Author Archives: Cindy

NaBloPoMo Day 20: family visits and holidays

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I just realized something that I haven’t mentioned here yet: my in-laws are coming for a visit soon. They’ll be here from December 4th to the 18th. It’ll be Mags (my mother-in-law), Roger (her boyfriend), and Steve (Dave’s brother). This will be the first time that any of them have met Cate, so we’re pretty excited about it.

I’m actually not sure how Cate will react at first. She tends to freak out if new people try to pick her up, but I’m guessing that she’ll get over it quickly. The last time Kris came over, Cate didn’t seem to remember her because it had been several weeks since the last time they saw each other. Even though Kris didn’t try to hold her, Cate sat on the floor a safe distance from her with a “right on the verge of bursting into tears, trembly bottom lip and all” look on her face. I’m not sure why, I was sitting right next to her, but she kept sort of whimpering and acting like she was about to freak out. An hour or so later, she was fine. When Kris went with us to the grocery store, Cate even let Kris carry her around. So my guess is that she’ll react similarly to the in-laws.

For that matter, she’ll probably react the same way when we see my folks at Christmas, because she hasn’t seen them since July, so I doubt she’ll remember them either. It’s gotta be tough to be so little and have no real long-term memory yet.

Anyway, maybe it’s because the in-laws are coming and I know I’m going to be busy with them for the two weeks that they’re here, but I’m getting prepared for Christmas freakishly early this year. I’ve already ordered my Christmas cards, and I’ve bought at least one gift for everyone in my family already. This is highly unusual for me, I’m typically one of those people who doesn’t start shopping until December 15th or so. It’s kind of nice to feel prepared, though.

Of course, this means I don’t have very long to get the guest room tidied up to the point that it can be considered usable. Lately it’s been the catch-all room for outgrown baby clothes, gear, etc. So it looks like it’s time to get out my label-maker and some boxes.

NaBloPoMo Day 18: baby singing

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In the interest of continuing my lazy weekend, here’s a video of Cate “singing” along with the theme song to My Friends Tigger & Pooh. It’s more like she’s yelling, and normally she rocks back and forth, Ray Charles-style, but she was too distracted by me and the video camera to give the full performance in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuWzxhAafuk

You can also kinda-sorta see those two bottom teeth toward the end of the video.

Happy Sunday!

NaBloPoMo Day 17: Saturday love

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The last couple of weeks, Cate has been going to daycare four days a week to allow me to meet a couple of deadlines, and it’s been going pretty well, so I think we might keep it up. She really seems to be enjoying it there, and she comes home in a happy mood, so I think this arrangement is working for us.

During the week, though, it seems like we’re always in a rush in the mornings. We wake up and I immediately have to get Cate fed, dressed, medicated (since she’s been on antibiotics), load up her daycare bag, and then get myself at least somewhat dressed so I can get out the door. I’m sure Patsy wouldn’t care if I dropped her off in my pj’s, but I don’t much like the idea. So I try to toss on jeans and a sweatshirt, and I make a half-hearted effort at dragging a brush through my hair before we head out. The whole process takes maybe 30-45 minutes, but it feels like longer because I’m constantly rushed.

(To be fair, a couple of days a week, Dave drops her off, and on the days that I take her, he picks her up. So there’s a very equal distribution of the workload there, which I appreciate.)

But I have to admit, it’s made Saturdays all the more enjoyable, because now we have these lazy days that are so nice. Today, Cate woke us up around 8:30 in the morning. We all got up, had breakfast, played for a few hours, and then the three of us took a nap in our bed for a couple of hours. We were finally changing out of our pajamas at 3:00 this afternoon. Then we headed to the grocery store, grabbed stuff to make dinner, rented a couple of movies, and we’re about to settle in for a lazy evening.

I know this might seem like an unbearably boring waste of a weekend to some people, but I cannot think of a way that I’d rather spend a Saturday. It’s been absolutely glorious, and at the risk of sounding like a total cheeseball, I feel really blessed to have this little family of mine that I love so much.

NaBloPoMo Day 16: TV talk

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Since it’s NaBloPoMo and I have nothing to write about: Who saw the season premiere of “Project Runway”? Who thought it was kinda boring? Just me? I’m hoping it’ll pick up as the season goes on. I really hope it doesn’t turn out like “Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style,” which I barely managed to watch three episodes of, and oh my god, it is so very, very dull. What can I say, I’m not a huge fan of makeover shows. (Unless they’re home makeovers, as I think I’ve already mentioned my “Clean House” obsession.)

Also, does anyone else watch “Kitchen Nightmares”? I have a bit of a crush on Gordon Ramsay, which is probably because I have a thing for blonde British men (case in point: my husband). But I really love this show. Dave and I have been watching the version on BBC America for ages, but the American version of the show is great because now I get to read the recaps on Television Without Pity, and they’re fantastic. I generally don’t care much for cooking or food-related shows, but this is my one exception.

NaBloPoMo Day 15: blah

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I gotta say, I did not think that comma usage was going to be the thing that was going to get a whole bunch of comments, but man, y’all have some serious opinions about that.

Today has been kind of hectic. I tried to clean the house and work while Cate was at daycare – that never seems to work, I usually end up getting not much of either done. Then one of my windshield wipers fell off (don’t ask) so we got to spend some quality time at Jiffy Lube this afternoon. Always fun.

My mom heard back about her biopsy. It’s not Paget’s disease, but it is breast cancer. The good news is that she might not need a full mastectomy (yay!), but the bad news is that she might need chemo (boo!). She’s going to meet with the doctor tomorrow to find out more information, and she’s supposed to get her second opinion sometime in the next few days. We’ll know more after that.

Meanwhile, hey look, cute baby!

I know we shouldn’t let her watch TV like that, but she gets so excited over “My Friends Tigger and Pooh,” and it’s so funny to watch her “sing” along with the theme song. It’s more like yelling while rocking back and forth, there’s no discernable tune at all. Hi-larious.

NaBloPoMo Day 14: work stuff

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Ok, I know I just wrote that thing about not complaining about your job on your blog, but I’m running out of NaBloPoMo topics, so here’s some work stuff, which will hopefully not be controversial enough to get me fired.

* I’ve just finished my 2nd project, and I already have a third lined up that I’m starting on now. W00t! Money! And just in time for Christmas shopping.

* I don’t know if I mentioned that I’m working for this company through an agency? It’s sort of a temp-to-perm situation – I work through the agency for six months, and at the end of that, if the company likes what I’m doing, they can hire me as one of their employees, or we can call it quits. It’s nice because it also gives me an easy out if I decide that I don’t like the job (which I do, so far).

Anyway, have you ever had those conversations with your boss where you think you’re about to get in major trouble and then you realize that it has absolutely nothing to do with you at all? My manager called me and said he was a little concerned, because they had gotten their first bill from the agency, and apparently I was billing way more hours than they had allotted for these projects. I was kind of confused because he had given me an estimate of how much time I had for each one, and I knew that I was keeping it within that range.

Turns out? My hours were totally fine, but the agency was billing the company for a full 40-hour workweek every week, even though I’ve never once put in more than 30 hours. Heck, one week when I was between projects, I only billed thirteen hours. And yet they still got a bill for forty hours. The hell? So the problem was with the agency’s accounting department, it had nothing to do with me. It was a big relief, but it also made me wonder if the agency did that on purpose. You know, overbill the company and see if they notice or if they just pay it and move on. I’ve never worked with this agency before, and I don’t really know any of the people there, so I have no idea if they’re a shifty bunch or not. I’d like to think it was just an honest mistake, but it seems really odd since they did it for several weeks in a row. They had my timesheets that clearly stated how many hours I had put in. How hard is to read the number off the timesheet and enter that into their little billing column? What do you think, incompetence or fraud?

* My first project came back from the copy editor, and y’all, she is killing me. I’m sure she’s a lovely person, but I am obsessive about grammar and punctuation, and some of my stuff that she’s correcting is just flat-out wrong. For example, say you have a series of three things. I’d write it like this:

thing1, thing2 and thing3.

She turns it into: thing1, thing2, and thing3.

That 2nd comma before the “and” just eats at my soul because it is wrong, wrong, WRONG. But she’s the editor, so I have to make the corrections the way that she wants them, and oh, I just can’t even begin to tell you how much it bothers me. I know my spelling and punctuation isn’t always perfect, and a few of the things that she spotted were genuine goofs on my part, but some of the stuff that she’s changing makes me want to claw my eyeballs out.

And now, I’m going to go back to work and meditate to the glorious sounds of the cement truck in my driveway pouring the asphalt for my new driveway. Oohhhmmm…