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posted on April 28th, 2013 under Books, Disney, Random Musings

Seven years ago my husband Carey and I bought my childhood home. We peeled off all the hideous wallpaper and ugly paint, we painted all the rooms in Disney colors. We had the hardwood floors refinished and carpeted some of the rooms and the halls and stairs. We planted magnolia trees and rose bushes. We completely remodeled the kitchen with gorgeous custom cabinets and a lovely tile floor. We filled our seventeen floor to ceiling bookshelves with books, actually overfilled them. Our mortgage is halfway paid off in spite of the fact that our house is worth over $100,000 less than when we bought it.

And this week I learned that the only way I can keep a job with my company is to move to Indianapolis. And they want me to move in two to three months. If I don’t transfer I lose all the company matches to my 401(k) and my bonus for this year. And have to start the job search once again.

When I was younger, I probably would have given notice to my landlord and moved. I’ve done it many times, from Pennsylvania, to LA, back to Pennsylvania, to Boston, to Austin, and back to New Jersey. From my frequent trips to the company headquarters in Indianapolis I have grown to love Indiana, but do I want to start over again there? I have a husband, a special house, I can’t just move on a whim as I could do in the past.

Decisions aren’t as easy now that I’m older in spite of taking two classes in decision theory in business school. It’s no longer as simple as making a pro and con list and seeing which list is longer. It’s a decision that is tearing at my soul. The only outcome I want is for things to go on as they are and that is not one of the options.

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posted on March 30th, 2013 under Books, Etc..., Random Musings

I’ve been sick since the day after Christmas.  It started as a cold, then laryngitis, then bronchitis and pre-pneumonia.   Then a lingering cough with episodes of severe coughing attacks.  After two months I made an appointment with a pulmonologist.  Handing her my huge envelope of X-rays, I described my cough and how long it had lasted.  “It will last 100 days” she responded.  “You have pertussis, whooping cough. It’s also known as the one hundred day cough because it lasts that long.”

I thought that whooping cough was a disease of the past.  The Fossil sisters in Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild had it, but that book was written in the 1930s, and the sisters likely had not been vaccinated.  I had all my shots as an infant, but the doctor went on to explain that you need booster shots as an adult, and there is now a combined tetanus and pertussis vaccine to ensure that adults get the booster shot whenever they get a tetanus shot.

When the Fossil sisters had whooping cough, Streatfeild wrote, “Whooping cough is a miserable disease, but if you must have it, the worst place is the Cromwell Road; it is so far from the parks and anyplace where you can whoop nicely in private.”  She was wrong.  The worst place is working in an office cubicle, or coughing in meetings in conference rooms, or on buses.  And the Fossil sisters ended up going to a cottage in Kent where “directly they got there they began to whoop less,” and then “went back to London without a whoop in them.”   I had hopes that the doctor would recommend some similar treatment, perhaps a long convalescence by the sea, but instead I was instructed in the use of an inhaler and scheduled for a lung function test.

Today is day 95 so in five days I should be well, unless the 100 days is just a rounded estimate.

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Quote of the Moment:

“I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.”
by J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye