King Olaf

I decided to give myself a little gift this morning and not set the alarm. I am not prone to sleeping late so I knew it would be well before 8 that I would awaken. It was 7ish. It feels luxurious and decadent to do this on a work day and I may be behind the power curve by I feel on track with my curves. The reason?....many things…I was chasing ghosts yesterday as usual on a weekend when I came across a line of kin that were granted holdings by Henry II this peaked my curiosity and so for a bit of fun I followed the line of descendants. What a wonderful surprise! I am related to Eleanor of Aquitaine, William the Conqueror, The Earls of Hertford, The Dukes of Normandy thanks to the first Duke marrying his mistress, all of the Kings of Norway and of Sweden. Mix in some royalty via the marrying of daughters of Denmark. We even reigned over all of Wales courtesy of taking the castle at Fontenay. I have not even scratched the surface of the wives and their lineage. This all through one little woman named Tabitha to her father and beyond. Tabitha is my 9^th great Grandmother. I told my daughter with a history like that she could marry Prince Henry. www.HighlandTitles.com Lady Tamara……of course I am. My great Grandfather King Olaf took a fancy to Alt Clut and wanted to possess it. Many years later another great Grandfather who had arranged a wedding between baby Queen Mary and Henry VI hid her there. Such intrigue and adventure…I LOVE it!!!

There was a Horatio sighting yesterday in town. I was sent a photo from one of my Horatio watching clan members. He was on Pat Booker Road.

Is there anything better to eat than fried cabbage and mashed potatoes? Except maybe grilled cheese and tomato soup….mmmmm

Speaking of food I must get to my kitchen and start and a Marinara sauce……

Ninja ad

I am sitting here staring at a blank sheet of paper and wondering what I have to say today. I am strangely silent. This fusses me up a wee bit. I seldom am just silent. Perhaps I am in mourning for what I cannot do. Perhaps I am just exhausted from my week, Perhaps I have wandered once again into a stand of trees and cannot see that it is just a few and not the whole of a forest. I do have a photo safari later ….maybe I am conserving energy. Maybe I am depressed over the Prague adventure. You see Shaggy and I were going to go to Prague for Christmas this year.  We had started planning the whole trip last November. I had saved up a wee bit over $5,000 and was adding to it a little at time from my new job. A job that I was told would start paying off  small but after we went live at the end of November would be better and better. That did not happen. It did not go live, it did not make money therefore I made no money and I had to start using what I had saved to survive. Then Christmas came and it was still not live and I was promised a greater percentage of commission and profit sharing to the tune of 17%. I refused the greater commission and I asked for a smaller percentage.  Granted.  Still we did not go live. This went on for months and before the end of February I had used all of my savings. I kept getting promises from the owner, while another owner was all doom and despair. One kept telling me that he had a track on two investors and we would have money he kept telling me he had appointments with investors and that they were millionaires and that him and J would be out of the office and out of the city and meeting with these investors and all would be well…..keep working. He would be out of the office, he would be gone. I assumed he was doing what he said. Both of these owners behaved as if they knew what the other was doing. Maybe I was not the only one being lied to…… he was attending meetings alright but they were NOT with investors were they?   This ended in April with the company owing me over $2000. Now I am in a battle to get what I earned and the commission at the rate I was told.  I have J1 saying one thing to me and another to J2 and now J1 is denying everything he said to me. What I cannot understand is why I who have no reputation for harming others in a work environment am not believable and yet J1 who has had similar issue in two other states is believable. Curious the things you can find out with good Counsel. J2 if he is lying to me about what he was up to then maybe he is lying to you about what he was up to also. He lied to me about things, has it never occurred to you that he is lying to you? Why are you so quick to believe I am the one not telling the truth?  This is a question I put to you. My actions were based on what I was being assured of, promised and told by J1. He told me we had investors right up to the day I was let go and for a week even after that. He even told me to call you, to get paid that one of the investors had come through and you had money. Do you remember me texting?

LOL…… I think that this is the cause of my fuss. That trip to Prague we, Shaggy and I, should have been preparing for. I feel a little better draining some more of the festering poison. Not the whole experience…just the owing me the money I earned. That is the poison. The lies told to both us J2 that is poison. 

mmmmm….. maybe if I buy a lottery ticket I can win the money and take that Christmas trip to Prague my daughter and I had so carefully started to plan. I can feel a little spark of hope…..warm.

One more thing J2….. I am Lady Tamarawww.HighlandTitles.com not just Tamara.

Since my favorite Shoe is reading this and feels left out because I never mention her.  I must tell you what her man did. She decided that since they are rock-stars they needed body guards. They discussed this and decided they needed body guards with Ninja skills. He placed an ad on Craigs List for Ninja trained body guards. She thinks and so do I that this was a very sweet and romantic gesture.

I wonder did any Ninjas apply?

No water

For the past few months my daughter has attempted to order from two different McDonalds water with her meal instead of a soda. Every time we are told that they cannot do that. They cannot serve water in a cup. “We cannot do that”. Several months ago this was not a problem. We could order water. Now they try to sell me a bottle of water. Do McDonalds stores not have water in them? Are there no faucets? I have been inside a many McD and walked up to the soda fountain and pushed the little lever next to the Orange dispenser and had water. Slightly orange flavored water but it was water. Now, they mean to have me understand that there is no water anywhere inside a McD? Bollocks! I at first believed it was a Texas thing but while Shaggy was in California she ordered water at a McD and was told no that they could not do that, there was no button for it. Button for it? I think we are on to the problem here. No button…..in other words there is not an option on the key pad of the cash register to choose water in a cup instead of  Diet coke or Sprite or tea. Whose brilliant oversight was that? Was it an oversight or is it the policy of McD to serve only soda or tea? Why are they insisting on humans only drinking a fountain soda or tea? Why are they pushing Dasani water on us? Is there something in the water at McD?  IS there something in the soda and tea? IS there something in the Dasani? They get the same amount of money from me no matter what I ask for in the cup. We have devised a plan to get around this. We will be ordering a Sprite. At the window we will say it was ordered wrong please just give us a cup of ice and water. Back to the button on the register; this is a wee bit scary! If it does not exist on an electronic device it does not exist in real time? Teenagers working in these stores do not have the ability or intelligence to think and solve for themselves? Why educate? Why teach them anything at all other than to push or touch buttons that will tell you all you need to know. We waste their precious education on preparing them to take a test that will measure the schools inability to teach them anything and then we punish the schools whose students do not have scores in keeping with the average of the nation by removing their funds and giving them even less to work with to educate so that these students can work at McD and only have to push a button on a cash register. Maybe instead of pushing them to prep on a national test that teaches them ?....... We ask Jason and Bella and Grace and Tyler what they may want to do or become and train, teach, educate and hone their skills in that area so that they are ready to enter the job market. Not all of them are rocket scientists nor do they care about how we allegedly got to the moon? They are in concentration camps so they do not need an understanding of that either. Maybe he just wants to be able to rebuild the engine on a 1976 Camaro and restore old cars? Maybe she wants to work in the forensic science arena. She does not care about politics of 1967. Anyway….. we went to Whataburger earlier this week and we ordered water with our meal and guess what…… we got water. No questions, no hassle, just a choice…” bottled water or water instead of soda ma’am?” We were thrilled. Lady Tamara www.LairdOfLochaber.com  has chosen a new venue for that  once a week junk food night.....I can get water!!! 

What is in your cup?

Psalm

I had an event dream last night. It went through many phases and ended actually on a note of fun. As I was interpreting my dream this morning it was very disturbing and I felt a bit disenchanted and hopeless. These feelings always lead me to taking a walk with GOD and chattering, which I did. After HE smiles at me with a bit of laughter in HIS voice we talk through what the dream really was about. It was my life over the past year. From the moment of my escape to the crashing of the ladder, the limping through town to the reality of who was there as I finished. It is strange looking out over the vista of the past year of your life and seeing it all from a safe distance as opposed to being enshrouded in the forest of it. There really was no huge dark forest; there were small stands of trees and valleys that were in fact small streams that provided a much needed respite at times. I am reminded of David as this goes on and my life in High School as I found a Psalm every time for every situation. Weird, now that I think back on it but, then not really. My dad wrote me letters every morning and quoted a Psalm at the end of each one and slid them under my door before he left for work. I thought it was a bit corny but cute back then. I understood not as much about what he was doing then as I do now. My mother could count on one hand the number of love letters my dad wrote to her; I cannot even recall how many he wrote to me. Not that the letters he wrote would have been considered love letters by most people’s standards. They were in fact letters to me from my dad out of love, with love, to encourage and to explain to me what he could not say. Psalms so to speak. I wish I still had them. I did save every one of them for years and slowly after 5 moves they vanished. But then it really was not the content it was the action.

I have been following in the footsteps of David. Not with Bath-Sheba, LOL…… But with enemies, people I believed were like family, crises and terror (some of you may think…. “and this is not normal for you Lady Tamara?”)  When you are sitting on the ground looking up Big Foot is much bigger.

Thank you for your patience, your kind words, your ability to smile at me, your ears as you listened to me, your time as you would stop what you were doing and give me a few seconds. In my dream last night my daughter is with me as I limped through the village but at the end as I was paying for a service done to me I was surrounded by people who were smiling and jovial and standing with me including me slowly into their worlds. In my real world here my daughter was with me every step through this. My instinct was to protect her from the results of the evil done to me, what she did was constantly say….”come on mom lets go”. She reached out to me now twice in her life time and gave me cause to keep moving. The birth of this child was no accident.

Perhaps I should make her Lady Shaggy www.HighlandTitles.com……..LOL…..nope I better use her real name……LOL

I arrived at the Gala venue at 3:15. The event started at 6. I had twisted my silky dark hair up into a chignon, fastened it with sparkly pins, applied enough curling gel to my strands to make curls last for days (they did) and secured the pin curls with pins. My car is overloaded with 75 large silver Swag Bags for all of the guests. I am exhausted and very close to not attending the evenings function. Three of us had worked from 3 – 7:30 the night before preparing the bags, the lightest of which weighed in at about 4 pounds. They were filled with swag from many of our members that just days before my business associate (L) and I had gathered. I am much stressed; we have not seen or heard from our committee head. She did not say she could not be there to help set up the bags, nor did she come by after work to see if we needed help. She did not offer to help transport these bags, or set up the venue. It is now 5:30. L and I have set up the tables. We have put the correct swag bag at the correct table with the correct name; we have set up the sponsorship level of the tables in conjunction with the front of the room. I rush upstairs and I apologize to anyone I snapped at on my way to the room. I still need to prepare the door for the speakeasy. I draw on an immense amount of eyeliner and brush on some powder and paint on some juicy garnet lips. So much for makeup….. I pull the pins out of my hair and the curls on the side jump back up into tight little blobs of curl. NOT what I had in mind but it does look very 1926…I am pleased. (First smile of the night). I slide my dress on throw my lip sticks into an evening bag strap on my shoes and off I dash downstairs. I do not even have a chance to take one last look at the dining room. I shroud the door and just as it is about to be 6 there is still no sight of our committee head.  I am now convinced she will show up late and take all the credit for the evening’s success. The guests start to arrive and to my surprise and immense joy many of them have made the effort to appear in 1920s style evening wear. They are even providing the speak word. One door is unlocked and easy for me to open to admit the guest after the proper word is delivered the other door is locked. I open it enough to allow them to see me and I can see them and offer entrance. One guest not paying attention and not seeing I have opened the door and my head is there cannot open the ancient (1891) door so he slams his body into it and it bursts open missing my face by a moment. The shroud covering the door falls to the floor, he steps all over it, he looks at me and says what word as he shoves his escorts through the entrance. His wife exclaims “you nearly hit her head!” he says “she is fine” and off he drags them. Still the head of the committee has not arrived. Cocktails are being served and L is sure I am getting my share however I do not even know what the appetizers are. At last, moments before dinner is served in she walks with her escort, hair looking fabulous, makeup perfect and a beautiful little red fringy dress. Has it crossed her mind that she did not make sure there were programs, place cards, gifts or anything else? Did she pause to wonder who decorated and set things up? Is she thinking who is staying last to ensure things that need to get back to us do?    As we, L and I, are setting up she remembers we had joked to Cass about my place card saying princess since that is what L calls me. I sign up for events as Lady Tamara. Cass knows this. L laughs and says my card say Lady Tamara Pearis. I smile. Later as I finally am able to sit to dinner I look at my place card and there in a beautiful script is written my name and it does say Lady. For some reason this one single moment is the very high light of my night. I relax, I smile, I even receive a Chairman’s award from the Executive Director and the Chair of the Board. That is a total surprise and causes me tears which now have me looking like the Joker from Batman or Jet Lei from the Crow.  Lady Tamara in writing at a table …… I loved jumping in and taking charge of what I could on that committee. So…….maybe next year I want to be the head and host a few meetings and then just show up and be fabulous.

I am NOT that type of Lady…. I am A Scottish Warrior Lady and strapping on my Claymore and targe, kilting my loins and heading to battle is more my style.

Lady Tamara www.LairdOfLochaber.com ..................... Priceless 

Breakfast Letters: Paris' Hilton

Breakfast Letters: Paris' Hilton: I Lady Tamara www.HighlandTitles.com would like to invite you into my last few days of adventure in Colorado. We decided one afternoo...

Paris' Hilton

I Lady Tamara www.HighlandTitles.com would like to invite you into my last few days of adventure in Colorado.

We decided one afternoon after a late lunch and before a cozy late dinner to take a drive out into the Rockies. We went from Interstate Highway to State Highway onto a county road that soon became a dirt road that meandered its way through a forest and eventually became a dirt trail. Some of this trail was still covered in snow and ice. We passed an old, hand dug, hand reinforced (as in no visible nails) busted up falling down mine( see photo). This vision of creepy haunted mine only helped to serve my soon to be “what have we done?” imagination. Several hundred feet after the mine we come upon several signs tacked on trees and an open gate on the trail that warn of private property and keep out. There is no place to turn around except for a slightly wider section of road inside the property bearing the warning. We crossed the threshold. We started the process of a 7 point turn to maneuver ourselves out of there. Now it is usually at this point in the movies that the bad thing happens. We were vulnerable, sideways to the only escape route. I just knew that at any moment a gaggle of unshaven ruffians shouldering their grandpas shot guns would bear down on us. Nothing happened so far. We make our turnaround and head back down the trail to the gate. Do we go through the gate? Just as I am about to relax Tony stops; still inside the property line and the female inside my head is screaming. I have a vision of becoming some woman starved mountain man’s girlfriend, firewood chopper and rabbit skinner. I am watching our 6 in the mirror as if my life might depend on it. He gets his GPS bearings and slowly moves forward. I sigh and he looks over and asks……”what?”

Dinner that night was the best tasting food ever!  Partly because I was not being held prisoner by the sons of the Deliverance crew and partly because only people from The Czech Republic can make stuffed green pepper like my mother, cooked red cabbage, dumpling and a steamed bread dumpling gently decorated with creamy brown gravy.

On another day, on another adventure we were driving up from Bolder to the grave sight of Buffalo Bill (photos on my Facebook page) on Lookout Mountain. We pass a few other vehicles coming down, several bikes with spandex clad people peddling up the incline and several coasting down. What we did not expect to see was a boy in a stocking cap, scarf trailing behind him in the wind, ski suit and boots careening toward us around a sharp curve on a skateboard. He survived.

Still on another day as we are trekking up to the summit on the Guanella Pass (see Facebook also for photos) we round a turn in the road and there charging down the pass coming around a curve is motorcycle boy. Popping a wheelie and hitting his throttle like he believed his bike was a horse and he was about to win a joust.  He also survived.

As we reached the summit we spy a red truck off to the side of the road buried in snow to his wheel wells on one side, axle on the pavement at a large drop off from the road. There are three people in the truck. We stop to assist if we can. One shirt clad lad gets out finds a tie down strap and we make three attempts to free him. We are not successful. I notice that none of the kids are wearing coats. It is only about 42 but it is windy and feels much colder. Do they not live there? Do they not know it could become chilly? And is it me or if you live in a place that tends to get snow covered and you own a truck would you not also have an emergency tow chain? We did and used it several times for ourselves and to assist many others. But then we lived in Alaska. Maybe it was the law. After we tried to help the over wrought teen became snippy and refused any further assistance. We were going to offer to notify park rangers but he insisted he could deal with it. I sure hope they made it home. No, we did not leave them alone. There were three other trucks and 2 cars up there. Please!

We pick up a brochure from the lobby of the Community center that advertises Silver mine with tours and adventure. We follow the directions and cannot find the mine. We drive back by again, nothing. We remember a time in California when we went on an adventure into some coastal mountains looking for Lorna Doone winery. We never found that either. We are convinced that the two places are owned by the same people.

We drive up to a state park that boasts fossils in a huge fossil bed. We arrive and there is a fee to drive around and hike around and basically just be there. NO. We turn back and head back up the road to an old pioneer farm we had passed to check it out. I am thrilled to find a restroom, rustic, but usable. So I avail myself of this and as we hit the trail to the buildings we pause at a sign to find out who had settled there. It is part of the fossil park and please go pay at the visitor center. Really?  I am awaiting my ticket in the mail for peeing and not paying for the privilege to do so.

We spent a part of the day on Halloween exploring an ancient pioneer cemetery (photos on Facebook). There were headstones from 1873 on to the present.  There were stakes in the ground with numbers on them and some had old plaques attached to stakes with no information except one that said unknown infant. This one still lingers in my mind. What was odd was that almost all of the graves were children. Staring from birth to about 14, and maybe only a few adults, the deaths of the children occurred in 2 separate years.  One group was about 1887-1889 and the next group was from about 1892-1893. The adults born were all born in the 1890s and died in 1930 and beyond. Where are the adults for the all the children? Because the adults buried there were all children at the time the other children were born and dying. If I can find 15 minutes in my day I will scour the web for info…..I love a good mystery/puzzle.

I will end this letter with this. Everywhere I go and I stop at a Starbucks there is usually a wait, sometimes short most of the time long. We found one that had no wait. But as Murphy’s law is always in effect the minute we publically said we were at Starbucks a man walks in behind us, then a bus pulls up and about 11 Paris Hiltons unload in dresses and shorts and jeans with skimpy shirts. No wonder they needed coffee, they were freezing to death. Paris’ this is not the mall!!!!! It is a small coffee shop in a little village elevation 8,000 feet and it is October in Colorado!!!!

I have errands needing my attention.

Have a wonderful cold day adventure today!