shredder

tatum has picked up a new trick. she's started picking apart her toys. she never swallows any of the pieces so i just let her do it. i figure it must feel good on her teeth and gums or something. here's some examples of what she does:



here's her favorite of all of her rubber toys...it used to be a motorcycle with a planet/earth for a gas tank...i never really understood the design of this toy:


this is what's become of bamboo. it used to have three stalks connected together. each stalk had a squeaker in the bottom making it worth a triple squeak. it kinda sounded haunted if you could squeak all three at once but she LOVES it even still in three parts, although i have yet to find the third stalk:



and, sadly, this might be traumatic for edie and emma to witness. this was her first stuffed animal and she LOVED him from the start. he is still her favorite, but now takes a little more supervision when she plays with it to make sure she doesn't eat an antler or anything:

Baby brother or sister?

with me going back to work i've been considering getting tatum a baby brother or baby sister but with her being such a baby herself, i'm just really not sure what i want to do. i've sort of been stalking the humane societies here in town (yes, i live in colorado so we have more than one humane society.) well yesterday i found laramie. and oh boy is he cute! he's 7 years old and he's a schnauzer mix. i called to get the details about him just to see if they knew if he was good with other dogs, is he good with kids. they said "he was picked up as a stray in missouri. he's not a bully breed so we don't test him with other dogs but what you can do is bring your dog and we can set up a meeting for the two to make sure they get along." well. i instantly emailed paul and he agreed, he was cute. and i LOVE schnauzers. i think they are so so freaking cute. as soon as i hung up the phone i smelled pee. i looked at tatum and she was under the desk. she would NEVER pee under there because that's her spot. i looked all over the office, in the attached bathroom, nothing. and then it hit me, when i was looking at laramie's picture she was digging to china on the futon and sometimes she does this berserk act right before she pees. sure enough! she peed on the futon and i realized maybe i, along with tatum, am not ready for a second dog. so we're looking into half day doggie day care a couple days a week. and good news bulletin, i went to look at laramie one more time today and he's gone! he's already been adopted. i knew he would be. he was cuter than anything. good luck in your new loving home laramie!

then last night when we were going to bed i asked paul if he could let tatum out before he works out in the morning so that she doesn't whine the entire last hour of my slumber. he said he would BUT she licks him the whole time he's working out. anything she can get her tongue on, shins, ankles, and when he goes down on his elbows and knees to do his crunches she crawls under him and puts her feet up and tap dances on his chest while he's up and then licks him when he comes down. she LOVES her daddy! just look at her smile in this photo.

tough week

this was a tough week. this is kind of a hard post and i know that family is going to not appreciate it so if you don't want to know how i really feel about things, please read the next post. it's my blog and it's not open for discussion.
this last week my brother sent me pictures of his little girl. she's super cute and roly poly fat like her big brother. one thing you probably don't know about me is that i miss my nieces and nephews every single day but especially sophie bee and violet because i have never gotten to meet them and they are growing up with out me. but when i got the pictures of sophie bee it was extra hard because she was born 2 weeks before our baby would have been. i know i won't feel like this forever, but seeing pictures of her is like a bookmark of where my baby's life should be. i hope this feeling goes away but honestly i don't think it will until i have a healthy happy baby of my own. i just don't get why god takes my babies away and gives babies to those that don't expect them. that's not to say sophie was not wanted because she is very wanted and very loved. i just don't get why i paid off my bills, put paul through school, got ourselves to good place financially, worked out the kinks of early marriage only to get ourselves to the place that we're truly ready inside and out for kids and then not be able to have them. what did i ever do to not deserve a baby. or just one innocent pregnancy. anyway. it's just kind of a bum week because it makes me realize all over again how different my life would be had our baby made it and i would have a happy roly poly 7 month old baby right about now.

Ghetto Bear

i'm not sure which is more disturbing...the way he bumps and grinds or the plumber's crack that seems to be a staple to this character.

blog stalking

this morning i was stalking blogs, that's what i call it when i go to a blog and then hit the "next blog" button at the top of the page...then i just scroll through like a voyerist and look at cool gadgets and things that others have on their blogs, and i found this. how did he even....i don't know where to start with what all i'm wondering.

well look at that....

i found this on faith's web page. i couldn't help myself so i added one to mine. can you believe it? so where did you come from?

it's coming, it's coming!!

so this week we drove down 119 only to find the fourth wall, the store front, has been added to the best store coming to longmont. i was never really a shopper or a shoe person until i worked in the commercial office in downtown denver. my co-workers there were totally into shoes and i quickly realized how fun it really is to be obsessed with shoes. and so began my love for DSW Shoe Warehouse. i'm not sure why the web page doesn't list the longmont store, but i cannot wait and i hope it's a good one. i've become quite the DSW critic in my recent years. the best part of DSW is when you walk in and go straight to the back there's the best section ever. the clearance section. there's the cutest shoes that you can only wear with one outfit but the best part, is they are super cheap. like, i got the cutest pair of green leather shoes. so ugly and you can only wear them with a couple shirts that i have. but guess what. they were $8. another pair of super cute brown leather boots with a braid of leather up the side-$12. yes, that's right, i said $12! so i'm super excited and i hope it's a good one like the one in park meadows and not like the one on colorado blvd. i've never seen a pair i couldn't live with out at the colorado blvd store. but needless to say i'm beyond excited and every time i drive past i squeal a little more. sunday i scared paul with my squeal. he had no idea i've been stalking the construction workers at the new DSW.

weekend news and other hulabaloo

yesterday was a lazy day to say the least. i've been so tired this past week i can fall asleep for 2 hours only to wake up ready for bed. i don't know if it was the kidney bean that sucked the life out of me or what. yesterday we watched hours and hours of ABC Family. movies like Ever After, and Aquamarine. it was a lazy day. then we went to see Dark Knight. it was weird to watch Heath Ledger in action knowing that he's dead.
i've been having trouble with my blog. i went to redecorate, i think i'll do that every week until i run out of favorite places, and i clicked a button that made everything strange, and then my color choices disappeared. it was so strange and so hard to get back to normal. but i like this new screen. it's from cutest blog on the block. so many cute choices. but you put it on differently than pyzam, another one with LOTS of choices, but i think that's how i screwed myself up so much.
tatum is cuter than ever and i am a bit worried about how she will adjust to me going to work. she's sleeping downstairs on the tile. i am going to give her a little more free reign this week since she'll be all cooped up after this. it breaks my heart but it will be so good for us i think. last night when we got back from the movie she was so excited to see us she about burst through her crib. (that's what we call her crate since she's our baby, i know, dorky but true.)
not much else going on. this is hardly even worth posting about huh?

moving day

today we went down to englewood and helped fondue's mom, sheila, move. she bought a condo only 5 minutes away from the condo she's been renting the past few years. we first met her in vegas but we've become friends sans eric since we all came back to denver and he went back to LA with is li'l woman. it was fun to see her again but even more fun because eric came home for the big day. it is a NICE place and i can't wait to see how she puts things together. so that was my day. now i'm hoping to go see dark knight tonight, or should i say toknight, but we'll see. that would be two movies two weekends in a row. how fun for me!

fair warning

we were going to take a quick hike last night after dinner at a nearby trail until we saw this and decided, we really don't know the difference well enough to venture into the woods alone just yet.

In case it's too fuzzy to read, here's what it says:
Due to the frequency of human-bear encounters, the B.C. Fish and Wildlife Branch is advising hikers, hunters, fishermen and any persons that use the out of doors in a recreational or work related function to take extra precautions while in the field.
We advise the outdoorsman to wear little noisy bells on clothing so as to give advance warning to any bears that might be close by so you don't take them by surprise.
We also advise anyone using the out-of-doors to carry "Pepper Spray" with him in case of an encounter with a bear.
Outdoorsman should also be on the watch for fresh bear activity, and be able to tell the difference between black bear feces and grizzly bear feces. Black bear feces is smaller and contains lots of berries and squirrel fur. Grizzly bear shit has bells in it and smells like pepper.

new best friend!

so i have a new best friend. this is not to say that my old best friend is going to be replaced but it is to say that i have someone to talk to and do things with here in longmont. i'm so excited. it all started when tatum wanted to say hi to a beagle when we were on one of our walks. turns out buster, the beagle, and tatum are soul mates. they love each other. and when we are out and another dog is out then buster comes out tatum wants nothing to do with the other dogs. she only has eyes for buster. i think it's a bit of a crush. good thing she's been spayed so we don't have to deal with the teenage pregnancy years. anyway-i'm getting sidetracked. busters mom is josie and me and her really clicked. she reminds me of judy hanks, for those of you from champaign. but not in a mentor way, in a she's-fun-and-i-want-to-hang-out-with-her way. and then last night they called to see if we'd want to come over for drinks. hello! yes! so we went over there and we got to talking and she told me she's recently lost over 50 pounds on weight watchers. i had no idea because to me, she's always been this small. then later-this is when i knew it was meant to be-she said "would you ever have any interest in hiking longs peak this summer?" YES! so august 10th-ish we are going to go do that. i guess you have to start at 4am so we're taking the tent and sleeping bags and we're gonna sleep at the base and then hike up that morning, see the sunrise, and then hike back down. i am so excited.
so she's my longmont best friend.
my jacksonville best friend, it's a tie. i have three. they are each my best friend but in different ways. sort of like how heff has holly bridget and kendra. i love them each but they fit different compartments of my life.
i have andrea, who sadly, i don't have any pictures with (my time was way too short.) she fits the compartment where i just need someone my age that understands and i can let my hair down and she relates to me on a christian level. we have the same beliefs and that's so important. with out that little part it's hard to truly connect. but she's there for me. she lets me have a bad day and knows that i'm still a christian. i don't have to be careful around her and i love her for that.
then there's debbie. she is not a church-goer, but to say she's not a christian is kinda hard for me to say. i'm hoping some day she'll find herself back in church but she has a lot of hang ups about it and rightfully so. but i'm of the belief that just because you go to church doesn't make you a christian, and vise versa, just because you don't go to church doesn't mean you're not a christian. she's been let down by alot of people. i hope i'm never one of those people. she is the best person to sit on the front porch and have a glass of wine with. oh i loved days when we did that.
and then there's voncile. we connected deep down inside my heart. she has a beautiful garden. it was such a retreat, an oasis in the neighborhood. she helped me make my yard go from this to this:

I only have a couple pictures of Voncile but this is the only one of us together. She was so much fun. We would go out in the yard and giggle and giggle until we were too hot or tired to lift another shovel. see, i can't help but use capitalization when i talk about Voncile. she really got me into gardening and i really needed that outlet when i was going through the miscarriage. i would see beautiful plants and flowers and although i couldn't create human life, i could garden. it gave me something to give life to. it was very theraputic.

she taught me all kinds of things about southern hospitality and the unwritten rules of the south. things like, you should never EVER say thank you for flowers. but it is acceptable to say "i appreciate the flowers." she was relentless with that rule. and if you hear a neighbor is sick you should always have some homemade soup in the freezer that you can warm up and take over there. i will always have some form of food in my freezer now after living across the street from Voncile. i miss her more than she'll ever know.

lately

well, i've been out of sorts lately. i posted a big long story with all the details but i un-posted it because i'm not sure i'm ready for the world to know. i can almost laugh at it now. but not quite. sorry i've been a bad blogger this week.

one funny/shocking thing that happened, yesterday i took tatum to the vet to have her girl parts double checked and she doesn't like to have her girl parts checked. she hides under the chair as soon and as much as possible. so afterwards i decided to treat her to a trip to the dog park. it was hot hot HOT so we didn't stay long. she pooed while we were there then we came home and i went back to work and let her stay downstairs. she likes to start her vigilant watch for paul the minute he leaves for work but sometimes i trap her in the office with me so i can keep an eye on her. so last night i decided it's just a couple hours at most, i'll let her stay downstairs since she was a good girl at the vets. later i decided to take my work downstairs and lay on the couch and work and when i walked over to the couch i noticed there was water all over 2 of the 3 cushions. then i smelled the water and it was not water after all. tatum leaked, otherwise known as pee, all over our leather couch. little booger. she's not allowed on the couch at all, let alone to pee! i should have known since she pooed at the dog park but never peed. so, that was her big accident for the last couple weeks. she does so good then she pulls a whamo but on the couch no less. i was in complete and total shock!

stellar!

well. it's over with. i called my current boss and told him "i found a new job locally here in longmont." and then silence. and then "...ok...well....i uh...good luck to you...." and then i'm not sure where exactly the conversation went because it was the hardest phone call i've ever had to make. but i told him "i just want you to know" and told him what my co-worker has been up to. long story short he told me i've been "stellar" and "crucial to what the company is doing" and asked me for another week. who doesn't like to hear THAT!? i called my new boss (big smiles) and she asked if we could go halfsies because she needs that time to train me, so i called my current boss back and made august 5th my last day. and i officially start my new job august 6th. thus the new ticker. isn't the fishy cute?
*WHEW* it's overwith.

so what shenanegans are on the menu for today? well, i'll have to keep you posted since it's 10:45 and we have yet to find dr. jekyl. did she get stuck on the train on the way in? did she carpool with ruth and she's in baltimore today? we don't know. ???? is this not nuts?

Confirmation

i look for confirmation in the decisions i make all over the place. did it rain in the east and stay sunny in the west? did i not burn the dinner on the night i made the decision? did i sleep better than i had in weeks? so today when I got this video i KNEW it was a sign from the gods somewhere that i had made the right decision and i've finally found my way out of the long dark tunnel i've been swimming through lately.

i took the job

also-i took the job with the re/max office here in town. i feel so relieved to take the job. i know this is against all rules, but i called her after my doctors appointment and told her that i had a good appointment today and i wanted her to know what's going on with my husband and i before i take the job so that she could decide if that's what she really wanted. i kinda paused for her to say "oh no, please don't tell me anything more." i went on to tell her that we are wanting to start a family in the next couple of years and i didn't want to surprise her in 6 months. she asked me what my plans were after i have kids and i explained that i will always need to work, i won't be able to just stop working and i like having a career so i plan on working even after i have kids. she said "oh we welcome any children you will have. we know that that's just part of being married and that's not a problem for us at all. i had to do the same thing after i had my children." hello! could i want this job any MORE? and i told her i was glad, my husband and i had talked it over and really wanted to tell her so that she wouldn't be surprised later. i told her i knew that wasn't typical to tell a future employer but in the interview she said "at the end of the day if you don't feel right about it, don't do it." and i just really wanted her to know up front. i feel like a huge weight has been lifted just having that off of my chest. so, i start august 4th and i feel really good about it. now the next step: tell my boss on monday that i'm giving him 2 weeks notice. yikes almighty!

Mamma Mia

tonight i went to see mamma mia. yes. it IS in fact opening night. one thing you might not know about me, because it does not come up in every day conversation, is that i have a crush on meryl streep. not in a i-want-her-in-the-sack kind of way but in a i-want-to-be-her-when-i-get-there kind of way. she is so sexy in a bohemian natural way. she has put on a couple pounds, she's aging gracefully and i'm SURE she's doing her best along the way but she's not fighting it. she is so naturally sexy and i just love it. i love that she doesn't paint her nails with bright colors. and i love that she almost never wears lipstick. it's just her colors. or at least that's what her make up consultant has me believing. so what could be better than a movie with meryl streep? how 'bout if you throw in ABBA!!!! hello?! i can't think of any better thing than meryl streep and abba...unless you added john cusak...ooo..now that would be fun. but unfortunately he didn't fit into this movie.

i went with my friend from college, brenda. the girl that was a cheerleader back in the day that i looked like a lesbian gym teacher, therefore we barely talked in college. we were nice to each other, no grievances to clear up, but we just didn't have anything in common. then. now...turns out we have a LOT in common and it's been so fun getting to know her in real life. life where clicks and groups don't get in the way. there was a point in the movie where we were both sitting there grinning at the screen missing our girlfriends from college. it made me miss the nights of bra dancing to big audio dynamite in just our bras and underwear. i miss my 2D friends every day. (that was the suite we lived in, 2nd floor, D wing, therefore we became known simply as "2D".)

cautiously excited

i just got back from the RE appt. he was an in and out kinda guy. he was nice. but man i wanted just another second. although i could be saying that all afternoon i suppose. so here's the deal. he looked at my goods and there was a cyst on my left ovary that is 1 centimeter by 1.8 centimeters. and he suspects it might be an endrometrioma (not sure on spelling) but nothing that is going to require surgery anytime soon. i have a bunch of little black pockets up there that he said are follicles. and i said "the ones that are about to release the eggs?" and he said "no, it's sort of like seeing how many eggs a woman has in her basket...so that looks very good to see all of that." he said he wants me to do an HSG test just to see that the fallopian tubes are running and he wants DH (sorry-more fertility lingo for Dear Husband) to do the swimmer test (that's next thursday and i could not stop giggling when he was scheduling it...i felt all of 10 years old.) but then of course he wants to do clomid and IUI's right away. or in the next 6 weeks. no rush. but i'm not sure i'm quite ready for that. i want to have DH do his test and then try for 2 months. if i'm not pregnant then, then we can look into the clomid route.

so...all that said i called the lady with the new job and left her a message. i know i know this is against the rules but i want to tell her that my appt this afternoon went well but i wanted to let her know we want to start a family in the next couple years and i still plan on working after that. we can't afford for me not to work, and i really like having a career. but i want to put that on the table so that there are no surprises down the road from me and let her decide if she really still wants me. paul and i both feel bad if i don't tell her up front. and then let it be her decision. but i will still be working after kids. which is another nice thing about this job because this little town we are in is way better for having young kids than places we have lived in the past. ??? don't know. but i want to make sure she wants me before i tell my current boss. and i want to do it with a clear conscience.

shaking in my boots...why?

today is my appointment with the RE (that's fertility talk for reproductive endocrinologist, thus the reason i say specialist or even easier RE). i feel like i know the answers on my medical insurance and that answer is that the insurance is going to cover the same stuff, but one will do IUI (intrauterine insemination) and the other won't. at this point i'm feeling like if we got to the IUI stage i would like to put that money towards an acupuncturist instead of IUI's anyway. i know the duties of the new job will be great. i know i could do them with one hand tied behind my back. i know it would be good for me to get out of the house and shake the dust off of me. i know it would be REALLY good for me to not have the headache of my crazy co-workers. and by crazy i mean, if they didn't have drivers licenses they would be put in the psych ward. i know it would be good for me to learn another part of the real estate industry. i also know that more and more of my duties are being done by other people and other departments and i could be phased out and laid off next month. so why am i so scared? here's more of what i know. i know that commercial is more stable than residential. i know that larger companies have more money to fudge around with. i know that life is short and without risks there's no excitement. i also know that i have bills to pay, one in particular that i have to pay by january or i'll be paying back interest on $12,000 for the past year. i know i do NOT want to do that. so why don't i know which way to go here? how can this really be this hard of a decision? i've been praying all week and up until wednesday night i knew i wanted the new job. then wednesday night, in the middle of the night i woke up with all of these questions, concerns, thoughts, confusions circling above my head like birds and x's do on cartoons when someone gets wacked up side the head. i have to make a decision tonight. when i think about calling my boss and telling him i've found another position i'll be excited. but i also know i'll be letting him down. so is that my biggest hang up? not necessarily. this morning when paul went to work i went to the store. we closed the door and heard a "hey, guys, you forgot me. you left me out and didn't take me with you." otherwise known as a bark. i came back later and she was just patiently waiting there. she was fine. but now she won't leave my side. i know, i KNOW, she will adjust to the change. but am i ready for it? is this how mothers feel about their human babies when they have to go back to work? then paul said last night, "what if you take this job and get pregnant right away." we already know that i won't be able to stay home with the kids. so it's not like i plan on working for 9 months and quitting. and she knows that i'm a married woman in my reproductive years, although i look 22, i'm really 33. and she's willing to take that chance that i will have kids and come back to work. so if she's willing to take that chance why am i worried about putting her in that position? dear god, why is this so hard. can't you just wave a magic wand over my day and make rain clouds in the east and sunshine in the west so i know which direction to go?

informative vote

more information has been requested in order to help you guys vote-----> on whether or not i should take this new job or not. so here's what i found out today. i called paul's insurance and they cover the specialist i'm going to on friday. (his name is doctor bush and that just cracks me up since he is a girly doctor. and by that i don't mean afeminate, i mean...you know...he works in the girly department.) so i'd still be able to go to him. they said that if he bills me as stomach pains or diagnostic i'm covered. if he bills it as infertility i'm not. so i called the doctors office and explained i'm changing coverage and i want to know what all you can code that way because if it's billed as infertility it won't be covered. they said we've got a LOOOONG way before they start billing things as infertility. if i do artificial insemination (i know-TMI but...) then that wouldn't be covered and each round of that would be $1,000. if i do in vitro i'm not covered on either insurance anyway. BUT we don't want to go that far anyway. i am not, in any way, against IVF and i think it's great for couples that can afford it and want to do that. but i just don't want to go through all of that for a big fat maybe. i also asked the doctor if, on friday, they'll be able to give me an answer on how long of a road i might have ahead of me and she said yes. i will be given all kinds of information and options so get ready because she said it's overwhelming. so paul's going to see if he could meet me there on his lunch hour. *whew* that's the scoop. does this help?

stranger in my bed

after 6 1/2 years of marriage, almost to the day, and over 9 years of knowing my husband tonight i found something out about him. he is a BIG fan of family fued. he's not a football fan, not a baseball fan. don't get me wrong, he'll watch a good game along with the next guy, but he doesn't talk to the tv or get worked up during games or shows.

but tonight, at 7:30 mountain time, i saw a whole new side of him. he was yelling at the tv. not screaming at the top of his lungs, but yelling back at the tv "NO WAY!" and "oooo-good one, taking out the garbage." who IS this man?

now what...

well, i interviewed for a position here in longmont as a closing coordinator and they told me they would make a decision by the end of this week and they called me last night with an offer. she offered me the job before she asked me how much i make. so i make almost $9k more than she was offering so they set up a bonus plan. i get a certain percentage of the houses she closes. her commission would mean i would make exactly what i make now IF her closings continue, and she just got a couple listings for $2M and she has another one coming in for $3M. so what's the catch? i would have to go on paul's insurance and it doesn't cover infertility. he's going to ask at work if he can add it on but i'm not sure if he will be able to or not. so that's the catch. this is all WAY too expensive with out insurance but my spirit is getting crushed little bits more every day in my current job. ugh! and i have my appointment with the specialist on friday.

update: paul's insurance can not add on fertility. which is not so shocking. so now the question is, do i take this job anyway to help reduce my stress so that maybe i can get pregnant? or do i stay there like a sitting duck and maybe get laid off next month and not even have this job as a possibility. a bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush right? but then do you think the bird in my hand is my current job, or this new job offer??? UGH!

ANOTHER update: i just talked to the woman that interviewed me to see if i could tell her on friday if i can take the position or not. i have an appt and i said "i don't have any other job offers or interviews, but i have an appt that will tell me what benefits i need and what i don't. would friday be too late for you?" she said "everyone needs good medical benefits so i understand that completely." i also asked her if i could start mid-august but i can't because she is going on a 2 week trip and won't be there to train me. so i would need to start august 4th. i offered to come in in the evenings to get started but she works evenings and the other staff doesn't work that late.
all that said, it gives us until friday to pray about it, think about it and see how things look like they are shaking out then.
i feel MUCH better about things now.

goal oriented

you know. it's important to have goals.

hallmark moments and mudders pocket

yesterday i was having a tough day because i was missing my mom. i love my mom. but i am not one to miss her in the sense that i NEED her so yesterday was kind of special. i called her and missy answered the phone. she said she and the kids had gone over there to see if mom and dad had anything better for breakfast. of course they did. mom and dad's house is always good for powdered or chocolate covered donuts. they had found waffles. i asked missy if she could get mom. when mom answered the phone i kinda choked up because, like i said, i was really missing her. i said through chokes "i miss you today and you guys are all there eating waffles together and i'm all the way out here all by myself." it was really kind of touching because i just am not like that. mom's response was so sweet it made it all melt away like butter on a hot summers day. mom's can do that. she said with love and affection, and i could tell she was missing me as much as i was missing her, "who's eating waffles?!" *sigh* i'm SURE she was missing me, but she had to hurry off the phone since her mosaic tile was pulling up in the drive.

she promised she would call me back later. the only thing better than mom calling you back is mudders calling you at all. later in the day when my caller ID popped up that "Arthur Zimmerli" was calling me my heart skipped a beat. not because he's been dead for 5 years, but because i knew the only other person that would call me from Arthur Zimmerli's phone is mudders. I answered really excited: "hello!"...nothing on the other end. "hello?" then swooshing. "hello?! HELLO!?....MUDDERS, can you HEAR ME!?" i got louder and louder in desperation before i realized. it wasn't mudders that called me at all. it was her pocket. i can rest easy knowing that her pocket does not have my number memorized so i have to assume i was on her speed dial. that should make me feel loved in some strange sense. sort of like the battered woman that says "he'd only get that jealous if he really loved me." right? so i'm savoring that thought.

on cute news, last night i cleaned the house from top to bottom. all but vacuuming because tatum HATES the vacuum. so our system is that paul takes her for a walk while i vacuum. it works out well. although sometimes i feel like we are coddling her fears. she's our first, what can we say. last night when i was cleaning our tub it got clogged so paul got me the plunger and went back to emailing. i started plunging and plunging and plunging and RIGHT as i was about to get it i heard a faint little scared bark behind me. tatum never barks unless she wants to play, and apparently unless she gets so scared she pees. yup. so i had to stop plunging and clean up her little potty all the while explaining to her that mommy is safe, i'm just plunging. but i'm in charge of that plunger she doesn't need to worry. then i picked up the dust pan that was right next to her little puddle only to find more puddle in the dust pan. so then i had to clean up THAT spot because i dripped it all the way from the puddle into the bathroom. paul said "so now we can't plunger around her huh?" i said "no that's too far, she'll get used to it." i think i'm a little more tough love than paul. but i gotta go vacuum because he's about to take her for a walk.

....and $5 more for me please.

what is up with tipping these days? i just picked tatum up from the paw spa. she got an oatmeal bath and hair cut. she looks so fluffy when she goes to the spa although i hardly recognize her when i pick her up. but i went to pay and they said "let's see...did she have a hot oil treatment today?....nope, looks like just an oatmeal bath. so it's only gonna be $48 today." oh...ONLY $48. so she hands me the receipt to sign and there it is. right under the amount like it's an obligation "Tip: ________ ". so i start thinking, it's not like when you carry out your pizza so you can save yourself a couple bucks, so you don't tip there. but it is sort of like starbucks where you know what everyone came in here for. it's not like there's a waitress or anyone that had to go the extra mile for me today. all they did was their job. the one i paid them for. i am already giving them $48 for this service, do i really have to give you more? then i think-so what if i DON'T fill in that little line? what if i leave it blank staring back at you as if you have any right to expect more from me. i don't expect anymore from you than what i asked. sort of like going to the post office. you pay them 42 cents to send your card or letter. but then they say it will get there in 3-5 business days, but if you want us to PROMISE you that it will get there in 3-5 business days you'll have to give us a little something EXTRA. then if you want to be sure we made good on our promise, you could always send it certified, it's just a little more than extra but then you KNOW our promise was good. i'm ranting. so what did i do with that blank little tip line? dammit, i put $5 on it. and the whole time i'm thinking she better be able to pay the bills, or wash the dishes, or scrub the toilets with this new hair cut. but instead she came out cute as a blonde cotton ball and once again i forgive them for putting me in that crux. that place between a rock and a hard place. that place of having to decide which is worse, paying them $5 or getting the looks and whispers for not giving them another red cent? doesn't she look cute? although the flash on my camera keeps making her squint now that she doesn't have all that hair in her eyes. she's not really chinese. give her a couple days to let her eyes adjust to the light. maybe next time for $5 extra bucks i can get them to stop calling her a he.

Hope

this is how i'm feeling right now. just a small ray of sunshine hope through the very grey trees. but it's still a ray right?
i have an interview on monday with a company here in town for a closing coordinator position. i can totally do the job, the job description lists EVERYTHING i have done for the last 6 years. it doesn't look like it will be challenging necessarily but i want to go talk to them and see how i feel about it. see what their volume of business looks like and see if the office staff is heavily medicated or more crazies just under the radar. the hope of having a normal office again is not even in my scope just yet after the hullabaloo i've been working with so no high hopes in that category. keep your fingers crossed for me.

on another note-now instead of my part being sun burnt from hiking, it's now peeling. so my head looks like that of a junior high boy not quite in tune with daily shampooings. let's hope that has resolved itself by monday!

Burglar

here's the last one. and it still makes me laugh.

Well, I got a puppy at New Years and named her Tatum, it means cheerful. Tatum sleeps in a crate at night but she is a total flopper in her sleep. And when she dreams she runs in her sleep so her crate makes a lot of noise. So I put rubber bands on all of the joints of her crate so that it doesn't rattle so much. But last night in the middle of the night, the first night for the trial run of the rubber-banded crate, I woke up at 1am to the sound of combat boots coming down the hallway. I woke up and looked out the door and saw a flashlight glowing from the kitchen. I woke Paul up and told him to get the gun; he got it and started down the hallway, searching from room to room. When he got to the kitchen he realized that we had left the light above the sink on, which answered the flashlight coming down the hall...but still not the sound of the boots. He looked everywhere; all the doors and windows were still closed so he came back to bed. About that time Tatum did another flop in her crate and I realized, at 1am, it REALLY sounds like the combat boots of a burglar coming down the hallway.

Run Lola Run

here's another paragraph story. there are some things from the south i won't miss.

We have recently moved to the South for a stint and have even bought a house in the hopes of settling down. It’s been interesting to say the least adjusting to the good ole south. One adjustment as been the pest control, or should I say, lack thereof. We have some neighbors that are sweet as punch but have 5 dogs. Beefy, Boo-Boo, Scrappy, Blossom and Squeaks. They also have quite the rat problem. There’s a wonderful thing down here called pest control services. Some of them are quite affordable. Ours is only $25 a month and I have since realized that I would rather go hungry than live with out it. However, upon meeting the woman who is the owner of the 5 dogs I started chit-chatting about our house. Somehow, and for the life of me I can’t recall, we got onto her house and the rat problem they have in the house. This is the famous line that left me blinking like a deer in headlights “one of them came running down the hallway at me the other morning so I just got ready for the day while throwing shoes and sandals and anything I could get my hands on in its direction until I could get dressed enough to run out of the house. Then I just left for the day”

Numb Nuts

here's another short paragraph. and me and numb nuts are now friends. but he's still a numb nuts.

So my job in a nutshell is to transfer money for commercial closings but the closers are supposed to give me wiring instructions for every wire request they send me. Lately I’ve been going above and beyond to get their wires out when they say stupid stuff like “can you send Henry $4 million dollars?” Now come on-if I told you that would you have the slightest idea who Henry was and how to get him $4 million dollars? Probably not right? So of course I have to go back to them and say ask for the wiring instructions. One closer is totally oblivious and says he sent me the wiring instructions. I used to actually look for them in my old emails, now I just say “I can’t find them, can you resend them?” to which he never replies until one of his lackeys tracks them down for him and sends them to me. Well today I finally lost it…I had these instructions that were off by $1.27-which is NO big deal in the grand scheme of things EXCEPT that I have to account for every penny I send out and believe me it would take us 6 years to figure out why this file is off by $1.27 so I went back to my requestee and told him the issue. So he responds and tells me I really need to clear it up with his lender. HELLO!!! Remember a day back when you actually had to do something for your job? How in the heck did it become mine? So I wrote this scathing email to my boss telling him everything this numb nuts was asking me to do. Then I decided, in all of my coherent PMS-ness, that I would change all of the he-s to you-s in the email and send it directly to numb nuts. He immediately tucked his tail and responded with “I’m sorry, my bad.” See, being bitchy really can pay off.

some call me lucky

i was telling a good friend from denver about writing and i remembered some short stories that i wrote last year. and i mean short stories, more like paragraph stories. but i'll post them because it's funny to think back. i even used capitalization.

We sold one of our two cars because I work from home and my husband does freelance design and only needs the car for meetings every now and then. But when he leaves for those meetings I feel trapped because I can’t get anywhere unless I walk. So I bought a bicycle and man do I love it. It’s green. Bright green. And it’s a beach cruiser, although it’s never made it to the beach, and I had them put collapsible baskets on the sides so I can get a whole weeks worth of groceries home from the store. It’s great. But the other thing about living in Florida is that it could rain at a moments notice. One day over my lunch hour I decided to ride a couple miles over to my sister’s house to see my niece and nephew. I love taking the back roads through the neighborhoods but there’s a little stretch that taking the back roads is just way out of the way. So I take a little two lane road that has some fast heavy traffic. I noticed though when I was leaving my sisters that there was a dark rain cloud looming over the area I had to go to get back to my house but figured at best it was a 10 minute ride. I could make it in 10 minutes and I had to get back for work. So I headed out anyway and no sooner did I get to that busy stretch of road did that rain cloud unload on me. And it continued to unload on me the entire time I was on the busy stretch of road. This is about the time I deeply regretted my wardrobe choice of a yellow tank top with a built in bra – ya right – and Bermuda shorts. Do you know that you can see straight through a yellow tank top with a built in bra when it’s soaking wet from one of Florida’s quick little showers? I noticed that once I got home. I wondered why all those guys, including the city bus driver, were so excited to honk and wave at me. It’s now referred to as my lucky yellow tank top.

today sucks

last night i got an email from the girl that's renting our house in florida. she is a really sweet girl and i could not ask for better renters. her husband is in the navy and he is stationed on the ship 6 months out of the year. so the email was titled "new tenant". you'll never guess what it was. yep. you guessed it. she's due in march. don't get me wrong. i'm so happy for her. she's about 23 years old and they've been married a couple years and she loves kids. so i'm really happy for her, and happy that my house will have happy memories for them in the years to come. however. you see where this is going i'm sure. we fixed up that house for our happy memories. and so that we could bring our babies home from the hospital there. and we had plans of creating a nursery for our babies. we even painted the back bedroom a baby blue because we were sure the first pregnancy was a boy. we were talking about names on the way to the doctors appointment when we found out there were problems. so the thought of handing all of those happy memories over to someone else to have in my house, that i worked my fingers to the bone to fix up, makes me very sad. and i know-i sound shallow just saying these things. i'm happy for her too, it's just, i want to have some happy memories for me too. now i know i'll never get to because paul will never move back to florida. is it too much to ask to just have one innocently happy pregnancy?

and on another note-work could not suck anymore than it does. and i really really REALLY want to quit because i just don't know how much more of this i can take. and i (until a couple weeks ago) was the only one in the office to still love my job. and i can see my apathecness coming out in my work already. every one else in my office has been trying to get laid off for over a year so they can get a severance package. me? i work my tail off so that i can do a good job and everyone else is laying around doing nothing. could life suck anymore today?

CDT Hike

this weekend we hiked a 13 mile section of the Continental Divide Trail and paul's parents came out with us so it was fun. we brought tatum and she loves hiking especially if she can find snow out there. i posted some pictures to our flickr page. tatum's feet got pretty sore. she's still laying around the house now. we've given her 3 baths so far and i think the mud is finally out of her hair except for a couple spots on the backs of her front legs.

on baby news. thursday and friday were really tough baby wise. i have an appointment with a specialist on july 18th. we'll see what they have to say. i had to take another preg test this morning because STILL no sight of the ole period. but i wore a white skirt to church and sat down and thought "what was a i thinking?" and sure enough, got OP when i got home. thank GOD she waited for me to get home and didn't bust a move on day 37 of my cycle while sitting in church. whew.

how to make a baby or at least get confused in the process

i got some books over the last week or so. one is the infertility cure
which talks about alot of chinese medicine and accupuncture etc along with herbs and diets. i'm sure it's helpful to some but so far all i can figure out is that my kindney ying is deficient and i have damp heat. (ya, i'm just as perplexed by this) but with an open mind i went back to the bookstore to get the fertility diet book but found fertility foods
which seemed easier to read. i was wrong. now my mind is so full of conflicting information i went to bed in tears again.
my stupid period is late, don't get your hopes up, not because i'm pregnant but because i didn't ovulate this month so now i gotta wait forever for my body to catch on that it has other duties to do. i'm so confused and pissed and sad and hopeless with all of this now i don't know how i'll ever get pregnant again. at this point if someone told me to stand on one leg and lick a flamingo to get pregnant i would.

on another note. tonight i go see brenda. hopefully that will be fun to catch up with her and make a new friend.
oh, and i haven't heard from the girl i sent my resume to. oh my gosh-what if i never hear from them?

so over it

so i have officially sent off my resume for a couple of different positions. oh my gosh i'm so nervous but at the same time i'm so over my current job i can not even tell you.
so we'll see what happens. if i don't get them it's a sign to stay where i am. if something does happen i'll just follow that rainbow until the little leprechaun shows his ugly face.
BUT i did get another inside out oreo today. that has GOT to be a good sign. or it's a sign that oreo needs to step it up on their quality control.
no other cute news today. this is all i got.
i think i'm going to start seeing how many so's i can fit into one post.