Quietly Getting It Done

Not much to mention that is really blog worthy.  I feel like life is just like that sometimes--full of business and busy nothingness.  I remember when we were first married, and Arlin would comment all the time about how boring life was.  It was funny because when you are single and have no worries your perspective changes a lot.  Spend that $5 on candy or the box of Girl Scout cookies?  Sure, why not?  Stay up late every night playing softball or hanging with friends?  Of course.  Clean your room?  Nah, more important living to get done, than that.  Now that we are "adults", (I guess you could call us that since we do technically fit the description), we are more focused on important stuff ... homework for the kids, bathing the baby, shopping for groceries, saving for a rainy day, retirement or college, getting exercise to keep ourselves mentally in shape, commuting and other fun work related stuff.  All things we would not technically choose to spend our time doing, but must get done sometime, somewhere, somehow.  I think if we had endless time and money, here are some of the things we would be doing instead of the 6:30 am - 10 pm grind called work and home life:

1. Travel.  We would go to Schlitterbahn, Seaworld San Antonio, or Sandals
2. Sleep (a lot, with kids not waking up before the sun rises)
3. Television, or movies rather - we would watch them, a lot of them, just to see a good story and eat some junk food
4. Volunteer - Habitat for Humanity, the Houston Food Bank, or Big Brothers/Big Sisters are a good start
5. The Gym - we will go more, I swear!  It's one of my new goals.  First I have to join a gym and resign myself to going either at 5 am before work, or 9 pm after work and dinner with the family.  But I'm going to do it!
6. We'd even spend time at the zoo, the aquarium, playing in the yard, riding our bikes and going for some family walks.  We do a lot of this now, but we'd love to do these things more frequently.
7. Visit family and good friends.  Yes! We'd love to come see you!  All of you!  Let's plan something soon!!
8. Watch and Listen.  I'd like the quiet time I have just to have a good talk with my kids.  To take them out on a one on one date, and to just talk.  No getting in trouble or doing an activity.  Just to listen, or to watch them while they live.  To enjoy their stages and get to know them as individuals.  I miss out on a lot of that while I'm at work all day.  I love it when I get those moments though.  They are not to be passed up!

That's a small start to the things we'd like to fill our days doing.  And we do have those highlights where we do get to do them, I'd like to make it more frequent.  We'll be working on that over this next year.  I'll have to notify my work to tell the clients to stay away so I can skip the 50-60 hour work weeks and the weekend schedule.  Just kidding on that one, but we'll definitely be sure to grab the time while we can and perhaps make some of our own three day weekends or holidays.  I know Spring Break is coming, I'm excited to plan something fun, even if it's a day at Chuck E Cheese and a Redbox DVD, it's all good.  Here's to the good times!  And to remembering some things we figured out when we were single, but forgot when we got busy with the nothingness of busy life ... we have more important things to do sometimes than laundry or dishes.  Carpe Diem people!

Photo Blurb

I haven't posted any recent photos in a really long time, so here I am giving it a quick and dirty.

Halloween!  Laney was a ballerina and Lindsay was a cheerleader.

Laney showing off some of her best ballerina moves.  She was very impressed with her balancing on one foot and made us watch her amazing feat over and over again.

Christmas Eve.  Laney was very excited with her new baby, and Lindsay was having a great time carrying around her DVD.  I'm not sure what I'm doing, but I must be thinking about what awaits me under the tree.

Here I am trying to look very cool and above all this excitement nonsense.  Lindsay is still enamoured with her DVD.  So easy to please at that age!

Arlin is in love with his new pjs.  I always give him pjs, so he had plenty of time to work up a dutiful appreciation for this gift.

That's it for now!  I'm working on getting new pictures taken, downloaded and ready for the big upload into the blog.  As you can tell, sometimes it takes months!

Same Sad Story, Another Day -- Lucky Me!

Same Sad Story, Another Day, is just a little saying we have at my house.  A little saying for those people in your life who seem to do the same mistakes over and over again, and then to be surprised the outcome is not any different.  For example, we had a friend once who was eating dinner with us, which was a stuffed bread item.  She did not realize the inside of the dish was super hot and burned herself on the filling of the bread.  Once she was able to cool off her tongue, she took another bite, without blowing on her bite, only to be surprised the second bite burned her tongue just like the first.  Two weeks later, when I made the same dish again, and the same friend was over, she burned her tongue again.  Now of course, we all burn ourselves, and I've done this more than anyone I know, and this is a way over simplification of the title, but you get the point.  Mainly we use the title for people who fail miserably at life, or at least the important aspects that seem pretty obvious examples of choice and consequence.  We know lots of people who don't save a penny of their earnings, and are continually surprised they have no emergency stash for, well, emergencies.  Or people, who don't pay their taxes and are surprised when the IRS audits them over and over again.  Or even for people who are not willing to be employed, and seem shocked they cannot find anyone to rent them an apartment, sell them a cell phone, or obtain a credit card.  Why oh why, don't people just "get" it?

Arlin and I have been called "lucky" by several people because we apparently understand the universal truth that what we choose will change how life impacts us.  We realize we should set some money aside to have for "emergencies" or that we should pay our bills on time if we don't want to lose our cars or need good credit to buy a house.  We are so "lucky" we know that if we don't pay our parking tickets or drive on a suspended license we will be arrested.  Crazy ol' lucky us!  I certainly think of myself as lucky, but not for those reasons.

I do admit it is hard to be surrounded by these people.  It really is.  People who do not have a sense of reality, or that do have a sense of reality, but think they are exempt from the same realities all the rest of us face.  I mean, we all pay taxes, we all need money, we all put on weight if we eat too much.  Those silly consequences all the world faces, are injustices faced by some of my friends.  I heard things like the system is out to get them, you're so lucky you don't have it this hard, and people should give them a chance!  (Um, if you don't pay your vehicle taxes for 2 years, and then get arrested for it, didn't you just get 600 days of chances to pay the overdue bill before you were arrested?)

Do any of you subscribe to the mantra that there are negative poisons in this world that need to be cut out of our lives?  I used to be such a person, and then I thought I was too mean, but I'm starting to pick that banner back up.  I don't think I need to saddle myself with these people too much longer.  These, crabs in the pot, that want to pull me back in the pot and bail them out from their realities they don't want to deal with cause they tried to avoid them by pretending they weren't there.  Silly rabbits! Tricks are for kids!

My Puerto Rican Party

So last night Arlin and I went to a birthday on the other side of town for his friend Gretchen.  The party was at Gretchen's house and involved her mom, boyfriend, her brother Mike, their kids, our mutual friends Randy and his wife, and us.  As far as parties go, it was pretty fun.  There was a lot of loud music, some great homemade self proclaimed "island food", and some good times had by all.  I have only met Mike and Gretchen once before, but I'm good friends with Randy and his wife Aimone.  While Randy, Aimone, Arlin, the kids and I were the only ones not drinking or smoking (contents undecided), it was really actually, a fun time.  I enjoyed getting to know Arlin's old friends and hearing the stories they share with one another about their fond high school and middle school memories.

BUT, the highlight for me this night, last night, was one little nameless child -- nameless because I can't remember his name and I'm sure someone told me.  This little boy was the cutest thing ever and he is going to be quite a handful for girls and mothers and women in general everywhere!  He is approximately 3 years old and I really only saw him from afar most of the night, watching him and the other kids while they played with balloons.  They played the way we all did as kids - hitting balloons at each other, rubbing static in our hair, trying to keep them off the ground before they fall, and becoming territorial over the balloon we deemed as ours.  I thought he was cute, and a little wound up for 10 at night, but I didn't think too much of anything.  A couple of times I saved his balloon from going off the balcony of the second floor apartment, so maybe that's what made me catch his attention?  I don't think we'll ever know.  What I do know, is that several hours into the party I heard a loud pop.  The sounds that only means, a balloon was killed, a terrible sound for children everywhere.  I expected the sound to be followed by a lot of crying and some yelling between children placing blame upon one another.  What happened next really surprised me and made me giggle several times since.  This little boy that had caught my eye, immediately, upon balloon poppage, brought his pieces of broken balloon past his aunt, past his mom, past his dad, past his grandmother, straight to (you guessed it) ME and put them in my hands.  Huh?  Well, as any good mother, I exclaimed, "Oh No, What Happened to Your Balloon?  Did it break?  Are you okay?"  Etc., etc.  I found out he doesn't know too much English but enough, when he said, "Broken".  and I said again, "Oh no, what happened?"  And then, he backed up, stuck out his little finger and pointed at me and said, "You did it."  And so I would not be mistaken, he repeated himself, "You did it."  Very emphatically I might add.  Then, he turned and walked away.  What?!    Okay, whatever, funny, but, alright.

I thought his fascination with me was over then, somehow I was the woman who popped his balloon, no problem, I can handle that blame.  But later during the night when the salsa music got louder and the dancing got faster, and he got more tired and was trying harder to stay awake with movement, he walked past his aunt, past his mom, past his grandmother, and came to me again.  He reached out for my hands and pulled me on the floor so I could be his salsa partner.  He danced a little with everyone in the room after that, but came to me over and over after most of his other partners.  His uncle, our friend Mike, said, "What did you do to him?"  I had no idea, until we all caught on at the same time when his great uncle said, and we all realized, I was the only white girl in the room, and the only person in the room that had blonde hair.  I guess this kid already has a "type".  Hilarious!

I'm flattered.  I'm almost famous.

Things That Make Me Cry

So, when I was a kid, I hardly ever cried.  I mean, I cried if I broke my collar bone, or if my horse died, but in movies, in life, as a general rule, I didn't cry.  THEN, I had children.  Now, there are a lot of side effects to having kids.  Some people gain weight and never get it back off, some have feet that grow a shoe size or two, some lose their memory, the list can go on and on.  But, for me, children have brought two side effects that I notice the most: my hair is darker, and I cry.  I do, I cry.  I bawl like a baby.  I can't help it.  I even hate myself for it, but I cry.  When I get so frustrated I can't stand another second, I laugh and cry at the same time even.  When I'm stressed out, I toss and turn in bed at night, weeping.  Finally, I always cry while watching Extreme Home Makeover and when I hear about someone getting a divorce. 

Extreme Home Makeover makes me cry because I'm so overwhelmed that people still care.  I really am.  It seems sometimes that people don't care anymore, and often I have thought, "Why do I care, when no one else does?"  That show though, shows the good in people.  The good we all sometimes hide from each other. the side that can be damaged by life, by cruel words, by indifference.  EHMO reveals how we really do think of others, and how we can sacrifice for those who really need it.  I love that!  It touches me.  Each and every time.  I love it.

Also, anyone who gets a divorce, gets tears from me, I don't even have to know them. I think divorce is the saddest thing EVER.  I know, I know, I know...sometimes divorce is for the best.  Sometimes there is abuse (physical, emotional or mental), sometimes there is infidelity, sometimes there is neglect, etc.  To me though divorce is like a death of a family member.  Death of some one's hope in another person or in a union.  When you marry a person, you believe that person loves you no matter what.  And will be there for you, with you, behind you, no matter what.  Life doesn't work that way.  I've seen it, and it just doesn't work that way.  It's supposed to, but it doesn't.  And sometimes we all have to move on to preserve ourselves and/or our lives and/or our children and/or our sanity.  And so people divorce.  And when they do, there is a little bit of hope that is snuffed out in this world.  And that is sad.  That loss of hope.  The world gets a little dimmer every time I think.

Odd, isn't it?  That I cry for two things that are so opposite?  I can't help that, having children ruined me.  If you've had a kid, you know that.  That's okay though, my hairs is now a little darker, and now I cry.  I cry for you, sacrificing helpers of those less fortunate, and divorcees and divorcers.  I cry for you.  In case you think no one cares, know I'm here, and I'm crying for you.

New Year's Resolutions

Do you have any New Year's Resolutions?  Are you one of the millions of humanoids that makes resolutions and keeps them?  OR are you one of the millions of humanoids that makes resolutions and doesn't keep them?  Better yet, are you someone who doesn't bother to make resolutions because you make changes throughout the year as you see the need for them?  Are you constantly striving to make your life a better thing for yourself, your family, your community?  I wish I could say I belonged to any one of the above groups.  I could be the successful person who made first of the year commitments and kept them, or the successful person who makes changes without needing a big annual day of promises, or even the person who means well, but never quite gets there.  I'm not.

I am one of the millions of humoids that sometimes makes resolutions, sometimes doesn't, sometimes keeps them, sometimes doesn't, and sometimes can't commit to them and makes little changes along the way.  I really can't tell you what is best or even works the best for me.  Hey, I'm just a blob of organic matter, I constantly grow and change, sometimes without my own consent.  This year, I haven't really written down and resolutions, and I can't bring myself to commit to them right now, but on the off chance I were going to make any resolutions for 2011, they might be the following:

1. I vow to judge people less, and forgive people more.  This entire anger and resentment thing eats me alive, and it never affects the people I'm mad at or resent.  They happily go on in their oblivious little world still being a burden, still being stupid.  And I'm the suffering one.  From now on, I pity people and dismiss them from memory.

2. I vow to be patient with my children more, and find a better way to teach them right from wrong.  I want to work less on the punishment system (unless necessitated of course) and work more on the positive encouragement, look at you and your awesomeness system.  It's getting to be a little tricky with a pre-preteen, but I will find a way.

3. I vow to start being healthy again.  Methods subject to change of course.  Either working out more, sleeping more, reading scriptures more, going to the temple more, eating better, anything, so long as it's an improvement.

4. I vow to not settle for less than I deserve.

5. I vow to pay it forward.  I will let people in front of me in traffic or at the bank, I will donate my time, I will give back to people who give to me.

6.  I vow to cut myself some slack.

So what are your resolutions?  Did you make any?  Do you care?  Whatever your answer, GOOD LUCK! and Happy New Year!

Laney's Getting Glasses

So my little girl is getting some glasses.  Well, this explains some of the problems she has been having at school, but I'm really surprised her eye sight has deterioated this far this fast.  Arlin was the lucky man to take her and Lindsay to the eye doctor last week.  Here is my report on how the visit went:

1. They got lost, the doctor's office was not clearly marked
2. All the while the baby was screaming in her car seat, complaining about being in the car
3. They found the right joint, went in, and began to WAIT
4. Wait, wait, wait
5. Finally go back to see the doctor to find out she needs glasses (no surprise there, but wait! there's more!!)
6. They take the whole group 2 kids, one frustrated dad, to the area to pick out glasses
7. Laney proceeds to pick up, try on, and put down multiple pairs of glasses.  In his mind Arlin is steering her to the set covered by our insurance so we don't have to pay any more than we have to
8. After "trying on" multiple pairs, what do you know?!, but she loves the pink Dinsey glasses.  And how do we know this?  Because she puts them on, flings her long hair over her shoulder and pronounces, "I look FABULOUS".

YES, she did.  Who taught her that?  I blame Arlin.  But it's too funny.  The sales lady of course tried to upsell here to every single more expensive pair, but she stuck with her fabulous pair she originally picked out.  Good girl, make mama proud!  Arlin continued to hold a squirmy baby, fend off additional upsells, and sign paperwork.  Then they met me after work at a local Wendy's for a quick bite to eat.  So of course I teased Laney about how expensive she was, getting her shiny new glasses and all.  She blushed and said, "What?!  I can't help I look good in them."  Oh me, oh my.  Preteen already?