Sorry, Can't Hear You

Yes, that oblivious individual walking (strolling, more like) down a very busy downtown Chicago street this morning, singing along with D'Angelo and ignoring the stares of fellow office drones making their own way to daily confinement and looking at the singer wondering what the HELL could be so fine on a grey, cold morning to sing about....

That was me. One of my co workers saw me and waved. It took a minute for me to realize that the outside world was trying to communicate with me.

Start your day off right. Here's D'Angelo before he ended up with his very own celebrity mug shot.

Happy Birthdays

Two posts in one day. My, aren't we busy? By we, I mean myself and my (our?) 12 other personalities.

Happy birthday, Dad.

Today would have been my father's 51st birthday. I miss him. A lot.

Happy birthday, Joey! - today is my godson's 1st birthday.
Happy birthday, Dave! - today is my godfather's __ birthday. I think he's 21 again. For the 30th time, or so he says :)

Wordless Wednesday - Grape Jelly

Back to Work

Today is my first day back in the office after being home for two glorious weeks. A few of those days were spent working from home, so it wasn’t all cartoons and Dr. Seuss. But still, I haven’t been here since December 21st and that’s the longest I’ve ever been off of work without giving birth.
What I didn’t expect was the knot of anxiety in my stomach upon my return. (Or did I drink too much coffee without eating?) DH’s schedule changed for some training session at work, so I called the school to say that Belly needs to be there 5 days (instead of 4) both this week and next. I ask how much that will be extra, and tell them I’ll send it in next week. The principal tells me that they don’t allow temporary changes to the schedule. If he goes 5 days then they have to change his schedule to five days, and adjust the tuition accordingly for the rest of the year. What?! That’s insane. It’s freaking pre-school, not pre med. I explained as nicely as possible that I just took TWO weeks off of work to stay with the boys over Christmas break and cannot take any more unanticipated time this month. She stalls and finally agrees to talk to the director of childhood development and get back to me. Seriously, what’s the big deal? As if no kids will be absent those days and suddenly they’ll be overcrowded because Belly is there? Oh, but it’s fine if I’ll pay higher tuition for the remainder of the year. THEN the schedule would be okay. Between tuition and fundraising, don’t I pay enough already?! And it’s not as if I was asking for two free days, I was going to pay for him to go! Now, if I was a less conscientious parent, I’d have just dropped his little butt off each day and waited for them to say something. But did I do that? No, I did not. Maybe I should have.
Before I had that wonderful block of time off, I’d been having horrible, pounding headaches. I tried to tell myself I wasn’t stressed. But the doctor said, “They’re stress headaches.” Then I realized I only got them at work. Hmmm. Coincidence? I think not. It’s not my job, specifically, that’s giving me headaches. It’s the pain of trying to juggle work and home, along with bills and other fun things like basketball practice and birthday parties, that’s what stresses me out. Then I sent an email to a customer and didn’t proof read it, and was embarrassed by my grammar. I wrote “was” when I meant “were”, since I was referring to the plural form of my subject.
Oh, and while I was off I started looking into BS programs so I could return to school. What I found was that I have 2 brain cells left available at the end of each day, and even less money. So school will have to wait.
I think I need a vacation. Again!

When Did I Become So....

Domestic???

I guess it happened 3 years ago when we moved into our first Home. We lived in apartments before that. Some nice, some not. Some is fancy neighborhoods, some in decidedly bad neighborhoods. We were sorry to leave the last one. It was a beautiful place, the landlord was great, and it was in a decent neighborhood. But there comes a time in one's life when you feel the need to take on massive debt to live in a place that will be all your own after you pay the bank about half a million dollars. Insane? Yes.

SO... we moved into a big house in a pretty good area. The catch is that it's a very old house, and while it is big, it's set up so that it's a terrible waste of space. Ah well, it's ours!

We've changed a lot of stuff in 3 years. Got rid of the awful carpet on the first floor in favor of laminate. New appliances. Lots of paint. A backyard. When we moved in, the backyard was covered over in cement. The 127 people who lived here were using it as extra parking. So we had that torn up and we put down dirt, grass and a swing set. DH built a nice new porch.

But the one thing we kept were the ridiculously hideous vertical blinds. It seemed like such a chore to get rid of them. But UGH they looked so, so... institutional! Like a cheap hotel convention center! So I am pleased to announce we have real curtains now!!!!

And my concern is, when exactly did I start getting excited about freaking curtains? Looking back to the first few apartments (and I use the term loosely) that I lived in, I did what every young, broke person does... I threw some sheets over the windows. Yep, tres ghetto. But that's what we did. I don't think I ever purchased curtains before this. Eventually we moved into apartments that had mini blinds, so I left them alone. Mini blinds are another thing I never want to see again, right along with glass block windows. But, I digress. Here are the new window coverings!!!!!! And a really cute kid who got in the picture.

Next problem - as soon as the new curtains were up, I decided it's time to get rid of the red furniture. The first floor now has more blue, light wood, and green so the red is way out of place. It never ends!

Also - notice the absence of a Christmas tree?? Ever since we got the artificial tree, it comes down right after New Years!

A Ha! and Other Dog Thoughts

This is our dog, Eva. She's a rat terrier/Boston terrier mix. A very expensive mutt disguised as an "all American mixed breed" or at least that's what the pet shop said. I kicked myself for shelling out the dough to buy her, because I could have adopted a dog that needed a home far more than this pampered thing. But alas, I saw her and fell in love.

Eva listens pretty well (sometimes) and has (mostly) gotten past her chew on everything within reach stage. When she was little, before she was crate trained, she ate a dining set and 4 chairs, a bathroom vanity, numerous shoes, and ripped the linoleum off the kitchen floor.

Now her last bad habit has been "inappropriate elimination" which is what the trainer euphemistically calls it when the dog uses the house as her own personal latrine. It happened at night, so I had to keep her in the crate. After a few hours she'd start to bark, so I'd have to stumble downstairs to let her outside. At least twice a night. It was like living with a newborn all over again.
Well, I've been on vacation from work, and the last thing I wanted was to get up twice a night to let the dog out. So I decided to let her stay out one night. I let her sleep on her doggie bed in the living room. She had a crap fest on my kitchen floor.

Next night, I let her stay upstairs in our bedroom. She dove right into the bed and made herself comfortable. She takes up a lot of space for such a small dog, and she snores and grumbles in her sleep... BUT she does not get out of bed to go crap on the floor! She will wait until morning to go outside only if she gets to sleep in our bedroom. It's a trade off, to be sure, but it's worth it to me to allow the furry gal to sleep upstairs so I can actually sleep all night.

Aside from that A Ha! moment, I fell down some stairs yesterday and yeeowch, that hurt. Stepped on a dog bone. On the first stair. It wasn't my dog who was so cavalier about human safety, but my mother's dog. I don't like her quite so much today.

Bad Shower!

Well, New Year's Eve didn't come without pain. Didn't I say it was all downhill??

Was trapped in a car with my cranky mother for about 2 hours.

Belly fell down in the shower, resulting in quite a nose bleed and tears aplenty. DH got some ice and that stopped it, but not before Belly proclaimed the shower to be "bad" and told it that it will get one more chance to be nice. Afterward, he decided he wasn't getting back in there because the shower was trying to beat him up. I think he still has soap in his hair.

Later, as we were partying hard with our sparkling grape juice, Golden Boy thought it would be funny to dump confetti down everyone's pants. When we did it back to him he bucked like a bronco and smashed his face into a table. More tears. Many more tears.

However, right now the kids are falling asleep and all is well with the world. They're happy, so we're happy. Hope you're happy, too.