Foggy morning.
I coached a lot yesterday. These zoom sessions are particularly challenging because it’s more difficult to ‘read’ the person I’m working with when I’m not in the same room with him/her. I have to work harder. This particular zoom connection was dodgy, at best, so sometimes the coachee would freeze, or I would, or the sound would go in and out or we’d talk over each other and have to start again. Lord.
At the end of it all, I’m exhausted.
I have an even longer day today.
I’ll be glad when zoom coaching sessions are finished – most likely, at the end of next week.
And after today, I hit the road for Rochester on Friday. I’ll get to the hotel, check in, rest a bit, and then head over to the theater and watch the final preview. (The show opens on Saturday.) I’ll take notes, send them out via email, and then drive back home on Saturday.
Sometimes, I feel like I’m getting too old for this. Ha! I’m almost 70, so I probably am.
Dear husband is making me a meal of some kind that I’ll take along with me tomorrow (in addition to a sandwich for lunch.) I have a little cooler and some ice packs, so it will be fine on the journey to Rochester. I’ll pop it in the microwave for dinner before I head to the show.
Okay, my friends. No posts tomorrow and Saturday. Back on Sunday.
Stay safe.
Happy Thursday.
prayers for better zoom connections, safe travels, a rehearsal that goes well (doesn’t require more from you, especially last minute) and plenty of rest. maybe a stop at the big lake, too?
sounds like you and don have the food part worked out for this trip … good! hard to avoid grumpiness and be most efficient when hungry. at least it is for me … though you’re a pro and worked through it last time. glad you’ll have more to your liking this trip.
i relate very much to what you said about exhaustion and feeling “too old” for the job. without being able to run anymore, i know i’ve lost strength and with that energy and endurance. add in relief given a few months’ distance from a very tough job (and all the sad and scary stuff now going on in the world) and i definitely feel “too old” to go back to social work. grateful that i don’t have to.
love that beautiful porch … glad you have it!
we had very hazy skies here yesterday … smoke from the wildfires out west. very sad.
no changes here yet. working on that.
happy thursday! and friday and saturday …
stay safe.
kathy
Hope all is well, Kathy. I just finished coaching for the day and I’m tired. Don is making dinner with extra portions so he can send some with me tomorrow.
It’s warmer here – 84 degrees – and sunny, which feels so strange after 3 days of rain. We’re going to have to cut our grass when I get back home. I can’t remember the last time we mowed the lawn.
Stay safe.
thanks, claudia. and sorry if i caused concern.
a lot of things here are well. better than well. being able to spend more time with my family is one of them. recent rains (or at least overcast/ cooler days), getting projects done and having time to rest are others.
like everyone else, i do have worries. like so many other people, my family members’ health/safety/future is my biggest worry. i try to give that all to God and feel what i know … that we are all in God’s hands. sometimes i’m good at that, sometimes not. lately it’s been more of the latter, but i am working on trust and doing what i can to help my family … and i sure do enjoy and appreciate being with them and being retired.
again, thanks for checking in and sorry if i added concerns to you.
hope you and don have a nice night. enjoy your work adventure and will see you whenever you get back here.
xo,
kathy
meant to add …
hope these later (time) replies from me don’t cause a notification sound to wake you up and that you get enough sleep.
i know you enjoy mowing the lawn, but it can wait (i know you know that)! hope the weather cooperates whenever you do want to mow.
a noticeable amount of leaves are dried up, dropping or are changing colors here … too early!
but the cooler temperatures are welcome anytime. :)
safe travels, friend.
kathy
dear Claudia/Don — lovely porch pix — good luck w/coaching, “Happy Trails” tomorrow. stay safe/healthy
Thank you so much, Linda.
Stay safe!
Zoom can be a funny animal at times, from my limited experience. I can’t imagine having to try and teach something. Good luck today…hope it goes better.
Glad to hear you will be well fed on your next journey. It sounds like you have things all set. It does become a little more difficult as we get older to travel, and I’m not exactly sure why. I don’t think we’ve become too old, I just think we have to find a new way to do certain things, and make the appropriate adjustments.
Hope all goes well for you this weekend…safe travels! ;)
hej, donnamae.
i agree … we’re not “too old” to do things (and that sometimes adjustments are needed) … but, for me, there are times i sure *feel* “too old” for some stuff. maybe that’s part of depression for me? i don’t know, but i don’t give up. :)
hope you and your family are well, safe, keeping cool and having good days and enough rain.
kathy
The days I feel old are usually the days I wake up and find that a body part does not work the same as it did when I went to bed…lol!! Guess it’s all an adjustment….just happy to still be here!
All well here…we have been blessed with adequate rain this year so everything is green and growing. Take care! ;)
good! the all well part and rain, i mean.
happy almost-friday. hope you’ll have a great weekend ahead (we’ll be watching the iowa-iowa state football game on tv).
kathy
Thanks so much, Donnamae.
Stay safe.
Everything looks so fresh and green on the porch after your recent rain. Hope all goes well for your journey.
I have the TV on in the background, constant news and normal programming cancelled, it’s not sounding good for the Queen, all her family are gathering at Balmoral, Scotland over concerns with her health.
Stay safe
I hope the preview goes well and it is a successful run through for everyone involved in the production.
Blessings for a safe trip!
I’m so sad about the passing of the Queen. I admired her tremendously. She became Queen in the same year I was born, so I’ve never known life without her. She was devoted to her country, served it selflessly for 70 years. May she rest in peace.
Sending my sympathy to you and all who mourn her.
Stay safe.
I am surprised at the sense of loss I feel at the Queens death.
She was an amazing woman who led an extraordinary life.
I pray she is with Philip now.
And her Corgis.
Lots and lots of Corgis
Siobhan
Well girls…..today is the day I have been waiting a long time for, Keith Urban concert, 2nd Row! I feel like I am rested up enough to go and enjoy it. My wonderful daughter, Carrie, made sure to get a parking space close enough so I wouldn’t have far to walk. You can reserve spaces ahead of time, who knew you could do that? I bought my sister a ticket so she could go with us. She never could afford to pay that much for a ticket, on a teachers pay, so I love that I can do that for her. Claudia, I hope this trip goes better for you. I do think as we get older it is harder to do the things we use to do with no problem. I am a couple years behind you but I definitely feel that. Love the picture of your porch. Take care on your trip!
woo hoo!
deb, that was kind of you to buy a ticket for your sister and of your daughter to reserve a good parking spot for you.
have a great time and enjoy every minute (i know you all will)!!!
kathy
Have a great time, Deb! Tell us all about it when I get back.
Stay safe.
Have a nice trip you can tell us about!
Prayers travels…one of my favorite novels…love the picture…will think of you…
Thank you, dear Brenda.
Stay safe.
I liked the queen
I did, too. Very much.
Sending good wishes for a smooth working weekend! Nice that Don cooked up some dinners for you!
Love your photo!
Sad that Queen Elizabeth has passed…she had an incredible life! And a rainbow came out!
She was amazing. She will be missed.
Thanks, Barrie.
Stay safe.
I’m a bit in a hurry as I read and write today, but it seems like some of today’s post is a cut and paste duplicate of yesterday or have I just been away from the computer for too many days. Or did the heat get to my computer.
I’m so sorry for the loss of your brother.
I have been crying nearly nonstop since 5am over the death of Her Majesty Queen of England Elizabeth; I don’t know a day of my life when she wasn’t the monarch. She was the queen before I was born and I’m not too far from starting my eighth decade of life, so it’s a long time to have someone so consistently in your life although of course she’s a public figure and the majority of people, including me of course, do not know her personally. I’ve been a fan and an anglophile since I was a teen with my eye on the young Prince Charles, He Who Will Be King. I will watch the next days/weeks surrounding her death and state funeral (and he getting crowned [I doubt he’ll pass and deliver the role to son William just yet]) as I am a student of history; and, well, I also love Britain (I have a strong English heritage on my mom’s side of the family).
Mostly, I loved her. Respected Queen Elizabeth. Adored her. Admired her. She physically at this age looked eerily similar to my mother in facial features, hair. So I feel like I’m doubly punched. God Rest her beautiful, strong soul; Long Live The Queen in our hearts and minds. Duty to the very end; again, she was just photo’d doing the Prime Minister thing at Balmoral, what, like two days ago? It just happened so fast, that of course we knew she was slowly failing at age 96, but having just done that public function in this past week, smiling and looking well enough for sure, and I think I spotted her wearing a Scottish plaid skirt in a nod to her country home (I hope her passing at this beloved spot where she spent much of her childhood was peaceful); what happened, was it her heart, what? Makes you reel.
I am just so, so, so sad that she’s gone. It’s so unfortunate that without her husband by her side, she had to endure Covid isolation at Windsor, hear the whispering about Charles’ questionable goings-on, suffer the despair of son Andrew being at the center of the Epstein crime/scandal; the Harry/Meghan ‘reveals’ which drew controversy about the royals; Queen Elizabeth has been thru A LOT over the past couple of years/more and this was hard for a private, dignified, refined, elderly woman with a lot of responsibility.
Of course I’m weepy in general because I’ve really had no sleep for days-on-end due to the dangerous Calif heatwave that saw us with, so far, 115 degrees and rarely under 100 at peak times. Everybody’s trying to conserve and I swear the best relief is to just tune up the car and sit in its air-conditioned chamber (because the house otherwise, even before our central air blew up on Sunday, is always too warm for me); to help the grid, we turn the thermostat to 80 degrees indoors from at least 4pm-9pm if not longer. Nobody wants to see the grid fail because they we will have NO electric fans, NO a/c at all. When we went 48 hrs with no cooling (can’t find a part or a service pro on a holiday weekend, Sun-Mon of Labor Day), our house was 90 degrees inside; our neighbor’s house which doesn’t have any a/c anyway, was 96 degrees indoors; I know I had heat illness for about 7 hrs at one point with headache and nausea.
Couldn’t find any kind of portable air conditioner or window air conditioner anywhere; all stores out of stock. Husband has now fixed the problem of the part on our a/c which ‘blew’; he was scouting stores in neighboring towns at 7am Tues and we got lucky, found the part, and he knew how to install. (Thank God, because we were told service calls for a/c repair are booked out a week/10 days with a/c service professionals. More than just me and my husband were dealing with a/c probs after this BRUTAL holiday weekend. Those service pros are BUSY.)
But it took a long, long time to cool down the house and we’re still treating the a/c as a whole VERY gingerly and conservatively. Pray the heatwave breaks Saturday (after eleven days of hell in Southern Calif) since there’s a hurricane off Baja; however, is our experience to usually be bypassed, at least where my husband and I live, when there’s any kind of rain forecast.
I am down-on-my-knees grateful to God and my husband for the gift, the privilege of cooled air in extreme-hot temps. Never will I EVER take it for granted again. I was glad we’d been making ice for days in our little Frigidaire tabletop ice maker; also grateful to have WATER so we could even do that, in light of increasing water shortages across our State.
I thought it was bad when I lived on the Gulf Coast (and it was, a month of temps at like 105 degrees every day, and with humidity) but, right now at 1pm-ish, we are 80 percent humidity and in the 90s temps; I imagine we’ll peak at 102 degrees like yesterday, no more of those 106s and 109s , though … please! … (but tomorrow-Friday is supposed to be hotter). My dog with his double coat has really somewhat shut down in the heat; I was worried how intense his panting got; kept bathing his ears in cool water so that the electric fans could blow on them and try to cool him.
I never cut and paste. Every post, every day, is new and unless I’m continuing a discussion about something, is entirely different.
I know you’re tired Vicki, but that kind of comment is dismissive and wrong.
Frankly, I found it very hurtful.
Goodness, I would never hurt you Claudia; I am SO SORRY; I obviously chose my words so poorly. I didn’t mean you personally were cutting and pasting; just some sort of mechanical problem with the post and some kind of duplication maybe just on my end. It was the exact same paragraphs on each day’s post, which confused me. You’re an incredible writer and a faithful poster. My God, it was never my intent to be insulting. I think I should just shut up and quite commenting if I can’t get out my words right. The amount of heat stress I’ve been under has obviously gotten to me. Again, my deepest apologies, Claudia. I would have thought by now that you ‘knew’ me better than to ever think I would disparage you for anything!
I can’t ever have something like this happen again. I’m clearly not communicating properly to where I’ve caused offense with the printed word when I didn’t even realize it. My hands are shaking as I try to write this because I’m so upset. I realize I have to permanently say goodbye and get my act together. Please know how much I’ve appreciated your support over the years. Your blog has been so interesting and educational for me; I will miss it so much. I wish you and Don the best ahead. I will as well always wish the best for your lovely readers. Take care, Claudia. Stay safe, stay well; stay happy. From Vicki in Southern California
You don’t have to leave! In fact, I ask you not to leave. If you look back at the comment, you can see why I reacted the way I did. It did indeed hurt my feelings. Maybe next time, an explanation when you say something like that? If I had known it was due to something on your end – though I can’t think how that would happen with the blog – then I’d understand. But you dropped the comment with no explanation, hence my reaction. Stay with us here. We all love you.
Claudia, thank you for your email and these messages. I’d been speaking of ‘cut and paste’ as merely a (poorly-chosen) description of some sort of mechanical issue with duplication of posts, unexplainably on my end (not your writing, which I know is fresh and original each time). In the excessive and unprecedented heatwave over a dozen days, we’ve had all sorts of weird things going on/going wrong/breaking down with computer, television, cell service. Of course as I’d said, even our central air conditioning crashed.
Anyway, I believe you and I have worked out the wrinkles and now it’s time to move on, and we’ll all enjoy hearing about your second Rochester trip. I do still need to step away from the blog for awhile to work on myself but, in the meantime, are we okay? Absolutely. Thanks for reaching out.
xoxoxo
I know you’ve been under stress Vicki. But I’ve been very busy and stressed myself. And I still manage to get a post out.
I do know you, but I have to take what I read at face value, especially if there is nothing added to the comment to explain what you’ve said.
It’s okay. All is well.
xo
Very wise words Claudia
An example of why your blog is so life affirming and encouraging
Hope your days
and travels have gone well
Siobhan x
xo
I can’t imagine the job of coaching that you are doing when freezing frames, etc occur on Zoom. My husband was NOT a fan of teaching music to kids via Zoom during the pandemic. Same things you were experiencing. It doesn’t surprise me when we hear of how far scores dropped during the pandemic. I think for HS and College it might have worked better, but for the younger kids, it was oh, so difficult! Are you finished w coaching after next week for these projects?
So very sad about Queen Elizabeth. I cried when a newsperson said we will not hear “God Save the Queen” again for a long time with Charles, William and George now all in line. Certainly not in my lifetime. It will be “God Save the King”. She, at least to me, was the epitome of what service to one’s country is.
Safe travels, kiddo. Hope you have dry roads and an uneventful drive. Hope the performance is a good one! Take care!!
I know you are not posting today
Prayers for your travels
You are important
Saturday trip home prayers!
No! You are absolutely not to old for this. You have done harder. You have expertise that needs to be passed on. A trip to Rochester is not that bad. Zoom maybe not so good.
You will know when the bad out ways the good. Then maybe time for retirement.
As long as you are still being hired you know you are good.
Thank you, me dear friend.
xoxo
Stay safe.
Hello again, Claudia. I’m still continuing my journey through your blog. I am now at July 7, 2017. Don is finishing up his run in Margaritaville and you have joined him to share the drive back home together. You arrived a few days early so that you could visit some of your favorite places. One of your pictures was of the beach where I spent my childhood. I lived not a block away from it, and spent vast amounts of time in its waters, on its sands, roaming the tide pools, and exploring the cliffs and caves. I was always barefooted and in a bathing suit. I remember when they built that pier and, even at that young age, how upset I was that it was being built. Then there was the picture of my school. My heart stopped. I loved that school, with its courtyard and big pine tree. I was in that courtyard, all of us in my class lined up to go to the cafeteria for lunch, when we were told that the president had been assassinated. I don’t think our country has ever really recovered from it. I loved the library right across the street from the school, where I would frequently check out books, and walk home with my nose buried deep into one of them. My grandma met my grandpa on Newport Street, and they lived just a few blocks away. I remember when there was a See’s there, and that sweet little hair salon very close by, and when The Strand was actually a movie theater, and the little newspaper store that sold magazines and cigarettes and comic books. When I wasn’t at the beach, I could often be found squeezed into a lower shelf, reading up on Archie, Veronica, Betty and Jughead. The owner of that little shop was most kind to allow me to spend my time there, reading his merchandise payment free. It was an idealic childhood; but, as you say, you can’t go home again. My funky little beach town is now wall-to-wall people, along with the incumbent wall-to-wall cars, and not one in fifty is from CA, much less OB or even SD. Paradise has indeed been paved over. I try not to think about it lest grief overwhelm me. What’s gone is gone.
Don went to that school for a few years as well. I wish it was still the Ocean Beach that you lived in. It’s too crowded these days. I read your comment to Don, who remembers it exactly as you do.
Thanks for writing, Elizabeth.
Stay safe.
Thank you for reading my ramble. There is comfort in knowing that at least one other kind soul remembers what a wonderful place it was. Lest I feel too sorry for poor little me, I remind myself that it’s not just the story of OB, but the story of SoCal all over. I blame the Beach Boys. 😉
San Diego and Orange County and Los Angeles are now one big sprawling city only separated by Camp Pendleton.
xo