Well, apparently it is something going around and we all got 'it'... and how! I've been trying to hack up my left lung for almost 2 weeks which is after I finally got my voice back. Seems like ages ago that we collectively as a family were healthy. First Erin was sick, then I came down with the weird voice thing where I felt fine but sounded like I had laryngitis. Once I sounded better, I started feeling crappy and then Clint came down with it all. Now we have a good day followed by a bad night and then it will flip flop and start all over again with one of us sicker than the other two and then trade it up the next day. I refuse to get flu shots - don't even get me started on the insanity on that front - and would rather let my body build up immunities the good old fashioned way by getting a bug and then fighting it off. However, if this thing doesn't get kicked and soon I think we're all headed for a trip down the medical aisle at the store... either that or it's OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! I don't know whether to think of it as a good thing or a bad thing but I am never sick enough to actually stay home from work. Perhaps if I actually got to bed at a decent time and got some quality REST I might get well faster. Maybe....
On a happy note, my favorite day of the ENTIRE year approaches in 2.5 days. Erin is so excited for Halloween even though she's already ruined one costume at a rather rowdy neighborhood party last weekend and got to pick another one out and wear it to dance earlier this week. It might be the draw of the candy and all the sugar-greed that goes along with the annual trick-or-treat trek around the neighborhood but I like to think that she likes Halloween like I like Halloween.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Happy Birthday, Erin!
Today is Erin's birthday - her actual birthday. It's not the first party and not the last party and not the end of the celebrating, but it WAS 7 years ago today that we were first getting to know her in her first day of life while my family was all on vacation in California thinking they had two more weeks before she would be born. She is just as beautiful today as she was then; her features just as delicate, her hair just as soft, her manerisms still as tender. Of course back then she hadn't learned to have her own, and at times very strong, opinions of things like she does now and she couldn't jump up and grab the DVD remote from the top shelf of the entertainment center where her Mother had put it out of her reach like I witnessed her do tonight. But take away all the growing up she has done in the last 7 years and she is still the little angel who stole my heart all those years ago in a hospital room while Daddy was away getting something to eat. Would I trade any of the craziness of having a child on top of all the other stresses in life? HELL NO! Erin is the center of our world and we are both so in love with her. Happy Birthday darling girl!
Of course there's no photos... have you read how crazy my life is?!? Stay tuned... there will be some - eventually!
Of course there's no photos... have you read how crazy my life is?!? Stay tuned... there will be some - eventually!
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Potential Overload
I believe that my usual ability to stay ahead of all the stress in my life by planning and scheduling every activity into bite-size tasks where they fit into my calendar has finally been pushed beyond the natural limits and the system is in major threat of overload; we are talking the red zone! So, everyone knows that I am leaving my "day" job for a new one and I knew that it would be a crazy last couple of weeks now that all my current projects all have the exact same end date to either be passed on or passed off. On top of that, I was "volunteered" by my fabulous boss to help him screen potential candidates to fill the position I am vacating with a contractor - guess I made the right decision to leave given that they don't think there's enough work long-term to hire someone to replace me huh? So, now all the work from work is spilling over into the "at home" hours in order to get everything done I want to complete to leave a good legacy behind. On top of that, I have now - count them - 3 days in which to do my 12 hours of Continuing Education so I can renew my Real Estate License. This is also an activity which requires "at home" hours away from the day job. I was going to spend the weekend online doing this but couldn't since Erin had a mandatory dance camp in Salem. (I didn't know there was a Salem in Utah either but guess what!) It is a long enough drive away that with gas still over $3 a gallon it made zero sense to drive her down and go back home. So, Clint and I drove her down Saturday morning and spent the day in Happy Valley while she danced her heart out. We got to see a little performance of what the girls all learned at the end of the camp and even Clint made a comment that eluded to his being impressed. The older girls had learned several dances and he said "how do they keep track of everything!". HA, dance is hard work, huh, really?!? Erin will be dancing at a Jazz halftime in January and they were learning part of the routine. Pretty exciting stuff and Erin slept all the way home! It is a telling sign that I'm on overload when I didn't even remember to bring my camera to take photos for the blog of the dancing. Today I had to do all the laundry I would normally have done on Saturday plus cook dinner for the first of two of Erin's birthday parties that are happening tonight with the family. Right now I wish I had no other care in the world than chasing birds like Sasha is doing in the back yard!
Friday, October 10, 2008
Tagged!
Ok, Kerstin tagged me first but Amber also did! Apparently it is the blog form of an email "answer these questions" and I'm always up for those so here goes!
Six Question Tag
1. Six places I go over and over: work, Erin's school, Erin's dance studio, Smiths, our favorite Mexican place and our favorite sushi place.
2. Six people who email me regularly: Clint, Denice, Amber, Mom, Gram, Becky (of course, this list would be MUCH different if it were people who IM me regularly....)
3. Six of my favorite places to eat: Aculpulco, Fortune Cookie, Ruby Tuesday, Olive Garden, Soup Kitchen, Marketstreet
4. Six places I would rather be right now: on the couch watching a movie, reading a book, Italy, the beach, Mexico, outside (if only it were warmer - the moon is so beautiful tonight!)
5. Six people I think will respond (aka, the TAG): I tag everyone I know who blogs and hasn't already tagged... which is Adrian, Christauna, Angel and TipTopTux
6. Six TV shows I watch: this is a tough one for me as I am not a TV watcher! BattleStar Galactica (which hasn't had new episodes for MONTHS!), UFC (Clint's favorite), Spongebob (Erin's favorite), Heros (but only on DVD so far), I want THAT! on FLN. I know that's not 6 but seriously can't think of anything else!
Six Quirks About Me:
1. I am a freak about saving things. Bills I paid from our first apartment (15 years ago!), Birthday cards, wedding invitations, extra buttons from new clothes, receipts, every school paper that Erin has brought home starting with pre-school when she was 4, clothes that are out of style and I couldn't wear again if I tried... You name it, I save it. When Clint and I got married he used to make me go through the closet once a year and get rid of at least a stack of things I hadn't worn that year. I am not such a freak about saving clothes and shoes now because of it (unless there's sentimental value like my VICA jackets and my letter sweater or the dress I wore to graduation-I've only been out of school for going on 2 decades!) but everything else I still collect. I have boxes labeled "scrapbook stuff" that I think might be fun to look back on someday. It has treasures like movie tickets to every movie we've ever been to, airline ticket stubs, brochures for places we've traveled to, stuff like that. And since these things are in a box with a girlie label like scrap booking Clint won't make me throw it away...
2. I love the Moon... I always know what phase of the moon we are in and where to look in the sky for it. And I always take a minute to moon gaze when I'm outside to feed Sasha before I go to bed. It calms me for some reason I can't explain. This is true even when the moon is still "up" in the daytime. I'm a moon girl!
3. I always snooze the alarm clock in the morning for at least a half an hour and more like an hour lately. I physically cannot just hear the alarm, turn it off and get out of bed. I instead have to decide when the latest I really have to be up is and then set the alarm for an hour earlier so I can have my snooze time. It's like somehow I'm tricking myself into thinking that I slept longer and got an extra hour or something. And when I actually get up after only a half hour of snoozing instead of the alloted hour? I pat myself on the back that I got up "early". Can't explain that one, either...
4. I am an obsessive planner... I plan everything down to the minutia. Doesn't matter what we are doing, I'm over planning it and over packing things to take with us. Clint doesn't plan anything, just gets an idea in his head and starts off knowing that he can just figure it out along the way. I'm the girl who packs a rain coat just in case we get rained on and then cart it around all day without needing it. Luckily we balance each other out!
5. I type everything... There's lots of instances with my job where I can cut and paste commands that I'm doing over and over on the system; or where most of the command is the same as the next line and I could just issue a 2-character command to bring up the line to change the one or two characters. But, I can't do it. I have to type out everything and I mean everything! Drives people at work crazy to watch me but I type so fast that I can still get it done before they could if we were racing!
6. I am so easily distracted from one thing to the next - especially around the house. I will start something and walk into the next room on some part of that task and find something else that I think "oh, I should do that while I'm here" and stop what I was originally doing to start the next thing. After doing that over and over I usually stumble across the first thing that I started (where I left off) and think "oh yeah, I need to finish that" and stop what I am currently doing to continue. Like a viscous cycle over and over. At the end of a Saturday spent at home and left to my own devices I've done a TON of stuff but not completed a single thing... and I'm exhausted. And then Clint will come in and say "what have you been doing all day?" because there is no clear evidence of what I did! I hate this about myself...
And a bonus quirk I just thought of... I always have a book hidden somewhere on my person (usually in my purse!) You never know when you're going to have 5 minutes you could be reading after all!
Six Question Tag
1. Six places I go over and over: work, Erin's school, Erin's dance studio, Smiths, our favorite Mexican place and our favorite sushi place.
2. Six people who email me regularly: Clint, Denice, Amber, Mom, Gram, Becky (of course, this list would be MUCH different if it were people who IM me regularly....)
3. Six of my favorite places to eat: Aculpulco, Fortune Cookie, Ruby Tuesday, Olive Garden, Soup Kitchen, Marketstreet
4. Six places I would rather be right now: on the couch watching a movie, reading a book, Italy, the beach, Mexico, outside (if only it were warmer - the moon is so beautiful tonight!)
5. Six people I think will respond (aka, the TAG): I tag everyone I know who blogs and hasn't already tagged... which is Adrian, Christauna, Angel and TipTopTux
6. Six TV shows I watch: this is a tough one for me as I am not a TV watcher! BattleStar Galactica (which hasn't had new episodes for MONTHS!), UFC (Clint's favorite), Spongebob (Erin's favorite), Heros (but only on DVD so far), I want THAT! on FLN. I know that's not 6 but seriously can't think of anything else!
Six Quirks About Me:
1. I am a freak about saving things. Bills I paid from our first apartment (15 years ago!), Birthday cards, wedding invitations, extra buttons from new clothes, receipts, every school paper that Erin has brought home starting with pre-school when she was 4, clothes that are out of style and I couldn't wear again if I tried... You name it, I save it. When Clint and I got married he used to make me go through the closet once a year and get rid of at least a stack of things I hadn't worn that year. I am not such a freak about saving clothes and shoes now because of it (unless there's sentimental value like my VICA jackets and my letter sweater or the dress I wore to graduation-I've only been out of school for going on 2 decades!) but everything else I still collect. I have boxes labeled "scrapbook stuff" that I think might be fun to look back on someday. It has treasures like movie tickets to every movie we've ever been to, airline ticket stubs, brochures for places we've traveled to, stuff like that. And since these things are in a box with a girlie label like scrap booking Clint won't make me throw it away...
2. I love the Moon... I always know what phase of the moon we are in and where to look in the sky for it. And I always take a minute to moon gaze when I'm outside to feed Sasha before I go to bed. It calms me for some reason I can't explain. This is true even when the moon is still "up" in the daytime. I'm a moon girl!
3. I always snooze the alarm clock in the morning for at least a half an hour and more like an hour lately. I physically cannot just hear the alarm, turn it off and get out of bed. I instead have to decide when the latest I really have to be up is and then set the alarm for an hour earlier so I can have my snooze time. It's like somehow I'm tricking myself into thinking that I slept longer and got an extra hour or something. And when I actually get up after only a half hour of snoozing instead of the alloted hour? I pat myself on the back that I got up "early". Can't explain that one, either...
4. I am an obsessive planner... I plan everything down to the minutia. Doesn't matter what we are doing, I'm over planning it and over packing things to take with us. Clint doesn't plan anything, just gets an idea in his head and starts off knowing that he can just figure it out along the way. I'm the girl who packs a rain coat just in case we get rained on and then cart it around all day without needing it. Luckily we balance each other out!
5. I type everything... There's lots of instances with my job where I can cut and paste commands that I'm doing over and over on the system; or where most of the command is the same as the next line and I could just issue a 2-character command to bring up the line to change the one or two characters. But, I can't do it. I have to type out everything and I mean everything! Drives people at work crazy to watch me but I type so fast that I can still get it done before they could if we were racing!
6. I am so easily distracted from one thing to the next - especially around the house. I will start something and walk into the next room on some part of that task and find something else that I think "oh, I should do that while I'm here" and stop what I was originally doing to start the next thing. After doing that over and over I usually stumble across the first thing that I started (where I left off) and think "oh yeah, I need to finish that" and stop what I am currently doing to continue. Like a viscous cycle over and over. At the end of a Saturday spent at home and left to my own devices I've done a TON of stuff but not completed a single thing... and I'm exhausted. And then Clint will come in and say "what have you been doing all day?" because there is no clear evidence of what I did! I hate this about myself...
And a bonus quirk I just thought of... I always have a book hidden somewhere on my person (usually in my purse!) You never know when you're going to have 5 minutes you could be reading after all!
And just like that... it's WINTER
I'm loving the fall weather, bringing out the light sweaters and the hoodies and actually wearing socks for the first time in months and what do I hear two days ago but that we are expecting SNOW this weekend. And we are not talking about in the mountains far away from where we will see it but HERE in the valley and in the yard most likely. It felt like summer would never come this year then was so damn hot that felt like it lasted longer than normal. NOW we are getting robbed of fall for it all to start over again. Damn weather...
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Fall is here
My favorite time of the year has finally come around again! It isn't too hot to leave the comfort of the air conditioned indoors; you need a jacket or sweater in the early or late hours of the day; and the leaves are changing color getting ready to fall. Yes, FALL is here and man am I loving it!
Last weekend, we spent Sunday driving through the mountains and looking at the beautiful leaves and scenery. I know that it would kill me to ever leave the mountains and I shudder to think of it ever happening (even though I bitch about being surrounded by raving lunatic Republicans...) I think we took over a hundred photos of leaves - from up close to landscape vistas. It was a great day!
Erin is doing Girl Scouts and working on her Outdoor Adventurer badge (they are called Try-Its in Brownies...). So she got to wear her girl scout vest to designate that it was an official outing and we went on a hike to find the smallest living thing we could find. We tried several times to get a really great hike in and set out several times only to get rained on and turn back before it turned into a soaking. We ended up finding grasshoppers and ants and several small spiders and got to check off the task in her handbook.
We stopped at the summit of the mountain and ate a picnic lunch and at one point stopped to let Erin wade in the water at the bottom of a waterfall. We were hiking on the last trail we embarked on and trying to find photo opportunities we could enlarge and put in our house on the walls when a super-nice older couple offered to take a family picture. So, now we have evidence that Mommy was on the adventure as well as Daddy and Erin... Now if only Fall will last as long as it seemed that Summer did this year so we can hold off Winter and its inevitable snow as long as possible.
My favorite day of the year approaches... All Hallows Eve... and this year I am branching out beyond the typical witch-y costume. Hopefully folks won't be too disappointed! Erin already has her costume and is so bummed that she won't be able to dress up at school since she will be off track. What a bummer since she loves Halloween as much as I do and I'll be at a new job were I don't even know for sure that I can dress up and won't be able to take the day off just because it is Halloween. We shall see how it all comes together I suppose.
I'm slowly weaning myself off the Blackberry and man is it rough!
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