From the Lost

Welcome back to me! Sorry to say it has been awhile. I just got back from my mission trip to Haiti and then couldn't remember my new password from when my account was hacked a couple of weeks ago. Will post some Haiti pics and the full story during nap times this week. In the meantime, you may have heard of the cool new site for all of us "in the know" called I Write Like. You paste a sample of your writing - a blog entry, for example - and some kind of algorithm thing analyzes your writing style to tell you what famous author you write like. Apparently I write like Cory Doctorow. Didn't know who he was, had to google him. Apparently, my blog writing style is similar to... a blogger! A liberal, science fiction writing blogger and journalist. Word.

Share Group Inc.: You're on my list!

For weeks now, we have been getting calls DAILY - sometimes up to 3 times a day - from "Share Group Inc." We are on the No Call List and have caller ID so I don't usually answer when they call. But still, annoying to have your phone ringing multiple times a day from some kind of telemarketer, right?

Last night, I was fed up and ready to tell someone off. So I answered the phone only to hear an automated message tell me something to the effect of: "There is a call for you. Please wait on the line for our next representative." I hung up.

I did some online research today and discovered that Share Group Inc. is a marketing/fundraising group that makes fundraising calls for all sorts of organizations. Just by typing in the phone number from our caller ID, I found many posts on various sites by people who have been getting calls as often as we have.  Apparently, a few years ago, calling back to the number would lead to an automated message with an option to opt out of the calls. So I tried that, but no such luck. Now you just get to leave a message so someone can... call you back... AGAIN!

I don't really understand all the details of the No Call List, but apparently somehow Share Group Inc. is exempt from the No Call rules. I get the impression that agencies that otherwise wouldn't be able to call me because of the List can hire Share Group to call me instead. Nice.

I think I'm probably in the majority here - hounding me multiple times a day does not make me more receptive to a fundraising pitch when I do finally get fed up enough to answer my phone and then wait for someone to be available to talk to me. I wish I could just call the police or something. As it is, I might get my whistle ready for the next phone call.

Fire Humans and Flags: From the Mouths of Babes

Learning my lesson about not talking publicly about breasts... I wrote a post about summer dresses for larger chested ladies and what happens? My blog gets hacked!

Well, I'm back with a big karate chop to the throat of my hackers, and a nice, fancy "secure" password. 

Take THAT!

******

In other news, Little Man (2.5 years old) has been dealing with some nasal issues due to the dry air here. It has led to multiple "I never thought I'd be doing this" moments with me shining a flashlight into his nose and extracting boogers that look like green raisins from his nostrils with a pair of tweezers. (Probably not medically advisable, I know, but a kid's got to breathe, right?) Enough is enough, despite his fear of air conditioning, wind, and all mechanical noises, we decided it was time to bust out the humidifier. 

The humidifier ranks pretty close to the air conditioning in terms of inducing fear. At this point, both things are not scary until, conveniently, it is time to go to bed. But, the humidifier is much more entertaining because Little Man calls it the... "fire human"!!

"Mama, I don't like the fire human in my room."

His other funny toddler word play: he calls the fly swatter a "flag", so any time he sees a fly he shouts, "I'm gonna flag it, Mama!" and runs for the fly swatter. Then I get to say, "Flag it, Little Man!" 

Rant: On Sundresses

*** Warning: the post contains a discussion about my boobs.***

Summertime, and I want a... really cute summer dress!

Woe is me, this is a problem for me every summer. I RARELY wear skirts or dresses any time of year, but in the summer, I almost always prefer a lightweight, flowy skirt or dress, long or short. (Unless, of course, I'm out weeding in the backyard or something,)

Apparently, I have a body shape that is next to impossible to fit in a casual summer dress, unless I want to shell out close to $100. And my "body shape" is not super crazy or anything. Yes, I am 5'10, but I'm an average weight and don't have major problem areas I want to disguise. The main problem: I have breasts. Yes. I am a woman and I have breasts. Proportional, but large enough to need fairly substantial support.

Strapless and spaghetti strap dresses are out. And also anything that gives me cleavage like the Grand Canyon. Apparently, that leaves me with... nothing! What the hay?

I think this is my 4th summer looking for a casual summer dress that is affordable, fits the boob-age requirements, and is long enough that my underwear isn't showing everytime I bend over. Last summer my mom found me a couple of maxi dresses that are cute, but one has a stripe of white cotton just at the bum area that is see through enough to require a slip. Personal opinion: slips in 100F weather are just inappropriately hot! The other one is also cute, but maybe a little cleavage-y. The first time Aunt Leona saw it she asked me if I was trying to "pick up a man".

Anna, I envy you and your cute little summer black dress! I will continue on my search, and maybe within the next few years I will find something! (By that time, I could've probably gotten years and years of wear out of a $100 dress, but I just mentally am not ok with spending $100 on a dress that is supposed to be a casual, playing with the kids and hanging out outfit.)

Maybe I should just cut some of these out and glue them on my body:

Summer - the hardest part of the year?

I am a stay at home mom to two routine-loving toddlers. They don't know they love the routine, but they do. And I do too.

Enter summer...

I've been longing for warm weather, playing outside, freedom, maybe *gasp* a small vacation or two. And here it is!

Eric is a Christian elementary school principal. Before the current year, he was a Christian elementary school teacher. "Summer off", right? Ha! I have a husband who shrinks away in terror from the idea of "down time". He gets incredibly anxious when he has free time. Luckily for him, "summer off" is an imaginary concept.  There is no "summer off" for someone in his position. Today is the "first day of summer" in his world, since yesterday was the last day of school. He was gone by 7am to be at school for multiple meetings. Will spend the afternoon helping teachers pack up their classrooms so that each room can be painted (by, you guessed it, him!) and moved to a different room for the start of next school year. That's right, my husband will be spending his "summer off" painting an entire school. And taking his admin. classes. And going to meetings.

The hardest part of our summer schedule blossoms from my own mind.  In actuality, these summer days don't look much different from any other day of the year. The problem is that a large piece of my brain thinks, "This is summer! Eric will be home more! We will do fun things! We will go on adventures! He will be around to help me with the kids and household tasks!" But it doesn't happen. I get my hopes up that he may come home for lunch or be home early so that I can go to an appointment without the kids or we can go to the park as a family. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.  It really is much easier when I don't even get my hopes up. At least then when he's home unexpectedly, it's a welcome surprise, unlike the opposite when I expect him home and he can't make it. 

Here's to a wonderful summer of adventure! Hopefully I'll be able to get us all out of town a few times!

Multi-tasking, in a "one task at a time" way

I used to be a great multi-tasker. It was, in fact, one of the attibutes that I was often praised for in professional settings. Give me a piece of paper to make a list and off I went... tackling tasks like, well, someone good at football tackles someone else - Brian Urlacher, maybe? Yes, I'm the Brian Urlacher of multi-tasking.

Except, now I'm not.

Mommy brain?

I have turned into a "one task at a time" person. This is almost as shattering to my self-image as when I discovered I was an introvert after years of being "zany and outgoing" as a teenager.  Suddenly the me I thought I was is a me I don't recognize. Mind blown.

Tomorrow is L's princess birthday party. I am doing last minute planning and cleaning today because I couldn't think about the party until this week. Before that, I had softball coaching related tunnel vision. Then, applying for the mission trip to Haiti tunnel vision. After the party tomorrow, the focus shifts to my mission trip minute talk at church, and the accompanying poster I have to make. And then, to the garage sale that is in two week to raise money for the mission trip.

The problem with this kind of task tackling, I have discovered, is that nothing is allotted more time than what I have between tasks. L's party gets a week and a half because that's how long it's been since I finished the task before it.  Minute talk for church gets one week. Garage sale planning, one week. 

It's not the best use of my time. And yet, if I try to push it into what really would be the smartest use of my time, it's like my brain just shuts off and I'm totally incapacitated. If "totally" means forced to sit on the couch watching Arrested Development (best TV comedy ever?) and eating junk food.

Foreign Language Acquisition... Fail!

I have never been much of a foreign language person. Something about my brain and learning style, I guess. In high school, I took German. This has served absolutely no purpose in my life, other than translating some scary music lyrics by a German heavy metal band. Even that was inexact: "I think they're saying something about blood, and then that word is 'hate'." Why did I spend 3 fruitful years of high school and one and a half of college "learning" German? Follow the high school logic here: everyone else I knew (except best friend, Andrea, who took French) was taking Spanish and lots of people knew Spanish, so I wasn't going to take Spanish. Therefore, German, because it seemed more obscure and alternative.

In college, I realized that the fact that everyone knows Spanish would make Spanish a desirable skill. Plus, I was majoring in sociology with the potential future career option of social work. So, I signed up for Spanish in my junior year of college. I made it 3 weeks before dropping. Why? I was in a Monday, Wednesday, Friday 8am Spanish class and I almost never made it to class on time. Hilarious looking back on it. It's not like I was staying up late studying or partying.

I managed to fake my way through college German - earning a whopping 1 semester of credit for my 3 years of high school German because of my poor performance on the German entrance exam. 

Now I understand the value of knowing other languages. My brain just isn't built that way.  I have a very poor recall for vocabulary.  I can read some German words and know what they mean, hear less German words and know what they mean, but remembering the words on my own to try to speak German. Nope.

(I actually have had much better recall with sign language, so any readers who know about multiple intelligences and brain workings may be able to give me some insight into myself upon hearing that.)

And now, preparing for Haiti, I find myself in a position where learning basic French expressions and some important phrases would be extremely beneficial.  I have no understanding at all of the French alphabet. How, for example, does Carrefour (which in my mind is pronouced "Car-4") come out as "Kah-foo"? Baffled.

I checked out a 3 CD set of basic French from the library, which also includes a little textbook. Let me tell you, the only thing more difficult than trying to learn a language is trying to learn a language by listening to a CD while also listening to the angelic sounds of two toddlers fighting over yogurt.