Let me just say, that it got my attention.  It DEFINITELY got my attention.  But, um, HELLO!?!?!?!  Looking at that mean, Exorcist-looking face does NOT make me want to become a social worker.  Not in one year, and not in ten years.  Now, as I look at that photo, I’m imagining that the photographer just told that sweet (she probably really IS sweet, and not evil) little girl to make the scariest monster face she could.  And that’s great.

But the sepia tones, added with the ad for becoming a social worker, makes the whole thing just creepy.  I did not click on the link.  For two reasons…the first reason would be that I very, very, very, very rarely will click on a Facebook ad.  And if I do, it’s only the ones that go to another Facebook page.  Secondly, I was afraid that the devil himself might jump right out of my laptop if I clicked there.

OK, just needed to share.  What’s the weirdest Facebook ad you’ve seen?

Yesterday I followed through (sort of) on something that I’ve been meaning to do for about eight years.

When I was pregnant with Becca, I went through the normal tests and such that are associated with being pregnant.  Somewhere along the line, I found out that my blood type was O negative.  After my c-section, one of the nurses had mentioned that I should give blood, because type O blood can be given to anybody (Well, O negative can be given to anybody who is ‘negative.’).  At that point in time I told myself that yes, I would donate blood.  It’s just the right thing to do, and I remember when I was younger that my father donated blood all the time.

So, last week I made an appointment.  I headed to the Central Blood Bank office to give my share.  I realize that it had taken a long time for me to follow through on this.  But, oh well…such is life.  I was getting around to it now.  And it’s not like I have a fear of needles, or blood, or anything medical.  The only thing I can’t do is watch them actually put the needle in my skin.

I did what I was supposed to do…I ate breakfast, drank plenty of water, and had a good attitude.  After I finished up the medical questions, all of which I passed with flying colors, I was ready to go.  The nice girl sat me in a chair and prepped me.  As she was checking out my veins, I told her that I had some previous problems with nurses finding exactly where to take blood.  She assured me that it shouldn’t be a problem, and found a nice vein in my right arm.  She stuck the needle in (and no, I didn’t look), and off we went.  First they have to fill up three vials of blood (not sure why), and then they move onto the donation bag.  The three vials came out just fine.  They hooked up the bag, and it started to fill.

But then, it stopped.

It was like my body decided that it needed whatever was left in there.  She poked the needle around, trying to get it to start again.  Unfortunately, I watched that.  Bad decision on my part.  I got a huge head rush, and mentioned it.  They laid me back and put an ice pack on my chest.  They tried a bit more to get that blood flowing, but no go.  This sweet girl apologized that I would probably have a big, pretty bruise there.  She said that my veins were just small.  Meh, bruises aren’t a big deal.  They fed me some diet Pepsi and cookies, and told me that I could try again in 56 days.

I guess I will try again.  I felt bad that I couldn’t actually follow through on this plan.  If it doesn’t work the next time, then I guess I’m just keeping my blood to myself

Photo courtesy of RebeccaLK’s Flickr photostream

Last night we told Chloe that if she had been a boy, her name was going to be Cletus.  Tony kept saying stuff about chewing tobacco and missing teeth.  It COMPLETELY got a rise out of her, so we just kept calling her Cletus.  She started screaming, with extreme passion in her eyes, “My name’s not Cletus!!!”  Finally, she broke down, yelled at Tony, and said “It’s on like Donkey Kong, Dad.”

After a few kid punches and her being held upside down, Tony asked, “OK, you really wanna fight?  You wanna fight?”  She, of course, said yes.  Then Tony said a line that I’VE never heard before, but I guess he used to say it when he was a kid.  It was:  ”Well then climb up my ass and fight for air.”

I about lost it.  It just struck me as so darn funny, that I couldn’t stop laughing.  Tears STREAMED down my face.  That, of course, got Tony laughing.  Hard.  The kids really had no idea why we were laughing so hard, but they joined in too.

It was exactly what we needed.  These winter blahs were broken, even if it was only for fifteen minutes.

I keep looking at the ten day forecast to see if I have a 45 degree day to look forward to (sad, but true).  You wanna know what’s even more sad?  I don’t have a 45 degree day to look forward to.  But, I have plenty of other things to keep my mind off the weather.

My classes started on Monday.  They’re both online, two programming classes.  One is Visual Basic and the other is Java.  The Java book?  It’s gigantic.  I think it weighs more than Chloe.  So, just another thing to do during the day.

Every day that I’m on the new laptop, I discover something else that I don’t have on it.  Yesterday, it was the font I use for Downey’s House stuff.  Not a big deal, took me 2 minutes to find it, download it, and install it.  But I’m always wondering…”what do I need to download today?”  I never thought I’d be so busy without having a regular 40-hour-a-week job.  I’m at the restaurant 3 or 4 days a week, but that’s only for about 3 hours at a time.  The rest of the stuff gets done from my kitchen table.  But then there’s mom stuff…girl scouts and cookie sales, volunteering at school (which, for me, means orchestrating the Valentine’s Day party for Chloe’s class and helping once a week with computer class), homework, baths, signing up for softball (mental note:  do that this weekend), cleaning up messes.  I’ve been making a bit (just a bit) of regular money from my websites, so there’s maintenance to do on that.

Is there somewhere I can buy a couple more hours in the day?  Please?

But I’m not complaining…not one bit.  How awesome is it that we have our own business?  It’s awesome that I don’t HAVE TO HAVE a 40-hour-a-week job.  It’s awesome that we have two great kids and we can afford to do all this extra stuff with them.  And if my house looks a little messy?  Well, it’s still awesome.

So, dammit, have an awesome January day.

As I was recording the sales for the restaurant, I went into my Quickbooks to enter some deposits.  when I went to save it, everything hung up.  I ended the program, started it again, and the same thing happened.  My laptop had been sitting for a while without being turned off, so I figured a re-start was in order.  As the laptop went through the process, I took a pee, smoked a cigarette, and sat down to get back to work.

Except for one thing.

No windows.  No nothing.  Not a blue screen.  Just…nothingness.

So, I re-started, when through some functions and saw that my laptop thought I didn’t have a hard drive.

Huh?

I hop on the desktop, googling where in the hell my hard drive even is, and how to take it out.  I thought that it may have just become disconnected, because there was some heavy banging happening the day before (that’s a different story).  So, I find out how to remove it, and I did that, and put it back in.  I crossed my fingers, started the computer…and…..nothing.

My heart stopped.  Just a week ago, I was thinking about how I really should have a back up routine.

But I never quite got that far.

I called my baby brother at work, telling him that I had a technical emergency, and could he pretty please help me, because he’s technologically awesome.

Long story short, my laptop went to the computer hospital (my brother’s house) in hopes that he can recover some (all?  Maybe?) of my files from my hard drive.  It’s definitely a physical problem (not a virus, or something like that).  He’s been known to get everything off dead hard drives before, but he made no promises.

The silver lining?  Well, I got a spiffy NEW laptop.  And new Quickbooks.  And new Microsoft Office (I was using 2002, I think).  And I treated myself to Adobe…the big one…at the student price (a savings of $1200 at Staples).

I still keep thinking, “Oh, I’ll get that phone number off the….oh…wait…I can’t get it off the laptop.”  Ugh.

Here’s the order in which I set up the new laptop:

1. Set up email
2. Join online back up service
3. Install Norton

I will never, ever, ever go without back up again.  Just gotta add it to my desktop.  It even has an app for my phone.

And I love, love, love my brother.  I mean, I did even before all this, but this makes him all sorts of “superman-ish.”

GO STEELERS!

So, I watched The Early Show this morning and saw that researchers have determined that today is the saddest day of the year.

But not for me.

I have to admit, though, I had a day last week that was just…well…icky.  I was just miserable, I was cleaning up puke all day, and I had zero motivation.

But today?  Today is good.

I got to watch my Steelers put the smack down on the Ravens.  I got to watch BY MYSELF.  And you know what I did during commercial breaks and halftime?  I cleaned my house.  Laundry?  Put away.  Dusting?  Done.  I love that feeling of having a clean house.  You know what else I did this weekend?  I caught up on my to-do list.  I even cooked dinner yesterday (and that, my friends, is an accomplishment).

I think I’ve turned the corner on the winter blues.  Now only if the weather would start cooperating, I think I can take on the world.

But maybe I’ll just tackle today’s to-do list first.  :-)

You know, there are some people who actually enjoy the snow.  They ski, they stay outside for more than five minutes in the winter, and they like hot cocoa.

Not me.

When we found out we were pregnant, I told Tony that he had one main job.  Snow duty.  He would be officially in charge of all snowmen, igloos, sledding and snowballs.  I just don’t have it in me.

About this time every year, I begin to wonder why I live in Pittsburgh.  WHY have I never moved someplace tropical.  I know that at this point in my life, I’m sorta stuck.  I just don’t want to yank the kids away from their friends, family, school and comfort zone.  So, this time every year, I figure out just about how much longer I have to live here.  I’m figuring about 15 years.  Chloe will be 20 and Becca will be 22.  I think that will work.

I’d better start planning.  I’m thinking Antigua.

Time to start saving.

I’m ready for some back to normal, too.  I’ve gotten used to my quiet time every day.  I’m ready for some.  But I had fun over break, too.  The kids loved the third Chronicles of Narnia.  We played lots of Wii Party.  All good.

I’ve also vowed to get on the elliptical machine at least five days a week.  Dammit.

Christmas decorations coming down today, and once they’re all packed away, there will be a calm that comes over the house.  Mama likey calm.

So, off I go…..have a great day!

So I looked.

Wow. My last blog post in 2009 was December 6th. And the next blog post after that wasn’t until February. I must have been in a mega-funk. Good thing? I guess I have more time to write now. What I DO remember from January 2009 is that I planned our trip to Disney. I think I was so tired of being here, so just…tired, that I needed to concentrate on something fun. I guess it worked.

All in all, 2010 was a good year. Chloe became a ‘big kid’ and started kindergarten. I got some quiet time while they were in school. We got some grown up furniture. We got a new deck. I got to see my Mom three times in 2010. The restaurant got busier, AND got to be a little more on auto-pilot. I got my Associates Degree (finally).

**Hey, did I mention that? I didn’t actually get the piece of paper yet, but I finished all the classes, got a ‘B’ in my English Comp 2 class, filled out all the paperwork, and it’s done. Gotta cross that off my Bucket List!!!***

All in all, I liked 2010. Even though I turned 40 (which was not so bad, even with a gigantic hangover), good things happened. And I’m looking forward to 2011. No resolutions. Except maybe to live in the moment. And this moment? We’re headed to the basement to play some Wii Party. Happy New Year!

Now, we can’t start selling yet, but I’ll scream it out to the world on January 7th. We have a lot of cookies to sell, especially because there are TWO girls I need to sell for.

Nothing beats frozen thin mints.

Nothing.

Just sayin’