Wonderful memories....

Today, he would have been 32 years old. I wonder if he would have been married, with children. Perhaps not. Would he have been successful with the business he started, probably. What kind of car would he be driving? What electronic toys would he own? What kind of music would he be listening to?What kind of food would he prefer to eat? What places would he have visited? A lot of questions and really no answers.

For the last five years, that is what I struggled with. Questions and no answers. But with time, I have learned to have questions and I am beginning to learn that I will get no answers and now it is fine with me. I have accepted the fact that, this is how it will be.

I lived with the pain and now it is not as hard as before. Maybe the cliche time heals everything is true. I do not know about closure. Sometimes I think closure is forgetting and I do not want that.

Memories, that is what I have left and it is a good feeling to have. I remember a lot of them when he was younger and there are times when I can smile about them. There are memories when he was an adult and those I really treasure. I am thankful that there was this time in my life that I was trying to find out what to do and I spent a few months with him and my sister and we got some kind of bonding. And not knowing that would be the last I would spend time with him.

Now I can say I am at peace with what happened, though there are times I still do not understand why.But I am fine with it.

So Gino, Happy Birthday and I believe where ever you are, you are also at peace. You will always be in our hearts. 

Plant sculpture....

When you are looking at buildings, especially in the summer time I find I am always trying to see what kinds of plants they have in front of the building. Since the weather is an important factor that decides what one will put in to make the building look different from the rest of the others in the block.

There is a restaurant two blocks away from my building and they always have very nice plants and containers in the summer time. The city or the business association has the summer program of businesses ordering wave petunias in big planters that decorate the sidewalks and it makes the downtown area alive.

This summer our management staff decided to be a bit different and we had our landscape company do a plant sculpture. It is quite different, the only thing that I would have changed is the time they planted the flowers so it would have covered the whole sculpture.

 

This is what is in front of our office building, I call it the plant sculpture.



Plants.....

Over the long weekend a friend of mine called to ask if I wanted house plants. Her sister goes on vacation a lot since she has retired and did not want to worry about her plants so she is giving them away. So she picked me up that holiday Monday and we drove to get the plants.

The plants were big that I decided to only take two of them. They were both ficus plant and are tall and healthy. So we dragged them out and into her SUV. At leasetshe was prepared with blankets and rollers so it will be easy to transport it.

When we got to my building, I realized how tall the plants were and I was thinking it might really reach my ceiling. I sort of have an idea where to put it and at that time came to the realization that there is only one spot i can put it where it will look okay.



 

There that is how tall the plant is, there is only about 6 inches of clearance to the ceiling. The painting on the wall I bought in the Dominican Republic when my niece got married. The guy who helped me haggled for the good price passed away suddenly a month or so after we got back. I always think of him when I look at that painting.

 

 

That same weekend, C and I went to the farmers market and I bought this herb pot with basil, sage, chocolate mint and lavender hiding behind the sage. Since I did not plant anything this summer, this was a good buy for $10.00 as the pot alone I believe it is at least worth that.



Too hot.....

I am lucky to be working in an office where the air conditioning works all the time and if there is any problem, I know it would be solved that day or the day after. When the weather gets too hot, it would be nice to have AC working.

In my building, my home the AC has not been working for weeks!!! And we have no clue as to when it will be repaired as the management keeps telling us that the parts are being ordered. On any given work day, I am out of my suite by 7:00am and I am off to work but this last Friday, I had to wait for delivery of something I had bought so I had to wait for it. The darn suite was so hot as I am facing south that I could understand the wrath that some residents are heaping on to the manager. I must add that she just surrendered her keys the Friday before and left.

Residents are leaving notes by the elevator and anyplace that they could vent their frustration. The insulting part I think is that when you come into the lobby, the AC there is working and it is comfortably cool there so the office staff are not suffering. Another thing is that they, the management is doing some cosmetic work outside of the building which is nice but not at the expense of the residents who are suffering inside.

So I bought two electric fans but it is not the same. So last Thursday I almost wanted to sleep in the balcony and if I had one of those loungers, I would have done so. Yesterday, it was a relief that it rained but did not last long and yes I am contemplating going to the store and buying one of those loungers as they are now on sale as summer is almost over.

Okay, enough of my venting. I am sweating just doing this post.

Rain, and more rain

I was going to blog about something else when I saw the lightning and heard the thunder and went out to my balcony and then the heavy rains started.

I was ready to clean the balcony floor when hail started and hitting me and so I went inside. It was something else as it pelted on the balcony door and hit me before I finally went inside. We have had this kind of rain this summer and there was one time when I went out the balcony and cleaned and washed it with the rain water and I was soaked but I quite enjoyed the experience.

It reminded me of when we were kids and we used to go out and just get soaked by the rain and when it was hot it was kind of refreshing. It was hot today and I was busy cleaning up and rearranging stuff in my suite.

It is still raining and the thunder is loud and I don't know why but it seems like it is a lot louder when you are high up...23rd floor. One time it rained so hard I could not see the river and it looked like there was heavy fog. It is almost 11:00pm and it is still going on. It is hard to sleep with that noise but I guess it is good for the farmers or for the grass.

Time to get to bed, another work week is upon us. I wonder if I will hear from the company I had an interview last Friday.