Until next year...

Day Thirty - A Confession

First though, everyone can breathe a sigh of relief because it's the last day of the thirty-day torture called NaBloPoMo and I get to take a break from struggling to think of something to post.
Now, onto the juicy stuff. Okay, so I'm not the most confident person, which carries over into my relationship with A. He dated a particular (local) girl for more than four years and every now and then I run into her around town. We both sort of act like we don't know each other when that happens and my heart races and I sneak peeks at her to see if she's having a better hair day, secretly hoping she's put on some weight. Well, today, I knew she would be at a certain place at a certain time in my building. So, I came up with a reason to be there then and I spent a little extra time on my makeup this morning and I picked out clothes that looked like a grown, married woman would wear that looked good on me. I only feel a tinge guilty for doing it because I know it makes her uncomfortable, but I can't help it. Something in me wants to make sure, at every opportunity, that she knows I won and he's all mine. I'm like a dog marking his territory.

Day Twenty-Nine

Found this video from Ali's blog. This video is such a great chronicle of this woman's life. I've mentioned on here that I scrapbook. I know a lot of people think it's just sticking pictures on a piece of paper in an album, but for me, scrapbooking is about so much more than that. It's about documenting my life and the lives of the people I hold dear. It's about reminding myself that I have an awesome life and remembering the good times. It's also about finding a way to deal with the bad, although pages like that don't usually make it into an album out on the shelf for everyone to look through. Ali Edwards has coined the phrase 'Life Artist' and I have decided that's what I am.

Day Twenty-Eight - #27

First person to guess what the significance of the second number in the title is wins a handmade greeting card (birthday, Christmas, whatever) designed by yours truly.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 184 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Found this over on the Littleton's blog.

Day Twenty-Seven

I talked about dog-sitting for my co-worker and keeping her Schnoodle, Annie. Here's a picture of the lil' sweetie for everyone to ooh and ahh over. Isn't she a cutie?
I tried my best to persuade a certain someone to give me one of her sisters for Christmas, but it didn't work. *insert pouty lip and sad eyes*

Day Twenty-Six - Sorry

I was under the weather yesterday with what feels like strep throat and was running a mild fever, so please forgive me.

Day Twenty-Five - Tis' the Season

The countdown begins. Christmas music on the radio. Wrapping paper strewn about the living room. Plans to get the tree & decorations out of the attic and up tomorrow after church.
Lil' Annie is sleeping behind me on the couch and must be dreaming, because she's making little noises and twitching ever couple minutes. It's about time for me to be doing the same (the sleeping, not the twitching).

Day Twenty-Four - Black Friday

Hours of sleep given up: 3
Number of hairs lost: 0
Number of items stores were out of before we got there (within an hour of sales beginning): 2
Hours spent waiting in lines to check out: about 2.5
Excitement on Wesley's face Christmas morning: better be priceless :)

Day Twenty-Three - aka Turkey Day

*Yawn* The tryptophan is kicking in and my brain is slowing down. It must be moving at a snail's pace since I have decided to brave the maniac shoppers in the morning for a $50 portable DVD player. Wesley better appreciate it, because there's a chance I could lose an eye or maybe some hair for that thing. Seriously, I've never gotten up at the crack of dawn on Black Friday (never heard it called that until this year) to catch the early bird deals. I'm hoping it's worth it. I've scouted out a little bling-bling for myself that I otherwise wouldn't get, so that could possibly even the score. Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving and were equally annoyed with their odd, but endearing relatives.

Day Twenty-Two

Today's post is brought to you by the number twenty-two and the letter S. Know a word that starts with S? Well, there's a breed of dog called a Schnoodle (not recognized by the AKC) that is apparently growing in popularity. I didn't even know they existed until today. One of my co-workers made an impulse buy when we were out to lunch and purchased one for herself. She's traveling for the holiday so I and one of our other co-workers have been commissioned/coerced, however you want to say it, into sharing the duties of dog-sitting for her. I don't think I want to give her back.

Day Twenty-One

Don't know if I'll have time to post tonight so I'll just give you a picture to look at. This was from a day in October when Wesley was on fall break. I took the day off and we went to a pumpkin patch to pick out some pumpkins, then ate lunch at Wesley's favorite place, Old McDonalds as he calls it, and just had a grand time with each other.

Day Twenty - A Good Excuse

I know, I know, I missed yesterday. But, I have a good one this time. I had class last night, so I had planned on posting after I got home. So, I watched a little tv and worked on some Christmas presents and about the time I got ready to post, the power went out. It wasn't storming so I'm not sure what caused the outtage. I went and found a flashlight and tidied up the living room waiting for it to come back on. After about forty minutes, I decided I didn't want to wait any longer and went to bed. And guess what, the power came back on about the time that I was crawling under the warm, heavy quilt on my bed. So, I got up and turned off all the lights that were on when the power went out and did what any self-respecting human would do in a house that is about 55 degrees because the power has been out for almost an hour...I crawled into bed and said, forget about it, I'll post in the morning. Don't blame me, blame modern conveniences for spoiling me.

Day Nineteen - Batman Returns

When the alarm goes off this morning, Anthony protests that he's too tired to get up for church. I had stayed up late last night working on a scrapbook, so I don't put up much of a fight. So, we go back to sleep and doze on and off between Wesley coming in to ask for breakfast or jump on top of us wanting to wrestle. Finally, Anthony gets up to go work on the brakes on his 65' Rambler. I stay in bed and go back to sleep. Then, I guess about an hour later, he comes back in and walks around to the side of the bed I'm facing and whispers, "Wake up." I open one eye and look up at him, which he takes as a sign I'm awake. He launches into an update on how the brake work is coming - he's found yet another problem with them. I look up at him, face scrunched up, and say, "Did you wake me up just to tell me that?" He says, "No, I woke you up so you could see Wesley," and nods toward the other side of the bed where Wesley is playing a racing game on the playstation which is hooked up to the tv in our bedroom. I roll over and see Wesley in the cape & belt from his Batman costume (from last Halloween) and his red pajama pants with no shirt, deep in concentration trying to beat his opponents on Gran Tourismo. He's so cute when he plays video games because he not only pushes the buttons to steer; he also moves the controller back & forth through the air as if that will affect anything. I wish I had taken a picture so you could see how funny he looked. He's not one of those kids who likes to play dress-up a lot either, which makes it even funnier (at least to me). You'll have to settle for a picture of him from last year in full costume & just use your imagination from there.

Day Eighteen

The pumpkin situation has sort of been taken care of. The boy (see Delinquent Children - Day 15) decided to drop kick it this afternoon as we were on our way to the car...to go to a wedding shower for my SIL, aaaaand we were already running late. So now, pumpkin goo is splattered all over the front step and out into the yard, and I had to wipe it off his shoe with a wet wipe before we left. Yum!

Day Seventeen: Sick Kitty Update

Ace is much better. Thanks for the well wishes for him. He's back to being his lazy ol' self again.

Day Sixteen

I think it's time to throw away the jack o' lantern now that it's face is collapsing in on itself.

Short post tonight since I left my power cord at work and despise using our dinosaur of a desktop at home. It's older than Wesley!

Day Fifteen - Delinquent Children

I have a normal, unruly five-year-old lil' boy who has lately been getting into his fair share of trouble at school. Today, he got suspended from the bus for three days. You might be thinking he has, say, punched another kid or maybe shot spit-wads at the bus driver. Oh, no! His offense?...crawling around under his seat with two other little boys (he happened to be the only one lucky enough to get caught). Yes, I have to leave work at 2:00 the next three days to sit in a car line for ten minutes, pick him up, drive the less than two miles to his daycare, drop him off and go back to work for a couple more hours, which will mean I either have to work late or take work home with me to make up for the 30-45 mins. it will take to do this each day. Is that not ridiculous!? Excuse me for my ranting. I usually don't air dirty laundry on the internet, but I am just fed up with this school system and he's only been in it for three months. This is not the first thing, just the latest in a long list of other absurd policies/rules we have to go by. This is his second offense on the bus (first offense is a visit to the principal's office - second is three-day suspension from the bus). His first?...touching a boy (not hitting, not rough-housing, not in any kind of unfriendly or lewd way, just touching him) and not keeping his bottom firmly planted in his seat at all times (Hello! He's five). Am I just overreacting, or do the punishments not exactly fit the crimes? I rode the bus all thirteen years of K-12 and way worse things than touching someone or crawling under the seats happened with no consequences besides the bus driver yelling at you. Don't get me wrong. I understand the necessity of the rules and the reasons behind them, and have talked to Wesley so he understands why they have the rules they have, but this suspension is not a punishment for him (regardless of the fact that it's completely unnecessary), it's a punishment for me. He would like nothing more than for me to pick him up EVERYDAY. So, thank you, school system, for rewarding my son for behavior you want to punish. Thanks a lot!
Okay, rant over, you can now go back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Day Fourteen - Mommy Wars

I hesitate to even bring this up, because it ususally sends women on either side into heated arguments, but I'm curious what other women (moms or not) think about this. I read an old article on MSN about the ongoing debate of whether moms should go back to work or stay home after baby. You can read the article here. I'll go ahead and tell you my opinion...
First off, some background. I'm a working mom. I had Wesley during Christmas break between my first and second semesters of undergraduate and went back to school (and started a part-time job) when he was four weeks old (my mom stayed with me for the first couple weeks back at school until he could go to daycare at six weeks). If I had more options, I wouldn't have chosen to do it the way I did. But, I didn't. I did the best with what I had. I don't feel like Wesley is permanently scarred from going to daycare full-time since he was a baby. But, with my next child, I want to be able to stay home with them at least part-time, probably while I work from home. Quitting my job is just not an option for us.
So, now you know where I come from. My opinion on this whole thing is that every woman (and her husband) should decide what's best for their family. If staying home, taking care of your child would drive you over the deep end (not that you don't love your child, but the day in, day out care of children and likely all of the household chores that would fall on you can get to you) and you are satisfied by staying in the work force, by all means, return to work and find capable, caring people to take care of your child while you're there. If you are financially able (all of the women this article is talking about are) and you WANT to be the one who cares for your child, by all means, quit your job and stay home to take care of him/her. I don't agree with Ms. Hirshman that the trend of women quitting jobs to take care of their kids in an injustice. She has the audacity to say, in effect, that most of these "priveleged educated women" have not chosen to stay home because they enjoy caring for their children. She implies that they have made that choice based on a lie they've been fed by society that to be good mothers, you have to stay home or because they have found fighting for a "new, more just society" to be too hard. She says herself that these are all well-educated, accomplished women. And, what I think she's saying is that staying home is a waste of their talents, that they have a responsibility, a duty to stay in the workforce and pull their own weight to make things more equitable for women. In her opinion (talking about elite women in high-paying jobs), "Staying home should not be considered a choice." Isn't that the same as the line they fed our mothers & grandmothers, that working outside the home was not an option? A woman's place was inside the home. Now, apparently, a woman's place is in the workforce.
I know this might rub a few people the wrong way, but I'm interested to hear what other women & men think. You don't have to, but if you don't mind, when you comment on this, would you tell me what choice you would make/have made for yourself.

Day Thirteen

Today, on my blog, 5 random things.
1. Happy Birthday to my Daddy!
2. The view from my kitchen window this weekend...
3. I'm operating on three hours of sleep. Why, you ask. Well, because I had a test in my class tonight, and I'm a master procrastinator. I don't play around at procrastination. No, I waste an entire three day weekend doing nothing all that productive, not even cracking my Economics textbook until about 10:30 pm on Sunday night (which, incidentally, is my normal bedtime). Then, I drink caffeine and surf blogs for about thirty minutes before I finally start studying. I do that for about three hours before going to bed, where I lay awake for about an hour because the caffeine is still in my system.
4. I really want Mario to win Dancing with the Stars, although I think Emmit deserves it more.
5. I used to absolutely abhor the color pink...now it makes up approximately half of the new clothes I buy. Not sure what happened there.

Day Twelve - Ode to Ace

We have a very odd kitty. Ace is the cuddliest cat I've ever met. I found him & his brother on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere one night this summer. We found someone to adopt his brother, and Anthony finally gave in to keeping him after Wesley named him.
This is him playing in the pool table. If we don't close our bedroom door at night, he'll jump on the bed and walk around on our pillows at our head, all over our bodies and finally lay down on my chest with his fur tickling my nose. He'll lay there for all of 2.2 seconds before he'll almost violently rub his head against my hand trying to make me pet him. We can't get any sleep with him in there.

He usually won't let me use my laptop either, because he crawls all over my lap and tries to lay down on the keyboard. He's sick right now with a cold (yes, my cat has a cold). He's been sneezing for the past day. So, I thought I would post some pictures of him to share the cuteness with the world in the hopes that it might make him feel better to be a famous kitty :)