my baby is not a baby anymore

thirteen hours, thirty-five minutes. that's all the time i have left until my baby is a kindergartener. ack! how did this happen? how did the past five years fly by so quickly?

i am weirdly ok right now. numb. but i feel hysteria rising from deep within.

that is all.

picnic tables!

so, i loves me some knock off wood. love! i've built several items, and have many more on my to do list.

most of the kids in our families seem to have been born in the summer months, so . . . kid-sized picnic tables were our gift of choice this year. well, those and magician/superhero capes and tutus.

but i digress. i made picnic tables. lots of them. (with a few modifications to the plans.) and timmy helped me.

i loved building them. ana really makes the plans so easy to follow. more like recipes than building plans. they were so sturdy! i filled my screw holes, sanded well, and put a lot of work into the painting. i cut and assembled the first two at the same time and then primed and painted them - a pain in the hiney!

after those first two, i cut, primed and painted the individual pieces, then assembled and touched up. took as much time - maybe even a little more - but it was way easier than trying to reach and get good coverage on all the undersides, in betweens and tight angles.

i have built nothing in weeks - these 100+ degree temps suck every bit of energy right out of me! i have two more picnic tables to build, then i'm on to timmy's headboard. then? who knows!

bookshelf for baby connor

this is not intended to be a blog about furniture building, but . . .

a new baby nephew, connor michael, will arrive in a couple weeks, so i decided to make a bookcase for him for his baby shower. of course, i perused knock off wood and found this plan.

i forgot to take any pictures, so stacy was kind enough to take one and email it to me.

just a couple problems. since it was sooo hot and i was sooo tired, i decided to avail myself of my lumber store's services and have them cut the wood for me. big mistake. the kid who did the cuts was cute and happy to help (and didn't charge me), but . . . not so accurate. i had to trim a couple pieces and the entire bookshelf is a quarter inch shorter than the plans specified, but so what? it's square, it's sturdy - it's good!

connor's nursery is decorated in greens, blues and browns, in a jungle theme. fortunately, i had this green paint (less yellow than in the picture) left over from my (as yet unfinished) craft room. unfortunately, the humidity was sooo high that week - the paint did not fully dry prior to the baby shower. and it rained that day. the day of the shower. the day i had to haul the bookshelf in my brother's pickup bed (hubs was gone in his truck). so, it needs a few touch ups.

i can't wait to see it all loaded up with bins or baby supplies. when connor arrives and i visit, i 'll be sure to make room among the thousands of photos i'll take of him for one or two of his nursery and this bookshelf.

next on my list of things to build is the headboard for timmy's bed. the base and the cubby hutch. not the side towers, because c'mon! did you notice (from the picture in the last post) how tiny his room is?

hermit carpentry

hobbies are the methadone to my workaholism. prior to my timmy-induced sabbatical, there was a time my husband "requested" i gain some balance. work - whether in the office, on the road or on my laptop at home - took an average of 85 hours of my week.

now, i never missed one of the kids' ball games or school functions, but i missed plenty of family dinners and regular ol' time at home. even as i type this, waves of guilt and remorse wash over me. the precious, fleeting time i wasted away from my family!

one night, as i drove home from yet another couple days out of town, hubs called and brought to my attention that i hadn't eaten dinner with my family in a month. (guilt tsunami, here.) it hit me like a ton of bricks. i loved my work, but not like i love my family.

so, i tried beaded jewelry, furniture re-upholstery (blech. soon after, we bought new furniture.), knitting, sewing (purses! quilts! couch cozies!), scrapbooking and photography.

enter knock off wood. oh, ana white, how i love thee and thy recipe-style woodworking plans that allow someone who has never picked up a hammer to build beautiful wood furniture. ana's site is called "knock off wood" because she creates plans for pottery barn and land of nod, etc. "knocks offs." actually, her plans are better because we builders can choose much higher quality materials. and save oodles of fweet moolah.

case in point? my first project: timmy's bed. here is ana's inspiration. please pay no attention to the messy cubbies (i'm still deciding whether to do bins or drawers) or the mismatched pillowcase. or, now that i take a good look, the "nursery colors" of his walls, doors and windows. clearly, i need to update.

also, see the flat wall bookholder? it seriously took me maybe a half hour to make. from scraps!

i plan to build a headboard base and hutch next. well, next for this room. you see, i have several plans on my list of to-do's . . . just have to prioritize and organize my schedule.

hello, old friend!

ah, my blog. just like all my journals of the past, i began neglecting you, letting you die a slow and lonely death only to come running back when i need you again. i'm sorry. i am a fickle friend. forgive me?

i am starting (just one week behind everyone else in the group) a new study: becoming the woman God wants me to be, a 90-day guide to living the proverbs 31 life. right off the bat, i'm stuck. at the end of day 1 (day ONE!) is an exercise. four questions to answer and at the end, viola! my own personal vision statement. simple, no?

no. question one - two of my unique personal qualities. i'm on it! empathy and creativity.

question two - one or two ways i enjoy expressing those qualities when interacting with others (e.g., through supporting, inspiring). umm . . . uh . . . wellllll . . . i don't actually do any much interacting with others. take creativity. i like making stuff. i like making stuff with timmy. i go to the occasional crop, but i never actually get anything done - a crop is just an opportunity for me to talk with real live adult women and go peepee all. by. myself.

question three - describe the perfect world-what are people doing, how are they interacting, what does it feel like (e.g., everyone is freely expressing his or her talents in harmonious and loving ways). huh. since i don't do a lot of interacting outside my home, the only thing that example makes me think of is tim actually putting his dishes into the dishwasher and timmy responding sweetly and obediently to my every request of him.

vision statement fail!

still plugging away

even though cz's design your life class at bigpicturescrapbooking.com is finished, i am not. i am so not. but i'm still plugging away.

this, for example, is week 8, sketch 2. it was originally a 2-page 8.5x11 spread, but i hated it. so i changed it to one 12x12 page and now i like it. oh, i would do some things differently if only i had planned ahead. the topic was emphasis. using big photos to create emphasis. but i wanted to continue my theme of using my most current photos to do the layouts and i didn't have a Christmas picture great enough to print in 8.5x11 size.

you can see, however, that i did use the design principle of repetition. red buttons (i'm not much of an embellishment user), red in the photos - and if i'd planned ahead, i would have printed the title in red, too. oh, well; live and learn. also unheard of? i included a picture of me! chubby and tired looking - yep, it's me. :)

p.s. a dirty pool board is a (most often) wooden game board handmade by the dad of the family for the kid of the family when s/he grows up and moves away. andrew got his the year before last. dirty pool is similar to wahoo and is a family tradition. we play whenever we can, but it's required on Christmas Eve and pretty much all day Christmas. this year, timmy and i basically got out the marbles, rolled the dice and counted the "steps" the marbles made. no rhyme or reason to our game. maybe next year.

p.p.s. tim's a rebel. he did not wear his Christmas jammies. stinkin' daddy!

so much to say . . .

well, this blog certainly isn't doing its job of recording all my memories. stinkin' blog. when will they come up with one that just pulls the data out of my mind and updates itself daily? that's the blog i want!

today is october 12th, which of course is twelve-of-twelve day! i remembered yesterday. and forgot by this morning. but i recovered quickly when i saw susan's email. so i'm taking pictures of my life today. my boring, house-is-not-tidy life.

also, i plan to work on my week 2 layouts for cz's design your life class. i finally finished week 1 the other day. this first one is a 12x12.

and this 8.5x11 2-page spread (and not a very good scan).

i am so insanely proud of myself! for actually finishing the first assignments, yes, but also for my newly developed ability to put all my worries and obsessiveness aside and just do it! it always takes me forever to come up with any idea and then i obsess about it and about the paper and everything else until it's just torture. not this time, baby! i am going to jump right in every week. the topics of my assignment pages almost don't matter to me. i do not need the "perfect" topic. i'm learning about design. my pages will slowly but surely become more perfect as i go along.

in other news . . . preschool. ugh. timmy is engaged in a battle over who rules timmy. thursday when i went to pick him and ethan up, i passed ms. brenae, our classroom helper, who said timmy politely told ms. abby (another helper), "i will not cooperate with you." (big sigh) as it turns out, he did eventually do what ms. abby wanted him to do. but only after he'd made it clear he was doing it on his terms. (heaving another big sigh)

oh! the weather has been so nice here lately that the boys and i drive with our windows down - especially when we go past the several blocks of street construction on the way to wal mart. they love to see which piece of equipment is working and which workers might be taking a break at that moment. aaaaaaanyway, the other day we were driving along with the windows down. timmy rested his foot up on the door's armrest and said sweetly, "look, mommy, i'm just like you - one of my leg whiskers is blowing in the wind!" God love him.

what a day already!

today is the 12th of the month. 12-of-12. i could fill my page with pictures of temper tantrums and time-outs. maybe even if today were 30-of-30, lol. but i'm determined to keep my patience and my good humor. i have taken just one photo of one time-out.

yesterday i finished my pre-work layout for cathy zielske's "design your life" class at big picture scrapbooking. it was torture, i'll be honest. even though we were given exact measurements, colors and basic layout (nine squares).

my scanner isn't twelve inches wide, so i scanned from one edge, then from the other and combined them in photoshop elements. i wonder how other people do that . . .

i'm still worried i will not be successful in this class. i have an abstract picture in my mind of exactly how i want my pages to look and what i want them to "do," but rarely can i translate that idea into reality. (much like how i cannot translate the precise mathematical calculations i make on the golf course into a long straight drive.)

by the end of this class, i expect to know a lot about design. i also expect to have a much higher level of scrapbooking comfort. i want to be able to put a photo and story down on paper in a pleasing manner and in a reasonable time frame and with a minimum amount of emotional discomfort. that's it! so, cz, don't fail me!

girliness lost

i don't know what it is about me these last few days, but i've been emotional, sentimental, nostalgic. thinking deep thoughts about so many things, past and present. for example, i've been lamenting the fact that i grew up with no sisters. no girlie influence at all.

having four brothers, all the tv i watched was that which appealed to males. shows like "the incredible hulk," "a-team," westerns. i don't even know the names of any shows with a female audience from that time period.

playing with dolls? i had some barbies, but my brothers' g.i. joes usually blew them up. or they buried them in the yard. or hung their severed heads by their hair from the clothesline. i did get a holly hobby bicycle for my birthday one year, but by the end of summer, she'd been disassembled for parts for various violent experimental machines.

polishing nails, playing dress-up, putting on make-up? huh-uh. nope. i didn't even feel like i was "allowed" to dream of prince charming and a fairytale wedding. i would have been laughed at for sure. and no girl-emotions, either. no crying, no female drama.

when added to our frequent moves, this equals a serious retardation of the ability to make girlfriends. not the desire; just the ability.

i made my first girlfriend in seventh grade. she moved away. and so, coincidentally, did we. i missed most of the eighth grade due to illness, but the summer before ninth grade, i really "blossomed," as they say - got boobs and hips and had great hair and learned how to use make-up to my advantage.

i became friends with the sister of one of the boys who liked me. butch and beverly (and bev's boyfriend) and i were inseparable. such intense but innocent good times. then . . . we moved away. (note: bev and i now live about an hour apart and we see each other every year or so, although we email back and forth frequently.)

i can't remember exactly how i met angela, but we became bff's. we had a lot in common, but were different enough to be interesting to each other. our friendship cooled a bit when we both moved twice more before graduation. but we went to the same college and jumped right back into our friendship. then, toward the end of our sophomore year, something happened. a gradual distancing at first and then someone told me she'd said horrible things about me. i never asked her if it was true. but i think about angela often. i wonder what happened back in college. i wonder how her life turned out. if she's happy.

fast forward to today. my cousin vicki and i've been best friends since we've lived in the same town since 1992. i made two very good girlfriends after hiring them, debbie at one company and susan at the next. then i became friends with susan's sister sharon. susan and sharon remain good friends and may be the first women, other than vicki, who i've felt i could confide my truths to.

what's the point of all this? i don't . . . know. i think there may be no point at all. but if there were a point, it would be that tomorrow is my very first ever pedicure appointment. tim gave me a gift certificate two birthdays ago and i'm finally using it, due in part (maybe wholly due) to my recent yearning for the girliness i should have had growing up. and i am so incredibly nervous about it. dumb, but true.

pre-formal education angst

two days from now is the official "meet the teacher" day at timmy's new preschool. yikes! we've already met his teacher, miss brooke, earlier in the summer, but this official meeting marks the end of his toddlerhood and the beginning of his preschoolhood (is that a word?)

i haven't even gotten over the end of his babyhood yet and now he's starting his formal education. look at him - does he look like he should be leaving his mommy for 3 hours twice a week already?  

well, after he helped me make bierocks sunday, i admit i may have been ready for 3 hours of timmylessness. but only so i could clean my kitchen. i swear!

note: my sister-in-law, taryn, is to blame for the end of my baby's toddlerhood. my 4yo nephew, ethan, needs preschool this year so he'll be ready for kindergarten next year. oh, he's smart as a whip and already knows a lot of things, but he has trouble with transitions. and since our school district just went to all-day kindergarten (don't even get me started on that mess!), he really needs the help . . . but, back to the  point: stinkin' taryn! since ethan stays with me while his mom and dad are working . . . well, it didn't seem fair to take ethan to preschool and not let timmy go, too. stinkin' taryn.

i've had this undefined dread about preschool for a couple months now. even as i type this, it's not yet defined (although my hope is it will be by post's end). i am not so much worried about him being away from me for the first time (except for 3 days of vbs this summer, during which he did just fine) because he is not a clingy, needy boy. i am sad for me, of course, but that's not it, either. he is polite and respectful and he gets along well with other children, but he's not timid, so i'm not worried he be a bully or be bullied. 

no, i think it's . . . i'm worried about whether he will learn there. he's done just fine here at home with me. he knows, by sight and verbally, all the letters of the alphabet and all the sounds each letter makes. he can identify which letter "makes the beginning/middle/ending sound" of most words. we accomplished this through playing with foam bathtub letters and just talking about words and letters throughout the normal course of our day. we learn about animals and airplanes and money and books and history and . . . we just learn. as we go about our regular activities, while we're in the car. that's how kids learn at home, right?

but this preschool . . . it seems a little . . . weird. i wouldn't have chosen it (stinkin' taryn). the parents' manual doesn't mention much about regular school-type topics. they don't do worksheets. they don't practice writing or cutting paper with scissors. instead, there is a lot of information about avoiding gender stereotyping and about "cultural inclusiveness" and self-esteem. is this what school is about now? if not, why is this what preschool is about?

i want timmy to learn to read and write. i want him to learn proper grammar. and math. and history. government. literature. science. critical thinking skills. maybe a foreign language or two. you know. the things i learned in school and the things that will help him succeed in college and adult life. self-esteem, et al? let us handle that at home.

i swear, if i had more than one child at home now, i would seriously consider homeschooling. our neighbors when andrew and tori were little homeschooled their kids and they turned out well-educated, well-mannered and well-adjusted.

but, all this (admittedly, self-created) drama may turn out to be no big deal. because timmy's birthday is in february, he won't be eligible for kindergarten for two more years. next year, when ethan is already in kindergarten and timmy's good and crunchy (i picture the preschool administration wearing birkenstocks and pookah shell necklaces - i sure hope that is just my imagination!), i can send timmy to a more traditional preschool. but at least i feel better now that i've droned on and on about my worries. thank you, bloggy-blog!

designing my life

i signed up for cathy zielske's design your life class at big picture scrapbooking! i'm nervous and excited. i'm alternately filled with doubt and squealing with anticipation.

when cz first announced the class, i really, really wanted to do it. but then i talked myself out of it. the money. the commitment. my lack of scrap-esteem. and then i just forgot all about it. until my sista-girl moon asked if i was taking the class.

tim's all for the class, especially since i don't have to go anywhere to take it. back when i was still a full-time wage earner and working so much my family rarely caught sight of me, it was tim who requested i get a hobby in the hopes i'd gain some balance. now . . . if i had my old paycheck, i might be as obsessed with my hobby as i once was with my work, lol!

but, speaking of my current obsessions . . . i've got to record this little timmy story before i forget:

over this summer, we've developed a new habit. maybe not a great one, but a fun one. we eat dinner on our bed while watching "ice road truckers" on the history channel. last week, tim bought timmy some "ice road ice cream dots" for dessert. last night tim was working and timmy and i had bierocks. but i digress.

timmy asked me yesterday while we were eating, "are you married to daddy?" i acknowledged it and he said, "i want to marry you, too." i know every little boy wants to marry his mommy at about this age, but it still melted my heart. ah, i love that little guy!

mah bay-bee is growing up!

we visited preschool today. (sob)

timmy poopied in his potty seat of his own free will yesterday evening, with no prompting from us. even though we have a "meet the teacher" group scheduled august 21st, we called to ask if we could drop in today as a reward for such wonderful big boy behavior.

we arrived and were escorted to miss brooke's classroom. timmy was inexplicably shy and whispered his greeting. then he noticed the sink. a kitchen-style sink at his height. with a magic faucet (just waive your hand beneath and the water comes on). he asked, "may i please wash my hands?" he found no bar soap, so miss brooke talked him through the pump and the magic faucet and the paper towel dispenser and the waste bin.

miss brooke also introduced him to the class caterpillar. whom timmy poked and almost squished. out of love, though. love; not malice.

then timmy noticed the bin of dinosaurs.

and the bin of tinker toys.

and the bin of cars.

and the reading area, where i read a book about emergency vehicles to him (but skipped four of every five pages, b/c that was one long book!) and miss brooke promised to read "chicka chicka boom boom" (a very fun book) at the "meet the teacher" event.

timmy was well-behaved even though he wanted to see it all and do it all. i was proud of him.

but my baby! (sob) he's growing up! (sob) i'm not ready! (sob)

i suppose it's a good thing he'll have these two mornings a week for two years before kindergarted, eh?

photo shaZAM

i stole that title from jessica sprague. she finally posted another photoshop friday! woohoo! it's a quick and dirty tutorial for adding some wow using screen and overlay layers. she calls her technique photo shaZAM. and i tried it.

i've already posted this picture:

it's ok. he's cute, no? i love his hair. i love the look on his face. i love his necklace. but the photograph itself is just ok. i didn't realize this until i read today's photoshop friday post. in fact, i really loved it prior to reading that post and trying the technique myself.

now that i've been properly educated on this topic, i love this one:

i greedily await photoshop friday posts. i also check the pioneer woman’s photography section once or twice or twenty times a day, hoping to learn something. ree also burns the edges of a lot of her photographs. i've never done it until now. i think i may have been a little heavy-handed, but i'm still happy.

all i can say is SQUEEE!

tonight begins my photography class! i've been reading my manual like crazy to prepare. my gf sharon and my brother tom are coming, too. i have been wanting to take one for years, but now that i have my d40, it's time.

the college in town does not offer any photography classes - can you believe that? every semester, i look in the catalog, but no. the arts and recreation department of the big town/small city near me does, though, so that's what i'm doing.

their catalog does not give a big description, and the receptionist didn't have details (though she was SO friendly and otherwise helpful), so i'm afraid "basic digital photography" might be too basic for me. but if i weren't worried about that, i'd worry about something else, so i say for $50, it's worth it. in the fall, we can all sign up for the advanced digital photography class.

speaking of squee, i have an opportunity to go to chicago in a few weeks. i haven't seen tori since january and haven't seen andrew, michelle & baby arie since september!

there's only one problem. the opportunity arose b/c a friend and her friend are driving and offered to take timmy and me along. we'll split the gas 3 ways. none of us can afford to fly anymore (stinkin' oil prices!), so it's a great alternative. however, the dates are set in stone b/c of the friend's son's navy graduation and i just realized yesterday after finally consulting my planner that it's also the weekend of my youngest brother's wedding.

dang it! i don't know what to do. it's his 3rd marriage (don't ask), but that doesn't mean it isn't important and isn't the one that will finally "take." but i haven't seen my first two babies in so long! and i suspect they won't be able to fly down for the holidays (again i curse those oil prices!). i just don't know what to do. but i'm excited i have the opportunity to consider anyway.

in the meantime, it's just 8 hours until i begin taking better pictures!

forgiveness: not my strong suit

i am not easily hurt or offended. i'm just not that sensitive, i guess. growing up an only girl with four brothers may have something to do with it - maybe i am less comfortable allowing myself to feel stereotypically "female" emotions. (oh, how we could delve into the depths of my psyche on this issue. maybe some day. then again, maybe not.)

i also do not trust easily. i'm polite. i'm friendly. i have a lot of "friends." i am a good friend to others, but there are only two women in the world who know the real entire me. i have a close relative who was, after ten years, becoming a friend. i haven't shared any deep dark secrets with her, but i am almost another parent to her child.

(deep breath.) ok . . . she criticized my child and my parenting skills. in a semi-public setting. it took no more than a few hours for the story to reach me.

i was devastated. i didn't know how to handle it. i decided almost immediately to forgive her, but what to do about it was beyond me. (my willingness to confront issues early and head-on has diminished since i've left the corporate world behind.) after several hours of hard thinking, i called my mom and cried. she listened and told me the criticisms were not accurate.

my mom is not the type to insert herself into her children's lives. she minds her own business. but in this case, she butted in. she called the relative. i do not know what she said, but whatever it was, it was the right thing to say, judging by the end result.

i would have waited until i wasn't so emotional before calling my relative to talk about the issue. so when caller i.d. showed she was calling that very night, i debated whether to answer. but i did. she was outside on the front porch and asked me to come out and talk to her.

i honestly do not know if i could ever be brave enough to do what she did - she got right to the point, told me she was very wrong, had no excuses and apologized. i did not make any effort to ease her discomfort (totally unlike me). i acknowledged her "wrongness" and let her know how deeply it hurt me. but i also told her i'd forgiven her almost immediately and accepted her apology.

i'd thought that even though i forgave her, our relationship would be forever damaged and doomed to remain politely distant, but as she answered my question of why she would say such things, something happened. the hurt i'd felt melted away and my broken trust mended. just like that. i didn't excuse her behavior - and she didn't ask me to - but over the hour or so we talked, we reestablished the foundation of our relationship.

forgiveness is always necessary, but not always easy for me. i should say it this way: forgiveness is a decision. not a feeling. sometimes the decision is made with gritted teeth and the "feeling" comes later. sometimes so much later that i wallow in my feelings of hurt or anger and realize i have to decide all over again to forgive. eventually the feelings match the decision. it's hard work!

but i know two things about forgiveness. the first is that it's required. if i want God to forgive me, i've got to extend forgiveness to others, even if they don't "deserve" it. the second is that withholding my forgiveness makes me a hostage to my pain and anger and prevents me from feeling peace in my life.

like i said, it's difficult. but this one time, God made it easy for me. for that, and for the repaired relationship with my relative, i'm grateful.

i used to be a professional

and by that, i do not mean a "professional." as in a pro. you know, a "working girl?" no, i mean i used to work all day in the corporate world. and i was a star. no, really. i have confidence issues in many areas, but not regarding my work. i really was an expert in my area of expertise. my advice and counsel were sought by many (which is a fairly good thing for a consultant).

i do not regret, for one solitary moment, being home to raise my baby. i believe every woman who can, should. please note the italics. many women can not afford to stay home with their babies. i feel for those moms who wish they could but must work to pay the bills. being married to a cop, i know a thing or two about money crunch. (why is it that police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and military members do such dangerous work for others' benefit and yet make so little money? does this make sense to you? can you explain it to me?)

other women feel they can not be good moms at home if they are not also active in the working world. these women should do what's necessary to allow them to be the best mothers they can be. their children are better off with a mom who is fully present and engaged at the end of the work day than one who is bitter and distracted all day long at home.

as i said, i believe it is best for children to be raised by a stay-at-home parent whenever possible. it is especially so for my child(ren). because my working self thinks nothing of being away at work from 6am-10pm and then working from home several hours more. because my working self's mind is totally, completely engaged in (obsessed with? i'm not too proud to admit it) the intricacies of the myriad laws and regulations that change seemingly daily; with the research so integral to finding and implementing just the right solution for a particular client; with planning and teaching the university courses that prepare fledgling (or veteran) professionals to pursue or advance in their own careers. oh, my heart is pounding even as i type this. that old addiction is still unbelievably strong. and so i stay away.

my children deserve my best. and i am unable to give my best to them when i give my all to work. unfortunately, i am unable to maintain balance. i have tried. i am sorry to have to confess that andrew and tori did receive less than my best during their early high school years. i thought i had a handle on it, but it slowly took over, this monkey on my back. but i dialed it back in time. they are relatively well-adjusted and healthy adults. and now we have timmy. and i am determined to give him my best. (i have taken the odd project here and there, but only short-term projects and those that allow me to work mostly from home. and still i must remain on guard. i wonder if this is a disability?)

again, i do not regret this decision to be a full-time sahm. i don't. i am fully committed to this, my job as mother. i am my child's first - and i hope best - teacher. he will grow up more independent, more confident, more engaged in learning. and so, on the rare day when i wake up feeling a little depressed about my absense from my former world, i just remind myself of the importance of my current job. i may be dressing in a t-shirt and crocs every day, but i am raising a fully-fuctioning, mentally and physically healthy, thinking and reasoning person here. and i am a star in this job, too.

apparently, observation is not my forte

my friend cruz emailed me that she'd just discovered the ends of her aluminum foil box had tabs to press in to prevent the roll from jumping out of the box when used. i'd never heard such a thing.

i looked in my drawer and sure enough! my plastic wrap, my foil - every one of them has offered me a very simple way to avoid the less-than-Christlike attitude resulting from my roll jumping right out of the box at the most inopportune time.

sometimes i get a little . . . oh, i don't know . . . judgmental? . . . about people in my life. i think i'm pretty successful at not behaving or speaking in a judgmental way, but having those thoughts is wrong. i'll be well-served by remember what an idiot i can be, and this picture will certainly remind me.