What just happened?

My apologies for the long blogging hiatus. It was completely unintentional, but a symptom of what happens when the.home.werker. is not, in fact, werking from home. The past month has flown by as I made too many trips to the land.of.cubicles to count, and journeyed to Minnesota to werk at a conference while sneaking in some quality time with family and friends. All in all, I think Lexi is glad to be back in her normal routine of laying around the house while I hop on conference calls, manage emails, and put in the 'thought hours' needed to keep my werk moving along. And in a way, I am too:).

However, sometimes time flies by so fast I find myself thinking,"What just happened?". How did I go an entire month with the same thing on my to-do list, or forget to send 5 wedding gifts and 2 baby gifts?

A little advice for you, send the gifts as you send your regrets that you cannot attend the wedding/baby shower...it will make your trips to Target to buy gift cards much less painful. The cashier I bought 7 giftcards from the other day looked at me with some judgey-you're-a-bad-friend-eyes as I sheepishly confessed to her I really needed to stop procrastinating! (Shoot, I just remembered I've still got my mom's birthday card waiting to be sent...and two more anniversary cards to get in the mail! Add it to the to-do's I guess!)

So, time rolls on, and my to-do list continues to evolve and refuse to get shorter no matter how much I check off. It's kind of like an experience I had while living in Italy one summer. I was eating dinner in a family's home and was served a huge bowl of spaghetti. And no matter how much spaghetti I managed to eat (I think I consumed at least a pound and a half of pasta), the amount of delicious homemade Italian pasta in my bowl seemed to stay the same. The food was delicious, a meal I will never forget...but I will also never forget the guilt I felt at not being able to make a dent in the incredible task before me no matter how hard I tried.

This never ending bowl of spaghetti served by my gracious hosts perhaps is a truthful metaphor for life sometimes. What a gift we have to werk, to relate to others, and share in the blessings laid before us. Perhaps instead of trying to eagerly consume the blessing before us and make it disappear, we ought to look up from our plate, and enjoy each bite a little more. Savor the company and the atmosphere around us. There is so much more to life and werk than accomplishment and being a member of the 'clean plate club'.

What about those of us, like my husband, who linger over their food for such an amount of time that the meal and conversation lasts for hours, and perhaps even the taste of the food is enriched by the company we share?

With that said:
Buon appetito (have a good meal): (boo-on app-èt-it-oh) before a dinner with friends say this to the whole company and expect the same answer in return. it is a blessing for the meal to come.