knick-knack paddy whack
i never write anymore. i must be happy and getting enough attention.
it's strange how life feels different these days, but still so much the same.
i drive a mini-van now. i have a car-seat for when i pick up the little kids in our family. since i haven't been working i've been helping out our friend trey (best man) by picking his boys up from school every day. i bring them home, help them with their homework, and if there's enough time i take them outside for some backyard sledding.
we have the greatest backyard in apopka. our picnic bench overlooks our neighborhoods giant runoff basin. it doesn't hold water because there's another drain in the middle that leads to the little pond behind the tree line. it's just a steep grassy basin. perfect for sliding down on pieces of cardboard. the kids love it :)
up until last week, picking the kids up from school and keeping house were my only two responsibilities. when i noticed i was talking to my cats more than a normal person should and cleaning things that were already clean to keep from going crazy, i started looking for a job. i found one immediately, and it is the perfect job for me. i am the new assistant manager at tuesday morning in sanford. i LOVE it! i have missed working and have really REALLY missed retail. i only work about 28 hours a week and since the store opens at 10am and closes at 7pm i don't have crazy hours. i will probably spend my entire first paycheck on stuff for our house there. i'd been in tuesday mornings in melbourne, merritt island and apopka, but they always seemed like a mess of weird stuff. our store is really neat....until you get to the back five aisles. they are a mess. but i'm fixing that.
i opened alone for the first time yesterday and everything went smoothly until my last two pre-opening steps: check email and turn on the music. i couldn't get an internet connection. i looked all over the store for the router and couldn't find it. i had to call megan, my manager. once i found it and reset it, everything was fine. our regional manager picks out the in-store soundtrack. it's a weird mix of slutty bar music (mustang sally, slow ride), pop hits from the early 2000s (fergie, christina aguilera), pre-ray of light madonna, lots and lots of johnny cash/neil young/elvis, and sprinkled with weirdness like unidentifiable opera and a version of 'my irish rose' so dripping with dramatic italian inflection it's almost funny.
about ten minutes after opening the registers went down. i had to reset both of them, which takes about five minutes each because of the ancient computers and you can only do them one at a time in sequence. those were all the hiccups, and the rest of the day went well. the other woman i was working with was new too. she got flustered if there were more than two people in line at the register and made mistake after mistake because she tried to go too fast. she worked hard though. the mistakes were easy to fix because the registers are exactly the same as the ones michaels had (before they updated). i was supposed to unpack and separate the truck for the weekend sale and since i finished that with plenty of time to spare i started working on the list left for the closers. it really is the perfect job for me. some people were born to do great things. i was born to work retail. i'm good at it and it makes me happy.
me, patrick and my mom went up to visit matt and lisa in brooklyn last week. i finally made it to manhattan this trip. we had tickets to see the addams family on broadway. the show was awesome :) roger rees played gomez and brooke shields was morticia. i love roger rees. and the woman who played grandma-ma, jackie hoffman, HILARIOUS. we had tickets for the evening show. next time we'll see a matinee. the show was over at 11pm and we didn't get back to brooklyn on the trains until well after midnight. i stood in the middle of time square on a friday night. we spent the day wandering around the city. i peed in trump towers, went to fao schwartz (nicest salespeople in nyc) and laughed at the people in line to get into the apple store (it's all on the internets people!). the apple store in manhattan is the ugliest turd of a building. for a company renowned for it's design, their flagship is an eyesore. we also strolled central park, very pretty. and i occupied wall street.
here is what the news isn't telling you about the occupy wall street movement, at least in nyc: the campers are made up of the homeless kids who go to the rainbow gathering that comes to ocala every year. seriously. even the nick-at-nite kid who gives out free cigarettes was there. some of the tarp-tents had homemade signs with their camp-name on it. and they had the worst drum circle i have ever heard. i don't know if it was too cold or if the big city has terrible acoustics...they were really bad. it could have been the snare drum.
we also went to the brooklyn flea again. i love the flea. i hit up the milk truck and had another ham and cheese with dark chocolate milkshake. so delicious! and my sister found a set of hottles! the girl wanted $28 each for them. i offered $20 for one and gave $19.50 because that's all i had left after my milk truck binge. and patrick bought me an old-fashioned better homes and gardens cookbook in the binder for $6. lisa has one and said every recipe she's tried has been good.
lisa and matt are finally having a baby! we went out to dinner with matt's parents and brother and sister-in-law on saturday night and they told us all. i am almost as glad for my mom as i am for lisa and matt. they've been trying for about two years now with no luck. my poor sister has been calling my poor mom in tears for so long my mom was running out of things to say. you can't hug through a phone. lisa is due at the end of may. i'm gonna be an auntie x3!
patrick and i tried to get pregnant in september and october, but nothing happened. it turned out for the best because i would have delivered really close to lisa and my mom would have been torn in two. and now that i have another job, i want to work for a while. i have this sneaking suspicion that we're going to have trouble conceiving. i think patrick might be the problem. he's 41, has carried a lot of weight his whole life and is a long-time weed-enthusiast. all these things make conditions just right for a low sperm count. i would be shocked if it turns out the problem is on my side. i've accidentally gotten pregnant too many times in my life. kind of ironic for someone who has never thought she wanted to birth a baby. i've always leaned more towards adoption. finally i find the man whose baby i would LOVE to have, and we might not be able to. we haven't talked about it. i don't think patrick thinks it's weird i didn't get pregnant immediately. i know it is. but i'm trying to tread lightly. the last thing i want is for him to feel like my sister did because he thinks he's broken. fortunately we have a healthy sex and love life :)
my sexual appetite was almost totally diminished after getting so sick last year. it only really started picking up over this past summer, and i was so afraid of getting pregnant before we were married that i was really conservative. i'm not the same sexual beast i used to be, and i don't feel the same way about sex i used to. i suppose that's all natural when you fall in love. i don't talk to patrick about what i used to be like or all the slutting around i used to do. it's in the past. i'm not at all ashamed of any of it and still look back with little smile, but if patrick knew a tenth of that part of what i used to be, he would shrivel up and doubt himself. for no reason. i don't want anyone else but him.
it's going to be time to get the kids soon.
i think the other reason i haven't updated my journal is i have a new toy. patrick bought me an hp touchpad, and i LOVE it. i even bought a bigger purse just so i could carry it with me wherever i go. it's my new crack. we have a mac but i dismantled my computer when we moved in may and haven't set it back up. i don't think i'm going to. i'm over desktop computers for a while.
the last thing i'll mention is my awesome cats. i love them. they are the best cats ever. they love us and they love each other. morgan and maisey, in pictures.
they are both really good at sleeping :)
i have all the professional shots from our wedding, and patrick put our video on vimeo so our out-of-state family could see us get married. i might post those next, even though you're probably over it. i am not :)
it's strange how life feels different these days, but still so much the same.
i drive a mini-van now. i have a car-seat for when i pick up the little kids in our family. since i haven't been working i've been helping out our friend trey (best man) by picking his boys up from school every day. i bring them home, help them with their homework, and if there's enough time i take them outside for some backyard sledding.
we have the greatest backyard in apopka. our picnic bench overlooks our neighborhoods giant runoff basin. it doesn't hold water because there's another drain in the middle that leads to the little pond behind the tree line. it's just a steep grassy basin. perfect for sliding down on pieces of cardboard. the kids love it :)
up until last week, picking the kids up from school and keeping house were my only two responsibilities. when i noticed i was talking to my cats more than a normal person should and cleaning things that were already clean to keep from going crazy, i started looking for a job. i found one immediately, and it is the perfect job for me. i am the new assistant manager at tuesday morning in sanford. i LOVE it! i have missed working and have really REALLY missed retail. i only work about 28 hours a week and since the store opens at 10am and closes at 7pm i don't have crazy hours. i will probably spend my entire first paycheck on stuff for our house there. i'd been in tuesday mornings in melbourne, merritt island and apopka, but they always seemed like a mess of weird stuff. our store is really neat....until you get to the back five aisles. they are a mess. but i'm fixing that.
i opened alone for the first time yesterday and everything went smoothly until my last two pre-opening steps: check email and turn on the music. i couldn't get an internet connection. i looked all over the store for the router and couldn't find it. i had to call megan, my manager. once i found it and reset it, everything was fine. our regional manager picks out the in-store soundtrack. it's a weird mix of slutty bar music (mustang sally, slow ride), pop hits from the early 2000s (fergie, christina aguilera), pre-ray of light madonna, lots and lots of johnny cash/neil young/elvis, and sprinkled with weirdness like unidentifiable opera and a version of 'my irish rose' so dripping with dramatic italian inflection it's almost funny.
about ten minutes after opening the registers went down. i had to reset both of them, which takes about five minutes each because of the ancient computers and you can only do them one at a time in sequence. those were all the hiccups, and the rest of the day went well. the other woman i was working with was new too. she got flustered if there were more than two people in line at the register and made mistake after mistake because she tried to go too fast. she worked hard though. the mistakes were easy to fix because the registers are exactly the same as the ones michaels had (before they updated). i was supposed to unpack and separate the truck for the weekend sale and since i finished that with plenty of time to spare i started working on the list left for the closers. it really is the perfect job for me. some people were born to do great things. i was born to work retail. i'm good at it and it makes me happy.
me, patrick and my mom went up to visit matt and lisa in brooklyn last week. i finally made it to manhattan this trip. we had tickets to see the addams family on broadway. the show was awesome :) roger rees played gomez and brooke shields was morticia. i love roger rees. and the woman who played grandma-ma, jackie hoffman, HILARIOUS. we had tickets for the evening show. next time we'll see a matinee. the show was over at 11pm and we didn't get back to brooklyn on the trains until well after midnight. i stood in the middle of time square on a friday night. we spent the day wandering around the city. i peed in trump towers, went to fao schwartz (nicest salespeople in nyc) and laughed at the people in line to get into the apple store (it's all on the internets people!). the apple store in manhattan is the ugliest turd of a building. for a company renowned for it's design, their flagship is an eyesore. we also strolled central park, very pretty. and i occupied wall street.
here is what the news isn't telling you about the occupy wall street movement, at least in nyc: the campers are made up of the homeless kids who go to the rainbow gathering that comes to ocala every year. seriously. even the nick-at-nite kid who gives out free cigarettes was there. some of the tarp-tents had homemade signs with their camp-name on it. and they had the worst drum circle i have ever heard. i don't know if it was too cold or if the big city has terrible acoustics...they were really bad. it could have been the snare drum.
we also went to the brooklyn flea again. i love the flea. i hit up the milk truck and had another ham and cheese with dark chocolate milkshake. so delicious! and my sister found a set of hottles! the girl wanted $28 each for them. i offered $20 for one and gave $19.50 because that's all i had left after my milk truck binge. and patrick bought me an old-fashioned better homes and gardens cookbook in the binder for $6. lisa has one and said every recipe she's tried has been good.
lisa and matt are finally having a baby! we went out to dinner with matt's parents and brother and sister-in-law on saturday night and they told us all. i am almost as glad for my mom as i am for lisa and matt. they've been trying for about two years now with no luck. my poor sister has been calling my poor mom in tears for so long my mom was running out of things to say. you can't hug through a phone. lisa is due at the end of may. i'm gonna be an auntie x3!
patrick and i tried to get pregnant in september and october, but nothing happened. it turned out for the best because i would have delivered really close to lisa and my mom would have been torn in two. and now that i have another job, i want to work for a while. i have this sneaking suspicion that we're going to have trouble conceiving. i think patrick might be the problem. he's 41, has carried a lot of weight his whole life and is a long-time weed-enthusiast. all these things make conditions just right for a low sperm count. i would be shocked if it turns out the problem is on my side. i've accidentally gotten pregnant too many times in my life. kind of ironic for someone who has never thought she wanted to birth a baby. i've always leaned more towards adoption. finally i find the man whose baby i would LOVE to have, and we might not be able to. we haven't talked about it. i don't think patrick thinks it's weird i didn't get pregnant immediately. i know it is. but i'm trying to tread lightly. the last thing i want is for him to feel like my sister did because he thinks he's broken. fortunately we have a healthy sex and love life :)
my sexual appetite was almost totally diminished after getting so sick last year. it only really started picking up over this past summer, and i was so afraid of getting pregnant before we were married that i was really conservative. i'm not the same sexual beast i used to be, and i don't feel the same way about sex i used to. i suppose that's all natural when you fall in love. i don't talk to patrick about what i used to be like or all the slutting around i used to do. it's in the past. i'm not at all ashamed of any of it and still look back with little smile, but if patrick knew a tenth of that part of what i used to be, he would shrivel up and doubt himself. for no reason. i don't want anyone else but him.
it's going to be time to get the kids soon.
i think the other reason i haven't updated my journal is i have a new toy. patrick bought me an hp touchpad, and i LOVE it. i even bought a bigger purse just so i could carry it with me wherever i go. it's my new crack. we have a mac but i dismantled my computer when we moved in may and haven't set it back up. i don't think i'm going to. i'm over desktop computers for a while.
the last thing i'll mention is my awesome cats. i love them. they are the best cats ever. they love us and they love each other. morgan and maisey, in pictures.
they are both really good at sleeping :)
i have all the professional shots from our wedding, and patrick put our video on vimeo so our out-of-state family could see us get married. i might post those next, even though you're probably over it. i am not :)