HaPPy MoTHers DaY

Well mine went very nice. I got eggs benedict for breakfast and a lovely card. Quite unexpected!!

Yesterday we accomplished an event that was actually very challenging. I can't say it was a pain in the ass, because really it all went according to plan and there were no fatalities....but it was challenging.

It was a boat regatta for a manufacturer that is very quirky to say the least. They are not a very outgoing bunch, and they are picky about certain things. Pair that up with a venue that is sometimes difficult to work with, and several changes to the schedule that people have come to get very acquainted with, and you have a big stress mountain.

Part of every event is the helicopter photos. Boats line up for their chance to get a professional photo taken of them racing down the lake in their boat. The photos are taken from the helicopter, and the starting point is a boat with me standing on it instructing them with a megaphone. (pictured below, I'm in the cowboy hat)


We usually do about 60 to 70 boats like that, then we rush to the next portion of the event. This is me, on the way to the next venue:


We had an article in a southern california newspaper last year, talking about how we conduct these regattas with a minimum of five different venues. Set up, tear down. Set up, tear down. A lot of times I'm jumping from boat to boat, then from boat to dock to get to where I'm needed. Run on the beach, pick up a few things, then dash off to the next thing on the schedule. Gee, I wonder how come my feet hurt....

One of the magazines that we do some work with is owned by a guy named Chris Davidson. He's a huge guy, big red-headed goof who gives the impression that he's not very saavy. I love and hate those kind of business people. They act like they don't know what they're doing and fool you into believing they're just a 'dude' that is lucky in life. But really, he has his money and his magazine because he knows just what the hell he's doing. He is not only a publisher. He's an Elvis Presley fanatic. He collected Elvis stuff for many many years, and eventually opened an Elvis museum in Vegas. When he tired of that, he sold a lot of the Elvis stuff to Graceland and made several million dollars from it. He didn't sell it all; he still has quite a collection, and it's stuff like jewelry, watches, pendants, clothing, etc. My boss has been to his office, and there are days where there'll be a big gawdy watch sitting on his desk--Chris says, "Try it on, that's an original Elvis piece."
Whoa. Touching something like that would be like touching an artifact from the pyramids in Egypt. But apparently Chris wears this stuff like it's nothing.
Yesterday Chris was on the boat with me, and I noticed a big "EP" pendant around his neck. I got to touch it and take a picture:



So that made my day, for the moment. As soon as I got off the boat I hit the ground running so I could get the banquet hall set up.

Peace....And....Love

I'm with someone who has mom issues. I know this now, after several years of living together.
I remember the first Mother's Day after we'd moved in together, I expected a nice breakfast waiting for me. Nope. Not even a card. Not even a cup of coffee. Not even a "Happy Mother's Day." Nobody in the house said a word. I got a bit irritated by it because really all I wanted was breakfast. Steve pretty much avoided me all day, working out in the garage and doing his own thing. I kept wondering what I did wrong--I went about things as usual and hoped he'd say something.
He ended up getting mad at me because I pushed the subject a little. He never explained himself; he just sent his daughter down to the Rip Off Store (the overpriced clothing store) to get me a gift certificate.
I don't think he spoke to me much the rest of the day.
And since I make a big deal out of Father's Day, no matter WHAT father or grandfather happens to be around, I didn't understand the anticlimatic reaction to Mother's Day that I got. I was extremely close to my father and as of this summer he will have been gone for 20 years. But I don't let that turn every Father's Day into a miserable reminder that he's gone. I just choose to celebrate the good Fathers who are still here.

But then I got to know Steve a little better, and realized that he still misses his mom terribly.
He really respected and looked up to his mom, and she died of cancer after a terrible fight with it in 1996. Honestly, after I heard Steve talk about his mom's last days--it left quite an impression on me. I could hear in his voice the sadness when he described all the different desperate efforts to keep her alive, once her cancer started to really take over. We have a lot of people come and go in our lives but I could see that her loss had still weighed very heavily on him.

So, when I was asked to help with the American Cancer Society, the first thought that came to my mind was Steve's mom. Of course I've lost many to cancer but none of those losses have affected me like hers did with him. I wanted to do something for him. And her.

I don't know when I finally realized that my wishes to have a nice Mother's Day breakfast cooked for me were probably never going to come true--but eventually I came to that conclusion. A card would be nice--but we'll see.

Oh Brandeeeeeee....

As much as I like to be in sandals or barefoot, I found out this weekend that neither are good for my feet. For years, I've had what I now know is called Plantar Fascitis. I don't think that's the right spelling but that's the idea. It's when you go to get up out of bed and your feet feel like pins and needles for about the first 5 minutes of the day.
I try to always wear sandals or shoes that have pretty good support, but Friday I wore some new ones that felt great at first. But then they felt like spikes strapped to my feet. Couldn't do anything about it because we were super busy with the boat regatta and I had no way of leaving until after 11pm. Soooooo.....
Here's me trying to look happy during the Hot Wheels racing:



The next morning I got up and got going at the crack of dawn, and as soon as I got down on the beach to get to work I noticed my feet felt like I was walking on those spikes again. I struggled thru the day, which included running the event at five different venues and coordinating the helicopter photos. I set up the banquet.
I limped around and took ungodly amounts of ibuprofen to help manage. Luckily, I had two staff members who helped with the banquet because I was pretty much done by then. When I changed my clothes into my banquet dress and high heels, suddenly my feet felt a lot better. Not perfect, but manageable. Turns out, it was because the shape of the shoes were stretching out the tendons that were screwed up.

The banquet and awards stuff lasted a few hours, then we broke down all the equipment and loaded up. Sometime after midnight I finally sat down and I couldn't get back up. The high heel remedy had run out.

The next day, the pain was about 3 times worse. I layed around as much as I could, but it's just not logically possible to have a family, and all that, and lay down all day when you've been gone for several days. I looked up the type of pain I was having--thanks Google-- and I found the explanation. The tendons in my arch are inflamed, have been for years, and now this really bad pain is likely an irritation from arthritis or a bone spur. Wearing shoes that aren't supportive and going barefoot are ways to make it worse. When I read that, I first thought of Brandy and her mission to remain barefoot when possible. I wanna be barefoot too!!!!!!

I will be seeing the foot doctor this week, but until then I have to rest and keep the bottoms of my feet on ice. The ice apparently helps with the inflammation. It does feel better when I ice them down, waaay better than what ibuprofen does.

At least I don't have broken feet like I initially thought. I began to dread getting older. "I'm getting so old I break bones by just walking too much!!"
We'll see if the genius doctor can make things better.

Feel Like I Do

Well, the boating event wasn't too fantastic, but I at least got to go on the radio. Awesome!! We had a radio station down there on the beach promoting the event, and the D.J. seems to like me. She grabbed me and said, "Hey, wanna talk on the air?" Of course I do. Duh.
The boat races that we were promoting were full of issues and problems, and I was glad to be the person in charge of the beach and not the frikkin race. Then the wind came up at about 25 mph, which then blew sand all over us and our sunburned skin. Ouch.
We had a gourment espresso vendor there, and that made things sooo much more tolerable.
Shay spent the weekend with his grandma and he enjoyed that. He loves his grandma.

I did get to take my friend out for an outing, to kinda get her mind off her mom dying. Steve wanted to fly his boss's really nice helicopter over the Poker Run portion of the boating event, so we took Bethany and her boyfriend with us. She was actually quite thrilled over that, because it was her first time in a helicopter. We got to watch the 175 mph boats from the air and that turned out to be a great place to see it. I went up to the Harley run by myself for a couple of hours, and got really tired of being groped and hearing the offers of things like, "Hey I'll show you mine if you show me yours."
Here's a drunk biker I encountered:


Here's just one small portion of the bikes parked up at the Casino:


And here's my one celebrity encounter from the motorcycle rally: Vinnie from Orange County Choppers.


So this week we have our first Boat Regatta of the season and of course my boss hasn't done anything to get ready for it. The bulk of the work will be done by me and I expect it will be mostly last minute. Oh well. My glamorous life.

I wanna go home

Oh wait, I AM HOME. Been running so much lately, I have a difficult time figuring out what's home and what's work.
I'm ready for the stupid boating thing, but at the same time I'm quite pissed because I really had no intention of being down there for it. My boss just told me today that I HAVE to be down there in order for him to screw around out on the lake during the event. Oh great. So what will I be doing? That's yet to be determined. Supposedly I'm some sort of "decision maker." The head cheese on the beach. Whatever.
The West Coast's version of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is going on nearby in Laughlin Nevada. That's about an hour from here, and the motorcycles have been spilling over into our town for the past week. Everywhere I go I hear the rumble. I have plans to go up there, likely Friday afternoon. I'm taking a girl with me who needs a day away from all the stress. Her mom committed suicide last week, and the funeral was today. Apparently her mom was what I call a "spare person," because she was abusive, mentally ill, and a danger to all her children she had from all the different boyfriends and husbands. So, I will be taking Bethany to the motorcycle rally to help start the forgetting process. Not the healing process, that would be for a more normal situation.

No Poop Here

No poop, like at Brandy's house. Just a day off, sort of. I did a little work and I have errands to run. But the rest of the day I'm going to do laundry and clean!

My phone keeps ringing, because apparently somewhere along the line my number became the information hotline for the big boating event that's this weekend. I find that kind of strange because I really don't have much to do with the thing. I'm getting some equipment lined up but other than that I have other projects that I'll be working on while the boats are racing.

Sooo many things to write about, with all this stuff going on. I'm acting as Campaign Manager for a gentleman who is running for Superior Court Justice, and things are heating up in that race. It's a funny thing to be involved in, because there's so many different rules for people running in a judicial race. Since I had the opportunity to talk on the radio during the Relay, I mentioned my friend Dana (the lawyer running for the judge position) and I asked people to vote for him.
WELL....that caused all kinds of shockwaves throughout the political community because everyone has taken a side in this race. One of the rules about these candidates is they cannot advertise on the radio without giving the other candidates equal time. That is, during certain HOURS. So when I mentioned Dana on the radio the other night, it was outside of the FCC Regulated hours for candidates. The other candidates and their supporters were PISSED. I found it funny that they just happened to be listening when I was on there at 8pm.
So the next day, Dana and his lovely wife Patti were at a function and one of his opponent's supporters brought up the radio thing. His opponent's supporter just happens to be the judge in my divorce from the evil brown menace. He seemed perterbed that we got the leg up on him and his candidate. I'm sure my plug on the radio won't earn Dana any votes, but it got a psychological advantage over his opponent. Yes Dana, you're welcome.

I had another Myspace miracle this past week. This girl, Stephanie Miller, was a good friend in 9th grade. She found me on Myspace and made contact. Very cool!
She has four kids. What's with you midwesterners and all the kids????

A Brand New Me

Just got done with the physical work of returning equipment that I borrowed for the Relay For Life. Generators, EZ Up Canopies, tables, trailers, vehicles, golf carts, the sound systems, and of course it all had to be cleaned before it was returned.
The track where we have the event has a dirt track with a grass infield. Uck.
We started setting up the event on Friday at 7:30am, and kicked off the walking and entertainment at 6pm. Since I was the only D.J., I got to be onstage with the sound equipment all night. ALL NIGHT. I got a one hour break at 3 am, since I could just put on a CD with mix music. But the rest of the time I had to be there because there were contests and activities that required someone to babysit the music and change it out often. I had two radio stations doing live broadcasts, so periodically they'd come over and interview me on the air. After each broadcast, my cell phone would ring. Someone calling to let me know they'd just heard me. Funny, but not very easy to handle because usually I had two or three people standing there waiting to ask me a question, prompt me to make an announcement, or to tell me something important. Busy, busy, busy. After setting up in the 95 degree heat all day, it was difficult to keep my cool once the event got really busy. I really got grumpy around midnight and had to take a handful of ibuprofen with some EXREMELY strong coffee. That helped a lot!!
The funniest stuff happened in the middle of the night, when we had disco hour and the Ms. Relay competition. Disco hour was quite popular, with people dancing everywhere. I had the costume stuff to complete the Village People onstage, so we recruited volunteers to do the dance. Then Ms. Relay, which was actually a drag queen competition, took the stage. Very funny! Shay participated, wearing my purple boa, Elton John sunglasses, and his shirt tied up like a tight little half shirt. He said into the microphone that his name was "Shayla." The Ms. Relay contestants circled the track asking for donations, bringing in $500. Wow!

When we did our closing ceremonies at 8am on Saturday, we counted about $50,000 in fundraising totals. That included the $400 brought in on the quilt raffle--thanks very much to Miss Brandy!! Everyone was in awe of the quilt, but I made sure that when a ticket was drawn it came from the Cancer Survivor registrants.
The t.v. and Wii went to some very active team members who had raised a lot of money for us, so I was grateful they won the prizes. Very cool.
All night long, I had our luminaries near the stage so I could keep an eye on them. Luminaries are little white paper bags decorated to honor people who have died of Cancer. Steve's mom was there with me all night, which felt kinda neat. My friend Regan was right next to her, as well as Steve's grandma. I hope I put on a good show for them.

The nicest compliment came from a gal who puts on the Relay For Life in a neighboring community of ours, Kingman. She was very impressed with how well organized and how well attended the event was. Glad to hear it.