Sitting in the Dark

The light bulb went out in my office.  And it stayed out for about 2 weeks before I finally decided I was tired of working in the dark.  And, actually, the only reason I went to change the light bulb was because I had to pull the ladder out to change out the battery in one of the smoke detectors.  Why do the batteries in the smoke detector ALWAYS fail at 2 o’clock in the morning when I’m trying to sleep?? 

So, I changed out the batteries in the smoke detector and took the ladder to my office and turned off the fan, unscrewed the light bulb cover and took out the bulb.  I had grabbed both an energy efficient bulb and a regular you’re-going-to-hell-because-you-are-ruining-the-environment bulb.  

Do you see my problem? Why on earth is the light bulb in my ceiling fan NOT standard?? Why would Lowe’s do this to me?? Needless to say, I sat in the dark for several more days.

On Black Friday, my mom, my sister and I were out shopping, at the reasonable hour of 9 am and eventually made our way to Home Depot.  I was like “light bulb!” and pulled the old one out of my purse to compare it to the selection along the wall (yes, I carried that stupid light bulb with me for weeks on the off chance I’d remember to replace it).  I found the replacement, a 2 pack, which is good since I have a total of 3 ceiling fans just like the one in my office – and I grabbed an appliance bulb for my oven (the light in the oven has been out for months – don’t judge – it scares me!)

I got home and later the next day, I put in my new bulb and attached the light bulb cover.  All was well.  

Until I made the mistake of pulling on the chain to turn down the fan… 

The light bulb cover came hurling down at me! I screamed and threw my hands up over my head and ducked! Mr. T came back to the office with a quizzical look on his face, and at this point – it was funny and I had started giggling – nothing like a good giggle when you realize that you’ve survived another catastrophe!  It was a happy-to-be-alive type of giggle.  Mr. T just looked at me, asked if I was okay and went back to gathering up his stuff for school.  I know that he was smirking at me – I could feel it as he left the room.   

So, the view from my desk has been an ugly bare bulb – I’ll spare you the picture, even though I took one – until yesterday.  I was on the phone with my boss and went and pulled out the ladder, climbed up and reattached the light bulb cover.  Then I pulled and tugged on that sucker to make sure I had actually tightened the set screws enough to prevent it from coming crashing down on me again like Halley’s Comet! Just to be safe, I haven’t pulled the chains, I’ll wait until Mr. T gets home and make him do it! 

Yeah, that just happened, I am saving the mildly dangerous issues for my son to test out first.  Winning!!! 

 

Car Rides

Last night I picked Mr. T up from school about 6:45, once theatre rehearsal was done.  We went home and I sliced up the take-n-bake pizza I’d purchased over the weekend that we never got around to eating, and we sat down and watched the last 5 minutes of The Big Bang.

Yes, I know that you shouldn’t eat in front of the TV, I know that eating at the table with your child is the best thing for them.  But, it’s boring.  And, it’s not like that would be the only time we saw each other or we talked.  Most morning when Mr. T is done getting ready for school, he comes into my office and sits on the couch and we chat for a bit (I’m usually already working by the time he gets up).  We review our schedule, we talk about his friends and classmates, we discuss theatre and wrestling.  I almost always make him run errands with me, so he’s frequently trapped in the car with me, and we’ve had some good discussions when we’ve been trapped.  We had a discussion this Sunday, as a matter of fact.

Once he got old enough to have access to phone, text, computer, email, etc., I was very clear that as his parent, I had to make sure he was being safe and being appropriate, and as such, there is no privacy on electronic devices.  He has learned over the years that I will randomly pick up his phone and check his text messages and his pictures.  And his videos… yeah, learned that one the hard way – check the videos!! And, while I know he deletes stuff before I can see it, I haven’t told him that sometimes just hitting delete doesn’t make it go away! Take Facebook for example, when you delete a message, it doesn’t go away, it goes to your archive box.  This weekend I just happened to log onto his FB account and he had a chat session going, and he said something that made my jaw drop.  I did a screen shot and emailed a friend of mine, BA, and said “Should I be worried??? I think I should be worried!”

I won’t go into details, needless to say, at this point, I will never, ever win mother of the year… Ever!  And, after about 24 hours of obsessing over what he said, I was able to say “what has happened, has happened and what will be, will be, but thank God it turned out okay”.  Even though what he mentioned happened in the past, I felt the need to make sure he knew that I knew about it… So while trapped in the car, I brought it up.  His eyes filled with tears.  He didn’t shed any, but I could tell that he was taken aback and felt ashamed that I knew.  We have a pretty open relationship, so I asked him why he never told me about it and his response was “I thought you’d be mad or upset”.  Well, sweetie, if you think it would upset your mom, odds are you shouldn’t be doing it!!

It was discussed.  I hope that we both are in a better place because of that discussion, but only time will tell.  I love this kid, he’s pretty darn amazing.  Yes, I’m bragging on him, but the reality is that I’ve been very blessed with him. And, while the situation caught me off guard, our relationship hasn’t changed, it has just evolved.

Back to my original point.  Last night, after the 5 minutes of Big Bang, I expected T to disappear into his room.  He didn’t.  He refilled his milk glass and sat down and watched Bones with me.  I love Bones – that’s one of my all-time favorite shows!  30 minutes into the show, I’m starting to get suspicious… He hasn’t left, he hasn’t gone to the depths of his room to play Xbox.  In fact, he said it would be nice if I made him another glass of milk.  I said it would be nice if he made me some hot chocolate.  HE DID.  After an hour, Mob Doctor is coming on.  Now, this show intrigues me, but I’m not addicted to it – normally this is when I’d pick up the house or do other random things, but I was so comfy cozy with my hot chocolate.  I figured T would go to his room – I mean, the computer must be calling him, right?  NO! He sat there and asked if I watched that show.  I said, yeah, sometimes.

Another 30 minutes goes by and I can’t stand it anymore.  I pause the TV.  “T, is there something you need to tell me?” Cause at this point, I have no clue why he is spending the evening with his mom.  He made a joke, I played along, and at 9:00 pm he got up and said, “Okay, I’m going to bed.  I love you”

“Uh, yeah, Love you too – take your dog.”

The best dog in the World!!

I survived…

I don’t know how to write this blog without giving you way too much history or dissolving into a tirade.  Which has me feeling thankful for a computer that lets me just backspace, as opposed to the days of a typewriter when I’d have to go through sheet after sheet as I tried to write this properly! 

There is my gratitude for the season!  And, I’m thankful for my friend Karen, who, when I sent her a text hanging my head in shame that I had to abandon my family gathering cause they were driving me nutso, she called it a “sanity break” and didn’t pass any judgement!

I’m sitting here writing this when I should be doing my hair and getting dressed, I’m about to go meet her from some fabric shopping so I can make my grandmother’s Christmas gift (yeah, that’s a story that has to wait!).  

Off to more shopping… thank goodness she doesn’t care if my hair is perfect – cause, really, it never is!  

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I hope you had a wonderful time!

and we aren’t going to mention the Cowboys… they broke my heart… 

Too Early

Okay, I really feel that I’m getting the hang of this blog thing.  I remember to tag the post, and the last couple of blogs I even remember to categorize! It’s the little things that make me happy.  

My plans for this past weekend got cancelled.  I was supposed to go with a girlfriend to help her shop for her wedding dress.  It didn’t happen, but they did file a “certificate of informal marriage” (Common Law here in Texas) and it declared they’ve been married since February, so now instead of a wedding, they’re thinking just having a party in the spring.  I am pretty sure that the little information I do have on this is more than enough, but apparently it involves and ex-wife and kids.  But, she changed her name and status to Married on FB, so, you know, that made it really real.  

The point – I had a free weekend!  Mom called me Friday night, they needed our help unloading stuff at my grandmother’s house, what time do I pick up Mr. T? “7 pm.”  “Okay, since I need his help tomorrow too, see if he wants to spend the night with us.”   

Score! I picked up Mr. T, ran home and packed his supper (I’d pick up a take n’ bake pizza) and he threw some stuff in a bag, we ran to Grammy Skeeter’s house, and he left with mom and dad and I went home, alone.  I sat down and had some pizza and a Lime-a-Rita!

Yet again, I am coming back to the point.  I woke up Saturday, just me and Shorty (our dog).  I had some coffee, I had some breakfast and by 9 am I was bored silly.  I check FB, Pinterest, even WordPress in an attempt to alleviate the boredom. 

In the end, I looked at the calendar and realized that it was my only free weekend from now until forever.  It was the only weekend that I was home.  So, I took advantage of it.. Yes, it’s too early, way too early, it’s not even Thanksgiving yet… But alas, it was now or never…

Time Warp

Second week in a row that dad has given me the results of the game before I was done watching it!

I am very blessed that I have a DVR with my cable.  They don’t – and don’t tell mom – but I think she might get one from Santa this Christmas.  Dad called me on his way to my grandmothers house to see if I had finally finished watching the game… technically no, because channel 11 went out, it froze, and when I tried to jump channels and come back to it, the screen was black.  Apparently that was why he was headed over to Grammy Skeeter’s house, her channel 11 was black and she thought she messed something up – and having spent a lot of time in Denver, missing the Bronco’s game wasn’t an option.  🙂  Anyway, he told me how it ended – game winning FG in OT.  Yeah, that’s what I figured would happen, but at least it gave me the score to put on my board without having to look it up.

The point of the story, is that I love that my dad will text me instead of always calling.  Drives my mom nuts, but he has figured out that I’ll answer a text much faster than a phone call.  But, his ability to text me has given away the ending to the game the last two weeks!!  I guess the second point is that I need to stay closer to real time when watching my Boys play. We’ll be in the same room for the Thanksgiving game, so he can’t give away the results!

Can you believe that Thanksgiving is only days away?   And I re-read my post 3 times checking for errors, having a school teacher follow your blog is a lot of pressure…

The Ugly Truth

Did you ever see the movie The Ugly Truth? It’s hysterical.  But at one point Mike tells Abby that hair in a pony tail sends the message that she’s just given up.  I get where he’s going with that, but I live in Texas, and during the summer, a pony tail is perfectly acceptable.  We do plain, and we do super fancy pony tails, but we do pony tails.

It’s Friday, I had time, so I was going to do grocery shopping during my lunch break.  Now keep in mind, I work from home, so unless I have a meeting, I don’t wear makeup.  And I’ve been known to go out in no makeup whatsoever.  I’m very comfortable with my natural beauty.  🙂

But I don’t go to Wal-Mart without at least running a brush through my hair, and today I tossed on some eyeliner and mascara.  As I was doing it, I was chiding myself – why am I bothering for a quick trip to Wal-Mart.  And then I remembered…

 

Here is one reason I make sure I’m dressed

 

Here is another reason why I make sure that I’m dressed…

 

This is why sometimes I wear a belt to Wal-Mart.

 

And here is why I brush my hair – or at least toss it into a pony tail!

Unlike some, I’m totally okay going out in sweat pants – they are pants, it says so in the name! And as we all know, shorts and a t-shirt are perfectly acceptable in my reality!  Yes, I go out without any makeup.  According to The Ugly Truth, this means that I’ve given up. I don’t think I have – but denial is a powerful thing!

Happy Weekend Everyone!

 

Cowboys vs. Eagles

I’m a Cowboy fan.  Have been since I was knee high to a grasshopper.  Of course, we moved away from Texas when I was in the 6th grade, so I was introduced to other teams, but at heart, I am and always will be a Cowboy fan.  Even though our offense this year has holes that the largest defensive linemen can find and drop our QB on his butt, our defense, as always is pretty spectacular and in the last game our special teams kicked some booty!! Our defense has been pretty good these past couple of years, D Ware anyone? 🙂 But, I digress.

Here is a picture of me and BA at the Cowboy’s vs. Giants game last year.  He’s my boy BFF.  And no one can ever tell him I posted this!!

I was given tickets to the suite and a parking pass from one of my favorite guys in the industry.  Needless to say, General Admission holds no appeal after having experiences the suite at Cowboy Stadium.

 

Here is a shot of the world famous DCC doing the kick line on the huge HD TV hanging over the field.  (These shots were taken on my phone… thus the poor quality!)

 

Here is the view of the field and the TV from my seat.  It was an amazing experience.  And at the end of the game, I was told to pick a game for this season that I wanted to see and they’d get me passes again.  Rock On!!

Now you have the background: Huge Cowboy fan, check; Adventure with BA, check.  The game we picked is the Cowboy’s vs. the Eagles game.  I prefer divisional games, and it fit well with our schedule.

That is until today!! Today I got the theatre performance schedule for Mr. T (second performance this school year, doing The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – and as I haven’t seen any of the movies or read the book in years, I’m excited, but again, I digress). Not only does he perform Friday night, and have 3 performances on Saturday, he has 3 performances on Sunday! Sunday is a day of rest, Sunday is the Lord’s Day, either way, I’m not happy about school functions on a Sunday.  I’m even less thrilled that it conflicts with me going to the game.

So, I called my dad.  I hate calling my parents to ask a favor, but they are only 10 minutes away, and if you’ve read a previous post, you’ll understand that I’ve frequently dropped everything to help them out, so I don’t feel as though I’m taking advantage of them!  Dad, can you and mom go see the last performance and then take Mr. T home afterwards? I’ll be at the stadium.  Naturally, he doesn’t mind.  Helping out others must run in the family.

An hour and ten minutes later I had to go “dad, mom’s beeping in, I gotta go.”  An hour and 10 minutes, with my dad, listening to him discussing politics.  I would have to believe that the CIA could classify this as torture and he could coerce the most hardened criminal to give up information.

A little bit later, I got a text from my brother “what did you say to dad? His politics and crap are fired up like crazy… he’s gonna drive mom up a wall” whoa… what? Don’t pin this on me!! “I didn’t say anything!! I listened to him very politely for an hour!!” To which my brother responded “I need to move back out”  LOL.  (Side note, my brother is 27 and has congestive heart failure, and had to move back in with mom and dad, as he can’t be on his own while they try and get him on meds.  There are lots of big words and terminology that I could throw out there, but trust me, it’s best for him right now.)

So, now you know, my dad should be used to torture terrorists, but he’s a great guy and he’ll pick Mr. T up from his last performance so I can still go to the game.  Yup, my priorities are straight!

 

An hour, not wasted, but not working either

I had to balance my checkbook.  Last night was Diva Dinner (monthly girls dinner!), and I have to get that logged cause I spent less than budgeted and I was excited about it!  So, spreadsheet open and off to the bank’s web page.

Then, I had to check my electric company web site, cause hey, my billing cycle just closed and I haven’t received my e-bill yet.  Whoo Hooo, $70 under budget!  (The budget notes are an aside, not the real point, I just love coming in under budget though, so I have to share!).

Well, a line item on my budget coming up soon is my toll tag.  So, I had to go check their web site, see how much was left.  Dude, no worries, I can move that payment down several months.

Which lead me to the web site for the hospital, Mr. T had an ER visit and they finally have finished messing with insurance.  I made my first payment, then they called and said “I see you didn’t pay your bill in full, would you like us to set you up on a payment plan?”  Why, yes, please do! So, I verified the web showed my last payment, and looked to see if there were any charges on the physician side.  Not yet.

Moving on.

The, because I’m a glutton for punishment, I check the Attorney General’s web page, just to see if maybe T’s biological father had gotten a job and I had child support about to transmit.  I knew better than to look, but hey, it’s the holidays, everyone needs seasonal help, right?  Would someone tell him that?

So, onto emails.  Oh, an Amazon order shipped, let’s track it! Off to that web site we go.

I have paid this bill every year for 14 years, and yet, it always surprises me.  It’s the once a year payment on Mr. T’s life insurance account.  Why on earth it is set to come up right before the holidays is beyond me, well, Okay, I know why it is due every November, but still!! So, back to the bank web site to do a quick bill pay.  And a quick prayer of thanks to the Lord for blessing my finances! I had the money to pay the bill without any transfers!

Oh, but then I had to transfer money over for groceries.  (That sounds funny, but I have multiple accounts I use, one for bill pay and on-line ventures, and one for every day expenses… it works for me but I couldn’t begin to describe it to you! Needless to say, in this world of identity theft, I like that my money is spread around.  And, more importantly, it really has kept me from spending money I don’t have.  Ignore my credit card.)

As I’m logging the transfer in my checkbook, I notice that school lunch will be coming due soon, and that triggers me back to email.  Where there is a note from Mr. T’s Spanish teacher “here are my tutoring hours, the end of the 6 weeks is this Friday” ACK! This Friday! I haven’t checked his grades in weeks! So, off to the portal page to look at the grade book for Mr. T.  He’s passing everything by the way, I know you were wondering!

I saw an email pop in, oh look, new blog post from one I follow.  Off to that web site I went.

Okay, I’ve gone through my snail mail and Yahoo.  Go cleaned out AOL really quick.  I’m not sure why I still have that email account, but I’m scared to close it! Then, I had to take a quick look at Pinterest and Facebook.  Facebook was a dud, but with the holiday’s coming up, Pinterest has had some good activity. Then, I had to go check WordPress, cause several emails I deleted were from the site.

And that’s when I realized that I just spent an hour, on a dozen websites.  It’s not the time that bothers me as much as the fact that I just visited a dozen web sites in the space of an hour!

Oh, and yeah, that did just happen, I spent an hour of work time taking care of my personal business.

To top it all off, when I concluded my blog, then I got on line to find clip art about computers just so I had a pic to share with you!  Let’s see how many web sites I can actually hit today!

Best Laid Plans…

We don’t keep cokes on hand much in my house.  If we did, we’d drink them and I’d go broke.  Now, chocolate syrup used to make chocolate milk, we go through 2 big bottles from Sam’s with alarming regularity, but apparently, chocolate milk is supposed to be the best thing Mr. T can eat and drink after wrestling practice.  I’ve refused to Google this, cause what if it’s not true?

We drink milk, Kool-Aid, tea and my new favorite, Mio.  Anyway, there are very few rules in the house, but don’t drink my last Diet Coke is one of them.  I don’t care if that coke sits there for weeks, when I want a coke, it better be there! Anyway, I have a diet Pepsi hiding out in the fridge.  Not my drink of choice, but it was free.  Last night, Mr. T had theater rehearsal and then wrestling practice after school, so I didn’t pick him up until 7 last night.

Nothing is better than being able to have a coke and not have to hide it from anyone! I planned to sit on the couch, pick a show off my DVR and sip my cold coke while dinner finishes in the crock pot!

The Pepsi was flat… sigh… 

My new New Year’s resolution

So, now you know all about me being a Yes Man.  And how it’s about become second nature to me.  So, that means it’s time to work on more self-improvement.  Ugh.

I’m technically going to make it my New Year’s Resolution, even though I’m not waiting until the New Year, cause hey – we all get asked that question – “did you make any resolutions?”  Why yes I did, I just implemented them months before you thought to ask me about personal growth!

I have to stop comparing myself to other parents, other women, other people in general.  I read somewhere that the fastest way to pop your own bubble of joy is to compare yourself to others (I’m paraphrasing, of course!).  It’s human nature to look around and compare yourself.  She is thinner than I am, He is funnier than I am.  I’m a way better singer than they are (okay, that one’s not true, I’m a horrible singer, but I OWN it!), my hair is prettier than theirs, they have a better house, they have a bigger house, they have more money than I do.  Wow, they spend more time with their kids than I do.

Despite what I’ve written, I’m not a very judgmental person.  I’m a big believer in “if you’re happy, then I’m happy for you” and “whatever floats your boat” because I recognize that we are all different and unique individuals, so when I tell you that I compare myself to others, I’m not judging them – I’m judging myself.  And that’s not fair.  I spend so much of my life accepting others for who they are, and forgiving them for what they do – why don’t I accept myself? Why don’t I forgive myself?  Okay, it could be any number of things and reasons why, but one day, I just decided those reasons don’t matter.  It’s not who I WAS, it’s about who I AM.

Right then and there I made a conscience effort to notice when I was comparing myself to others.

So, I’ve been making an effort, paying attention to my thoughts.  My goal is to stop the comparisons and replace it with gratitude for all that I’ve been blessed with.  It’s time to focus on all I have, and not where I feel I’m lacking.  It’s time to focus on all of the good I can do with what I have been given, it’s time to focus on the fact that I am ME, and I will never be a mom that has freshly baked cookies and milk waiting on my son when he gets home – but, thank God, that’s not the kind of mom he needs.  He needs the kind of mom that I am, the one that he knows without a doubt will be there for him. Cookies or not.

Mr. T driving the boat on our annual day at Lake Grapevine with friends a few years ago.  🙂