It’s great to hang with my mom. I got a good laugh when I realized that for the whole time I was away, she didn’t know how to work the phone I left her. She kept kvetching about how it would only call my friend Sue, or on rare occasions, Beth or Tammy, the fiancées of two of my brothers. As it happens, you need to dial the number THEN press the call button. If you press the call button first, you basically get either the last number called or my old speed dials and hilarity ensues.
My mom is going to kill me for telling this story, but I have to. Anyone that knows her is aware that she always goes out of the house looking like a million bucks. One day, we were putting some stuff in the storage area under the eaves. She had a bunch of bungee cords around her neck that she was using to bundle up some foam padding and comforters. She used them all except one. Later that day, she had to go to the mall to return a sweater. When she got back, she still had the bungee around her neck and I asked her if anyone inquired as to where she had gotten that chic little bungee cord she was wearing. She was mortified. I laughed my ass off.
I just started taking a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course online. It’s amazing how difficult it is to focus on the basic elements of your own language. Especially since I’ve pretty much taken them for granted since I learned to speak and write. Once I complete the course, I plan to take an additional course in teaching business English. Even though I don’t consider myself a business person, I am able to speak it with some degree of fluency as a result of selling college textbooks for five years. Granted, it’s sort of like Esperanto or pig latin, but I think I can get by. (thanks Prentice Hall…) As my goal is to continue traveling and volunteering, it would be good to subsidize my endeavors with a job teaching English.
Here are the burning questions of the moment…why am I so irritated with the problems of people around me? It’s entirely too pat to say, “Compared to what we were dealing with in Sri Lanka, these difficulties are all so inconsequential.” True or not, it sounds so arrogant and dismissive but I can’t help but feel that way. I never want to be the person that runs around saying, “You think you’ve got problems…let me tell you about blahblahblah…” I just have a real shortage of patience right now and a sincere need for fewer expectations from those people around me. If you’re unhappy with your life, then change it; you want a meaningful relationship with someone in the same geographic area? Find someone that’s already there. You want more money? Then get another job and/or a better one. Hold the door for someone you don’t know; be kind to small children and animals and wipe your feet. Feel free to give me your advice, just don’t get pissy if I don’t pay it any mind.
Dan & Jon with their new shirts...each of their dads has "jersey envy".
