Where the Wild Things Are

The Big One woke me up at 1:17 AM, "Mommy, The Almost Feral Cat caught something and is playing with it on my bed."

I went in her room, turned on the light, saw bird feathers all over the floor, and then something thup, thup, thupped at me.

I was in no mood to chase an injured bird all over the house with a broom at 1:17 AM, so I told The Big One to get in my bed, closed all the bedroom doors, and figured The Almost Feral Cat would take care of the bird.

When the alarm went off, I could hear a peep, peep, peep and followed the sound into the toy/storage room and found TAFC sitting on the windowsill, just watching the bird trying to fly out the closed window. Apparently, TAFC had just been playing with the bird for the past 5 hours.

So I scooped up the bird in a shoebox and let it go outside. It looked like it had an injured wing and leg, so I figure it will eventually be taken care of by one of the neighborhood cats.

The Little One was very upset when she heard all this, and wanted me to take the bird to the vet.

Never gonna happen in a million years.

Something New, 365 Days Later

It's exactly a year since I challenged myself to try or learn something new every day.

And, I know, I'm about 20 Something News short.

The truth is, I just got lazy about looking and realized, hey, this exercise isn't a REQUIREMENT, and let it go.

But, I'm glad I tried to keep it up.

It is really HARD to find Something New every day, but I feel like I have relearned to use new eyes in looking at the world. Just because you do something the same way 100 doesn't mean you should.

Some Something News I will continue, like not being afraid of buying sushi in a land locked-city, always carrying my camera with me (because you just never know), and adding different things to my coffee. (BTW, Dr. Pepper in coffee - AMAZING.) And I do feel I have improved my writing skills, which is very helpful in my profession.

And I will continue to keep my eyes open, head up and mind aware.

After all, since the women in my family live until at least 90, at 45 years old today, I'm just halfway done.

Something New, #346

I had an awesome job offer, when I wasn't really looking for a new job. The only thing that was holding me from accepting immediately was the fear of starting a new job. I mean, the first two weeks of any job suck, and this will be the third new job in 14 months.

But it was almost as if I created this job for myself, and it's a 20% bump in pay.

Yeah, like anyone would turn that down.

Because things at my current job are so shaky, and the boss is a little "moody," I was dreading turning in my two weeks' notice for fear she'd tell me to go before the end of the pay period. So I totally wimped out and gave notice by e-mail.

At least I'll have enough on this pay period to cover the mortgage.

Something New, #345

I taught The Big One how to "legally" download music.

I may never see her without the earbuds again.

Something New, #344

The Little One has had the eye/nose/throat goop for the past couple of days, and I ran out of the liquid medicine, so she was forced to learn to swallow a pill.

This did not go over well.

I found myself turning into The Other Mother from Coraline, and tears were on the way. So we compromised and I chopped up the pill and stuck it in a breakfast bar. That seemed to work.

Now I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that it's just allergies, and I don't get another call from the school nurse.

Something New, #343

I was so bored at work today, that I went to the building next to ours to use the restroom.

Freaky thing was, this building is a mirror image of ours, so everything was exactly the same, just backwards.

I felt kind of like Alice.

Something New, #342

I am not the most patient person in the world, especially when it comes to explaining or teaching anything.

This is a gift I inherited from my father.

As soon as my kids learned to read, they were pretty much on their own if they wanted to learn something new. This has saved us a lot of tears over the years.

But The Little One wanted to finish a latch hook rug her sister started, and the only way she could learn was if I showed her.

Gulp.

But we took it step by step, I took a lot of deep breaths, and she got it, and neither of us ended up in tears.

Something New, #341

I Enjoy Being a Girl

Even though I pride myself in being low maintenance, I did make an appointment for highlights, because there is just isn't a product in the stores that will cover my grays anymore.

It took a while, but I liked the results. Now I think I'm stuck doing it for the rest of my life, though.

Something New, #340

I learned that the elementary school has a policy that a student is automatically out for 24 hours if he/she reports to the school nurse with diarrhea.

"It's not really diarrhea! It's just from the drainage from her allergies!"

Nope. Out for another day.