Its a Hero

family

happy “this feels like a monday” tuesday!

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Hope everyone had an awesome holiday weekend! We had a small get together on Sunday and it was lovely. True story.

One of my four freshman college roommates {in Buffalo, NY} just moved to Cleveland to do her residency at Rainbow Babies and Children hospital. I’m so excited to have someone from that part of my life living close to me. She and her boyfriend came over on Sunday and it was so good to see them! True story.

We also have yet another Whitewater Rafting trip in our immediate future. We’ve been wanting to do this for a while and a great deal came up on Groupon that we just couldn’t pass up. So sometime within the next month and a half we will be heading back to West Virginia for an awesome weekend away! True story!

My mother is itching for grandchildren like you wouldn’t believe. NIM and her husband came over on Sunday as well. They brought their adorable little one {seriously NIM, if you want a night out, BF & I are babysitting!}. My mother oohed and ahhed over the little one. I was watching her to make sure she wasn’t going to steal her when NIM wasn’t looking. True story.

This resulted in my mother making even more comments to BF about when she was going to be a real grandma {instead of just to her “grandpuppies”}. True story.

Last but not least, I’m excited to announce that I will be starting a new job next Monday! I am really excited about feeling like a productive member of society again. Not that my current part-time job doesn’t count. It does, but it doesn’t fulfill me. True story.

still processing.

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This past Tuesday I came face to face with one of the men that shot and killed my grandfather 19 years ago. It was the first time I have ever seen him in person. I meant to write about this Tuesday night, but, honestly, it took me a while to digest what had happened.

I met my family in downtown Cleveland at the Federal courthouse. I’ve never been in a courtroom before. Federal Courtrooms are… intimidating… even for law-abiding citizens such as myself. We were there because the man who was convicted of murdering my grandfather, whom is on death row, is claiming a mistrial in 1991.

Here is the deal: I don’t want my grandfathers killer to be executed. This isn’t always a popular opinion, but I really don’t think that you understand until you are part of the victims family. Let me explain. It’s taken me a long time to deal with everything you have to deal with when someone you love is murdered; I didn’t live a “normal” childhood because of it; I was overly sensitive to things a child should not even be aware of.

But I forgave the men who killed my grandfather. I forgave them because it’s exhausting carrying around that much hatred for someone. I decided that I didn’t want him to be executed because, let’s face it, playing God and choosing who lives and who dies just breeds more hatred in the world. He may be a horrible man, but he is a man with a family; he is a man with people who love him and people who would be destroyed if he was executed. And, truth be told, I do not want anyone to feel like I’ve taken away someone they love; I’ve felt that pain. No one should have to feel it

All this being said, I still want him to be in prison forever. And he’s claiming that the reason he found himself in this situation, is because of the way he was raised and the extremely messed up childhood he had. Let me tell you, he HAD a messed up childhood. I’ll give you that. His mother was a drug addict and alcoholic. He and his mother were beat by his stepfather.

But we all have a story. You can either choose to let it define you, or you can call it a life experience and move on. I’m not saying that these moments don’t change us, cause surely they do. All I’m saying is you take from it what you want to take from it.

We all have things happen to us that help to shape us as individuals — both good things and bad things. But we decide what to do with those experiences. We decide whether to take them and grow from them, or take them and demolish our lives in the name of our tragedies. You create your fate. You decide whether or not you shoot someone. You are in control of your own life.

Basically, I’m not sure what this blog post is about. I have been thinking about getting this out all week, and I am still unsuccessful. Oh well…

{weekend wrap-up, tuesday style}

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My weekend is officially coming to a close! It’s been a very busy weekend. Yes, I know it’s already Tuesday, but BF had today off from work, so we got to spend some extra time together.

Saturday we went to a graduation party for a cousin in our hometown {which is about an hour from where we live}. We brought the pups to stay at my parents house for the day so we could conveniently stop “home” to take them out throughout the day.

This was an awesome idea, except that we didn’t take into account the fact that right across the street from my parents a civil war reenactment was occurring… canons and all. {Note: Not really sure about why we do this. I know this is big in the South, but we are in Northeast Ohio…. pretty much on Lake Erie… which could practically be Canada… OK, that’s a stretch, but still}.

Luckily the little ones didn’t freak out too badly from the canons.

In other news, his family fed me a lot of food and booze. Which is no surprise. This continued on Sunday when we went to his other cousins house for a party. It was 90-degrees out {Note: In the Midwest we put unnecessary prepositions on the end of sentences… like I should have said “It was 90-degrees.” But instead we say things like, “Where’s my coat at?” instead of “Where’s my coat?” Have you noticed that from my writing? Random, sorry.}

So anyway, it was 90-degrees {out} and I decided to wear all black {genius} and drink while I had a pounding headache {super genius, obviously}.

But I still had a ton of fun! Love his family!

Monday we had my mom, sister and dad over for a very laid back mini cookout. It was really nice to just relax. We really stretched that relaxing out all the way through today. Unfortunately, back to being a stay-at-home-puppy-mom tomorrow, which means talking to two dogs who cannot respond so I sound like an idiot all day. Such is life!

Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend!

changes.

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For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you probably noticed that something’s been… different… lately. Without getting into specifics, a lot has changed in the last week.

Not with me & BF, things are fine on that front, but pretty much everything else has… changed, let’s say.

First off I am writing this post in the middle of the day as I take a break from cleaning up the kitchen. I should be working, but I’m not.

Second of all, we have a new addition to the family. No I’m not pregnant, but we did adopt a sister for Oscar. Yes, it may be crazy to be just getting settled into our new old home, but it seemed like the perfect time once we started to think about it. Everyone is adjusting {me, BF, Oscar, the two cats}, so why not just add her to the mix now and let them all adjust at once? Perfect.

Oscar and his new sister, Pepper {Oscar is the black cocker-mix and Pepper is the white/brown beagle-mix; and I am the one without any makeup, so please ignore}

I wouldn’t quite say that Oscar and Pepper are getting along famously, but I’m confident they will be. Someday.

this much is true.

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I was on a serious high yesterday after sticking it to the man, mentally peacing out at work, getting the severe weight of work off of my shoulders.

And then, I wasn’t. True story. Not sure why. I think I’ve “checked out” too early & now I don’t want to do anything. Like, nothing.

But even though I was feeling like doing nothing but sleep, I went out to Dinosaur BBQ with a couple of lovely ladies! {for those unfamiliar with the hype of the Dino, it’s basically a hole-in-the-wall, biker bar. It’s been featured on the Travel Channel before & the Food Network.}

It was, sadly, only kind of good. We waited an hour for a table and then 45-minutes for our food to arrive. True story. I ended up not enjoying my food nearly as much once it arrived.

I really want to cancel my Netflix subscription, but I must finish the second season of Mad Men first! I have just one more DVD coming… hopefully it will be here soon. But otherwise, Netflix hasn’t been worth the $15 a month. True story.

My landlord has decided to put my duplex up on the market. This annoys me because two realtors came by tonight. I had to be home for them, and they were… late. True story. See the thing is, I don’t particularly care if the house sells. So they should probably be kind to me and be on time. I’m just sayin’.

Tomorrow I have a half day at work. I’m going to actually sleep in tomorrow. True Story. I didn’t get to do much sleeping in because I was working at the Yoga Lounge all weekend {which I loved doing, don’t get me wrong, but I just didn’t have an opportunity to sleep very much this weekend 🙂 } and spendin time with BFs niece & sister who were in from Denver. It was such a fun weekend, but goodness am I worn out now!

Best true story ever? Well that would be the fact that I only have 6 and a half days of work left. Sigh. Light at the end of the tunnel!

Hope you’re enjoying your week!

monday mantra. bye bye 2009.

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This week I have to work & I’m definitely not in the holiday spirit anymore. I’m so blah!

I believe in snow days. Today should be one of them.

I’m addicted to planning. And yes, this still includes budgeting.

I wish for safe travels for BF as he comes up to celebrate the new year with me mid-week!

I’m jealous of people who have this week off from work.

Soundtrack/Mantra for the week: 2010 is going to be a great year 🙂

{Photo: this morning, on my way to work. this is apparently “light” snow. ha}

& my holiday weekend update:

guess who forgot their laptop in Ohio?? THIS GIRL!

So the holidays were amazing. SO much fun. When I get my laptop back, I’ll have some pictures to post. I slept in a LOT this weekend. Which was FANTASTIC.

Christmas Eve I got to BFs family party at 4pm. He was supposed to be there, but got stuck working late last minute. So I went without him! It was so much fun! Until I was two blue martinis deep before 6pm and an hour before BF was supposed to arrive. Needless to say, I got a little tipsy.

Which left me a little hungover for Christmas day.

Christmas day we spent some time with my family & BFs mom. We ate a lot of food and relaxed. Then headed back to BFs house & did a lot of snuggling. I love snuggling (true story).

Let’s just say that today is semi-depressing. It’s snowing, I’m alone again, and I have to work. Blah!

So how was your holiday weekend?