rochelledenise.com

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If you work in a busy, sometimes noisy office like I do, you learn to value and cherish the quiet moments that occur. I take those precious times to write or work on prioritizing my work flow lists for any outstanding projects.

But sometimes, nothing beats pushing away from the desk and taking a walk around the block just to get your thoughts in order.

43Folders has a great article about a snippet of conversation between Barak Obama and David Cameron, the British MP.  Senator Obama talks about a piece of advice he once received from someone close to the White House about the importance of scheduling time to yourself to think.

There are days when you think, quite seriously, that life is literally a roller coaster.

Today is one of those days.

I was just getting back from lunch when my cell phone rang. It was the alarm company letting me know that someone was breaking into our house. Knowing that Lori is sleeping during the day and can’t hear a damn thing that goes on downstairs, I was completely freaked out by the fact that some stranger could be wandering around our house, or even go upstairs to her room and she wouldn’t know.

I told the person on the phone that there was someone in the house, and that they weren’t able to hear the alarm, so if there was police or security on the way, they needed to hurry.

When I got home, I noticed there were several unfamiliar cars outside our house. The lawn had been freshly mowed, and our neighbor’s garden gate was standing open. All strange things, except for the lawn. I thought about going next door to see if Josh could walk into the house with me, but decided I was being nuts and with phone in hand, went in.

The back door was standing open and the alarm was going off. I turned off the alarm, checked the door and called the company to say that the house was fine.

I could see the people whose car was in front of our house get back in and leave. They looked… well, they were looking around a lot … which made me freak out again, so I decided to over and talk to Josh. See if he’d seen anything.

Now Josh is a great guy. His wife is a nurse like Lori and they’ve been super awesome to us. They helped build our fence, we’ve had Josh over for dinner. He’s quirky and funny and just an all around helpful and sweet guy.

When I knocked on the front door, a strange man answered and I immediately started feeling strange. But I could see Josh’s wife and I could see a baby bassinet right behind him and he was whispering so I thought, ok. No problem, baby sleeping. Calm down ‘Chelle, seriously.

And then the bomb shell dropped.

“Josh died yesterday.”

…

His wife and his sweet 6 week old baby are suddenly alone in the world, and my freak out about having our house broken into is suddenly and horribly put into perspective.

Boss has told me to stay home, for which I am grateful, because I’m just …

anyway.

Gonna have a little quiet time I think. Then call everyone I know and tell them how much they mean to me.

Then drink a lot.

Monday for lunch, Kristen with a K and I took new hire Jason to lunch. We went to High Street Pub because one, it’s close and B, I like their veggie burgers.

So we sat down, waited an appropriate amount of time to get noticed by the waiter and ordered. “Veggie burger please.”

Our waiter sat down beside us, the expression he was sporting was looking bad for me and my tasty burger. “We don’t have veggie burgers. You see, they’re re-working their plant so there are no veggie burgers right now. And no Boca Burgers either. Everyone is buying those up so they’re off the shelves. So…”

“So no veggie burger.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

So I ended up with a hummus plate, but still. No veggie burgers? I was distraught!

Of course I called my mom the next day. “Mom, no veggie burgers!”

She told me that it happens, that the factory sets the same footprint, making x amount of one product before resetting for the next product, but if supplies happen to run out before it’s set back to that original product, people have to go without or learn to make them from scratch.

I told her I’d had a dream that I’d gone to the High Street Pub and showed the Chef there how to make the veggie burgers we made as kids. She laughed and said they’d probably taste a lot better. “You made a good burger,” she said.

I love my mom.

She’s the only person I know that laughs at the idea of me cooking in my sleep.

I think I’m going to be dusting off and buffing up some of my tutorial templates for different social media tools in the next weeks and posting them here for people I met up with at BlogHer08.

If there are any templates someone would like to see first, just ask. I’ll work on those before any others. Gosh, it’s been a full day and I’m still mostly glowing from the last day at the conference.

While for the most part, BlogHer rocked, there were some rather unpleasant surprises along the way. One, surprisingly, happened in the exhibitor hall.

Now, I’m usually behind the table at expo’s and conventions. It’s rare I get to play at being the attendee and being pampered too. One of the rules of a table I run is that everyone is a customer. Even the people working the convention. Never deny someone your time and information just because they don’t hit a demographic. Be gracious and smile. For bobsake smile.

So imagine my humiliation at finding a vendor (whom I won’t name) completely ignoring me because I wasn’t a mom.

Me: Hi, this looks interesting, can you tell  me about it?
Her: Sure! How old is your child?
Me: Oh, I don’t have any kids, but I have a niece who will be turning 5 next month. (says the auntie who spoils her only niece shamelessly)
Her, with a slight frown: Where do you blog then?
Me: Oh, I’m a corporate blogger. I work for PAS and run their Business in General blog.
Her, with raised eyebrow and slight disdain: Oh….

and then, gentle reader, she turned her head. No, turned her entire body away from me. Giving me the clear brush off.

I was stunned. Absolutely stunned. In my mind, at that second as I move away from her table, I hear my little internal voice say quite clearly – “Lady. My niece is turning five, and she has a very, VERY generous and loving Auntie.  You have a product of which there is a rather large sticker price. So, in the immortal words of Julia Roberts from the movie Pretty Woman, ‘Big mistake. Huge!’”

The story goes like this.

I went to BlogHer not expecting much and after two days I take away a new inspiration to begin blogging again.  It’s funny where you find passion, you know? You see it in little places, small spaces and then for a moment, it brushes against you and inspires you to find something to be passionate about.

BlogHer has done that with me.

I want to find my passion again. I want to find a joy in my voice.

Tomorrow I begin to Zen my online life. Simplify and focus.

Tomorrow is a new day.