Monday, February 28, 2011

Crazy

I’ve been having some crazy dreams these last few days. I’ve had no fewer than 3 where I was dreaming that I was pregnant. Last night, I dreamt that I was carrying twins. It was all so very realistic and I chalked having twins up to having touched a fertility necklace in a pottery shop this past weekend. (I did actually see fertility necklaces in that shop, but outside of dream land, I *DID NOT* touch them.) Those dreams are weird to wake up from; I almost always feel a little bit lost/emotional because of how real the feeling of being pregnant was, and how real the feeling of knowing it was all just a dream, is.

When I stayed with my Aunt this weekend, I had a horrific dream in which Hub decided he was going to publish a recipe to my blog. And after he did this, he emailed the link to a lot of people so they could read it. The list of people included my mother who commented on the post. I was unsure whether or not she’d read any of the other entries and was furiously scrambling to delete and hide things before she could get to them. I woke up in a panic. It was crazy. Putting things on the internet is crazy. Probably, if I’d had my computer, this whole blog would be gone; that is how panicked I was.

Things always seem better in the light of day though, thank goodness.

I had a really nice spell of 5-ish days sans children. My parents had them Wednesday and Thursday, I signed them up for “camp” on Friday, and I left for the weekend on Friday afternoon. I missed those crazy bastards. I didn’t even get my shoes off Sunday afternoon before I was wiping Liv’s bum. I swear, she waited for me to come home to do any pooping.

She is still at daycare, but the big kids are upstairs making a huge amount of noise as I am preparing for a conference call that begins at 5. I sent them each off to read for 30 minutes, and still…noise. Of course, when I came upstairs to check on them after they got home from school, FIL was preparing root beer floats at his table for them. Bud brought him the pop and ice cream; all he had to do was scoop. Oh, a very appropriate afterschool snack.

It’s no wonder they’re crazy up there.

I’ll miss them when they’re sleeping though.

Friday, February 25, 2011

W I N N E R!

Well, I got 7 whole comments on that last post! Maybe it says something about your blogging ability when even a giveaway can't bring people out of the woodwork. I'd better not read in to it for it will depress me.

Anyway...I can't figure out how the heck to get a screenshot of the number generator in here, but I did plug numbers 1-7 in to Random.org, and the lucky number was #3!! Jess is the winner!! And lucky her too, because I am spending the weekend doing God knows what with my aunts and we usually visit some pretty cool places (last time we went to Amish groceries and family stores and some interesting antique places). I'm looking forward to having a goal in mind.

So! Jess, I am emailing you now!

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

30 Days of Blogging- Days 8-13- and a Giveaway, just because

Well this exercise in somewhat daily blogging is going…well, it’s going. I thought that if I had topics etc to write about that I would be more inclined to type the entry. Let’s play catch-up. And then also, because I feel like it, and because I miss you guys, AND because I recently published my 400th entry here( You—wow, 400 entries in over 3 years? You are a ROCK STAR!!), I am going to host a giveaway. The prize will be whatever I decide it will be, and I will likely tailor it to the winner. So…be sure to comment, ok—by 11:59 PM EST on Thursday 2/24? And I will draw a winner on Friday morning.

Day 08 — Something I crave
I crave a lot of things. Right now, because I’m half-assedly dieting, it is bakery cupcakes and donuts, or gooey brownies, or cheesecake. My most common craving is this:


I love coffee. I drink mine black most of the time, but one of the things I miss most about working outside of my house is picking up a nice double double for the ride home. Double cream, double sugar if you don’t speak Tim Horton’s lingo. This wasn’t an everyday habit—usually just on the days my commute home was longer or if I knew I had a particularly long night ahead of me. It was a comfort, while also being a pick me up. My extreme love of heavy cream plus it being one of the few things that triggers my lactose intolerance prevents me from having it in the house. I put it in everything if it is here. And so, an outside treat it remains. A damn good one too.

Day 09 — Pet peeves
You maybe don’t want to get me started on pet peeves. According to my mother, I take great pride in pointing out people’s mistakes. This isn’t true at all. I questioned her about a week ago about why she kept forwarding me emails that I was already on the reply chain of. Just asked. But apparently, I really just wanted to point out that she was stupid, not ask if she meant to be typing something in the body, or if something was wrong with her email. Aaaaanyway. Grammar and punctuation are a huge source of pet peevery to me (made up words aside..ha). I will be the first to admit that I am a horrible speller and typist and that while I did major in English and can conjugate the shit out of a verb (and love every minute of it), I do make mistakes. A lot of them. I know that the extra short sentences I am fond of, as well as those one sentence paragraphs, are totally wrong—BUT I LIKE THEM. Here is what bugs me: People saying “I seen” as in, “Oh, I seen that movie!”. GAAAH! See also: “I would have went!” You would have what now? Improper use of apostrophes take me over the edge as well. Just last week I was in an email war over a communication I asked for, that I provided my edits to 3 times where an apostrophe was not added to “customers”. We were talking about something belonging to a customer. It was the customer’s. And yet, the apostrophe was continually missed and it took me over the edge!!! I might need to drink less coffee, huh? Thankfully the girl who was writing it used to work for me, and she knows my quirks. I’m sure there are more—like people using a rug doctor to “shampoo their carpets”. It doesn’t work. But I am a carpet cleaner’s wife. I have to say that. (but it’s truuuue)

Day 10 — A photo of me taken over ten years ago I actually did this one because it was sort of quick.

Day 11 — A photo of me taken recently

This is Liv and me at Disney on Ice:



Day 12 — Something I bought recently
I mentioned in my bullets yesterday that I bought NKOTBSB tickets. Yes, I really did, and I’m not at all embarrassed. NKOTB was my first musical obsession. And I didn’t get to see them in concert when I was a kid, so when they were here 2 summers ago, my girlfriend and I went. I was training a class at work on a Saturday, and I actually stopped class so I could go back to my desk and buy the tickets. We had such an amazing time, we even talked about trying to get tickets to their Cleveland or Toronto shows that were in the days after ours. Anyway, when we heard they were coming again, we were back and forth on going—neither of us really cares about BSB, but in the end we decided to go. And it will be EPIC. I can’t wait.

Day 13 — Something I want to buy
Sad but true: a dishwasher. When we remodeled our kitchen, we got rid of the dishwasher. It was the kind that hooked up to the kitchen faucet, and it wouldn’t work with the new one we bought. It’s been on the backburner for a while, but now that I find myself home more often and FIL can’t do any dishes anymore, I always seem to be the one with dishpan hands. It’s been almost 3 years since the remodel. It is time! Hub and I just seem to disagree on what we want. He wants cheap, standard, nothing special. I want one that will work, and work well. I don’t need bells and whistles, but I do need one that doesn’t require a ton of pre-rinsing and post washing.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Miscellany

Ugh I feel like there are so many things to catch up on here! And my stinking job keeps getting in my way! Unreal! Well, no better time for bullets than the present.

• I am almost 2 months in to working from home and it is more awesome than I could have imagined. It’s also different somehow too. Misty asked me to elaborate some on that and it’s hard to put my finger on. It might need its own post. Not unlike being a mother who works outside the home, being a WAHM has to have boundaries. I don’t just bill hours; I’m expected to be around generally between 8 and 5. I’ve noticed that my counterparts who work on the west coast are a little bit more likely to add things to my calendar for 6 and 7PM east coast time. And I sometimes say yes. But usually I say no, because I live in New York, not CA. Just because I work from home doesn’t mean that I’m always working…you know? I don’t know. I think I do need to get in to it more another day; I don’t feel like I’m adequately covering it. I love the flexibility I have to get my kids on and off the bus; go in to school for a bit during the day though. And you know what my home office doesn’t have that the real office does? Candy and snack vending. And pressure to order lunch just because. I’m saving a shitload of calories and money being home, brewing my own coffee (but damn If we don’t go through way more coffee now; I didn’t realize how much I was getting on the outside!), eating leftovers or just a sandwich for lunch. I was in the office one day last week, and look at my gigantic sandwich! You can’t even see the chips behind it! (I ended up taking half home for dinner)
Albacore Tuna with chipotle mayo, alfalfa sprouts and tomato. See also: My glasses. I can't eat with them on. It's a thing.

• Some filters on my work computer have made me unable to comment on a lot of blogs. I can read them just fine, but cannot comment. It kind of sucks. I think it’s mostly the ones with the comment form embedded. If it takes me to another page or window I am good. Weird and annoying.
• I bought tickets to go see NKOTBSB. Judge me if you must, but we’ll see who is laughing when I finally become Mrs. Donnie Wahlberg. It’s in May. I can’t wait.
• Speaking of May, Hub turns 35 then, and I’d like to take him someplace for a weekend. I’m not sure where though. Not someplace too far; he hates to fly. He also likes to be kept busy when we travel. Time to do some research.
• My mother is taking the children on Wednesday night so we can go out for dinner and a movie. I hate to ask my parents for anything. I hate it hate it hate it. I also hate no longer having a built in baby sitter. I don’t think we realized how lucky we were. And MY were we lucky.
• I’m going away this weekend with my mother and aunt and we are meeting my cousins and SIL and basically having a girls’ weekend. Yes. GIRLS’ not GIRL’s. Just had to get THAT off of my chest. I love spending time with my aunts and cousins though. I wish we lived closer. It will be a fun time, for sure.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

30 Days of Blogging-Day 10-A picture of me more than 10 years old

Apparently, I thought it was supercool to have orange hair. This color was achieved with blonde hair dye in my very very dark brown hair. This is me at my prom in 1996:



Here I am in 1993, being a very appropriate 14-year-old





And this is me when Hub and I got engaged, 8/14/00, in Frontier Town at Cedar Point. I know-- worst posture EVAR in that one...

Monday, February 14, 2011

In which I say "cycle" way too many times...

If I wasn’t still 15 when I started taking hormonal birth control, then I had just turned 16. I was mostly always on the pill, except for a year or so that I was on the Depo shot, which ended in having to take the pill on top of it due to erratic bleeding, causing me to be a real pleasure to be around. Aside from that, I’d never had any issues with birth control. I had regular, light 3-4 day cycles. What more could a girl ask for?

I swear to you, the day Hub and I got married, I got the baby bug. It was like something that was hibernating had woken up and it was fierce. I thought baby thoughts 24/7 and once we were back from our honeymoon, after talking it over with Hub, I stopped taking the pill. Of course, at that point he was not on board with the whole baby thing. We’d been together for 8 years, and had lived together for 5, but he still didn’t think we were ready. So I became an expert in tracking my cycle, knowing what was going on every single day of it. Knowing if I was ovulating, or was going to get my period, or anything in between. I was really good at it. So much so, that on that April night when he told me he really was ready to have a baby, I knew that it was prime time. And I didn’t know it until a regular doctor’s checkup a few weeks later, but that was the night I got pregnant. Right on our first try.

Now, after Bud was born, things were a bit tricky. I couldn’t get the timing of my cycles right at all, nothing matched up. Neither of us wanted me back on the pill though. In the months that I was not taking it, prior to pregnancy, let’s just say things were a bit more active. Birth control didn’t just stop me from ovulating, you know? It was better for both of us to have me off. And we realized that something could happen and were fine with it. And that’s how we managed to have Lucy when Bud was 19 months old.

After Lu, again, there was no rhyme or reason to my cycles, so I did use the pill again for a short period of time to regulate things. And it did, but it brought with it horrible migraines and so was out the window. But it was better this time. Hub was responsible for providing any sort of contraception, and I was back to being in tune with my body and knowing what was happening and when….which is why Liv was such a surprise, and is why when she was about 18 months old and still hadn’t (hasn’t still) slept through the night I decided that some form of birth control was necessary. I talked with my doctor about my headaches, things that had worked and things that had not and we settled on Seasonique which lets you go 3 months in between periods and offers an estrogen supplement for the week you are having your period to keep hormone levels steady and avoid the migraines and such.

It’s been about a year, and it has been fine until recently when I have had increased migraines—including those pesky ocular ones, lack of interest, and mood swings. Hub and I decided together that it has run its course and it is time to get back to the basics if you will. It’s going to take a little work, but I am up for it. Even though I keep telling Hub that my working from home arrangement seems perfect for having another child, the truth is that I am reasonably sure that I am done having babies. Hub will be in charge of the birth control, but I’m going to be all over that too.

At least for a little while.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

30 Days of Blogging-Day 7-A Favorite Photo

First- here is a tie for my 2 favorite photos out of the 7 years I just looked through:





And this next one has the honor of making me bawl like a baby. This photo was taken when Lu was 9 days old, which is why I look like a deflated pregnant person. But look at me and my Bud. I remember going down every slide in the park with him that day, after a long couple of months of not being able to run around with him. I miss that baby boy:

Monday, February 7, 2011

30 Days of Blogging-Day 6- A Fun Fact About Me

I could probably regale you with several small fun facts about myself. What I should actually do one of these days is an update to my 100 facts about me list, that I wrote when I was, I think, 28. I wonder what is the same? What is different? I can assure you that I still hate my grey hair. A lot.

I don’t know though. I don’t really have anything that would constitute a big reveal here, so I guess I will just give you a few fun-ish things.

• My high school show choir was on CNN because we performed when the space shuttle Endeavor connected with our school because one of its astronauts was a former student.
• I cried like a baby when Lu got all her hair cut off yesterday, but she loves it, and so do I.
• I am fully aware that I skipped day 5 of this challenge, and it’s because quoting people is just not my thing. What sounds eloquent coming out of your mouth, sounds douchey coming out of mine.
• Working from home has been everything I expected and not at all what I expected, both at the same time.
• Hub and I have never hired a babysitter; FIL has just always done it. We realized that if we ever want to go out again, we’re going to have to find a good babysitter. And pay them.
• Hub and I have collectively decided that I am going off of the pill. And no, he is still not interested in the snip. Neither of us is interested in the side effects of the pill anymore, only one of us is not interested in having any more babies. So…there’s that.


And there you have it, that’s about as fun as I get these days.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

30 Days of Blogging-Day 4- A Favorite Book

I’m finding these “favorite” entries hard to write. A favorite book, huh? I just don’t know. I like books a lot and I often get depressed when they are over, like I just broke up with a boyfriend or something. Something that was comforting or enjoyable for whatever period of time is suddenly just not there anymore. I have a hard time dealing with it. So, I’ve enjoyed many many books, but I don’t really think I could say that any one book is my favorite book. Just not going to happen. The Lovely Bones though, might be as close as it comes. I loved that book. I love that book.

Hey, maybe I’ll read it again.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

30 Days of Blogging-Day3- a Favorite TV Show

I love TV you guys; I always have. There was a time, way before my TiVo, when Hub and I had a separate VHS tape for every day of the week, and we recorded multiple shows on multiple channels and, well, wow. It was crazy. To say TiVo has changed our life would be a huge understatement, and you would think that with all that it does for me, I would be watching a lot more TV than I do, but not so much. This goes back to the movie post. I just don’t have the kind of time that I used to anymore. And I am mostly ok with it. I mostly watch sitcoms now, as 30 minutes is just the right amount of time for me to sit down. Modern Family, The Middle, HIMYM etc. Together, Hub and I watch Castle, Burn Notice and Psych. I’m still watching Glee, but I am not sure why exactly. Honestly, our guilty pleasure is sitting down with the paper on Sunday mornings and watching CBS Sunday Morning. Because, well, we are old folks.

Anyway, my point is that it’s hard to say that any one of those shows is my favorite. They’re mostly just filler.

Talking about all time favorite shows though…that I can do. Friends and Will and Grace come to mind. Felicity…oh, how I loved Felicity, but the way it ended forever removed it from my favorites ranking. Seinfeld is my show that will stand the test of time. I can watch that show anytime and never be bored.

My all time favorite show though, is probably Dawson’s Creek. Teen angst at its finest. I have watched that show from end to end so many times and it never fails to suck me right in. I love you Dawson, Joey, Pacey and Jen.

Honorable mention would have to go to Murphy Brown. I didn’t watch that one when it was actually on TV, but it was on Nick at Night when I was pregnant with Lu and couldn’t sleep. I recorded it after she was born so I could watch while I nursed her in the middle of the night. Murphy and the gang aaaalmost made me look forward to my sleep being interrupted.

Tell me about your TV habits, past and present. I so want to know.

30 Days of Blogging-Day 2- A Favorite Movie

(I swear I wrote this yesterday, but my huge project at work is leaving me a bit crazed.)

When I was a Blockbuster manager, my favorite thing to do was to set up the Employee Favorites section. We would decorate nameplates with clip art and really have a good time with it. I always made it a point to watch some of everyone’s favorites. We got 5 free rentals a week—10 actually because Hub was a manger in another location, so it wasn’t hard to do. And because of this, my favorites were always changing. The joys of being young and carefree, I suppose. Now, I don’t have a ton of time for movies. Hub and I will get one on demand once or twice a month, if that. We watch a lot of kids movies. We don’t stay up very late. It happens. At least this way though, I’m not constantly adding movies to my favorite list. I can’t pick just one though, so let’s pretend I’m setting up the old Employee Favorites wall again and I will pick between 5 and 8 to display on my wall.

1. The Sound of Music
2. When Harry Met Sally
3. She’s All That
4. Titanic (ok, L.A.M.E I know)
5. Dazed and Confused
6. Heart and Souls
7. The Negotiator
8. Music and Lyrics

Tell me, what would be on your wall?