Adios

Tonight we celebrated the end of a 10-week long Crown course. We had such a good time. I always feel like our groups become little families during these courses, and I keep in touch with a lot of my groups. I highly favor regular Crown reunions.

In other news, I am so sick and tired of dress shopping that I think I'm going to boycott it indefinitely after tomorrow. Usually I have to settle for a less than perfect dress. This time it was much, much worse.

I found the perfect dress. Yep, I most certainly did. The color was awesome, the cut was great, and I looked like a freakin' princess in it.

And they didn't have it in my size. Of course it had to be a bridesmaids dress, so ordering it would take three months, and I only have three weeks. So I gather a list of all the stores in Texas that carry this particular designer, and begin to call each and every one of them, looking for this dress in my size.

Most of them didn't have it at all.

The ones that did either had a color that would look horrid on me, or couldn't sell me the floor demo. The latter is much worse than the former. Simply knowing that the dress is there, the embodiment of perfection in fit and style, and I can't have it because of bridal shop politics.

So you can't order another one and let me have the one off the floor?

No, ma'am. We can't sell the demos. But I'll be happy to order one for you.

Right...

So, off we go again. I'm going to attempt to take the kids shopping for a dress tomorrow. Wish me luck. I'll need it.

Not Chicken Pox

Thankfully. But the rash has spread full-body, although still light. Now I'm just preparing for this weekend. Wish me luck, lots to do...

Steel Magnolias and Golden Roses

The magnolias are in bloom. Coming from Louisiana, I have a soft spot for them. My husband picked one off the tree in our front yard for me, and I spent hours drinking in its sweet citrusy smell. The rose vine in our backyard has once again produced flowers against all odds. Beautiful yellow roses with pink-tipped petals, another sign that God is my romancer. The fact that the poor, sickly vine keeps producing gorgeous blooms every year is what keeps me from cutting it down to end its misery. It's almost metaphorical.

The winds of change are in the air, and I'm testing the breeze with my finger, speculating on what it could bring. No one knows right now, all things must work themselves out in time. I guess patience is the key, but please don't pray for patience for me. I've learned that lesson, thank you. Just pray for a good outcome and clear direction.

And yes, I'm being vague on purpose. I don't want to mention too much, since it's all shooting the breeze at this point, since no steps have been taken. I don't want to spill the beans and get everyone all worked up over what very well may be nothing. And no, I'm not pregnant. Good grief, guys!!! Let's just say it's regarding something financial and leave it at that.

No progress on the bathroom so far (yet again - please do not pray for patience, I'd like to get my bathroom DONE, and patience is learned by being tested in it!). Paying for the Iz's MRI and the hubby's business trip took all the money away. Half of it we'll get back in an expense check, thankfully, but it's half the money we had set aside for it. Thankfully, Izzy's MRI came out clear, so no surgery is in her future. That's good, because I'm hoping she'll be able to say she's 26 and still has never had surgery, too. Just because I think that's kinda cool. So it's off to the at-home physical therapy and endless wearing of pink boots. At least we live in Texas.

And to top off my wandering post, both the kids are sick. I'm hoping it's just a virus, but noticing a rash on Eli about 20 minutes ago, I made a doctor's appointment for tomorrow morning for them. Please pray it's NOT the chicken pox, since my week is severely busy and I would have to cancel all sorts of plans to accomodate this. This includes many important plans this weekend, so please God, let it not be the chicken pox. And the kicker is, Bryan mentioned earlier that he's never had it. He's freakin' 32 years old and has never had the chicken pox. Bad news for him if it ends up being chicken pox, and for me, since I'll be the one taking care of all of them.

I'm tired already. Is the day over yet???

That's not my weekend, it's too...

My plans for this weekend were thwarted by circumstance. I had planned to spend Saturday at Career Conference, Saturday night playing poker, and Sunday going to church and cleaning house and getting Bryan ready for his trip.

Instead, I drove an hour in pouring rain and sleet to my Director's house at 6:30 AM, got to Career Conference and stayed through 10:30, when I checked my voicemail to discover my son had been taken to the ER. Apparently he'd gotten into the medicine cabinet and there was a possibility that he had swallowed some multivitamins. Normally not a big deal, except they were adult multis and had a high iron content. The scary part is that the bottle and the Poison Control Center agree that iron overdose is the main cause of death in children under 6. My boy's only 2. So... I frantically drove to the ER, almost getting run over by a red car that thought that it had the right of way making a left turn from a side street. He actually had the gall to flip ME off. Ha. And all the crazy drivers in Houston, of course, that don't know how to handle a stoplight that's out. Four way stop, people, four way stop.

Saturday night we cancelled, because after 8 hours in the ER we were all exhausted. He was fine, and there's a strong possibility that he didn't eat any vitamins at all. That evening I started getting a sinus headache.

Sunday morning dawned with me sick as a dog. I was running a fever, my throat was swollen and unbearable, my eyes were puffy, I was sneezing and coughing, and my headache still hadn't gone away. I felt like a truck had hit me. I skipped church in lieu of sleep. Most of the day I spent dozing, simply because I didn't have the energy to do anything, but every time I sat down I passed out.

I went to Home Depot with the family that afternoon, thinking that getting out might make me feel better. That was a mistake. I felt worse, and was dragging my feet to the car, slow and sluggish and miserable. My angel of a husband fixed food all day for our bottomless pits of children, and as the day wore on I felt better and better, so that by the end of the evening I was functional again and was at least able to feed the dogs to help out.

So my Monday dawns with a lot of housework to catch up on from two days completely lost, and preparation for an MRI tomorrow for my daughter. She has no clue, I'm worried. Not about the procedure, but because I don't want her to be scared. I still have some lingering symptoms of yesterday's illness... a little scratchy throat, a little fatigue that caused me to only spend 20 minutes on cardio instead of my normal run, and a little cough that drove me out of the sauna after only 7 minutes.

Oh, and I'll be by myself until Thursday evening, too.

That was definitely not how I planned to spend my weekend.

Happy IKEA Career Conference Birthday

So today is my birthday. I wanted to go to the gym, but little bit is sick, so I can't. I wanted to get out of the house, having been captive here yesterday (hubby took my keys by accident). So, where do I go? IKEA!

I thought... this is perfect. I can have lunch with the kids at the cafe, then drop the Iz at the play area, and take sick little bit with me to shop for another shoe rack. Right? Everyone gets out of the house and has fun, right???

Well, that's before I went overboard. I should have known better. I got Iz a new easel with one side blackboard and one side whiteboard, plus markers and chalk to go with it. I also got a new toy organization system for her closet, and a shoe rack. And a chair.

Lord help me, I can't control myself at IKEA.

Like Running for the Flint

Ugh.

Screwdriver thrown in the engine. I am powerless against it.

God's delay is not God's denial. It's only a delay. It's only a delay. It's only a delay. It's only a delay.

Ugh.

Junk

There are some days that I love driving my Jeep. And I thank God for those small blessings.

Today we looked at tile, because we're finally getting our bathroom done this week (yay!). We picked out two we really like. One is a beige-brown marble, the other is a red-brown marble. Put the two together, and can you say "elegant"? I can picture the bathroom with sunflowers in an antiqued vase, sepia pictures of foreign lands, and antiqued silver fixtures. So pretty! When it's done I'll upload pictures (although it won't be DONE DONE for a while, after this we'll still have to peel wallpaper and paint the walls and cabinets, plus replace the countertop). I'm going to look for small red and brown stones to do the base of the shower. I'm so friggin' excited I'm about to jump out of my skin. And is it weird that I'm getting this excited over a bathroom? I hope not, because I can't afford a psychiatrist right now. The best I can do is calling my sis, who has her Bachelor's in Psychology. I hope she doesn't charge much.

I helped a friend with a garage sale today. I ended up taking home 2 boxes of food, four new pairs of shoes, one Barbie with clothes and one without, and a pillowcase full of ribbon. All for free, thanks Steph! I don't know how this happens to me. I can walk through a garage sale and not buy anything, but if I'm helping someone run one it's like I lose all my marbles. I see stuff and think, "I don't need that." But give me two hours, and I swear I'll die without it. I have evil thoughts about fighting the next-door neighbor over the Barbie playhouse as she purchases it. I saw a Ken shirt that looked like it went to a prince outfit and thought, "Now if I can just wrestle that playhouse away from the stinky neighbor, I can sew a pair of pants to go with that shirt, buy a Ken doll, and then my princess can play princess!!!"

Of course, reality hits later, when I've had the Ken shirt for over a year and still haven't bought a Ken doll. I've probably bought the little material it would take to cover Ken's Liquid Papered butt (*snicker - Keri, remember?*), but I don't have a sewing machine, and I don't have the patience to sew it by hand because I use it all on the kids and my husband.

That's why I took six months to fix the "sewing pile." I felt so silly when it took me a grand total of 20 minutes to fix the minor damage on the six items in the sewing pile.

What I really need to do is schedule a garage sale of my own. Then I can get rid of all the crap in this house, which has piled up once again, probably because I've helped too many friends with too many garage sales. And I can take the money and use it to buy the paint and the cabinet knobs and the sunflowers for my new bathroom.

And thus the plan is set.


*Maniacal laugh*

Words of Wisdom

From our car trip:

Absolute blasphemy causes dog ear fidgets. Golf hobbyists infest juries, knowingly leading marsupials northward over patchy Quebec. Returning soup tastes unfortunate.

Almost bragging, Chad decided enough frenzied groupers had ingested jellybeans.

Artifacts buried carelessly decompose extremely fast.

Harmonious imbeciles joust kings loudly. Many nobles ogle princesses. Queens reluctantly summon truants' ugly vengeful wives. Xanadu yesterday zapped Angelo because calamari doesn't escape frisky gorillas.








Eh, figure it out for yourselves. :)

Impromptu

Pay Bonus.
Pay raise.
Cheesecake Factory.
Phantom of the Opera.
Light at the end of the tunnel.
Adam's Peanut Butter Cheesecake.
On-call gets to work from home.
Reorders.
New orders.







Happiness...

I get the overwhelming sense that I'm not taking care of things the way I should. Is it a psychological disease to think that you're constantly not doing good enough, or is it just society making me feel like I have to be perfect? Maintain the perfect house, have perfect children, have the perfect body, the perfect business, the perfect marriage. I have none of the above.

My poor floor hasn't seen a mop in three weeks. Frankly, it even disgusts me, and after three dogs and two children it takes more than you probably think to accomplish that. I'm glad my kids are past the eating-off-the-floor stage. Gotta take care of that this weekend. The house is constantly torn apart over and over again. Really, though, if you can get past the construction zones it's not half bad.

My children are great and I love them, but they sure do test my limits. Constant fighting. Throwing fits. Disobedience. They get into everything. I mean EVERYTHING. Accidents on the part of my 4-year-old and a complete unwillingness to potty train at all in my 2-year-old. I hope these qualities will one day turn into passionate curiosity that will lead to the cure of cancer.

My body... errr... nope. Not gonna go there.

My business is great, I just don't have time to work it the way I should, and when I do have time I'm so darned tired from everything else. But I make myself do it anyway, and I DO enjoy it. But I know why I'm not where I want to be and all the fingers point back to me. No excuses, right? I know.

My marriage? Let's just say the other half is in the other room playing WoW, and we've got our problems. I'm trying to work on them, but sometimes I get so aggravated I just want to scream and yell, which isn't really my personality at all.

So there you have it. Jen is human after all. I know you've been wondering. And I don't really have a right to complain. So many others have it so much worse than me. I just feel such... pressure. To be the best I can be, to go above and beyond in everything I do, and it's simply not possible to achieve everything. I'd need another five lifetimes for that.

I'm going to keep on truckin', though. Come hell or high water I will keep going. Because, you see, that's just what I DO... I'm a steady plodder. The Energizer Bunny. I just keep going.

And maybe, one day, if I just keep going long enough, my life will resemble a little bit of perfection.

And maybe I just watch too many movies...