I will no longer apologize for having neglected this baby -- it is what it is... Having posted over 80 articles in the past year on the SEC women's basketball website, along with working full time and assisting my Mom, I get to this one when time allows and the mood strikes. Guess what? I'm in the mood to write and I'm making the time because I love to share stuff I care about, which brings me to tonight's ramblings...

In case you don't know, I love music. Along with good books and well-written movies, music ranks right up there as a necessary essential in my life. I cannot imagine a single day going by that I don't listen to some type of music. My tastes are varied and far-flung. I have a special affinity for independent artists who refuse to sell their souls to the devil to get a record deal. Some of the most phenomenal music out there is being created by folks who will never be heard by much more than their families, friends and a few but loyal followers. But I have stumbled upon an artist who is starting to get some well-deserved recognition and I sincerely hope it continues. She is an immensely talented voice -- both lyrically and musically.

Discovering good new music always gives me a buzz, and the sources can be as varied as catching a snippet on the radio (although, for me, this happens rather infrequently since most of what I listen to rarely - if ever - receives airplay) or something one of my friends recommends. Because of my screenwriting aspirations, more than a few of my discoveries have come from movie scores. I am a firm believer that, in order for a movie to work, it must have the complete package -- and a fitting score is an oft overlooked essential. Just recently, I was watching "Blue Crush." Don't laugh -- although marketed to appeal to teenage boys with it's sexy young cast of toned and tanned females, it was a surprisingly passable film, due mainly to the stunning cinematography shot on location in Hawaii with a few additional surfing scenes shot in Fiji. The story, although simplistic and somewhat predictable, was refreshing in it's approach of showing an empowered young female who didn't need rescuing, nor was she relegated to the sidelines to cheer on her hero. SHE was the surfer facing her fears and the blue crush of the North Shore's Banzai Pipeline.

OK... about the music. In a particularly cute love scene between our heroine and her hunky guy, one of the most stunning songs is playing in the background. Being the pit bull I am when it comes to finding something I'm after, I impatiently scrolled through the soundtrack credits in search of the song that caught my ear. After a few swings and misses, I finally struck paydirt: the song in question is called "Destiny" and it was performed by a group I'd never heard of -- Zero 7. Further research led me to find out that Zero 7 is actually just two guys -- top session players/engineers/producers from London who bring in other top studio musicians to play with them, and they have a rotating lineup of some of the best European vocalists to front the band. After downloading enough songs to know I was hooked, I immediately went and purchased 3 Zero 7 cds. I was at once smitten with the vocals of both Tina Dico and Sia Furler, a striking 6-foot Danish blonde and a quirky Aussie/transplanted Londoner. The next cds added to my ever burgeoning collection were several by Dico, whose solo work is more acoustically geared than the synth-pop sound of Zero 7 - think Joni Mitchell and Dusty Springfield had a lovechild.

But the most utterly satisfying discovery in all of this is the quirky Furler. To visit her website is to step into a pantheon of child's play -- crude crayon drawings of stick figures, rainbows and sunshine. To see her perform live through the wonders of YouTube have prompted several to snidely remark she must be mentally challenged or on drugs. Or both. But make no mistake: when Furler opens her mouth to sing, nothing but pure genius pours out. She is an audiophiles's dream -- better live than on cd. (Which leads me to two conclusions: the next time I have the chance to see her live I must go, and secondly, her record producers should be shot on sight.) Sia Furler should be recorded live in concert for each and every cd she puts out, otherwise she's being over-engineered and way over-produced. (See the entire set-list on YouTube of her early morning live/in studio performance on KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" in 2007 for compelling evidence.) Furler is a goofball -- an overgrown kid who takes nothing seriously and cuts up incessantly between songs. She makes funny faces and dances around in her seat like a kindergartner in need of a restroom. Her live performance of "Buttons" on Jimmy Kimmel in January 2008 is the best use of glow-in-the-dark paint I've ever seen. For an immediate pick-me-up that never fails to put a smile on my face, I always watch this video.

But the most stunning performance of a song I've ever witnessed is her KCRW rendering of the semi-famous "Breathe Me." If anyone by now is beginning to scratch their heads and mumble to themselves "I think I've heard that before" it's because an extended mix of the song was playing over the final scene of the critically acclaimed Alan Ball-written"Six Feet Under." Many folks went clamoring to find the song after that stunning finale, but her KCRW live rendering is the best version she's ever performed. Furler goes from goofball to genius in 2.3 seconds as soon as the opening chords are played. In this extended version, there is a complete passage of her matching a cello note for note before launching into the most stunning vocals that are a window into her soul. It is a wail that is grief-filled and yet cathartic. No matter how many times I've seen this performance, it gives me goosebumps and makes me cry. The woman is sheer genius.

To truly appreciate the depth of emotion that Furler gives this performance, it helps to know a little about her background. This free-spirited Aussie set out to see the world with her boyfriend, and while he traveled ahead, she took a different path with plans to meet him in London in time for his birthday. Furler got sidetracked and called him, asking if it would be ok if she detoured through Thailand, even though that would push her arrival a week late and she would miss his birthday. He insisted it was fine, and on the night of his birthday celebration, Furler's first true love was tragically run over and killed by a cab he was hailing. With nowhere else to go and a heart full of grief, anger, guilt and a full gamut of emotions, Furler traveled on to London and moved in with his flatmates, where they tried to drown their grief in a haze of booze and drugs. Furler admits to the abuses and the ensuing breakdown she suffered, and it was only through years of therapy that followed that Furler was able to emerge as the singer you see and hear today.

Do yourself a favor: go to YouTube and watch this breathtaking performance, but if music speaks to your soul the way it does to mine, be prepared to cry. And then be prepared to smile that you've enjoyed a glimpse of the genius that is Sia Furler.

'Twas the day after Christmas, and all through the south, every creature was stirring... and coming to the post office to mail all the Christmas gifts they procrastinated and didn't mail two weeks ago like they should have. Whoever told me the rest of this week should be easy and light with only a few customers -- you LIED. We had a line all day long, and needless to say, I was in a less than festive mood. I was ready for a few moments of peace, but I guess that will come at a yet to be determined time. The only improvement today was the customers seemed to be less agitated. They KNOW they're already late, so they're not stressin' it -- if the package gets there in 2 or 3 days, cool. If it gets there in a week or so for less money, that's even cooler.

My only contentious moment of the day came early on, and I had my say and that's all there is to it. One of the other clerks was pointing out the fact that next Monday should be interesting, with only 3 clerks there (one clerk will still be on vacation, and I won't be there because it's my New Year's holiday). He then asked was it possible I was working? My swift reply was "absolutely not." The established rules are as follows: management is supposed to post a holiday schedule no later than the Tuesday of the week prior to the holiday. Well, my new little abode doesn't post anything. I guess we're supposed to either ask what the staffing needs are, or we're supposed to be mind readers. While I'm capable of both, I refuse to do either. I could ask, but why should I have to? I could "mind read", and since I was in management myself a good number of years ago that's rather more simple than you'd think, but again -- why would I do that? I'm just a little level 5 peon. I refuse to do the job that a level 15 supervisor or a level 17 station manager should be doing. It's extremely simple to post a holiday schedule -- takes less than 5 minutes, and that's if the printer has to warm up. If management is going to willfully not post one, the least they can do is give me verbal notification within the allotted time frame. I would, on occasion, like to make some plans, and I need to have some reasonable amount of time in which to make them. I don't think that's too much to ask, and the Employee/Labor/Management handbook agrees. It's real simple: no tell me, me no workee.

One of these days, my new management is going to catch on to something: I'm relatively easy to get along with (hey! no snickering), I'm extremely hard-working and I'm self-motivated, but I'm a stickler about one thing -- MY time. I work my butt off while I'm there, but I'm not married to the place. They already get 8 or more hours of my day, and I view that as a necessary evil until I hit the lottery or get a publishing deal. I refuse to give them any more of my time than I must. And if management insists on requiring my services for overtime or holidays, then I'm going to require they do it in a timely manner. End of story.

And now for a break from our regularly scheduled rantings... Today is Christmas, and after yesterday's last minute shopping, last night's last minute gift wrapping, this morning's slaving away in the kitchen... Ha! I almost had you on that one... No, this non-cooking heifer did not produce any culinary concoctions, although I DID cut up fruit for nearly 2 hours for the aptly named fruit salad. Hey, that counts, doesn't it? After all the mad-dash preparations, my wonderful family arrived at 11 a.m. for a mid-day brunch-y sorta thing at Mom's house. Why, with Mom being so sick, did we not move the gathering to my humble abode, you might ask? Well, for a variety of reasons. First, and foremost, you can barely get in the door of my place for all the "stuff" that needs to be picked up/cleaned up (I have a bad habit of starting projects and getting distracted mid-way through, and their skeletal remains haunt my abode like a bad scene from "Tales From the Crypt.") Secondly, I am currently owned by 4 cats (cat people know what I'm talking about -- no human owns a cat. Cats only deign for us lowly humans to provide them fancy feasts and princely palaces at their behest. They are only gracing us with their presence as long as they see fit.) and numerous members of my family are allergic to the feline furr balls (why wasn't I blessed with such an allergy?), so family gatherings of any kind at my place are out of the question. Which doesn't exactly get me off the hook, since I've spent quite a few spare moments over the past several days helping to clean my Mom's place.

Which brings me to my point: I'm exhausted. Deep-down bone-weary I-could-sleep-'til-New-Years tired. Of course, this state has been aided and abetted by a sinus infection/bronchial crud I can't seem to shake. I initially contracted this mess more than a month ago, got better, and then got it again. I am on the upswing, but Mom is on her second go-round, and I'm actually quite worried about her. She spent 2 solid weeks cleaning and cooking in preparation for today's gathering, and I couldn't convince her that not a single solitary soul in our family nor any of our friends cares whether she cleaned the dust bunnies out from under her bed, nor whether she got down on her hands and knees to scrub behind the commode. Christmas is about gathering with family, watching the little ones squeal with delight over their presents (only to play with the boxes they came in) and eating ourselves into a carb-laden stupor. Each of those things can be accomplished quite easily in a comfortably clean house (which my mom's home is -- ALWAYS) instead of one that has been spit-shined like the tip of a West Point plebe's shoe. But to no avail. Mom has dusted, vacuumed, rearranged, polished, and scrubbed herself into a frenzy over the past 2 weeks, all for a 3-4 hour gathering of 16 people, including the 2 of us. And of course, it looks like a hurricane hit as soon as all the presents have been opened, so why go to all the trouble? I guess I just don't care enough about stuff like that, which might explain why my house is ready for condemnation at any point -- I'm just waiting for them to tack the notice on the front door. I guess the answer is somewhere in the middle. I certainly need to care more, and she needs to care a little less. But isn't that one of the great lessons of life? Compromise. Meeting in the middle. Making concessions. I think that is one of the principles I'm going to add to the list of things I need to work on in the upcoming year. That, and cleaning my house, so I'm not constantly peering out the front door in fear of seeing codes approaching with a hammer and nail and a little pink notice.

So, I worked in furthest reaches of Dante's Inferno for several months, cursing my very existence, when I got up the courage to actually pursue my writing on a semi-professional level. (See below post regarding my sports writing at www.secwb.com). Although it allowed me to get the creative juices flowing again, I am somewhat limited in my subject choices (it's a website devoted to SEC women's basketball, so... yeah... I don't exactly have free license to post about local politics or the plethora of good movies coming out around the holidays). Anyway, despite it's necessary limitations, it was good to write again, especially about a subject on which I am somewhat conversant. In the meantime, I continued to gaze longingly at the bid board, praying for ANYTHING to come up that would get me out of this hell, when suddenly, I saw it: a job I had coveted for YEARS. In my little corner of the 'hood there exists a quaint little post office that is the smallest in all of Nashvegas, and said post office happens to be at the end of my street. Approximately 150 yards lie between my front door and the back door of this little outpost. Why hadn't I bid to this job before now, you might ask? Well, I had tried unsuccessfully in years past and been outbid, because this little PO is known affectionately as the retirement post office. It's such a great spot to work that most people go there and stay 'til they retire (or die, whichever comes first). Needless to say, positions there don't come up for bid often (about once every five years or so) and my seniority in times past wasn't enough to get me in the door, but something told me this time around might be different. So I placed my bid and waited with baited breath. Next thing you know, I find out IT'S MINE! I GOT THE JOB!!!

Now before you think I got to leave Dante's Den anytime soon, let me explain how things work at the big P.O. I had to first scheme qualify (for those not in the know, that translates to learning every street in my little zip code and memorizing which carrier delivers the mail to that particular street), and then after passing that test, I was mandated to pass a class that teaches me all the intricacies of being a window clerk. Surprisingly enough, there are a LOT of rules and regulations to serving customers across the window, moreso than just the common courtesies like not sneezing on anyone nor muttering expletives when they do the most heinous things, like belching in your face. "Service with a smile" -- that's our motto. (Well, it's really not, but it should be, since we're negatively scored by mystery shoppers if we don't greet our customers in a friendly manner. And don't EVEN get me started on THAT waste of time and moola. "Mystery shoppers" my big fat patootie.... AARRRGGGGHHHHH!) Actually, all the rules and regs are not so surprising since I DO work for a bureaucratic governmental red-tape-producing entity.

I was awarded the job in late March, and went to scheme training soon after. Since I've lived in that zip code all my life, training shoulda been a breeze. And it was, until I went to review for the test and there were discrepancies between the review material and the scheme I'd learned. Long story short, the scheme had changed over the past few years (streets added, names changed, carrier "splits", etc.) and I had been blissfully unaware that I'd spent four days learning the older incorrect scheme. No problem. Let's just start over on the new one and it'll be a breeze, too. Thank HEAVENS I had a great trainer who was wise enough to credit my training time to me in the proper way without me having to go all postal on him. I passed with flying colors and was all gung ho to get the window clerk training started. So I waited, and waited. And waited. And waited some more for the call or correspondence that would let me know when the next class would start. Now I'm an impatient sorta girl (bet you wouldn't have guessed that, now would ya?) so I commenced to calling the training office myself. Only problem with that is, not a single solitary soul in that overpaid/underworked office has a freakin' CLUE about scheduling training classes except for ONE GUY and he's out of the office for the next TWO WEEKS. I find it more than a little ridiculous that only one guy in the ENTIRE Mid-state area schedules training, and he's famous for two things: 1) spending an inordinant amount of time on the golf course and 2) NEVER returning phone calls. Makes him infinitely qualified for the job, don't you think? So I dug around a little and found out that there was a scheduled rate increase to take effect May 14 and they were dragging their collective feet about training anyone until after that date. Makes sense, but you COULDA TOLD ME instead of me having to snoop around like the man from U.N.C.L.E. to glean that valuable info. Of course, it's a two week training class, and CERTAINLY no one is going to schedule training that would conflict with Memorial Day, so ... you get the picture. This job I got in March? I finally got trained for in JUNE. And people wonder why we have rate increases? It's to pay the salary of the brainiacs who come up with such nonsense.

Okay... another attack of postal-induced indigestion is coming on, so I'll get all Zen for a moment and post more later...

Okay, I realize there are a few small holes to be filled in as far as what's been happening with me since I last posted about my job change, so here's another year's worth of happenings crammed into an overstuffed nutshell. I left the relative comfort of my night shift job (I was working for the best supervisor EVER, I was surrounded by good buddies who kept it fun, and I'm a night owl at heart) for the relative hell of a day shift job at the Annex. It may have looked good on paper, but boy, WAS I WRONG. I joined a crew made up of crotchety old codgers with a loon or two thrown in for good measure, working under the most horrid conditions for a supervisor who used to mess around with one of my fellow workers back in the day. Sounds like a dream job, huh? If you enjoy NIGHTMARES. I tried to make the best of it, but it took all my efforts to drag myself to work everyday. Needless to say, I found the only way to slog through this daily grind was to listen to my I-Pod non-stop for 8 hours a day and tune everything else out. I had worked at this facility several years before, but that was a day at the spa compared to THIS. During that foray, I only worked six hours a day, surrounded by the best crew ever. We had a fun bunch back then, and we cut up and joked around and virtually ate our way through the holidays. (Most crews brought snacks around Christmas, but our bunch brought goodies the entire month of December, and for ALL holidays, including Keith Richards' birthday. Hey... it's a holiday to some...)

This time around was sheer hell, I tell ya. Understaffed, overworked, and the air vents I had written a formal complaint about two years prior STILL HADN'T BEEN CLEANED. Instead of just being black and grimy looking, they now had growths hanging out of them that reminded me of that old B-movie classic "The Blob." The headaches, sinus infections and nosebleeds began again almost immediately, so I launched into another losing battle to get them cleaned, all to no avail. What is it with these people? They'd rather fight tooth and nail to keep from doing the right thing instead of just sucking it up. LITTERALLY. I mean, how freaking difficult is it to change the 28 air filters once a month instead of bi-annually, and then get a fork-lift and shop-vac the vents? Do you know what official response I was given to my formal complaint? Someone had to be TRAINED to clean the vents... RIGHT... And once they got them trained how to use a shop-vac, then they were going to teach them how to wipe the boogers out of their noses, I'm sure. Has anyone EVER heard such a ridiculous excuse before? Oh that's right... I work for the blithering idiots of the USPS, an organization that wrote the book on stupid. Lest anyone think I'm overreacting, let's just say that my 22 years of service make me an expert. There's a REASON the term "going postal" is now part of the American lexicon. Hmmm.... I've just figured out the title to the expose I'm going to write about my 22 years of federal hell. Look for it at a bookstore near you in the near future, after I've sufficiently zippoed all my work-related bridges...

Enough for tonight... I'm getting indigestion just THINKING about the place...

Almost another year has passed and I'm finally returning to my little blog. I decided to get an early jump on New Year's resolutions and make yet another sincere effort to write as close to daily as possible. Lest anyone thinks I haven't put thought to keyboard in a while ("pen to paper" is OH SO last century), I got an actual writing gig this past spring, and although it's not paying any bills yet (actually, it's not paying ANYTHING yet), I'm beginning to get my name out there a little bit. How it all came about is rather interesting, so I'll recount it here.

For anyone who doesn't know me, let me just enlighten you to the fact that I LOVE sports, but am most particularly a fan of women's college basketball. I have been a die-hard fan of Vanderbilt athletics since childhood, and they happen to have one of the more talented women's basketball teams in the country. They compete in the very best conference in the nation (the Southeastern Conference, of course) and I spent many years attending every home game and quite a few games on the road. I wound up becoming best buds with two of Vandy's best players ever, and the late 80's through about 2000 were consumed with all things hardwood. Alas, I became disenfranchised with their jerk of a coach and the way he treated his players, so my admiration waned and I began to pursue other interests. Although I let my season tickets lapse, I continued to attend the SEC tournament each March. With the caliber of teams competing in this league (each season, anywhere from 5 to 7 of the 12 schools are chosen to play in the NCAA Tournament), the SEC tourney offers some of the best basketball to be seen anywhere in the country. I get to OD on 11 games played over a four day period and I LOVE IT!

So even though I didn't get to attend a single home game this past season, I watched Vandy anytime they were on tv and happily made my way to Atlanta for the SEC tourney the first week of March this year. The fact that I got to spend time with my best friend who moved there in January, along with renewing ties to friends who support the South Carolina Gamecocks (no tasteless jokes from ME... nope, not a one) were just added bonuses to four days of basketball bliss. Because I had started blogging here, I had also begun to write a few things on myspace as well, and I decided to compose a few thoughts about the tournament and post them on my myspace since I had better traffic there (because, yes... at heart, all writers want to be READ.)

Upon returning home, I had to drive my 80-year-old mom to her dentist's appointment (mom gave up driving about 2 years ago, and all of Nashvegas' roads, intersections, parking lots and sidewalks are much safer because of it), and because I was tired from the trip home that morning, I just snoozed in the Jeep while she got cleaned and polished. About an hour later, Mom climbed in and said, "Dr. Lancaster asked about you," which was not at all surprising, since A) he's my dentist too and B) I haven't been to see him in about two years. (Yeah, I know... the Tooth Fairy is somewhere greedily rubbing her hands together at the prospect of having an adult victim to call on in the near future...) I assumed he wanted to see me ASAP and I muttered something about being busy when mom surprised me with "No, he asked me if you still hate your job." OKAY.... Let's just say that it hit me like a ton of dental floss that the ONE THING my DENTIST, whom I haven't seen in TWO YEARS, remembers about me is that I HATE MY JOB. Is it possible that maybe -- just maybe -- I've complained a little too vociferously about my own little personal postal hell if that is what people remember about me? Not my charming personality or my quick wit or my stunning intelligence or my ability to be conversational on a wide array of subjects... NOOOOOOO..... I'm the chick who HATES HER JOB. I tried to laugh it off, but moms have a way of recognizing whether a chuckle is truly sincere or just a cover for irritation. Needless to say my little titter was certainly the latter and not the former, and mom, in her infinite wisdom, recognized this immediately. Of course, mom herself has been badgering me for YEARS to either get out of this job or manufacture some coping mechanisms, so I chalked it up to her predictability that she asked, "If you could walk away from the post office right now and choose any job in the world, what would it be?". What WASN'T so predictable was my answer: before I even had a nanosecond to process my response, I blurted, "I'd be a women's basketball sportswriter." And while I glanced in the back seat to see WHO had actually burst forth with that little verbal fart, I realized that it had escaped my own lips. And I also quickly realized that any response that exited my mouth that rapidly without being spot-checked by my brain was probably straight from my heart. And why not? It combined two of my greatest loves: women's basketball and writing.

So, after returning home and contemplating a return to hell/work after 5 glorious days off, I seized upon a novel idea: my brain had been so firmly rooted in old-school ideas of newspaper and magazine sports coverage that it suddenly struck me that I could register a domain name and write about SEC women's basketball to my heart's content on the internet. I mean ... HELLO ... if hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of people log on daily to read about and discuss the trials and travails of motherhood or pet ownership or any other of a jillion different subjects, why couldn't I write about a subject I love so much and which is becoming ever more popular? So I set about choosing the most logical domain name which would garner the most hits (Repeat after me: writers write to be read), but there arose one itty-bitty problem: it was already taken. By a site that was trying to do what I wanted to do. Hmmm...what to do, what to do... In a Sopranos world, I'd buy 'em out or bump 'em off, but I don't think that type of logic works in cyberspace. So I did the next best thing: if you can't beat 'em, JOIN 'EM. I perused the site and had to admit it was structured very professionally, with a gorgeous design and intricate layout. It had so many levels I got lost, but the one thing I did seize on was the fact they appeared to be a little short on writers. To do a site such as this justice, the ideal situation would be to have "beat writers" for each of the 12 schools, and then have featured columnists tackle a variety of pertinent subjects. While wandering through the site I noticed a link to contact them, and on a lark, I sent an e-mail offering my expertise. After hitting the "send" button, I was immediately seized with a stomach cramp that was the result of that panic feeling, wondering "what the *#@! did I just do?!?" A day passed, and then another, and I had begun to breathe easier but yet admitted to myself that I was more than a little disappointed when the unthinkable happened: I got a response from the website owner, wanting to read some of my stuff. But before I could do my own idiotic version of a celebratory dance around the computer, I realized I didn't have anything to submit that was really for public consumption on a commercial website. The stuff I'd written on myspace was fun and fact-filled, but more a personal blog than true sports writing. I wound up exchanging numbers and phone calls with the owner/webmistress, and after much disclaiming, I told her how to navigate to myspace and read my SEC recaps/opinion pieces. When I didn't hear back from her after a coupla days, I figured she wasn't interested, and despite my growing disappointment, I had to give myself a congratulatory pat on the back for even putting myself out there like that, when voila: lightening struck twice. The owner got back to me, liked my style, and asked me to join her staff. The rest, as they say, is history.

In the past 8 or 9 months, I've written over 40 articles and am now the featured columnist at www.secwb.com in addition to being the Vanderbilt beat writer. Drop on by and give me a read if you'd like to see what I've been up to.

I'm in such a state of flux right now... Those who know me know that I've been in a really pissed off place in my head about uncontrollable events at my job. Most also know I took matters into my own hands and put in bids for a new job. Well, my supervisor and great friend called me yesterday afternoon with the news: I got a new job. I will be rejoining the human race: I will be working DAYS. 10:30 AM to 7 PM. Not a bad deal; off early enough in the evening to actually go out and have fun, not in too early in the morning to prevent going out the night before and having fun...

So why am I less than ecstatic right now? I Hate Change. I know all the cliches already, so don't bother reciting the litany: "change is good", "change is inevitable", "without change there is no growth"... blah, blah, blah... Blah. BLAH. Have I said this before? Let me say it again: I HATE CHANGE. I know this makes no sense, especially when I've become disenchanted and unhappy in my current circumstances. But they're MY circumstances, dammit, and there is some comfort level that comes with ownership. I did what I was supposed to do: I made the mental list of pros vs. cons, going vs. staying, and the pros of going outweighed the cons of staying. BUT THERE WERE "PROS" ON THE SIDE OF STAYING ALSO. And now they are rearing their ugly little heads, sticking out their tongues and razzing me, making me question whether I made a good decision or not.

Let me list a few so you can join me in my pity party. I will be leaving behind 2 of the best friends anyone could ever have and a gaggle of other good buddies. I have had the good fortune of working for an amazing supervisor for the past 2 years, which is extremely rare in my job. In my 21-year federal career, I can name my truly excellent supervisors on one hand and have three fingers left over. She is very good at what she does, she is fair, and above all, she genuinely cares about her employees. But more than being an exemplary supervisor, she has become one of my best friends. It is she who encouraged, cajoled, and eventually pushed me off the cliff into counseling. And I am a better person for it. I will be eternally indebted to her for helping me see this was the only logical decision to be made at that point in my life. The other great friend is someone I only renewed my connection with in the past several months. We used to work together years ago, but as time and circumstances separated us, we lost touch. When she transferred to my shift several months ago, it was like coming home to an old friend -- the kind you can pick up the conversation with in mid-sentence years later. She is a joy to be around; she puts a smile on my face the minute I walk through the door. She sees the humor and the beauty in ordinary life and she makes those around her take time to appreciate it as well.

When contemplating the reality that I will no longer be working for and with these two, it makes me rather reticent. I feel like I'm heading out on a high-wire across a great chasm, and I don't have either of them to steady me. But if I listen closely, each is cheering me on as I venture to a new place. I have made a solemn vow to not lose touch with either of them. Great friends are difficult to find in this world, and even more difficult to keep. But it is worth whatever time and effort I must put forth to make it happen, because I am a better person for having each of them in my life.

As I'm settling in to sleep this morning, I do so with a sense of happiness and well-being (For those of you who know me well, this isn't a particularly normal state for me... I'm usually agitated or obsessing about something). I really must say that when I take the time and make a conscious effort to remember and put into practice all the helpful little hints my counselor has been giving me the past year or so, I really can improve my mood/outlook. Instead of stressing out about the pile of laundry I tripped over as I entered my back porch/laundry room this morning, I instead focused on the fact that my neighbors' 2 (very large) dogs were roaming around my back yard. I love these 2 fuzz-buckets; they are extremely friendly -- in a warm, gangly, slobbery sort of way. So after letting my own 2 dogs out, I set out on a cold winter's morning adventure. Despite knowing my efforts would be rebuffed, I called to Simon and Lucy in hopes theirs would be a short-lived prison break. No dice. Lucy came running to me, rolled over to have her belly rubbed, and as I reached for her collar too quickly, was off like a shot, chasing after her companion Simon, who had barely given my calls and whistles a second glance. Simon is a much more accomplished escape artist; none of this neighborly trap-laying for HIM. Leash in hand, I headed up the street hoping they hadn't ventured too far, since the current temp was hovering around 30 degrees and I was wearing my usual uniform of shorts. Blessedly, they had only gone about 8 or 10 houses away, and had even made the mistake of entering someone's fenced back yard via their open driveway gate. After trespassing into this unknown neighbor's yard and closing their gate quickly, I was able to wrangle both dogs relatively easily, considering Lucy (on the leash) weighs about 65 or 70 pounds and Simon (being held only by his collar) weighs well over 100 pounds. But they both marched home with me like perfect little soldiers. My neighbor was so ecstatic after I put them back inside their pen that she cooked me breakfast.

I have such an enjoyable time with my neighbor. She's a stay-at-home mom who works far harder than anyone working outside the home. She's a phenomenal photographer, a talented writer, an upholsterer, a creative quilter, a poet ... is there anything this woman isn't capable of doing? She's a wonderful wife and mother, blessed with an awesome husband and 2 beautiful children. She's one of those people who GET IT. She may not know what the latest political crisis in the world is, but she takes the time to marvel at the beauty of a perfectly formed leaf. She may forget to take the time to brush her own hair, but she will sit down to read to her children, or play with them in the yard, or take them on adventures. She cares about the things that really matter: being a wonderful partner to her husband, and a mother who loves her children enough to want them to be the best they can be: loving, creative, respectful, adventuresome, caring human beings. If they follow her example, they will have the best teacher they could ever have. Any time I get to spend in her presence lets me know I am blessed. I am blessed to have her not only as my neighbor, but as my friend. So as I pillow my head this morning, I do so with a smile on face and a feeling of happiness at having been able to spend some time with my friend.