Sooooooo……

I skipped dinner with the team on Thursday night in favor an ice cream and a diet Dr. Pepper in my hotel room.  Much of 9/12 was filled with emotional discussions among our executive ranks. I was grateful to get to the airport where I snarfed down a chicken sandwich anticipating a brief layover in Charlotte.  It was not to be.  While my flight left and arrived on time, I wore a blister on my right foot from not wearing socks with my clogs – while doing the 10 min gauntlet from B terminal to E terminal at CLT.  Of course, once there, a massive thunderstorm settled over Charlotte and in the end, my 8:01 flight didn’t take off until after 10pm.  I got home sometime around 11:30pm and finally to sleep at 12:30am.  Not my usual routine.

Anticipating the arrival of our ridiculously expensive Tempur Pedic bed today, I started on the laundry shortly after I got up at 7:30am (sleeping in for me).  I bypassed the cleaning in favor of sorting through 4 days of mail and packages. Mattress guys arrived just as I was falling asleep on the sofa for a nap at 2:30pm.  First, there was confusion about disposal of our 14 year old existing mattress and box springs (resolved – they were removed).  Then came our realization that we  weren’t really getting a king-sized bed:  rather, 2 twins with separate mechanisms that would be placed side-by-side.  Ok, fine. Then we realized that one of the two bases was cracked and damaged.  Fine.  Call to the distributor was made, base was returned to the truck with the promise of a new one tomorrow.  Then I realized that one of the two Tempur-pedic mattresses had a red stain on it – from being packaged in plastic in the head with some red colored promotional materials inside.  Well, since the one thing that voids a TP mattress warranty is a stain, I had to reject it.  Fine – they took it out to the truck and headed to the next delivery.  About an hour later we heard from Alan, who announced that there were no more mattresses available and I would have to wait 2 weeks for another one.  No, no, no.  You are not bringing me a new base and not a mattress.  You are not making me wait 2 weeks, bring me damaged goods, then announce that you need 2 more weeks to provide a replacement – not for $8000 worth of product which I can now clearly see is a particle board base with a hefty motor, and two twin TP mattresses.  About 8 calls later, the plan now is to return the red stained one with a plan to replace it with an undamaged one asap.  Of course 2 weeks from now is my anniversary weekend, so the last thing we want to do is to spend it sitting here at the house waiting on a mattress delivery.  Meh.

I’m not sure this is going to work for us anyway.  I mean two twins means a big seam in the middle – not conducive to cuddling.  It will be good that each of us can control the head and foot elevation, but the actual mattress is in no way a king.

Good thing is that when we saw our old mattress out in the driveway, it became apparent why we have back pain.  It was really sagging.  Pity these things are so stupidly expensive.

Hopefully tomorrow’s delivery won’t be too disruptive.

Also accomplished today was the setup of Apple TV, though I haven’t figured out how to make it just stream the mac desktop to the TV.  We are, however, now more easily watching Netflix from the den television and that is a win.

Not sure what to do about the stress and conflict at work.  I know that when I push folks, it gets worse, but when I don’t see the productivity I need from some people, I’m not sure what else to do.

In other news, ISIS has now decapitated an innocent aid worker.  2 journalists and an aid worker down, more in the lineup.  So many of the worst situations in my life and apparently in world history have been precipitated by folks who are just hell bent to pick a fight….

I am far from home in the mid west and absolutely dumbfounded by the total apathy regarding the anniversary of 9/11 here.  We live 10 hours from NYC, and 170 miles south of the Pentagon and not one 9/11 has passed by without our lives virtually grinding to a halt starting at 8:45am and going on for the next hour as we mark the 4 planes that went down that day.  People pull cars over and stop.  They stand in the streets and in stores.  But they stop. They take 60 seconds and they remember.

This morning, as I listened to Taps on CBS, all I heard was happy chatter from my fellow business travelers all around me.  I guess they’ve forgotten what it was like to see people choose to fall 1000 feet to their deaths rather than burn to death in a gutted skyscraper.  I guess they’ve forgotten all those first responders who’ve now been gone long enough for a child to enter and exit our K-12 public school curriculum from start to finish.

What do I remember?  I was on the 7th floor of a children’s hospital teaching – when all the Disney channels moved to the national news.  Katie Couric looked shocked and I recall watching as the 2nd plane hit the twin towers – saying to the student next to me, “That looked like they did that on purpose…”  Reality set in.  But healthcare workers do not stand down.  They keep going.  I let the class go home about an hour early, knowing that the traffic would be impossible given all the military in the area.  I remember telling them to watch the sky – for it would hopefully be the only time in their lifetimes when there were no planes flying overhead other than those of our military.

I’ve been working from the hotel much of today, but had a chance to relive some of the footage I remember so clearly from that Tuesday in September.  I think the people falling/jumping from the building really unglued both me and my husband that day.  We had to turn off the television.  It hadn’t been since Bobby Kennedy that I literally felt sick watching TV.

And today?  We forget?  Knowing of all of the men and women who’ve gone to Iraq and Afghanistan and have lost their lives in the ripples that followed behind that morning….all connected.

Pray for peace.  Real peace.  The cessation of war and hostility.  The cessation of extremism in any form.  Balance people, balance.  We are angels dancing on the head of a pin…there is room for everyone.  No one need die.  We’re here to dance.

So far this weekend has been interesting.  Hubby did all the housework while I went to work on Saturday.  Well, let me correct that – he did all the housework except the bathrooms.  I am still grateful.  I worked longer than I wanted to and I ran back down the road to the Chinese place for orange chicken for dinner.  Hubby has changed over the years on this point.  When he was working, he would never consider that it might be a burden for me to cook a full meal after putting in my own hours on the job.  Housework was also not his thing – he preferred to work or fish.

Then came his first retirement.  For the first month, he tried to bring some order to his newly found freedom, but he also noticed that I literally never stopped.  Everything from the yard, to the housework, to the cooking, to the food buying, to the errand running – it was all my job, too.  Things slowly started to change.  He realized that my begging to eat out a couple of times a week was more of a cry of desperation.  My need for someone to help take the load of living in a house with 4 cats and grandkids was again – desperate.  He’s never been one for outside help.  I am still in favor of that.  But things are better.   I still spend a part of every weekend cleaning house and cooking, but it’s better.  My goal?  If I’m putting in 10-12 hour days 6 days a week – someone else does the heavy lifting at home.

He’s now on second retirement and I dream of mine.  But I’ve got a few hundred $K invested in a business and I need to get the investment back before I can pass the torch.  What’s happened this year is that we’ve all gotten totally overwhelmed by the workload and thus have stopped taking on customers.  Of course, we’re going to regret that now as the cash flow slows.  Meh.

More about work later.  So yesterday, being Labor Day weekend and owning a 14 year old mattress, we adventured out to “Sleepy’s” to test mattresses.  3 hours later we’re the proud owners of an adjustable TemperPedic which is going to set us back about $8K.  Yep.  You read that right.  Now, the Kingsdown that  we bought in 2000 cost about $1700 – which I also thought was absurd at the time.  I have no idea if this is going to work or not, but there is a 30 day return policy and trust me, for $8k if I can’t sleep, it’s going back.

I guess in the long run we’re prepped to spend a ton of money this year.  So far we have a new roof $21K, need new gutters $3.5 K, need a new kitchen (might come in at $25K), and we need to redo at least the master bath ($10K).  I am pressing hard for these renovations since we’ve lived a ridiculously frugal existence for the past 20 years while caring for son, son’s baby and his mother, hubby’s mother, hubby’s father, and started this business right at the time I have been ready to retire.  We’re recently inherited a substantial amount of money and I’ll be damned if I plane to die with even a few million dollars sitting in a bank.  This is a hard sell to husband who is Scots-Irish and even to me.  I’m not used to spending a bunch of cash.  But the reality is that what I want to buy is practical – a good kitchen, a safe bath, a roof that won’t leak until after we’re gone, gutters to keep hubby off ladders and digging pine needles out of same.  The bed, however, was a bit of a stretch.  It better be good.

Plan for the day?  Piddle around the house.  Head to Dillards (Clinique plus bonus) and Macy’s (Estee Lauder plus bonus).  Not sure what else. My fitbit seems to be having an issue with getting charged – readjusting that in hopes that I haven’t killed it.