Ok, so it’s Wednesday and I still haven’t posted my resolutions for the week, so this isn’t looking good. However, last weeks resolutions went stunningly - having finished all my goals by Friday (that damn laundry slowed me down, else I would have finished it sooner) so I had my whole weekend free.
As to this weeks resolutions: I’m going to cheat and list some things that are done or half-way done. So without further ado, the list, week 2:
Plan a damn meal….dammit! Seriously, I’ve been whipping together meals with no fore-thought for like, weeks now, time to get my act together. I’m already working on this one - I have some beans soaking for some chili tomorrow. Just have to do some grocery shopping.
Get my bathroom to the point where I can actually take a shower in it. Done. Just finished taking one with Liam, instead of his normal bath. Awesome, I love my new shower. Pictures to come soon.
Get a haircut and get a real job Well, get a haircut anyway. Yeah, the guy I get a haircut from always bitches at me cause I wait too long to get my haircut (saves money, and gets me a few weeks of that shaggy….um….Shaggy look. Carleen digs scruffy dudes. Again, this one is pretty much done, I have an appointment tomorrow.
Totally unfair, I know, but this week was an absolute horror for both me and Carleen starting from Sunday night, so I’m gonna cut myself some slack for this week. In more positive news, on sunday me and Carleen went and played tennis for the first time since Savannah while MorMor (Grandma) and MorFar (Grandpa) watched Liam at the park. It was awesome - my body has been telling me to get up off my ass for months now, and I finally listened. It felt great to get back on the courts again - I my serves haven’t deteriorated quite as badly as I thought they would, so that’s a plus.
More posts to come soon, hopefully, I still haven’t told you about our new toy, I will surely get to that within, oh, the month or somewhere thereabouts.
Over at The New Me, Chrissy is blogging her 3 goals for the week, she asked if anyone else wanted to join her and I told her I was game, so here goes (plus it’s a great way for me to get to use the ol tag - yaaaay!):
Finish the molding in the bathroom. This bathroom should have been done weeks ago. My continuing struggle with this tiny, tiny room is frustrating, so instead of saying (as was my original intention here) “I’m finishing the bathroom this weekend”, which has been uttered more times than I can count, I will simply break this nearly-finished task into bite-sized chunks. Ten bucks says this “bite-sized chunk” takes me 3 more weeks.
Fold all the laundry. This is so prevalent it could become a permanent fixture to this little project. I’m great at doing the laundry, I do it all the time, but I never seem to actually get around to folding it, until our bed becomes a mountain (the qualifications for the label “mountain” are much easier to achieve in Oklahoma) - Liam can sled nearly all year round thanks to my laundry habits.
No snacking during Lost. Lost has been my arch-nemesis these past weeks. We’re into season 3 and I’ve gained 10 lbs. True, not all of that can be attributed to Lost, and it’s not like I’m eating nachos and hamburgers or anything, in all honesty, I think I eat very well, but I have two problems: portion control, and activity level. Does fruit count as snacking? Cause Mike likes him some apples and would be glad to chomp on that during Lost as long as apples don’t count as snacks.
That’s it for now, I guess I’ll come back next week with the results and we can see how I did. Good luck to us all!
Thought of a question - figured I’d post it to the ‘tubes. How do you listen to music? Is it background noise? Do you actively listen, doing nothing else? Do you listen to one album at a time, or do you randomize it?
Me? I mix it up, baby - randomized all the time, unless I’ve just bought a new album. And mostly music is background noise while I work on the house, though certain songs require my full attention. A few songs that fit that bill of recent, are Jethro Tull’s Aqualung, Cross-Eyed Mary and Locomotive Breath. I LOVE the flute solo’s (course, why else listen to J.T.?). Tell me about your listening habits.
Eeew, sorry for the bad title-pun. I think, however, that I’m allowed some bad humor given that I am on the home stretch in our master bathroom. The tile looks great, and I haven’t even cleaned off the grout haze yet. Grouting the tile took a bit of getting used to, not to mention a few blisters, but I got the hang of it after a while and I’m pretty pleased with the results. I’m completely in love with the tile we chose, and in retrospect, for a little better water protection, maybe I should have made the grout lines a bit narrower, I like the look. In the pics below, the grout is still wet and so it looks darker than it actually is. Dry, it is only slightly darker than the tile itself.
I really can’t stand that all these pictures are blurry, goofy camera….
Carleen has an iPhone which she dutifully takes to bed every night in case she wakes up with a dire need for the latest update on Brittany Spears or with a desperate need to play Pac-Man. This morning I got up before her and started feeding Liam his breakfast. While he was eating I checked my mail and this was what I found:
I’m up. Feel a little qweezy but I’m coming .
I responded:
You’re a dork - sending me emails from bed. I start getting breakfast orders from your iPhone I’m taking it away.
While Mitch was here for xmas he teased me endlessly about having far too many blogs and social networking sites for him to keep up with. He asked specifically if there was way I could collect them altogether so he could access them easier. Well, there is. I just signed up for claimID, a “free, easy way to manage your online identity”. I’ll add to it as my “online identity” grows, which it likely will, given how addictive the internet can be.
Mitch was over tonight and Carleen, him and myself took turns Googling our names. Both of them had very professional hits come up - Carleen’s work for her various Library Blogs, even a quote in the local newspaper, Mitch and his various projects. We saved the best for last, as it seems; check out the first two hits in the photo.
Yeah, apparently I’m a Gay Literature Author. But hey at least I get this great quote on Amazon.com:
Huxley continues to redefine erotica for the 21st century, breathing new life into a genre that was becoming very stale
So here’s my Daemon (from the Golden Compass Website):
Edit: Well screw it the code is screwed up, but here’s my daemon page.
The first time I took it I got a fox, which rocked, but this time I got a Crow, which is pretty cool too. Their descriptions are both very similar. Go ahead and answer the questions about me and see if YOUR answers about me give me the same daemon.
I’ve been teaching Liam sign language for the past few months now, and I wanted to keep a record of the signs he’s learned. Here’s what he knows so far:
Light
Fan
More
Water
Eat
Shoe
Dog
Bath
I think that’s all. I proud of him, and myself as well, this is the sort of thing that I would start and then just give up on, and I almost did, but then he just exploded with all these new signs that, after months and months of practice, finally just started popping out of him.
I would really like to be home right now but I can’t because our house doesn’t have any electricity. It started on Sunday, around the time Mike, Liam and I decided to decorate our holiday tree. I like being at my parents house but I hate this feeling of displacement. I don’t have the things I want or need right at hand around me. I had to tell Mike over the phone at work yesterday exactly what kind of panties my work attire required. It was rather farcicle since I’m sure my co-worker thought I was talking dirty to my husband on the phone.
I want to go home and decorate my tree. I was just starting to get back into yoga again, getting up early in the morning to get an hour or two of my own time before all the hullabaloo started. Sometimes, I just wish mother nature would stay out of my business, or at least tweak things more in my favor. Some nice fluffy snow, power back at my place but a complete power outage on the side of town where the library is? Now that would be nice.
Mike and I watched Golden Compass on Friday night. We were both trying our best to finish the book before we watched the movie but alas, we ran out of time. We read enough, however, to know that the movie does speed up the plot and as a result, kind of misses out on some of the emotion/relationship between the characters but given the depth of the book and the time alloted to the movie, they still did very well and it was a fantastic movie. There’s a great deal of controversy over this book/movie right now given it’s apparent “anti-religious”, “anti-Christian” themes and the proclaimed atheism of the author, Phillip Pullman, however, that warrants a long discussion that we can save for another time (when I actually have more time). It’s actually a trilogy and the real controversy doesn’t apparently appear until the third book when there’s something about the characters killing God. Obviously, I’d like to finish the books before commenting but all I can tell you is that so far the book is fantastic and the movie was a really wonderful watch. The little girl who played Lyra was great.
For now, here’s my daemon. If you haven’t read the book and need an explanation of what a daemon is go here and click on daemon. Really neat concept.
I guess a lion fits. I’m also a Leo, born in July. But the whole modest but proud seems a little contradictory but maybe that’s the point.
Mike will email me every so often at work with little updates. It’s nice because it helps me feel like I’m able to participate in some of his and Liam’s daily activities and I don’t miss Liam so much as a result. They’re usually short “Everything’s good, went down for his nap just fine” type stuff. Last night however, I got this:
Email Subject: Dogs….Grrr
Next time Turbo gets himself stuck in the compost bin I’m leaving him there overnight, and MAYBE it’ll teach him a lesson. How he got in, I don’t know, I’ll have to check it out when it’s light tomorrow.
Liam’s fine, he’s head-banging on the couch.
I’m happy to say I finally have the chaotic family I always hoped for.
Me and Carleen were talking about Halloween for us as kids and how different it is now. Observe: I’m here, alone, except for Liam, it’s 6:30 as I write this, yet I haven’t had a single trick-or-treater. 10 - 15 years ago, I should have several rings of the doorbell, by at least the younger crowd still out with their parents. It’s probably just as well, we didn’t buy any candy anyway, we never get trick-or-treaters. Also, both the mall and Wal-Mart are having a trick-or-treat night. In a way, it’s kind of sad - a generation of kids with parents so scared of some vague, ethereal boogeyman (read: pedophile), that they’re subjected to trick-or-treating in bright, safe gigantic symbols of American commerce. I understand the fear, I really do, I’m wondering if I won’t fall prey to the same fears as Liam grows older. Isn’t it better to fear the boogeyman that’s not there, than to risk allowing your child to fall prey to the one that is?
Halloween has almost returned back into an “adult” holiday, instead of taking your kids out trick-or-treating, you drop them off at the babysitters while you dress up to go to a Halloween party. Maybe that’s what Hallloween is morphing into, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just out of touch with the trick-or-treat crowd. Maybe it’s just more Bible belt, anti-pagan trash that’s ruining my holiday. What I’m really sad about is how apathetic I’ve become towards the whole holiday. It never crossed my mind until yesterday to even buy candy, and even then I forgot - and it doesn’t even look like it’s made a difference. I just rent my horror movie (actually, I did that yesterday, and I didn’t rent, I bought 28 Weeks Later, awesome, but actually not a very good Halloween horror movie), I’d say eat a butt-load of candy, but thanks to Crohn’s I can’t even do that anymore. So basically I rent a movie and if I get around to it, carve a pumpkin (we actually did that this year, first time in the 5 years we’ve been here.
LATER:
But are any of my above reasons the real reason why we don’t get trick-or-treaters? Are there really less people trick-or-treating than when we were kids? Can I really blame the lackluster turnout on society? Unfortunately, no I cannot. As I was putting Liam down to sleep just now I heard (and saw as I passed the window) many children and parents out making the rounds, all of then blowing right by our house. And then it struck me…we have no porch light.
So, I totally missed the fun because I was at work but last week Liam got to chat on iSight with my parents (in Norway) and Mitch (in Korea). Technology is freakin sweet!
I’m catching up on blog reading and I just got to Chrissy’s post about “perfection” and dealing with the “lulls” in life. She just recently finished her MLIS too (in addition to several other accomplishments). I like how she questions “well, what’s next? Is this it?” because I’ve done a lot of this myself lately. We spend a lot of time trying to accomplish things and despite how rewarding the achievement may feel there’s this initial coming down period afterwards. It kind of reminds you that the best part is often the process, not the result. I think sometimes we grow up thinking that happiness is a state of being. Something that just happens but only after a certain mixture of ingredients or specific variables have been combined. The media certainly makes us feels this way. Buy this, be this, look like this. Maybe it’s better not to think about happiness as a state, but as a learned skill that has to be practiced. Continuously. Not that I’m an expert on this but it would seem to make more sense if we thought of it that way more often so we’re not constantly looking for something external to create that specific state of being. On the other hand, it’s also very likely that it’s almost midnight and I should probably go to bed. Either that or waaaaay to many of those Buddhist focused self-help books.
I had to go to OSU Stillwater for a workshop on Friday. I prepared meticulously for this trip, printed out three different maps, two to get me to Stillwater and another of the campus. I got lost. Twice. Once on my way to Stillwater and again on campus. Didn’t help that there was construction everywhere and nowhere to park that didn’t require a permit. I felt pretty traumatized by the time I made it home. I am hopeless when it comes to reading maps and following directions. On the first day of our honeymoon, it was Mike who got us from our hotel in Oslo to the port to catch the boat to the island where the Viking Ship Museum was supposed to be. This would be a city I have visited a total of three times in my life. Mike had never even been in the country before. And it’s not like finding the port in Oslo is all that difficult. You can see it in the distance, you can smell it. Just follow your nose…I just don’t understand how I get so disoriented. I think it’s just the map thing. I do a lot better when people just give me landmarks and tell me “right” or “left”.
You’re The Giver!
by Lois Lowry While you grew up with a sheltered childhood, you’re pretty sure
everyone around you is even more sheltered. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, you were
tapped on the shoulder and transported to the real world. This made you horrified by
your prior upbringing and now you’re tormented by how to reconcile these two lives.
Ultimately, the struggle comes down to that old free will issue. Choose
wisely.
I had this horrible dream last night that I kept getting in trouble for things at work. I showed up without shoes once and then reshelved a bunch of books wrong. Those are the only two I can remember. As punishment, they made me tie balloons to the belt hooks on my pants.
I think the source of this dream comes from various things. First, Mitch sent me this article yesterday about police in Thailand who are punished for minor offenses by being forced to wear a Hello Kitty armband. Second, I spilled gasoline on my shoes yesterday while I was filling up the car on my way back from lunch. I didn’t have time to go home and change so I had endure the smell for the rest of the work day and I was scared to death that a patron would complain or I would get in trouble for getting people high off the fumes or something. Third, I was late for a staff meeting on Tuesday. Lastly, there’s obviously some sort of “you have more responsibilities at work now and yikes that’s scary” thing going on and I guess this is how my psyche is trying to deal with the extra stress.
The balloon thing was pretty funny, though. The Hello Kitty armband definitely wouldn’t work for us since most of us are women and love cats. I guess we could always use it on Matt.
