Month: April 2011

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Now I know how different a parent’s worry really is

“Stop worrying about me.”

Or, “Don’t worry so much.”

How many times have you said that to your mom over the years? Probably about eleventy billion. And how often did she reply, “I can’t”? I’m guessing about 100% of the time.

Now I know why.

Even though she’s only 8.5 months old, not a day goes by that I don’t worry about D.

And I don’t mean your run-of-the-mill piddly little worries that would make me a wildly stressed-out, obsessive, over-protective mom (which is pretty surprising, actually, since i really like to be in control of certain situations. i’ve turned out to be pretty laid back about this whole child-rearing thing after all. who’da thunk it?). Like I don’t get all worked up if D tips over and bumps her head (obviously as long as it’s not a life-threatening gash) or starts chewing on a piece of paper and accidentally swallows some. Eh, no big deal.

I’m talking big lifetime worries. Like how do I know if I’m raising her well? Will I be able to instill in her the values that I think she’ll need to be a good person? Will we be good enough parents to raise her to be a strong, smart, independent woman, with a good head on her shoulders? How do I make sure she has a solid foundation off which to grow the rest of her life? How do I keep from turning her into one of the specimens you see on Intervention or COPS or Girls Gone Wild?Will I be able to prevent her from being one of those snotty, bratty, disrespectful, obnoxious kids you see constantly fighting with their parents in public and who you just want to slap silly? Do I have the strength to not screw up royally along the way somewhere and break my child (emotionally and mentally, not physically. i’m pretty sure i would never crack a bone in her body)?

See what I mean?

She is so pure and innocent and beautiful and happy and full of wonder and curiosity right now. Every time I look at her or watch her playing with R or listen to her talking to her toys, my heart just swells with love and pride that we actually made that ridiculously awesome little person.

My absolute worst nightmare is that I do something that extinguishes that amazing little spirit in her and she turns out to be a lost, mad, unhappy person who hates her mom. I really don’t know what I would do to cause such a transformation, and I hope and pray every day that I never find out. But knowing that I am now fully responsible for molding this little person and shaping her future fills me with worries like this that I’m pretty certain will never subside.

And I’ve realized that I just can’t help it. I don’t sit and stew over these things every waking minute, mind you, but such thoughts do dance in and out of my mind a couple times a day.

And maybe that’s a good thing? Maybe it would be bad if I didn’t worry about her like this. Maybe it’s just showing how much I love her and want to always protect her and be there for her however she needs. Maybe.

And these worries are SO much different than any others I’ve ever had, no matter how important I thought those were at the time. Like what college am I going to go to, what kind of career path do I want to take, where do I want to live? Granted those are all pretty big life decisions, but raising a kid? Trumps them all, hands down.

Just last night, D was scooting around the house following me (which is super freaking hilarious, btw), and she got to our bedroom doorway. Just inside that doorway is the door to our laundry chute (well it’s not really a chute, more just a hole that opens straight to the basement and laundry basket below), which currently has no door on it since it was ripped off to redo the room and has yet to be replaced. She didn’t go near it, but I instantly thought oh my god, what if she fell head-first through that hole and splatted on the hard concrete basement floor?? I’d die.

That last one falls more in the head-bumping or paper-eating category than the screwing-her-up-for-life category, but you feel me. A mother’s worry truly is never-ending. But you know what? I wouldn’t trade this for anything in the world.

<3

 

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FF

Yesssss… it’s Friday!! Too bad the weather’s shit again – cold, wind, rain/snow mix later today. Boo. Ah well, at least the weekend’s knockin’ on the door!

I heard this on the radio yesterday morning and it made me giggle, so I thought I’d throw it out there for this week’s FF:

“You must be driving the bus to hell, because you’re lying to me!”

 

TGIF!

 

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Winner winner, chicken dinner

I’ve never understood that phrase. Who wins something and gets a chicken dinner? What kind of contest do you enter that carries that prize? It’s never sounded very enticing to me either. Like oo yay, you won whatever you were doing, so here’s a big pile of chicken. I picture a heaping plate of fried chicken, of which I am not a fan. Maybe that’s why the whole saying is a bit perplexing to me. If I win, I want something good – cash money, bling bling, trophies along those lines. Not a plate of greasy chicken bits. Ew.

But anyway, it is a fitting title for this post because R made teriyaki chicken sliders for dinner last night, the second invention with his new meat grinder. Um, holy awesome!! These were some of the best mini-sandwiches I’ve ever had. They were made of ground chicken breasts, green onions, garlic, ginger, and real soy sauce, topped with cherry horseradish mustard, and served on pretzel dinner rolls.

I’ll just let the picture speak for itself. And yes, I had 3 of them.

 

Definitely drool-worthy

 

 

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Back in business

Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta. No, not really. But I was going to put “Ahh, it feels good to be back” to start this post, and then the Geto Boys lyrics popped into my head instead. 🙂

It does feel good, though, to have my new theme all sorted out. Kind of like being *home*. My old one just felt too sparse and blah, so I love the splashes of color and little extras I can do with this one. I am pretty proud of myself for figuring out how to manipulate the website code to change things, too. Last night when I was showing R the header I created and how I’d taught myself to change icons and stuff, he kept saying, “Oh that’s easy.” Well, yeah, duh, when you’re a web/computer genius, but to us laypeople looking at code is like looking at Mandarin Chinese – a whole bunch of random letters and symbols that don’t make any sense whatsoever. So I’ll just continue to pat myself on the back thankyouverymuch. 🙂

So this post is just gonna be about a whole bunch of random things, because all the stuff I have floating around in my head this morning doesn’t really have much connection. (see, that sentence right there didn’t even make a whole lot of sense) For starters, I feel like I look like a total frump. Since Winter has decided to come back, I have on a gray sweater, black pants (which would be great if they were a little truer black. they’re more like a black khaki, so i keep worrying that people are thinking they look too much like faded black jeans, which are disgusting), and a pair of hiking sneakers. Blech. These pants are new, and are the exact same style as a couple other pairs I have for work and absolutely love, but like I said the color is just a little meh. And since I’ve never worn them before, I realized this morning that I don’t really have any shoes to go with them. They’re not dressy enough to wear my cute black faux-patent leather flats, and I apparently have no other casual black shoes. So sneakers it was. Gross. *I’m open to all suggestions for good casual black shoes. The comfier and cuter the better.*

And since we’re back in the 40s today from the gorgeous sun and 60s yesterday, I had to get another jog in last night to take advantage. I decided my new rule is I’m not running unless it’s at least 50 degrees outside, because I hate running in cold weather. And I don’t see 50s in the forecast again until next week, so I made my butt get in gear last night. I changed up my route again – went 2.11 miles in 18:56, which is 8:57 pace. Woo wee! I’m very surprised I broke the 9:00 pace, because it certainly felt like my slowest run yet. I was expecting to get slower from when I started before I get faster though, seeing as my body has to get back into shape after the weirdest, probably most traumatic thing it’s ever been through. So that’s pretty encouraging. I could feel it in my left knee and ankle by the time I got done, though, so a couple days off may be a good thing right now.

D has decided to be a little stinker lately and not take her afternoon naps at daycare. Hence, she’s tired and cranky when we get home and has to take an evening nap, which I was hoping she was starting to drop. Tuesday we were supposed to go to swimming, but she was so tired she fell asleep when I fed her when we got home and I didn’t have the heart to wake her – she ended up sleeping for an hour and a half. I figured she needed that more than being dunked by Mommy. 😉 When she doesn’t nap well she doesn’t sleep as well at night either. She’s awoken a couple nights this week, with last night’s wake up coming at 4:00. Fabulous. And since she ate then, I had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t going to be hungry when she woke up for good this morning. I was right. I tried to feed her anyway, and paid the price. She bit me! Numerous times in a row! I know she obviously doesn’t do it on purpose – she’s not hungry but has something in her mouth, so it becomes a chew toy instead – but goddamn, does that hurt! And I’m afraid I scared her this morning too, because when she did it for like the 4th time in a row I pulled back and said, “Stop biting!” She looked up at me with these huge eyes and a tiny little frowny face and almost instantly started crying, big tears and all. I felt so terrible. I should have learned from the first nibble that she wasn’t hungry, but I kept trying. Poor little thing. Why is Mommy shouting at me? I’m just lying here looking up at her with my gorgeous gray eyes. 🙁 Oh man, I felt so mean. That beautiful little face was so sad; I don’t think I’ve seen her cry from fear before. Needless to say, she got lots more hugs before we left for daycare. Unfortunately, her lack of eating leaves me in the ever-so-lovely lopsided state. Bleh.

She loves playing in her playpen now too. How adorable is this??

 

Our little zoo animal

 

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Ta-daaa!

I think I finally found a blog layout/theme that I like, and here it is. What do you think? It’s the same one I’ve had the past couple days, but I figured out how to make the top picture my own. I really liked the water and colors in the shoreline one that originally came with this theme, but I wanted it a little more personalized. So I found a shot that captured the stunning colors of the water and then just incorporated my old header pictures into it, since I thought they were pretty bland by themselves. Isn’t that picture awesome?? R took it in St. Thomas last year. You really can’t beat the scenery down there.

I figured out how to change a couple other things on here to give it more SM flavor too. Website coding – fun stuff. I might tweak the header a little more, but this should be pretty much it. So I just wanted to get this quick post on here to let you know that hopefully you won’t see a different site each time you check me out anymore. 🙂 I’ll be back later with more good stuff to tell ya.

 

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Who sings this?

I love music. But I am absolutely terrible at knowing who sings the songs I like. Do you do that? You love a song, can sing along to all the words at the top of your lungs, but you have no idea who the artist or band is. Or am I the only weirdo that doesn’t pay enough attention to the soundtrack of her life? 🙂

Ever since R and I started dating, I’ve become a huge fan of classic rock. He’s listened to our local classic rock station his whole life, so once we got together I started listening to this genre too. Mainly because our relationship was new, I was soooo in love, I thought everything he did was fantastically awesome, and I wanted to do and like all the same things he did. Granted, some of that brand new relationship mystique has worn off by now (what?? no way!) and there are certain interests of his that I could only tag along with for so long, but this is one of his “things” that I ended up really genuinely enjoying.

Prior to R, I was a total hip-hop, rap, gangsta chick. Well, not me personally, but my taste in music. My high school was completely ghetto, and music was the one area of my life in which that “style” had any influence. Snoop’s “Doggystyle” is, has been, and always will be one of my favorite albums of all time. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, if I hear that one come on I can rap along word-for-word as if I was Lady of Rage herself with my afro puffs. Hands down, it’s my favorite driving album. I know every word to every song, and it instantly turns my Toyota Highlander into a low-riding pimped-out Caddy rollin’ on dubs and bouncing with hydraulics.

 

My ghetto ride when Snoop blasts

 

But back to my point. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m a relative newcomer to classic rock or what, but even my favorite songs I often have trouble telling you who the artist is. I’m sure it annoys the piss out of R too, because I constantly ask him, “Who sings this?” He’s probably like good lord woman, don’t you know by now?? (maybe not really, maybe he pays no attention to how many times i ask, but i always feel like i get annoying) I’m really bad figuring out lyrics too. I often do the classic gloss-over to words I don’t know for sure. You know, you’re singing along great then you hit that one spot on which you’re a little unsure, so your voice gets a notch lower and you try to just smear some words together that sound like the real thing. There’s one song in particular where I just figured out a line a few days ago – REO Speedwagon’s “Time For Me To Fly”. When they say, “Enough of the jealousy, And the intoleration…” I never knew what that last word was, then all of a sudden I heard it again on the radio the other day and it’s like a light bulb went off in my head. Ah ha! Intoleration, that’s what it is!

Maybe this is why I hate karaoke too – I don’t want to have to learn the words to a song as I’m reading them on a monitor in front of a bar full of people. But I’m sure everyone would just be so blown away by my beautiful singing voice they wouldn’t even notice if I flubbed a few words in typical SM fashion. (joke. i can’t sing for crap)

And maybe someday I’ll finally figure out who all the artists and bands are that have been playing these songs I love for all these years. Meh, probably not. I’ll just keep bugging R and asking, “Who sings this?” 🙂

 

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Limos are fun

For starters, what do you think of this layout for the blog? I can’t change the picture up top to put in my other ones like I used to have, but that shoreline picture is kind of neat and I like the color scheme and graphics of this theme. Good, bad, otherwise – lemme know. I’ll probably keep changing it around a bit too, so don’t be surprised if you see a different look a few more times.

Now here are the pics I promised from our anniversary limo ride this weekend. Like I said, R was totally surprised and had a great time. It’s amazing how much fun you can have pretending to be high rollers. 😉

 

Your limo awaits

 

I could get used to this

 

Big pimpin'

 

Our last stop - it was a wonderful night!

 

And since the weather has actually been cooperating the past couple days, I got another jog in last night. Added a little distance this time – 2.09 miles in 19:21, which is a 9:15 pace. A little slower than last week’s pace, but I did add just over half a mile. I’ll take it. I didn’t walk, and my new running kicks felt great. Slowly but surely. I looked back at my past runs and the fastest I’ve ever done that same route was 16:13, a 7:45 pace. Yikes! I’ve fallen a long way in the 3 years since then. 😛