Today in history....

Ok, my history. February 24th has not always been a good day for me. I guess you could say that it is sort of like my Friday the 13th. When you look back at your life so far, there are dates that stand out more so than others. For example, I seem to have a knack for finding people who are born on or close to August 21, and March 17. Those are the days that have the most people on them. Heck, even Lucas's birthday is on March 15 (close enough for government work!)So what makes 2-24 so special?? Well, in 1999 I got second degree burns on my right hand after a candle fell into a laundry basket after I had fallen asleep. I was rushed to the hospital. Exactly one year later, I was rushed to the hospital again...this time it was because I was going into labor two months early with the girls. (They held on for three more days until the 27th to be born.) I can remember holding my breath every Feb 24th for the last several years. I know that nothing else has happened that has sent me to the hospital but true to form, I now work in a hospital and I am working today. I also worked last year on this date. Well, I guess there are far worse ways to be in the hospital today than working in it, eh?

Speaking of working in a hospital...when I get off work on wednesday morning, it will be the last time I have to go to work third shift!!! I am soo excited to start my new position!!

I really hope this day passes without incident. I will be holding my breath as much as I can.

First comes love, then comes marriage...so when comes the baby in the baby carriage?

Since getting married, Lucas and I have talked about our family and the possiblity of expanding it...thats right...another baby. We have had numerous talks about everything from timing to how many. I would prefer to have them sooner rather than later for a host of different reasons ranging from my age (biological clock ticking like a timebomb) to the age gap between the girls and any other siblings that may come about. He has voiced his concerns too. They range from his fear being a first time dad to the traditional man's approach to children--money. He wants to make sure that we are ready for the financial burden of raising a growing family and who could blame him?? He does understand my concerns about my age and I understand his concerns about the financial aspect. So now what? What kind of time frame are we looking at?? The best I can sum up from our conversations about this is that we (and by we I mean he--I've been ready since the girls were about 3!!) should be ready to start trying sometime at the end of this year. Ok, I can deal with that. It really does sound reasonable when I take a step back and look at all that we want to acheive in this year. I just got a full time position at work, the girls are turning 9 (halfway to freedom!!!), we have a lot of traveling planned this year to New York for a family reunion, to Massachusetts to go see Tina and her family, and all the camping that we want to do this year too.

So, you'll need to forgive me if this next part borders on TMI (too much info) but it is sort of in context. Lucas and I had a very wonderful weekend where we got to re-connect after a few weeks of being just overly stressed out. It was a wonderful weekend. So fast forward to last night at dinner...Lucas is not one to dream so this is where it gets strange...he tells me that he had a strange dream sunday night that he had to share with me. He dreamt of a baby girl. This was our baby in the dream. He tried to elaborate but since he isn't use to dreaming, he didn't remember the details so clearly. So after telling me this, he gets this silly little smirk on his face like he is toying with the idea. WTF? I was joking with him that after all that deliberating and me finally agreeing to wait until the end of the year, if he succeeded in knocking me up now (highly unlikely BTW--timing isn't right) I told him I would kick his ass!!! Then I reciprocated the silly little smirk and left it at that.

The one thing to remember in all of this is that I need to have more patience. God will provide and if he doesn't, He has been more than generous with the gift of the girls. Even if I never have any more, I have them.

That went rather well...

There was a good turn out for my little Stitch & Bitch last night! Lets see, there was Heather (and her daughter Nyna and son, Daniel), Chris, Brandy, Cheryl, Jill (who went home early due to not feeling well), Laura (with her daughter Molly), Tanya, Rachel, Angie, Brooke (and Brooke's beau Ben), myself and the girls. Lucas was on the computer entertaining the boy-child whilst the girls all played up in the bedroom. It was really nice to have the new couch in the living room...there were enough seats for all the butts!! Mostly, everyone there crochetted but they all want me to teach them to knit so I think I have my work cut out for me!!! I have been able to teach Heather pretty well, but only on the circulars and haven't gotten to teach her how to purl yet. I was going to expand on helping Jill learn but she started feeling ill and went home. I hope she feels better soon.

Laura is making a granny square blanket for her little one; I'm always working on some type of baby pants; Tanya was making something pretty with a star center; Heather whipped up a scarf with effortless ease; Angie worked on an amigurumi camel. Rachel borrowed a bit of yarn and just worked on a little swatch of nothingness. Chris worked on some really pretty chain mail flowers for a belt she's working on; Brandy drew in her sketch book of the different people crafting; Cheryl had a very tangled ball of yarn that she was determined to unknot and wind in to a ball; Brooke...well, she brought the Smirnoff. The funniest part of the night came when I joked with Brooke that she could prolly fit into the red, white, and blue longies I made. They are size 3T but made with a large needle so the are super stretchy. I was kidding but she wanted to know if she could and sure enough!!! THEY FIT!!! They were very snug but she really did fit in them! And I have the pictures to prove it! (I will post them when I upload them later)

Yeah, it was a great night. I hope that these ladies will join me again for another evening to stitch and bitch!!!

UPDATES!!!

Well, I haven't posted in a while. For anyone who happens to stumble onto this blog, I have still been keeping up on my MySpace account blog.

Anywho...

Lets start with the holidays. We kept it simple for Christmas and the girls had such a good holiday. Then New Years, we went to our friends annual gathering and had a good time there with all our friends. Now January...I turned 30!! It was truly an amazing week! My mom took me to Chicago for three days and on day 2 we went to see Wicked on stage! (This was a big deal because the show was formally closing on 1-25 and our tickets were on 1-21!!!) I think our cast was *actually* better than the original Broadway cast!!! Dee Roscoli was our Elphaba and Annaleigh Ashford was our Glinda. Truly a wonderful performance!! Afterwards, we did a little shopping and got dinner and hit some of the local watering holes. We ended the night at a Jazz Club. When I got back to town, we had a party on friday (1-23 my actual birthday) we went to Nagoya then to Ragtime Ricks. It was such a blast! Its like I had a WEEK of birthday!!! I haven't decided if I like being 30 yet. I will say that I was ok with turning 30 but now that its here...we'll see.

OH! I almost forgot! I bid on another position at work and I got it! I start in the new clinic on March 2nd. I am really excited on getting out of the dungeon! There may also be a pay increase involved!!

On a yarn-y note: I have found my own slice of heaven! There is a yarn store not TEN MINUTES from my house!! SQUEE!! I have been in there twice and I plan on going back again and again! The ladies that run the store are soo sweet and the selection of yarn makes me want to drool.

Speaking of yarn and yarn-y things...I have finished several more pairs of pants. I will hopefully post pictures soon. I will be uploading them to myspace and facebook for sure.

2009 is looking like its gonna be a good year! The girls will be 9 in 2 weeks...*gulp* Almost to double digits! Catch you all on the flip side!!!

morning thoughts 11-23-08

Well, here it is...8:10am and I am wide awake. Why is this noteworthy you ask? I worked third shift last night and I usually come home and go straight to bed. I get to crawl into a warm bed and drift off and get to deep sleep before the girls get up and the house gets loud. This sounds sooo appealing to me right now except that if I go lay down I will simply toss and turn for quite some time. :(

Ok, different subject. We FINALLY got our photos tonight from the lady we hired to shoot our wedding. Sure did take long enough. One thing I have to say about it is that you get what you pay for...truly. She was an amateur student looking to get her portfolio started and wanted to use our wedding pics to help her with that. She only asked for us to reimburse her for the overhead (she had to rent a large flash and needed $ to get to and from wedding stuffs) This total came to about $60. I know...a steal right? No...not really. I would say that for all the pictures that she did I am about 60% happy with her work. The other 40% was an honest waste of her talent and my time. She never once consulted with me about what pictures I liked or didn't like and then delayed getting them to us until all the post-editing was done--on 700+ photos!!! You've got to be kidding me!!! Anyways, there are some really beautiful pictures but how much of it was the location and how much was her skill? Not to mention, she did have some exclusive shots that no one else got of just me and Lucas. I really don't want to sound ungrateful but if she is trying to make this a career then she should have approached this a little more professionally. I would love nothing more than to be a professional photographer or be able to show off my photos to everyone. When I first met with her to go over details of the wedding and what would be expected of her as well as "interview her". Her experience seemed limited but what I had seen I really enjoyed (or else I would never have asked her). There was one thing that she said that bothered me very much. She went on about how a friend of hers just "takes a lot of photos but since she doesn't take them with a professional camera she shouldn't call herself a photographer...she is just someone who takes snapshots" W....T....F? You mean to tell me that I cannot call myself a photographer just because my camera is a high end point and shoot camera? That is just plain insulting! Photography is not determined by the equipment that one has but by the eye looking through the lens that must interpret what they see to how it will translate to the picture!! There are plenty of BAD photographers out there that have all the finest and up-to-date equipment and don't have an eye for it at all! I may not have the fanciest camera around but I feel that I certainly have an eye for art and beauty! Not to mention, I have had some formal training, not much, mind you and it was years ago, but I still carry with me all those lessons I learned. I have even taken some of her pictures and made them better just by cropping and framing them better! I really am upset about the whole thing. Her comment about "photographers" really pissed me off. Oh well. We are paying her only the bare minimum and not even going to entertain the thought of a tip. She wants to use us for a reference? Go ahead, be my guest...although she might not like what I have to say about it. I certainly will not be spreading referrals around for her. Not until she starts acting like a professional.

I am not use to anxiety

Yesterday I talked to my boss for a little while. She is a really neat lady and we talk a lot outside of the context of work (aka we call each other at home to bitch about work). I have known for a while that our department is planning on restructuring its policies and its shifts. The proposed plan I heard was that we would implement three set schedules and everyone must fall inline with either the 7am-3pm (first shift) 3pm-11pm (second shift) or 11pm-7am (third shift). There would no longer be those extra shifts like 8a-4p, 10a-6p, or even my original bidded hours of noon-8pm (not that I have worked my bidded hours in MONTHS--too busy on frakkin' thirds). Well, here is where the anxiety comes in. While talking with her, she began to talk about what is happenening but then paused and said that she isn't really allowed to talk about it and I didn't push it. She said that she isn't at liberty to discuss the details of what is happening. Alls I do know is this. I was able to discern out of her that there may be two jobs in our department on the chopping block. Also that those two jobs would be taken from the two employees that have the least amount of seniority. The first is Landis who has only been down in our department for about 4 months. The next one on the block is me. Thats right, yours truly. I feel so completely helpless. I have been fired before and I have quit jobs before. This really doesn't fall into either of those catagories. I mean, there is absolutly nothing wrong with my job performance so it isn't even that there is anything I could do to improve myself to try to save my job. The only saving grace may be that since I am qualified to do other jobs in the hospital I will simply be reassigned within the establishment. I would be able to stay in the union position and keep my state job. The pay is really nice and if my job is abolished and I am reassigned, I keep my current pay grade. This is nice considering that the starting pay for Medical Assistants at the hospital start around $10-ish. I would transfer everything over with my current hourly wage (which is over $14 at this time and I am due for another raise in January). I really don't want to lose my job. I like it, I am good at it...(wait for it...) and gosh darn it, people like me! And I mean that! I have found quite a rapport with all the nurses and doctors that work thirds with me. Some of the nurses have even told me that they prefer me over the guy (Landis) that works the rest of the time and they even like me over the lady that use to work thirds (Michelle). Whatever. I am just anxious about maybe losing the job.

Am I being unfair???

Today the girls came home from school and in the usual style, they get snack and then its right into homework stopping only for bathroom breaks. So Gillian gets right to it and it takes her a little while but nonetheless, she is now complete. Naudia on the other hand.....this is where I am having difficulty. Forgive me, but she is such a scatterbrain. She and Gillian sit down at the same time with the same homework and logically, they should be finishing up at roughly the same time (give or take a few). Not the case today. Naudia decided that homework wasn't as important as writing a letter to her penpal. This letter of course, is not homework and she insisted on making it as artsy as possible. This is not inherently bad, I encourage them writing letters. The issue is that she chose to not do her homework. So now I become the bad guy. I get mad that she hasn't even begun it (oh, its 5:30pm at this point, they've been home for an hour and a half and Gillian is finished) So I tell her to go get her homework and get started. I try to be private about this since I firmly believe that by calling out her mistakes in front of her sister, Naudia gets a sort of inferiority complex. I do not want that at all! I want both girls to be confident and independent.

So she (Naudia) goes over to her back pack, gets out her folder and proceeds to want to give me ALL THE PAPERS ONE AT A TIME. I finally tell her that she just needs to get to work. She takes her homework over to the desk, turns around and hands me a stack of papers. I start to go through them, look up and see that she is turned around facing me and watching me read the papers! GRR. So I frustratingly tell her to turn around and get started on her work!

I feel like such a bad guy when it comes to Naudia and her scatterbrained-ness. Gillian can be stubborn but she usually gets it and that is that. With Naudia, it just seems that she just doesn't get it and won't ask but then looks like a deer in headlights when you finally get so frustrated with her to the point where I am yelling at her to do the simplest of tasks.

I really need to find some patience for my daughter. She is smart and funny and talented and so self conscious. Gillian is, in many ways, her opposite. Overly confident to the point of being obstinate. I really don't know how to help Naudia build her confidence when her biggest rival looks just like her, in the same grade, competes for the same attention from the same parents and lives in the same house and sleeps in the same room as her.

Well, I have company and I need to get dinner on the table so I will write more soon.

OKTHXBI