Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Halloween

I promised a post today, but I'm really really tired. So, you can check the pics over on Flickr and I'll post a little something tomorrow.

Which also happens to be the first day of NaBloPoMo!!

What do you do at work? I made this spooky cupcake today during a mandatory meeting today.

Monday, October 29, 2007

My kid says some crazy stuff.

Mini Mann is going through the really fun stage of learning to read. He's really beginning to grasp the idea of phonics and how the letter sounds are useful for things like spelling.

Last night in the car on the way home from dinner, I hear the boys arguing. About how to spell Middle Mann's name. Mini was going to die before he acknowledged that the second letter was an E.

"Uuuuhhh...Mommy? What letter makes the uuuuuhhh sound? It's a U isn't it, Mommy? Like Ugly and Umbrella? It's a U. Right? Right?! Right!"

"Um, yes. Uuuhhh is U like ugly and umbrella, but the letter in your brother's name isn't a U, it's an E."

"That's just not right. I'm pretty sure it's a U, but whatever!"

Sunday, October 28, 2007

church home?

We've been going to a church here for a few weeks. I've enjoyed the worship and the messages really seem to be speaking directly to me. They've been about community the last couple of weeks. Of course, they're pushing small groups right now. I'm not 100% sure this is our new church home, so the idea of jumping right in to a small group is a bit overwhelming.

That said, the idea of building a community is very important to me. Especially since I'm missing my community back home very much. I guess I don't just miss the people, but the familiarity of how I lived my faith out in that community where I was so comfortable. I was very grounded by my community and my routines.

I'll get there here. I'm hoping that this time without a community will help me grow closer to God by myself.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Moblogging

I hooked up with mobile blogging today, thus the couple of pics off my phone. I'm hoping that mobile blogging will make NaBloMoPo more successful for me. I'll be traveling quite a bit in the coming month and I'm pretty sure there'll be days there where actually getting logged in and posting something of significant value will be difficult. But, now being able to blog from my phone will make it much simpler to just get out what I'm thinking quickly and send it off.

Also, maybe it'll make me a little better at the whole blog it when it happens because I'll forget in about 5 minutes problem I have.

we found the webcam

It's funny to me. When we moved, we unpacked about 2/3's of the boxes during the first couple of days that we lived here. There was so much that we needed to get out so that we could feel like we were home.

Once we got out all that we needed, the rest of the boxes moved out into the garage and now we only get into them when we find something we're missing. Interesting to me, that the things we're missing are usually found in the first or second box that I look in. Also of interest is how much other stuff I find in each box that I really had wished for in the last few weeks.

So, I found my webcam. The one I got for Christmas. So, if you wanna chat, I can video chat now. YAY for me!

The sunset at St. Augustine

I love customized drinks!

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Some stuff from the last week or so.

I bought a new toy. I know you're jealous...mine is the silver one with 160 GB of storage. It's going to take some time to fill it up, but I'm ready for the challenge.


I was in Puerto Rico. For a week.

In case you weren't sure, unless you have a very diverse exposure to the ecoli available in the waters of this region, do not drink the water. Not even the nice bottled water provided by the hotel. It's bottled from water deep in a well in the beautiful native land in which you dwell. I believe it may, in fact, be the festering grounds for the evil creatures that climbed inside me and made a home. My body loves me so much, that it kindly, and quickly saw to it that all the evil creatures were expelled mercilessly within 12 hours of their entrance.

Going to PR and leaving your family for the longest ever in the history of their lives is the perfect time for amazing lessons to be learned at home. It is not generally recommended that these lessons involve the 6 year old and his encounter with jumping off a toilet, a slippery floor, and the edge of the door. Softie did a great job at stopping the bleeding, locating a health care facility in the area, and encouraging the doctor to take his time and stitch him up nicely. Heck! It only took 14 stitches to get the job done.

I did take some beautiful pictures on the plane ride home. The Carribean is absolutely breath-taking.

Sweetie started her own blog!

AND! We went to the ocean yesterday. The Atlantic ocean. We've official gone from sea to shining sea. Pictures are coming.

Deep thought of the day.

It seems to me that the longest term consequence of choice is the reality that no matter what happens afterward, the pain of the choice that has already been made will, for the remainder of our days, change the reflection of ourselves to ourselves. For the better or the worse.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Puerto Rico at night


Puerto Rico at night
Originally uploaded by Everyone's crazy
I haven't mentioned the Parkinson's lately, have I? The other skyline pics I took last night were WAY WAY worse with the shaking. I think I need a tripod.

The Island of Enchantment

This new job of mine is working out pretty well. Although I miss my family something fierce, I get to go to cool places like Puerto Rico on business. For a whole week.

I'm kinda glad I know my way around blogger, since all of the directions are in Spanish. It must have something to do with the IP address, but it's a little disturbing. Spell check isn't getting anything right, so I'm sorry if there's errors.

I'm actually on my first trip with my new boss, so I'm learning from the best how to do this business travel thing.

I'll try to post some photos in a little bit. We are actually working while we're here, but I'll work harder tomorrow to take pictures than I did today. There really is a lot of beauty here.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Random Facts of Recent Days

  • There were two rattlesnakes killed about 20 feet from my front door today.
  • Apparently, there are also Wood Scorpions near the rattlesnakes.
  • There is a doctor who lives across the street is maybe 24 years old. That seems wrong to me.
  • My tummy has been upset again today. Really. Upset.
  • I've been thinking about putting together my 100 things.
  • Apparently there wasn't as much on my brain as I thought.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Did you ever wish?

We live in Gainesville now, as I've previously mentioned. There's lots of nature around here. New to us nature. I tend to avoid things I don't know about, so if you can imagine, I don't even want to accidentally walk through the grass if I accidentally park too close to the yard. Yes, I back out and try again so that the nature touching doesn't happen.

There's all kinds of different bugs and plants and lizards and frogs. I'm used to slugs in the rain, but there was a moth in my garage the other day that looked oddly like a bat. I'm still not convinced that it wasn't. Eugh!

Okay, so here's what I wish. I wish I had one of those really cool computer identifier thingys they use on CSI where they put in the partial fingerprint and it scans through the whole database of the world and finds the bad guy. I would take pictures of all of the nature around here and run it for processing. Then I would know if I should be knocking over the mushrooms or cooking them up for dinner. Whether I should make friends with the nice moths or call pest control for the bats.

By the way, the mushrooms here are big enough for me to believe in Smurfs. They spring up almost overnight and go through a crazy lot of changes before they get kicked over by my brave husband.

A little about the Sweet One...

So, about 15 years ago, I met this really sweet little baby. I'd worried and worried for the preceeding 9 months about many things. Not the least of these was what in the world was I going to do with a baby. I was only 17, after all.

I'd spent a good portion of my pregnancy puking mostly out of anxiety. Seven months to be exact. In fact, I threw up at least once every day until that fateful day when I decided that I would keep her for my very own.

So, then she was born. Labor wasn't that bad, really. The nurses weren't the greatest. They didn't have any faith in me to be a good parent. I didn't know exactly what it meant to be a good parent, but I have always been stubborn, so I knew that I'd figure it out and Rock the House at it.

She was an easy baby. Very easy. She nursed right away. In fact, the first full day she was alive, I had to go to a nursing class at the hospital. The teacher made all the other new mom's check out my kid, the barracuda. Ewww...I was 17. These women were all looking at my boobs and this kid, umm...sucking on them?! Ugh! I didn't really want to breastfeed, but my mom strongly encouraged me to. Looking back, I'm really glad that I did.

She met all of her milestones ahead of schedule including being fully potty trained one week after her 2nd birthday.

The final day of potty training wasn't my shining moment in parenting, but I think it bears mentioning. If you spank the crap out of your kid for pooping in their panties after they "promise to Jesus" they won't do it again doesn't actually scar them for life. It does, however, make for very funny fodder later in their lives. It will not earn you, the mommy, a real nomination for Mother-of-the-Year either, no matter how many times you hope that it will. For the record, after the whooping, she didn't poop in her pants again.

She's always been very verbal, though initially she didn't want to let on to this fact. I actually had to set the monitor back up in her bedroom so I could hear her. She'd play with all of her friends (stuffed animals) throwing tea parties for them in her crib. Once she'd perfected her language skills, she decided to share with us in full sentences from the beginning.

She's always been a planner and when she was about 4, I had to make a rule that she was not the one who would be making the plans for what we were going to do each day. No lists, sweetie. You're not the boss of our day, I'd have to tell her. Even at that age, she was a better person than me.

The first day of school scared the crap out of me. I was terrified that she'd tell her teachers what a crazy mommy I was and they'd take her away from me. I found incredible comfort in the fact that on the first day of school, her teacher told all of us parents that she'd believe half of what the students said to her about home if we promised to believe half of the stories they brought home about what was happening at school. Perspective. It's a beautiful thing.

We've always talked pretty straight with each other. I decided long before she was born that when she asked me hard questions I would answer them with all the truth available. We still follow this plan today.

She has grown into an amazing young lady. I can't get her to earn a B in school to save my life. She's all about the A's. She makes amazing choices in her friends and with her values. She is all I ever could have hoped for and I am thankful every day that God made her His kid in spite of my crazy motherly input.

God Tube

I just got a link to this from my Dad. It's pretty powerful. Kinda makes me think about all that I let get in the way and how amazing God is to be willing to still take me back. And not just take me back, but take all the crap I come with.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

quiet

I'm quiet today. It's spreading to my heart. Life isn't always easy. Not that it's really hard right now. It's just quiet.

I don't want to say that I'm looking for trouble. I just have had so much going on in my life for so long, that these empty days are geniunely boring. It's a simple life here in Gainesville. For me.

Being new in real life kinda brings to light how much I don't share here.

That may sound strange, but for the last 15 years or so, the people around me have watched my life change and grow and, well, they've been there. So, there's not much back story required. At least about the day to day stuff that makes up my life experiences. At least the ones that people seemed to mostly be interested in.

Since I'm new in real life, I find myself re-telling some who I am and where I came from types of stories.

I think I've been using my kids to make friends.

I say this because when I think about knowing people in Washington, I think about the being known that goes about as deep as 'how was your day?' and 'what's been going on with you lately'. I've habitually answered those questions with answers that tend to lean heavily on the kids. People seem to like me, but I've long believed that if they really knew me, they'd change their minds. They'd realize that they probably, more than anything, pity my kids for having the mom they're stuck with.

That said, I realize that y'all don't know a dang thing about each of my children except for the day to day stuff that I do share...which I know isn't much. There have been many times that I've wanted to reference something specifically about one of them, but y'all don't know that there's some other historical stuff that directly relates to why what recently has been encountered has relevance.

So, I don't share any of it.

Would it be weird to spend a bit of time going back in history and letting out some history on each of my kids?

Part of the reason that I'm even thinking about doing this is because the other day when I was googling something, I realized I've lived a lot of life and that since I have a blog I could actually, possibly be a resource for someone who was googling something that I have talked about. But since there's no backstory here, I don't share anything that anyone would probably even dream of finding useful.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Watching football

I am just sitting here with Softie, watching TV the way we do when he's driving the remote. We watch everything. Sports. Car Dealership infomercials. Sports. Commerc...nope...movie on HBO. This is a fun way to watch TV, though I must admit that it did take some real getting used to.

When we first got together, watching TV with him would drive me crazy. He'd flip to this show and that show and ask me what was going on. Like I knew anymore than he did. We just turned on the show! Remember? You're driving the remote?

It's not like that anymore. I don't have the attention span I used to, so flipping around between 3-10 different shows works for me.

In the midst of it all, I have all these short term exposures to the oddities that are resident in this human race of ours. In life, I tend to try to relate just about everything to something else. Something that I have personal experience with. So with that knowledge in hand...a snippet of tonight's TV experience from my perspective.

I've noticed that when football players get a touchdown, it's fun to watch the guys around the actual play maker. Usually, the main guy is gettin' down with his bad self and someone will run up and be all hip to the step. They slam into each other with coolness dripping from their jerseys. They are the two that the shot is intended for.

But, I find it interesting that there's usually another player or two around this exposure of coolness whose complete dorkiness is revealed on camera for the world to see. He tries to get in on the action of the celebration, but he really ends up looking very much like a big oaf. Jumping up after the other two. Trying to make it back down in time to throw his arm up and high five the play maker's....umm....head. It's really funny.

Next time you're watching the news and the sports come on, don't watch the play maker...watch the poor sap behind him, trying to be cool like his teammates.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Delurking 101

Today is the first blogging holiday I remember ever hearing about. I've learned about many since then, but this Delurking Day is really something.

There's a flutter all over the internet apparently about the decrease the number of comments that are being left. Delurking Day to me is mostly about admitting how much I suck at leaving comments and making a day just so that I can run around to all of the blogs I read and let them know..."hey, I read".

The other thing that Delurking Day offers is an opportunity for me to not be the only person who does this admitting. You too, can hop outside of your reader and join in the fun of letting people know you read what they write.