Short...

Work has been challenging.  I'm still fighting a cold.  It means I am winning when it takes so long to become a real thing, right?  Emergen-C is doing its stuff I guess.  The weather today was lovely though so I went for a walk in town before dinner.  I like to think that fresh air helps to keep germs away.  My happy for today is the bright sky as the sun was getting low on my ride home from work today.  Thankful for sunglasses.  😎

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Voting for Mid-term Elections

Eight hours, I may have gotten eight hours of sleep last night.  After doing a bunch of research on the candidates, walking to the polls in the rain and voting, I tried to take a nap and failed.  My feet were cold.  That was all that really got wet, my feet.  I took my shoes and socks off right away and tried to warm them up.  Eventually that meant a heating pad on my feet.  Then I think I couldn't sleep because of the heating pad.  Maybe the real reason I couldn't get to sleep was the eight hours last night.  The eight hours and extra vitamins are kind of keeping the stuffy nose a little bit at bay.  🤞

This morning's search with Z for information on the candidates was sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating.  It was fun to throw ideas at each other and working together to find information.  It was very frustrating when there was no information to be found.  It seems the lesser the office, the lesser the information.  There was one candidate that a local newspaper tried to find to interview (including knocking on their door!) and never found them.  I understand wanting to maintain some semblance of normalcy and privacy, but if one is running for a public office, questions on stances and eligibility should be answered.  Z signed up somewhere to give people rides to the polls, but there were no takers, including me.  I decided to walk.  The church where we vote is just over a half mile away and it hadn't been raining, until I left.  Good thing I brought an umbrella.

Voting is my happy thing for today.  Some sites we used to try and find information are:

https://www.citizenscount.org/
https://www.vote411.org/
https://www.ballotready.org/

Not that these sites are any use to a reader with polls closed or closing, but maybe I will remember that I posted the links and look back next election season.  Maybe next time, there will be more complete information on everyone.  😲

Still some foliage!

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Happy Monday.

Well, maybe calling today happy in the title is a bit of a stretch.  There is no school tomorrow for me and the students were a bit rambunctious today.  Mondays that are like Fridays will do that.  After school was the D&D Club.  I was a little better prepared today and I am starting to learn how some of the players think.

Gideon came down with a cold this weekend and all day I have been feeling more and more sluggish with a slight sore throat and itchy eyes.  Because of this, my afternoon plans for visiting were canceled and I came home instead.  In my head I have adjusted my thoughts to all the different things I could get done tomorrow but I kind of hope that I sleep.  And vote, voting is important.

With the time change there was light for my drive to work and for my ride home.  Both of these periods of time were light, but I still had my headlights on.  At just before 9 PM I am going to finish this are post and head to bed.  Hopefully I will feel better when I wake up.  My happy for today are the delicious truffle things that K made.  Golden Oreos and a cream cheese frosting--not much healthy going for them, but sweet, yummy and now gone!

And then the phone rang and I have another happy for the day.  Friends called to set up a meeting about becoming our heads of staff while we wear the baronial coronets.  Things are starting to come together and I am getting excited.  😃

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The Day After Crown

Breakfast this morning didn't go all that much different than I had expected.  Sort of.  We were still at the hotel and met up with others that we knew would be there.  All this was expected.  Knowing that one of these friends is now Princess of the East in the SCA was also something I knew.  I congratulated her when I first saw her as I hadn't been able to the day before.  There were a few of us having breakfast and I took a picture and had a realization.  Well, reality hit.  One of my daughter's best friends was Princess and will be Queen.  It was a moment of how much my life has changed and how it will be changing.  Also of the people I wish were still here to see it, those that are here and the many that I haven't met yet.  There was a flash of panic followed immediately by a calm feeling.  Like all is okay, don't panic over stuff that hasn't happened.  Live in the now.  Now things are good.  There are things about this now that aren't perfect, but the things I can control are mostly okay.  Now is my happy for today. 

There are children behind that curtain.

They were watching the sunrise

(because kids don't 'get' an extra hour of sleep when the clocks change)

and imagining things about being witches, wizards or warlocks.

Soon after this Gideon's friend says 'oh, zombies' 

as some other character they should have considered.

This is when the game leveled up.  😄

That breakfast picture...

There is a gas fireplace outside the hotel.

The kids sat down to read by it and I took a couple of interesting shots.

Dancing Flame

I've been spotted! 

Hey! 

And then he smiled for the camera. 

A couple pictures from the ride home.

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Crown-picture heavy

The rain was falling as we drove to the event site.  Thankfully friends had a pop-up tarp they shared with us.  The tournament was moved into a barn area but there wasn't much room in there for watching.  As the number of fighters decreased, the amount of space increased so I was able to join others in there to watch towards the end.  The fights were fun to watch.  In the end, the fighter who won fought for one of my daughter's best friends and they are now Prince and Princess.  Many pictures from the day and evening follow.  My happy for today-there were many-but I will use seeing the smiles on fighter's faces under the helmet grill. 

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Dentist-short

We drove about 3 and a half hours to get to a hotel so we can drive another 45 minutes to get to an event site in the morning.  We are tired and need to be up in a few hours to get ready.  K and I had hoped to leave much earlier than we did but Gideon had a toothache and had to go to the dentist.  The dentist found nothing wrong but recommended he go to a pediatric dentist.  I wonder if he is starting to grind his teeth when he sleeps.  I am pretty sure I started grinding mine around his age.  My happy for today is that we arrived safe and are with friends and can get some SLEEP.  😴

Posing at the dentist.

💤💤🛌☮🛌💤💤

Dreams--Happy November

This morning I chose to listen to a Tedx on the way to work.  The music player on my phone wasn't working and the book I have been listening to I knew wouldn't do what I wanted so I went to YouTube instead.  The program I listened to (there is that link to it above), spoke about living/achieving our dreams.  It is a little like The Secret, but one person's story and in just over 18 minutes.  Any how, it made me realize that I am in the beginning stages of living a dream and becoming Baroness.  I didn't get here quite the way I thought.  I didn't expect to have my daughter be my partner in this when I first thought about it.  There are people that I had hoped to share this with that won't be here.  There are things that I expected to find important that seem trivial now and things that I knew would be important that are even more so now.  There are other aspects that I am still trying to wrap my thoughts around. 

Sometimes, the dreams a person have are squashed.  It is sad, frustrating, maddening.  Things happen that we have no control over.  They point our life in a different direction.  An unexpected journey (so to speak) that takes us to a different space, or keeps us from moving forward.  When this happens, I have learned to take a deep breath, maybe some time, and reform or create new dreams. 

There are other dreams I have that must wait because of the time commitment that is involved in becoming a part of the Baronage.  I will do my best to hold onto those dreams too.  To nurture them and help them grow.  These dreams are my happy for today and what I am thankful for. 

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