Got Kleenex?

Back in March I wrote about Petra, the rare Australian swan that fell in “love” with the perfect mate - a giant, swan-shaped paddleboat.  By all accounts, Petra and her hunk o’ plastic are happy.

Now comes a story about an equally-confused whale. CNN reported today that a baby humpback off the coast of Sydney has mistaken a 36-foot yacht for its mum and refuses to leave it.  Poor thing.

Watch the video…it’s amazing. I hope the wildlife rescue team can do something to help, or finds a passing pod quickly. The strange thing is, I dreamt about whales last night. (Save the Freudian references.)

 

 

That’s Miss Vesuvius To You

Anyone who knows me well knows that the Badass persona I sometimes put out there is a sham.  Call it acting…call it wishful thinking. I’m just not as tough as I’d have others believe. 

I hate confrontation. But I hate being taken advantage of even more. So when I get pushed to the limits - I mean really pushed - I erupt like Mt. Vesuvius.  It’s best to find a hazmat suit.

The past few weeks have been particularly trainwreck-ish.  First came the $700 gas bill from NStar, on top of my already mouting bills from my move to Maine. Then came the unexpected news that my pathological ex-husband had procreated (followed by endless wailing by yours truly).  Which led to an argument with an unsympathetic friend.  

Then my father was taken by ambulance to the emergency room twice in 48 hours.  It seems he thought he was having a heart attack. Which sent my mother back on high blood pressure medication. Which added to the stress of my move. Which was the reason I was in Maine this weekend, to let the cable guy into the new apartment. Which didn’t work out, because apparently the electrician was such a Houdini with the wiring system that the nice cable guy couldn’t get me set up. Which means I have no high speed Internet connection in the new apartment, which means I can’t work from home until the problem is resolved.  Which means I’m getting ready to pull my hair out. And did I mention the big stain on the bathroom ceiling that wasn’t there two weeks ago? It seems the floor above my beautiful new apartment has an unfortunate leak.

Normally, I’d say I handle stress like a champ.  When trouble hits, or when others freak out, I get calm.  But after recent events, I have to admit. I’ve been one grumpy bitch.

This has had its rewards though. For example, I need a Blackberry for work. And last month I tried to purchase one, to no avail. I wasn’t eligible for a phone upgrade until 2009, so buying a phone would have been expensive and out of the question. But on Saturday, after my meeting with the cable guy, I drove straight to the phone store, walked in, and over to the Blackberry on display.

A nice boy-faced salesman came over and said, “Can I help you?”

“Yes, ” I said. “I would like that phone (me pointing at phone). But I don’t want to pay the price you’d like me to pay.  So I tell you what. If you wave my service upgrade and bring down the price, I’ll buy the phone from you today.”

He looked at me, paused, and said, “Uhhh…ok.”

So between the deal I got on the phone and the money my company is chipping in, I got a free Blackberry this weekend.  So who you callin’ a bitch?

 

I Have Nothing to Say Today

Except I like this song by Ingrid Michaelson. 

 

And You Are…?

I recently met with my financial advisor, who views himself as more of a “life coach” than anything else.  He tries to get a handle on his clients’ habits, extracurricular activities, relationship status, etc. to give him a rounded view of their personality and spending habits. I like him. He’s like Yoda, only taller.

Yoda gave me a number of homework assignments, one of which was to take the Myers-Briggs test.  So I did, and and guess what? I’m an oddball unique.

I’ve always known that I’m an introvert, but more specifically I’m an INFJ (Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, Judging) - the rarest of the 16 personality types, representing 1% of the population.  I read the profile a bunch of times and there’s no doubt about it - it’s spot on.  

I like being rare.  Who the hell wants to be like everybody else?  INFJs include Aristophanes, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Goethe. That’s good company.  Oh, and Tom Selleck.  (Admit it… “Magnum P.I.” was hot, even with the 80’s moustache and short shorts.)

Have you taken the Myers-Briggs? What are your letters?

 

If You Have Anger Management Issues

Then this is not the video for you.  A slow, searing, stripped down version of “Rootless Tree”.  I love it, though Damien looks like he could use a Double Whopper with cheese.  (Why so skinny?)

 

If You’re in a Giving Mood

This week is Make Someone Smile Week, an eight-year-old program developed by Teleflora.

 

It’s Really Happening

Wow, I’m really leaving Boston in a few weeks.  It hit home today when my landlord posted my apartment on Craigslist.  I guess he got so many responses so quickly that he decided to hold an impromptu open house, rather than schedule individual appointments. 

So a slew of people came by tonight, and each put in an renter’s application.  One woman brought a giant camera and took photographs of my place, CSI-style.  Flashbulbs everywhere.  Another offered to write a big fat check on the spot.  I know I live in a prime location, but still. I thought I was about to witness an arm wrestling competition.

I will say, the open house was kind of fun. Everyone I met was really interesting, or had a story to tell, and some even hung out to chat after looking around. One was a musician. Another had a fiance who’s in Africa doing AIDS research.  Cool stuff. 

But the BEST renter wannabe was a girl who couldn’t have been more than 24 or 25 years old. She asked me how long I’ve lived in the apartment. About three years, I said. To which she responded, “No way! You’re too young to have lived anywhere for three years.”

I LOVE her.

 

I’m Still on Vacation and You’re Not

Wow. Who knew that doing so little could be so much fun. In my next life, I plan to become a professional Lazy Ass, supported by a legion of sugar daddies.

 

Vacation

Seven more days in Maine.  

 

Shhh, I See Dead People

So the strangest thing happened this week. I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning as I get ready for the “big move” to Maine (that’s not the strange part)…trying to figure out what I can donate to a yard sale or get rid of completely.

While I was at my parent’s house last weekend, I went through one of my dresser drawers and came across a letter I’d forgotten about, written by my great-great grandfather, Marcelin, to one of his daughters. He fought with the Pennsylvania Calvary during the Civil War and instructed her to hang on to his uniform and the confederate paper money he included with the letter, saying that they might be worth something one day.  (How very Antiques Road Show of him, no?) 

So I put the letter back where I found it and returned to Boston. The next day, for whatever reason, I found myself perusing some geneology chat rooms. While my own surname is quite common, once you go back a generation or two, you run into names that are pretty unusual.  So once in a while, I just Google them to see who might be roaming the world with similar DNA.

Let me take a step back. I come from a long line of WASPs, and for whatever reason, WASPs are annoyingly excellent at documentation. Oftentimes they know exactly what city or town in England they stemmed from. For close to each line, we have family trees stretching back to the 1600’s.  And more family trees, and more family trees. A few of my cousins belong to the DAR. Not really my thing, truth be told…all those tea parties.  Zzz.

Anyway, I will say there’s a fun & wacky melting pot of characters in my family - 1 Mayflower passenger, 2 Salem witches, Paul Revere, an early Boston architect, members of Parliament, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, a Royal Navy commander, a Mohawk Indian, the founder of Maxwell House coffee (sorry dude, I prefer Starbucks), the president of Dartmouth College, a baron, a guy who was named Le Baron (but wasn’t one), a sugar plantation owner, a composer, and a partidge and a pear tree. I often wonder what the heck they’d have to talk about if they were all stuck in a room together.  You know…if they weren’t dead.

But there’s one branch of my father’s family that is a bit of a mystery. Probably because they were French, and therefore discussed only on occasion. The Brits and the Frenchies aren’t eachother’s biggest fans, as you may know. After the 1800’s, the Frenchie family records just stop.

So here I am, reading through some posts in some random geneology chat room that Ive nver been n before, when a note catches my eye. It’s from a woman on Long Island who came across a photo album in the house of a friend - a collector - after he passed away recently.  The people in the photos have the same last name as the Frenchie side of my family, and the album is dated “Philadelphia, 1902″.  I know my father’s family was an old Phildelphia family that summered in Maine. That’s how I came to be in Maine actually - my grandfather inherited the house.

On a hunch, I wrote to this woman, introducing myself and asking if there were any first names associated with the photographs. Wouldn’t you know it - it turns out that the couple in the photographs - formal portraits taken in the early 1800’s - are my great-great-great grandparents. The parents of Marcelin, who wrote the letter mentioned above. 

Not only that, but the album contains an informal portrait of my great-great-great grandmother, Sarah, taken at our home in Maine on her 90th birthday in 1902.  I never knew such a photo existed. 

What are the odds? So while I’m not a big believer in God or fate or cherub-faced angels sitting on poofy white clouds that look like something out of a Charmin commercial, I sometimes wonder if we all have passed family members up there, pulling a few strings and guiding us along a certain path that may seem entirely random at first, but makes sense in the end.

In any case, this woman in NY is mailing me the album tomorrow.  Very cool.