recap

Saturday (Pictures)

/ aidan, life, mommyhood, pictures, recap, weekend, writing

Did you know the first day of Spring is in just a few days? That’s insane! I’m so glad, though. I can’t wait ’til the weather finally breaks. Although, we’ve had quite the mild winter–no complaints there. I’m just ready to wear flip-flops and skirts and traveling and taking pictures. So ready!!

Work news:
During lunch one day, Shannon, Justin, and Patty had a “puppet show” of sorts with spoons. Hilarious. KA told me that I’m getting good at proofing the reprints. YAY because I enjoy doing it very much.

Amanda’s last day was yesterday. She was my cubemate and so awesome. I get my own cube, but I won’t get Amanda. I’ll miss her.


Amanda looks pretty.
I look like a dork. My hair is awful. 🙁

Aidan news:
He is climbing all over me and it’s driving me crazy. There are a million places to sit in the family room, and he insists on sitting ON MY BACK. It’s not comfortable at all. He’s trying to force me to eat a Pringle. A Sour Cream and Onion Pringle for breakfast. HONESTLY. Ew. He’s also learned how to ask for every single toy he sees. Oh my.

I got him REAL underwear in hopes that it will speed up the potty-training process. I figure, if he wets himself and feels it, he’ll be less inclined to do so in the future. I know this will mean lots more laundry over the next few days to several weeks, but hopefully it will mean the end of buying diapers and Pull-ups soon. He’s getting there, but he gets lazy sometimes. Way too much, actually. So yeah.

I feel like I’m constantly running the vaccuum because Aidan is forever spilling crumbs or something all over the floor. Our family room carpet is awful, and the shampooer is broken, so I just have to live with it. *sigh*

He pronounces “butt” so funny. I keep asking him to say “butt” or “nut” or “cut” because I love the way he says those words.

I feel like all I say is “NO!” He gets into so much stuff. All the time. He climbs like whoa, nothing is safe!! He’s so destructive if he’s not being watched or monitored every second. It’s exhausting!

Writing news:
In April, I ‘m going to Spring Fling Writer’s Conference. I’ll get to meet other writers there, authors, agents, and mandywriter!!! It’s gonna be fun! 😀

I haven’t done much with my WIP. I have ideas all the time, but once I start working, I seem to lose steam. Not sure what the deal is. Well, it’s hard to focus. I’m trying to write romantic scenes, and that’s hard to do when Aidan is asking for help with something every five minutes, or when Chris is slamming things all over the house. I think I have to get away to be able to write those scenes. Also, there is so much I have to do, write, revise, change, that I feel overwhelmed by the idea of it all. I simply need to FOCUS, get in my zone, and let go.

I heard from my agent. He’s had to expand the submissions list to include Christian publishers. I’m getting discouraged because my book is on that fence: too Christian for mainstream, not Christian enough for the Christian publishers. I don’t know if Only Yours will sell. All the more reason I’m glad I have a super agent–he’s working his butt off to sell my book because he sees merit and that’s incredible to me. I always let him know how much I appreciate him.

Pictures:
It’s been a while since I’ve posted loads of pictures. I know certain people have been requesting them (ahem davidd), so here we go:

Captured!

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Chit Chat

/ life, recap, shopping, weekend

I had a busy, busy day yesterday. We left the house at about 8am and didn’t get back last night ’til nearly 11pm. We went and got Aidan, then stopped by Ty and Jolene’s place. They had never met Aidan, and we had never met little Ellie, and it turned out to be really great and way too short as usual. Ellie is the sweetest baby ever. She’s six months old and smiles, smiles, smiles. The only time she got upset was when she was hungry. She and Aidan took a real liking to each other. Ty and Jolene made us chili and they ate like 438957497 Zingers. I passed because I don’t like coconut–but Ty bought me cookie dough. 🙂

Jolene has this amazing camera: a Canon DSLR, and OMG. It’s sooooooo awesome. She let me take loads of pictures with it. Wow. *breathes* Of course, I took pictures with my camera as well.

After that, we headed back home. Chris drank two Red Bulls and two Starbucks Double Shots. We stopped at Best Buy where I used up the rest of my gift cards and my reward zone certificates and purchased a BOAT LOAD of DVDs:

The Wizard of Oz three-disc collector’s edition
A Different World season one (!!!)
Growing Pains season one
Clueless “whatever” edition
Titanic special collector’s edition (with 45 minutes of deleted scenes!!)
Hercules

I also got The Golden Girls season four for Chris, and he bought Aidan Danger Mouse seasons three and four. So yeah, if Chris doesn’t get a big enough bonus for us to go to Disneyworld this year, we have plenty of DVDs to keep us occupied, no? Cause he bought LOADS, I mean LOADS. It was insane, the amount of DVDs he got. Most of them I have no interest in watching.

After Best Buy, we stopped at McDonalds, then went to Chris’s mom’s house. Grandma Edna is all moved in, and she was smiling a lot. We put in the DVD of Grandpa Myron, and it was hard for me to watch. Chris’s mom started to cry. Aidan lightened the mood a LOT, though. Chris’s mom gave me a box of “75% less sugar” Trix. Walmart is the only place we can buy them around here and I refuse to go in that store.

I wish someone would release an entire DVD of Woody Woodpecker cartoons. I saw a couple of Classic Cartoon sets, and they each had ONE Woody Woodpecker episode on them. What’s up with that? I’ve been fiening for some Woody Woodpecker, but I’m not buying an entire set for ONE EPISODE that’s probably like seven minutes long. And why isn’t The Wonder Years on DVD yet???? I dunno about you, but DVD TV shows are the coolest thing EVER. Especially when the old shows are resurrected. I wish they’d put The All New Mickey Mouse Club on DVD. I’d buy them ALL in a HEARTBEAT.

Lady and the Tramp (along with loads of goodies) should be arriving for me any day now. Wheee! Chicken Little is also on my “to buy” list, because Aidan likes it a lot.

Chris and Aidan are at church now, so I’m taking the time to relax. Yesterday was long and tiring, although good. I can’t believe I managed to finish The DaVinci Code AND Elsewhere before I had to return them to the library. But good books have the ability to hold my attention, so it worked out well. But now, I have a copy of TTYL out, and I can’t find it. I’m going to renew it so I have more time to look for it. I didn’t enjoy that book, and I only read about five pages before I had to put it down. Maybe I’m getting old (NOOO) but an entire book written in IMs is a bit much.

Have I posted that before?

Anyway…

We hosted a Game Night at my house on Wednesday. Just the life group, nothing huge. We had pizza and played Apples to Apples and Scene It! Good times, good times. Chad and Ben got into yet another argument–Ben is Jewish (not sure if he is Messianic or not) and he wouldn’t eat the pizza because even though it was cheese, it was half cheese and half pepperoni. Chad was asking Ben why did he still keep kosher (especially since he’d eaten a Big Mac the other day), and round and round they went.

Ben: You give me the SAME SPIEL every time!
Chad: That’s because you ask the same six questions every time!

Good Lord.

The house is already crumbling. *sigh* Well, I had a clean house for quite a few days, so yeah.

I wasn’t planning on doing any writing yesterday. I did jot down a few ideas in my writing journal early this morning, but anything serious? I’d pretty much shelved the idea. But for some reason, I opened up Becoming Me and went to work on revising. I rewrote the ending, cut out entire chapters, and got rid of seventy-five pages of gobbledy-gook. Now it’s with my crit partner Mandy (mandywriter) and with Kelle Belle (itskels), my reader. In the meantime, I’m going to take a small break and then jump back into my WIP, all while jotting down ideas for future projects.

I love writing!

Why did it take me so long to discover the beauty of RSS Aggregators? I use Sharp Reader and I like it very much. I especially like getting all the news from the sites I visit in one spot, rather than going to loads of webpages. It’s great! 🙂

‘Til next time! 🙂

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Stuff

/ recap, Uncategorized

Lucy just made the biggest puke ever, right in front of me. Twice.

Ew.

Chris comes back tonight, so ends my four days of no work, no people, just peace and quiet. I had a very pleasant long weekend.

Friday
– Woke up at 9, read, bathed, went and got a 90 minute massage.
– Came home, read, wrote, relaxed.

Saturday
– Got up early afternoon, bathed, went to counseling, then ran errands, and spent the rest of the evening all by myself.

Sunday
– Got up at 1pm, played on the computer, read, and relaxed all day.
– Worked on revisions.

Monday
– Got up at 1pm, watched The OC on DVD, read, and relaxed.

Going back to work was hard. But it wasn’t crazily busy, and so that was cool. I couldn’t wait to get home to the peace and quiet, though. Heh. This morning, my across-the-street neighbor came to check on me and make sure I was doing okay.

Now I have just a little bit of time before life starts going back to its normal breakneck speed. Thank GOD for the R&R, but I’m sure gonna miss it.

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Lots (Pictures)

/ family, life, pictures, recap, Uncategorized

I am EXHAUSTED! Last week was long:

Wednesday: Family stuff/mourning/support.

Thursday: More family stuff, then a trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond to get a coat rack. I ended up picking up some canvas storage boxes for $2.99 each, and a Santa Claus who was on clearance for $3.74.

Friday (around midnight): Out of town relatives showed up, and we took some of the cousins to our house. They were tired, but we stayed up really late talking anyway. It was good to see them, even though the circumstances were sad.

Friday evening: Calling hours. They showed a DVD full of pictures of Grandpa. The cousins and I were in and out. It was really sad, but the support was amazing. After that, all the cousins went to Max & Ermas to eat a late dinner, and a few of us went to Meijer in search of long underwear.

Saturday: The funeral. Needless to say, it was very, very, very sad. There were three eulogies (Chris gave one), and a song, and their pastor spoke. After the service, we went to the cemetary, and there, the American Legion did a service, and there was a 21-gun salute, and they played taps. It was heartbreaking. It still doesn’t seem real. 🙁 As an aside, the Johnstown cops are PIGS. I hate them. One of the pallbearers had expired tags on his car. THEY IMPOUNDED HIS CAR. He didn’t get to be a pallbearer, he was at his UNCLE’S funeral, and he was already upset–they couldn’t have just let him have a ticket? The cops were supposed to be there to help escort us to the cemetary, not towing cars. Grrrr. Anyway… after the funeral services, we went to a lunch that the church had provided for the family, and then some of the cousins and I went home for much needed naps. They woke up after an hour (AN HOUR!) and headed to Grandma’s. I slept for a few more hours, and so did Aidan and Chris. We were so tired. After we got up, we headed to Grandma’s where the mood was a lot lighter than it had been. People were laughing and talking and it was good. We were also taking pictures, some of which I’ll put under a cut. The cousins stayed with us again (YAY) and we watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and half of Hitch before we all got tired and pooped out.

Sunday: BIG BREAKFAST made by Chris. We talked and hung out with the cousins, then they left about 10:30am to head back to Illinois. I miss them. THEN we went to Aurora to drop off the Booba. Mommy had us take her grocery shopping, and I was cranky and tired. We also ate Ruby Tuesday. We came back home, I finished reading A Bad Boy Can Be Good For A Girl (Tanya Lee Stone tanyaleestone) and crashed.

Monday: WORK all day, then Barnes and Noble. I got a few books and a book light. Then I met Craig at Target and helped him pick out an iPod. Then I went to his house and set up his wireless network (can I just say $#@!*&), and helped him with his iPod. I was there a lot later than I’d intended, so I grabbed some McDonalds on the way home and ate that before reading a bit then falling asleep.

Tuesday: WORK all day, and then I plan to stop at the library to pick up a reserve, then go home and relax and write and read. I am worn out, I have a headache, and I need an evening, so I am turning off the phones and probably won’t be answering anyone on AIM or AOL.

And… here are some pictures:

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Brief Rundown & Procrastination (Pictures)

/ friends, pictures, recap

I am soo procrastinating because there are two things I have to do and I really don’t want to do them:

– Hang up laundry.
– Retouch my hair.

BAH. I’ll get them done in a bit. I HAVE to do them tonight. My hair is in not-so-nice condition and my room, well. Yeah. We won’t even discuss that. Meh.

I’m so happy Live Journal is back. I did miss it very much. I had all this good stuff to write about and couldn’t. Well, I did record some things with Editpad, so yeah.

Last night, I had THREE invitations. TRIPLE BOOKED! That never happens to me. I’d been invited to a party, to a Mark Schultz concert, and Rob wanted to do something as well. I didn’t really want to spend money on the concert, wasn’t in a partying mood (and planned on dropping in later in the night at some point), so I decided to hang with Rob and the gang. Good times, man.

I met Rob, Josh, Tyler (skinny bitch), Bizzy, and Emily at Starbucks, then the girls ate KFC. After that, Emily disappeared, and we carpooled and went to Tyler’s place where Becky showed up. Since T had NO snacks in his apartment, we trekked to Giant Eagle (Rob and Tyler skipped arm in arm, and Becky, Bizzy and I walked arm in arm) where we loaded up on junk food. Then we headed back to Tyler’s where we watched The Lost Boys.

The Lost Boys! Man, I forgot how HOT Jason Patric was. MAN. Beautiful. I wonder what he’s up to these days?

Here are a few pictures from last night of me and Biz. Teasers, they are. 😉 More to come soon.

Yummy!

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