"Reck" The Christmas Tree

Written by Savvy, Age 7

Hi, my name is Lion.  It's around Christmas time so I'm gonna tell you of how I 'reck' the Christmas tree every year.  The first thing I do is I 'noc' down the things around the tree.  Next, I climb up the tree and finally, I break the 'speshall' ornaments.  Whatever that is. 

Big Shout-Out to cats! I like breaking Christmas Trees, do you cats?  If you don't, you're 'lasy'.  "Ha ha ha, nan nan nan a fou fou", I'm better!

And this is my speshall song:

"Mess the Halls When Trees Are Falling
Fa La La La Laa, La La La Lah..."

Parkour Master

Written by Jacob, Age 10

There are many secrets I have, but my biggest is that I am a parkour master.  Normally I’m just a “normal” cat, doing cat stuff, but when the time is right I use my secret super power.  I slowly creep down the hall, and then, I pounce.  I jump the hallway walls one to the other, then I scale the curtains with lightning speed.  I leap off the curtains onto the couch and I repeat this action three to four times more until I take a well-deserved nap on my favorite chair. 

When it comes to parkour I can’t be beat.

When I need a break from Parkour, I hang in my curtain hammock.

There Are Kids Here Too

Written by Savvy, Age 7

Hi, my name is Lion. Guess what? There are kids here too. The first kid is a boy and he plays on an ipad, whatever that is, and he reads books at dark time.  The second kid is a girl and she all ways steals my spot when I snuggle. Seriously?!? and she sits on a red thing and I like to nuzzel her.  I also like to peek on her book too and put my butt in her face, and also knock her lantern off the ‘dark’stand.  And, I play with their pencils when they are doing their homework.

Helping the first kid with his homework 

Savvy’s first blog entry 

The Life of Lion

Someone once told me cats can't have blogs.  Well, you know what I think about that?  One big hairball!  My owner has let her blog lie dormant for years.  She says she is "busy", but that's bonkers.  I see her watching TV and folding clothes.  I think she does this all the time, and I should know because she's constantly kicking me out of the laundry basket.   Something about me being "in the way", whatever that means.  And, don't even get me started on how much she sleeps at night.  I mean, what is the deal with these people sleeping when it's dark?  That is the BEST time to be awake.  It is so quiet that when you knock something off the nightstand it makes the BIGGEST noise.  I love it!  Oh, how my human jumps!  I really love to sit on her headboard when she's sleeping and stare at her - all the time.  When I sense she is stirring, I'll leap onto the bed.  She always covers her face when I do this because she thinks I'm going to jump on it.  Just because I did that one time.  Sometimes I don't jump, and instead I just stare down at her intently until she is fully awake and stares back up at me with just a slight amount of fear in her eyes.  Oh, the power I feel being able to look down on her for a change.

But, how rude of me, I've gotten quite side-tracked.  Let me introduce myself.   My name is Lion.  I am a cat.  And I am taking over this blog.

The Heart of Communication

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It's been far too long since this blog saw a post, so I'm very happy to welcome, for the very first time ever on Donut Fridays - a guest blogger!  Actually, it's two guest bloggers: Mama J and Aunt G.     Mama J is somewhat social media savvy (aka she has a FB account) and Aunt G's specialty is texting emojis. Therefore, when they said they might like to have a blog (but didn't know how to go about it) I suggested they use mine to share their thoughts.   Not really thinking I'd hear much further, I was surprised to receive an email about a week later with the following post.   So, without further ado I introduce you to the first ever blog post from the esteemed team of Mama J and Aunt G:

We’re two sisters-in-law with 40+ years of history together who meet for breakfast once a month to catch up.

Fifty years is a lot of combined experience. We’ve been around for the rotary dial telephone, the typewriter, the introduction of main frames and personal computers, the use of the internet, cell phones and social media. 

But nothing beats good old heart-to-heart conversation.  Where we can see each other’s smiles and grimaces and winks and eye rolls.  This is where you can jump into the middle of someone’s sentence and still hear what they’re saying.  (hard to do on the phone). This is an art with the potential of becoming extinct in the face of texting, tweeting, twittering, game playing and what-all that’s coming down the pike. 

So we like to put the iPhone aside for awhile (except maybe to share a photo or two), order a nice breakfast, and visit.

We like to experience different restaurants for breakfast.  This month’s was interesting (said with a wink and a nod).  It was kind of an upscale, trendy place.  We were surprised by the question from the waitress of whether we’d like a starter while thinking about what to order.   Huh, a starter, before the first meal of the day.  And we were told it might be the scone of the day or a batch of fritters to munch beforehand.  “No thanks.“ But hmm…unnecessary,  but…its a thought.  So of course we caved and ordered a batch of fritters (fancy donut holes) with the idea of taking some home to the boys (fat chance).

Then we decided to be reasonable for the “main meal” and ordered yogurt parfaits with home-made fresh pecan/raisin granola.  We were asked if we’d like bacon too.   “No thanks, just the parfait would be great. “ Now to us “parfait” meant a light meal.  The waitress came with an 8” tall, 4” wide goblet full of what appeared to be an ice cream sundae.  That was pretty funny to us and even to the ladies next to us who laughed and complimented us for being so “good” as to order yogurt – and so much of it.  Unfortunately, what should have tasted like pecans and raisins, mysteriously tasted a lot like bacon. Curious…and kinda yucky.  So we’ll move on.

So now we’re in the planning stages for our next big outing.

Might I recommend sky-diving or flame throwing?  Because I have no doubt that an account of you two trying one of those things would go viral!   Thank you for your contribution and hopefully we'll see more to come!

The Cinderella Diaries

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To follow up on yesterday’s post, one of the activities that Princess S did, to entertain herself while mama was trying to clean, was to write in her diary.   Mind you, she just turned 3, and she doesn’t know how to write.  But, she took this very seriously and got out her pen, her glue, scissors, and stickers.  Because, really, all those things are necessary, all the time.  

I watched her sit down at her little table with pen in hand and scribble in her diary as she dictated her daily life out-loud: “daddy went to work… Mama breakfast… Savvy pre-school…”  She was genuinely talking about her life and day and writing it down as best as she knew how.

And then Mama continued to nag her to pick up her things until we finally all mopped together.  A little while after that she sat back down to continue ‘writing’ in her diary and with pen in hand the scribbles began again in earnest.  This time, all I heard her saying was “Clean, clean, clean, clean….” in her little voice.  I am a little concerned that she is taking this Cinderella thing seriously...

"Clean, clean, clean, clean"

Just Give Me This Moment

Yes, the couch and chair are lined with piles of clothes and we can’t sit down.  Yes, the kid’s beds are unmade, and their floor is so littered with toys that it is difficult to walk without stepping on a sharp-pointed car or dull-headed baby doll.  Yes, it’s true that for every ten minutes that I get to clean, it is first preceded by a half-hour of kids needs.  Yes, the bathroom needs cleaning and don’t even mention the kitchen stove.  Yes, almost every carpeted surface has a towel lying on it because that’s where my daughter insists on having her pull-up/diaper changed as she also refuses to use the toilet.  Yes, there is a constant battle with ants that have become so smart that they only show up in groups of ten and they don’t reveal where they come from.  Yes, we do have an aging cat who is starting to lose track of where her litterbox is.  Yes, we even have fleas that seem to train with the ants and come from nowhere, and travel sparsely, but never go away.  Yes, my house is a mess. 

But, on Tuesday, I made it my mission that I would sweep and mop at least one room.   I mean the kind of sweeping and mopping that requires you to move furniture.  So, I pushed my clothes-laden couch and chair out of the way, and I began.  Ten minutes here, thirty minutes with kids, ten minutes back – always trying to convince my kids, encourage my kids, nag (but ever so slightly), beg, and pester my kids, to pick up all of their things off the floor so that I could in fact sweep.   Finally the floor was clear, and I began to mop.  They were downstairs playing when I started, but came up shortly thereafter and suddenly, I had my Tom Sawyer moment.  “I want to mop!” my 3-year old shouted (while wearing her Princess dress of course), so I gave her the toy mop, showed her the bucket and let her go.  “I want to mop too!” shouted my 5-year old so I handed over my mop to him.

Yes, they have no idea how to mop.  Yes, there were additional puddles of water on the floor. Yes, I pretty much had to re-do all the places they mopped first. BUT, they were so happy!  And I was so happy they were helping!  They even got on their hands and knees with rags to dry the floor after that.  And, when I told them I was going to mop the laundry room next (where the litterbox is) they shouted, “WE WANT TO MOP THE LAUNDRY ROOM!!”.  As they mopped, I told myself that I needed to remember this moment. 

The kids were being helpful, the house was getting cleaned bit by bit, and at this pace … we might be done by Christmas.

Cinderella drying the floor with a rag. (Please note the dress is on backwards for the full effect)

Who knew mopping the laundry room could be so fun?

Employed!

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I got a job!  Of sorts.   As of about two weeks ago I am employed again, and I am very pleased to report that I just turned in my first invoice for a grand total of nine hours worked.  Wait, what was that?  Nine hours in two weeks you may wonder… what kind of a “job” is that??     

Through an alignment of the stars, an old client of mine needed some project support and reached out to me at the same time as I had reached out to them just to see how they were doing because, through the years, we had become friends.    It all happened very quickly.   My friend put me in touch with her boss and we had a twenty minute conversation about all of the upcoming projects they have, after which he said, “Okay.. well, I think the next step is for you to provide us with a Statement of Work, and we’ll see where we want to go from there.”  While I kept very cool and professional on the call, inside a hundred questions were going through my head…”A Statement of Work for what exactly?  What is it they want me to do? How do I present this to them? How much do I charge them? I hope I have a week to work on this…”   “Can you give it to me in the next two days?” he asked, “Sure! [crap]”.     

So, for the next two evenings, after the kids were in bed and I finally had time to think quietly I put on my old work hat and drafted out a Statement of Work (SOW).   This is something I had done for my previous employer, so it wasn’t completely foreign to me, but in all honesty, it was one of the functions of the job I liked the least. I searched on the ‘interwebs’ for a template and did a little research on a few type of things to include, and then I thought back to my interactions with this old client to reflect on what services I thought they had always needed – only then, they weren’t paying me directly.    In the end, I had a five page document and at the top was “Meghan Ingle, Independent Consultant”.   My feeling when I finished that document was one of pride.  “I can do this” I thought.  “I hope they think I can do this” I thought next.

I sent the SOW over to my contact and had a follow up meeting to discuss it.  I was worried he would think I quoted too long (through September), or he’d think I’d quoted to high (to remain a secret).   But, my fears were immediately squashed when he said that I had “exactly captured the spirit of what they were looking for” (Yes! Yes!) and “let’s target the end date to be Oct. 3, but if this works out, it could be a long term engagement for both of us…” (yes! Yes! Yes!)   I hadn’t even done anything yet, and he’s already imagining extending the contract out.   That was the shot in the arm of this job hunt that I needed.  He also didn’t blink at the price quoted (shoot, should I have aimed higher?).

From there things moved very rapidly.  In fact, I have never seen a SOW approved so quickly, and two weeks later I was attending my first meeting.   The only downside to this engagement is that it is not consistent hours.   I can’t be guaranteed a certain minimum each week as it’s solely depending upon the needs of the projects and the timing of activities there.  

And here’s the best part.  They are in Chicago.  But they know that I am in San Francisco and that I do not want to travel much, and they are okay with that.  That being said, I will not turn down a trip to Chicago, and am excited to go out there for a couple of days next week.

This company has already taken such good care of me and I’m so very grateful.   They have provided me a laptop in quick haste, their help desk support was immediate and they’ve been quick to respond to my queries.  Most importantly though, and I won’t feel ashamed to say this, I feel respected for my abilities.   When I was so unceremoniously escorted from the last company, and then it has been a bit rough with the job hunt, I started to doubt my abilities.   Had I just skated by?  Was my knowledge base too narrow to apply elsewhere?  Why won’t people let me in the door for an interview??   But these guys remember working with me fondly through the years, they know I can deliver and they believe in me.  They believe in ME.  Yesterday, I received the following email from one who works there “Have I told you lately how happy that I am that you are on board!”   To be honest, she had, once before, but you know what? I’ll take that compliment again and again.  Because that just makes me want to try harder to support them and make this work out for all of us.

“Independent Consultant”…that has a nice ring to it doesn’t it?