I'm excited ! I've interviewed friday on the phone for a job at the Verde Valley Guidance Clinic which looks very promising! It is located in Cottonwood and if I get the job I would live in Sedona, one of my favorite places as you know.

I'm having to overcome my mental and emotional obstacles to pursuing my dream of living in a place like Sedona. At first I was scared to death, waking up with anxiety and telling myself to forget moving, just stay here! Guess I was scared to give up what I have. Now I am not scared but moderately excited. Then there is inertia - I'm contented, like my job, liking my house more and more as I fix it my way. Esp as I look around and think of leaving it. But I think if I stay here I am cutting myself off from the new possibilities that lie in the place I dream of, that I would be settling for the status quo, preparing for old age by playing it safe. And it seems like I am ready for an adventure, and I'm not getting any younger!

I have to consider the possibility I won't get the job, but I think I will and am proceeding like I will .


I am in a quandry about whether to rent or try to sell my house, which I think is my biggest obstacle. (Any advice is welcome.) No matter which I do, I'm purging my house of unnecessary, unloved, or unwanted stuff that, even though I don't consider myself anywhere near a packrat, has accumulated over the years. I am hindered by an emotional/mental obstacle to throwing away good stuff. I got this from Granny I am sure -you know how she is always passing along stuff nobody wants - a very annoying habit that I am also guilty of foisting on my kids! Every time I want to toss something my mind automatically thinks "who can I give this to?". It's amazing how ingrained this is and how gut- wrenching it is to put stuff in a trash bag to either throw away or take to charity. But I am persisting and it does feel goodto lighten up! I even found a place to take "building materials" for recycling - old boards, tiles, drywall, etc that were collecting cobwebs in the garage. I got my guest bathroom updated with new faucets and towel rods.

Next I will try to get a shower stall door replacement for the master bath. If I sell I might get new countertop in the bathroom too.l

I interview in person with DR G on sunday in Cottonwood. Wish me luck!
I will call a realtor to show my some rentals in Sedona while I am up there too.

Just watched PBS special about Dale Chihuly glass artist - there is a special exhibit of his glass throughout the desert botanical garden that I just bought a ticket for -it should be beautiful lit up at night.

The Bright Side...

They say you're always supposed to look at the bright side of things. You know, like the glass is half empty...

Well today, it was really cold out morning when I took the dogs out into the yard for their morning ritual...and I smiled at the fact that frozen dog poo is much less unpleasant to scoop up and discard than regular dog poo.

A little while later, I went upstairs and crawled back into bed with Carmen. "It's SO cold," she said. Yeah, but if it was warm, I'd be out riding my bike instead of snuggling with you. "True-dat," she said.

Later it started drizzling, raining, snowing, raining, sleating, etc. I didn't feel so positive about that, but it did give us a great opportunity to put up our Xmas tree...

Update from Scott & Alice

Hi everyone-
Scott's Grandfather passed away last Sunday, and we went to Albany on Tuesday night for the Service on Wednesday. It was a really nice service, with so many people, but of course really sad even though he had a long happy life. Scott's Grandmother is still alive. I wish I had known them earlier, they seem like amazing people- nuturing and fun-loving. They had a large loving family- four biological children, three adopted children, and took care of several foster children over the years.
On a lighter note, today we had a party at the house with about 25 friends and 4 kids, a non-shower, I guess you'd call it. It was so nice to see everyone and celebrate the upcoming arrival of Baby G. We had a great time. We had everyone write name suggestions & put them in a vase, since we are still stumped.
We are looking forward to Thanksgiving and visiting with Scott's family & with Doug, Carmen & Carmen's parents. I am really excited to play some mexican train if I can stay awake:)
Only 7 more weeks until the baby comes, give or take. We are getting ready little by little. By the way, we are registered for a few things at BabiesRus, if anyone asks.
Love to you all.

I agree with a Republican

I saw Mitt Romney on the Today Show this morning and I liked what he said about the Big 3. He said that giving them the money would ensure their demise. Instead this is an opportunity to help them shed costs and restructure giving them the chance to be competitive and survive. They need new labor agreements to get the labor costs in line with their competition and the retiree burden needs to be reduced. He wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times on Wednesday about it. I agree with the republican view on this issue.

Free Cars for 1 million tax payers

I have an idea. Instead of giving $25B to the Big 3 so that they can keep making cars that no one wants...why don't we give $25,000 to 1 million taxpayers with the contingency that they buy a Ford, GM or Chrysler vehicle. I think the return on investment for the American people would be better. Most of us will get abolutely nothing, which is what we're going to get with the bailout. The lucky few, if you could call them that, will get new cars.

How do you decide who gets them? Lottery. All taxpayers with income less than ____ are automatically entered to win. The amount could be like $100,000 or so. We could even spread it out over a few years, to keep them on life support as long as possible...

I've been compromised

My credit card was compromised today. Someone got the number and charged hundreds of dollars at some porn site. Miraculously, Chase caught it and denied the charges. New cards are en route. Apparently no damage done. This leaves me with 2 questions:
1. How does this not happen more often? With all the people that actually see my credit card number during the dozens of transactions per month...
2. How in the world did they catch this so quickly? What kind of clairvoyent algorithms do they use to figure this stuff out in real-time?

This is the second time this has happened to me, and at least the 3rd or 4th time that Fraud Protection has called with questions like: "Mr Kennedy, did you charge $347 to ILUST4YOUNGBLONDS.COM today?" or "Mr Kennedy, did you purchase $57 at Chevron in Homestead Florida yesterday and $32 at Applebees in Boise Idaho today?" uh....no to the blondes...but don't tell anyone that I ate at Applebees...okay.

I'm just glad that there's some really smart programmers out that that are working on the side of goodness and justice...because otherwise the hackers and thiefs would have their way with us and we'd all be broke. Of course, we still have the politicians doing their best trying to give away our hard-earned tax dollars to the Big Three...because they simply can't make cars that people actually want to buy...but their existence is vital to our national security...therefore we must keep them on life support so that they can continue to loose market share to the Japanese...who arguably make much better cars trucks and SUVS...and wait for them go bankrupt when nobody notices...or when the economy is doing better so that nobody cares. And they accused Obama of being a socialist. Now that both parties worked together to socialize banking and they're well on their way to socializing the US auto industry...the GOP is going to have to find a new bad name to call him.

As for me, I'm going to just going to bury my head in the sand and continue being a good American...by spending as much money as possible...as soon as I get my new piece of plastic.

San Francisco Adventure

Sunday we went to San Francisco for the day. We took Bart over and then we rode the cable car
over to Fisherman's Wharf. It was a beautiful day there with sun and 75 degree temperatures! We ate fresh Dungeness Crab. Kendall gave fifty cents to a street musician playing a dulcimer. She said that when she grows up she wants to play an instrument so that people will give her money!
At Pier 39, we visited the aquarium and enjoyed seeing a fringe group of the Stanford marching band performing. It was a fun adventure of public transportation and seeing the sights in San Francisco.

I experienced a little winter while driving home from Flag - the skies turned from blue to gray and the temperature dropped from 60 to 38 in a couple of hours. As soon as I started driving out of town flurries started, then heavy snow which stuck to the windshield and road. Since I was headed downhill, within 30 minutes it was rain and after I climbed out of the Verde Valley, the sun was again shining and it was clear at home.

I enjoyed my overnight in Flag - Darlene has an adorable old house right downtown so we walked to restaurants and even for shopping. I'd never experienced Flag from the perspective of a resident - it is really a cool place and I would even consider living there but not particularly attracted to it though. What does attract me is red rock and desert! I saw a picture of Terry Tempest Williams (author) seated outside her Castle Valley (isn't that a cool name?) UT home (outside of Moab) which included spires of red rock and I was immediately envious and had to look it up on the web. She is coming to Changing Hands Thursday so maybe I can talk to her. One of these days I hope to fulfill this dream of living in such a place.

I'm watching less TV these days because I got rid of my cable recorder. More reading, more listening to radio and music. I still catch Oprah most nights.

Hooray - I did several hours of filing, purging, tossing in my office and it feels so good to have all that done! Now I can just shred and file as things come in, thereby avoiding such a back log. I'm learning to make it easier = moving the files that I need to the spot where I go through my mail (laundry room), instead of creating a pile in the laundry room or on my desk to be sorted some months down the road.

That sure was a lot of leaves Doug!

Halloween

Kendall was Dorothy for Halloween this year. She had a lot of fun trick or treating. Rosie went as Toto. As you all heard, I painstakingly sewed this costume (with help from Mary and phone consultations with Mom). I think it turned out pretty good despite the fact that I had to sew her into the dress for her first costume party on Tuesday. It was just like an episode of "Project Runway" as I rushed to finish her dress in time. You can't even see the blood stains on the sleeve bands from my pricked fingers. If I start now, maybe I can finish next year's costume without as much stress.

Love,

Anne

Leaves, leaves and more leaves

Yesterday I spent 3 hours mowing the leaves and dumping them in the woods. (I love having a compost pile in my backyard!) Today...it looks just like it did BEFORE I started! I see another couple hours of yard work today. Yippee.

2 Hours In Line We'll Never Forget

The lines were a block and a half long and as diverse as one can imagine- what a great place to witness history and the best time to start a family.
Love and Hope- Scott & Alice

Dawn of a New Day

Carmen and I stayed up to watch Obama's acceptance speech. It was inspirational...to say the least. It's still a bit surreal. I too, have never been so emotionally vested in an election. I don't think the nation has ever been so emotionally vested. I don't recall a similar level of celebration by millions across the country for any previous President. I certainly don't recall caring this much in the past, other than being really, really disappointed that this country re-elected W.

McCain was relatively gracious. His crowd was disappointing, though...with their boos. McCain should have scolded them. I would have liked to have seen an apology from him as well. After running such a dishonorable campaign, I hope that he slips into obscurity and retires soon.

It's the dawn of a new day. We have a new President, and he has a lot of work to do to rebuild our economy and rebuild respect in the international community.

I feel like I am sitting on pins and needles over this election - I have never felt so invested emotionally in an election. It's hard to believe the whole thing will be over by tonight! And probably no one will read the blog for days...

I love the picture of Alice and the blanket and seeing her big belly - more excitement there and the unknown there too -in just two months we'll have another little being in our family and we'll finally know what it is!

I'm at work and a patient didn't show up so I had time to talk to Anne, who is getting everyone ready to go to Disneyland for a few days.

We had fun making Rosie the little vest. Rosie seemed to enjoy the fittings and rolling around in the fabric as we were sewing. She is so adorable.

I am impressed with Anne's willingness to tackle sewing, especially with something as challenging as the Dorothy outfit for Kendall's Halloween costume. It was fun having her call me for a consultation every few hours! Sewing can be tedious and frustrating, but fun too when you like the finished product. I am enjoying sewing and knitting more these days, after many years of not really doing either one. In a way I feel like I've returned to myself, as needlework was such an important part of my young life until I went to nursing school, started working, and pretty much stopped making things.

I had my yard all cleaned up and everything is trimmed way back (remember the rats?) and surprisingly it doesn't look too scalped and bare. Julio seems to have a good sense of design the way he can trim an out of control bush down to two sticks and have it look good. Sort of a zen approach. Anyway, I am very relieved because I have decided to hire Julio for monthly maintenance so I never have to have yardwork hanging over my head again.

My next project( and then I hope to have no more unpleasant projects), is to eliminate all my unncessary papers , statements, etc from my filing. The barrage of paper related to investments is ridiculous. The town of Tempe is having a Shred- a -thon coming up in two weeks and I am using that as my target date to rid my office of all unnecessary old papers with my social security number and privacy information on them. I can take it all to the shred a thon and get rid of it all at once! Yeay! I will feel so much lighter when that is done and my office will be once again under control. Now its under piles of papers.

The weather is lovely - in the mid 80s during the day, 60s at night.

I will be going to Flagstaff saturday (brrr) to see my friend Darlene NP who moved there a month ago for a job. That will be nice to go up there, and fun to see her. I'll have a chance to break in those winter clothes before going to NY in January for the birth.

Hopefully we'll be talking about President Obama after today!

Obama Fever

Hi everyone-
As the election gets closer, we can really feel the energy and the support for Obama here in NY. It's all very exciting!
Scott will be shooting tomorrow night at the Daily Show with John Stewart. I may go to friends to watch the election coverage.
We had our birthing class yesterday, which was very informative. Now that there's no hiding the fact that I'm REALLY pregnant (this thing is huge), a lot of our neighbors in the building are noticing. The ones with kids are especially excited for us and it's nice to know that there are so many other families and feel that sense of community. I am feeling really good in general, more energetic.
Speaking of the baby, check out the beautiful blankie that Patricia knitted for him/ her...it is so soft and cozy I have been using it myself!