New Years Resolution Time!

So it's that time a year again. When people make a bunch a promises to themselves about changes they're going to make in the new year. Some of them are easy to keep, so many more of them seem to fall through the cracks. Goodness knows I made my share of resolutions that didn't hold up for even the first month of the new year!

Having said that, I am once again attempting to make a small list of resolutions with the intention of bettering my life and myself as a person, and I'm praying to God for help to stay on track this year, because I really want this year to be different.

So lets get to the list shall we?

1. Get my home life organized

This came about because I feel like my house is a disaster. It seems cluttered and cramped. There are always things that need to be put away, but no place to put them. When I do "put something away" for safe keeping, a lot of the time I can't find it later, and tear apart what little bit of the house I did get organized looking for it. The hubs and I have been in the house for almost 6 years now, it's time to let some of this crap go! Can someone say spring Garage sale :)

So I'll be using the MySimplerLife 2012 Declutter Calender, following along daily completing a simple declutter task, maybe two if I feel motivated, to get ahead for days I maybe out of town.

The Goal: More time fore myself and my family, and less stress.

which leads me to my second resolution...

2. Getting on a cleaning/cooking schedule.

My house is not as clean as I'd like it to be. Oh sure, I know I'm not the only wife and mother that feels this way, and I swore I'd never be the extreme of a neat freak like my mom (she will go to her grave scrubbing something I'm sure of it) but something needs to be done. I appreciate folks trying to make excuses for me and say it's "ok" because I work too. but I'm ready for a change. The hubs and I tend to do laundry when we run out of clothes etc, but now with a little one, I finally appreciate my mother's cleaning schedule and planned meals.

The Goal: More family time, less money spent on eating out.

3. Creative time for me.

This one is pretty short and sweet. I'm a crafty person. So was my mother, and my grandmother, I NEED to be creative. So since I don't have a "creative" career to satisfy my needs I gotta make time for it somehow. So I have this craft room, it's so full of stuff you can't move in it, let alone create. So plans is to clean and organize my room (for the 3rd time) which may require me to thin my stash (you have no idea how much it hurts to say that) so I can get that healing creative time back. I love so many of the craft blogs out there and that is my ultimate goal. I have SO many ideas in my head, I really need this creative outlet.

The Goal: A happier me!

4. Blogging.

For two reasons, to keep me honest and accountable to stick to my resolutions and, in reference to resolution #3, to ultimately be part of my creative outlet. This is something I've wanted to do for a long time, and I've really been inspired by one of my high school friends and her blog, The adventures of Mister and Misses H, to just do it and quit waiting for the "right time" because it might never come. So I'm working on a blog name and once I come up with one I'm happy with, I'll get these posts moved over. The layout and such with be a work in progress till I'm happy with it so expect changes but I will continue to post.

The Goal: To keep me honest.


5. Being a better Wife, Mom, and Friend.

I'm not good at expressing my emotions, and I'm sure sometimes that translates into the perception that I just don't care, which is not true. I had a close relative lose a parent last year, and because I was convinced I didn't have anything useful or comforting to contribute, I didn't call her for most of the year, and it hurt her dearly. I don't want that to happen again. I've learned from that experience that you don't always have to say the "right thing" but that just be present is often whats most needed.

The Goal: Letting the people in my life know how important they are to me.

And finally.

6. Get the Baby weight Off!

So I dropped my Y membership (please don't be mad at me Tera) because my favorite instructor and good friend moved to Colorado to advance her career. So I currently don't have a good weight management regimen. So I'm going to take what I learned from the weight loss program I was in before I got pregnant, and use my Wii more ofter, and maybe talk the hubs into making a treadmill purchase, and lay off of donut Friday's at work and get this extra 30 pounds back off. Ironically, I think this will probably be the easiest of the 6 resolutions. Go figure right.

The Goal: A healthier me.

So here is to 2012, Lets get this thing started! I hope you will follow me along on my journey. Wish me luck!

hey all

so sorry, but i've been really, REALLY busy. with the house move, the freak march snow storm and all of the other crazy things that have been happening. so looking forward to the upcoming spring. i'll be able to have a "real" deck garden this year, plus the new back yard is already so beautiful. you'll have to forgive me if i ramble on and on about my plants for the next 6 months, i won't be able to help myself. that is one of the things i miss about the south, a longer growing season. hopefully in about a week or so once we get the house unpacked i'll have some great pics. to put up, especially of the backyard and maybe of the koi in the pond too if they'll come up to be photographed. so many things to do, and so little time....

changes.........

god, i went for over a month without updating. i am thoroughly ashamed of myself as i should be seeing as i promised frequent updates. although, honestly, there hasn't been a lot to discuss. christmas came and went uneventfully, new years some fool was shooting a gun off nearby and when i went to stand out on the balcony to watch the fireworks i nearly got shot. works been busy to say the least but things are starting to get back to being somewhat "normal" although i’m not sure i’m looking forward to normal; normal is too slow and my hours will get cut.

in the near future the hubby and i have a family vacation coming up. i’m looking forward to it, i’m not sure if he is though seeing as we're going with my parents (his in-laws) but hopefully we'll make due. also we have house ownership looming in the near future. we'll be interviewing agents all this week and my husband seems to already have his sights set on a house just a couple blocks from our current location. i don't think we're going to end up with what we expected or closely resembling what we want which is probably why i haven't been too excited about the process. maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised, i hope so.

and as far as new years resolutions go, i didn't really make any, i probably should have though. god knows there are things i could improve upon. maybe i should just do something simple like promising to finish anything i open to drink, that would make the hubby happy. there are things i’d like to do, but i feel like some of them would require way more effort than i have to put into them right now. i could be content with my current snarky, sarcastic, and skeptical outlook on life, but somehow i feel that my husband expects more of me.

on the positive side of things, for christmas i got a new computer with the works as well as surround sound for my mp3 listening pleasure including a subwoofer (which i can't completely enjoy while we're living in this apartment, even more a reason to hurry and buy a home). also i have discovered deviantart.com and now that i have the processor power and a 17" flat screen monitor to enjoy the view with, i’ve been spending hours of my free time clicking away and wishing i had the talent and the know how to achieve what they have.

on a side note, earlier this week i drove by a dick blick (art supply store) with my mother and i mentioned something to her about loving the smell of new office supplies like crisp new note books and new packages of fine point roller ball pens. my mother looked at me like i was crazy. my reply was, “well why else do you think i liked shopping for school supplies?”

–catch ya’ll on the flip side!

what to do, what to do.........

so i found out my ex-boyfriend, actually the only other guy i ever dated (yes I only dated two people in my life,) is getting married. i just became a member of friendster.com and i thought i would do a search to see who else from my "home town" was a member. that's when i stumbled across his profile. i didn't even realize who it right away, it was the caption under his profile pic that tipped me off, reminded me of him so to speak. you see he's lost a lot of weight and looks really good. so i decided to go check out his website, hadn't visited in almost a year. seems he got engaged towards the end of sept. i'm ecstatic for him, he's a great guy and i knew one day he'd find someone, and i'd love to send him and his fiance a wedding present but this is where it gets a little complicated.

i don't want it to seem like i'm coming back out of the woodwork when everything is starting to go right for him. I attempted reacquainting with him as friends close to a year and a half ago. I had to call his mother 'cause the old e-mail address i had for him didn't work anymore. she seemed very happy to hear from me and gave me the contact info that i needed. so we connected and set a date to have a phone conversation. it was a good, long phone conversation, but the whole thing seemed a little awkward. i don't know if it was because i was now married to the guy i left him for or because we hadn't spoken in so long or what, but the conversation seemed strained to me. Anyway, the story goes that any other future attempts that i made to contact him after this conversation went unheeded. i don't know if it was because he was busy or distracted, or because he just didn't want to talk to me.

so long story short, i don't want to seem like i'm being noisy, or interfering in his life, especially since i don't know how my good intentions will be received. the other thing that make me nervous is i'm not sure how his fiance would react to my contacting him. my intentions our honorable but that doesn't mean she'll see them as such. my husband and i had to deal with a situation where one of his ex's actually made an attempt to get him back while we were dating, and he seriously considered it. It hurt me deeply and to this day i have vowed to claw the girls eyes out if i ever meet here again.

I just don't want this thing to turn into a similar situation, i don't want it to, i'd never forgive myself if it did. We were very good friends before we dated, and had good, silly fun together and then it all kinda fell apart afterwards. He was the extra big brother that i really didn't need (i already had two real older brothers) and came to my rescue once even after the break up. i miss that part of us, the friend part and now that i'm back in the vicinity it would be nice to try to get at least close to what we had as friends. i just don't want to screw it up, and i don't think making an attempt at it while they're planning their wedding is such a good idea.

i'm so deeply conflicted.....

and the thing that is so ironic about this post is that i'm sitting here listening to some monty python tracks, something he got me hooked on so many years ago :)

...the return

long time no see huh? well lets see, after hurricane one and hurricane two, a month long trip traipsing across the country and cruising the high seas, dealing with a poorly timed apartment move, two weddings, re-adjusting to living near the 'rents again, and settling into my job transfer, i'm finally back! gotta try to not go no hiatus for such a long time in the future.

So here i am, hopefully to be seen making more frequent and free-flowing entries and allowing the serious and the silliness to ensue. and on that note, i've noticed that my goldfish cuddle together in the same corner of the fish bowl every night. Cuddle you ask? yes cuddle, when their were 3 of them i never noticed this, but now that 'blackie' has passed into the great beyond, i've noticed this phenomenon. although i pride myself on being fairly knowledgeable about goldfish, i am not, however, an expert. i wonder if they just like the companionship or if it's something more, and i can't tell the sex of my fish so i have not idea. anyway, stay tuned for a picture of the cuddling duo, i wouldn't let you'll miss this for the world.

and speaking of pets, have you ever noticed how people who don't have children talk about their pets like children. I overheard two of my bosses talking the other day about their pooches. "I can't just send them out to do their business, oh no, i have to play with them or they'll be pissy the rest of the evening," says the first boss. "well mine knows when i'm not in the mood to play that she's out of luck, I just give her the look and she knows not to mess with me," replies the other boss. and all the time i'm sitting in the corner and shaking my head and thinking "there is know way in hell i'm telling them about my cuddling fish, or how intelligent my algae eater is, that would just be weird."

devastation............

My husband and I have been living in Jackson, Mississippi now for about a year. I'm originally from Nebraska and he is originally from Houston. We were actually scheduled to move back to Nebraska next week. We don't know if we will be able to leave that soon.

I also had the chance the visit Gulfport and Biloxi in May this year. The destruction is unbelievable. These casinos and buildings that have been thrown onto to land and on top of other structures are massive. I'm not sure if people who have never seen these structures in person realize how massive they really are. The destruction down here is total and complete and the loss of possession and life incredible.

For those of you who are not familiar with Mississippi the state capitol, Jackson (were I currently live), is about a two-hour drive north of the coast. Now I do not want to take away from the tragedy on the coast but here in Jackson we have refugees from the coast housed in our coliseum with no food and no power. 80 percent of the city of Jackson and surrounding metro area is without power, almost as many also without water. Stores cannot open to sell supplies because there is no power. We have a "boil water" advisory because the water has been contaminated, and many homes have been damage, and are missing roofs. There is a gas shortage and 2 hr long gas lines at the few stations that have gas and the power to pump it.

What people don't realize is that its far worse and widespread than even the media can cover. If anything, the difficulties we are having here in Jackson should only further point of how badly the Coast needs all of our help. Please donate, it doesn't matter what organization or how much, just send what you can. And I agree, you can't let yourselves be overwhelmed by what you see on the television. Use the information to be motivated to help, I can't stress that enough.

moving time again...

well the time has come to say good bye to ole mississippi. my hubby and i will be rolling out in the next two weeks, but there is still so much to do, luckily we have a moving company this time. this will be our third move in the last two years, hopefully this will be the last one for a while. i'm actually looking forward to the move, it seems like it will be a lot smoother than the ones in the past, plus we're finally going to be able to have our honeymoon once we get the boxes moved in. we're going to drive down to florida and spend some time at disney world and then take a 7 day cruise to the bahamas and both the american and the u.s. virgin islands. neither of us has been on a cruise before and he's never been to disney world. so this will be a great three weeks for the two of us to relax, enjoy the scenery, get to know each other just a little better and take some awesome pictures. i plan to get an extra memory card for my digital camera just so i have enough space. the closer we get to the move date and the trip, the more excited i get. i know i sound like a little kid when i say this, but this trip is going to be SO COOL. i've never been out of the country before so this will be a totally new experience.

also, i'm trying to get a job transfer so i don't have to go through the whole agony of another job search. it sounds like they'll be able to do it, the only problem is there is no management position comparable to the one i have now so i'll have to take a demotion. my hours will be severely cut, but at least my pay won't. and they tell me there is a good possibility that another management position could become available in the near future, apparently a few ladies are expecting. I just hope with the christmas season they'll find a need for me.

but beside the inevitable stress that comes with and cross country move, i think i'll be happy to be near my family again. well, at least i hope i'll be happy......