the angel closes her eyes

my "Simpsonize Me" pic from a few years ago

If you happen to be a JSer, then you know that we lost one of our own this past week, likeisaid, or Betty. I was completely gobsmacked when I read that Betty had passed on in her sleep - it seems as though she'd just lost her beloved husband, Paul. My heart goes out to her two sisters, Sally & Paula. Some of my favourite posts were from these southern sisters! Old black & whites from the 60's and 70's (loved those little shift dresses!) blurry coloured pics from the 80's, posing with their men and their cars.

Paula and Sal - if you're reading this, I am so, so sorry.

As always, work is really busy and we spend our time trying to get more things done than we did the day before. I'm used to this kind of pace and it doesn't stress me out very much. I do get stressed by my boss, though.

He's calming down a little (dare I say, he's even getting a little beat down by the amount of work?) and he's lightening up a little. Yesterday when he called me about another conference call I was late to he actually laughed when I said "holy crap, another one?"

At home, the big project involves a visit from Bill's parents and his younger brother, Craig, In April. They'll be spending the odd night at our house here in the city and that means painting the downstairs, converting the downstairs living room to a studio apartment for Em, getting Jamie's room ready (she's moving back after the last semester ends and staying until July or August) buying a new bed for Em's old room and getting the carpets cleaned. So far, we have the new throw rugs, lol.

I'll be waking Bill from his nap in a few moments. What is everyone else doing?

a conversation about journalspace

Em came home from school yesterday, exclaiming "Oh my God! I was filling out forms today and had to give my social teacher your email."

I was sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop open, Jamie was making something to drink by the fridge, having come over to finish packing.

"When she looked at it, she said 'Becomingkate?' and I said 'yeah' and she said 'oh my God I used to follow her on journalspace!'"

I looked up over my reading glasses. "Journalspace?! What did you say?" I asked.

"Nothing! I just looked at her like this. Oookayyy."

"I didn't know there was anyone from here that followed me at JS," I said, surprised.

Jamie walked over. "Me either!! Small world, hey?"

Indeed! I have so many happy memories of journalspace. There were so many people whose lives I really cared about, and so many people that followed my posts from the time I'd first met Bill. Some of the very first I remember meeting was Silent Whisper, Wizardress, Tammy and Kittywoman.

Remember Smotlock? He was definitely one of a kind, love him or hate him.

I really enjoyed photography blogs, or blogs with the writer pouring out their hearts, or sharing their stories of every day life with family and friends. It's true that at the end of the day, I would much rather leave a nice, encouraging comment than a contrary one, but most of the time my comments were like a friendly wave as I weaved through link after link of friends posts.

Maybe now that I have weekends off, I can keep up with the awesome friends I have here and at various other blogsites.

Have a good weekend.

becoming kate

photo by Dan Gheban

One thing that I love about having a blog, is being able to write whatever I want, whenever I want. I am just so glad that I followed that link! I'd been posting on the widow's message board but was getting tired of it. Not so much the newbies, who went there to find validation and support, but the more seasoned widows that fancied themselves overly important and started flame wars to prove it.

Anyway, many of you will remember Kamai40 from JS, who was widowed the year after I was. She posted a link on her sig line at widownet, and I followed it. The idea of an online journal was especially nice, since I had fallen for Bill and needed a place to document all the drama of my LDR. I liked it so much, I kept it when he finally moved here, when we got Em, when we got married, and all through the trials and tribulations of selling life and health insurance.

But I wasn't always becomingkate. When I was first widowed, my username was kate2108. I had chosen "Kate" because I felt that the person I was before didn't exist anymore, now that Dale was dead. You know how after being coupled for awhile, you're never just "Kathy" anymore, but "Dale and Kathy"?

Going back to just Kathy was one of the hardest things I'd ever done, and while I had a full time job and a teenager and an apartment, I wasn't truly living in real time. In the six, seven, eight hours I spent online after coming home from work, I changed myself to Kate. I was kate2108 because my wedding anniversary to Dale was August 21, 1993.

Later, when the first WN crashed, I changed my username to becomingkate. That was halfway through 2003, and my transformation was just beginning. I didn't want to be the resentful bitch I was when Dale was drinking, and I didn't want to be the martyr I'd been when he was dying. I wanted to be known as someone in transition - someone who was recovering, but good natured and funny. Tough, but sexy, and loyal. Someone trying to be a better person, a better Mother.

It was sometime in 2005 that I felt I'd finally become the person I wanted to be. Bill had been calling me Kate since we'd met, Em called me Kate instead of "Mom". Just recently, she was being a smart aleck and said "Okie-dokie, KATHY?" and I replied, "Hey! Show some respect."

"Whattya mean?" she asked.

"I'm your Mother, you can't call me Kathy. Kate means MOM to you, Missy."

And I meant it.

help?

Empress Hotel, Victoria, BC

I'm getting quite comfortable here at Blogspot. I don't really miss journalspace as much as I used to, thanks mostly to the readers that have made a real effort to visit and leave a comment, so thank you very much!

I do miss the homepage, like most of you, but I've noticed that JSers are finding ways to congregate - a recent example is Simon's JS Community blog. I've got the link along the right hand side, so go ahead and visit.

That brings me to one of the only complaints I have about the place. Whenever I try to use my old cheatsheet for linking pages, it doesn't work and I have to try and edit it. I hate the way it looks without adding the link text:

http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_links.asp%3E

So is there an easier way to add the link text without the editor automatically adding double tags? I've tried fooling around with it before, but to be honest, I'm so preocccupied with other things that I'm sure I couldn't concentrate on learning it anyway and just want someone to tell me, lol.

The other issue - the post editor doesn't always put spaces between my paragraphs.

I'm off to work! Hope you all have a good Tuesday.

**edit**

Here's one of Simon's comments:
P.S. If you want to write it in HTML manually, just make sure you copy and paste what you’ve done into the ‘Edit HTML’ window, not the standard ‘Compose’ one.

Exactly! I was using the regular "Compose" one and it wasn't working well for me. I did today's post in the "Edit HTML" and it worked perfectly! Thanks Simon.

another close call

Yesterday I had to meet with a client to go over an offer extended to her husband, for life insurance coverage. I was quite nervous about it because the offer was taking the premium from $60/month to $345!

Because he was insuring himself for $2,000,000, the company required a para-medical, which means a nurse comes by your home to take your blood pressure, a blood sample, and a urine sample. With these, the lab found cotinine, a by product of nicotine usage, as well as some kind of medical issue. Between those, they sent the premium through the roof!

I thought I might be losing his sale, and usually when that happens I lose the coverage for his wife as well. Thank goodness we were able to adjust a few things and get the premium down to a manageable amount - I may have had to quit this gig if we hadn't.

Since I have only been selling insurance for eighteen months, the chargebacks would have put me out of business!

Today I'm working at the clothing store job, so I should sleep well tonight. The store itself is 8000 sq feet and with only two people on the floor, they keep you busy every minute of the day. I'm sure that I will think of you all for most of the day. To be honest, I've been obsessed with finding as many journalspace refugees as I can, and especially in the last few days, with so many signing up here at Blogspot.

Have a good Tuesday!

p.s. The photo is by Ron Asp. It's a snowy owl, near Wetaskiwin, Alberta. For some reason, I couldn't get a space between the photo credit and the start of my entry. It hasn't been a problem since I switched to this layout, but now it's doing it again. I guess I need to do a bit more Blogspot reading.