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Bye-bye, Vancouver

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Editorial, Financial, Planning Tagged with , February 28th, 2010 @ 10:48 pm

Well, I got to watch the Canada v. USA Gold Medal hockey game today, and loved it. I’m glad that Canada won – they were hosting the games, they should have won. I think if the Olympics had been hosted any other location other than Vancouver, Canada, I would have been all “GO USA!”, but I couldn’t manage it today.

And I don’t think it’s being un-American, as has been suggested. It’s just a game, they’re all NHL players (and even NHL Refs!), and it doesn’t matter that much to me. In the scheme of things, I mean.

But I missed most of the rest of The Games. I didn’t see any Downhill Skiing, nor did I catch any of the really cool looking snowboarding (Downhill Snowboarding?), or the figure skating. I just took a moment to watch some recaps – only about ten minutes worth – and I realize again just how much I missed it.

I want to be in a position, two years from now, to be able to have cable and sit and watch Olympics from the moment they start until the second they finish. To be able to take two weeks off of work, still send the kid’s to daycare, and just veg. Turn up the television and clean in the other rooms when there’s something on I’m not completely in love with.

That would be cool.

So I’ve got some events queued up in another tab, and I’m going to enjoy the things I missed. It won’t be the same, of course. I can see who won already, and I know who crashes and who doesn’t stand a chance. A lot of the fun is gone.

On the other hand, I did finally figure out who that squat little man-figure is supposed to represent, all on my own. Yay, me!

Note to Self

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Completely Off Topic Tagged with February 28th, 2010 @ 1:38 am

Just a memo to me: this is not something I want to give up on. Daily effort is necessary and essential. Stop thinking negative thoughts and ACT. No apologies, ever.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog!

No TV Happy Play Day – Yay!

0 comments By Nicki Filed in What Happened Tagged with , , February 23rd, 2010 @ 10:10 pm

Sometimes you just need a cowboy picture.

So if you read my last post, you read about my zombie kids. And so tonight, as there was no boy scouts to take my son to, I announced to my daughter when I picked her up that tonight was to be No TV Happy Play Day!

She was not amused, in the adorable way only a 4-year-old can be.

But then my son and I talked about how he couldn’t find his toys and how he was angry and sad about it, and I explained to him that he needs to organize his toys. I’m not sure how, but suddenly they were both totally psyched about it. After my son explained that we could pack up the baby toys and then if I forget to take my medicine and we get another baby (!!) we could get the baby toys back out, it was decided. Tonight’s big adventure would be cleaning shelves and taking pictures so we knew where things would be and could find our toys.

Now my daughter whines a lot. Usually it’s because she’s hungry, but today when we got home, it was, “I want to clean the shelves!”

Seriously, she was whining about not being able to clean quickly enough.

But we had to make sure my son had his homework done. After that, they cleaned. I supervised (sore back – honest!), and as my son attacked the book shelves, I saw one of my favorite books – Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back by Shel Silverstein. After cleaning lost its appeal, I was determined to read it.

The kids totally loved it, I finished it only a little bit after bedtime, and I realized where I got my writing style from. Mr. Silverstein likes to ramble, and I like to ramble.

So all in all, our No TV Happy Play Day was a success! I have another book by Uncle Shelby – poetry this time – to read tomorrow night. And if I can’t find the one with the naked butt drawings that  I remember from when I was a kid, I’m totally going to the library.

What a great ending to a suckage day!

TV Zombies and The Zone

1 comment By Nicki Filed in Editorial Tagged with , , February 22nd, 2010 @ 9:10 am

When my daughter watches television, she does nothing else. She could sit there for hours and watch Spongebob and then Dora and then Sailor Moon (yay, VHS!), and not complain a moment (except for the traditional V battle cry, “I’m hungry!”).

My son could play on the computer for hours. On a lazy Saturday morning with only half-awake parentage, he could easily kill three hours on Kidzui.

Lately, if the TV isn’t on, my daughter doesn’t want to do anything. And if my son can’t play “something with electricity”, he’s not happy.

That’s not good.

They both have tons of toys, and when we do finally manage to get them to start playing, they get totally into their respective activities – blocks, coloring, playing Spy – and don’t miss the television at all. It’s just getting through the whines and cries of “I’m bored!” and “There’s nothing to do – can’t I play on your iPod?” that’s the difficult part.

My husband had a suggestion – no television for a week. It’s a great idea, and something I want to try as well.

You see, I can’t really complain about my kids’ habits, because they’re my habits, too. When I’m up in the evenings after everyone else has gone to bed, I “have” to have the television on to keep me company. Usually I’ll put in a movie I’ve seen about 16 times. And then I turn on the computer, and start playing games on Facebook, addicted to Farmville and Cafe World (darn you to heck, Zynga Games!).

But when I have the television off, and I’m actually working, I easily slip into The Zone, that place where everything gets done and you lose track of time because you’re so focused on what you’re doing. And that just helps – the pocketbook, the bills get paid, my task list, everything.

So – a week without TV. I’ve got other things for this week too, but I’ll try hard to focus on getting this done.

Wish me luck!

Photo by Wynand Delport

I Want, I Want, I Want!

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Editorial Tagged with , February 21st, 2010 @ 11:06 am

We don’t have cable right now, and while I realize how much I really miss it just after I get back from doing laundry at my parents’ house, I’m so glad we don’t. Because when the kids come with me to do laundry, I hear one thing for the entire trip.

“Mommy, come here, quick! I want that!”

Commercials suck. They teach my kids to beg for things they don’t need. An overpriced robe you wear backwards? My son wants it. A machine that squeezes toothpaste out of the tube automatically because the user can’t figure out how to get the last drop out? My daughter needs it. A bunch of markers that change colors? The helicopter that floats around your living room? The latest TV show card game toy?

“I want it! I want it! I want it!”

I’m trying to get them to change their verbiage. “That’s neat! I like that! It looks like fun!” But with kids, it’s hard. I like to get stuff, too, so teaching my kids to not want everything they see is hard. Still, I feel like if I can steer them away from always saying they “want” something, or it’s something they have to “have”, that maybe I can adjust their attitudes a little.

There’s got to be a book out there to teach me what to do. All the advice that’s spread out on the Internet in all the great blogs that I read, all in one spot so I can read it all at once and reference it. Does anyone know where that link went?

Photo by Ivan Petrov

Really, Really Bad Day

1 comment By Nicki Filed in Completely Off Topic Tagged with , February 19th, 2010 @ 9:30 pm

Today was horrible. I was so frustrated I wanted to scream and cry. Three other people had very similar days. It sucked.

Tomorrow will be better, simply because medicine is making my back hurt less, and now that I realize that I can take that medicine until I get to the doctor.

It is going to be hell getting out of this chair, though.

Wish me luck!

Things Move in My House Without Being Told

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Editorial Tagged with , , February 17th, 2010 @ 7:24 am

And I can’t tell you how much that freaks me out.

I believe in ghosts. Or maybe it’s that the idea of ghosts scare me, I’m not quite sure now that I think about it. If someone told me their house was haunted, I would eagerly ask what happens and shudder in sympathy. But I watch shows like Ghost Hunters with a skeptical eye. They never record much of anything, really. Not on the episodes I’ve seen.

Yet ever since I was a girl, I was afraid of dark spaces. When we lived in the country we kept a second refrigerator downstairs in our basement (formerly our living area before the 2nd and 3rd stories were built). It was at the end of a long hallway, and the light switch was strangely positioned. One had to turn off the main lights then walk down a longish, mostly dark, definitely shadowed hall to get to the stairs where there was again plentiful light.

I can’t tell you how many times I switched off the main light then ran like the bats of hell were after me, not daring to look at the open room to my right, for fear of seeing ghosts appear. Never mind the fact that I grew up down there, and there wasn’t anything remotely scary in the room. Once the lights were off, all bets were off.

Now in our new house, we have a door that doesn’t quite hang right. Plus it’s an older house with the original hardwood floors (or at least very old hardwood floors). So when you step on the floor in just the right place, and it can be in the hall, in the bathroom, or two bedrooms away, that door pops open.

Yesterday that happened to me. I was alone in the house. I had to close the door because my cat has decided that the room with it’s blue shag carpeting is her very own litter box, and she can poop there any time she wants. So I went and pulled the door shut.

I swear that I felt resistance as I closed the door, as if someone from the inside grabbed the bottom of the door for a moment, but didn’t have the strength to hold on.

To say that shook me up would be an understatement.

So you see, I’m scared of my daughter’s door. I know it’s just the funny quirks of an old house, but I believe in ghosts just enough to be scared.

It didn’t help when this morning the vanity in the bathroom opened just a little. It’s hung funny too.

Oh, the Pain!

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Completely Off Topic Tagged with February 15th, 2010 @ 6:00 am

So I had just woken up and was walking my kids out to the car so they could go to Sunday school, and I slipped on some ice. My already stiff back seized up some more, and now I’m in pain. Big pain.

I laid down for a bit after arriving back home, but after a couple of rounds of ibuprofen and a couple rounds of laying down, it still hurts. I’m not sure about whether I’ll make it in to work, nor whether I’ll be able to sleep tonight. *urk*

I’m just hoping that what the pharmacist told my husband doesn’t pan out to be true – that it will hurt more tomorrow than it does today.

Just When Things Were Looking Down…

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Business, Financial, Planning Tagged with , , February 12th, 2010 @ 6:00 am

So I’ve been hopelessly behind on work projects, and I was even in the process of writing a post about how I don’t like designing websites anymore, when I got started on one of said work projects and pretty much smoked through all but the last 1/2 hour of polishing in the last 2 hours.

I’m supposed to be in bed right now, and surely my husband is worried. (It’s 12:30 a.m. as I write this, and I have to go to work tomorrow.) But was it worth it?

When the project is completed by the other party, I will have earned enough money to pay for 3 months of Internet.

I have gained some motivation, as the project wasn’t as difficult as I had been fearing – which is what kept me from working on it these past two months.

My butt is sore from sitting for so long in the same position.

I’m not completely finished, and I may not be able to get back to the project for the next 24-72 hours.

I think it was worth it.

Glorious Snow!

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Completely Off Topic Tagged with , , February 11th, 2010 @ 6:00 am

It snowed a bit yesterday. Not too badly, just maybe a foot or so. I don’t actually know how much, just that it was light enough for my son to shovel and tromp through. He actually spent about 90 minutes outside playing. Had it not gotten dark, we probably wouldn’t have been able to drag him in.

My daughter, on the other hand, is definitely not a snow freak. She did go out a bit this morning to play and sweep/shovel, but she was over it quite a bit quicker than her brother. She came inside, got her hot chocolate/cocoa, and resumed her games. She doesn’t like to sled much, either, so I must say it doesn’t surprise me.

My husband was my hero, going out to brave the elements twice while the most I did was take photos of the tree across the street from my front porch. I wasn’t interested in taking a drive around the block to see how bad the roads were, or to see if it was even possible to dig out the cars. He did all that for me, and for that I am eternally grateful.

I’m also pretty sure that if I came back to work today with stories of how I’d driven around a bit, I would have been faced with the sort-of-kidding-but-mostly-serious question of, “Why didn’t you go to the office, then?”

Seriously.

Well, I hope everyone who didn’t have a snow day isn’t suffering from too much snow envy. You can’t have any of mine. I’m enjoying it too much from the warmth of my living room.

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