Queen of Swords

Memories of the King, by Nicole Cadet





His lips are too wide, and I'm not blonde, but otherwise. . . . yeah. . .

1. I am fortunate enough to have several ex-boyfriends/lovers as good friends.

2. Personal inventory processing continues. Good stuff coming up. This weekend will be focused on framework and prioritization of fundamentals and goals.

3. Motherhood = leadership.
It's not only equal to leadership, but a lot of the principles of leadership apply, especially that of leading by example.

4. I use approximately 20% of my brain at work and still garner lots and lots of praise. This scares me.

5. I need to make social plans with friends at least twice a month. It's scary that I've been doing so much less for so long.

6. I have a couple of essays/reflections to type up and share.

7. I love LOL's. They keep me sane at work. (See #4 above.) I know I just posted one yesterday, but that was mostly for someone else. This one is for me, in fond memory of Steve Irwin:





8. Learning from my own mistakes is good. Learnig from the mistakes of others is even better. In the latest case, it prevented me from striking out in pain at someone else. Instead of assuming that the silence was all about me, and a rejection of me, I asked what was going on his the other person's life that interrupted our conversation. Guess what? It had nothing to do with me.

9. Lots of intense, meaningful dreams in the last few days, death and bears featuring most significantly.

Also: this image, which pretty much sums up my last week. . . .

I made a locked Wolfling post a little earlier today and realized that the cute anime girl with her wolf is just to "little" for my starting-junior-high-in-a-little-over-a-month daughter.

So this is the new Wolfling icon. The image is "Bubblegum Zen" by Joseph Corsentino.



And yeah. . . it looks a lot like her. . .

I found this while doing some Google image searches yesterday, and fell in love. It speaks so eloquently to my struggles over the past few years.






Unfortunately, there wasn't an artist's credit attached.



(As I preview this, it looks like it's not too big -- but if it distorts your friends page, let me know and I'll put it behind a cut.)

While sorting through boxes, I found my Housewife's Tarot.

( This lady does seem more than a bit familiar. . . . )

This warms the cockles of my geeky little heart. . .

Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. . .

Every year I buy myself something special for my birthday.
I'm a little early this year, but since I'm placing a mail order during the holiday season, I decided to go ahead and do it now, to be sure it will be here on my birthday.

This lovely figurine, by Jody Bergsma, is on its way to me from Gaelsong. The piece is called "Release Your Dreams." It resonates beautifully with what's going on in my life these days.

This is for tamnonlinear, who posted this morning about a lovely encounter with a praying mantis.





Eye Contact by Matthew Bradbury

1. The hard drive on my old computer is broken. Hopefully _storyteller_ and strandsofchaos will still be able to recover the data.

2. I'm pissed at an eBay seller who wrote me today to tell me that he didn't actually have the item I ordered -- and paid for! -- in stock, but before he refunded my money he wanted me to submit an agreement to "mutually cancel transaction" -- or else he would subtract his seller fees from my refund! Then he had the nerve to tell me that in the future I should order directly from his website, to be sure he had the merchandise in stock. I sent him a scathing letter in reply, but clicked the Agreement because I really don't want to waste my time fighting with him and eBay to the tune of $184.

3. The good news is that I was finally able to locate the abovementioned item -- a statue of Snow White and Bigby (aka "Big Bad") Wolf from the comic series Fables -- at a local comic shop, and my mom did me the favor of picking it up for me this afternoon since I wouldn't be able to get there after work. As it happens, it's exactly where Hob recommended I go in the first place, back before the statue was released. *sigh

4. I'm feeling on the edge of overwhelmed at work. My boss is a great guy, but he seems to have a hard time staying on a single track. He is constantly making travel plans and then changing them, and changing meeting times. I believe he's getting a lot of pressure from above, but it makes it tough on the rest of us. Meanwhile, I'm also trying to do my project management work and keep up with all the routine requests for assistance from the teams I support. There simply isn't enough time in the day.

5. I opened an investment account today outside of my 401K at work. I now have a Roth IRA, four mutual funds, and two stocks. This is where the bulk of the money from the house buy-out is going, minus the new furniture, the new computer, and a cash reserve in my savings account.

6. My spiritual practice still isn't as consistent as I'd like to be from the perspective of routine, repeated "practices" -- but there is a richness there that I've not experienced in ages, especially in my relationships with the deities. I keep meaning to make a major post about that, but I'm so busy living it that I'm not making the time to write about it.

( Here's my new statue of Bigby and Snow after the Battle of the Wooden Soldiers -- the best thing that's happened to me all day. )