Good Things and East Coast Guilt.

1. Honey called in the new cell phone company to transfer over our old phone numbers onto the new carrier. I only heard his side of the conversation, but it sounded like he was making fast friends with the customer service guy, chatting about everything from our dog to how many children we expected to show up on our doorstep for Halloween!

2. Discovering one of my weekly recipe e-mails from Texas Monthly was for a Cream Filled Pumpkin Pie Roll. Mmm. We're hosting Thanksgiving at our house this year. Honey hates pumpkin flavored deserts, but I think I might try to make this anyway, as he will not be the only person at the table. Just thinking about it makes me all fuzzy with anticipation!

3. We're heading back over the mountain this morning so Babydog can do her second leg of her JHD trial. The last time we went to a herding trial/exhibition, it was all corgis; this time she's the only corgi in a sea of border collies and a few shelties. It's really only intimidating for me. HOWEVER, though she's not as disciplined as a lot of the border collies - and most of them are rural dogs anyway, so they have more room for practice than just a living room - in her part of the trial, she was still a lot better than some of the other dogs. (My chest puffs.) What can I say? I guess I'm a competitive American mommy.
I visited SonnjeaB's Friday post, today. It's interesting, her conundrum about volunteering and being a better person is not only somewhat personally familiar - I too sometimes have trouble reconciling my desire to make the world a better place and not really wanting to work the volunteer places I've sold myself on - but its familiarity seems to translate to another area of my life: the professional one. I think I'm only just now finding the general direction I want my career to take, but boy do I feel like I've been slow to the game.

In this part of the country people are defined by and happily define themselves by their employment or their achievements. (I may have blogged on this before.) If you're 5 years old, it's assumed you're a good reader. If you're 18, it's assumed you're applying to top tier schools and the state university is only your "safety." If you're 60, it's assumed you've made it to the top of your game, you still work-out and you've got a healthy retirement waiting with which you can travel the world in your twilight years. If you're out of college, it's assumed you're on your career track and you know what that is. So here I am, 30, just now starting up what I want to be doing and I feel like I'm perceived as a dilly dallyer, when really all it was was schlepping to pay the bills and sampling till I found the dish I liked. (And some days I think I might still want to switch the dish.) It's hard to be human in a part of the country that assumes over-acheivement on everything and everyone. (see #3 above!)

Revision to #3: I'm happy that Babydog gets a thrill from herding. It makes me happy to see her happy, even when she's over-eager!