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Friday, August 29, 2008

Haiku Friday #2: Crappy week


Haiku Friday


Husband is busy
Baby refuses to sleep
These make me grouchy

Bureaucrat bullshit
Three days ago, then next day
A speeding ticket

How can my sister
Cry her way out of one?
It's happened twice now.

Yet another job
That might as well be performed
By ruthless robots

For all the pity
And compassion I receive
From each cop I've met.

Today was better
Until my husband came home
(Just kidding, sweetheart).


Oh, well, at least I got a break while my mom watched the baby today. He took three naps today! But they each lasted 25, 35, then 15 minutes. Look at the time of this post. He literally went down 10 minutes ago. And that after staying up late last night. Grrrr. Argh. (Points if you know what that's from.)

But blogging always makes me feel better after he's gone to sleep (actually, they both are -- Brandon has another sub job in the morning), especially because the kitties take advantage of my empty lap.

Haiku Friday is fun, people! Look how much I saved on therapy this week. :) But really, come and play. Check out more haiku at Christina's blog, leave comments, click around archives, spread the bloggy love!



Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, I am looking for a new blog design (not that I don't like this one, but it's a little dull for me). I may be experimenting with these in the next week or so. Be sure to stop by early and often and let me know what you think!

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Surely, you must be joking...

*****RANT WARNING*****

We recently bought our friend's car. Today we went down to the BMV to get the title taken care of, since his birthday was on Monday and the plates are now expired. I should probably mention that this was the second (and not final) visit on behalf of this particular car. Let's not forget the three times I went earlier this summer because of my old car.

Oh yes, my friends, this is a story about bureaucratic bullshit.

Let me back up a bit. I have owned my 1993 Nissan Altima for 5 years. Back when my husband and I were first dating, it was the nice car -- his had a broken speedometer, among other things. And really, for a 10-year-old car (even a 10-year-old Japanese sedan), it was in great shape. A few years later, my husband bought a 2002 Mazda Protege. So then that was the nice car. Fast forward a few more years, and we were planning to move to Boston with my newly discovered fetus. On a trip from Columbus to Cincinnati (where his dad lives), the Nissan started making funny noises. We were planning on leaving our cars here while he did a year's worth of grad work (would you want to pay for Boston insurance and a parking spot a quarter-mile from your tiny apartment, and oh yeah, have I mentioned Boston drivers are INSANE?). So we just figured we'd leave my car at his dad's house instead of his car, and in the meantime, my mechanic brother-in-law could look at it.

Long story short (yeah, I know, not that short), we decided my car was no longer fit for transporting an infant. We moved back in February and bought our friend's car with the intention of selling mine soon. It's taken us this long to sell my car, for about 30% less than what we wanted for it. The economists who say we're not in a recession can bite me. In the meantime, the tags expired in June because they were still in my mom's name -- she had turned the title over to me, oh, the weekend before we moved. No time to get new plates then. And because we live in an apartment, any car with expired tags gets a notice. Apparently people abandon cars in these parking lots? If you say so.... So I had to pay for new tags, despite the fact that we had already spent 4 months trying to sell it, all the while not driving it. And then I had my birthday three weeks ago. Another year's worth of tags. And then we sold the car, and they wanted more money from me to turn the title over to the person who bought it! WTF? They already get fees from the buyer, what the hell do they think I am, made of money?

Things must be simpler now that we've sold that car, right? Ha. So my husband goes to the BMV a few weeks back to get the title for the Hyundai (our friend's former car) turned over. Chad had signed the title and mailed it to us, since he lives in Cincinnati. My husband said he'd need to get it notarized, too, because it says right there on the title that that's what you have to do. They argued about it, and Chad insisted he was right. So Brandon took the title in, and guess what? They told him it needed to be notarized. We mailed it back to Chad, who took his sweet time getting it notarized and sent back to us.

So now we're caught up to today, thinking that nothing else could possibly go wrong. Why do we even bother? The lovely ladies at the title agency tell us that we still cannot finalize the sale of this car. (See the title of this post). "The car belongs to your friend and his wife. We can't turn the title over without both of their signatures. You can try going next door to License Services for a 30-day temporary tag so you don't get pulled over." Where they tell us that no, they cannot do that, because it would be illegal. Furthermore, we cannot put my brand-new license plates on this car, because those plates are only in my name, and not in both our names. Bite me. They might as well create a robot to do these people's jobs for them, because we would get just as much compassion from it.

We are now blessed with the privelege of sending back the title, having Chad's wife sign it, get it notarized, send it back, go back into the title agency, and try not to develop depression and ulcers in the process.

And all I could say to Brandon was, "When can we move to Canada?"

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Why Kroger rocks

On Tuesday, the day of no nap, Christina and I went to the Kroger out by her to pick up some dinner on the way back from the pool. They were giving away free pinwheels. I picked one up, figuring that if Adam wasn't entertained, I would be.

Adam was thrilled. I didn't take it out for him to play with until Wednesday, since he was having sleep issues, but as soon as I did, he was riveted. I blew on it to make it spin, and his eyes lit up. When I held it out to him, he batted at it to make it spin some more. It's just so cool how something that simple can elicit such a profound reaction.


At my mom's house, having a blast with that pinwheel!


Now I'm off to do something productive!

Haiku Friday

Haiku Friday



Time for something new:
A fresh, fun game on my blog
Called Haiku Friday

From Christina's blog,
An alternative to posts
Long and hard to write.

Some weeks have a theme
Others are purely random
This week is "School Time."

My husband teaches,
Substituting for many
Local school districts.

He also went back
To get his certificate
For high school English

This week was the start
Of both learning and teaching
I think I'll miss him.




Christina over at A Mommy Story started doing Haiku Friday with Jennifer over a year ago as an alternative to spending the first part of the weekend writing a long, detailed blog post. Still going strong, this week's batch had over 40 participants! Although I'm late as usual, I'm participating this week. Of course, I'm sending my husband off to school this week, not my son -- that day will come (not soon enough).

Anyone else who feels so inclined should join in as well. If you have never written haiku before, it's not hard. The only requirements: three lines long, first line is five syllables long, second is seven, third is five. It just takes a few extra minutes (or a good thesaurus -- I recommend Thesaurus.com). Christina explains how you can participate and put one of those cute little buttons on the post or on your sidebar, and you can get added to the list. Come on, it'll be fun, and you might even find some new cool blogs to frequent or get some new traffic to your own (woot!).

Peace out!

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Nap time

Monday was great! Or so I thought....

It was a normal day, at first. I woke up, got ready for the day, Adam woke up, and a few hours later was about ready for a nap. Now, he is a short napper. I count myself lucky if he sleeps for an hour or more. Typically, he naps for 30 to 45 minutes, but sometimes he wakes up after 20 minutes with that "Hi, Mom! I'm awake now" smile and I know I'm screwed.

But lately I've been trying to encourage longer naptimes. I usually wait until I hear him crying (or talking to himself) to go in, to make sure he's not just "sleep whimpering," and instead of picking him up and assuming he's done sleeping, I offer to nurse him a little. If he still needs to finish his nap, he'll go back to sleep within five or ten minutes. That usually ensures a total nap time of an hour or two.

So I put him down as usual, and half an hour later, he started to fuss. I put him back to sleep, and he continued to nap for another two and a half hours! I was ecstatic! Too bad I didn't take advantage of it and get some laundry done. Instead, I sat on my tush and read blogs. Bad mommy. I did go in to check on him, just to make sure he was still breathing -- just look what I found!

I figured he wouldn't need another nap that day and maybe even go to bed early. He didn't need a second nap, but he went to bed around an hour later than usual. But that wasn't the worst part. He woke up five hours after he went to bed, and didn't go back to sleep at all until a nap late Tuesday afternoon. We went to the pool with some friends, and he usually gets tired with the sun and the heat, and he didn't even fall asleep in his stroller this week.

I felt better after talking to Kendra, my aunt-in-law. Apparently her daughter Zoe (almost 18 months) was a terror the other day after not getting the nap she needed until 3 or 4 hours later. They had to get pictures taken for passports because they're taking a trip to Canada (am I the only person who thinks the need for a passport to get into Canada is ridiculous?).

He had a two and a half hour nap today. Hopefully he won't wake up super-de-duper early again tomorrow. I have a job interview in the morning and need those precious last two hours or so of sleep. Of course, if I'm tired in the morning, it will be my fault, because I'm sitting here typing instead of having gone to bed an hour ago (or more).

Eh. I think I'll remedy that.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Helping Bloggers Everywhere

I am a newbie blogger.

In case I haven't mentioned that yet. I mean, I've done some LiveJournal-ing before, but this is my first "real live blog," per se. A friend of mine does a lot of blogging (she's a really good writer!). I've been checking out her blog, A Mommy Story, and came across this:





Do what now?

So I clicked on it. It took me to Motherhood Uncensored (Note: when she says uncensored, she means it! That said, her blog is also very good, and very funny).

This is Kristen's amazingly brilliant and clever idea:


If you read blogs, then for the month of August, make the "pledge" to click through from your feed reader. No obligation to leave a hilarious comment or send a long stalkerish email (although both, within reason, are always lovely). Just click through to the blog (not on ads unless you are so led) and if you're feeling generous, click around to their older posts.

Just those extra page views can make a big difference for bloggers who could really use the help, or in my case, where page views don't matter so much, a big fat ego boost.



Sure, I'll join in (better late than never, right? and of course, I'm a geek -- I wanna do what all the cool kids are doing). Now that you mention it, this year has not gone so well -- my husband is going back to school for a teaching certificate in the hopes that this time next year, it will make him more employable. I'm looking for work, despite the knowledge that most of that income will go to pay for childcare. And I know everyone out there has similar problems right now. So go ahead and click that button, read some blogs, every click to an older page counts. I mean, you're gonna read them anyway, right? Just take that extra minute to go to the blog itself and help your fellow bloggers out.

And if you like what you see here, feel free to keep reading into September, too. :)

Until next time!

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Mission Statement: Part II

I do actually want to write something here about who I am, what I do, and what I want to accomplish here. Last night's post was really just about getting my blog up and running. I was tired, but I wanted to put up anything, even as short and sweet as that was. Figuring out where to start is always the hardest part for me. In fact, when I was in school and writing papers, I would frequently write the middle first and then go back later to put in the introduction.

But I digress.

First up: Who the hell are you?
Hi! I don't think we've been formally introduced. I'm Melissa (Mel for short), a twenty-something SAHM, SCA participant, gamer, comic book reader, musician of sorts, knitter, sewer, and other crafter, and general all-around nerd. But in a good way, I think. I am also wife to Brandon, a teacher and perpetual student (also a geek), and mother to Adam, an 8-month-old who will most likely end up a geek himself. Poor kid. Hopefully we won't screw him up more than that.

And why should I care?
Well, like many of you (maybe all of you), I'm a mom. It's up to each of us to support one another, and to look to each other for support when we need it. I hope this becomes a source for support, for the give and take of advice, a place to read and anticipate or reminisce. In the short term, maybe just a fun place to visit for a laugh. Kids are usually pretty good at providing comedic material.

So that's a starting place. More to come soon!

Mission Statement

So I’m finally joining the blogosphere, and what better topic than parenthood? It seems like a great way to meet and make virtual friends while venting and just generally collecting my thoughts -- I've noticed that keeping a diary/journaling/blogging leaves me feeling more clear-headed and less grouchy. So tune in to read my "momisms, funny kid stories, and random (over)sharing."

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