So this weekend, was the weekend of marriage, sleeping, driving, sleeping, playing, sleeping, playing, sleeping, banging laminate floorboards into place, and sleeping again.

That’s right, I finished laying the laminate floor. Last Monday on President’s day, Chris, Ann and Kurt came over to our smoke filled house (more on that later) and helped lay down some tracks floorboards. The smokiness was because the blade which Lowes-Man told James to buy for a nice smooth edge on our floor, was way too thin and flimsy and wussy to do a proper job. So James would lower the blade, and it wouldn’t really cut, but instead the heat from the friction on the wood/ laminate would cause it to smoke and in addition to taking FOREVER to cut a board, slowly but surely, our entire house because like a scene from some midnight swamp-forest, all murky and smokey with a nasty acrid smell that made one feel sure an icy hand was going to REACH OUT FROM UNDER THE REFRIDGERATOR AND GET YOU! Ahem. Maybe not that bad, but it was smokey and hazy and stinky. So, Kurt and James set off hither and yon to Lowes to Get Thee A Bigger, Badder Miter Saw Blade. They came back and James strapped in that new blade, and it was much much better.

So we sawed and we laid and we CLICKED! and we hammered and we sawed and sawed some more, and then we got to tricky bits where weird shapes and notches had to be cut out of the middle of some boards to go around the closet door frame and Ann and I watched Galaxy Quest (I’m a big believer in entertainment during long drawn out home improvement projects) while Kurt and James sketched odd drawings on pieces of paper and then James would trot back and forth from the saw to the closet, with both of them looking and nodding to each other and saying “Just a bit more off here,” over and over.

Chris abandoned us first and then went James, which is pretty sad seeing how it was HIS ROOM we were flooring! But I guess school is a fairly good excuse. FOR NOW. So Ann and Kurt and I carried on, sawing and laying and beating and sawing some more. Oh, and let’s not forget measuring. It was kind of fun, especially with friends to make it go faster faster. But when the time came to go get kids and we called it a day, we were still just a bit shy of half-way finished. And when James returned, he commented: “Did you guys get any further?” Which about got him a fat lip.

So, Sunday morning I hopped downstairs and started working on it again, and was dismayed to find that the increasing smokiness of the new blade was… increasing. The sawing was taking longer and longer because if I pushed the blade down too far, it was just getting smokier. I decided, what the hell, I’m going to take this blade off and get the HUGE blade on, dug up the manual under all the sawdust, and carefully managed to get the old one off and the new one on. I wish we’d just used that one from the VERY BEGINNING, because that huge mother fucker sliced those boards like a HOT KNIFE THROUGH BUTTER!

I really enjoy sawing. Is that the proper term for operating a miter saw? That’s what it does, it saws, so I think I got that right. It is pretty fun, and I have to admit, when we started, and James was doing all the sawing, I was getting all itchy and fidgety, because I WANTED TO OPERATE THE SAW OF DEATH THANKYOUVERYMUCH and when I finally got to saw, I was like.. Yeah. This rocks. And I was also very determined not to lose any fingers, thanks to Ann, who helpfully said, “Your thumb!” right as I would turn the saw on. It’s a good thing. No one wants finger stubs floating around a basement, lest of all me, and ESPECIALLY lest of all, my hand. However, I am not as paranoid about the blade coming loose, flying off the saw and whacking me in the eyes, because I often forgot my safety glasses. Not even from in the other room, I’d forget them on top of my head. I guess if the blade DID come loose, I would need to be worried about more than my eyes, more like my whole head.

Anyway, sawing is fun, (“I AM AMY! I OPERATE THE SAW OF DEATH! FEAR ME! MUAHAHAHAHHA!”) and after I got the Large Blade of Dhoom installed, the sawing was much faster. I got just about done that afternoon. During nap time James came down and we finished up the floor part, and felt all anti-climatic because we still had a little corner in the closet that wasn’t finished, so we couldn’t rise and do our “we’re done, we’re done, we’re done!” song and dance. But I finished that up that evening and now…. the flooring is done 🙂 Now, we just have to install our quarter-round (think trim) and find some matching caulk to fill in some gaps around the door frames, and we’ll be DONE done!

I’m thinking Wednesday is the day for the final “we’re done, we’re done, we’re done!” song and dance 🙂

– amy feels all bad-ass today, thus the use of “mother fucker” in this post.

– amy also loves the sound when the boards “CLICK!” together perfectly.

… it is still important to make sure your shirt is on inside IN.

That’s right, I’m sitting here at work, it is well into the morning, and I JUST REALIZED that my shirt is inside out.

I am such a dork.

I am doing War and Hate all in one, baby. You think I’m cheating? SUE ME. Besides, I vomit up enough words that it will be way way way more than necessary to cover both. If I were a better writer, I would be able to tie it all in with half as many, and make all coherent, but oh well, this is me and my rambling brain and I just have to work with what I’ve got, yo. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, this post is all about my friend Chris’ Word Challenge. Perhaps you’d like to read the other entries, or even join in! (Chris would be so ecstatic, you should totally do it.)

Have you read Harry Potter?

If you ask someone that question, you get various responses. A lot of people have read them and love them. Some folks have tried and gotten bored. A majority of folks who have not read Harry Potter will answer vehemently, along the lines of, “Yeah, like I’d be caught dead reading Harry Potter.”

There is a better example of this mind set, in fact, I remember there was a movie or a book or SOMETHING a few years ago that I was totally into (along with the rest of the known universe) and James scoffed at it, and at me for loving it. Just about everyone who wasn’t all into it followed the whole, “Ew, everyone and their dog is going on about that, I’m way too cool for school to be into THAT.” James was giving me the business about it every time it came up, and finally I got sick of a) hanging my head in shame or b) defending my “guilty pleasure” which always ended in hanging my head in shame (DAMN I wish I could remember what it was.) Finally, I spoke up and said, “You know why EVERYONE in the country likes XYZ? Because XYZ is actually GOOD, DAMMIT!”

(Now that I think about it, I think it was the first season of American Idol, and I think I said, “Because these folks can actually SING, dammit!!”)

Whatever it is, the things that we like, read, watch, wear, attend, what-have-you.. these things define who we are, which I think is why we get so adamant about separating ourselves from things which we don’t want to be seen as. As teenagers we rebel against our parents with the need to define ourselves as separate entities from them. And yet then we band together with our friends and “non-conform” in our own group-conforming way. Years out of high school, we all still have our cliques and ways of conforming and non-conforming to show ourselves to the world in the light in which we wish to be seen.

Jon on Blurbomat recently posted thoughts on this same sort of subject in his post, “Going Big” which I read and nodded my head along the entire thing. I’m also reading (OK, i’m re-reading it for the umpteenth time, you caught me) Chocolat, by Joanne Harris. I own the movie, and also love it, but the book has a lot of different aspects which aren’t really pinpointed in the movie. One of the characters in the book, Guillaume, owns a small dog whom he loves dearly, but is very sick. He seeks comfort from the priest and the book’s antagonist, Francis Reynaud, who informs him that dogs have no souls and he’s wasting his time and feelings on a pet. The sad day comes when he has to allow the vet to put the dog to sleep because he is in too much pain. The morning after, he comes into Vianne’s shop. Vianne and Armande let him grieve in his own way, and in discussing the “advice/ comfort” that Reynaud had given, Guilliame asks Vianne what exactly she believes in. She thinks for a moment, and answers, “I believe in whatever makes you happy.”

At Bunko a few weeks ago I sat down to a new table to a discussion in progress about staying at home with one’s kids. It was decidedly pro-staying at home, which is fine, but I thought it needed another point of view, which would be mine, which would be hello, some people HAVE to go back to work in order to pay their mortgage and buy, oh you know, FOOD AND ELECTRICITY.. I really wasn’t riled up as I dove into the conversation, just matter of fact, but as one lady pressed me about what exactly the cost of daycare, and gas, and eating out while at work, and didn’t I think, if I REALLY added everything up, the cost of working would balance out and make the entire situation not be worth working? The fact is, I make more money than daycare, gas, etc. (which came out great, btw: “Actually no, I make more money than all those things. I make a boatload of money!”) and if I didn’t go back to work last fall, we would be in pretty dire straits. Like, defaulting on our mortgage kind of suckiness.

I really don’t mind people feeling strongly about staying at home, or going back to work, these parenting issues are important and it’s important to think them over and decide which side of the fence you are on. For example, I believe that breast feeding is best. However, I’m not going to go hand out pamphlets to the formula-feeding moms, that is THEIR decision, and one I’m sure they came to after a lot of thought. I will however, give a momma breast-feeding in public a grin and a thumbs up, and if I’m really feeling cocky, a “YOU GO GIRL!” But I digress. The point is, it’s a damn good thing that I actually feel good about being back at work at this point in my life, because IF I had really felt miserable about my needing to work and being away from my kids all day long, this woman GRINDING it into me that I really “could stay home, if I weighed all the costs” (except that no, I COULDN’T AND I THINK I KNOW MY CHECKBOOK BETTER THAN YOU) would really have made my misery make me want to cry myself to sleep that night. As it was, I just got a little pissed, and then forgot about it until now. I’m not really mad at this woman either, btw, I think she just got a little too into the discussion to hear my side, and was so positive that her choice was the right choice for everyone, that it got a little carried away.

We all make choices for the good of our families and ourselves. I don’t think it’s anyone’s job to make that decision FOR them, or make someone feel bad about that. Just as in Chocolat, Vianne’s response to Guillame, “I believe in whatever makes you happy,” is entire message of the book. Not only living your life in a way that makes you happy, but NOT pressuring others to live THEIR lives according to your beliefs. The “battle” between Vianne and Reynaud really is about letting people be happy with their own choices, which also means allowing people to do/ read/ watch/ love the things that they want to love and makes them happy regardless of whether it is cool and exclusive or if it is totally mainstream and gauche and, you know, American Idol and Britney Spears. Or choosing to stay at home with your kids. Or choosing to have an abortion.

So how does War tie in to all this? I believe that a lot of the wars we’ve seen lately revolve around this issue. If religious groups (or zealots, I guess I should say) could just allow others to make choices and not try to force their own choices and beliefs on them, would there be terrorist attacks? It makes me a little frightened of events in our country. When we try to remove other peoples’ choices from them and foist our own beliefs on others, I think it spells trouble. We already have domestic terrorism with church burnings, abortion clinic bombings that sane people frown on, regardless of their beliefs, but we also have the more subtle things, pharmacists refusing to give out birth control/ morning after pills because of their beliefs. I believe with every fiber of my being, that abortion is wrong. This means, that I won’t be having any. That’s my choice, for me. I would never, ever deign to make that decision for someone else. Just like I won’t make the decision for other mommies to breast feed exclusively, or stay home or go back to work, or any number of things.

Free choice, people. Living a life that will make you happy. That’s what it’s all about. That, and not deeming yourself worthy of making those choices for others. Not belittling others because their choices are different. Not throwing bombs because their choices are different. Not flying planes into buildings because their choices are different. It starts out small, but we are all warring in our own way, battling over choices, and trying to impose our personal choice on others.

Hate and War

fini

I followed my friend Chris’ link to an article at Psychology Today on procrastination, and then saw a link to this article entitled, “Lust for the Long Haul” which I promptly read through. Because I’m a sucker for sex articles and subscribed to Glamour for years just to read the silly articles about How To Please Your Man In Bed (it all comes down to blowjobs, ladies.)
Very interesting, and fitting for today, since two good friends are getting married this evening, and the article had a lot of good thoughts in there for making a relationship last through the long haul.

Though it did seem like a lot of it wasn’t news. How you’re really feeling can affect your sex life? No! Tell me it ain’t so! Shocking! Come on, this isn’t news. But how a few of the therapists talk about the joy of being grown up and taking on responsibility was a little more interesting, to me, at least. I feel as if I do take on responsibility, but I seem to resent doing so, which could probably earn me a couple of months worth of sessions in a therapist chair.

“What he’s doing is teaching people the joys of adulthood,” he says, “of the wonderful things that can happen in a relationship when you take responsibility for yourself…”

A quote in the article from Frank Pittman, a marital therapist and author of, Grow Up: How Taking Responsibility Can Make You a Happy Adult. I think I should read that one!

“You examine your own behavior and see what you expect others to do for you that you could be doing on your own — for example, learning to feel good about yourself without requiring someone else’s praise and compliments.”

This is directly from the article, and at first glance, I feel like saying, “A-DUH!” This seems like a no brainer, I mean, in high school, in college, in LIFE, I’ve known certain type of girls/women who seem to identify themselves by the relationship they are in, when really what they should do is stand on their own two feet and determine who they are first, be OK in their own skin, LOVE and accept themselves as they are, BEFORE getting into a relationship. If you have to depend on some man for acceptance, then you’re in trouble. I don’t think I’ve seen this specific trait in men, but that’s just because the symptoms in women are so easy to spot to me. Maybe it is common for men, I just couldn’t say.
So a part of me is saying, ‘Hello, everyone knows that,’ but another part of me knows that sometimes this need to be grown-up, be responsible seems to possess me in a stifling vise-like clamp of inaction, and I shouldn’t be throwing all these handy stones when obviously there is something going on in my noggin that I cannot seem to face straight on.

Anyway, there you go, a few disjointed thoughts on this article about how to stay groovin’ in your relationship. Basically, I thought the article was interesting, and had some pretty good points, and I think you should read it 🙂

– amy

• Silicon lube, and silicon toys, do not go together. If you try to use them both at once, you will end up with a big glob of unusable silicon. So please, people, try to keep your lube and your cock rings and your vibrators and dildos all straight.
• some dildos come with very powerful suction cups, which can then be used to thwack your plastic shlong onto a handy surface for use, such as the headboard, the shower wall, the bathroom floor, the bathtub, etc.
• there are THREE DIFFERENT TYPES of lube. water based, silicon based, and some other kind that I can’t remember. Also, if you’re prone to yeast infections, stick with glycerin-free.

Here are the many ways in which the vagina was referred to throughout the evening:

• hoo-ha
• hoo-nanny
• Princess *
• Her Royal Highness
• Noonee *
• “area”

There were some other ones, but they were the usual words used to refer to this area, and are therefore boring.

*That’s right, I used “princess,” just because it’s hilarious to say, “My princess is scared of that thing on page 18” – it just cracks me up. I also used Noonee, because of the SNL skit with the woomba. Tina Fey rocks.

I am totally taking my catalog to the next neighborhood bunko party. Forget Party Lite and Southern Living, it’s time for a Temptations sex toy party! Yee-ha! – amy hopes her parents don’t read this. if so, oh well.

I have totally been digging Chris’ Challenge(we need to determine a name for it, my friend), and seeing the various threads of everyone’s friends criss-crossing back and forth like a spider web all based on this event. I have been mulling over what I am going to do with the various words when I snapped a picture this morning that will be perfect for the word “hate.”

And then today as I was reading at lunch, I got more insight into my whole thought process that goes along with “hate.”
And I remembered another blog entry I read recently that totally tied in, and i’m so ansy and wired up about it all i want to vomit it all down on the page, but i can’t. i have to WORK! and there is more work to be done TONIGHT! and tomorrow we are being all solemn and serious for some “I DOs” and then we are BOOGEYING DOWN until the wee smas!

So I thought I’d tell you. Hate. Soon.

Coming this Saturday,
to a crazy mokes blog near you!

– amy had a very nice birthday thankyouverymuchtoeveryone

It’s weird to feel this old. Not that 32 is that old, or that I’m belly-aching my age.

No, it’s weird to not have that “it’s my birthday! yippee skippee fun fun!!” feeling with me all the time. It’s been a couple of years that I’ve really had that feeling. You know, the feeling of, “It’s my special day!” with the occassional mopey “why do i have to work on MY SPECIAL day!” feelings or even the feelings of “why do i have to do this (enter mundane thing here) ON MY BIRTHDAY!”

Now that I’m old, it’s more like, a normal day with the occasional feeling of “Wow, oh yeah, it’s my birthday!” I knew that I would feel this way which is why I told James taht I wanted a present to unwrap on my birthday. It’s FUN to feel all yippee skippy! I WANT that old “yay!” feeling all day long back. I started to waffle on the present thing a few days ago because I knew James was busy with class both nights before my birthday, but he stopped me and said I was getting a present, dammit, NO WAFFLING ALLOWED! We are still going to get me a bike, but we haven’t gotten around to it yet – busy busy. So this is just a little something for me to have today. Big present still to come.
And he’s right 🙂 Everyone should get a present on their birthday. James brought the kids in to say happy birthday to me right as we were all heading downstairs to leave, and while it was kind of a non-event for them, Jocelyn pitching a fit over being bodily handled (her daddy dared PICK HER UP! SHOCKING!) and Ethan deciding to be all mopey, it was still nice 🙂

It’s snowing this morning, and as soon as I just accepted the fact that traffic sucked and I would be at work an hour later than planned, it was nice to see the snow fall all pretty. It is going to warm up soon and turn to rain, and no schools even thought about closing, so it also is a non-event, except for the prettiness. I wish I worked next to a window so I could see it, cause it’s really coming down. (I can still see it, I just have to actually TURN AROUND to look. Piffle. Can’t be bothered. It’s my birthday for heaven’s sake.)

So, I’m late to work, which means it’s time to get BUSY, but I have been wanting to write, and so I did.

BECAUSE IT’S MY BIRTHDAY! YAY!

– amy is older today and didn’t use spell-check because IT’S HER BIRTHDAY! and so there will probably be a lot of tehs and taht’s and e’s before i’s even after c’s.

I wish there were more foreign language options for young kids. I would love to see immersion programs in our county schools, but aparently we’re living in the wrong county. It seems like right now, when they are so young and picking up everything quicker than quick, NOW is the time for them to be hearing another language and picking it up. I even looked for private preschools in our area, but nothing.

Doesn’t this seem like a no-brainer? There is research that points that language is easier when you are young. Research also points that kids that learn/study another language do better in other areas academically. Why don’t all ELEMENTARY schools have foreign language programs in place? Ethan has a weekly spanish class in his pre-school, and he will often sing me the spanish songs about numbers and body parts. I wish they would do even more.

Jocelyn can count to ten already. Heaven knows we haven’t been working on it or anything. Sometime in the last few months, she just started counting all the time. She picked up a floating “3” foam number in the bathtub last night and gleefully said, “THREE!” so she even knows what a 3 looks like. She must be watching a lot of sesame street at her daycare.

Maybe that’s teh answer. We’ll quit tivo-ing Little Einstiens and the other shows, and just pick something off of a spanish network. Might not be a bad idea.

How does one go about getting more immersion programs in one’s public school?

I have been thinking about the challenge my friend Chris has come up with. (Go look! Join the challenge! It’ll be fun!) I thought it was a great idea and waffled on participating because things have been so crazy lately, and I didn’t want to say I would do it and then not find the time to do it. I am always wishing I had my camera so I could take pictures during the day and I just in general wish I would take more pictures, so finally I signed on, and this morning I grabbed the camera and decided I was going to fulfill one of the challenges today.

I helped get the kids into James’ car this morning, with the camera hanging around my neck and I exclaimed, “I’m going to take y’alls picture!” and was all excited, until James informed me that the camera battery was dead and needed charging. Grrrrr.

Anyway, so unless I use some other way of fulfilling a challenge, guess that isn’t happening today. Perhaps I’ll think of something else. We’ll see.

Life has been busy. It’s a good busy. Tonight I have bunko with the neighborhood ladies, and I’m really looking forward to that. Tomorrow is a bachelorette party that will probably last until the wee hours of the morning (except that one of us is going to have to get home at a somewhat decent hour to thank the sitter and send let her go home. Oh, James is going to the bachelor party of the groom tomorrow too.) Sunday evening I have poker with some friends/ acquaintances of Chris’ again – I had lots of fun the first time, this time, I want to have fun and WIN WIN WIN! And then Monday is President’s Day. Both James and I have the day off, but the kids’ daycare/ school are open, and so it will be the PERFECT day to lay our newly purchased from Costco laminate flooring. I sent an email to some friends inviting anyone who wants to help over, because I think a few people at least want to learn about the process so they can do it in their home, so we might have help/ onlookers, or we might be going it alone. Wednesday is my 32 (is that right? good lord, I’m old) birthday, and while we are going to get me a bike for my birthday, it probably won’t put in an appearance ON the ACTUAL DAY, so I’ve informed James that I still want a present on the actual day of my birthday, doesn’t have to be anything fancy (because the bike will be the fancy thing!) Because I do! For the last couple years, money has been tight and I’ve always just told James that I don’t need/ want anything because honestly the bank account couldn’t really afford it anyway. So this year… SCREW THAT! I want me some PRESENTS, DAMMIT! Well, just one, will be fine 🙂 I also told him I want to be surprised, and therefore he needs to come up with it himself, and not just have me tell him what to get me. I can think of a couple of options that I hinted I wanted around Christmas that he could still give me (HINT HINT HONEY!), but something totally different would be fine too.

I just want a present 🙂 On my actual birthday. Which is next Wednesday. It just hit me that my birthday is next week. Damn, life has been busy.

Work has been going well, lots to do and some interaction with folks that I can actually label as “my” clients, and that’s a nice feeling. I think I may pick up a book about project management, or maybe just organization. There’s a lot going on, both at work, and also personally and right now my method is to write down everything that comes to me so that then I have got it on paper and my brain doesn’t feel the need to pop up with the random things I need to do in the middle of other things, like “I have to do up Jocelyn’s invitations!” (which I did, last night, although I still need to do a few more.) Sometimes just purging the brain of all the random thoughts, getting it all down on paper (or website, as the case may be,) is helpful in itself. There’s a great book called “The Artist’s Way” that recommends “morning pages” where you just sit EVERY morning and write, write, write for a specified amount of time or number of pages and then you are done and can go on about your day. There really is something behind that, because if you get all of the mundane out, or the thoughts you’ve been kicking around in your head, it is like you release them and are then no longer bothered by them, and your brain is free to focus on other things.

So my biggest issues right now are sleep, this diet pill I’m currently taking, and the thousands of things that my brain reminds me of every 10 minutes on a rotating basis.

The sleep and the pill thingee are inter-related. I have been taking it for a few weeks now, and I am seeing results. I still don’t know how I feel about it. I think I will be pretty relieved when the 6 weeks are up. I have always kind of been afraid of drugs/ medicine, even when I was a little girl. When my mother would give me tylenol or whatever when I was sick, I used to not swallow it, and then wait until she was gone and spit it out. I just didn’t like the thought of the medicine breaking down and going all through my body doing heaven knows what. I still don’t, but I’ve gotten over it for the most part. Any girl who hits puberty and then knows the horrid bloated pain of MENSTRUAL CRAMPS gets over fear of medicine VERY QUICKLY and pops the pamprin like it’s candy.

So, the drugs. If you interested, it is called Phentermine, and it acts as an appetite suppressant and also ups the metabolism. They don’t make me crazy, which is good, that is always my first fear of any drug. It does affect my sleep though, and my reaction to it. I am not the sort of person who can go day to day on a little bit of sleep. I need 7 or 8 hours a night, or I feel it the next day. And even if I don’t feel it, my mood and state of mind shows it. If I am getting weepy or depressed, the first thing I look at is how much sleep I’ve been getting the last couple of days, and that is usually it.

So first off, I don’t get tired and all ready for bed at the usual times. I still seem pretty awake and alert and my mind is always on the go-go and I have often kept James up for a half hour or 40 minutes just talking and blabbering away while we’re settling in for bed. This isn’t out of the ordinary, in fact one of the main symptoms of me being sleeping is I will get very chatty and just can’t seem to stop talking. The sleepy-chatting and this mind-racing chatting are pretty different though. So I have to make a pretty concerted effort to go get my butt into bed at a decent hour, and it is hard, and I often fail.

When I fail, I don’t feel tired the next day. I sometimes have the same “you are TIRED” body feelings, like I get this emptiness feeling somewhere in my stomach when I need sleep or have had too much caffeine, and I’ll still feel that, but I don’t actually FEEL tired. Also, even like last night, when I went to bed at 11:30, when I wake up in the morning (at 6:30, this morning) even though I’m tired, it’s like a switch has been flipped, and I’m AWAKE. BING! AMY’S AWAKE! Mind ON! Brain GO-GO-GO!

So these aren’t necessarily BAD things, but they are different, and I am not taking this pill every day, I take it for 5 days a week, and then I’ve found that the 2 days I’m not taking it, I need a lot of sleep. Last Sunday James got up with the kids in the morning and I didn’t even notice. I was too busy sleeping. And then that afternoon, I went upstairs and had a nap. I NEVER have naps. I was so set on the sleeping that I didn’t even take off my bra, and sleeping in a bra is never a good thing. My body just needed the sleep.

So, even though this pill makes me Not Sleepy Ever, I need to really make an effort to get my body the rest I know it needs. It’s hard. Especially when the weekend is facing you and it has “staying up past midnight every night” written all over it.

Ok, I could go on and on, but I think that this is probably way longer than a blog entry should be, so I will spare you the torture to reading more of my speedy-brain thought vomit, and let you get on with your day 🙂

– amy never knows if I comes before E, and who knows what’s after C

First off, happy first (ok, today is his second) day of new job, James!

2. We didn’t go see the panda. The tickets I had procured were pretty early. We live a fair ways away from the national zoo (hello northern Virginia suburbs!) We would have had to get up crazy early. So when all of a sudden I realized that WE WERE GOING TO GET SNOW last weekend, the conversation went something like this:

me: so. the panda. we’re going to have to get up early.
james: yeah. very early.
me: yup. early early early.
both of us: ….
me: so you know, it is supposed to snow this weekend!
james: SNOW! wow, gee, we wouldn’t want to go out and get caught in the snow.
me: nope, we definitely wouldn’t. and you know we have to wait in line to see the panda, we wouldn’t want our kids waiting in line outside in the freezing cold snow.
james: nope, wouldn’t want that.
both of us: we’d better not go.

Yeah. So, maybe next time. When it’s not so early. And so freaking cold.

3. We DID get SNOW! YAY! And did you know that Target has SWIMMING SUITS ON DISPLAY and have had them on display since JANUARY? I’ve been meaning to post a big ???!&#$*#&@???? about that and have forgotten. We don’t need short sleeve craziness YET, Target, so just CHILL OUT with your swimming suits and your pool toys and your sidewalk chalk and your bubbles and beach balls. JEEPERS!

So yeah, I’m bitter, because I can’t find my kids snow boots anywhere. Grrrr. Anyway, it started snowing late Saturday afternoon, snowed all night, and we had about a foot, or maybe a bit more, Sunday morning. It was all done snowing by then, which is what I call a PERFECT SNOW STORM! I took the kids out and we all played/ shoveled in the snow, then James came out, and I went in and he kept shoveling and the kids kept playing. I popped my head out to ask the kids if they wanted to come in, but they were having a blast. Despite the icicles wedged in between their soaking wet socks and their sneakers, because they don’t have snow boots. Jocelyn loved to gingerly lay herself down in the snow and make snow angels, though it took a few times of showing her how to move her arms and legs for her to catch on. Ethan loved to climb up the snow hills all the shoveling created and slide down them. I loved sitting inside with a cup of tea watching from the couch with my feet in slippers. Yesterday, I was in serious pain from the shoveling, the “you didn’t lift with your knees” sort of aching sore back muscles pain. Thankfully, it seems to be all gone today.

Oh, the back/ neck muscles weren’t just sore from the shoveling (i am a wuss, but not that much of a wuss). Ethan threw a tantrum at one point on Friday and as I was handing him off to his father, he punched me in the side OF THE NECK. I mean he really got me. DAMN it hurt, and DAMN it totally wonkified my whole spinal column. So yesterday, I was still dealing with the weird neck issues (I haven’t wanted to go see a chiropractic so badly in my life*) and then with the back muscles it was just too much. Again – today, feels like everything is spit-spot.

* Actually not true, I was probably in much more pain after I was rear-ended many many years ago. But nothing fades the past like the present!

4. Ethan did have a couple of punching, kicking, head butting tantrums over the weekend. He got tossed in his room and ignored for them, and his Geotrax train went into timeout until the next day. He seemed to get over them much quicker however, and James said that he could see the pause, in his mind, before he just let loose. The pause was non-existent before, so he is definitely making progress. He often will inform me, after he does something, “That was a good choice, mommy! I make good choices!” Yesterday he had a good day at school as well, no notes, no visits to the office, and his afternoon teachers said he did great. Nothing like bribery and rewards, so he got 2 M&Ms when we got home.

5. Work is a lot busier lately. And worse, it’s the kind of busy where I have to pro-actively do stuff, rather than just passively do what is handed to me. I have to put on the grown-up hat and make calls and act like I know what I’m doing, and convince people to spend the money in their budget by giving me work. The calls have turned into meetings, where I will again, have to act like I know what I’m doing, and use words like, strategy, goals, focus, standards, accessibility, etc. I DO know what I’m doing, but it’s much easier to do the passive thing than the proactive thing. I do get to ride on the metro train to DC tomorrow though, which I always enjoy, and of course, that also means there’s a Perfect Pita in my future as well. Yummilicious.

6. Birthday parties. Jocelyn is turning 2 in March, and it seems like we should be at the stage in our parenting to have a real children’s party, instead of just inviting our friends over for a get-together and make a cake and call it good. However, she IS 2, which is still pretty young, and have YOU had a house full of kids over? I haven’t, and I smell disaster. I am thinking of inviting our neighbor kids, the other kids in her daycare, setting up kid tables with butcher paper and crayons on them, making a cake, getting pizza delivered, and calling it good. I should think of it as like a trial run to Ethan’s birthday in May, when we’ll invite his class for some sort of party function. Eek. I’m scared just thinking about it.

7. Home improvement. I don’t know if you know, but Costco has a coupon for $5 off their laminate flooring. We have a room in the basement that we’ve just got finished by a contractor, and we’ve decided to lay the floor ourselves. I have vast dreams in my head of how we’ll become pros at laying this floor and then we’ll move on to bigger and better things. We’ll floor our bedroom and closets! We’ll floor the other bedrooms! Then the HALLWAY! THEN THE WORLD!!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHA! I’m actually pretty excited, we were originally going to have our contractor do the flooring, but after looking at the instructions, we thought, “Oh we can do THIS.”

I’m sure you’ll hear about the divorce from “irreconcilable differences” soon, all stemming from arguments on the proper way to lay laminate flooring.

That’s it for now.

– amy walks the walk, but never talks the talk