some important aspect of their personal moral code. Those judged the best were read on the air by the authors.

Being the negative, glass-half-empty type that I am, I decided a better approach for me would be "This I Don’t Believe." You see, it’s not that I don’t believe in God. There are simply several important things I don’t believe about God. So I thought I would use my "Ten Things" format to list some of the highlights of my unbelief…

1.) I don’t believe that God honors, ordains, blesses or in any way sanctions human beings doing violence to other human beings. Ever. For any reason. I don’t believe we were created to inflict suffering upon one another. We do it. We seem to derive some kind of perverse pleasure from it. But let’s leave God out of it.

2.) I don’t believe the Almighty put us upon this wondrously intricate, inconceivably beautiful planet so that we could destroy it with our astonishingly lethal weapons. And…

3.) I don’t believe we were given Earth so that we could alter it to the point of uninhabitability with the filthy by-products of our daily existence. Eons ago, as an infant race, we could reasonably depend upon our Creator to deal with our temper tantrums and our excrement. We have (arguably) grown well beyond that point, now. With "maturity" comes responsibility. Reject the responsibility, and extinction looms large. And rather sooner than later, I expect.

4.) I don’t believe the Author of the Universe has any particular preference for with whom I choose to perform the sex act. Admittedly, having indiscriminate sexual intercourse with anything or anyone can have serious public health ramifications; so mankind long ago created social codes to deal with this issue. Unfortunately, whenever man needs to put teeth into any legislation, he declares it "God’s Law." But I don’t believe that the Great Mastermind of planets and star systems and galaxies far beyond our ken, is all that invested in our puny sexual antics.

5.) I don’t believe God whips up famines, earthquakes, floods or other natural disasters as punishment for evil. Once again, "God" takes the rap for things we don’t understand and can’tcontrol. The Earth is an amazing and fearsome entity in its own right, a living thing. Our job is to live on it, to love it, to respect it…and, sometimes, to die when its life force overpowers our own.

6.) I don’t believe that humans are any more specially connected to the Creator than the rest of creation. We may indeed have been ordained to "communicate" with the Almighty…but who is to say that other creatures were not? Perhaps they even do so with much greater facility than we do, unencumbered as they are by the interference created by our so-called "intelligence." Perhaps an eagle, or a hamster, or even a cockroach has a much more direct line to God than I have…

7.) I don’t believe in the conventional concepts of "heaven" and "hell." There is an aspect of the universe which we encounter occasionally…only enough to be confused, intrigued, intimidated and frightened by it. Call it "the spirit world," or "the other side" or "the after-life." Mankind has brushed against it for millennia, and in many cases has made it part of—if not the basis for—various religions and belief systems throughout history. We will go on to…something at the end of this life. But the idea of a big garden where I will reunite with all the people I have ever loved (what about the ones I didn’t like so much?) seems, in the end, much too…corporeal. Even though the "unknown" aspect of it can frighten me to insensibility if I dwell on it too much, I have it in my mind that, wherever we go, it must be…can there be a word for it? Inconceivable?

8.) I don’t believe God takes sides in human disputes. Once again, backing one horse or another in the endless squabbles, great or small, in which human beings delight in engaging, does not seem worth an eyelash bat from the Creator of more worlds than we have numbers to count…

9.) I don’t believe God randomly answers prayers, or that sometimes the answer to prayer is "no," or any of those other platitudes that various religions have concocted to explain why God is so often indifferent to human suffering. I’m sorry…it doesn’t make sense to me that there is a Being who has ultimate power to alleviate suffering, to heal illness, to create peace, and doesn’t. It’s not that I don’t believe the Author of the Universe is without power. It’s just that I don’t believe the Almighty uses (or doesn’t use) that power in ways we can explain or understand.

10.) I don’t believe that God is going to strike me dead, or smite me in some other nasty way, for my unbelief. Consider the one great aspect that seems to distinguish us from all other life on our planet—our ability, no…our compulsion to ask, "Why???" We are meant to quest after knowledge—knowledge of ourselves, knowledge of our planet and our fellow passengers upon it, knowledge of the universe beyond our own little speck of dust in our own little corner of our own little galaxy. In gaining that knowledge, we come to know the greatness and character of the Entity from which all things sprang forth. I don’t believe that is not what the Almighty intends.

Tags: Spiritual Beliefs, God

New Entry In The Series (A Little Tardy...)

(You may or may not remember that I had begun a series of posts about six weeks ago that was interrupted by my life...  Well, I've finally had the time to think enough to add another entry...)

As I puttered around the bathroom this morning, my free-streaming thoughts flowed to the brink of the cliff once again. No matter where I go inside my head these days, it seems I end up there sooner or later: craning my neck over the edge of the great canyon between "What I Have Been Taught" and "What I Can Believe After Fifty Plus Years of Life." Or maybe, not so much peering into the crevasse, as already ten steps into the empty air. Waiting for the moment when I glance down, look at the camera, squeak "help!" and disappear in a cartoon poof.

Today, my thoughts went to illness, and healing, and my assertion in a previous post to the effect that a loving, omnipotent Dad In The Sky who possesses the ability to end suffering or heal illness would just do it. Some claim that God is fully capable of conferring miraculous healing, but only heals those who fill certain criteria. Obviously, we don’t know the magic formula by which to obtain healing every time, or we would never be ill again. Nevertheless, "miraculous" spontaneous cures occur from time to time. Just often enough to keep us believing that divine healing is a matter of praying hard enough, or being good enough, or having a mighty purpose in life we have yet to fulfill, so the Divine grants us some kind of reprieve.

I am supposed to believe that this all-knowing, all-powerful God, who loves us so much that we haven’t the capacity to understand that love, allows things like cancer and AIDS and malaria and ebola virus to plague the human race, for inconceivable reasons of Its own. And every now and then, this God will zap a miraculous healing on someone, just to let us know that It is capable of doing so. And to keep us in line in front of the altar…

I’m sorry, but I think that paints a ridiculous picture of the Author of the Universe. What kind of capricious, callous, venal Supreme Being have we created for ourselves? We could fit the body of our knowledge about the connection between the physical and the spiritual on the head of a pin. We know spontaneous healings occur, but we are clueless as to the mechanics of such things. As always happens when we reach the limitations of our human knowledge, we toss the unknowns into the lap of "God." But do we never stand back and really look at this "Collage God" we’ve constructed? We’ve ended up with an all-powerful, all-loving God who is frighteningly schizophrenic about how It chooses to use Its power to express Its love. When we have a hard time dealing with how all these conflicting talents and abililities add up to something we are compelled to love and worship, we turn to those age old cop-outs: "It (illness, accident, premature death) is God’s will," or the Catholic version—"It’s a mystery."

So what do I think the secret is? How do I explain miraculous inexplicable cures? My current theory is that there is an intrinsic connection between our "souls"(or "spirits" or "energy") and our physical bodies. A connection that we understand is there, but have no concept as to the depth and magnitude thereof. Or what effect the ability to channel that energy at will would have on things like illness and pain. Perhaps miraculous cures occur when a particular resonance between our bodies and the energy that gives us life is obtained.  Some ancient mystic "religious" traditions have explored these connections. But in our culture, these tiny beginnings of what might be real understanding of what we are and how we work are shouted down by two powerful lobbies: Christianity and Western medicine.

Christians believe that Christ healed the sick, so healing must come from God. Okay. What if I don’t argue the existence of God, or a "Divine" being? What if I don’t argue that Christ was sent by that Being, or especially ordained by It? But what if the reason that Christ healed the sick was not to show that all healing comes from God, but to demonstrate that human beings themselves possess the capacity to heal? What if we’ve been "going forth" with the wrong message all these two thousand plus years? (One of many…)

As far as western medicine goes, for all its touted basis in sound science, it has major flaws. Not the least of which is the fact that it only peripherally acknowledges the link between body and "energy," or soul. When miraculous cures occur beyond or counter to the medical community’s understanding, they shrug their shoulders and say, "Can’t explain it," shake off the cold sweat and hack into the next body. Western medicine, still a mostly male-dominated good ole boy club—almost a cult itself—has no time or respect for methods or research outside its own narrow scope. Who knows how much mankind has suffered for the smug discrimination of "modern" medicine?

It’s a pity that there is so much we don’t understand, a body of knowledge we don’t have that so dwarfs that which we have. And we, as a race, are not interested in knowing what we don’t know. We aren’t interested in knowing that we don’t know. We so want to believe that we have a handle on everything…or that we are just a few electrodes and test-tubes away from having all the answers we need. And anything beyond that is thrown into the lap of that Being who handles all the Stuff We Don’t Get.

I was listening to a discussion about evolution the other day. Someone made the very wise observation that when you make your God the explanation for everything you don’t know, that God shrinks every time you learn something new. Is that what we want? A shrinking God? Or do we want to invest our energy in finding out what our connection really is to the Author of the Universe? Some of my readers have made comments that human beings were uniquely created to communicate with the Divine, even to hunger after that communication. That may well be true. But what exactly is it that we are meant to draw from that communication? I fear we may be hopelessly tuned to the wrong channel…

Tags: miralces, healing

Sams in Love (?)

We had a day off today… A day off work and a respite from the hideous gloomy weather of the past week. So of course we headed for the dike.

Hopes of a "Sam sighting" were rewarded…

…doubly.

Recap:  Heading north on the dike, we almost immediately espied "Sam" perched in a tree overlooking the channel.  As my camera rapidly ran out of battery power, I snapped off shot after shot, hoping for at least one "postable" picture.  Dog and Dad finally dragged me away. 

A few hundred yards further along, I spotted "Samantha" surveying the landscape from her own cottonwood.  Cranked up croaking camera once again.

Eventually we continued our stroll, threw the ball for the dog, turned round at the "osprey tower," (ospreys were not home today...) and headed back.  And discovered that "Sam" and "Samantha" had decided to co-habitate. 

Now, of course, I have no clue of the sex of either of these birds, don't know how to tell...  Didn't consider they might be of opposite sexes until we came upon their tryst.  And I'm only guessing that they are a pair.  But it seems likely...

Happy March

I decided to post something pretty, because today was SO not.  You name it, it sucked. 

The weather.  My employees.  My health.  Sales.  All pretty much sucked the grand wazoo today.

But in the immortal words of Scarlett O'Hara, "Tomorrow is  another day." 

And it would be hard pressed to suck as bad as this one. 

There's something to look forward to... :P