Today was a good day

enough shopping to sustain me for a couple of weeks

so much stuff

the best thing I bought today:

a set of Halloween cookie cutters, decorating kit, and pre-packaged sugar cookie dough from Williams-Sonoma. I can't believe I'm going to make cookies with my little family. I love holidays.

Observations and Thoughts After a LONG Day

A lot of people are out and about at 5:00 in the morning. I can't believe I used to be one of them.

Getting an MRI is not an enjoyable experience, especially when you have to be at the hospital at 6:00 am.

Vacuuming my new carpet is more strenuous than my morning workout.

Does anyone have Verizon cell service? Does it suck? What phone should I get? Neil wants this one:



for six hundred bucks??? insane.

Neil's dad is way too skinny and it is freaking me out.

All I want to do is sleep and there's just not enough time.

I am more excited to buy Hayden's fall clothes than mine this year. We're off to a late start though. It was like ninety degrees here today, so it's not like we'd actually be able to wear any of it yet anyway. My head is dancing with thoughts of tiny suede pants, mini cable sweaters, and little denim jackets to go with the crisp air, falling leaves, and that apple-y/cinnamon-y smell that should be here by now. I'm getting started this weekend. With or without crisp air.

The Weirdest Thing

The strangest thing just happened to me. I was at the gym working out. The gym I go to was a school once upon a time and so the main gym area is three or four classrooms opened up to create one big room. There are sets of double doors that lead outside on each wall. All of these doors were closed except one set at the far end of the gym, directly across from where I was working out. It was open to let in some fresh air, but you can't really enter or exit through it. A young man (maybe 18 or 19) suddenly came walking in those doors. He stopped in front of me for a second and it freaked me out. He was about six feet tall with a shaved head and was wearing a thick sweatshirt - like a Hurley one or something. I thought it was weird, but then I felt bad because I had made a snap judgment about this guy, and he probably just worked at the gym and was running late. I went back to working out. Then, I notice a cop outside the gym with his gun drawn. I didn't know what to do. I saw him try to open the doors to get in the gym from where he was, but those were all locked. I had no idea what to do. The one man that was in the gym this morning noticed what was going on too, and went and opened the doors to where the cop was looking. He told the cop the guy had come through, and the cop burst in and started doing that gun-out-looking-around-corners thing. I had visions of being taken hostage, I swear. Then, the man saw the guy across the street, running into someone's back yard. So, the cop took off after him. I tried to see what was going on, but I saw the cop jump a fence, and that was it. I finished my workout, but when I left an hour later, they still hadn't found the guy. There are cops all over the place and I'm glad I don't live right next to the gym. I can't stop wondering why the guy stopped in front of me (what was he going to do?) and why were the cops after him in the first place (what had he already done?)? I wonder if I'll ever know.

Recommendations, Anyone?

It's been a while since I've read a good novel. The last two books I've read are:
The Girlfriend's Guide to Toddlers and What to Expect the Toddler Years



I could use a few good books to read in my spare time (ha ha).
Anyone have any suggestions?

P.S. I hate Stater Brothers. I just wasted an hour there and they didn't have half of the things on my shopping list. I hope the strike ends soon. I miss the big new Vons where I usually shop - with the Starbucks and fancy cheeses and nice produce and fresh bread and all the vegetarian stuff a girl could ever want.

Completion!!!

The remodel is officially done! I have been waiting five months to say that!
Here are some pictures:

Living Room (only major change is the carpet)
living room.jpg

Another view of the living room, looking into the dining room:
livingroom2.jpg

In the kitchen, it's all new ceramic tile floors, new counters, we took out the old fluorescent light fixture and replaced with can lights:
kitchen0001.jpg
kitchen0002.jpg

Here's the entry:
entry.jpg

Our bedroom:
master bedroom0001.jpg
master bedroom0002.jpg
(damn - I just noticed the picture on the wall is crooked and you can see my dog's butt in the doorway of the second picture!)

The glorious wall of shoes and purses:
wall of shoes.jpg

And the shower-which I finally got to use yesterday!!!
shower.jpg

Hooray!! Now I feel like I need to buy all new furniture and window coverings. Will the madness ever stop!? Here's a terrible picture of Hayden in his room:

hayden's room.jpg

He was just waking up from a nap (as indicated by the crazy hair) and was wondering what in the hell I was doing! I didn't take pictures of the other two bathrooms or the guest room, but they all have new tile and carpet too.

In other news, my very best pregnant friends are having a girl. So we can expect to meet Tarin Elizabeth sometime around the end of February!

Tales from the Gym
This morning, the sweatiest man at the gym fervently wiped down a weight machine before he got on it. It happened to be the machine I just finished using. The machine I politely wiped off even though I wasn't even sweaty. The same machine I was standing right next to, watching in horror. I'd seen this guy do the same thing to other people, but when it was me, I have to admit, it felt personal. Is this guy in denial or what? This isn't the first odd thing I've witnessed at my gym. Also today, a man (weird bike guy as I refer to him) came up to me as I was doing one particularly hard upper body exercise. The one where you have to put your forearms on the little pads with your arms extended to the sides and then pull the bars together in front of your chest. He told me that only on my first reps, he could see the muscle I was supposed to be targeting. In other words, he caught me losing my form towards the end of the set. I guess he was trying to be helpful. But, I felt like he was watching every single rep I did the rest of my workout.

I go to the gym early because I have to go before Neil goes to work, but also to beat what I like to call "social hour." If I go too late in the morning, without fail, the "crew" shows up. About ten middle aged people who spend way too much time per body part and seem to classify themselves as serious exercise enthusiasts, though their physiques disagree. Not that they're out of shape, but for as much time as they spend with the free weights, watching each movement in the mirror, they should like Lou Farigno - but they don't - they look like middle aged people who occasionally exercise and regularly use tanning beds. These folks also occasionally abandon the free weight area and use the weight machines I use. They will sit on a machine and carry on a conversation, completely oblivious to the other people (namely me) who only need to do that one inner thigh machine to finish their workout. Why do they torment me so? A couple times, I went in the evenings. I quickly learned that that is high school football player time. I don't particularly enjoy getting into slightly embarrassing positions with a seventeen year old audience, so that time slot was out too.

Last week, I had my one and only blatant sexual advance. I was running on the treadmill, listening, as usual, to some very loud hip hop music with very offensive lyrics. This man in his late 30's came right up in my face and made what I can only describe as sustained direct eye contact. It was like he was trying to intimidate me into being attracted to him. The rest of the time I was there, he kept it up, leering at me from his StairMaster. It motivated me to work harder so I could kick his ass if I needed to!

Halfway Point

I've made it half way through this week...and lived to blog about it. Neil's Dad is doing okay, though he's in a lot of pain. It's really hard to see someone who has always been so vibrant suddenly seem so small and afraid. Hopefully, he'll be out of the hospital soon.

I made my deadline, and got another new one to stress out about! Hooray! I just went through my Portuguese user manual, formatting like a mad woman. My mouse-hand is tingling painfully from scrolling through almost 500 pages of technical drivel. I am procrastinating moving on to French.

Our shower doors are in!


I have been staring at this massive shower for about two months now and still can't use it. Soon...

My very best pregnant friends are finding out the sex of their baby this Friday. Here's a picture of each of them with Hayden on the day he was born:
Becky:
becky&hayden.jpg
Reid:
reid&hayden.jpg

I can't wait to find out is it's going to be Cannon Reid or Tarin Elizabeth (I think those are the latest name options). It almost makes me want to do it all over again. And then I remember what I looked like nine months pregnant:
momandbeck.jpg

and I am content to wait another year and a half!

Why This Week Is Going To Suck

This week is going to suck because:

Neil's Dad has to have surgery tomorrow morning. He was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago, and while the outlook is good, it's cancer. Typing the word alone makes me shaky.

Neil is out of town presenting his stores' yearly profits and losses to the president and CEO of his company. He had a great year, nothing to worry about, but stressful in and of itself. Not to mention, he will be away while his Dad is having major surgery. And has to somehow get back from L.A. during rush hour traffic to San Marcos to get to class by 7:00.

My shower doors are being installed tomorrow. We've been waiting for them forever, but now I have to be home between the hours of twelve and four instead of at the hospital.

Neil's Mom usually watches Hayden for a couple of hours on Mondays and Wednesdays so I can work. She just called me tonight and had to cancel because another family member is in the hospital for emergency heart procedures tomorrow.

I have a huge deadline this Wednesday and no time to work!

Neil has his first MBA midterm on Wednesday and no time to study.

We have to move almost every item of furniture out of the house on Friday because we're getting our new carpet installed on Saturday. I can't wait for the carpet, but that doesn't make for a fun Friday night, or a relaxing weekend putting the house back together.

All I really care about is that the surgery goes okay. Maybe it's better that there is so much other stuff going on. I should welcome the distraction. If I had time to focus my anxiety in one direction, I might worry myself into oblivion.

About Fathers

I guess I've been thinking about this because a friend's father passed away a couple of weeks ago. It made me think about my father. It's a sad story, and without retelling the whole tale, the bottom line is that I didn't know him very well and he died unexpectedly about seven years ago.

I have realized that I never really thought of him as a father. And not because I had a different father figure instead. I just didn't have one at all. Without really taking the time to analyze why, I always felt fatherless. Like I sprang forth from nowhere, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Physically, it's obvious that my dad had some genetic impact on me. My skin is a bit darker than my Mom's, I am short like he was, I have a different nose. But, I have never once wondered what part of my character I got from him. I don't know what that says about me or him. Just something that occurred to me...