Joys of Winter

So it’s supposed to snow something awful this weekend. 6 inches or something. And so all the plans for this weekend are getting flipflopped, postponed, or cancelled.

Joy.

Not a bad thing, really. My husband and I stayed home last weekend and managed to just basically do stuff around the house, veg out, watch movies, relax. The furthest we went was to the mall to pick up a painting we’d gotten framed. Usually we’d have gone out with friends and stayed out until like 12 or 1 in the morning. It was just so much more relaxing not having to do that – I think we both really enjoyed it.

So I know I just started my new job a few months ago – but I’m already seriously considering a change. Part of it is the commute, but it’s also that I’m not in the job I want, and I’m not making the money I want to make.

This job, just like my last one, doesn’t challenge me enough. Maybe I don’t make it so…but I’m left with a great deal of idle time. I don’t feel like I’m challenged enough, I don’t feel like people trust me enough to leave me with other tasks to do. I want to be self-managed, and I try my best to be, but when I do need guidance, the powers that be are nowhere to be found. I can’t deal with that.

So my husband found this place near where he works that’s offering training in a number of pharmaceutical related areas, including technical writing (which I could totally do, with the right training) and they in turn place you with clients needing those skills. I could so totally do that. And it’s close to home.

See, the commute part is hard. I won’t lie. I miss being able to leave to and from work when it’s light out. I miss being able to actually get stuff done at home during the week. The way it is now, leave the house at about 5:30am, get home at around 8pm. I have time to eat, change, and go to bed. That’s it. Then the cycle starts all over again. I have no life, no freedom. The house is a mess – dishes are seriously piled so high in the since I’m afraid they’ll topple over. Our walk-in closet is overflowing with clothes that need to be washed – and don’t even get me started on the sludge growing in the tracks of our sliding shower door.

I’ve barely seen my husband save for an hour before bed and that’s it. We never get to talk, never spend time with each other. My sex life is pitiful – we’re lucky if I have the energy once every couple of weeks. And on top of that, we’re actually trying to have a baby in the middle of all this??

Don’t think so…something’s gotta change….

It Pays to be a Couch Potato

Okay, so not really a couch potato - but watching TV has its uses!

Case in point:

Last week, I came home from work, dropped my bag on the couch, and headed upstairs to changed and freshen up before dinner. I had changed into my sweatpants and a T-shirt, and went into the bathroom to wash my face. I happened to glance at the ledge just behind our bathtub and saw some beige splinters of wood, along with some dull lavender plastic pieces there. I was curious as to what they were from, so I scanned the door frame and the moulding along the wall - nothing appeared to be damaged, and the colors and textures weren't a match. I finished washing up, took the pieces in my hand and went downstairs.

"What are these from?" I asked my husband, holding up the shreds of wood.

"I don't know." He replied. "I was hoping you'd be able to figure it out."

"Put my CSI skills to good use, huh?" I teased. "Okay - so first question. Where'd you find it?"

"She was laying on the floor next to the bed when I got up this morning, chewing on it." He explained, motioning to our dog Pepper.

"Okay," I mused. "That makes this a heckuva lot easier." I then proceeded to examine the molding and the floor on the ground floor, thinking that perhaps she'd gotten something from there and brought it upstairs. Didn't find anything that matched. I went into the kitchen, checking under the dishwasher and the oven to see if maybe she'd found something under there. No luck.

After watching me search in vain for a few minutes, my husband left to go run a couple errands. I sat on the couch, thinking for a minute about how to best approach this mystery - then realized that I was looking at things from the wrong angle. To see what she had found, where she had gotten it from, I literally needed to come down to her level and see the world through her eyes. So I did - I got down on my hands & knees and walked around the ground floor, then made my way up the stairs slowly, pretending I was a dog, exploring all the little corners, nooks, and crevices.

As soon as I entered the bedroom, I spotted it - one of the support rails (the mismatched middle one) from underneath our bed had falled off and was on the floor. Not a big deal in terms of our bed and its ability to support us, but regardless, that's what she had been chewing on!

I went downstairs grinning from ear to ear and called my husband. "You can't ever say that watching CSI and shows like that are pointless!" were the first words I said to him.

"You figured it out," he chuckled.

"Yep." I beamed. I went on to tell him what I'd discovered - and how I'd discovered it.
So - pretty cool, right? I felt like such a detective!!

You have now reached The Outer Limits

I said it, didn't I? That if this wierd psychic phenomenon happened again this week that I'd be officially freaked out?
Well, I'm officially freaked out now. I happened upon backstreet.net this morning as I was following up on one of my message board posts, and saw a thread on Aaron Carter - something about a comment he made, saying that he only liked girls that were pretty - not really relevant to my discussion here, but it interested me a bit so I followed it down and read it.
Now about 10 - 15 minutes later, I open up CNN.com and what do I see as one of the headlines? "Singer Aaron Carter escapes fiery SUV accident".
So like I said, I'm officially spooked.
I think I'm subconciously psychic or something....

The Twilight Zone

You ever think you've got sort of a prophetic air around you without you really realizing it? Or that you're like, subconciously psychic or something?

Like for example: Sometimes you'll be thinking about a song, and the next thing you know, it's playing on the radio. Or you have a dream, and then you realize your dream is happening (deja vu, I believe it's called...), or something from your dream makes an unexpected appearance. It's happened to me twice in about three days. Kinda freaky, considering the odds.

Cases in point:

1) Sunday my husband and I were coming back from the mall, and a song by Hilary Duff was on the radio. Something about it made me wax nostaligic, thinking about how young today's musicians are, thinking about my high school reunion coming up this year, etc. And the song "1985" popped into my head. So I started telling my husband how even though I'm now 27, I don't feel like I'm getting old until songs like that come out and the DJ when announcing it says something to effect of "a lot of kids who like this song weren't even born yet when the artists mentioned in the song were famous". That sort of thing makes me realize that there are kids born in 1990 that would now be teenagers - and I told my husband, that is what makes me feel old. I actually remember 1990. For example, I know where I was and what I was doing when I heard that Kurt Cobain committed suicide. Yet there are kids out there that were born after that and weren't even around during the Nirvana glory days. That's the kind of thing makes me feel old. So lo and behold, guess what song comes on just after Duff's "Come Clean", just as I've finished telling my husband all this - none other than Bowling for Soup's "1985"!! Creepy...
2) Sunday night (hmm...seems Sunday was just full of creepy coin-ki-dinks, wasn't it??) I had a dream about Dennis Quaid. Not going to go into any details, but let's just say it was a really vivid dream. (A little awkward to wake up from and assess the ramifications, considering he's old enough to be my father...) I hadn't been thinking about him, hadn't seen any of his movies lately, nothing. The closest was probably a discussion over lunch three days earlier where I had very quickly mentioned his new movie "In Good Company" with Topher Grace" and how it looked pretty good. And it wasn't even a "I really want to see Dennis Quaid in 'In Good Company'" comment; it was more like, "That new movie 'In Good Company' with Dennis Quaid and Topher Grace looks really good." So today I go onto CNN.com like I always do, and what do I find? A special entertainment headline/front page story on Dennis Quaid.

Yoiks.

I think if one more freaky-deak coincidence like this takes place this week, I'll be officially spooked.

Happy New Year!!

It's my first entry for 2005. And three guesses as to what my main resolution for the New Year is...yep - it's the one I made when I started this blog, that I quite obviously was unable to keep:

To write more.

Or, to be more specific, to write in this weblog (doesn't count if I write in other journals either) at least once a week. That's the only resolution I'm making this year. We'll see how well I do at keeping it. This entry - I don't really have a topic for, but I'll write anyway. We had a pretty good holiday season. Kept it lowkey this year. Probably a good thing, since soon after Christmas, I got sick - just a cold, but I was pretty miserable for a couple days. I'm still a bit congested, but now the hubby's got it.. Except he's got a fever. Which I didn't have. So it's a bit different.

I know what I can write about - the tsunami. It's all that's been on the news the last week. Really tragic, and unbearably sad, what happened. My neighbor brought up a really good point though, and I'd like to throw it out there for public feedback:

When 9/11 happened, network (and cable news) offered up a number of photos of the destroyed twin towers. They showed people running, screaming, scared for their lives. They showed firefighters at work, they showed people helping others get to safety, etc. Yet not a single dead body was shown. They didn't show people jumping out of the towers, they didn't show any dead bodies on the ground, corpses being hauled to the morge, nothing.

Yet for the tsunami, they have no qualms about showing the bloated bodies of dead civilians, bodies piled in mass graves, rows and rows of bodies tagged and waiting for identification...

Why the difference? Why is it that for a catastrophe on American soil, where the majority of casualties are Americans, that news teams, "out of respect" avoid airing dead bodies and depicting the carnage in that way. Yet, for a disaster on the other side of the world, they appear unhesitant - almost eager - to show just how many lives were lost. My neighbor said it was blatant discrimination. I'd like to give Americans a chance to defend their media, offer any possible explanations for this discrepancy that may not have been entirely obvious to me or my neighbor.

Any thoughts?