Better

Things are better today. We went to the park, we got the new license plates for the truck, I found a snow cone place (albeit closed at the time, it did have posted hours unlike all the others I found, and also it's not nearly as far away.)

We're having trouble establishing that I do require him to take a nap daily, nothing that couldn't be solved by the fact that he's still in a crib, though.



I tried to call to check in on my status from my interview, and I got voicemail, so we'll see. I've never wanted a job so badly in all my life.

Not getting better

Fiona just locked me out of the house while the pool guy was here and Landon was inside asleep.

Thank God that Lynn and Kimber have a key, and that I happen to know their home number without the use of my cell phone and thank God that Sarah was there when I called...from the pool guy's cell phone.

Landon never woke up.

Am now walking around inside my house with keys in my pocket...just in case.

Survivor

• I beaned my son in the face with a plastic baseball first thing this morning.
• Despite that, he says he's having fun today.
• He's under the impression that the school is closed.
• I finally got to talk to Scarlett's vet this morning.
• On one hand, I'm not paying for surgery.
• On the other, there is no end in sight for this injury.
• It is a severe sprain/strain, with a torn something or other ligament
• She is to be on cage rest, leash walked, house confined, and crate confined for the next 30 days - and then we'll check in again.
• He said it could be another 30 to 60 days before it heals, but he does expect to see improvement in 30 days.
• Clinton tried to fix the garage refrigerator - whose door wasn't closing completely, by adding a hasp.
• In drilling the first hole, he let all the freon out.
• Thankfully, we were able to get a used one for $100.
• The dump wants us to pay $45 to get a technician to verify its emptiness and then $42 to dump the old one.
• Thank goodness, we can just deliver it to my parents house, whos garbage people ll just pick it up.
• He then attempted to clean the pool, by backwashing it.
• And we ended up with a crack in the filter.
• $1500 later, our pool will probably work again tomorrow.
• He's no longer allowed to "fix" anything until I get a job.
• There is not a snow cone place within 10 miles of our house.
• And that one is closed.
• In 100° weather.
• I did put my claim in for unemployment.
• So I expect to get my first check in 5 to 6 weeks.
• I'd say this unemployment thing is going just great.

Interview update

The interview went really well. Which in my history means I didn't get the job - so, hopefully this is a change of course. The job isn't what I really wanted, but it's an in at a company that has great benefits and they did say that when something comes up that is more structural related I would be considered for it. Which, in this market, is about all I can ask for.

Still no word on Scarlett.

I don't know exactly what next week will bring as far as posting, but I suspect rather than morning updates you'll get - whenever he takes nap updates.

Because why not have another day of updates.

• The vet and I have been playing phone tag since yesterday afternoon. I finally got ahold of him this morning. He hand delivered Scarlett's X-rays to the other vet yesterday, because he couldn't get the quality pictures he needed to send via email for the area of his concern. So we should know something by tomorrow.

• Which in vet time probably means Monday.

• He is calling in a prescription for more painkillers for her in the meantime.

• My interview is today at 2:00. I'd appreciate any good vibes.

More things

My interview got moved to Thursday afternoon.

Landon calls this shirt his "carrot salad" shirt.

Things and updates

• I have an interview tomorrow at 2:00 pm.

• Scarlett's x-ray was inconclusive for now. The vet is trying to get a no-fee consult for us (I mean, we already put a wing on their office with this dog, it's the least he could do) with the radiologist. He said he saw an abnormality in the little bone in the middle of her ankle, but since he's not a specialist, he's not really sure what's going on and wants a second opinion. He said one of two things will come from that, either we are still on complete cage rest for as long as it takes to heal or we are going to be having surgery. Neither outcome will be great, but I just hope she'll get through this without breaking her spirit. She already pretty pissed at us for having to sleep in the crate at night and she's only been doing that for a few days. I have no clue when this consult will happen, but the vet said early next week when I saw him on Friday - which is like yesterday (no word) and today. So we'll see.

• Landon let us buy him some underwear. Yeah - we've asked nearly every time we pass them in Target, and he's all "NOOOO!!! What are you trying to do?!?!?! Kill me with this underwear business?!?!?!?" He relented and has a favorite pair already - although has not worn them yet. He has however, peed in the potty most mornings since the first time and twice during mid day when he announced he was peeing (when in fact he meant, I'm about to pee.) ALso yesterday at school, he peed in the potty twice! We will begin potty training in earnest on Saturday. For him it will be a day of juice and hanging out at the house. For me it will be a day of changing wet underwear and laundry.

Landon on the Water Slide

Onward and Upward

Scarlett's foot will be X-rayed tomorrow. It's more swollen now than it ever was before. I don't suspect they'll find a break or anything, but I hope they decide to wrap it or maybe give me some kind of drug to knock her out for the 4-6 weeks it will take to heal.

This morning, Landon peed in the potty! And then requested a treat for it...I asked if he wanted M&Ms or a lollipop. He said "No, Mommy, lollipops are for poo." Very serious like. So he had M&Ms before breakfast.

Coming out of the closet

No, not that closet.

So, about 5 weeks ago, my department manager called me into his office. Actually to be precise, he emailed me a notice that he wanted to meet with me in 3 hours about a "work load discussion." 3 hours is way too long a notice for such a meeting, so I naturally fretted about it for 3 hours and freaked out. Look, it's not really any surprise that they don't have work. I'm in this building with 7 levels of parking...only about 4 are full of cars, when 6 months ago, if I got here after 7:30 I was lucky to find a space at all.

Oh, right, the meeting, so he called me in and told me about how things might go. Oh wait, it was this day. Basically 5 things might happen. 80% chance of lay-off on June 12. 10% chance that current job will hold over, but we don't know how long. 5% chance of being sent to Norway. 3% chance of being sent to on-shore project. 2% chance something comes up and we have another project that you can go to.

So I went back to my desk and spent the day running numbers through our budget. The good news was that if I got laid off, with unemployment, Landon out of Day Care, and us tightening our spendiness - we'd be fine for 6 months - or until unemployment runs out anyway and honestly, the market should turn back around by then. I took this information along with the possibility of Norway and the slight possibility of having work here home to Clinton to discuss.


Clinton and I made the decision not to tell anyone at that time. We have family members that might have freaked out over the Norway thing, just as much as they would have about the being laid off thing and since nothing was final, there was no need.

We decided that I would try to ride it out. On the hopes of Not Norway, that possibly my job would hold me through until they got more work. Because the very last thing I wanted was to look back and see that the ship was not sinking when I jumped, but only listing. I didn't send out any resumes.

Fast forward, three weeks ago, after just posting about my miserable day, I got a call from my department manager. He remembered that I did not appreciate the 3 hour notice for the last meeting and asked if I could come to his office and discuss work load.

At that meeting, he said that they didn't have anything. He said the my last day would in all likelihood be June 26, and that he expected to give me final notice on or around June 12. He also asked me to train someone else to do my job. And then put me in touch with the company recruiter so that he could look over my resume and help me with some contacts.

I went back to my desk and started Job Search 2009. I set up a spreadsheet, I fixed up my resume, I sent resumes to the company I knew was hiring, I sent out resumes to anyone I knew in the industry to give me their contacts. I got in touch with head hunters. In all I sent out about 20 resumes over the next few days.

I got calls back from a couple head hunters, and come Monday there was radio silence. I got an email from a certain company that I knew was hiring that said, we don't have anything for you at this time. I was dis-heartened.

On Wednesday of last week, I decided to go ahead and plan what Landon and I would be doing while I was at home. I wanted to do more than watch Sprout and play trucks all day, I wanted to try to keep some learning in his day, because one day he'd have to go back to Day Care and I don't really want him to be behind. I had just finished typing out my ideas and printing things for him to color when I got a call from the same company that said they weren't interested in me.

On Friday I had an interview with that Company. I suck at interviews and this one was ok, I suppose. Here's the thing about interviews and me. When I walk out of one feeling confident, I am most assuredly not getting that job. When I walk out of one feeling like "hey, I just spent an hour making myself look stupid." I get those jobs. So this one wasn't bad. I spoke with 4 people there, and they seemed ok with me. The job is doing something I don't actually want to do, but it's a job that will last me until I can find something I do want to do. And it's something I have experience in.

Yesterday they made their decision. It was a no. Not now. But they have something they want to keep me in mind for in about a month. So it's back to square one - I have about 8 companies to send resumes to today bringing my total up to about 30 so far.

It's been a rough month, and this rejection has not helped.

The silver lining is that with a few weeks or a month off work, I might be able to get Landon potty trained before sending him back to school. That would be nice.

Timeless Treasures

What started as a quest to find a recipe for chocolate chip peanut butter cookies. Ended up taking 6 months and hundreds of hours of work. And after all that? That recipe ALMOST didn't make the cut!

Back some time around Christmas, Clinton was asking around for a recipe he remembered his grandmother making for Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies. No one knew what he was talking about and no one had the recipe.

We got the recipe boxes from Clinton's Aunt Nolie and I sifted through, typed and printed them. The recipes had come from both Nolie and Clinton's grandmother. There were close to 350 of them. I printed out 4 sets of binders to have the family review and mark them, so as to narrow the field. As I passed out the last binder, we asked for pictures of the two deceased women to incorporate in the cookbook. And that's when the 3rd box was found. It had the recipe we had been looking for, among others.

In all, I typed 568 recipes. Most family members were given a chance to look through them and add to them. I took their notes and tallied the votes. And narrowed it down to 82 recipes. Their notes included changes to recipes that had happened over the years, how the recipes came to the family, Uncle George's love of Cheese Whiz pretty much indicated that any recipe with it had come from him.

Clint's cousin Jody came up and we stuffed the pages into the sheet protectors.

We used 1 1/2" binders.

I asked each family member to write a little something about their memories of both Nolie and Rose. Without giving them much to go on, they all came back mentioning unconditional love. I asked Allison of The Displaced Texan to create a few sheets incorporating those blurbs and a few pictures. I gave her very little direction, and very little time, and then bugged her with some tweaks on font size and stuff and she came up with some great pages. Those four pages are at the front of the cookbook.

Followed by the table of contents (alphabetical order) and then the recipes.

We chose two different formats for the paper (we had bought some marbled paper in various colors). One format had a header and footer graphic and the other had a watermark graphic. It worked out perfectly with the recipes for them to be on every other page, so that the longest of the recipes had the watermark, and I was able to put each recipe on one page.

In the front pocket we also included a CD with all the pictures, and all the scrapbook pages, scans of all the hand written recipes and all 568 recipes (typed, although not proof-read - so those that didn't make it into the cookbook probably have typos).

We included a final page thanking everyone for their help with this project and expressing a hope that the cookbooks would find their way into our children and grandchildren's kitchens, so that these two women would be forever remembered.

Clinton worked with a friend to create a cover, the cover includes a picture of Rose (upper left) and a picture of Nolie (lower right) and a faint background watermark of a wine bottle label featuring Rosie the Riveter. You see, Rose Wood, worked for Boeing during WWII. Her picture was featured in some history books, and they have saved the articles which explains that even though she worked as a welder, when they took her picture they thought Rosie the Riveter sounded better.

We held a lunch on Saturday to give out the cookbooks. We made several recipes from them, and everyone loved them.

This project was not that costly - I think in total we spent around $250 for 13 fully made up cookbooks (we probably could have made 16 for the same price given all the stuff we had left over.) It was not hard - typing, editing, proof-reading stuffing pages. It was time consuming - thanks to the nature of my job, I was able to type the recipes at work while I waited for other things I had going on. I spent roughly 100 hours typing, scanning, etc. I don't think I could have come up with the pages that Allison did on my own, so I'm glad that I decided to out-source that portion. And I know I wouldn't have been able to do the cover on my own - my photoshop skills are just not that great. But all in all, I think it was worth it and I hope the finished product will be useful to those who get to use it.

Let's see

I’m not ignoring you, blogger won’t let me in.

Something I learned at work yesterday

So, yesterday I went into the bathroom at work to find a co-worker hacking up a lung and laboriously scrubbing her hands as if about to perform open heart surgery. (And no, we are not surgeons here.)

So I asked her: "Hey, what's going on Hacky McGee?"

And she says: "Dude, Angus* put this thing** on my desk that has walnuts on it...it's the ONLY nut I'm allergic to, and normally casual contact doesn't do this to me."

So I say: "Well, I have some Chlortrimeton in my purse if you think that would help, it's an antihistamine."

She says: "Maybe later, if it doesn't get better."

And I went back to my desk to discover that I also have some Benedryl Spray. So I head back to the bathroom to offer the Benedryl Spray. She says - can you spray it in your mouth? And I'm like, uh - I don't think so, I spray it directly on ant bites, so I thought maybe if you touched the walnuts, that you could spray it on your hands or something.

She came into my office, sprayed it on her hands and smelled it...deeply, repeatedly. And within seconds her symptoms were starting to go away. She did it 3 times within a few minutes and was back to normal by the time she walked out of my office.

I had no idea you could snort Benedryl. Well, I suppose I figured you could snort it, I just didn't know it would be effective.

* I was going to make up a name for him, but I couldn't, I just couldn't do better than Angus.

** We had a bake sale at work yesterday so various home made items made the rounds...they even faked a sign saying the second level entry was closed forcing everyone to pass the bake sale on the way into work.

It only took 9 months

But Landon finally actually likes school, I think. Or more accurately, I guess he really likes what they do at school during the summer. Yesterday when I picked up Landon I got there just as they were lining up to go outside to play. He was PISSED. He threw a wall-eyed fit the entire ride home.

He continued throwing his fit for a few hours after we got home. He even told me he was "sad" and refused to eat anything for dinner.

But this morning, instead of fighting me about going to school? He got ready and was excited to go in (it also helped that one of his friends was getting out of his car just as we arrived). Granted, he wanted to wear his same Astros shirt that he wore yesterday, but when he found out it was Field Day, he changed his tune, and also agreed to wear a lighter colored shirt, because black and 95° weather is not a good combo.

So, today is "Field Day." I have no idea what that means, but when I called this morning to ask, they said, yes he did probably need sun screen and bug spray. If Splash Day was any kind of indication, I can only assume it will be tons of fun.

Bullets

• I have a bunch of posts brewing and don't have the supporting pictures for any of them. So you're going to get this boring bullet point list.


• I'm also very tired today for no discernable reason.

• Yesterday I discovered a leak in Landon's class room when I went in to put some stuff in his cubby. Everyone had already been there for an hour and a half. Well, not in the classroom, because both his teachers were sick, but in the building.

• I'm assuming it was the A/C or a pipe, because they just had the roof replaced a couple months back and it hasn't rained in 40 years...or maybe 2 weeks, depending on who you ask.

• We also had a pipe leak in our house over the weekend (one of those brewing posts.) Actually it's probably been leaking a lot longer than that, but we discovered it this weekend.

Movie Monday

We spent quite a bit of time in the pool this weekend. I taught swimming lessons in HS, so I'm working with him on some of the basics, blowing bubbles in the water, kicking, moving your arms, etc. He's still not willing to dunk his whole head under water - but we'll get there.

Happy Dude

This morning, Landon is participating in Splash Day at school. It looks like it will be a lot of fun and I am absurdly jealous that I can not join him.



From getting to wear his bathing suit to school, to getting to wear his new water shoes, the excitement was uncontainable. We had been talking about it all week. A build up, so that he'd be excited about it.



As it turns out, he didn't quite understand what was going on. When we walked out the backdoor this morning, he thought splash day meant he got to swim...in our pool...today. I told him we could probably swim this evening, but that Splash Day was happening at his school, with his friends. He pouted nearly the entire drive to school. But was so excited to tell Miss Kisha about how he was wearing his swin diaper, babe-ing soup, wa-er sues, and swin tirt. (She got all of it but the swim shirt.) He also told her was going to Splash (complete with visual demonstration of jumping in a puddle type moves) and swim (visual demonstration of the crawl stroke.)



And BONUS, he got to take his Cars backpack to school, which he packed last night with various toys and will probably be disappointed to find that I re-packed it with normal clothes and a towel.



When I left, I said "Bye, sweetie!" And he barely looked at me and was all "BUH." Do you think I could convince them to have Splash day more than once a week?

Monthly Newsletter #32

Dear Landon,

Today you turn 32 months old. And you are great – when you want to be. Or when you’re not tired. Or hungry. Or being greatly wronged by a society in which you might actually have to share some things with other people.
You are stubborn – taking a full 20 minutes in time-out before relenting to apologizing for the train tracks you drew on Grandma and Grandpa Logan’s couch.


You are a jokester. Your latest is to say that something is not what it is, but something else. Those are not cows, those are horses! HAHAHA! You go on red, and stop on green! HAHAHA! It’s taken us a while to get with your new found sense of humor, but I think we’ve finally gotten it.



There are moments in our day together that I really look forward to, no matter how small. When I drive over a bridge and say “Bridge!” You say “Water, water!” Each morning when I wake you up for the day, I get 15-20 minutes of snuggle times.

I spent a lot of this month putting together a cookbook from recipes I gathered from your Great Grandmother Wood and Great Aunt Nolie. I never met Mrs. Wood, but Nolie is someone whom I am so sad that you never got to meet. I asked the family to write a small paragraph or sentence about them, so that I could compile them and use them in the cookbook and every one of them mentions unconditional love. I know she would have loved you so much – she had been bugging me for years to have a baby before she passed away, but I just wasn’t ready yet. The mere mention of the possibility perked her up even close to the end – but she also knew it was better for us to wait until we were actually ready – and thank goodness, because otherwise we wouldn’t have you, we’d have someone else.

Oh, thing to work on. For the last couple days when I pull out the camera you do this squinty eye smile. I want eyes. Not lines. I’m just sayin’.

Love,
Mama

Already been one of those days

We woke up early, so we were running late.

I poured, but forgot to give, Landon his medicine.

I left the house stopping to get us breakfast, and realized I had forgotten the medicine.

I returned home to get the medicine.

I brought it out to the car, where it rode in the passenger seat with me to drop Landon off at school. And instead of giving it to him, I brought it to work with me.

At which point I realized I also forgot to give Scarlett her medicine.

Adulthood

My mom likes to tell people that I've been an adult since I was 4.

I think my son may be on the same path to early adulthood. We went to dinner Thursday night and at the table they gave us some bread, so Clinton sliced some for Landon and handed it to him.

The first slice, Landon explained how it needed to be a sandwich and folded it over himself.

I gave him the second slice, which he scoffed at about how it wasn't folded and then folded it himself again - narrating exactly how one folds bread, "like a book," if you must know.

For the third slice he made his wishes clear to Clinton during the cutting process and while he was folding it for him, he even repeated the "like a book" command. And when Clinton handed him the piece of folded buttered bread, Landon said "Good job, Daddy!"