Everything is Unfinished

Have you seen that Office Depot commercial? The one with the hand coming out of the box that “gives people a hand”? CREEPY! And really, could you be more blatant in your ripping off of the Staples Easy Button?

And what about the Visa Check Card factory commercial? You’ve seen it, the one with the people all working in step to “Powerhouse”. And if you haven’t seen it, you can see it here: “Lunch”. I love the commercial, since I have kind of an obsession with assembly lines in general and that song in particular, but I have a beef with the portrayal of cash. Someone paying cash would not hold up the line like that, but someone paying with a CHECK would. Especially if that someone is roughly 85 years old, doesn’t start writing the damn thing out until after they’ve heard what the total is, and of course has no idea where their driver’s license is.

What about the Texas Instruments DLP HDTV commercials with the elephant and the annoying little girl who talks about the mirrors? At first I was kind of annoyed by her, but now I share Johnny’s sentiments and want to punch her in the face.

And can we stop with the car commercials where people get in an accident? Specifically the Volkswagen ones, and even more specifically the one where the people in the car are talking about one of the commercials and then they themselves get in an accident! The only thing worse than pretentious, over-dramatic ads are SELF-REFERENTIAL, pretentious, over-dramatic ads.

Then just as I think to myself, “this is why I have TiVo,” Bruce Campbell goes and makes an awesome Old Spice ad. Woody talked about it here and included a clip of the commercial. More proof that Bruce is one of the coolest people in the universe. I may just start wearing Old Spice myself.

I have a memory from when I was about 10 years old. My mom told me one morning while my dad was on a business trip that she never slept well when he was gone. I remember wondering why? She should sleep better because she got the whole bed to herself! But now that I’m sharing my bed with someone, I totally understand that. Johnny’s gone on a bunch of small trips in the next few weeks here, leaving me with no one to snuggle with when I do finally make it up to bed. So I lie awake a little later, watch another show on the TiVo, and steal his pillow. But I can’t really complain since he’s on job interviews - someone’s got to bring home the bacon, right? And at least Jack is back to sleeping through the night now, so maybe my sleep won’t be that bad. Besides, I get the whole bed to myself.

After 19 days, I finally saw my house again on Friday. Then I immediately packed back up and left for the night. I was actually supposed to be gone for 2 nights, at an annual planning meeting for Columbus Scrappers where I’m on the board of directors. That sounds pretty important, doesn’t it? What it actually means is that I get to help moderate a website where 250 women bitch about things, and occasionally scrapbook. Anyway, I came home a day early when we actually got through our whole agenda early. It’s so good to be home, even though I don’t really like the house we’re currently living in. But all of my stuff is here (most of it dumped on the floor right now), my Christmas tree, my hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures of Jack, my TiVo and all the shows it recorded for me while we were gone, and my comfy, comfy bed. A bed which I am currently not in, at 3:30am, because 1) Jack has decided he doesn’t need sleep anymore. Every time he wakes up, he has this look on his face like, “hey, who tricked me into closing my eyes?!” Last Thursday night he slept from 11pm until 2am, then got up and played the rest of the night. Fortunately tonight he’s sleeping soundly and has been since about 9:30pm. and 2) I am sick. Again. Quite possibly from not sleeping well. My throat is all dry and scratchy and last night around 4am I finally found some expired Chloraseptic and although it tasted kind of like rubber, it let me stop coughing enough to drift off. Then I slept until 2pm today, so here I am. And I’ve been watching the Food Network so I’ve been eating everything I can find in the kitchen. I should take some NyQuil and knock myself out. But not before I write about a few more things.

So in my last post I talked about professional bloggers. I came up with another reason not to be one: hate mail. Seriously! People who voluntarily read a personal website will take the time to send nasty emails to the person writing said website. Mind boggling. The latest blog I’ve been binging on can be found at Dooce.com and she publishes some of her hate mail, emails from total strangers criticizing what she writes about, how she treats her dog, and how she’s raising her daughter. As if someone is forcing them to read her site. Personally, I almost wish I lived in Salt Lake City so I could bribe her with Doritos and bourbon to get her to be my friend.

I did a meme a week or so ago and tagged 5 people, 3 of whom have stepped up to the challenge: Kathryn, Johnny and Myke. Amanda said she was going to play, but she’s been travelling so I can certainly understand why she hasn’t gotten to it. And as for Kris, well I’m not sure he knows I have a blog anymore.

In that same post I mentioned a limerick contest at Looky, Daddy! I fully intended to participate in that contest, then all of a sudden it was over. There were many, many good entries, which you can read here, and those were whittled down to 10 finalists which can be found here. Or you can just read the winner, which I will post here:
Surprise - It’s Triplets by Christine

We’d spent almost every last dime
Before seeing that second pink line.
My husband, he grins
“Please don’t let it be twins”
He should be more specific next time.

Anyone who knows me rather well knows that I’m a night owl. I’ve always been this way, and no matter if I had school at 7:30am or work at 8:00am or even a baby who regularly wakes up around 7:00am, my default bedtime is somewhere around 1:00am. Actually, now that there’s that baby who regularly wakes up around 7:00am my default bedtime has been pushed back to something more like 2:30am or 3:00am or later. I’m not sure why I’m like this - could be wiring, could be that my parents are like this, could be that I don’t want to miss anything that might happen at this late hour (strange, because I certainly don’t mind missing what happens between 6:00am and noon), could very likely be that I hold tightly onto this precious alone time when both husband and child are asleep. But as usual I digress: my point was supposed to be that what I usually do with these minutes is watch TiVo’d shows (Good Eats, Doctor Who, Thursday night comedies on NBC, home improvement shows that make me think I really COULD rip out a wall and put up a new one, or the occasional food show on the History or Travel channel) and read blogs. I have a list over there on the left, and then there are others that I have bookmarked which I read daily or weekly. But sometimes none of these blogs have anything new to quench my thirst and I’m faced with actually going to bed, and that will not stand for the reasons listed above. And let me just say right now that no, the irony is not lost on me that I crave new posts from others while my own blog sits, stale and unupdated, for weeks on end, and I apologize to all of you who are regularly disappointed by me. So what I do on an alarmingly regular basis these days is find all new blogs to read, with months of archives for me to go back and peruse and avoid sleep. And what I’m realizing is that there are bloggers out there making money. Just by blogging! I should be in on this! Of course that’s when I realize that they all have much larger readerships than I do. And ads on their sites. And they actually post daily or almost-daily. And they’re a lot wittier than I am. Oh, and usually they’re professional writers or journalists. It’s not that I can’t write, but I certainly don’t think I could see myself as a professional writer. Besides, if I was a professional anything I doubt I would be able to spend 5 straight hours playing video games on various platforms. Or go back to bed with Jack for a few hours after he has his morning bottle. Or decide on a whim that I want to go visit my friend Jen in Colorado for 5 days. Or let Jack stand on my lap and be all jumpa-jumpa for 45 minutes, leaving bruises on my thighs where he dug his toes in. Or read other people’s blogs for hours on end. So I guess I’ll just stay professional mommy because really, this is the best job I’ve ever had.

I’ve been tagged. Not the first time ever, but the first time I’ve been tagged by someone that I don’t know in “real” life.

It’s a new virtual frontier for me.

Liesel at Dante’s Inferno With Children, which I’ve been reading for about 2 months or so, called me out. She also tapped Looky, Daddy! (who is running a limerick contest - more on that later), Notes from the Cookie Jar, This Mom and Copabananas. She was tagged by Glennia at The Silent I.

It’s a game of Blog-Tag that requires you to write five things about yourself that your readers may not know, and tag five other bloggers to do the same. This is perfect! You may remember that I was going to post a list of 50 random facts about myself in lieu of New Year’s resolutions. You may also notice that I did not, in fact, post that list. That’s because I only came up with 16. And then I was trying to recover on New Year’s Day. (I have finally recovered with the help of Mucinex DM and Tylenol Cold Severe Head Congestion, plus several days of finally chilling out.) Besides, that list is at home on my laptop and I’m here without said laptop so that list is scratched, and I’m going with the seemingly simple FIVE things. Here they are:

1. One of the only regrets I have is that I didn’t change my major in college. I went to school majoring in music education, and very quickly realized that I wasn’t in the right place. But I stuck with it because that’s all I had ever wanted to do. Subsequently, I never finished my degree and at this point, have no interest in teaching.

2. I am scared of drains. Sink drains I can handle, and storm drains in the street, but bathtub and ESPECIALLY pool drains Freak. Me. Out. My Gramma has an inground pool and when I was young I used to have nightmares that I swam to the bottom of the deep end, got my finger caught in the drain and drowned. And hers is just a little round drain - those big grate-type things in big public pools literally give me the shivers. As a result of this fear, the first thing I do when I see a pool is look for the drain. Something about knowing your enemy, I guess.

3. I have a thing for redheaded guys. Conan O’Brian is on my List.

4. I wanted to have Jack completely naturally (ie, no drugs) using HypnoBirthing. Unfortunately, I needed a semi-emergency c-section. I was incredibly disappointed and upset about that, but I quickly realized that it doesn’t matter how he came out, he’s still the most amazing thing in my life.

5. I see numbers as colors in my head. 1 is white, 2 is yellow, 3 is red, 4 is orange, 5 is blue, 6 is green, 7 is black, 8 is orange, 9 is purple, 0 is black. It has been this way for as long as I can remember it, and I use strings of colors to help remember dates, zip codes and phone numbers. (I also think I have a partially photographic memory. I’m not sure if these two things are related.)

Well there you have it! Did you learn something about me? I’ll bet you did. And now I’d like to tag Johnny, Myke, Kathryn, Amanda and Kris. Leave a comment if you’re going to play.

P.S. It’s not really 3:45am as I’m posting this. We’re still on the west coast so it’s only 12:45am. Not that posting at 3:45am is uncommon for me.

Remember when you were a kid, and the wait for Christmas was a killer? And you shopped for one gift for everyone, and usually your Mom or Dad picked it out for you anyway? And you couldn’t understand why the grown-ups took a nap after you opened all your presents? The good ol’ days. And it’s not that this is my first “grown up” Christmas, but it seems to take me longer and longer to recover from the holidays. Let’s see why….

Friday Dec. 15
Make 2 batches of cookie dough for cookie exchange. Kill mixer. Switch to wrapping some presents. Hate all my wrapping paper, and why don’t I have any bags?

Saturday Dec. 16
Order Christmas cards with picture of Jack. Don’t have tree decorated yet, so can’t use picture of all of us. Head to parents’ house with Jack. Johnny stays home to grade finals.

Sunday Dec. 17
Go Christmas shopping with Dad and Mom, who is on crutches. Celebrate Mom’s birthday. Yes, she had the nerve to be born 8 days before Christmas.

Monday Dec. 18
Pack Jack back up and head home. Use new mixer to make 3 more batches of cookies, and bake and glaze all 30 dozen.

Tuesday Dec. 19
Pack up 30 dozen cookies, and take the family down to Columbus. Get portraits done at The Picture People. Wanna see? Here they are. Email is amy AT peelio DOT com and password is babyjack. After portraits have dinner with Natalie. Pick up Christmas cards from Costco. Head to cookie exchange. Socialize and eat cookies while Jack gets lots of attention. Johnny labels and stuffs cards before finding Seahawks helmet signed by Steve Largent. Go visit with Amanda. Realize we left cookies behind. Go back and pick them up. Get home around 1am.

Wednesday Dec. 20
Ignore the long list of things I need to do, including decorate the tree.

Thursday Dec. 21
Take both cars 45 minutes to Massillon to the nearest Kia dealership. My gas gauge hasnt’ worked for about a month, and it still doesn’t because of course they don’t have the part. Do some final shopping, eat lunch, and drive 45 minutes back home. Finally get to making the 3 gifts I have to make. Which I forgot to take pictures of, of course.

Friday Dec. 22
Pack up both cars with luggage, Wii, gifts and people and head to my parents’ for Christmas.

Saturday Dec. 23
Go to lunch at Zoup (yummy) and visit Gramma, before finally heading out with Mom at 3:30 to help her finish shopping. Get myself some gift bags in the process.

Sunday Dec. 24
Go to lunch at Fricker’s (yummy), where Johnny is spending the day watching football. Leave around 3:30 to finish up some even more last minute shopping for Mom. Go to church for Christmas Eve service. Go to Gramma’s, as is tradition. Head home to wrap late into the evening, as is also tradition. Go to bed at 3:30am.

Monday Dec. 25
Get up around 9:30 to a living room packed with gifts. Three hours later, we’re done opening them all. Many, many nice things are exchanged. Have a lovely ham dinner in the late afternoon. Visit Gramma again in the evening, where more gifts are exchanged.

Tuesday Dec. 26
Since I’ve decided I don’t like any of my current Christmas decorations, Johnny and I hit Chipotle (yummy) then go shopping. I score some much-needed wrapping paper, more gift bags, ornaments for the tree that’s still not decorated, and other various bargains. The mess of gifts finally gets to me that evening and I begin organizing.

Wednesday Dec. 27
Go to lunch at Zoup (yummy) again, visit Gramma then pack up both cars again with luggage, Wii, gifts and people. Head for home. Jack and I stop in Mansfield on the way for more shopping. I score a set of Christmas dishes for half off, plus other deals.

Thursday Dec. 28
Unpack. Laundry. Dishes. Organizing. Finally decorate the tree. Yeah, I know. Better late than never though.

Friday Dec. 29
Skip trip to Columbus I had planned. What was I thinking - I don’t want to drive that far again this soon! Natalie comes to visit. Go to lunch then shopping. Feeling queasy and headachy. Fall asleep in chair, wake up and go to bed around 1:30am. No longer queasy, but stuffy and scratchy throat.

Saturday Dec. 30
Alarm at 8:30. Not bloody likely. Tell Johnny to wake me up at 11. He does, I say no way. Cancel trip to Columbus again. Wake up at 2pm. Blah. Johnny gets me medicine - Mucinex DM. USE IT next time you’re congested. Feel better and do some dishes. Feel worse and take a nap. Fall asleep on couch after watching 9 episodes of Good Eats.

Sunday Dec. 31
Wake up at 2pm again. Finally feeling better. Fold what seems like 52 loads of laundry. Begin packing for the trip out west. I’m not even recovered from the last trip!

I swear, I think I was less busy when I was working. But I still have no desire to give this up, sickness and all. So Happy New Year everyone, hope you’re recovering from your holidays. I’ll have pictures from Washington soon!