random...

Thank you Julie! She made some soaps, and offered to send them out to some folks and I am one of the lucky recipients. They smell heavenly, and one is in my shower now. I'd actually gotten them last week, but I think my husband may have stuck them on a high shelf after I brought the box in, to keep it out of Kevin's reach, and I just found the box yesterday.

I hope this post goes through. Having trouble with the internet today.

I got the letter from HR at work, I test for the position I applied for next tuesday. I hope I do well, but even if I do... it's no guarantee of putting me at the top of the list. It sure would be nice to get that job though. I am ticked off for a friend of mine though... she works in the office where this job is at, she has the same job classification as I do. They sent her a letter telling her she would not be invited to test. WTF? She's just as qualified as I am. I don't get it. She told me that she thought her boss didn't like her. I have to wonder now if that was it... seems awfully petty if it were.

Also next week is Kevin's surgery. I'm getting cold feet. I am paranoid now. If you all don't hear from me thursday evening, something bad may have happened and I am in jail for murdering the surgeon.

Oh. So our state just passed a law that there's to be no smoking in public buildings now, with a few exceptions (casinos). The law was passed in response to Illinois passing a similar law (though their casinos were not exempted). While on the surface, I'm happy about it because I hate walking into restaurants and smelling smoke. I'm slightly disturbed by the trend of legislating this kind of thing. How far does it go, when does this kind of thing stop? Someday will it be illegal for fat people to buy candy or ice cream? I don't know... I don't see a perfect solution. Someone locally posted an idea that made more sense to me... treat cigarettes like a controlled substance... like alcohol is treated. Then make restaurants and bars buy a cigarette license the way they do a liquor license. To me that makes more sense, that way there would be some restaurants and bars that people can still smoke at, and others that choose not to offer that option. Sure I don't like to be forced to breathe second-hand smoke, but I don't think that should mean that every single entertainment venue in the state must be smoke-free and that people can only smoke in their homes, cars and a certain number of feet outside buildings. And casinos.

The first!!!

The first flower to bloom in my yard!

Not that I have tons of blooming plants, but one year I did plant a bunch of bulbs, ranging from early bloomers to late tulips. This one is the first to bloom. And it's not even one I planted... it's a volunteer that sprang up from the bulbs I had planted about 6 feet away... so it must have come up from seed. Interesting!

I had procrastinated doing our taxes. I was afraid of what my bellydance business might do to our return. So I procrastinated. I shouldn't have. ha! I managed to come up with enough business expenses (that I can prove) to take my net income down to less than $300 (out of almost $5000). So, we're still getting a nice return. And if I had to... I probably could have come up with enough expenses to prove a loss... but I won't do that now, as that would require me to fill out another form, and I'm done with forms. Anyway, it will be good to get our return. I wanted to get a dishwasher last year but didn't push for it. However, this year we will get it. I can hardly wait. It will probably pay for itself within a couple years just with the $ saved in water that is saved compared to how the dishes are done by hand here. Not to mention how convenient and so much cleaner the dishes will be. I can hardly wait. We even looked at some today.

We did by a new nuker today. Our old one is in poor shape, and about 20 yrs old, and only 750 watt or some such... barely has any power. We picked up a scratch-n-dent model for $40 today, with more power. And we used a gift card so it wasn't out-of-pocket $$. Kevin "drove" the cart around in Best Buy... they had this big cart that looks like a car or whatever... he saw the wheels on it, did his best "Oooo!" so naturally we had to put him behind it's steering wheel. For mama pushing it around, it was like pushing a bus compared to the regular shopping carts, but Kevin had a blast "steering" the play steering wheel in it.

Spring at last!!!

It was like, 70 degrees almost! The high was supposed to be 69, but I think it really did hit 70. Or it just felt like it. It was damn wonderful!!!

We went to the park today. The big one in the center of town. It has a small lake with ducks, a conservatory and of course the playground and expansive greenspace. Kevin did the swing, ran around chasing some bubbles, but they were blowing toward the lake and he has a total thing for water. So naturally he ran for the lake. He enjoyed the flowers in the conservatory. I hear it's supposed to rain tomorrow, bummer... it would have been nice to have another pretty day to be outside.

I was sick of the lame blog template I had. Almost everyone else has the same dang template. So I changed. The only thing I don't like about this one is the pyzam bar up at the top. I can't get rid of it. :P

I've been having odd dreams of late, but can't remember them well enough to interpret. I don't like one of the recent ones... a friend of mine murdered in it. bleh.

eh, past my bedtime...

Drummin'!

Ok, found a new hobby. LOL.... I will be practicing my drumming!

Kevin had a BLAST. First, he had a room full of women to flirt with. (there was one token male who took the workshop... and he was cute, more on that) There were also about 20 different drums of all sizes, so he was in heaven. Right up till the workshop started, he'd either be flirting or banging on someone's drum. I did notice that towards the end he was watching me hit my drum... I think he was starting to "get" the patterns. I'm hoping I can eventually teach him rhythms. How cool would that be to have my kid be a kick ass drummer of belly dance and tribal music?

SO. I had one guy sign up for the workshop. I was eager to meet him as he was totally unknown to me when I got his registration in the mail. Turned out that he and a friend of his play pretty regularly, including for dancers, and he wanted to network with other folks interested in drumming and Near Eastern belly dance music. And he was cute too! scratch that, he was sexy. :) Long, dark hair in a pony, nice little beard. The grey in the beard gave him a distinguished look. But here's the kicker. He had an aussie accent!!! I can safely say that I was not the only female thinking "yummy". One gal told me she intended to pursue. LMAO. I wish her luck. ;)

I've rediscovered my iPod. Of course I used it every week for dance class. But when my desktop crashed, I stopped syncing my iPod because my laptop didn't have iTunes on it. However, I realized that the desktop may be a while getting fixed, so I moved my iTunes over to the laptop. Fortunately all my music (and all other computer files) had been stored on an external harddrive, making it easier to move everything. I did do a dorky thing... stayed up all saturday night moving the files, remaking my playlists, getting everything ready to sync my iPod. By the time I finally plugged the iPod in to sync, it was 6am sunday morning and I had not slept at all. whoa. While the iPod did it's thing, I passed out briefly on the couch. But I got up again when Kevin and James got to the living room, so I pretty much did sunday activities on no sleep. Surprisingly, I didn't feel the crash till late afternoon, evening of sunday. But I won't be making a habit of that...
Anyway, I had downloaded a bunch of classic rock songs that I haven't heard in years but never got them on the iPod till this weekend. So now I'm listening to great songs I've missed, as well as some new belly dance music I haven't listened to before. I'm finding stuff I want to write a dance for and being nostalgic.

Bedtime. Kevin has an appt with a surgeon tomorrow morning to find out if he actually has a hernia.

did I win?

so my day started with puking. yeah, stomach flu I guess. It moved on to a pointless argument with the hubby. While Kevin and I watched his new movie, The Bee, I checked some lottery tickets I had laying around. I guess if you have the Powerball number, you win. I had a ticket with the Powerball number. $3. Except that I bought the powerplay option with a multiplyer of 5... so I won $15. woo.

Kevin woke from his afternoon nap in a PISSY mood. Perhaps because he was hungry. Probably inherited that from his dad. So I fed him, and now he's better. Now we are watching Firefly episodes and teaching Kevin to sing the Firefly theme song.

I have nothing else exciting to say. The day was not great. I should have been trying to get better, that's what taking a sick day is for... it's what I hoped to do since it was J's day off. Instead he has slept all day and will probably sleep all night, while I took care of Kevin all day and tried to hold my guts in. (the puking stopped this morning, but it was the other end I was concerned about)

Nobody won. The $15 was spent on the pizza I bought for my eating disorder binge.

stuff

ugh! I am wiped out tired. I only worked two days this week and they were busy, trying to catch up from vacation. I was going to post a long trip report, but it will have to wait till tomorrow.

I applied for the job that I've been waiting for it to be posted. It's open to the public as an "entry level" position though, even though it would be a promotion for me. So I won't know what my chances are for a while. I do know the supervisor wants to hire internally instead of outside the organization. That may help... if I pass the test.

Happy Ostara or Spring Equinox, however you call it. Did you balance an egg? I did not. I think ours aren't quite fresh enough. Can't wait to see what Kevin does with his basket!

Back from heaven...

yeah... I was in heaven. Or was it florida? doesn't matter, wish I was still there. I plan to write a good post about it tomorrow. Too late now, I must get to bed!

I just finished putting together Kevin's Ostara basket. Spent too much, I'm sure. I'm considering waiting till friday morning to give it to him though, so daddy can be there for it.

More to come!

basket ideas

When I was at Walmart a couple days ago, J and I went down some aisles so I could get some Ostara basket filler ideas. In the crayola aisle (have you noticed that it's not just crayola crayons anymore? crayola gets a whole fricken AISLE for markers, crayons, coloring books, etc etc) I found toddler crayons. They are egg shaped (nothing to do with easter) to be easier to hold in toddler hands. Also, they aren't a crayon that can be broken into bite-sized pieces and eaten! So, I will be picking up some toddler crayons for Kevin to color with. I think that we will color some eggs and tape them to the windows next week!

I discovered that Kevin likes things with lights, especially if they blink. heaven forbid that he get ahold of one of J's flashlights (J has a zillion flashlights... in my perception lol) because I can never get him to give it up. I saw some easter blinky light things... I might get one of those to put in the basket. I think I might also look for some more large plastic non-moving-parts dinosaurs to go with his T-rex that he got at the Walking with Dinosaurs show last weekend. He loves his Rrrarrrr and plays with it all the time. I think T-Rex Rrrarrrr needs a stegosaurus or tricerotops to eat.

I am going to skip that grass shit that is usually sold to put in those baskets. I'll get it when he's older. But I'll never forget my stepsisters daughter, at the easter when she was a year old, she somehow managed to eat some of that grass, and when it came out the other end later, one end of that grass was stuck in a turd in her diaper, and the other end was stuck in a turd still inside her. I will never forget watching my mom pull that piece of grass out gently while my stepsister (who was f-n 16 at the time) hold her daughter while the poor kid screamed. No thanks. Keep your plastic grass, Walmart.

new family traditions...

So, Kevin's first year I was too wrapped up in being a new mom to consider what we would do for the holidays as a family. For those who don't really know, I am wiccan, been so for oh... 15ish years. Was practicing solitary, then part of a small group since 94. But I still practice solitary at home. My husband J is not wiccan, though he's cool with it and sometimes does go to my group's family celebrations. And he has participated in some of the things I've done at home, like wardings. Anyway... the equinox is coming. Ostara. It is thursday the 20th. I have to work that day. That's okay... maybe in the future I will take off work on holidays so that we can celebrate the holidays better.

But this comes to the major question... what traditions do we want to do to celebrate Ostara? Kevin is too young for teaching anything, and thats good because I'm not quite prepared yet, since I'm only just now figuring this stuff out. But I need to figure out what I want to do this year. In the future, I'll tell Kevin the story of how the Eostre bunny and the eggs came about. This year, for Kevin I will make him a basket of toys and a couple of plastic eggs with treasures in them that I will "hide" in the living room. I will probably make some hard boiled eggs for decorating and later eating. Since I'm going to try and garden again this year, I will be making my garden egg for burying. That will probably be a tradition I can include Kevin in, in the future. Unfortunately, I don't have time to do any psanky eggs this year, since I'll be in florida soon. I really enjoy doing psanky, but damn, it's time consuming. I'd consider doing some later, but with the cleaning I need to do, I'll wait till next year.

One good thing is that Ostara and Easter are around the same time. So saturday the 22nd, there's all kinds of egg hunts going on around town. I think I'll take Kevin to the one at the petting zoo for sure. We'll see about going to another one not far from our house. Depends on Kevin. I don't really want him to eat candy anyway so if that's all the egg hunts are, I can do without going to several.