It’s a New Day for the Shelblog!

I wrote a post.  I lost it.  I am bereft.  Well, actually, I’m pissed off.  I don’t have any freaking way to get it back, and now I’m out of time to write!

I’ll have to try again later.  Grrrrrrr.  >

Matthew as a ninja.

Michaela (middle) is a fairy princess, and Shaya as a fairy princess.  Yes, they’re both the same thing, but aren’t they cute?

Okay.  This is only my second third fourth fifth try, and I think I may have gotten it!

 At least I think it is.  Thanks for the tag, Doug!

The basic facts:

Who is your significant other? Steve
How long have you been together? Since November 1994. Married in August 1995
Dating/Engaged/Married? Married.
How old is your S.O.? 36

Which one?

Who eats more? Steve does. Definitely
Who says “I love you” first? Probably 50/50. We’re kinda saps.
Who weighs more? Steve does! Yay! By about forty pounds now, which makes me very happy!
Who sings better? Steve does. He’s professional quality, while I am poor amaturish at best. My range is about ten notes, and they are questionable on most days.  Steve’s freakishly good, and has an amazing voice.  And I don’t say that lightly, either.  I wouldn’t lie about such things.
Who’s older? Steve, by about two and a half years.
Who’s smarter? That’s a tough one. I’m definitely quicker, but that may not be a good thing! Our intelligence is completely diverse. I’m more creative with words and drawing/painting and such, but Steve has me beat on math and more methodical, structured knowledge.
Whose temper is worse? I get mad more quickly, but I think Steve is scarier. He has that “Trooper Voice” which says, “Don’t fuck with me or I’ll smash your face into the pavement.” He’s never used it on me, though, and it’s a good thing, ’cause I’d hurt him. HA! Nevermind the reality that he could kick my ass if he wanted to [he never would, though, 'cause he LOVES me!]. You didn’t want reality anyway, did you?
Who does the laundry? Both of us. It’s probably 70/30 him, though. I hate housework!
Who does the dishes? Both of us. Probably 90/10 on that one [he does them more than I do].
Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? Depends on your perspective. If you’re in bed with us, it’s me, but if you’re standing at the foot of the bed, it’s Stevie.
Whose feet are bigger? Steve. He has long skinny feet. Size 12, which is abnormally long considering that he’s only about 5′ 10″. Mine are 7 1/2.

Whose hair is longer? Mine, although Steve’s was way longer than mine when we got married. My hair is actually below my shoulders now, which is the longest it’s been since high school.
Who’s better with the computer? Me, definitely.
Who mows the lawn? Steve. We have a push mower, and I can’t even start the damn thing.
Who pays the bills? Usually Steve, although we’re switching banks so I can do it online.
Who cooks dinner? Me. Almost always. If Steve “cooks” it’s sandwiches or something frozen.
Who drives when you are together? Almost always Steve. He does that for a living. In fact, he can even teach cops how to drive now. He’s a very excellent driver *rocks back and forth*.
Who pays when you go out to dinner? Usually Steve, unless I do.
Who’s the most stubborn? Steve! No, seriously.  He’s just more laid back than I am, so it looks like I’m more stubborn, but I’m not.
Who is the first one to admit when they’re wrong? I’d say that’s 50/50, although I like to argue just for the sake of arguing sometimes, in which case it doesn’t matter who’s right, ’cause I am!
Whose parents do you see more? Until the past month, we saw Steve’s mom more than my parents, although before we moved to St. Joe three years ago, we saw mine every week.
Who named your ferret? We don’t have ferrets. I named our Australian Shepherd, and my mom named the cocker spaniel, but Shaya had come up with the name “Shyla” when she was three or so. I named our kids, does that count?
Who kisses who first? It varies. We have stages where I kiss Stevie a lot, and then others where he instigates the smoochies.
Who asked who out? Steve asked me. He asked me to go to Sonic. Romantic, don’t you think?
Who’s more sensitive? Believe it or not, we’re about equal there. I’m definitely more emotional than he is, but he’s as much of a sap as I am when it comes to lovey dovey crap.
Who’s taller? Steve, by about four inches.
Who has more friends? Probably Steve. I’m a stay at home mom, where would I find friends?
Who has more siblings? Steve has a brother and sister. I have a brother, although one died at birth before I was born, but I don’t think we can count him for this purpose.
Who wears the pants in the relationship? Probably me, at least in the sense I’m louder and more opinionated than he is. About stuff that matters to him, he does, though.

Which makes me incredibly happy.  It’s a Gateway, and it has a 19 inch flatscreen monitor that works!  Woo hoo!  I can see pictures, and hear music!  Mom is staying with me this week, until tomorrow.  She is improving every day, and I can’t even tell you what a relief that is.

Looks like she’s going to live, and be happy and pain-free again.

Thank God.

Anyway, life is better, and I’ll be blogging, hopefully, on a semi-regular basis again soon.

Take care, y’all!

Thank you for stopping by my blog. Your comment was welcome, as are all comments, even from people who disagree with me. I read your letter last night right before bed, and began composing an answer instead of sleeping, which was stupid since I can’t remember any of it today, but there you go.

It was the first thing that I thought of this morning, so here I am. I’m still debating with myself exactly what I want to say, so this may end up being more of a random nonsense entry, but since I’m still depressed, and therefore still wanting to write, here goes!

You wrote:

First, i would like to comment on your literary style, which is, well, pretty stylish for my taste. You write with sure and sharp strokes, which might be a touch of a true writer. I enjoyed reading your last entries. And not only because of the literary style, of course, but intricacies of why else are hard to put into words.

Um, thank you, I think. I am glad that you enjoyed my last entries, but I have to say that ‘pretty stylish for my taste,’ is a bit ambiguous. Sounds kinda like when someone tells you you’re style of dress is ‘unique’ but they really mean horrible. It’s cool, though. I liked they way you worded it. It actually made me happy, which is damn near miraculous right now!

I would like to begin from the end, and answer your question of “Is it even possible to reconcile myself to that?”, that is, the question about the importance of godhood of Jesus Christ. Again, I’m not feeling important enough (in your personal existence) to convince you, that is why i hope I won’t try to argue with you, but will just lay some answers, in case you need them, and if I miss something, you can always inquire me further on any topic concerning Christianity.

Thank you for that. I do appreciate the way you made it clear that your aim isn’t to argue. I’m not crazy about arguing, but I do like a good discussion. There’s a fine line between the two, and I’m always excited when I can have a ‘debate’ of sorts without getting nasty. I’m a bit of a drama queen, but I avoid confrontation at all costs. Weird, huh?

So anyway. I’ll just take your answer and ask questions or share my own point of view, or ramble aimlessly for a bit as the mood hits, and we’ll see what happens, okay?

Here’s my favorite part about blogging.  I’ll continue this tomorrow, and continue until I finish, or until I lose interest and move on to something else.  No offense, I just do that sometimes.

This will be the test post, eh?

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I’m beginning a blog entry knowing full well that Steve is gonna walk through the door any minute and we’re gonna have to leave.

We’re driving a bunch of hours today to go sign some papers on a consolidation loan that will consolidate two bills, reduce our payments by about $75, and reduce our interest from 11% to 6%. You really can’t beat that, now can you? [barring someone giving us the money and not asking us to pay it back, that is... and if you know anyone who'd like to do that, let me know, okay?]

Steve’s also getting a raise this month, so things are finally looking up a little in the finance area [yay!]

And of all things, my health is really starting to improve. I’m just taking my melatonin now instead of melatonin and half a sleep-aid tablet. I had stopped a while back, but started again because I was having a hard time falling asleep again. I’ve found, though, that the half tab of sleep aid is too much and I’m feeling drugged in the morning.

So night before last, I just took the melatonin again, and I woke up at 6:30 in the morning, which kinda pissed me off since I went to bed after midnight. I tried for an hour or so to go back to sleep, and finally managed it.

I slept until 9:30, which was about one extra hour of sleep, but still earlier than I was getting up when I was taking both the melatonin and sleep-aid. So it occurred to me that maybe I didn’t need to sleep quite as long as I used to.

When I woke up at 7:30 this morning, I gave up and got up. I’ve showered, done e-mail, drunk coffee, and relaxed, and all before my kids woke up. Okay, that’s a beautiful thing, people!

I’m still taking my new supplement, and this waking up at the crack of dawn crap started not too long after I started it. I’m in my fourth week of taking it. My eczema is still gone, and I’ve been washing my hands with soaps that used to cause breakouts within thirty minutes of touching it.

I’ve had a few days where I’ve literally run around all day, and after the day was over, didn’t think I was gonna die from the pain and exhaustion. It’s like I start moving, and the moving gives me more energy [which is what happens to normal people, but with fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue, you end up feeling a hundred times worse than when you started.]

Here’s another weird thing I’ve noticed: A month ago, I was eating the equivalent of 1/2 to 1 candy bar a day [we've got those Nestle mini's, so I don't know the exact amount compared to a full-size candy bar]. I was craving sweets more and more, and with hypoglycemia…

Okay, remember when I said I might have to leave any minute?  This is that minute. I’m gonna go ahead and publish, but I’ll finish this later.

Yay me!  I wrote an entire short story!  It ended up being 4,400 words, and I sent it off to the contest I was planning on entering.  We’ll see how it does.  If I win, I’ll let you know what it is and where you can read it, but if I don’t, um, I ain’t ‘fessing up.

It’s a bit of a change for me considering the fact that I have a blog where I’m working on the rough draft of a novel, but there you go.  I’m a big ball of contradictions.

I have the next several scenes of Thea’s story planned out, but I’ve been concentrating on the short, so she’s been in a corner of my brain, waiting patiently in her jello-brained coma.

I was thinking it would be really mean to make her go back to public school after she recovers, but then I remembered one of the questions Paperback Writer asks her characters:

“What’s the worst thing I can do to you.”

Honestly, the worst thing I can think of, after almost dying and coming out of a coma using regenerative powers you didn’t even know you had, is going back to school and pretending to be normal when what you really want to do is zap the mean kids and teachers and give all of them jello-type brain damage.

Yup.  Thea’s going back to school.  But first I have to get the scenes written where she recovers.  And after writing the short, I’m really excited about Thea again, and I feel like I’m finally ready to have another go at it.

So maybe when I hit a wall, taking a breather and writing something short and fun will perk up my creativity and get me back on the right track.

I can’t tell you how wonderful it feels that I finished something!  I have to admit, I could have tinkered with it forever, but I only did two edits, well three.  I went through it with the spell and grammar check first.  Then I printed it out and went to Pizza Hut while I was at mom’s and edited it on paper.  After that, I went back and fixed it in word, then finished the final scene [which I'd had some trouble figuring it out]  I went over it one more time, and even though some of it bugged me, I sent it off anyway.

I know you’re supposed to make it as perfect as you can get it before you send it off, and I didn’t quite do that.  There were a couple of places that didn’t feel quite right, and I probably should have worked on it some more, but I felt like if I messed with it too much, I’d decide the whole damn thing sucked and end up trashing it.

That’s not what I wanted to do, so I stopped editing it and sent it anyway. The spelling and grammar is good [I've pretty much got that down].  I love the plot because there’s a cool twist at the end [at least I think it is;-)]  There’s some humor, although that may end up counting against me.  It might be a little too close to real life.  I never can tell about these things.

I liked my characters, but with it being a short story, I didn’t spend a lot of time working through their thought processes, so I don’t know how much of their inner lives got into the story.  That could be good or bad, again, I’m clueless.

I think what I’m learning is that I’ll never be able to follow prescribed rules when it comes to my writing.  I kinda go where the story leads me and hope it works out in the end.

I read it to Steve and he liked it, but he’s not really a good judge since the last fiction he read was something by Dr. Seuss.  That and he loves me, and love tends to be blind [at least his is.  Trust me on this.]  Nevertheless, it felt good to have him say he liked it.  What can I say?  Even uninformed, love-blinded accolades work for me!  I’ll take anything.

Pitiful, ain’t it?  Oh well, it’s only right that my beloved be my biggest fan, don’t you think?  And he is terribly sweet, and really cute.

I read JA Konrath’s blog from time to time, and he had this to say about what makes a good blog.  I think I break about every one of his rules with my li’l ole blog, which is probably why only a few people read me.  I haven’t quite worked up the courage to try to generate hits [there are several things you can do, but I can't think of any off the top of my head, and I'm tired now, so I'm not going to go looking for them.]

I’m a little worried because I don’t think I’m very consistent. Certainly not with content, since I’m all over the world in topics, sometimes in the same post [like now... hee hee].  Oh well, right now, this is just a personal thing.  I’ve met some really cool people who, and this is still weird to me but it’s true, have become actual [or is that virtual] friends.

Maybe when I’m published I’ll get my act together and do a ‘professional blog,’ but right now this is pretty cool.

Ugh.  The two-year-old just woke up crying, so I’ll see y’all tomorrow.

Okay, so here’s the deal.  I don’t know if y’all remember me whining about jury duty a while back?  I was on call for the whole month of March.  Well, I got the call and had to go to the Federal court in KCMO today.

The selection took all day [as in, we got there at 0830 and didn't get gone until 1530, um 3:30pm] I’ve got a headache from here to next week, and to top it all off, I got selected to be on the jury, and the trial may take all of next week to get through.

I probably could have gotten excused because of childcare, and probably should have since now I have to figure out what to do with them all next week.  I have to be there at 9am, so I need to leave here by 7am because it’s an hour drive with no traffic, but with the way KC is, I’ll end up stuck in traffic for eons.

I wasn’t thinking clearly about what all this means on the home front.  You see, when you have three kids, you hesitate to ask people to babysit without paying them [which is why we rarely ask, because three kids equals a lot of money even for a couple of hours].

My kids are usually well-behaved, but they have their moments, and with three of them, even the best kids can be a challenge to watch [trust me on this ;-)]  So I’m in a pickle.

We thought maybe we could farm the kids out to grandparents, but my mom didn’t sound enthused about the idea, and Steve’s mom and sister have to work, and his sister couldn’t get permission to take Shaya with her to work, so that’s out.

We’ll probably end up taking Michaela down to mom’s anyway, but it’s a three and a half hour drive, and when I suggested that they meet us half way, I got silence. [Don't misunderstand me here, I know mom has her own stuff going on with grandma and everything, so I'm well aware that it's an inconvenience.  I just hate feeling so damned guilty for even asking in the first place, and when she's less than enthusiastic, it makes the guilt that much worse.]

Even if we do take Michaela to mom’s, that still leaves Shaya and Matthew.  The ideal situation would be for some kind soul to volunteer to come over to our house [so we don't have to wake them up at the crack of dawn] and watch the kids here until Steve gets off work.

When I was mulling this crap over before I actually looked at the time it’s going to take up, I thought I’d split my jury pay with the babysitter, so they’d make $20 a day.  For three or four hours [with one or two kids] that’s decent pay in this region for babysitting.  For three kids and eight hours [or more] it’s pitiful.

We don’t have the money to pay someone a fair wage for that kind of time, and I don’t have the heart to ask anyone else to do it for free.  It’s one thing to ask grandparents since they [supposedly] live for that kind of shit, but to ask friends, none of whom have as many kids as we do, feels like I’m taking advantage.

I love my kids.  I wanted them before I got pregnant, during the hellish pregnancies, and even during post-partum depression [well, for the most part.  I never stopped loving them even when I couldn't stand to be around them].  I still want my kids, and I don’t regret having them, but this brings home the fact that my life is not my own, and won’t be for a good long while.

Doug’s been talking about the Duggars and this women’s group called the Prairie Muffins.  Their whole goal in life seems to be becoming housewives and baby factories.  Which is fine, if that’s what make’s you happy.  But here I sit, a stay at home mother of three, and I feel overwhelmed and bogged down right now.  If I had more than the three I’ve got, I think I’d lose my mind.

Bill Cosby said

“My wife and I have five kids.  The reason we have five kids is because we do not want six.”

Yup, I can honestly say that the reason we have three kids is because we do not want four.  And that’s a change from a few years ago.  I’ll tell you about that another time, though.

For now, my head hurts, I’m exhausted and stressed out, and I want to go to bed.  So be well, dear friends.  I’ll see you tomorrow.

There’s no place like home.  Even my home, where five of us live in 927 square feet [small, by American Standards... of course we Americans are notorious for having too much stuff, and I'm afraid my little family is no exception].

I rather suspect that if we didn’t have so much crap, our cramped quarters would be less noticeable.  Or maybe if I was more organized, I could find room for all of it.

The problem is, whenever I start to go through stuff, I have little [or big] gremlins all around me, telling me we have to keep that, and this needs to go in the garage sale, so let’s put it in a box until we have one.
We’re never going to have a garage sale, because I did one once and refuse to do another one.  Ever.  Steve lives under the delusion that someday he’ll do one by himself, but that’ll never happen either.

So I have a garage bursting at the seams with all this stuff.  If we had a garage sale and sold it all, we could probably make some money, but the nightmare of putting stickers on everything, and then having people come up and try to haggle on already extremely low prices gives me hives!

For example, on my first GS, I priced a music box that had either dolphins or unicorns on it [can't remember now] that cost between 12-15 dollars new at $1.  Someone tried to talk me down to 50 cents.

Another one was a three piece maternity outfit I had paid $40 for [on sale, mind you]  the year before [which is a lot on my budget]. I had priced it at $3, and a woman had the nerve to ask me if I’d take $1 for it.  When I said no, she gave me a dirty look, laid the outfit on my checkout table and stalked off like I’d insulted her!

Then there was the man who came up asking to buy a bicycle seat.  He got in my personal space [within a foot of my body... I don't like being that close to people I've met before, but with a stranger it is extremely uncomfortable]  I ended up taking less money just so he’d get out of my back yard.

Steve was driving the tow-truck then, so he wasn’t there when the creepy guy showed up [of course] so after it was over, I swore I’d never do another one.  I’ve been very vocal about this fact in the five years since the first one, but Stevie persists in thinking there’s stil a garage sale in our future.

He has no idea the Power I Wield!!!  Mwaahahahaaaa!

I’ve been having evil thoughts of the girls in my accountability group coming over with a pickup truck, and us going through all of it and loading it up to take to Good Will sometime when Stevie’s gone.  I keep trying to tell him that we need to unload some of our stuff [most of which is still in good shape and could be enjoyed by others].

My personal theory is that if we get rid of the crap we don’t need, maybe some of the stuff we do need will trickle into our lives.  Steve gets twitchy when I start talking about that kind of thing.  He’s madly in love with me, so he tolerates my ‘flights of fancy,’ but I suspect he doesn’t believe me when I let go one of my spiels about energy and creating a vacuum and all the other stuff that goes along with my theory about giving our stuff away.

And then there’s my natural laziness, which means I just want to load up everything and take it to the Salvation Army and let them sort it out.  I don’t want to sell it on eBay.  That means work.  All that packaging.  And trips to the post office. And all the other stuff that goes along with doing online auctions.  I like to buy stuff on eBay, but I have no interest in selling stuff there.

So my house is a mess right now.  The kids’ suitcase is in the living room floor, along with their dirty clothes.  Seems like all three of them change clothes in the living room, and leave the clothes where ever they fall. I know, if I was a more disciplined person, I would have trained them better, but there you go.

The fact is, people, I’m a rotten housekeeper.  I hate laundry and dishes.  Don’t like cooking [actually, I love to cook, but I hate cleaning up the messes afterward].  I don’t like to dust, and I hate vacuuming, and anything else that resembles housework.  So I put it off.  Which means that stuff piles up until I can’t take it anymore and have to bite the bullet and clean.

Okay, well, all that was to say that we’re home and glad to be here.  Shaya and Matthew are watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and it’s at the maze scene [the scary part, as Shaya just put it].  They get a little nervous at this point, and have requested that I join them in the living room to watch it with them.

Which means I get to put off cleaning for a little while longer.