Conversations About God: Part One

Rocking with Gus: always a bewildering experience.

Gus: "There ghosts."
Me: "There are? Where?"
Gus: "Ober there. In the dark. They scary."
Me: "Ghosts aren't scary." (absently, not really paying attention)
Gus: "Ghosts scary. I scared."
Me: (oh. hmmm) "You know what to do when you see a ghost?"
Gus: "Uh-huh."
Me: "You look it in the eye and say 'In Jesus name, go away!' Here you try it!"
Gus: "JEEMUS DAY BYE!"
Me: "Did it work?"
Gus: "Yeah, ghost gone."
Me: "Do you know why that works? Jesus's name is very powerful because Jesus is the Son of God. Whenever you need him, you can call him and he will be right there with you, even if mommy and daddy aren't. Jesus watches over you and takes care of you."
Gus: "Jeemus jump?"
Me: (huh?) "Does Jesus jump? I suppose he can."
Gus: "Yep, Jeemus jump high! And slide!"
Me: "I suppose he could slide if he wanted to."
Gus: "Yep, he slide down the big, big slide! Jeemus like ice cream?"
Me: "I would imagine that he does."
Gus: "Mommy, I like ice cream."
Me: "Me too baby, me too..."

Love Means Yellow

We have some fun conversations while we are rocking at bedtime. Sometimes, if I'm really lucky, I just get to listen to how his little mind works.

Me: Gus, I love you
Gus: Momma, love you!
Me: Do you know what the word love means?
Gus: Yes! No!
Me: It means that you care so much about someone else that you try to do as much as you can to make them happy.
Gus: Yeah! Love! Yellow! Big bird, momma. See his head? (Big Bird was rocking with us) Oh! That's daddy! Daddy drink pop! Daddy cooking?
Me: No, daddy's getting kitty his medicine.
Gus: Daddy feed kitty now mommy, oh! there water! Daddy play in water! Feed kitty and play in water daddy, good daddy (I find it fascinating that the kid can narrate daddy's movements downstairs when he 'can't hear me' say his name in the same room). Hans nigh-night momma? All friends nigh-night? Trains nigh-night? Need eat? no...Speecee (Spencer) in mud momma, Hiro helper! Hey momma?
Me: What baby?
Gus: Love you momma. Night!
Me: I love you too baby.

Outnumbered Party of One

Depending on the age of your kids, this post will make you laugh, cry or be very very glad your kids or grown. Or you will think that I am extremely disorganized which means that 1)You are correct 2)You are a better person than I am 3)I'm not having the type of week that I can be happy that you have it all together so I don't want to hear about it. 4)I'm still new at this being outnumbered thing and the only way I'm not losing it is by telling myself that it (and I) will get better in time (like when the last one leaves for college...)


Some mornings make me want to cry...or nap...or never EVER leave the house ever again.

Here is an example of what might happen on any given morning that we have to leave the house early in the morning (before say...10 am).

Probably somewhere around 530 or 600: Teddy wakes up and wants to nurse. He is too tired to do an effective job, so he keeps falling asleep, and waking back up outraged and 'starving.' By the time he is actually done eating, it's 30 minutes before I have to get up and I'm so stressed about getting every possible minute of sleep I can't fall asleep until 5 minutes before the alarm goes off.

Alarm goes off. For a more concrete example, we'll say 700. I get up trying very hard to not wake the baby sleeping on my arm. I get dressed very quickly, use the toilet and sink two floors down so I don't wake the kids before I get a chance to get coffee made. The flush of the toilet wakes Gus. C'MON! I hear his door slam. I race up two flights of stairs to head him off. Too late! He jumps into my bed with the baby. "Hi baby!! Mommy look! Baby is awake!!" He gives him a germ laden kiss and a pat on the head then runs downstairs yelling "EAT-EAT!" Now the baby is screaming, but if I don't follow Gus immediately, half my fridge will be on the kitchen floor by the time I calm the baby and Gus will have picked out breakfast, whether that's strawberries and yogurt, or pickles, or raw eggs (apparently, eggs are "ucky" when eaten raw with shells on...). Why don't we lock the fridge? Well, that would require remembering to do so before bed...and knowing where the lock is at any given time.

I get Gus settled with an appropriate breakfast, dress the baby, nurse the baby, clean Gus up and get him dressed shoes and all which will hopefully stay on. It's probably somewhere around 740 by the time all this is done. My coffee is cold and untouched. I have not eaten. I give Gus a coloring book or other task that were I not trying to go somewhere would keep him occupied for an hour and put the baby in the bouncer. I start packing a diaper bag. I'm interrupted about 6 times by requests for food, Gus messing with the baby, Gus messing with the cats, random tantrums, wanton stuff scattering just to make me crazy, or going to the bathroom to eat toothpaste or "warsh hands" (and face and hair and shirt and floor). I'm trying so hard not to plop him in front of the TV all the time, partially because he becomes a miniature zombie, but also because if we have to leave before he's done with his "show," it will be a screaming, physical wrestling match to get him in the car. I digress...

I lose my sense of humor about the delays and strap both kids into car seats so I can finish packing. It's probably 830 by now and I'm still hungry and caffeine deprived...and LATE!

I do a once through the house. Do a cat head count. Double check that I have spare clothes for both kids and plenty of diapers. Make sure I have Blanket and Paci and 'Warter' (that's water for those of you whose toddlers don't have southern accents). Grab a granola bar and a Pepsi for me. Turn the car on. Remember that I forgot to give the cat his medicine which reminds me that I forgot Teddy's medicine...and oh, yeah there's a load of laundry in the washer that will be mildewed if I don't switch it before I leave but there are clothes in the dryer, where's a laundry basket to put these in!

 Run back in two or three more times to get so-and-so's casserole dish or that shirt they left over here the last time they were here or the paperwork for the doctor's visit.

Leave. Maybe make it out of the neighborhood or even to the toll road before I remember what else I forgot. Decide if it's worth going back for. Look in the rear view mirror. That's right, I was interrupted getting dressed. I forgot to comb my hair. AGAIN.

This last part usually has pieces that get missed. For example Thursday when I went to Michigan for the day (I was gone about 15 hours) I came home to find 5 trains in the toilet upstairs, the water in the downstairs sink running full blast, the cats completely out of food not that it would have mattered because one had been locked in the office and one was in the garage because SOMEONE opened the garage door into the laundry room. Once last week Gus went with no pants while his dried in the dryer because he soaked through his diaper and I didn't bring a spare. On a different day he went without a shirt while I hand washed it because an aunt spoiled him with chocolate...while teething...in a white shirt. (Chocolate is horrible to get out once it's set). Gus had to wear one of Teddy's diapers when I forgot to bring enough of his. If I forget the blanket or paci and we are going to be out of the house for naptime...oh man...

I feel that I am really at a disadvantage here because the same kids that make getting out the door so hard also stole pieces of my brain in utero. I pretty sure at my pre-children intelligence level I could have handled getting in a car and leaving even with two midgets in tow with a lot more efficiency (or more importantly, dignity).

I caught myself daydreaming on the drive to Michigan. In my fantasy world my morning looks like this.

My alarm goes off, I get dressed, grab my coffee and have a bowl of cereal that is NOT soggy from sitting for an hour while I'm constantly interrupted. I grab my keys, my phone and my purse (which has NOT unpacked itself while my back was turned and distributed it's contents to different parts of the house).

Then I LEAVE. Period.

A Perfectly Normal Tuesday

While they are much funnier, I figured all my posts shouldn't revolve around how exhausting and humiliating being constantly outsmarted by a one year old is...

Today was one of my less hectic days...

We woke up and ate breakfast without incident. I spent some time in prayer thanking God for that. We drove to Valparaiso to hit the DMV (or BMV, even the web-site isn't sure which it is) to change my driver's license, registration and plates to the new address. I drove the same 1 mile stretch of Hwy 30 at least 12 times looking for the elusive-apparently-not-clearly-marked DMV/BMV while being serenaded by screams of outrage over having play time interrupted with meaningless adult errands. I found out the paperwork I brought was not sufficient (I would have thought that the mortgage paperwork would have been good enough coupled with a piece of mail with the new address, but I was wrong). We drove back home and Gus fell asleep as I pulled in the neighborhood. Lovely.

I let him sleep in the car while I packed a bag and a lunch for the beach. Our friends showed up and off we went to the beach. We got out of the car at the beach 10 miles from the house, all seven of us clad in some version of wishful thinking summer attire (to be fair, it was seventy degrees in my driveway). The beach felt like a balmy 50 degrees with a brisk wind. Within a minute of hitting the sand, Gus's teeth are chattering. I dig out an extra T-shirt for him and we eat a sandy lunch of salami, cheese and broccoli We let the kids play for a little under an hour before group misery over-rode the objections of the one child wearing enough clothing.

I brushed as much sand out of my car as possible, plunked the kid in the bathtub where he happily splashed for almost an hour. Once his fingers and toes had gone from blue to pink to white and shriveled, I dressed him and all but tossed him in the crib for a nap. I walked across the hall and collapsed on the bed. In the midst of reaming myself out for not taking advantage of nap time to get housework done, I got a much needed nap.

When the baby woke up, we went for a really long walk around the neighborhood, then Gus got out of the stroller and took off down the street pushing the stroller. We took the long walk again with him pushing the stroller the whole time. Then came a trip to CVS just for chocolate. When we got home I nuked a hot dog for him and he offered me a bag of marshmallows as an acceptable dinner alternative. After a parental talking to (and hiding the bag of marshmallows) he ate or fed to the cats most of the hot dog and tried to eat a spider for dessert. We cuddled and read several partial stories and then he went to bed.

This was a great day, considering what the last couple months have been like and I'm still exhausted. Maybe it isn't him, maybe I'm just getting old.

A Different Life

Yesterday was my second mother's day. While nothing was about the day itself was spectacular, it definitely gave me an appreciation for how different our lives are now than a year ago. A year ago I had a three month old and all I wanted was a really long nap and to be able to lay Gus down without him screaming.

How different our lives are now! Rob and I contemplate daily how any child of ours could think that 8.00 AM sharp is an acceptable wake up time when there is nowhere to be. I'm a little disgruntled about the hour because I prefer to be up an hour or so before he is, but I don't wake at 7.00 naturally or motivated by an alarm clock if there is nowhere I have to go. So for now, the baby is my alarm clock. I get him out the crib, turn him loose while I brush my teeth and hair and then go down to make our breakfast.

After breakfast we play. A week ago, we moved into a house much too large for us so we have a floor of our house that doesn't have any furniture. In the morning, Gus runs around this room like a crazy person while I sit in the middle and growl at him and pretend like I'm going to pounce if he stops running. Then we do something more calm like reading or practicing how to make snow angels on the kitchen floor so when the snow comes we're ready. Then mommy gets her computer time while Gus goes up and down the stairs over and over, working very hard to wear himself out for his morning nap.

Then we rock. Oh, how the rocking has changed over the course of a year. Last year he lay calmly and passively in my arms. This year, twice a day we have a baby's choice rocking session. Sometime he lets me hold him and we pretend he is a well adjusted, calm child. Sometimes he sits upright on my lap and we rock till he spaces out and falls over. A personal favorite of mine is when he absolutely wants to be on your lap but refuses to sit still and expects you to keep him from falling as he climbs up to your shoulders and hangs over the back of the chair or launches himself backward between your knees expecting you to hold his feet and rock as fast as you can. His new spin on rocking has us in side by side rockers, rocking back and forth and singing together until he is ready to climb the stairs and retrieve puppy and binky.

Then comes the cornerstone of my day...naptime. Half his nap is devoted to mommy time, reading, napping or eating if it has been a few days. The other half I use to do chores that are impossible when he is "helping," like folding laundry. He will hand me a piece of clothing, I fold it and put it in the stack, then he unfolds it and hands it back to me. While this will keep him entertained for hours, folding laundry is already at the bottom of my list of favorite household chores and I have no desire to fold the same shirt eight times. Right now, that half of naptime is being used to unpack items that aren't baby friendly, like medicines and soaps or picture frames and hardware.

All too soon, he is hollering to be let out of his crib. Depending on his mood, we have a brief snuggle session in the rocker, then he tears through the house like his diaper is on fire to do a cat inventory and make sure that they appreciate it the next time he is out of commission for a couple hours. Next is lunch which lately has been punctuated with "no," "off the table," "on your bottom," NOW!" We have started teaching him to stay seated in a normal chair at mealtimes as not all our friends and families have high chairs and most are not amused when he climbs on the dining room table during meal time and starts splashing in whatever they fixed for dinner and restaurants definitely don't find that sort of thing adorable.

Next we wash dishes which keeps him occupied for a good hour (what is it with running water and kids anyway?). Then the afternoon gets underway. This is the most entertaining and exhausting part of my day. On any given afternoon I will do 90% of the following activities: rescue a cat

pull something out of a toilet

take something sharp away from him

yell at him for chewing on an electrical cord

tell him to "Get down from there right now!" at least a dozen times

accept a few drive by hug and kisses attacks

put at least two dozen books back on the shelves

put the trash back in the trash can

tell him hitting mommy is not nice

kiss a booboo and/or pin him down while we stop a wound from bleeding since he eats bandaids

take a crayon out of his mouth

clean up a shredded piece of paper and/or take it out of his mouth

change his clothes at least once

hold him while he cries because he ran into a wall face first

pluck him off the dining room table four or five times

rewind a roll of toilet paper or stuff an entire box of kleenex or wipes back in the box.

Rob's mom commented yesterday that he must get all his energy from me because Rob was apparently not psychotic as a toddler. I didn't know if I should laugh or cry. I did pray that the next child likes to play with his fingers, sleep and gaze contently out of a window.

The evening is the highlight of my day. Rob comes home, we have dinner and then we play. He learns his body parts and how noses are in the same place on mommy, daddy, and Gus. Gus shows us his belly button and how he can tickle himself. He practices counting on his fingers and showing how old he is. He practices pointing to the right color ball when mommy says a color and the right animal when daddy makes the noise they make. If he is cooperative, we read a story. Then Rob puts on waltzes and Gus takes turns dancing with mommy and daddy in the kitchen till it is time for jammies and brushing his teeth. Then daddy rocks him to Andre Rieu until bedtime.

After Rob lays him down, we sit at the kitchen table in silence for a while and drink our tea and enjoy the quiet, we wash dishes, feed the cats, switch the laundry and then head to the couch to read (me) and watch tv (Rob). Last year this would have been the productive part of my day, but now I feel I have been dragged into responsible adulthood by my one year old. I'm up at eight, in bed by midnight or one most nights, my dishes and laundry are done daily, we eat three meals a day, I can't finish a book a day anymore, I actually remember to get my mail almost every day, and most weeks we get to the grocery store. Happy mother's day mom! I give you maturity and responsibility!

A New Reign of Terror

A new reign of terror has begun. In the week and a half since I installed baby gates, Gus has had to turn to his creative side to wreak havoc on this house...and my sanity. I'm trying really hard not to stifle his creativity and independence but I refuse to let him trash the house as a recreational activity.

He really is an agreeable baby..."You locked me out of all the fun places so I will adapt!" In the last week and a half he has learned to increase his reach. Since all the fun stuff is up high, he has learned to climb a little. He can now reach about eight inches of our dining room table by simultaneously doing a pull up and swing his feet over to catch a dining room chair to free up one hand for grabbing. Practical implications of this are...he can pull the high chair off the table onto his head, he can get to a beverage left on the table...or food...or coins...or paperclips...or mail...or books...or candles (luckily it wasn't lit!).

He has learned that walking has a lot of potential for increasing his speed and is diligently practicing that. He can now successfully string together about eight steps at a time.

He has learned to operate the radio in his room. He turns it on, blasts the volume and sits in front of it and wails along with the music.

He has learned the joys of smashing smashable foods with his sippy cup, mostly cheerios and animal crackers into little specks of edible powder. Once he has powdered his food he then has the option of licking his fingers and picking up the powder with his spit or sprinkling the carpet with the powder. The ants and cats are a big fan of this activity and we now get to vacuum a couple times a day.

He has earned the love of the cats who suffer so much abuse (I mean love!) at his hands by playing the you lick it, then I lick it, then you lick it, then I lick it game with his food. Gross.

He has figured out how to get around the babyproofing on the entertainment center. He also likes to chew on DVD's.

I had him in the office BRIEFLY with me and he managed to bite a glass ball Christmas ornament in two and lick all the paint off. No he didn't cut himself, yes I am glad I put the Christmas tree behind a gate.

He can open the front closet and dig your salt covered boots out and chew on the soles.

He likes to fold the pages of his books. This is a welcome change from the ripping the pages out and eating them phase but it is a little weird.

And of course, there is the very fun pull all the wipes out of the box one by one game, but again, compared to other things he could be doing, that is relatively easy to deal with so I just make sure there aren't more than an inch or so of wipes in the box in the living room.

The joy he gets from destruction is so real and infectious that it's hard to be mad. My current schedule goes something like this:

Wake up
Change a dirty diaper while setting boundaries about when it's okay to stick your hands in your diaper (wait till after I wipe).
Set boundaries about tooth brush etiquette (no, you can't put my toothbrush in your mouth, or the kitty's mouth).
Set boundaries about food behavior (taking food out of your mouth and throwing it at the cats is bad, especially when it is cereal).
Put him in the kitchen with me while I eat, clean the kitchen, do dishes and start dinner.
Empty the washer of all the recycling that he has transferred from the recycling bin to the washer.
Put him in the living room to play while I work for an hour.
Come survey the destruction.
That puts us up to about morning nap time. I would continue, but considering my morning, I think I will get too depressed if I think about the rest of the day in too much detail.

This is for those of you who have children who are a little older, who talk back, have attitudes and all the other fun stuff that is in store for us down the road. I hope you enjoy hearing about Gus's antics and remembering when your kids were this age and you would seriously pay a babysitter just so you could have a cup of coffee in peace without him trying to grab it and dump it on his head, or burn himself by sticking his hand in it and sloshing it all over the both of you. I hope you enjoy it when I tell you this morning, I put on my coat, hat and boots, took a dining room chair out on my porch that has six inches of snow on it so that I could enjoy my coffee in peace. I hope you remember, I hope that you laugh, and I hope that you take pity on me and volunteer to take him somewhere, anywhere, away from here. Should that ever happen, I have big plans...I'm gonna take a nap!

Six Days

Ask and you shall receive...

I ask for a semblance of a schedule, Gus obliges. Six days of sleeping through the night, eating at four to five hour intervals, and napping at predictable times. Of course I don't count on it lasting but it is a breath of fresh air for me.

Baby Steps

Today we begin a new adventure (sad that this seems like a fun, challenging project to me)!

After two months of my life revolving around Gus's relatively random string of needs, I am finally noticing a pattern emerging to his day. So starting today and running through the rest of the week, I am documenting our day in detail. Then Monday, we will attempt...with bated breath...a schedule. I have heard that not all babies respond well to schedules, but he seems to be on a rough one of sorts now of his own making.

There are two goals to this endeavor. One: that I would actually be able to predict accomplishing anything at all other than fulfilling his basic needs. Two: that I would be able to schedule appointments with some certainty that he would not be having a meltdown at that particular time, including driving anywhere outside of my zip code.

We would also like to move him to his own room sometime in the next couple weeks, which I have refused to do thus far because he is still wanting to eat three times a night. Fingers crossed that this works. It wouldn't be the end of the world if he won't do it, his daddy seems to function very well with no schedule, but it would make my life a little easier if I could get my lovely ordered routines back in one sense or another.

It Can Be Taught

As a woman who has learned to live with her man in relative peace and harmony, I am a firm believer in using positive reinforcement to reinforce desirable behavior in my mate. We jokingly call this "training" him and I thought I had been rather subtle about it over the years. It keeps me from having to nag and I don't kill him for not being a woman able to understand hints. These behaviors that we have worked on tasks having to do with dirty laundry making it to the hamper, learning to actually use a dishwasher, taking out the trash and other simple tasks.

It occurred to me while talking to a friend today about doing laundry that I have been trained as well and never even realized it. My friend asked why Rob couldn't help with the laundry and after I expressed horror over the thought it dawned on me. There is no reason why a man as intelligent as Rob should be unable to master folding clothes or grocery shopping from a specific list. The only conclusion that I have been able to reach is that he has mastered ineptness in these tasks so that I will only ask him to do them as a last resort.

Of course there are chores that both of us hate and the other doesn't mind so a natural division of chores has evolved, but with laundry and grocery shopping, chores we both dislike, I feel I have been outmaneuvered.

25 Random Things...

Since I did this for facebook, I figure it should get posted here too although I modified some of it and fixed some errors in reason (thanks sissy!)

1. I have a small library in my office which is meticulously organized and cataloged...the only part of my house that is.
2. I cannot throw away my old floppy disks, even though we don't have a computer that will read them anymore.
3. I am slightly obsessive about list making.
4. The tape dispenser from my parents house is on my desk. It might be older than I am.
5. Current reading selection: Paradise Lost
6: Current music selection: Mozart's Mass in C Minor. If you haven't heard it...hear it...awesome.
7. Am either a very liberal republican or a very conservative democrat. Or something else entirely.
8. The four most populous authors in my book collection are Orson Scott Card, Raymond Feist, Dean Koontz and L.E. Modesitt Jr. So far haven't read much by those guys that I didn't like.
9. Am a member of the laziest book club ever. Originally formed to give moral support while we tackled books we were too scared to read on our own. Unfortunately, we have been giving each other reassurance and excuses not to read the selection.
10. Love snow, love cold, love Indiana, hate vacuuming
11. Love bandannas, wear them every chance I get
12. I am really not as grouchy as everyone seems to think I am
13. Correction on number 1, my pantry is a lesson in classic OCD behavior as well, closet too. Pretty much anywhere that you cant see when you walk in the door is meticulous. The main areas are a disaster.
14. I find paperwork very overwhelming. My mailman is lucky if I empty the mailbox twice a month. I'm really not trying to drive him crazy, I just forget until I realize I haven't paid bills in a while.
15. I wish Indy had a better recycling program
16. I have never gotten my Christmas cards out on time
17. I love Indianapolis. It is the perfect size city. Very little crime comparatively. Traffic is awesome for a big city. It has cultural activities and eccentric ones as well. It also has a sledding hill with a concrete strip at the bottom of it. Kinda sick if you ask me.
18. I wanted to be a trucker for a year in college.
19. I bite off more than I can chew regularly. I wouldn't know how to function any other way.
20. Last year after spending a winter in Alabama, when it snowed for the first time, I wrapped up in a comforter and took some tea out on the balcony and watched it snow for two hours.
21. I feel with the amount of mood swings and intense feelings I have, I should have been a poet or an artist or something angsty.
22. I am supposed to be writing a paper on economic forecasting for a Fortune 500 company of my choice. Sigh...
23. I love my parents and siblings and miss them like crazy. Sometimes I get angry with the nature of adulthood, how it separates us from loved ones.
24. I am terrified of dogs, but want a really really huge one someday, Malmut probably.
25. I think it is funny how disturbed my parents are by my sleep schedule, especially considering that I probably sleep far more hours than they do.

Sundays

Sundays are one of my two days off. Other than church and homework, the agenda is pretty much cleared for catching up on my projects (see resolutions). Today's parade of daily adventures includes playing 10,000 with Syra while procrastinating on my projects, blogging while procrastinating on my projects, grocery shopping while procrastinating on projects, playing with Ryan's iPhone while procrastinating on projects (it has an application called iBanjo, fun stuff!). You get the point...pretty much that I would rather do anything else than clean out my closet. It would probably help if I was actually at my house, but having not seen Ryan since a week before Christmas, it is hard to tear myself away.

Other interesting happenings...

Our friend Scott is moving to Chicago...he will be missed and he is providing further motivation for the much speculated move to be to the Chicagoland area. If my parents would just move to Chicago then it would be an ideal location. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure that the mild Tennessee weather has spoiled them for the north. I distinctly remember complaints about the Indiana November when they were up for Thanksgiving. Personally, I love winter and this has been a fun one already and we have at least two more months of it. Were it not for winter, I wouldn't be able to appreciate the summer. Mostly I find the heat uncomfortable and tedious, but after a nice cold winter, spring and early summer seem nothing short of miraculous to me. It is very easy to see the hand of God in the changing of the seasons and the life cycles of our planet. I think that is why I hated Alabama so much. There were no seasons, no rebirth, no wonder in the new life, all the seasons just ran into one another with glaring monotony.

Gotta love the tangents...I will be back later to update on whether the desire to procrastinate triumphed over the need to cross things off the list.

Details, Details...

I hate shopping, hate it so much that I will get bread and eggs from wok and skip grocery shopping for up to three months at a time (hey, you can do that when you don't have kids). Then when it gets to the point where it can be avoided no longer (what, the family doesn't want pb&j for Thanksgiving dinner?) I shop for four our five hours and find that it really isn't as bad as I think it is. In fact, today I almost enjoyed myself.

So part of running around today included a much needed trip to the bank. While there, I mentioned to our banker that I had applied at the branch by our house and was pretty sure I had bombed the interview. He says "Hang on," and comes back to tell me that they want me at that branch. I had an impromptu interview on the spot, during which my phone wouldn't stop ringing and was told to email my resume. We shall see, I suppose.

After running my errands I get home and notice in our quest to make sure there aren't holes in the walls and that all the rooms have doors, we have neglected to tackle the office. Let me preface this by saying that you cannot walk through our office. There are two places to step and if you can't get to where you need to be by hitting those two steps, you are out of luck. I debated for about thirty seconds about whether to make a half-hearted attempt to straighten up or to just push everything in and shut the door. I think that it will have to be a project for another day. The rest of the house looks awesome though, and I am really looking forward to seeing my family. I will try and post some pictures after Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Tuesday Mornings

My goal on Tuesdays is to get out of bed in time to take the trash down. Why I can't remember to take it down Monday night is beyond me, but this is a typical scenario. I crawl into bed and remember that tomorrow is trash day. At this juncture the question is do I want to wake up early to get it down in the morning or get out of bed right then, put shoes and a coat on, and take it down that night? At the point where I am already horizontal, do it in the morning always wins. I usually nudge Rob at this point and ask if he can do it, but as he goes to bed before me, he talks in his sleep and says yes. Inevitably, that doesn't happen. We go a couple weeks between trash pickups a lot...

So this particular Tuesday morning, I was up at eleven, but didn't remember to check the trash situation until I heard the garbage truck down the street. I let Bob out with me when I went out, but my fierce hunter-killer cat turned into a 20lb. projectile when the garbage truck pulled up. Apparently doors will open magically if you launch yourself into the door repeatedly and howl. Bob, your ancestors would be ashamed of you.