What a day! September 18, 2013

Tuesday was just not my day. It kinda felt like Monday’s evil twin. It was worse than Monday and just really treated my like crap. Paige and I have been butting heads lately. She’s developed an attitude and doesn’t like to listen very well.

After having a harsh day Monday, we did some running on Tuesday. Work was stressful, leave work, get Paige, rush home and eat dinner. We had open house at her school. Finally, get home and showered and tucked Paige into bed.

Then it happened. I sat down on the couch to get some work done. Spent a good bit of time carefully marking revisions and things to check on my paperwork. I grab it all and head to my laptop. And there it was. Or, there it wasn’t. My laptop had a funky screen, so I tried to restart. And it didn’t. It didn’t restart. My wonderful, 7 year old MacBook Pro had died. Yes, I realize that’s ancient in laptop years. But it’s a Mac! And I loved it.

I had to go out and purchase a new laptop. A new MacBook wasn’t in the budget, so I got a new Toshiba. It’s a nice computer, but it’s Windows 8. I’m still trying to figure it out. Thanks to a bit of help I now know how to get a normal screen. That’s a start. It can only improve from there.

And most importantly, we can Skype with Daddy while he travels, and I can work from home.

And So It Goes September 11, 2013

One of the drawbacks of Ronnie traveling is when Paige isn’t feeling well. Before, we would split the day. I would take the mornings, then he would get afternoons. That way neither of us missed a full day of work and we could easily take care of her. Now, when the school calls and says she isn’t feeling well, it’s all up to me.

This has now happened twice since school started a month ago. My job works with me and allows me to work from home. But really, it’s not that productive. I admire people who have the discipline to work from home and get a full work week completed. I’ve been home for a couple of hours now. I’ve checked Facebook, set up an event for our Girl Scout troop, read some of my book and watched NCIS. During that I did spend a little time working. I’ve actually worked myself to a stopping point.

Well, not exactly. There’s more I could do, but it’s hard to do with just one monitor. I’m so used to having two monitors that doing some things are just too difficult with one. So I also spent some time on New Egg finding a monitor. Maybe that will help me work from home a little better. Or maybe it would just allow me to check Facebook easier while I watch NCIS and pretend to work.

Our New Normal August 30, 2013

Things have changed quite a bit around here.  I’ve taken a job back in the office I started in.  I’m still with the same company, but instead of an hour commute each way I have a 10 minute commute.  That worked out perfectly since Ronnie also took a promotion.  His promotion has taken him further away from home.  

 

Ronnie now travels.  A lot.  He will be away for the majority of football season.  His new job is twofold.  First, during football season he is in charge of the alumni skyboxes at a major university.  It’s an SEC school and all alumni boxes get catered food at the football games.  He is the one who oversees all of the food.  Once football season is over he will be traveling, but not as much.  He will travel as a corporate trainer for the company he works for.  He has stayed with the same company just taken a promotion with them.  They’re a good company and he really likes it there.

 

This is definitely something new for us.  We’ve never had him away from home this often.  We Skype frequently to help with missing each other.  Paige asks most nights to Skype with Daddy.  She’s adjusting to this pretty well.  The biggest change for me is now I’m doing the single parent gig.

 

I’ve always had Ronnie here to help me out.  In fact, he’s done the majority of activities with Paige.  His work hours had him off at 2:30 every afternoon.  He could get Paige and get her to Girl Scouts, soccer, swim lessons, all that good stuff.  While my job is willing to work with me on activities, it’s still not always possible to leave at 3:45 on a Tuesday to get to Girl Scouts.  As a result, I’ve joined with a friend to start our own troop. I’m still doing soccer and swim lessons, but at least one thing is easier to mold into my schedule.

 

So, stick around and watch me lose my mind a little at a time!

I’ve missed blogging. May 26, 2013

I’m finding that more and more I miss blogging. Work is very stressful and this gives me a chance to relax and have some fun. I’m trying to find more time for myself to do things I enjoy and to relieve some of my stress. One of those is to get back to writing. I hope to be back on here twice a week. Lets see of I can keep up with that.

Habitat for Humanity October 4, 2012

The company I work for celebrated an anniversary Monday. One of the values the company holds is to make a difference in the community. To honor the anniversary the company closed every office in each state. Instead of going to work, all employees went into the community to help others. Some offices helped out in soup kitchens, retirement communities, children’s hospitals, and more.

Our office helped with Habitat for Humanity. Our local chapter doesn’t usually work on Monday, but made an exception for us. As we were told, they don’t usually get 25 women (and 2 men) who want to work all day. The home we worked on is one of the largest that Habitat builds. It has 6 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. It’s being built for a family with 8 children.

I spent the day painting, putting up a chalk line for siding, caulking the house and putting up foam insulation. It was a long day, but we had a lot of fun. Half of our crew put on the roof. Something cool about this house is its woman built. Women raised the funds and have done 95% of the work. It was very rewarding to see the house making progress. It’s also cool that it’s in the same neighborhood that Ronnie lived in as a kid.

Frustration update September 26, 2012

We finally got our soccer schedules, but it did require a call to the Boss. The Sports Director didn’t return emails, voicemails, or text messages sent by myself or another coach. Finally,Tuesday afternoon I had enough. I placed a call to the Boss and said I didn’t have a schedule. About five minutes after that conversation, we had schedules.

Jerseys were supposed to arrive Thursday. We got them a day early.

Schedules and uniforms are here. We’re ready for our first game. Still it the best experience we’ve had with this program though. It seems to get worse each season. At the end of this season we’ll make a decision on the next one.

Frustrated September 24, 2012

I write this being very frustrated. We are members of our local YMCA. Ronnie and I coach YMCA soccer for Paige’s age group. We do this to be active in her life. Ronnie said from the moment I was pregnant that he wanted to be a soccer coach and have fun with our child. Well, 6 years later here we are. This is our second season coaching.

Last season I got a bit frustrated with how the youth sports director handled things. Scheduled game dates were changed, our schedules and uniforms were late. Emails, phone calls and texts were returned days later, if at all. as a coach parents ask us questions. Sometimes we don’t have the answer, and turn to the coordinator for the answer since its her job. Yes, this is a paid position, not a volunteer slot.

This season, things are even worse. Schedules were due to us by Friday. As I write this Monday night, still nothing. She put kids on our team who had already been refunded their money. We only had 10 kids to begin with, and 3 dropped out. That left us with 7 kids when we have to play 6 at a time. We asked about getting more. Did we? Yes, but only one we found, and that’s a whole ‘nother paragraph. Instead of giving more players to the teams with barely enough, she created two additional teams after registration deadline. We are supposed to play on half fields and instead have 5-6 year olds running around on full soccer fields. I hope we have uniforms before the first game. At this point, I have my doubts.

We did have someone join our team, Paige’s friend Jude. His mom was going to play him up in the next age group to challenge him more. Too bad that coach was given over 20 players when he should have no more than 14-16. He had to cut players, the ones who he picked to cut, and they had to find different teams themselves if they wanted to play this season. I think that was wrong. They should have found teams for them. What would have happened if I hadn’t been friends with Jude’s mom? How would she have found another team for him to play on? At least we got another player. Jude’s a good player, but we would have welcomed him with open arms even if he was the worst one out there. Why? It’s rec league soccer and the kids want to learn to play.

I think part of the problem is the YMCA soccer merged with a local non rec league soccer club. They’re competitive and from what I hear around town, not all that not all that nice. Yes, as a perk for coaching we get free soccer instead of having to pay the registration fee. Personally, I would gladly pay the fee to have these problems go away. I’ve been reluctant to complain and be labeled a trouble maker. I don’t want Paige to be excluded or us not be allowed to coach because I complained. If we don’t have uniforms by Thursday,the promised date of delivery, and no schedule by tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be sending a link to my blog to the director of the local YMCA. Our first game is Saturday. Wish us luck that we have a game time and something to wear.

Tooth Fairy Origami September 19, 2012

Our tooth fairy got a bit bored last week waiting for Paige to fall asleep. The result was two $1 bills being folded into a chain. That went over pretty well. Then the tooth fairy got lazy with the second tooth of the week and just folded them in half. Paige said it looked like an alligator mouth. With the third lost tooth she was anxious to see what the tooth fairy would make.

Crap! Time to enlist the tooth fairy’s helper. Most people know him as Ryan. Ryan has also helped make the tooth-money exchange for us. He stays up late and Paige has been waking up to try to catch sight of the tooth fairy. He can wait her out better than we can. He’s also much better at origami than we are. He’s the one who started this with the money chain. I didn’t get a picture of that before Paige unfolded it to see how much money she got. I did get a picture of the latest though. Ryan made a flying bird (pull the tail and the wings flap) and a butterfly. He’s tapped out on origami, he broke out his dollar bill origami book to practice for the next tooth.

Bye bye teeth September 17, 2012

I guess when your child’s teeth all come in at the same time as a baby, they all go out at the same time. In the past week Paige has lost 3 teeth. Paige hasn’t lost a tooth in months. I was beginning to wonder when she would lose others. And she lost them right on time too. School pictures are next week. My little girl will have that cute little gap toothed smile for her first grade pictures.

It’s Soccer Time! September 16, 2012

This is our 3rd season playing soccer. We chose to play at our local YMCA. We enjoy the non competitive format. Yes, there’s a score and yes, there’s an actual winner. However it’s less cut throat than playing at the local parks. Some of those leagues are super competitive. Paige is still developing her skills. We’ve moved up from digging in the dirt and biting our nails to actually running after the ball. That’s a huge improvement!

We will be coaches for the 2nd season, coaching ages 5-7. Our goal is for the kids to learn good basics, and to still like it at the end of the season. Neither of us believe kids should be pushed so hard that they hate the game. If a parent wants a more competitive league, they are welcome to join the park teams. Each parent wants different things for their kids.

We have practices on Monday and Wednesday evenings, with games on Saturday morning. There are 2 weeks of practice before the first game. There are either 6 or 8 games before the tournament at the end of the season. I will miss 2 games for prior Girl Scout commitments.

Now comes the fun part. Now we juggle soccer, homework, and Girl Scouts. Ronnie is a co-leader and has homework to prepare things for the girls to earn their journeys and badges. I help out a lot with the girls as well. I can’t make it to the meetings since I’m still at work when they start. Ronnie can’t go to a lot of the weekend events since there are a lot of overnights and men can’t generally attend them. By the time we get into the groove of things and have the routine down perfect, the season will be over and things will seem dull.