Blog Posts - The Girl In The Band

Why Spotify is my favorite music streaming service

12/5/2022

I have a confession to make. I have a large cd collection and I spend a lot of time listening to my collection. To say I was late to the party of streaming music is an understatement. Yes, I used I Tunes back in the IPOD days. I even used Amazon streaming. But what I didn’t like was constantly having to buy music or download music.

The D-Man and I listened to Pandora a lot during the pandemic. I never really got into it, but he always talked about having to “train” it by giving thumbs up and skipping songs, which I thought sounded like too much work when I just wanted to listen to some music.

Enter Spotify, which I got on this year. I pay the ten dollars a month for the Premium plan which includes more than 82 million ad-free tracks, plus the ability to download your music directly to a device and get higher streaming quality. As a Premium user, you also can save tracks and podcasts for offline listening. You also get a month for free when you subscribe for the first time.

There is a free version, if you really don’t want to pay for your streaming, but there are other plans and some company partners that can give you the benefits of the premium without paying the full 10.00 per month.

What makes Spotify my favorite music streaming platform? I have yet to search for a song I want to hear or add and not found it.

It’s easy to make playlists, but there are a ton of great ones already created. The D-Man and I found one with live versions of some of our favorites that we had never heard before. There are playlists by types of music, moods and even weather (Chill Rainy Day Mix).

Best of all, there are new artists that you can discover and support. If you have ever said, “there is no good new music out there,” you have not been on Spotify!

Speaking of new music, I am getting ready to release a new song on December 16th and yes, it will be available on Spotify. See the link below for the new song and also for Ready To Love again, the first release. Enjoy!

Let's Make Something Happen
URI: spotify:track:1htM73ZLUOUr7br5xpsq6t
Link: https://open.spotify.com/track/1htM73ZLUOUr7br5xpsq6t
Ready To Love Again
URI: spotify:track:7od3Ub9UE1NTC8PChgyZhf
Link: https://open.spotify.com/track/7od3Ub9UE1NTC8PChgyZhf

A THANKSGIVING REMINDER

11/22/2022

A couple of weeks ago I was getting ready to watch a Thursday night football. I had finished my workout and was in the middle of taking a shower. Not a quick shower, but a full wash your hair shower. I had just rinsed the shampoo out of my hair and was going to turn off the shower to put in some leave in conditioner when the handle literally broke off in my hand. With the shower going full blast.

Need less to say, the football game suddenly took a backseat.

After drying off and throwing on a robe, I started dialing plumbers. It was close to 800 pm, so I wasn’t having much luck. Emergency plumbers coming out in the evening have gone the way of every other type of service since covid.

What to do? Turning off the water in the front of my house is not an easy task in the dark and even if I managed to get it off, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get it back on. Leaving the shower running all night was also not an option. I needed a handy man in close proximity to come to the rescue.

My neighbor popped into my head. Having lived next door to his family since he was a young boy, I had watched him grow up. I wasn’t sure exactly what he did for a living, but he drove a truck filled with tools and had a shed full of more tools in the backyard. Definitely the handy type.

I threw on some clothes, combed out my wet hair and ran next door. When his mother answered the door, I identified myself, since with no makeup on and my hair resembling a drowned rat, I wasn’t sure she was going to recognize me.

Hearing what was going on, she immediately called her handy son, who happened to be home in the back house. She said he would be over in a few minutes.

He arrived, accessed the situation (a broken stem), turned off the water, spent an hour trying to get the broken part out, went to Home Depot to get a new part and fixed the handle. (Turns out what he does for a living is plumbing.)

After three hours, with order restored, I asked what I owed him and he told me, “Nothing. You have always been a good neighbor to us, so this is just a good neighbor thing.”

I did manage to get him to at least take some money for the part he bought, and I threw in some Amazon gift certificates, but that was no where near what it would have cost me if I had been able to get someone out. Not to mention my water bill if the shower had been running for 24 hours.

The word hero gets thrown around a lot, but that night, he was my hero. No, he didn’t jump in front of a train or lift a car off me, but he saved me from a lot of stress and inconvenience. Not because he expected anything back, but because he thought it was the right thing to do.

I know being a good neighbor, or just opening a door for someone happens every day. More than all the bad things that people do to each other that gets all the press. It’s just hard to remember sometimes.

This Thanksgiving I have so much to be grateful for. The big things, like health and love and a roof over my head. But if we go around the table at dinner and say what we are thankful for, I will say, “My hero neighbor with plumbing skills.” Because he didn’t just fix the shower. He reminded me of all the good that people do that no one ever hears about.

Wishing you and yours a wonderful day of gratitude and love.

LEARNING NEW TRICKS

10/26/2022

I am going to admit something I am not very proud of. I hate learning new things. I am not talking about learning a new word of the day or being in a work meeting and hearing about some new product that we are going to be rolling out.

I mean having to go through the pain of trying to learn a new skill. I hate it. It is difficult and it sucks.
This isn’t something that happened as I got older. I never liked it. When I think about learning new things, I always equate it with lots of tears, lots of stress and a lot of frustration.

A couple of examples come to mind.

I got a great job offer several years ago using a software I was familiar with but didn’t know how to use. I was honest during the interview and said if they would provide training, I was sure I could pick it up. They offered me quite a bit more money than I was making and promised the training would happen. I jumped at the offer.

My first day, I learned the person who was supposed to train me, had literally run crying from the building the Friday before I started never to return. A definite red flag.

The training never happened, and I was left pretty much on my own with a big thick manual trying to figure out how to do my new job. There was no You Tube or websites to search for information. I was on my own.

I cried nightly. I finally managed to get a former co-worker to come to my office for a day to give me some training. I still remember the joy of getting stuff from the software to just print!

I eventually became not just a SME at that company but learning that software changed my entire career path and led me to where I am in my career today.

The second example was learning how to put together sequenced music for my band. Having little understanding of music theory and even less programming experience, I was alone, trying to figure out how to add backing tracks of keyboard and horn sounds so I could keep my four-piece group sounding big, but not having to spend big for extra members.

Again, no You Tube or website help. I worked from a huge manual. I spent many nights frustrated and in tears.

I remember one night staying up until after 200am trying to get some changes I made to a sequence to save. I woke up the next morning for work, tired and defeated. I was standing in the shower when I suddenly had an epiphany of how to fix the problem. The fix worked and I went on to do hundreds of different sequences over the years. Those sequences became the basis of many gigs and lots of good times making music.

Which brings me to my latest endeavor. Writing and releasing original music.

When Eric, my former bass player, first brough up the idea of doing some writing together, I was excited. I had dabbled in doing original music during my early years of singing but had never really given it the time and attention it needed to fully develop. Add to that, I had never gotten very proficient on any instrument, which limited how and what I could create.

Nowadays not playing an instrument doesn’t mean you can’t write songs. Band Lab and Garage Band are two software programs that I have been learning that let you put together songs and collaborate with other songwriters.

But working on the music is just one piece. Once you finish it, there is setting up a distributor, getting the music in the online stores and promoting it so people find it. Don’t forget artwork for the single and making sure it fits within a certain size.

All of which I am a total novice at. Proven by the first release Eric and I have done, a song that we reworked from something originally written years ago called “Ready To Love Again.”

Figuring out the artwork and getting everything set up with the distributor was harder than I thought it would be. Some buttons didn’t get clicked so instead of being out and ready to stream, we were delayed by over a week.

Instead of nothing to reference on this learning process, there is an overwhelming number of videos and information and how and why you do things, much of it conflicting information. Easier than no information, but harder to sort through.

So why is this old dog learning new tricks? I have been asking myself that for months. Why not just spend my evenings watching “Dateline” or my celebrity crush Wayne Brady on “Dancing With The Stars?”

I think I got the answer the other night at my Cycle class. I wasn’t in the best of moods and as we were finishing up the class, I was reflecting on how much I wanted to go home and lay on the couch.

Then as we were finishing up our cool down, it started. Our new song. My instructor had downloaded it and was using it for the final section of the cool down. There it was blaring on the cycle room stereo. A song I had written and sang. No, it wasn’t the same as hearing it on the radio. It wasn’t a Grammy nomination. But I felt an excited feeling I had never felt before and it ended my grumpy mood.

Yes, learning new things sucks. Yes, sometimes I just want to watch some “American Greed” while having a little wine, but that feeling when you conquer something you have never done before. That feeling when you build or create something for the first time. Well, it just keeps you coming back for more.

Check out my new endeavor by searching on Spotify, Amazon and I Tunes for:
Ready To Love Again
L A Lyon
If you like it, add it to your playlists!

WHY BURBANK LOWE'S IS NOW DEAD TO ME

9/22/2022

Many of you might already know that about six years ago I had an entire set of kitchen cabinets pull of the wall and come crashing to the floor, destroying everything, except for a few glasses and a cup. (See the April 2016 post in the archives for the details.) The cabinets had been bought and installed by Lowe’s.

They did replace the cabinets, even though I paid to have someone else install them. Unfortunately, they didn’t match the rest of the cabinets because the cabinet line I had originally purchased had been discontinued.

So who in their right mind would go back to Lowes to FINALLY get matching lower cabinets and a much needed new countertop?

Before you call the authorities to have me committed, let me give a bit of justification on why I made this decision. Having just lived through the major renovation of last year, I was hoping for an easy in easy out. Since they had the exact line in stock for the cabinets and the configuration wouldn’t be changing, I thought everything would go quickly and without drama.

Having just written that, maybe the authorities should be called!

What was the outcome? More stress and more money than I had planned on. A typical renovation? At least in my world. But this one wasn’t just mistakes, but complete disregard for my time and energy. As a result, Lowe’s Burbank store is now dead to me. I have vowed to never step inside their walls or purchase anything from them again.

Here's three reasons why:

NO ONE PICKS UP THE PHONE. EVER
Renovations run into snags. This is to be expected. More money is to be expected. Spending HOURS emailing and calling the store to try to resolve these issues was not expected. I had to pay for a design change, and it took me THREE hours and over 20 phone calls to reach someone to take my money! This was not a one-time thing. Even when someone picked up the phone, they had no idea where the kitchen design people were, and they were the only ones who could do a damn thing to resolve issues. I was told one time they were at lunch, only to find out later, one person was on vacation and the other person had Covid. If I hadn’t somehow tracked down some guy in appliances who managed to take a credit card payment over the phone, my project would have been delayed yet another week. Asking for a manager got me put on hold and hung up on ten different times.

A couple of times I was forced to drive the 25 minutes one way to the store just to get things moving along.

I still haven’t figured out how I even made the original appointment to start the project, but that was the first and last time I got someone to pick up a phone without numerous tries.

THEY LIE AND PLAY GAMES. AND NOT FUN GAMES.
Nothing came in the timeframe they described, and they made up scenarios that no one who was doing the work had ever heard of. Like to minimize the time the kitchen was totally not functional, there would be temporary plywood countertops put in place. Like a temporary sink could be put in place. (Half true, but it would have required me buying two sinks and having someone build something to drop in. All of which would have been additional money.)

The cabinets came in earlier than promised. But that meant nothing because I spent three weeks trying to get the cabinet guy to schedule the installation. He had specifically told me to call him DIRECTLY and not Lowe’s when the cabinets came in. I foolishly followed directions and then every time I called or texted him, he gave me some sob story about how far behind he was and how hard he was working to get me scheduled.

After three weeks of living with my dining room full of boxes and no date in sight, I finally called Lowe’s installation group. (Not to be confused with the Burbank store, because they actually pick up the phone.) They had no idea the cabinets had been delivered. They informed me the cabinet guy had seven days to get me a date once THEY were informed the cabinets had arrived. I have no doubt this was intentional on the part of the cabinet installer, telling me not to inform Lowe’s when my cabinets were delivered to buy him more time.

He texted me two days later late in the afternoon and said he could get his guys over tomorrow. My take on it was, he was hoping that such short notice would mean I would say no, and he could go back to Lowe’s and say he had offered me a date and I wasn’t available.

I called his bluff, said yes, and got the entire contents of the cabinets packed up in one night.

THEIR CONTRACTORS REQUIRE SUPERVISION. A LOT OF SUPERVISION
The guys who demoed the kitchen saved my back splash, which I wanted to keep. No easy job and I did give them high marks on that. They got the cabinets in and cleaned up after themselves. On the surface, they seemed good. Until it came time to reconnect my dishwasher and garbage disposal. But let me not get ahead of myself.

Once the cabinets were in, there was no use of the sink, dishwasher or garbage disposal until the countertops came in. I had ordered porcelain. In doing research, they are cheaper than quartz and very durable once you get them installed. I did see that during fabrication, they were easy to crack if you had installers who didn’t know how to work with the material. Something that would come back to haunt me later.

Even though the cabinets were in stock, just eight miles from my house, it took five weeks to get an install date. Five weeks of washing dishes in the bathroom sink and new doggie shower.
The morning of the install, I got a call from the countertop place. There was a major problem. Two different slabs had been cracked when they were cutting them. The suggestion was made that they didn’t think porcelain was going to work and I would have to change to quartz. I needed to call the store.

The women from the countertop place and I both worked in tandem trying to track down someone to pick up the phone from Lowe’s Burbank. It took almost a full morning. Once we finally talked to Lowe’s they informed me quartz was going to be somewhere around another three thousand dollars. They would get back to me.

Later that day, the countertop installers informed me it had been a “defective lot of porcelain” (code for we finally found someone who knows what how to do this) and they had located another slab. They would let me know when they had it cut and call me with a date.

Two more weeks went by, and they finally showed up. Since the old backsplash and the wall were uneven, I had paid for an extra transition piece of porcelain to try to solve the problem. The installers had no idea how to make it work and I ended up having to tell them to cut a piece so it would lay flat against the wall. They used white caulk to put it in place and a lot of it got smeared over my dark tile backsplash. I had to have them come back a week later to clean it all up.

I finally thought I was in the home stretch when the plumbers came. I would have my kitchen back!
But of course, there were problems. The garbage disposal was missing the piece to connect it to the sink, lost by the cabinet demolition crew. Because I wanted to get to the end of this nightmare and the garbage disposal was old, I had them put in a new one. NEVER have a plumber put in something that they supply. They charge you twice as much and I know that. Which tells you how at the end of my rope I was.

They tried the sink and the garbage disposal out and headed out the door. I threw some dirty dishes in the dishwasher to give it a spin. The water went in fine, but when it came out, it came rushing into the new cabinet under the sink. Not leaking. Rushing. So hard I heard it from the other room.
When they arrived back about twenty minutes later after my frantic call, the first thing the plumber said, “I was afraid that was going to happen.”

EXCUSE ME?

“Yeah, the hose that should have been there to connect it was missing, so I used a standard one. But I had my doubts it was going to work.”

Maybe something you could have mentioned to me? Or something you should have tested before you headed out to Friday night happy hour?

I had to contact a GE appliance center and dish out $40.00 to get a couple of hoses on special delivery. After nine weeks of not having a working kitchen, the project was finally finished.

Do I love it? Yes, having all the cabinets match and light countertops is great, but it took a couple of days to get over all the stress and work before I did.

Will I ever remodel anything again? I will. Just not for a while. And never with Lowe’s. Although with their total lack of customer service, I have my doubts they will still be in business when I finally go back down renovation road.

MY BEACH HAPPY PLACE

9/1/2022

Del Mar beach is one of my favorite beaches in the world and my absolute favorite beach in California. I always made it a point to make a trip down for a weekend at least once a year. It was also one of my parents’ favorite trips when they came out to visit. I have wonderful memories of happy times there.
We always stayed at a funky place called the Del Mar Beach Hotel. It was older and very family friendly and was literally the only hotel right on the beach.

I missed going down there during the pandemic and then the Del Mar Beach Hotel closed for renovations. I had a conversation with the investment company that was part of the renovation and they told me they were going to make some significant changes.

When I saw the hotel was finally opening in July, I jumped on the website and checked it out.

Of course, the first change was the price of a room. Although never cheap in the prime summer months, the rates had increased, but the pictures looked great. I found a Sunday and Monday night rate that was reasonable for the end of August. I even convinced the D-Man, who was not a fan of the old place, to come down with me.

The old Del Mar Beach Hotel was what I liked to call “bring your own.” Although there are a couple of great restaurants right next door, there was no food or drinks available at the hotel itself. Need a beach towel? Bring your own. Cooler or beach chairs? Bring your own. Boogie boards and beach toys? Bring your own.

There was a deck off the back that opened to beach, but you had a hill of sand to climb over to get to the water. The patio furniture was mostly old picnic tables. I don’t want to say the service was bad, but even that had kind of a “bring your own,” kind of feel.

Not really knowing what to expect, I packed the truck with what I would have usually brought and off we went late Sunday morning.

Check in time wasn’t until 400pm, but we took a chance and got there early. We immediately saw the difference walking in the lobby. Our room wasn’t ready, but complimentary wine and beer were. They checked the luggage for us and off we went to the newly done outdoor patio.

After taking a wonderful walk on the beach, we headed over to the Poseidon restaurant next door. Reservations are highly recommended, and it is pricey, but the food is amazing. The D-Man had the Chilean sea bass and he talked about it the whole rest of the trip. I had one of the best lobster tails I have ever had. Whatever you do, don’t skip the bread or the calamari!

The sunsets are also amazing. So much so, that everyone applauds when the sun finally goes down. The D-Man thought it set off the corny meter, but I find it charming.

We relaxed by one of the two new fire pits back at the hotel and I enjoyed a nice glass of wine.

The next morning, we had a great breakfast at the Americana in downtown Del Mar, about a six-block walk from the hotel. They have been there forever, and they are always good.

Back at the hotel, I hit the water. No need to take the beach chairs or towels I had packed, out of the truck. The days of “do it yourself” at the Del Mar Beach Hotel are gone. It has become, “you want it, we have it for you.” They even provide beach toys and boogie boards. Wavestorm (my board) and I had a wonderful afternoon. The weather was perfect, and the water was warm.

We had dinner that night at the Monarch in downtown Del Mar. I hadn’t eaten there before, but the food was good. They open up all the windows, so the place feels open and they have a great happy hour.

The only issue I could find with the new Del Mar Hotel was the rain shower in the bathroom. Having only a rain shower head and no alternative, meant a girl like me who doesn’t wash her hair every day was going to be shower challenged. I went to the lobby to ask if they had a shower cap. After a brief search, the two people working were thrilled to find out they did have shower caps and presented me with the first one anyone had asked for. Their enthusiasm for making their guests happy is not something I have seen since the pandemic.

Wonderful service, nice décor, but still a beachy not stuffy, vibe, makes the Del Mar Beach Hotel my happy place. More than worth the higher price and the great views haven’t changed a bit!

FRIDAY NIGHT FUN AT DANCE DTLA

8/24/2022

If you are looking for a fun Friday night outside with your family, a group of your friends or maybe just you and your significant other that isn’t going to bust your budget, I have a suggestion. Dance DTLA in downtown LA at the Music Center.

What is Dance DTLA? It is the highly popular free evening of dancing on Jerry Moss Plaza at The Music Center that takes place on Friday nights during the summer. Some of L.A’s top DJs and local bands play live while the crowd learns new moves in different dance styles— from Disco and Tango, to Bollywood and Salsa.

Last Friday, I skipped my usual evening of wine and Dateline and accepted an invite from the D-Man’s sister to join her and some friends for Disco night.

I made the short drive to downtown and easily found the Music Center parking lot, where parking was a reasonable $9.00 for the night. It was a perfect night for outdoor dancing! The Music Center Plaza was set up with tables, big screens, a stage, and a huge dance floor. There were places to buy food and drinks, but the better way to go is bring your own spread.

Since I was a rookie, I didn’t know what to expect. Luckily the D-Man’s sister and her friends were pros at this. They had saved two tables that they decorated with disco tablecloths. One of her very artistic friends made placemats with our names on it and provided everyone in our group with disco ball necklaces. They brought a huge spread of great food and drinks. (Yes, you can bring your own wine and alcohol).

The evening started with a disco dance lesson, with an enthusiastic instructor showing us some John Travolta Saturday Night Fever moves. As my ex-bandmates can testify, learning dance moves has never been my superpower, but this was a total no judgement zone! A great way to start the night and get everyone loose and ready to dance.

After the dance lesson, the DJ played lots of great songs. The dance floor was packed with all ages so even if you feel shy about getting out there, no one is too cool for the room and even dancing by yourself, you will feel totally welcome.

Unfortunately, there are only two more Friday nights left this summer. If you can’t make it out, put it on your “must do” list for next summer.

For details, check out their website at:
www.musiccenter.org/experience-learn/experience-learn/for-all-ages/dance

THE BEST NAP SPOT IN TOWN

8/2/2022

My house always had a second bedroom, but in all the years I lived there, it was never set up as a proper bedroom. I made attempts with a futon bed at one point, but it was not a cozy, comfortable place to sleep or hang. At one point, it had deteriorated to a kind of catch all room where mismatched furniture went to die. When I started working from home full time, it became a nice office space. Last year, when I was forced to change my original location of the laundry room/office to the opposite side of the house and have it connected to the second bedroom, I wanted to make it a place for guests to spend the night. Or, depending on the guests, somewhere I could sleep. It turned out even better than I hoped. But of course, took a lot longer than I expected.

I love the bed I ordered from Pottery Barn, but it literally took months to get it. “It’s on a boat. Somewhere,” was the answer I got when I called for updates, but it was worth the wait. It has great storage underneath. I got an economical Casper mattress, and it is really comfortable. Since the room is in the back of the house, it does not get much afternoon sunlight, which in addition to being a great guest bed, also makes it the perfect spot to grab an afternoon nap. Both the D-Man and Aja, the cat, have tried it out and declared it the best nap spot in town.

Since I had spent a ton of time redoing an art deco armoire that I picked up from Goodwill, I wanted the room to have an art deco feel. I found a great comforter and pillows on sale to fit the style.

The insert above the bed, despite looking like it has always been there wasn’t. It is the other side of an outdoor storage area that I had created with what was the water heater closet. (The new tankless water heater is now on the side of the house.) It’s a great spot for some books, a bed lamp and even a place to charge your phone.

The insert above the bed, despite looking like it has always been there wasn’t. It is the other side of an outdoor storage area that I had created with what was the water heater closet. (The new tankless water heater is now on the side of the house.) It’s a great spot for some books, a bed lamp and even a place to charge your phone.

The bedside table cost less than some wine at happy hour. I was scouring the Home Goods store in Pasadena for a small table and just as I was about to give up, I found it tucked in a corner on clearance. It’s small enough to not take up much space, but big enough to be the perfect bedside accessory.

Now all I need is some guests! Looking for takers if anyone is interested…..

ADVICE FOR MY SIXTEEN YEAR OLD SELF

7/21/2022

I just finished reading a book I really enjoyed called “This Time Tomorrow” by Emma Straub. I recommend it if you are looking for a good summertime read. No real spoiler here since the synopsis mentions the premise. A woman goes to sleep on her fortieth birthday. She wakes up the next morning and finds herself back in time on her sixteenth birthday.

That premise never gets old for me. Don’t we all wish we could back in time, even for a day, to change how our lives have turned out? Or go back in time to give our younger version some sound advice?

Which brings up that age old question “What would you tell your sixteen-year-old self?”

Here are three things I would say if I had the chance:

Stop trying to fix other people. I spent a lot of time in relationships with people who I thought I could fix. Friends, boyfriends, people who I thought I could help turn their lives around. It took many years and a lot of disappointments and tears before I realized that you cannot change anyone. They have to want to change themselves. If you really want to fix someone, go to the pound, and get a dog. A dog can be changed by a woman. A man cannot.

Stop constantly saying “it could be better.” There is nothing wrong with trying to do better in your career. Working on being a better person is admirable. But constantly looking at everything around you and saying, ‘it could be better,” sets up a lifelong habit of never being satisfied. Which leads to never really being happy. I still struggle with this one. Finding a balance between being ambitious and enjoying what you have is not an easy skill for me. If I had started working on this earlier in my life, I might be better at it.

You are smarter than everyone else in the room. It took a while for me to realize that just because you owned a business you weren’t necessarily smart. Or that because you happened to be my boss you knew the best way for me to do my job. I doubted my decisions, talents, and skills more times than I care to count. No telling where I would be today if I had realized sooner just how much I could do.

As far as I know, we can’t go back in time and fix our lives by changing one day. We can’t place a land line call to the house we lived in during our teenage years. But we can look at our past mistakes and without judgement, move forward to make what time we left the best time ever.

LESSONS FROM OPRAH

6/22/2022

I must start out by saying I am not a fan of Oprah Winfrey. I know a lot of people think she is AMAZING! But I find her ANNOYING!

What’s amazing is that I would spend over $20.00 on “Oprah’s The Life You Want Planner.” Even more amazing is, I feel like it was money well spent. So how did I end up adding to Oprah’s financial empire?
I had an epiphany shortly after the start of the year. I should be happier than I am.

I had gone through a stressful 2021. A new position, a crazy renovation, but the holidays had been wonderful and everything in the house was finally done. Yet, I wasn’t feeling blissful.

I certainly had enough things to be blissful about. Getting settled in a new position had been tough, but all in all, this was one of the best jobs I have had in my career. I even like my boss! I had a great life partner, some fantastic friends, two amazing pets and a lot of creative outlets. After imagining how great my home renovation would be for so many years, it lived up to everything I had dreamed of.

Yet, I still spent way too much time annoyed or stressed out, instead of enjoying everything I had. Why wasn’t I happier?

I was listening to Howard Stern one afternoon in my truck when his sidekick Robin Quivers, started talking about the Oprah journal. Howard Stern is no fan of Oprah and he also suffers from having a great life and not enjoying it. Robin was saying she was going to buy the Oprah journal for him because she thought it would help him. I was intrigued. Robin suggesting an Oprah journal to Howard? That was AMAZING!

I went on Amazon and bought it. It sat around for awhile and I finally cracked it open. I turned to the introduction page and after I read it, I realized that one page was worth all the money I paid for it.
So, what did I learn?

Journal Gratitude
I have been keeping a journal (back when I was a little girl, we called it a Diary), since I was nine years old. It started out being about things that happened that day, songs I listened to, tv shows I liked. As I got older, of course, there were entries about my love life, my friends and later, my bands and my jobs.
Oprah’s introduction basically stated the same thing, so I related immediately. But then she pointed out something I had never really thought about. She wasn’t writing in her journal about all the things she was grateful for. Or things that had brought her joy or happiness that day.

Neither was I. There were lengthy entries when my contractors were driving me crazy (complete with some language not appropriate for preschoolers) or I had a particularly frustrating day at work. But very little when I saw something come together on the house or really nailed a work presentation.
No surprise I wasn’t feeling happier! I wasn’t focusing on any happy things.

I now try to include something I am grateful for every night when I sit down to do a summary of my day. Some days, that haven’t been particularly good, it might just be that the weather was great. But it is something. If nothing else, I find I am going to sleep with a better attitude and letting some of the frustrations of the day go.

I Feel Good About My Job When…
The pages of the journal have Weekly Reflections which are questions you are supposed to ask yourself every week. Some of them set off my Corny Meter. Like “when was I true to myself?” I am not sure I even know what that means. But some are good. I even came up with one for myself.

I have been struggling with work this summer. In analyzing why, I discovered there is a part of me that hates working during the summer. I loved being off when I was kid, with no where to be and no alarm going off. Part of me longs for that time every year June thru September. Other things have contributed to my general feeling of work disdain, including a lot of turnover on my team.

After dragging through another week, I decided to try asking myself a Weekly Reflection type Oprah question. Mine was, “I feel good about my job when…”

I came up with several things. When I learn something new. When I rock a presentation. When I help a co-worker with something they are struggling with.

Once again, looking at the things that made me feel good and not continuing to focus on what was annoying, made the whole week go better. Sounds simple, right? It is simple, but, if I don’t make an effort to do it, it is easy to fall into my negative habits.

You Become What You Believe- Oprah Winfrey
In theory, I have always agreed with this quote. But did I follow it?

I have never described myself as a positive person. I consider myself a stubborn realist who accomplishes things because she just refuses to give up. But look at a situation in a positive light? Not so much. My question around why I wasn’t happier was becoming clearer and clearer.

Did this journal instantly change my life? Of course not. But it has helped me adjust my mindset while I work on finding my way down happiness road.

The Lemon Tree Hang Out

6/9/2022

The first major project I decided to undertake with some additional time on my hands, was building a very comfortable spot to read the Sunday paper outside. The deck, which is built in between my two new rooms and under my lemon tree, has a ton of shade. With the heat of summer coming up, I decided it was the perfect spot.

I enlisted the D-Man's help, as he tends to be able to see fault in some of my original construction ideas. I guess an engineering background does that for you! I had seen a pretty simple design on You Tube, where you cut pieces of wood and just stack them underneath some boards to get some height, add cushions and call it a day. The D-Man thought we needed to take it to another level, with brackets and more complicated cuts, but I really wanted to get it done this summer, not 2023! He did make an invaluable suggestion, which was attaching it to the deck to give it more stability. That idea turned out to be the game changer!

The only wood I purchased was three large boards for the base, which I stained and attached together using 2 X4 s underneath. The height was three sections of stacked leftover deck boards. The bottom ones are actually screwed into the deck itself, so this piece isn't moving when you sit down on it. I used boards that were leftover from another privacy screen I had built near the firepit to trim out the front and the sides.

I got the cushions online from Walmart. To keep them in place, I found two industrial pipe clothes racks on Amazon for around $25.00. (The photo below gives a better view from the side).

I finally tried it out last Sunday and it was perfect! Now, if I can find more time this summer to enjoy it.....