Rod Kratochwill's Weblog

Friday, December 30, 2005

Here's something I like about sending out my Christmas cards each year. For just the price of a stamp the post office will tell you that it knows what my friend's new address is and prints a nice sticker on the envelope of my Christmas cards and then sends them back to me so I can update my address book. Cool! I also discovered that if you cross out the incorrect address and write in the new one from the address that's on the envelope and after putting on a fresh stamp put it in the mailbox the letter carrier will gleefully take the letter and then send it back to you again several days later :) At least they didn't cancel the stamps the second time they returned it so I can now address a fresh envelope and cut out the uncancelled stamp and paste it on a minty fresh newly addressed envelope to go out for the third try. So if you didn't get a Christmas Card from me yet don't give up, I'm still trying.  And just in case here is what it looks like, a photo of the girls and I standing on the Charles Bridge in Prague from our trip last Christmas. 5:11:39 PM

Halley's doing weather reports so I thought I'd mention that it is absolutely georgeous here today. I was out at lunch and found this little Russian market where I picked up a bottle of Obolon Premium beer from the Ukraine and a Kiper Bock from Poland. And what would some nice beer be without some Mikado Cornichons? Maybe a couple of slices of brown bread that I picked up at the Czech deli the other day. Yum! Anyway enough food back to the weather. It's in the high 60's and low 70's here with clear skies and bright sunshine. Oh, and of course it wouldn't be Florida if there wasn't A TROPICAL STORM OUT IN THE ATLANTIC!!!! WTF!!! I guess mother nature wanted to sneak one last named storm in before the year was out. What a sense of humor she has. So on this most beautiful Winter's day in the sun I'll raise a toast to Tropical Storm Zeta (Jones?) with a nice gherkin and a cold Obolon! Here's to the end of named storms in the year 2005! 5:05:01 PM

Halley is wondering what the bloggers are up to today, note: I'm not one of those famous bloggers she lists :). I'm at work, wishing I was home with the girls. I'm also looking up a recipe for a friend that putting together her menu for the New Year's Eve party. I like making a traditional southern dish, as in South America. It's a Feijoada, or Brazilian Black Bean Stew. It's a nice hearty warm dish that is somewhere between a stew and a soup when I make it. I use this  recipe as my starting point and more easyify it by substituting canned beans and usually use different sausages and meats each time I make it depending on what looks good at the market. Here's another recipe that includes a yummy looking photo. 10:31:44 AM

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Over at Heathervescent she is asking "If money was not an issue, what kind of life would you lead?" I have been thinking about this for the past few years. In my case I've been trying to figure out how much money it would take for money not to be an issue. That is I've been hoping to change my life so that I could spend as much time as possible with my girls. I guess in the best case scenario I would still work, but for the school system so I would have the same schedule as my kids. I would be on vacation when they are so they would be sitting at home during the winter break while I'm here at work wishing I was at home, or even better that the girls and I were off on vacation somewhere. Maybe visiting relatives, or seeing the country. And then there is trying to make sure that they will have all the opportunities for college that they have worked so hard at in elementary and middle school. And having a comfortable home to raise the girls in. We already have that I think, it's just a matter of maintaining it at this point. So I would lead the same kind of life at least in the short term but with more time for me to spend with the girls. Once they are off to college ... not real sure what will happen t 1:49:57 PM

Thursday, December 22, 2005

One of my daily aggregator flows is BigHappyFunHouse. I think Ron lives in the Chicago area where I happened to grow up. He collects old photos and posts them to his web site. There are some great photos over there. Every now and then I'll see something in those old photos that looks so familiar. A piece of furniture, or a lamp, or sometimes a face that somehow looks familiar. I'm certain it's only a matter of time before I spot a photo of myself taken by someone at some point in my past. 1:49:49 PM

oh, and by the way, what the heck was Halley doing blogging at 9 pm last night? Must have been some sort of problem with her blogging software where all her early morning posts got stuck and came out at night instead :) 9:06:46 AM

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

I'm watching City of Angels, again. I don't understand why but I am drawn to this movie. I like the Meg Ryan character and wish I had the magic she sees in Seth Plate, Nicolas Cage's character. It's such an interesting love story a doctor and an angel. An angel who is so inept at the ways of love, but is completely comfortable with children. The man with the child in his eyes. Or, maybe it's just the music. I remember watching it for the first time with Cindy. It was one of those movies that we both seemed to get totally involved in. We stop talking and absorb the images, dialog, and story. An Affair to Remember, and Sleepless in Seattle were other examples of that type of movie. We would be sitting on the couch channel surfing and would somehow become instantly involved in those movies. And at the end we would pass the tissues. Tonight I'm watching as Nathan Messenger an angel who has fallen to earth to become human is describing the process to Seth. During a commercial break I check my aggregator and notice that Halley points to Maryam talking about falling. Seth falls ... and wakes in pain, and with an overwhelming flood of emotions and feelings. Maybe it's just the music. As Cindy and I watched City of Angels that first time I distinctly remember the point near the end when I realized what was going to happen, how the movie was going to end. How Seth was going to lose Maggie. I cursed the maker of the movie, as Maggie is riding euphoric, through the woods on her bicycle, I cursed. How could they let her fall. How could they let her die. How could they let me fall. How could they let her die! Seth gets up, again. Even though he has lost the only thing he has loved, he will go on and live. We fall. We get back up, and as with Maryam we sometimes have a helping hand. Someone who reaches out and gives us the help that we need to get back up and live again. Seth has such a short time with Maggie. She tells him they have their whole lives together. "I would rather have had, one breath of her hair, one kiss of her mouth, one touch of her hand, than an eternity without it. One." But somehow he is able to get up again and revel in the beauty of the world. "When they ask what I liked the best, I'll tell them it was you." 9:50:35 PM

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Nina talks about the "unbearable lightness of parenting" Everyday is like this for me with my girls. And I don't ever need anyone to remind me. It is impossibly heavy on your heart and soul trying to make every day be Christmas, to correct all the mistakes, to try and stop thinking about the fact that we will never again be the family we once were. No matter how hard I try to "take back", and "want the chance to change". I can't even stop them and make them sit in my lap so I can hold them anymore. They keep growing up and slowly becoming young adults. They are maturing and seemingly need me less and less every day, even as I feel I need them more and more. The trick is to somehow ignore this heaviness of heart and try to enjoy the life we have with them while we can. 9:17:16 AM

Saturday, December 3, 2005

Christmas quilt. 9:43:20 PM

Christmas Decorations Chesley and I are getting our all the Christmas decorations. Christmas music is playing on the Stereo. Some of the songs have a sense of melancholy to them. As we go through the decorations we each silently play back old memories of Christmas past. Remembering doing these things with mom. Remembering the look of delight, how she would revel the process of taking each delicate decoration out of the box, or unwrap the years gone by piece of newspaper from a piece of glass and rush to place it in it's spot on the mantle, or on the china cabinet, or hang on the wall. And then stop to look at the date on the newspaper and remember... So we carefully unwrap the delicate little Christmas memories, and look at the dates on the newspapers and remember what it was like back then, back when... And we stop to go do something else for a minute or two. And wait for a lighter tune to play on the stereo, for our eyes to dry, for the memory to fade... And then we come back and smile, and find a favorite decoration, and look for a new place for it to sit. Everything seems to have a new place these days. Things just don' t seem to fit anymore. 5:23:23 PM