Month: December 2009 (Page 2 of 3)

best things that happened last week:
1. date night
2. house is decorated for c’mas
3. found out i had 20 more hours of vacay than i had thought.

seriously – 20 more hours! i was like a kid (or myself) in a candy store as i marked my availability to cash in on it. i will work a grand total of 12 hours the week of NYE but get paid for much more. is there anything better than paid vacation?

there are lots of studies that actually say vacay makes you more productive. this probably has something to do with the rate at which you reply to emails the first day you’re back (it HAS to quadruple when it comes to messages sent per minute rate). but i think it’s a general rule of life that you must rest. it’s been a soapbox of mine long before now, and it’s not just because i’m lazy (though that makes me quite the flag waver). it’s built into our dna.

i read a few good books on the subject, one of them being Sacred Rhythms (Barton), which I highly recommend. Rob Bell once gave a message on the same topic. He said that studies have been done on animals at the zoo, and it seems that if animals are kept in the public eye for more than 6 straight days, they become quite cantakerous. put them in the cave for a day and when you bring them out, they’re back to normal. we’re just built to have to take a break.

which makes me sad for the current state of our culture. it seems that being pro-vacation makes you a slacker, or at least that’s what we all think it makes us. we were discussing my “extra” vacation at lunch and a co-worker mentioned she has nearly 3 weeks left. 3 weeks! that’s the rest of this month! more than! but she said she didn’t feel like she could take it throughout the course of the year, so it’s just sitting there to be wasted. another co-worker is actually taking her vacation but is very quick to say, “well, you know, working from home” as if she’s going to loose her job for leaving email stagnant for 4 days.

now, i don’t fault the employer on this. it’s not their job to make us take vacay. i think it’s the fear of the employee when they go to take it. it’s like there’s this idea that if you take vacay, you’re not working hard enough. lies. lies, i tell you.

this is what i decided is really happening: we don’t take vacation because we want to feel important. we want to feel like if we left, it would all fall apart. there would be crashing and burning and people crying “why, michele, did you leave us?!” but the reality is that everybody makes it just fine. sure, there are adjustments to be made. but the work gets done. and when you come back, you’re so much more enjoyable to work with. win-win. win.

i’m not sure how it became so socially acceptable to make ourselves feel so good about being important. i guess we all have our ways of doing it… i shouldn’t pick on the people who have solid careers. but i just have to think that if you’re really doing well at your job, then you should be training other people to replace you. if you’re really doing great things, then there should be more of you, not you doing more.

just a thought.

i just read on someone’s fb status that they went for an evening workout and i was taken aback to my days of OU glory when i would take a jaunt over to ping for a quick run and lift. just like that. you get up and go. then when i was in upper i took part in similar activities. i would run up to US fitness, push a weight or two, then jog on home. on the really cold days i’d drive up and utilize their treadmills. then i’d go home and have dinner. it really required little foresight other than when dinner would be ready and if i needed a second shower that day.

when we moved to the grand metropolis, the price for a Y membership didn’t change too much from what we were used to (i think?) but we had a lot less money, so it got ganked from the budge. i know, your health shouldn’t be the first thing out, but in all actuality i can run outside for free and largely only used free weights so a couple of 5 lb’ers at home did the trick. and i was pregnant – how much was i really going to use the gym anyway? jj lived out his workout aspirations at the gym on campus and we we able to pinch pennies.

but now the prospect of him having a job with a paycheck (that is the same every time) will be happening about the same time i’m recovered from birth #2, i was quite tempted to see what it would take to have our membership make it back into the financials. oh, the high hopes. but alas, the price is a bit high and i would still have to pay $2 every time i wanted to leave a kid at the babysitting center (and is that PER kid?!). i’m just not sure we can do it. but i had to see for sure.

so i start doing my financial reporting. the great thing about moving and starting new checking accounts is that they’re fresh and they match what you have in the computer. however, sometime around march, something started not matching. and sometime around april i stopped importing those important docs into my handy quicken so that things would stay on track. and so, yes, this evening’s daydream of future memberships rapidly became a quicken nightmare. night. mare.

i am so saddened… now my checkbook shall never match again because, no matter what, even when you start fresh with a “new account”, it just doesn’t cut it. i think if i were to use the past 6 months of data and divide it, i might get a fairly accurate portrait of where we’re at, but it’s just not the same. and did i mention i hate math? hate it. and i’m a little too detail focused, so that i can’t be ok with just rounded numbers. i need exacts.

so here i am, rounding out my year and importing months upon months of data and i still don’t get a true portrait (months march through june are lost forever, according to the bank website). but i strive onward toward the goal. *sigh*.

on the upside, we did make more money than we spent this year, which i consider a victory. someday that gym membership shall be within my grasp. i suppose as i start composing my list of ways that 2010 will be better than 2009 keeping on top of financial records should probably appear somewhere. either that, or “delegate to husband.” but then we have to start working on trust (that things get done the way *I* want it) and other character issues. let’s just stick to a few practical things and keep the image alive, shall we? 🙂

tis true. i just stumbled upon 2 different blogs that i follow and they’re giving stuff away, like books and touch screen computers. i’m thinking about making those rolo on pretzel treats with m&ms on top? that’s the best i can do. sorry.

you’d think that i haven’t posted in a while because i have nothing to say. au contraire. (go ahead cara, correct my french. is that french?). there’s actually so much swimming around in this tiny little brain that i can’t put it into appropriate words and sentances – at least not without using words that mean nothing like “lots” and “so” and “idk” or ending my sentences with prepositions.

the past week or so has been a rough one. i didn’t realize just how rough until all the crying and then the cold sore popped up. as i previously mentioned (oh, real bloggers link to previous posts, too. this is a free skill so i will participate in an effort to convince myself someone takes me seriously), there are 4 reasons for cold sores appearing in my life and one of them is stress. i thought the crying was baby hormones, but then i decided to cut myself a tiny bit of slack and admit life has been a bit trying.

we no longer get to go on the cruise, which is a HUGE disappointment. seems so petty in comparison to the children dying in africa and all. but we had our hopes on an escape with warm weather and now it’s gone within a month of departure. boo. but i took it pretty personally since i’m the reason we’re not going. or, at least, i’m carrying the reason we’re not going.

then there was the threat of losing our health coverage. praise be to jesus that it turned out that badly worded forms were sent to an over-reactive control freak and thus we’re still covered. but that was a rough couple of days, too.

then i forgot to pay the mortgage. it got paid, just late.

then our overly-expensive (but the grandparents insisted) car seat arrived while we were out of the state and i had to fret for a good 12 hours that it was stolen from our front door. thankfully we live in a safe neighborhood and have fantastic neighbors. crisis averted once again.

then there’s the complete lack of holiday cheer. now, pre-thanksgiving-ish time and the days immediately following, i was totally into the yuletide groove. and then the tinsel lost its sparkle. i have no idea why. i think it was the previous 4 paragraphs. but our tree was delivered tonight, and as mentioned those rolo things are on the books, along with an upcoming cookie exchange, so maybe we’ll get a little spirit in our step. fortunately i have everyone but 2 people shopped out, and i have an idea for one – just need to get it purchased before amazon’s free shipping time expires.

when it’s all typed out it doesn’t really sound like much. i mean, everything mentioned really is “just life”. but i feel like there’s been a lot of “just life” really fast. not to mention the whole growing a baby thing. i’m not one to plead pregnant too often (generally only when manual labor is involved), but my cousin RAB once said that she told her husband, “I grew a lung today, what did you do?” and it’s quite true. all this development of healthy body parts on top of “just life” can really wipe a girl out.

so, i must end the post by bragging about my exceptionally good taste in husbands. with all this going on, the hubs has been 100% perfect. just super. supportive, taking on more and more at home so when i walk in i never think “and now i have to ____?!” and he’s an amazing dad. henry loooooves spending time with him and jj’s fatherly instinct is as good (if not better) than my motherly one. and tonight i walked into a homemade fried chicken dinner – because i wasn’t “eating healthy” – and barely any dishes in the sink. he really is amazing. it seems his only recent fault is that he makes me feel guilty for not being able to do it all. all the single ladies out there: don’t settle. these type of guys really do exist. oh, and he passed the business praxis. he’s smart, too. what. a. catch. and so i must post this picture to exemplify truly how “lucky i am”. who can resist that face?

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