Coming Back From an Injury

I’ve posted about how great I felt when I was active.  About a week and a half ago, I started to have pain in my lower back.  This wasn’t caused by over exercising, it is the combination of being a mom and cleaning the house.  I hadn’t been to the gym for a few days before and haven’t been since.  Once the back resolved, I came down with a nasty cold and had trouble breathing at rest, so getting my heartrate up was out of the question.

Today, I’m feeling human but worn out.  Just as I noticed an increase in my energy level after I started exercising, I’ve noticed a decline since I’ve been more sedentary.  I look forward to getting back to the gym tonight after the hubby gets home.

I had been hoping to participate in my first 5K by the end of the summer.  By going to the gym late at night when no one else was around, I found the courage to try jogging instead of walking.  This is no small feat for someone who is overweight, but I did it.  It felt great!  I’m not going to be doing any running for a while, but I am definitely going to work on building up to it again.  I can almost feel the satisfaction I know I will feel when I do it, and I’m going to use that to motivate me.

It’s easy to view a setback as a failure.  It’s only a true failure if you fail to get back to doing the work required to achieve your goal.

Time to Begin the May Blog Chain!

I must be crazy, but I volunteered to organize the blog chain for the second month in a row. With a short sign-up period, we still managed a great turnout! This month, the chain will be unthemed, which means you can go wherever your little heart desires as long as you somehow tie in to the person before you. For those reading but not writing, be sure to check out the links as unthemed chains can be very entertaining!

Here is the list of May’s participants:

Auria Cortes

Life in Scribbletown

Polyamory From the Inside Out

For the First Time

Family On Bikes

Writes in the City

Elf Killing and Other Hobbies

Rotating Bear

Fantastical Imagination

Asian Business

Spittin’ (Out Words) Like a Llama

As Yet Untitled

Mad Scientist Matt’s Lair

Peregrinas

Delirious

And So Ends the First Job

Well, it was fun for the couple of weeks it lasted. The site I was blogging about Evansville for is being shut down. It was still in the experimental stage, and apparently not as successful as they would have liked. I am currently working on developing a new blog that will continue the posting I was doing there.

The new URL is http://evansvillewi.wordpress.com

Contrasting Parents

Being an adult child of divorce brings a completely different set of issues from growing up with divorced parents. I was 19 when my parents divorced, living on my own. Since then, both of my parents have remarried. This also brings different complexities than would be present if I had been a child when “step-parents” or “other parents” were brought into the mix.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to write this post and have it come out the way I want it to.  For some reason, the words aren’t coming as easily as I would like.  There is a moral to the story, I swear!

As I drove home last night, I found myself thinking about the environments I enter when I visit my dad and his wife or my mom and her husband. I know why it was on my mind, and that’s because I had just left my mom’s.

First, let me say that I do love my mom. The thing is, they have a way of living in the past at her house.  My mom will constantly bring up the she’s upset that my dad _________ because when we were kids he didn’t __________ or something to that effect.  Truth be told, I know that my dad has grown and changed in the past decade, I don’t need her to tell me that.  But I find it unsettling that she still feels a need to create a void in our childhood memories.

I know that my dad wasn’t there for everything when I was younger.  If he was home, he was there, if he was working, he wasn’t.  That sacrifice allowed mom to stay home with us.  I don’t remember feeling less loved because he occasionally missed things.

As for her husband, he seems to want to tarnish dad’s image by basing comments on what he thinks he knows of the past.  It’s not as bad as it once was, but every once in a while, he makes a comment that goes over like a fart in church.

When I visit my dad, mom is seldom brought up.  When she is, it’s something going on in the present.  I haven’t once heard from him how my mom did ___________ when we were younger and that made us suffer in _________ way.  He’s secure in his relationship with us and at times he pushes to make sure that we all have a relationship with mom.

His wife brings up my mother even more infrequently than my dad does.  She didn’t know our family before she started dating my dad and seems to keep that in mind.  She only knows my mom by what she’s been told or what she’s seen the relatively few times they’ve been around each other.  She doesn’t assume that she knows my mom.  She doesn’t try to improve her standing in our lives by cutting our mom down.  By acting this way, she has become a mother figure to us.

I know this may all be confusing.  Some of the details have been left out intentionally.  The point I’m trying to make is that I don’t HAVE to see my parents’ spouses as parental figures in my life.  Their actions have determined how I see them.  It has also affected how I view my relationship with my parents.  I hope to never be faced with step-parents in my daughter’s life, but if I do, I hope that I would take the high road that has been taken by my dad.

No matter what age the children are, I think it’s important for parents to be very careful how they talk about the other parent.  Kids aren’t stupid, don’t paint someone as a villain if they aren’t.

I’ve Been Tagged

Colby over at Spittin’ (Out Words) Like a Llama tagged me! Now, it’s my turn to spill six things about myself and tag six others. Here are the rules:

1. Link back to the person who tagged you (that= me!).
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post by posting links to their blog sites.
5. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their site.
6. And let your tagger know when your entry is up.

Now, for six things about me…

1. I played the violin for seven years in school.  After spending those seven years fighting everyone who told me I could be great if only I would practice, I quit.  Now, 13 years after leaving high school, I wonder why in the hell I quit.  I even went so far as to visit my old orchestra teacher to figure out how to start again, but found out I was pregnant before I could save up to get a new violin.
2. I despise mice, living or dead.  Yes, this is one area where I’m a “girly girl”.  I will run, scream, do whatever I have to do.  The pest control girl knows this and loves to torment me!  Ironically, before we acquired a fish tank, I thought of getting a gerbil for my daughter.  Really, is there much of a difference?
3. I’m a horrid housekeeper.  It takes a lot to admit this on the internet, but it’s the truth.  I really want to figure out a way to keep my house clean, but I find myself cleaning like a madwoman on Sundays only to have it fall apart throughout the week.
4. Since I’ve started exercising, I’m becoming a morning person.  After being a perpetual snoozer for my entire adult life, I’m actually getting up BEFORE the alarm goes off!
5. I want to run.  This is another side effect of exercising.  I feel great and for the first time in my life, the thought of doing a 5K is appealing to me!  Me, the girl who couldn’t do the mile run in gym class during middle school, who’da  thunk it!
6. I have a jukebox in my head.  Some people get random tunes stuck in their head, I get a song relating to something I’ve been thinking about or observed.  For instance, this week I watched a very short co-worker standing on a milk crate to put bread away.  Before I knew it, “Short People” by Randy Newman was playing in my mind.  If I’m doing something satisfying, liberating, and along the lines I feel I want for my life, “Suddenly I See” by KT Tunstall is called up.  And on a mushy note, “Follow Me” by Uncle Kracker has been stuck in my head quite a bit as things get back to the positive side in my marriage.  The title of that song is inscribed on our wedding bands.

Now, I have to find six people to tag.  Here goes:

1. Fantastical Imagination
2. The Unfocused Life
3. Stamper Dad
   
4. Virtual Wordsmith
5. Mind Over Mullis
6. The Happy Circumstance

Garage Sale Etiquette

This morning, my sister-in-law and I hit the pavement.  Two local towns were holding their city-wide sales and we’re always in the market for a good bargain.  Hot chocolate in hand, wrapped in fleece, we jumped in my van to see what we could find.  We found quite a few good bargains, but I noticed that we spent a good deal of time griping about some of the sellers.  For that reason, here is a list of (should be) rules for hosting or attending a garage sale.

When attending:

1. Don’t make a total mess of the clothes.  I get annoyed when I see someone just throwing clothes back down after checking the size.  Seriously, you don’t have to fold it well, but if it was folded when you picked it up, fold it!
2. If you don’t like the price but you love the item, ask if they’re willing to negotiate.  A helpful hint, this works best on Saturday later in the morning or early afternoon.  No one wants to pack up all that junk!

When hosting:

1. Let me know you’re having a sale!  You can put a sign in the yard, balloons on the mailbox, or make sure some items are clearly set up for a garage sale on the driveway.  I can’t tell you how many “hidden” garage sales we saw today.
2. If you want people to leave the main roads to your back road, put a bright sign pointing them in your direction.  Not everyone has a map of the city-wide sale participants, and not everyone holding a sale paid to be put on the map.  If you don’t let people know you’re selling your stuff, don’t complain that you didn’t sell anything!
3. DON’T have a garage sale in your garage that is on the backside of a townhouse complex.  No one will see you and you won’t have success.  If you must hold it here, see rules 1 and 2.
4. Mark your items!  I don’t want to guess what you might want for everything.  Part of the time spent having a garage sale is to price items.
5. When marking your items, remember that this is crap you no longer want.  Yes, you want to make some money, but don’t expect someone to pay $5 for something you bought from Walmart for $10.  In the world of garage sales, people are looking for something cheap, and to be honest, half price isn’t cheap when browsing garage sales.
6. Be willing to negotiate on price.  True, you don’t have to, but again, this is crap you don’t want.  If you don’t want it and you see someone who is seriously thinking about it, many times coming down a tiny bit will make the potential buyer think they’re getting a great deal.
7. Don’t come out of the house and tell me all you have is “boy stuff” when I’m looking at the housewares you have.  We’re pretty wise to the world of kids’ clothes.  All blue clothes usually means boy.
8. Pay attention.  We had one sale today where we had to wait for the woman to get done reading a chapter in her book before taking our money.  Not that I would have, but I wonder if she’d have noticed if we left without paying!
9. Have your crap somewhat organized.  I don’t want to be stepping over piles of stuff for sale because you have it all over the place.

Will My Vote Count?

I have to ask myself this question more and more.  The Democratic primary is a heated race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  As of the latest count I’ve seen, there are 307 uncommitted “superdelegates” and the difference in the delegate count is 133.  Even though there are more primaries to come, I think there are many who wonder if the “wisdom” of the Democratic Party has silenced their voice.

In 1968, the DNC changed their policies on seating delegates to take some of the control away from party leaders and return it to the citizens.  This sounds like a great idea.  Knowing that Wikipedia is not a be-all-end-all source for the truth, it was interesting to read about the McGovern-Fraser Commission to see how this change came to be.

If you read the Wiki entry on Superdelegates, it’s interesting to note that the Democrats feel this decision weakened the ticket of George McGovern, who was one of the chairs of the McGovern-Fraser Commission.  In 1982, they felt it necessary to give back some of the power to party leaders.

The more I read, the fewer answers I have about this topic.  I can’t find anything that leads me to believe that this is a fair system.  Let’s face it, whoever wears the most Chapstick to prevent their lips from drying out on the backside of the superdelegates could very well wind up becoming the nominee.

Three Years Tomorrow

Coffee Shop Treats

At the new location, I’m going to be in charge of running the coffee shop in addition to an ice cream counter and two pizza brands.  Yes, it’s a bit unconventional, but it’s what I’m being given.  When I was touring the store last week, the pastries for the coffee shop area looked all wrong.  I was hoping to get some input from my friends in the blogosphere before I recommend changes.  When you go to a coffee shop, what treats do you buy to go along with coffee?

The Beginning of an Interesting Week

Last Monday, my boss called me.  There are going to be some changes at one of the locations of the company I work for.  I was a bit flattered when he talked to me before deciding what he wanted to do.  He needed to know he had someone competent to take over and turn on location around.  We met at that location, talked a bit, he showed me around, and told me it could be a few weeks before anything changed.

Last night, I called to get my schedule for the week.  Apparently the changes have come and I will be transferring after today.  Because I know how much work there is to be done, my head started racing as soon as I found out, causing me to lose some sleep.  I’m actually not looking forward to going in today, no one else knew of the plan for me to move.  My co-manager wasn’t terribly happy last night as he told me that I’m at the other store most of the week.  We have a tight knit group, especially during the day, and there’s part of me that feels like I’m abandoning them.

Along with this surprise move, I’m sure I’ll be meeting with the owner sometime today to iron out the details.  I’ll have to work late at least a few days a week, so I’ll also have to rush to find rides for Khaila.  It’s times like this that I’m glad I live near so much family!  Rick is already out the door to work and is planning on being at work until after sundown.

For the first time, a job I’ve had off and on for almost a decade has much uncertainty.  Part of the appeal to returning after leaving was that nothing ever changed.  That’s no longer true and I have to admit, it’s a bit scary!