Friday, November 22, 2013

♪Oh The Weather Outside Is Weather...♪

I have been crafting up a storm and the man has been baking cookies fresh for Thing 1's lunches... peanut butter oatmeal. Yum!  Cookies make the house warm and it smells like the holidays already!  Generally I am ALL about making room for Thanksgiving so it doesn't feel like the redheaded stepchild of the holiday season, but this year man, it just seems like we need the OOMPH into Christmas.  Luckily for me, I have never had decorations for Thanksgiving and the stores decided to lump Halloween and Thanksgiving together this year.  Amazingly enough, I now have Thanksgiving décor due to the storewide "fall" clearances that did the lumping together! Haha!

 Ma and her man are doing well...we like him.  He might be around for Thanksgiving... hope so... he's fun.  It's going to be a small Thanksgiving this year, much like Christmas.  I'm just glad I finished shopping already.  I get to sit back and enjoy now.  Generally, what we do is take the Friday after Thanksgiving to decorate like so many people I'm sure do.  This year, I'm jumping the gun...and get this...at the request of Choners...he is usually VERY adamant about giving Turkey Day it's due.  Well, this year, he wants his cake and he's going to eat it too... Next Monday, whether the big one goes to day care or not, we are doing our Christmas décor.  It's something to pass the time and we might have Knott's plans on Saturday... but until that is certain I don't want to make any plans in stone.  So I say, the general idea will be to get out the Christmas awesomeness for Monday... and if Thing 1 goes, she will come home to a winter wonderland in the house :)  Also, I am planning on lights outside this year! Shhh, don't tell Mister... 

This weekend is family weekend, we're gonna see a lot of his family :)  I say his family, but they're really OUR family...It's funny, I just wanted to specify WHICH side of the family, mine or his...  I could say The Brown side...  But really, that doesn't help... us Irish have been known to have the fever.  So both sides are relatively brown.. hehehe...

Tuesday is Christmas pictures... I have been saying, I want to make more image heavy posts, but I haven't yet.  I think because I don't plan them THAT far ahead... so it's hard to do.  Also, I love my camera.  I love it SO much I'm afraid to leave the house with it...  I know.. shut up...  I got a filter for it to protect the lens so perhaps I would feel better about letting it bang around my back pack...  wrapped in a scarf...  and maybe a sweater.

Next years tax return already has a portion dedicated to my new lens.  My cousin Ace is in "the business" and he helped me out HUGE on shopping around for my next lens purchase... And the more Choni is working on his film project the more I think he will probably want to use the Nikon for projects...  A new lens wouldn't hurt!  Ace said that my camera body and specs are great, I should be getting great results when I put the new lens on ...next year...

I am LOVING the weather...cold. I love cold.  Snuggles, soup, hot cocoa, coffee NOT for my morning commute... aaaahhhh... Blankets on the couches... I LOVE blankets...  kid snuggles...  and when the decorations go up...the soft warm glow of the tree...  oh yeah... that's the stuff....

Today is my last work day of November and I start my staycation... Thing 1 asked if I had any time off that overlapped HER time off...so I made some... cause sometimes, you just have to.  I hope this allergy/cold thing goes away... Maybe with a little help from my friends Alka Seltzer and Nyquil... 

Too bad there's not a way to make people leave comments... I want comments...

I'm Better at Stalking...

I have been keeping up with READING the blogs I follow... reciprocation has been more difficult...
This is what happens to US when the economy tanks and slowly comes back on line...and by slowly, I mean I don't think that there is an instrument that can measure the slowness... THAT's how slow...

I can be so busy I work through lunch one day, and the next day I can be completely dead and begging for work to do... I always have work to do, it's like home...when in doubt, clean.  Here it's the same basic principle... You just need to know what and where to clean.  Know that, and there will always be something to do.  Such is life, eh?  Yup, I think so, too. 

The past two months have been unreal busy...just as I said.  It's amazing, because the time I feel I have the most to say I am unable to say anything because I am sitting here with visions of V-Tech toys dancing through my head...  not really... My Christmas shopping is finished.  Just two things to pick up when they arrive at the store and I'm DONE.  Because Christmas is thin this year. 

I can't believe how quick it came up on us, and I say that every year, but I really mean it this year.  And I'll really mean it next year, and ten years from now.  I swear... I totally swear.. like... totally.

I have the dreaded second birthday coming up of Thing 2...and not just any second birthday, the last second birthday I will throw...so do I throw one? do I do something at home in the backyard?  Do I say "Hey Clan, who wants to meet us at (insert pizza place with games here) on such a day at such a time?" and see who shows up?  I have NO friggin clue... Not a single damned one... dammit...

So instead of freaking out about it, I'm just gonna leave it alone for now.  I have too many things.  My weekends are filling up fast and I am increasingly ecstatic about the fact I found the planner I did when I did.  Otherwise I'd have post it notes where plans should be and that would be a disaster... mentally more than anything else, but still...It would be there...bahaha...

Everyone's doing really well...Thing 1 is bringing us to a place where just when we think maybe she's not doing as well in school as we once thought, BOOM... nope, we get the great behavior report followed up by the awesome AR testing report and we put those worries to beddy-bye...

Thing 2... Jesus pleezus...  She's crazy.  I mean it, she's NUTS... she just runs around the house with her little blahblahblah language and talks to you like she's just having herself a conversation you never knew you were in the middle of.  Then there's the whole breaking the crib thing...she broke the crib...she is SO not ready for a bed yet, not even a toddler bed...she would be crawling up into Thing 1's bed and head butting her to instigate a playtime at midnight....so we are totally NOT doing this bed training thing yet...that being said, we are need of a new crib.  So I have my eye out on one that's atleast half what I paid for this one new...I don't need the mattress, just the crib...it's not safe for her to have it the way it is now and it really freaks me out...  no matter how many zip ties or nails or screws you use, there's always that mom gut thing that makes you think, FUCK THIS, I NEED A NEW ONE... and that mom gut is applied to so many things... I don't mess with the mom gut.

Speaking of mom guts, mine is pretty much gone ;)  I am down 10 pounds and I have another 10 before I get to where I was before thing 1 was a twinkle in our eyes...another 10 pounds after that and I'll be perfecto...right at the place I need to be period.the end.  So that's a nice sentiment.  And now my rings fall off....shit.

And to celebrate my awesome personal triumph, I cut my hair off...  pixie cuts are huge right now, and no it's never been my way to follow the herd (baaaa n shit) but my hurr... oy vay.

I highlighted it...fine...it was great...fine...I stopped the affordability on it...had to stop...fine...so I did...  and then I had bleached ends...meh.  I covered them with wash-out brown...fine...worked for a little while but it's still crunchy feeling... meh.

Stop the color, stop the bleach and the crunchy... cut the hair. Done... looks freakin sweet and I can't believe I didn't talk myself into this sooner.  As much as I feel that having long hair is something I owe the "bad hair" community, I am sorry all you thin stringy hair'd folk...but long hair thick hair is NOT awesome...Looks great, I'm not denying that fact... but it sucks to have it on your head, on your shoulders and then there's that whole "I Don't Like Things Hanging Off My Body" syndrome... haven't heard of it yet? really?  It's new...  I have it...with a vengeance.

Until they make a pill for that, I will not have a purse, a child, a scarf, hair, bags, whatnot hanging off my body at anytime.  This is why I don't let my kids pull on my person, I carry a backpack not a purse and why if I am carrying bags from the car to the house...of who am I kidding...if I can help it I NEVER CARRY BAGS FROM THE CAR TO THE HOUSE! Carpel tunnel and IDLTHOMB syndrome are why.

<END RANT>

<NEW RANT>

Unless I'm missing some mystical, cosmic, universal message...me n the significant other are awesome fantasticness... Ever have those friends that were like, in marital distress... and people were like, "Oh shit, are they gonna make it?"  Yeah, I had those too... friends...family... whoever...  Well, we haven't had that. Ever.  I just realized that the other day when I recently heard of a split.  Knew the couple fairly well... and BOOM... split.  It was a surprise to her, too, turns out.  Pretty sad when I think of it.  Made me think of me n Choners... and I came to that conclusion.  I don't know, makes me pretty proud to think of that.  I mean, no I don't have a BA in bullshit from FU...  but I take pride in my family...my marriage...Which is probably why we are in the 13th year of couple-dom and nearing the 11th anniversary of our engagement, and the 10th anniversary of marriage is next April...
I was thinking that we should do something special and when I mentioned it to the mister and said, We should do something for our anniversary next year (which we NEVER EVER do)" and he nods...and then he thinks...and then he says "Why next year?  What's so special about next year?"  And when I tell him it'll be TEN whole years...oh the look on his face...so adorable I could have just died....

I still look at that face and see the baby face I met when I was 19...  I was 22 (going on 23) when we got married.  I know plenty of people who were married younger than that...but ask me how many of them are STILL married??  Go ahead...ASK ME...  not much...

Not that I want to turn this into a bragging session, but I'll tell you what...My foot still hurts, I found out I have TMJ and the mouthguard is too expensive to buy right now so I go to bed with Motrin every other night...My allergies have been taking this opportunity of our weird weather to SHIT all over me and make me miserable and the TMJ is now causing tension headaches and tension in my neck and shoulders comes and goes... I am doing little exercises at my desk all day to curb this. My dentist basically told me my teeth are just BAD and if I want to continue eating food that I need to brush and floss after every meal and use a special rinse that helps decrease the dry mouth I have as a direct result of taking antihistamines which I cannot function without.

My point is this...  I take the things that are awesome and going RAD and focus on them 100% because there is enough SHIT to balance them out...Trust & believe...It's NOT ALL wine and roses...but when I sit back after doing shit ton of crap work and think about going home to my hunnies...  it makes things better... and it makes things better because my mister makes ME better... being a good mom to the kiddos makes me want to be a better person...and then sometimes kids are just assholes... They just are...and I think sometimes what you need to do is realize that, walk away, and pick up somewhere fresh in the morning.. That's what works for us so far! 

Yay!  Basically, balance.  Everything is... balanced... There's good to outweigh the bad and sometimes, the opposite is true.  To wrap it up (as if that's at all possible with me) my foot hurts, my jaw hurts, my mouth forever tastes of toothpaste and flavored floss and my husband is all kinds of MAD awesomeness...and I think I'll keep the kids, too.  Aloha.