Whew!

I have not been feeling like blogging.  At all.  So I haven't! LOL  I guess with the weather getting nicer, I've spent more time enjoying the great outdoors.  Yesterday, today and for the next few days it is raining, so I'm hoping to catch up, upload some pics and get on with it!

Now, what possesses people to park badly? (Nice segue, don't you think?)  I'm not talking just a tiny bit crooked, but those whose cars are practically sideways in between the white lines, or whose passenger side is thisclose to the one next to them.  So that the only way for that person to get into their car is to climb in through the passenger side of their own car, with their skirt flying upwards and flashing their white underwear with pink hearts for all to see?  Just sayin.

Last time I had some jerk park thisclose to me, I wished I'd had my camera with me for photographic proof.  Instead I came home and googled and found this site.  I had fun looking through pics of bad parkers and realizing that it is nothing personal against me!

Off to make some baby food and put away the groceries that have spent the afternoon strewn across my front hall.

Mother's Day

I had the best Mother's Day ever this year!  I was able to spend my very first Mother's Day with my new little princess, and my 16th Mother's Day with my kiddo!  I got to sleep in a bit while my dear hubby got up with Little Miss.  He poured me a coffee when I came downstairs and I snuggled a bit with Little Miss.  Kiddo was already up - yep...16 yrs old and he got up nice and early on Mother's Day!  They each gave me a card starting with my kiddo.  He'd made a card - this is the first time in many, many years that he'd made a card and while it was silly, it was awesome.  When I saw that he'd actually put some work into it and done a nice job I was touched.

He seemed surprised that I liked it so much, but it means a lot to me since he's not really a crafty kidlet to begin with!

They gave me some wonderful gifts - far too much in my opinion, but I really love and appreciate them!  First off, I got Season 2 of The Big Bang Theory.  Yay!  I have watched all of season one on my treadmill, and found many episodes or parts of episodes that I'd missed.  It's a pretty funny sitcom so I will enjoy Season 2!  Then I got some beautiful silver earrings from an awesome silver store here.  I put them on right away and wore them all day!  Finally, they gave me two tickets for myself and my kiddo to see The Lion King when it comes to town.  This was something I was probably going to purchase myself since I've never taken my kidlet to see a musical or even a live show and I really wanted him to see one before he's flown the coop.  Nonetheless, it was a nice surprise and like I said, far too much but I love it all!

Off to my sister's we went to have a Mother's Day brunch.  This is the first time my sister has hosted a meal for us in her new house.  Despite some challenges like their new table and chair set not having arrived yet (we sat on folding chairs at a card table), the cat suddenly vomiting on the floor nearby and the cornigware dish exploding, it was lots of fun and the food was great!  At least we had mimosas...mmmmmm

Upon returning home I was able to relax on the couch to finish my latest book and then I went out to do a bit of gardening.  Back inside for a lasagna dinner with caesar salad, a bit of play time with Little Miss and then a nice relaxing evening.  All in all it was my favourite Mother's Day so far! 

Thank you to my family, and of course Happy Mother's Day to all of you wonderful mothers out there!

Customer "Service" My A$$

Gah!  I have this aversion to dealing with phone call-customer service.  I cannot stand it.  I avoid it like the plague.  I shudder at the thought.  The problem is, once in awhile, you have to call in to get something changed.  Today, I decided to finally call my cable/phone/internet provider and have them merge my billing with my cell phone.  It's all with the same company, but because we ordered the cell afterwards, they never put it on the same bill.  I've been wanting to call for about 6 months, but have put it off, over and over again.  I seriously would rather pull my eyeballs out with a pair of tweezers than call them, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

I made myself sit down with my bills and pick up the phone and call.  I listened to Sally the automated voice ask me question after question, knowing the end result would just be talking to a customer service person, but knowing that if I just hit "0" she would tell me that that was not an option and start over.  I finally got through to a rep and to my surprise he was nice.  Not only was he nice, he actually sounded like he knew what he was talking about, and was able to help right away!  You could have knocked me over with a feather!

It soon became apparent that I was right the first time.  Although this guy was nice, and seemed to want to help, he was having computer problems, resulting in me being put on hold five times while he sorted things out.  At one point I glanced at my phone and saw that I'd been on the phone over 20 minutes!  Good Lord!  I could do a full sink of dishes, switch the laundry, change a diaper and feed my dogs with time to spare in 20 minutes!  No flippin wonder I hate making these calls!  They take forever!  When we moved last year, by the time I'd gotten done with switching all of our services I wanted to take my life, or at least eat a giant tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream to soothe the frustration!

The guy today tried to put me on hold a final time and I told him that I didn't have much more time.  He then offered to call me back when the system was working again.  I said okay, but had no intention of actually answering the phone.  When it rang less than a minute later I did answer and was pleased to be told the changes were made. Of course I couldn't just say thank you and hang up...I was thanked for calling and asked if there was anything else they could do for me.  I know they need to do this, but seriously, by this point I just want to hang up and not feel held hostage any longer, but my polite Canadian upbringing prevents that!  So I sat through it, answered his questions and waited to be dismissed.  Gah!  I guess it could have been much worse!

Boil & Toil

Do you ever get irritated with something and have no idea why you are irritated - you just are.  And by god someone better stop doing whatever it is that is irritating you or you just might reach your boiling point and fly off the handle, blow you top, lose your cool, explode!!

I brought my kiddo to the dentist today to get a cavity filled...found out he has another that needs doing...sigh!  This means he is home early from school, has plopped himself in front of the computer and is watching youtube videos incessantly.  We kept the computer in the living room so that we can sort of keep an eye on the usage, but it sometimes bites us firmly in the ass...like right now.  I am feeling completely irritated right now and I have no idea why - maybe because he is usually just getting home from school so the last hour of these god awful videos have imposed on 'my' time.

In any case, I had to call down and ask him to turn down the volume once, which he did but I can still hear them and sort of want to go throw the speakers across the room.  Violent I know, but for some reason it's like fingernails on a chalkboard!  It's like running the tips of your fingers accidentally down the cheese grater.  It's like hearing your little 8 year old neighbour learn to play the recorder every single afternoon.

Top this with the fact that I am trying to get Little Miss to nap, and I just feel like if I don't go and expel some energy in a constructive way, I just may need new computer speakers.

Weigh In Wednesday

Well, although I weighed in last week I don't think I posted about it.  It was really just a bad week and I felt it important to still weigh in but didn't have the heart to put it in writing.  I did really well over Easter although my exercise was non existent, but by Easter Monday I was hit with a sinus type cold and felt like a bag of dirt.  Like not the nice gardening soil you buy in the bags, but the nasty dirt you find under neath large rocks with slimy bugs crawling around with more legs than you thought possible.

This is when it went off the rails; when I am sick I eat what I want to eat, what will go down, stay down and make me feel better.  Generally this means soup with lots of crackers, pasta (which I mostly avoid) and white bread (which I also avoid unless hungover - then it's no holds barred!).  I really don't care when I am sick because I figure if some toast and peanut butter feels good, then so be it! LOL

That said - it made a direct impact on the scale and i went up 3 lbs!  How many freakin carbs did I eat?  I was irritated but knew it wasn't permanent "real" weight - nevertheless I knew this week had to be different.  I began to feel like crawling out of my little hole by Friday and while I had no energy to exercise, I started trying to eat better.  By Monday of this week I realized that the only way to fully get back on track was to start calorie counting again.  I'd rather jam screwdrivers through my eyeballs than calorie count, but I found a fabulous site that tracks it all for you so I guess I'll put the toolbox away for awhile.  The site is Spark people and you can track food intake, exercise and find all kinds of videos, hints and tips to get you motivated.

I am still working on the motivation to get back to working out.  Yesterday I forced myself to do 30 minutes on the treadmill, and did so (yay) but holy crap it was hard.  I never got that "woohoo" feeling so the whole 30 minutes was a killer, but I did it and that's what counts!

All this to say that I have lost that extra 3lbs and am again at the same weight as two weeks ago - I am thrilled with that and feel like I am back on track.  It's not a race but a marathon, and I'm still going!

Bring Your Friends Over...Really

My son thinks I am insane.  I guess it's not too much of a stretch for any teenager to think their parents are insane, I mean mine were but I hoped I'd be different.  Nope.

I guess I give him good reason to think so.  Sometimes when he comes home from school, I'm bee bopping around the living room singing at the top of my lungs to Billy Joel or Elton John or some other fabulous 80's icon. 

Sometimes I am jumping up and down doing my workout and clearly proving that mirrors or an audience are not good ideas while doing aerobics.  Until I am a size 4 (hahahaha) I ought not watch the way the protruding parts of my body fly about as if they are of their own mind as I do jumping jacks or knee kicks.

Occasionally I am wearing a scarf wrapped around my head and holey pants while I clean or organize my way through the basement.

The other day I was on the treadmill which my kiddo has to walk past to get to his basement 'man-cave" complete with couch, chair, giant TV and gaming system.  The fact that I was running on the treadmill wearing skin tight running pants and a tank top would be embarrassing enough for my cool kid.  What was worse was, after I started I realized I'd forgotten to tie my hair up with an elastic.  I had a good burn going, and didn't want to stop to run upstairs to find and elastic, so I started looking around to see what I could use.  Although my craft supplies are right there, there were no elastics.  I did however find a solution that got my hair off my neck and perhaps achieved a new level of style for me.

When I mentioned a new level of style I didn't say it was a higher level.  Yep, my cool teenage boy had a friend over and walked past me sweating on the treadmill with four pens jammed through my head (one fell out for the pic).  I have to say though, that as stupid as it looked, it totally did the trick and I got to finish my workout in peace! 

No wonder he thinks I'm weird though!!!

Held Against My Will

Tonight I was held against my will.  Sort of.

Let's go back a bit, to last night.  When we went to put Little Miss to bed like we always do, she started to cry.  Occasionally she will cry for a couple of minutes, but it's gotten pretty rare since she discovered how much she loves her Fisher Price projector/music box.

After a couple of minutes I looked at my dear hubby and we tried to figure out if Little Miss would settle on her own.  Just then she began to shriek, an angry, upset cry/scream somewhat exorcist-like.  We figured that she was NOT going to sleep just yet, so the hubs heated a bottle and went to get her.  She drank up her bottle and then was super alert and giggly.  To be honest we had a lot of fun with her as she giggled and played for another hour.

She eventually went to sleep but dear hubby had to rock her to get her to settle.  We've not had to do this as a regular thing before, so we just figured her teeth (or lack thereof) were bothering her.

Well, tonight told us that it might be starting a habit.  She only got a short nap in the car this afternoon and was rubbing her eyes by 6pm.  In order for mommy to not have to rise and shine at 4am (good times people), we try to keep her up until 7pm at the very least, if not a bit later.  She had her bottle and was sleepy, but again woke right up when she heard my voice.  Daddy spent some time with her and was able to get her to stay up until 7:40pm which is awesome.  He put her down like always and left the room...and the crying began.  It started as the tired, moan like crying that we generally ignore and it usually turns to whimpers and then sleep.  Not tonight.  It went on and on and on and on...it outlived the energizer bunny for sure.

We haven't really developed a 'plan of action' (which we need to do for consistency) so when dear hubby went upstairs he took her out of her crib and put her on the floor with him to play.  She began to scream again.  I decided to keep her in her room in the dark and rock her for a bit.  It's not a habit we want to get into, but gosh it's nice to get a little snuggle and baby falling asleep on you!  Until I realized that I could not put her down.  As I settled in to rock my sweetie, I didn't notice that she somehow wound her fingers around my necklace and held on for dear life.  Once she fell asleep, I went to stand and noticed her fist around my necklace, and went to gently move it.  Nope.  She had me in a death grip.  I tried to gently pry her fingers off of it to no avail.  I started to giggle as I realized that I probably could have let go of Little Miss and she'd have hung by her one little fist on my necklace.  The visual was just too much!

It took me almost 10 minutes to forcefully gently pry her teeny fingers one by one off of my chain.  As each finger was peeled away, it would immediately curl up in a fist like motion again, which made getting the next one off a bit more difficult!  Eventually I pried her off of me and gently placed her in her crib.

Now off to strategize with my hubby as to how to avoid making this a nightly routine!