Thursday, February 28, 2008

Holding pattern

First of all, whatever that bug I had was, I still sort of have it. I'm keeping food down and all that, but lord I still don't feel right. Guess my superpowers failed me this time.

On the bright side, neither of my guys got sick. They're a little sick of me feeling sick, but whatever.

The job hunt continues. It sucks to be out of work right now, with everyone so frightened about the economy (oh, except, apparently not our fearless leader), with tax time looming, etc. etc. etc. Between a Euro costing $1.50 and stories of gas going toward $4 per gallon, I just want to sit quietly at home and try not to do anything that involves spending money. Especially since I don't have any coming in. I am bad with money. Well, not really, I know exactly how to manage money. I just usually choose instead to have lovely shoes or handbags or half the contents of my local Gap and Banana Republic stores. These are things I'm working to change. Carrying debt prevents me from having choices, like to choose not to go back to work for a while, or having the type of job I can accept dictated by the pay I need to be making. It sucks, and it's no one's fault but mine.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Sicko



Stealing a few minutes here to post before the little boy wakes up from his nap. We've had a nice day, were able to get out in the stroller for the first time since fall. We timed it well, Valentino dropped off to sleep after a half hour or so, just in time for his afternoon nap. I'm in recovery mode, slowly eating an apple and yogurt and drinking lots of water.

Friday night I was a sick as I've ever been in my life. Curled up in bed shivering, feeling like I was dying of thirst, throwing up any water I did drink. Saturday morning I dragged myself out so I could watch Valentino and his papi at swim class, but then I went right back to bed when we got home. By dinnertime last night, though, I was right as rain. Very strange, although not unusual for me. I seem to always contract an accelerated version of whatever everyone else has, burning through all the symptoms and ailments quickly and usually feeling better pretty soon. I think it's the prenatal vitamins, which I continue to take even though I have no intention of having any more children. I think those vitamins are part of the reason I've been so healthy the past 2 years, hardly a cold or a cough. Let's hope it stays that way.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Early Morning Quiet


Valentino is a morning boy, waking around 6, hungry and ready to be out of his crib. I bring him to our bed to nurse until he falls back to sleep, and then I get up for the day. First stop, coffee maker. Next, layer up on fleece and Uggs and take the poor dog out (but only after I step out and check for coyotes, bears or mountain lions in the yard). Once Ruby has danced around the yard for a bit and done her thing, I come back inside, prepare my coffee, and head for the living room upstairs. Our living room and sun room are on the top floor of the house, and the rooms face east, with additional windows to the north and south. I can see mountains out of every window, and the pine trees that surround our house provide some filter for the intense rising sun light.

I love this time of day. I have always preferred the mornings to the late nights. To be able to wake up and slowly ease into my day with my little routine makes heading off to work so much easier for me. Even on the weekends, when the work is at home or errands are the only things on my agenda, I still rise early, have my bowl of coffee with steaming hot milk, and settle into the couch to check email and news, catch up on the stack of magazines that I never have time to read, or just look out the window.

Our routine will change some in the months to come. We've decided to move back to our house in town, and find renters for the mountain house. When we bought this house way up in the mountains west of Boulder, we had no idea that less than a year later we would have a baby. I think that if we had known Valentino was coming, we probably wouldn't have bought this house. It's difficult to be 30 minutes from anything. If I run out of diapers, which has fortunately never happened, it is 30 minutes to the nearest store. I never head home with less than a half tank of gas, because I have been stranded on the road for hours. We can never go out for drinks or dinner after work, because the dog is always at home, waiting since morning to be let out. Once you make the 30 minute drive home, you don't leave again. Friends never come to visit, either because the trip is so long, or because the roads are intimidating for half the year. I miss having people over for dinner, miss running home in the middle of the day to take lunch in my own kitchen, miss taking the bus the to the farmers market in the spring and summer.

We finally decided that since we do have an alternative, we'll take it. We hope to be able to keep the mountain house by renting it, and someday if we're doing really well financially, we'll keep it just for us to use on the weekends. Either way is fine with me, I'm just happy to be moving home, back to the first house we ever owned, the house where we had our wedding celebrations for days on end, where we can (and have!) comfortably put up 6 friends, and where there are currently three other children under the age of four within 100 yards of our house.

I will miss my quiet mornings here though.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Who's that boy?


I walked into the nanny's house today to pick up Valentino, and he was sitting up on the couch next to her, watching the other baby play on the floor. I looked at him and thought, "who is that?" He just looked like a boy, not a baby. When did that happen?

The mystery of the drool has been solved. Tooth numero uno has pushed through. He has hardly fussed at all, bless his little heart.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

What's in your bag?

Oh, this could be ugly.....

my bag - brown Gap bucket bag:
  • Herbacin kamille & glycerine hand lotion
  • cloth diaper / burp cloth
  • clear plastic envelope with coupons & gift cards
  • diapers, wipes & changing pad thingy
  • Moleskin for notes on a new project
  • spiral notebook for stuff that inspires me
  • receipts, unpaid bills, W-2s
  • plastic zip-top bag (from my last flight) with one lip gloss, one lipstick, one tub of lip stuff, Tide to Go pen, perfume
  • Trader Joe's facial tissue pocket pack
  • handkerchief with my initial embroidered on it
  • key ring 1 - house key, rental house key, safe deposit box key, friendship token, wisdom blessing ring
  • key ring 2 - car key and alarm thingy
  • digital camera
  • card holder for department store / infrequently used charge cards
  • 6 pens
  • small post-it note pad
  • USB flash disk
  • 2 tubes of lipstick, 3 tubes of lip gloss
  • Bellybar (granola bar for preggos, which I fell in love with while pregnant (and I'm not preggo anymore!))
  • nail file
  • homemade business cards that say "ring my cell"
  • dry shampoo
  • 3 checkbooks
  • wide-tooth comb
  • 3 tampons, one thong panty liner
  • cell phone
  • wallet (see below)
my "wallet" - Coach wristlet containing the following:
  • Anthropologie gift card from my sis
  • receipts
  • business cards
  • pictures of my boy and my niece
  • King Sooper and Sephora "loyalty" cards
  • driver license
  • 2 Visa cards
  • 2 bank ATM cards
  • insurance card
  • Costco card
  • Eco Pass (bus pass)
  • my husband's expired driver license (the only picture of him that I carry)
  • $35.07 in cash and coin
  • namaste blessing ring token

Might be time to get a smaller bag.

Monday, February 04, 2008

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Well, it turns out the easiest way for me to fix the Twitter issue (and the stupid comments issue) was to switch templates. Thank you very much, problem solved. Sorry if the page is a little boring, but I was ready for a change and this will do just fine for now.

Thank you for the calls and emails about getting fired. You're all very kind. One of the best things about this little blog is when people "call back". I have no news to report on that front, things seem to be moving very slowly right now in the jobosphere. I'll just keep plugging away until something breaks.

I posted a couple of weeks ago about slowing down, even before my job ended. This change of pace feels pervasive in my life right now, and it feels really good. I joked to a friend the other day that I think I have single-handedly sustained the US economy over the last ten years with my spending habits, which now accounts for my extraordinary level of debt. There are slivers of truth in that statement. Even before I was laid off though, I started to feel the need to slow down, spend less, conserve more. I've always been careful to recycle and reuse as much as possible, but at the same time I suffered from a compulsive shopping urge. I have more STUFF than anyone I know, and a lot of it is either useless or pretty close to it.

I have now embarked on a journey to declutter my life and my home. It started with cleaning out my closet (which was in fact three closets in my house), and I'm now down to less than one regular sized closet for all of my things. Then I moved on to all of the baby's things - outgrown clothes, swings and chairs for which he is now too big, car seats and strollers that are too small now. I gave away a lot to friends with new babies, took the clothes to a consignment store, and Craig's List has been AWESOME for the rest of that stuff. Little by little, the clutter is disappearing. With it goes some of the weight on my shoulders - even if that's only how it feels, it's still worth a lot to me.

Sunday, February 03, 2008

Snap

There are so many things that I wish I could do. I wish I could cook a meal that just makes you go "oh, yum!". I wish I could jog. I wish I had the crafty gene. Right now, I really wish I was a web guru, so that I could fix the stupid Twitter feed on the right. It's driving me nuts, but I love the idea of it so I'm leaving it there until I figure out how to fix it.

I also wish I'd gone to college. It just wasn't possible for me after high school - no money, no scholarships, mediocre grades (lazy!), and people willing to pay me to work. I floated around for a couple of years, and then from the time I was 19, I've been working full time at increasingly challenging jobs. I've really enjoyed myself, especially a job I had doing research in the film industry for about 7 years.

I found myself unemployed two weeks ago. Suddenly, with no warning. Let go due to "restructuring", which is corporate-speak for "gee, we wish we'd managed our funds better". I'd had a bad feeling for a couple of months, but genuinely thought my position was safe. Guess I was wrong.

Job hunting is difficult under the best of circumstances, but I'm finding it hard to get in the door to even interview. The education thing is hard, because I'm currently in a technical field, and people want to see engineering and/or computer science degrees. I've always gotten by through relationships that get me in the door, and then I work my ass off to learn what I need to know. This time, though, it feels harder.