I don't need MORE noise.

Thank you Kelly for the offer. Almost nothing I worry about is logical...so I probably wont need him too often. I'll just remind myself not to be a neurotic mess and hopefully that will work. :)

Now, onto a new topic. My Tivo remote.

It hates me.

The pause button has decided to become volume up. Volume up is still volume up. Fast Forward is Volume up. Volume down turns the tv off. All of the other buttons are preforming their intended function. Leaving me exactly 3 ways to turn the volume up and exactly NO ways to turn it down (aside from getting my butt up and doing it the old fashion way).

No one in the house will fess up and tell me that they perhaps dropped it in the tiolet, ran it over with a monster truck, put it in the microwave, the dishwasher or the washing machine...and there are no signs of foul play. So who knows?

I may just throw the stupid thing at the wall.

If I do, I'm not appologizing to the wall or the remote.

I'm a freak.

I'm such a worry wart. It's seriously annoying. I annoy my friends and myself!!

I worry about everything. I overthink EVERYTHING. I rethink every decision I make. I worry too much about other peoples opinion of me. I worry about the past, the present and especially the future.

You know that saying "don't sweat the small stuff"? Yeah, I don't follow that at all!

I have a couple of friends that are totally easy going. Sometimes they come of as seeming like they don't care as much, but in reality I don't think that's the case. I think they just have an easier time adapting to things and they are ok with whatever happens. I wish I could tap into just a little bit of that.

I want to be able to worry when it's appropriate and just let the rest go. I want to be less of a people pleaser and be more genuine.

Also, I have noticed a few times in the last week or so that I appologize way too much for things that are either 1) out of my control entirely 2) that I'm not actually sorry about or 3) don't even require an applogy.

For instance...today at the bank this lady was distracted and wasn't watching where she was walking and bumped into me. My reaction? "oh, sorry". For what exactly?? For standing in line? For not jumping out of the way when she absently walked into me? I wasn't really sorry. I didn't need to be. But that was my first reaction.

There are countless other times that I do it.

See...so now I'm worrying about how much I appologize. I guess I should just face facts. I have issues.

Well, that's that then. Sorry if this bored you. :)

yum

I'm a fan of dessert. Especially the homemade kind.
But sometimes a plain ol' scoop of vanilla ice cream really hits the spot!

I owe you one Holly

Some days are boring in a good way. Sometimes there's nothing better than knowing I have nothing that needs to be done, nowhere to be, no pressing responsibilities etc.

Today was not one of those days.

Today I was just plain bored. It's been raining for like 5 days and it was starting to get on my nerves. The boys are spending the night at their grandparents, so by 4 o'clock I didn't even have them to distract me (I'm not really complaining about that, just trying to convey the extreme boredom).

I called all sorts of friends to see if they wanted to do something, but everyone was busy. It's like they don't realize that sometimes I need them to drop everything to keep me company. Geez.

But then...my day took a turn. For the freaking fantastic.

You see, two of the friends (Bridget and Stacey) that I had called gently reminded me that they were going to the Garth Brooks concert tonight. I should have remembered this since I've been sort of bitter about it for months! But in my boredom I forgot. (Not bitter at them really. They asked me to go before they bought the tickets but I couldn't justify spending the money at Christmas time).

Then at 4:30 Bridget called back and said that the third girl that was going suddenly couldn't and if I could be ready in ten minutes I could have the ticket.

I was ready in 3.

Talk about luck. I had just dropped the kids off. I was sitting at home by myself wondering how I was going to pass the next few hours before I could go to bed without feeling like a complete senior citizen. Within minutes I was on my way to the Staples Center to see an amazing concert.

And it was amazing.

I don't care if you don't even like country music. Garth Brooks is a spectacular performer. Trisha Yearwood came out and sang with him which wasn't really a surprise. But then Huey Lewis came out and sang. It was so random but so great! He ended the show singing American Pie. Random? yes. Great? YES!

I had a fun time with friends, got to see a great show and because I'm not much of a drinker I didn't have to pay $11 for a beer. Perfect night.

Oh, and I'm sleeping in tomorrow and I don't feel bad about it.

There are worse things than being a goat.

I had a date on Friday night. While this is a rare enough occurrence to be blogworthy on it's own, it is not the date so much that is inspiring this post. Not directly at least...

It was a first date. A blind date actually. It was a last minute thing.

So, in an effort not to reveal my goat like characteristics(mainly my hairy chin. I don't eat tin cans or anything) right off the bat, I thought I should probably wax the little suckers. Usually I have it done professionally, but not on a regular enough basis, mostly just when I start feeling extra manly. And I haven't been in awhile. This occurred to me as I was getting ready. So I dug the store bought wax out from under the sink. I've used it before, once I think. I remembered that it was really messy and a pain because you have to use the wax quickly because it hardens in seconds, and since I have a lot of hairs to get rid of that is no small feat. But, I also remembered that hairy faced girls aren't attractive so I carried out the painful messy task. Problem solved.

Or so I thought.

My face was smooth as could be, and I guess that's all I can really ask for, right? I went on my date and he didn't offer to let me use his razor or anything so I figured I was ok. I was really tired when I got home and just washed my face and went to bed. Saturday morning I woke up with a rash all over my chin. An ugly gross red rash. ON MY FACE. A rash much more noticeable than any hairs ever were. It's just barely better today. Which means that for the last three days I have had to answer several versions of this question "Wow, what happened?" many many many times. Each time I just bleat and go on with my business.

The date was fun. Hopefully I'll see him again. But not for a few more days.

The wax is in the trash.





Warning: this is totally unrelated to the prior topic.
In Yahoo's top searches today, Michelle Williams was number 1. Heath Ledger was number 5. That's interesting to me.

I'm alive.

I haven't died. Or vanished. I wasn't washed away in the "big storm" (which was pretty small, really). I am here.

I took the boys to Albuquerque last Tuesday night. It was not a planned trip, but McKay ended up not having school on Thursday and Friday (plumbing problems or something like that) so we hopped in the car and drove to see people that I've been missing.

About an hour into the drive I started to think that maybe I was crazy to go with them on my own...the 12+ hours that were still ahead of us seemed so long and the dvd player stopped working about a quarter of the way through Transformers. But, the kids handled it very well and we had some great conversations. Then they slept and I drove and listened to music and ate junk food and had a good time.

I purposely didn't take my computer because I wanted to make the most of the short vacation and not be sitting in front of it the whole time. I took my camera, but didn't actually end up taking many pictures because the kids both got really sick the first day that we were there and we spent most of the time cooped up in Erin's apartment. In retrospect I probably should have taken the computer and left the camera home :)

On Friday morning Gentry had a fever so I gave him some ibprofen and less then 15 minutes later his eyes were swollen shut. It freaked me out because I was picturing his throat swelling up and I panicked a little. But after I gave him some benodryl and he slept for a few hours they were better. I still don't know what caused it but his Pediatrician thinks it may have been the dye in the medicine.

Then McKay spent that whole night throwing up! They pretty much ran through every symptom in the book...fevers, allergic reaction, vomiting, coughing, sore throat etc. Erin was probably not happy that we brought the death flu with us! Not surprisingly, all 3 of her kids were sick before we left.

But, actually as dreadful as that all sounds we had a pretty good time. I didn't watch the news once, never got on the internet, didn't watch any tv shows. It was kind of freeing! The kids got to spend time with Erin's kids (Leah, Carlos and Emma) and I got to see some old friends and all of my family that lives there. We had a mellow trip and watched High School Musical 2 eight zillion times but it was still pretty fun.

Now it's back to real life. I'm playing catch up with current events (I didn't know about the whole Marine murder thing till this morning) but I had a bunch of blogs to read last night when I got home which was fun.

We probably wouldn't have made it to NM until summertime so I'm glad that we got to take advantage of this spur of the moment trip.

it's water.

We are officially on Storm Watch 2008!

It always amuses me how Californians react to weather. Especially the newscasters. We're supposed to get something like 2 (not 20, 2.) inches of rain in the next couple of days. But if you watch the news for too long you might feel inclined to start building an Ark. It's just that serious.

They're already reporting live from various different places around the valley talking about the expectation of rain and how people are reacting. No rain has even fallen yet. And they'll no doubt be out there tomorrow with their network issued rain gear. It'll be the top story every hour. Like there's nothing more important going on in the world than water falling from the sky. I wonder if they realize that in other parts of the country water actually freezes as it's falling. Oooh, a whole other phenomenon.

After all of this build-up, I think it would be funny if it didn't even rain. Well except that we desperately need it.

If it does actually rain as much as they are predicting it'll mean that I'll be cooped up with the kids for the remainder of the Christmas break. But they're back to school on Monday. I love those little knuckleheads but these 3 weeks have, at times, felt like 3 months.

And I just realized that I just blogged about the rain. Well, this is Storm Watch 2008. What do you want from me?

2008

I'm sure that I'm going to forget and write 2007 until at least February.

But I'm excited for the new year. It feels like I'm at a turning point in some regards and I'm looking forward to seeing where my life is headed. I'm not making any resolutions, so to speak, but change happens whether I like it or not so with some clear intentions and motivation I'm hoping to steer that change in a direction that makes me happier and more fulfilled.

I hope that everyone had a fun filled and safe New Year.

The decorations are down and it's back to regular life. Till next year :)