I remember looking through my Mother’s sewing things and examining her collection of buttons.  She had a huge assortment of buttons of all shapes and sizes.  Some were fancy.  Others were plain and simple.  She kept her collection in a glass jar.  With a simple shake, you could pick out the button of choice then shake, seek, and find. 

Her Mother had a collection of her own.  Perhaps that is how my Mother got her idea.  Grandma had a whole lot more buttons to choose from.  A jar simply would not do for her collection.  It was kept in a fancy hat box. 

Like my Mother (and her Mother), I also have a collection of buttons – although mine is quite petite.  It’s not really a "collection," rather it is more of a collecting spot for the buttons that have lost their homes.  All of my buttons are all plain and and simple.  They are NOT neatly set aside for perusing.  I keep my buttons hidden – in the box – that has the needles, bobbins, and other odd sewing stuff – which I hardly ever use. 

Although I keep my buttons out of sight, those who are closest to me (namely my children and my husband), needn’t ever lay eyes on my collection to know exactly which of MY buttons will benefit THEM in their quest for whatever they are in need of. 

Take tonight for example, B called up and, in a minute, he had me in tears.  He has always been the best at finding my buttons.  He can find those that even I have lost track of.  While I am looking forward to visiting him next month, I am also fearful of the button pushing that will likely occur. 

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It’s B’s birthday and I have the blues.  I am sad to not be able to celebrate with him.  It is the first time that we haven’t celebrated together in all of my 16 years of life.  I knew the day would come, but I always figured he’d be away a college before it happened.  At least I know that he is in good hands.

I spent the free moments of my day tracking his gift on the Federal Express website.  There wasn’t a lot of free moments though.  I do not actually know if it got there.  B had not seen it by the time he and I talked on the phone, but it was still early (in Hawaii).

He talked to me from the beach (which is now his back yard) while his aunt cooked up "the best fried chicken" for his birthday meal.  He sounded good, and HAPPY. 

There is the stubborn, self-destructive being that is taking over yet again.  Although subtle, my own voice can be heard clearly warning me, "You don’t want to eat that."  This being even agrees that I don’t want to eat these things, but it doesn’t talk me out of it.  Instead it says, "Yeah.  So what.  Eat it any way!"  So, I do.

Then, my voice can be heard on the brink of tears.  It urges me to exercise.  The being talks me out of that idea as well – without much coaxing I might add.

It had better be gone tomorrow.

B’s birthday just around the corner.  My present for him, an iPod, is questionable in my mind.  I wonder if he’ll really appreciate it.  He probably would not appreciate anything other than a plane ticket home.  My ho-hum feeling about the iPod stems from the number of iPods that he has burned through in the past year.  I am hoping that, with the drugs behind him (I pray they are), that he will be better equipped to hold onto one now.

Along with the iPod, I wanted to send him some of his music.  I fired up the mac and logged onto his account.  I began sampling his music to find the songs that I might also listen to.  I began with the momma playlist that he had been creating for me at one point.  Two of the six songs were ones that I would consider mom-friendly.  The remaining songs were drug and sex reinforcers. 

From the momma playlist, I moved to his full set of iTunes files.  Here there was more unplayable music, mixed with a generous smattering of pornography videos.  *Crap*  I realize that boys will be boys, but we’d already gone down this path.  My previous discovery was the stimulus for my creating an account for each child on the computer, and instituting full control by having to approve every site before it could be visited.  I could now kick myself for approving the installation of Limewire.  The site must allow him to download these files even though my parental controls are set to forbid it.

Yes, boys will be boys.  It’s not the first time that one of the boys has exposed their naked eyes to the stuff.  I need only think back to when D was a teen for another such experience.  His father once found a porn video in his room.  I don’t know the entirety of his response (I never did with D).  I only know what he told me, and that was that he discussed pornography in terms of it’s exploitation of women.  The issue seemed to be resolved with only that. 

Back then, I believe, it was harder to come by without showing ID.  Now, the Internet is littered with it and, apparently, it is easy to come by even with a failing mom’s sorry parental controls.

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I had feared that work would get busy suddenly.  I was nervous that, when it did, I might not be able to handle the increased workload.  I just had no idea that the challenges would present me with such an extreme feeling of inadequacy. 

In the back of my head, I reasoned that it wasn’t me that was failing to perform up to expectations.  The sales force, was the issue.  With in the past two days, there were four safety reports that were likely to require expedited reporting to the regulatory authorities.  The problem was that the reports were so vague that I needed to do a lot of chasing down the details. 

On BIG problem was that the initial reporters (physicians, nurse practitioners, etc.) were no longer wanting to play the game.  "Well, it wasn’t related to your drug," they insisted.  Reminding them, that once they report an event, in a patient, on our drug, we are obligated to report it to the agencies.

Being that I now work at a small company, where our group has been reduced to the bare minimum (and my boss is on vacation), I was a tad bit overwhelmed.  I didn’t feel well, but couldn’t go home because these cased needed to have information gathering, data entry, and processing to keep to the timelines. 

On top of the normal job duties, there are the clinical team meetings to attend, and standard operating procedures (SOPs) to edit. 

This is when I’d like to huddle up in bed and sleep the day away.