In some aspects, I've been busy lately and, in others, I've been avoiding.
There have been good days, bad days, and in-between days.
I've typed words and deleted them many times.
Some days, I feel like wiping this clean and starting over but I'm not quite ready to let go of some of the memories I've shared here.
So, where does that leave things? Here, there, and everywhere.
But, I am still here - and, on some days, that alone is a miracle and a blessing.
It's not all doom and gloom around here but it's not sunshine, rainbow, and glittery unicorn poop either. It's a steady wave of ups and downs and we're just riding it out.
There's a new opportunity on the horizon that could really change things for us and give us a chance at a restart. I'm looking forward to it but I'm also scared that we might crash and burn. But, we'll never know if we don't try so all we can do now is prepare ourselves and get ready for another wave.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Never Forget
I have never done a post about September 11th, 2001 since I started this blog back in 2007, mostly because that day held a different meaning for me at that time.
Sept. 11, 2001 - I was getting ready for work that morning with the TV on for background noise. I was in the midst of fixing my lunch when I heard the announcement about the first plane hitting the first tower of the World Trade Center. I stood transfixed on the screen and watched as the second plane hit the second tower. As I was working at a mental health agency, the first thing that crossed my mind was how our clients would react to this situation. I quickly got my things together and rushed to work, where most of my co-workers already had TVs and radios tuned in to the news. Since we were located far from all the activity, we didn't get as many calls or panic attacks as we were expecting; I'm sure they were all watching like we were, trying to figure it all out. I went home at the end of the day to my apartment and watched all the coverage with my kitten, not remotely interested in stopping by the bar I usually went to every night.
Sept. 11, 2002 and 2003 - On each anniversary, it was me and my cat again, watching footage of that day and reliving the tragedy and loss. In 2003, one of my former co-workers was serving in the Army over in Afghanistan so it was a little more personal that year.
Sept. 11, 2004 - I had just started dating my now-husband a few weeks before and we traded stories of what we had been doing that day. He had been in the military at the time and, after the attacks, awaited orders to be sent overseas; unfortunately (fortunately?), he blew out his knee shortly afterwards while still in boot camp, which ended his military career.
Sept. 11, 2005 - We were engaged on this anniversary and living in Florida with his parents. I was in between jobs while he was working at a local nursing home. I had woken up early that day, feeling a little "off". While sitting in the quiet as he slept, I thought about a little secret plan we had hatched and my suspicions were soon confirmed. I waited until he woke up to tell him...on the other hand, he quickly ran out of our room to tell his parents and his grandparents, who had come over for lunch that day, that we were expecting our first child. I felt a little weird celebrating on such a solemn day but everyone's excitement pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind.
Sept. 11, 2006 - We were married for 6 months by this point. We didn't get to spend much time reflecting on the 5 year anniversary, as we were preparing to move from Florida back to my home state of Texas with our 4 month old son.
Sept. 11, 2007 - We were in Texas and had moved into a bigger place, as we now had our 16 mo. old son and a 1 month old girl. I was back at work part-time from my maternity leave while he had left his job about 6 months before to stay at home to raise the kids.
Sept. 11, 2008 - We had moved again into a bigger place because we had just added another girl to our family the month before. While remembering the events 7 years before, a new era appeared to be around the corner with Obama running for president.
Sept. 11, 2009 and 2010 - We no longer had cable by this point so we were not as inundated with all the 9/11 coverage. Instead, we were focused on keeping the little ones entertained and all the everyday minutia.
So, that brings us to this year, the 10 year anniversary. It's amazing how so much as changed in that time, both in my personal life and the world at large. Our son is starting on his first soccer team, our oldest girl is losing her first tooth, and the youngest one is being potty trained. Our sense of security as a nation has been rocked to the core and we're still recovering from it. I've been avoiding most of the coverage this year because, for me, it is time to move forward. We do plan on educating our children about 9/11 once they get old enough to explain what happened without giving them nightmares in the process. We will definitely never forget that day but it is time to move forward to a hopefully brighter future.
Sept. 11, 2001 - I was getting ready for work that morning with the TV on for background noise. I was in the midst of fixing my lunch when I heard the announcement about the first plane hitting the first tower of the World Trade Center. I stood transfixed on the screen and watched as the second plane hit the second tower. As I was working at a mental health agency, the first thing that crossed my mind was how our clients would react to this situation. I quickly got my things together and rushed to work, where most of my co-workers already had TVs and radios tuned in to the news. Since we were located far from all the activity, we didn't get as many calls or panic attacks as we were expecting; I'm sure they were all watching like we were, trying to figure it all out. I went home at the end of the day to my apartment and watched all the coverage with my kitten, not remotely interested in stopping by the bar I usually went to every night.
Sept. 11, 2002 and 2003 - On each anniversary, it was me and my cat again, watching footage of that day and reliving the tragedy and loss. In 2003, one of my former co-workers was serving in the Army over in Afghanistan so it was a little more personal that year.
Sept. 11, 2004 - I had just started dating my now-husband a few weeks before and we traded stories of what we had been doing that day. He had been in the military at the time and, after the attacks, awaited orders to be sent overseas; unfortunately (fortunately?), he blew out his knee shortly afterwards while still in boot camp, which ended his military career.
Sept. 11, 2005 - We were engaged on this anniversary and living in Florida with his parents. I was in between jobs while he was working at a local nursing home. I had woken up early that day, feeling a little "off". While sitting in the quiet as he slept, I thought about a little secret plan we had hatched and my suspicions were soon confirmed. I waited until he woke up to tell him...on the other hand, he quickly ran out of our room to tell his parents and his grandparents, who had come over for lunch that day, that we were expecting our first child. I felt a little weird celebrating on such a solemn day but everyone's excitement pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind.
Sept. 11, 2006 - We were married for 6 months by this point. We didn't get to spend much time reflecting on the 5 year anniversary, as we were preparing to move from Florida back to my home state of Texas with our 4 month old son.
Sept. 11, 2007 - We were in Texas and had moved into a bigger place, as we now had our 16 mo. old son and a 1 month old girl. I was back at work part-time from my maternity leave while he had left his job about 6 months before to stay at home to raise the kids.
Sept. 11, 2008 - We had moved again into a bigger place because we had just added another girl to our family the month before. While remembering the events 7 years before, a new era appeared to be around the corner with Obama running for president.
Sept. 11, 2009 and 2010 - We no longer had cable by this point so we were not as inundated with all the 9/11 coverage. Instead, we were focused on keeping the little ones entertained and all the everyday minutia.
So, that brings us to this year, the 10 year anniversary. It's amazing how so much as changed in that time, both in my personal life and the world at large. Our son is starting on his first soccer team, our oldest girl is losing her first tooth, and the youngest one is being potty trained. Our sense of security as a nation has been rocked to the core and we're still recovering from it. I've been avoiding most of the coverage this year because, for me, it is time to move forward. We do plan on educating our children about 9/11 once they get old enough to explain what happened without giving them nightmares in the process. We will definitely never forget that day but it is time to move forward to a hopefully brighter future.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Oh happy day(s)
This has been a pretty good week for me - halle-freaking-lujah! I have been catching up on a lot of stuff at work, the kids haven't been complete holy terrors, and we're finally getting back on track with our finances after me being really sick in May and going out of state for a funeral in June.
On the whole work topic, my supervisor invited me to go to the major state conference for our field, which was a huge surprise. I ended up having to pass on going because it would have set me behind on my work and I've really been making an effort to try and get a little bit ahead. Due to major changes in our budget, there are going to be some staff changes coming down the pipeline. I'm hoping to still be around for a while since I do have so much experience but I'm also hoping that passing on the conference doesn't come back to haunt me later on. I knew that I would be in trouble and get behind otherwise.
I've been doing computer time each night with the kids to work on their phonics and math skills. They have been really excited about it so far so hopefully we'll start to see some results from the effort. We are getting ready for the girls' birthday coming up next month. We're heading down to my hometown to hang with my mom and little sister for an extended weekend. She has volunteered to use her AARP discount to get us a hotel room...mainly because she doesn't want all 5 of us crammed in their little apartment and because my sister wants to go swimming in a nicer pool. We might exchange pool time for babysitting time so we can run away and do dinner and a movie :)
My decluttering efforts have come to a bit of a standstill with most of my energy being split between work and the family. I've been getting better about taking care of the mail as it comes in, which made it easy to find some paperwork I needed earlier in the week. I've almost gotten all of our financial papers taken care of so the next area after I complete that will be working on all the things I've gathered for homeschooling the kids. Arts and crafts stores are my downfall because I will grab all kinds of supplies with grand ideas in my head but they don't get executed. So, I will be going through our storage tote of craft supplies to see what we actually have and make a list of them.
Tonight I'm going out with the girls and I'm very excited about that. We usually will go out drinking about once a month or so. Most of my girlfriends are single and childless so it's a little weird going out with them but we make it fun. One of my girlfriends and I are planning on getting season tickets to the women's basketball games this year because we had so much fun going to the NCAA playoff games this past season. I'm trying to take more time out for myself this year and doing things that I had pushed aside, like sleeping and reading.
So, that's what's new over here...until next time :)
On the whole work topic, my supervisor invited me to go to the major state conference for our field, which was a huge surprise. I ended up having to pass on going because it would have set me behind on my work and I've really been making an effort to try and get a little bit ahead. Due to major changes in our budget, there are going to be some staff changes coming down the pipeline. I'm hoping to still be around for a while since I do have so much experience but I'm also hoping that passing on the conference doesn't come back to haunt me later on. I knew that I would be in trouble and get behind otherwise.
I've been doing computer time each night with the kids to work on their phonics and math skills. They have been really excited about it so far so hopefully we'll start to see some results from the effort. We are getting ready for the girls' birthday coming up next month. We're heading down to my hometown to hang with my mom and little sister for an extended weekend. She has volunteered to use her AARP discount to get us a hotel room...mainly because she doesn't want all 5 of us crammed in their little apartment and because my sister wants to go swimming in a nicer pool. We might exchange pool time for babysitting time so we can run away and do dinner and a movie :)
My decluttering efforts have come to a bit of a standstill with most of my energy being split between work and the family. I've been getting better about taking care of the mail as it comes in, which made it easy to find some paperwork I needed earlier in the week. I've almost gotten all of our financial papers taken care of so the next area after I complete that will be working on all the things I've gathered for homeschooling the kids. Arts and crafts stores are my downfall because I will grab all kinds of supplies with grand ideas in my head but they don't get executed. So, I will be going through our storage tote of craft supplies to see what we actually have and make a list of them.
Tonight I'm going out with the girls and I'm very excited about that. We usually will go out drinking about once a month or so. Most of my girlfriends are single and childless so it's a little weird going out with them but we make it fun. One of my girlfriends and I are planning on getting season tickets to the women's basketball games this year because we had so much fun going to the NCAA playoff games this past season. I'm trying to take more time out for myself this year and doing things that I had pushed aside, like sleeping and reading.
So, that's what's new over here...until next time :)
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Cleanup cleanup, let's do it together
That's what our kids sing when they pick up toys at night before bed. I tried an experiment this week of separating the toys out by which kid plays with it the most and putting it in their designated backpack. 2 of the kids dump their toys out on a daily basis, the 3rd (our middle kiddo) has kept all of her in her backpack since I first separated them out. While doing this has helped us to see which toys they're actually playing with, it has backfired some since the living room is still a royal mess most of the day. I'm half tempted to go back to using a toy chest that the kids used when they were younger so they can just dump all their toys in there and pull out what they want. Daddy worked on cleaning up his workspace today so he can get back into some of his craft projects later this week. I worked on going through some of our old financial papers today and cleared out a lot of paper clutter...the shredder (and the grill when we use it) are going to be busy! I decided on a decluttering plan this weekend - I am going to only work on paper and physical clutter on the weekends when I have time to separate it out and really focus in on it. During the weeknights, I am going to start working on my digital "clutter" after I get home from work. We were talking this weekend and realized that we are starting to run out of space on our hard drives (yes, plural). So, I'm going to start looking over what is on my computer to see what can be deleted and what needs to be dealt with/reorganized. Wish me luck!
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Summer Cleaning
I have been on a cleaning and purging spree this summer. We've gotten rid of several boxes of stuff that I had no clue we had or needed. It started out with clearing out some of the kids' toys as our oldest's birthday approached. We anticipated several new toys coming and realized that they don't even play with half of the toys they already had. From there, a massive clean-up happened in anticipation of a family visit that never happened (but that's a story for another day). Oh, the dust bunnies we found around the house...we could've created another cat out of it. I have to give much credit to Daddy for clearing out a lot of his old hobbies and "projects" that have been lingering around the house. I've been reading a lot of minimalism/simple living blogs lately and they have been a great inspiration to get us on track. We've been talking about the possibility of moving into an RV at some point but we would have to drop a lot of things to do that. Hopefully, once we get things a little more organized and decluttered, I'll post some pictures of our progress.
Monday, June 20, 2011
A new day, a new post
I took a bit of an unexpected leave of absence. I thought about dumping this blog and starting anew but that wouldn't be right...there's history here that needs to stay here. However, I did decide to weed out some of the older entries that were mainly just mindless blathering to see myself writing. So, what does this mean? It means that there will be some gaps in my blog but I think I may finally be ready to do this thing...whatever it might be.
Here's a little mood music for this time of year down in the South...
Here's a little mood music for this time of year down in the South...
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Just call me Veruca
I have a raging background headache and an insatiable need to eat everything in the kitchen. I originally thought that maybe I hadn't eaten enough at lunch but, lo and behold, the true source of my fiending finally hit me (men and squeamish types may want to run now). Ever since I got my Mirena inserted, it has been a godsend because I used to have the Red Sea going on. However, since Miss Mirena moved in, it's been more like a sprinkle here and a sprinkle there (cue angelic choir) But, one of the downsides is that, while that has improved, the hormonal shift each month has not. As I joked once with the hubs, it's all the hormones of a period without all the bleeding - Period Light or Diet Period. Part of my weird shift each month is a raging headache at the beginning and towards the end of my cycle. Also, I want to eat and I want to eat NOW!!! And, everything too - I've already scarfed down 4 refried bean and pico de gallo tacos and chugged a Coke Zero since I got home 3 hours ago. I've almost finished a lovely adult beverage and I see either sweets or a salty snack on the horizon next (wow, donuts sound good right now). Tomorrow will probably be just as bad too. But you must excuse me now, I need to go bash my head into my desk to relieve some of this weird pain/pressure :)
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