If I could pick one word to describe my hobbies, it would be dilettante.  A jack of all trades, a master of none.  A dabbler.  I don’t really have a focus for my life except raising my kids.  I have so many hobbies and interests that I often find myself spread out too thinly and I don’t seem to enjoy much of anything any more.  So it’s time for more focus.  Time to make some goals and pave some roads for my life to follow.  This will also be extremely helpful in decluttering my home   I have a little depression era mentality where it’s hard for me to chuck things I know I could use later.  Like towels.  I still haven’t made anything with those towels.

I’m not a scrapbooker.  I gave it an honest effort, but I do it like once every two years and I pretty much just use the internet to track my family’s goings on.  So I think it’s time to ditch the scrapbooking crap.

I love gardening.  I’ll keep that one.

I like sewing, but I don’t love it.  I think I just need to use up all my fabric and then go one project at a time.  Same with knitting.  And it’s time to give the craft stuff to the kids since I never use it.

The thing I keep thinking is, how much is it costing me to keep this stuff?  Is it worth the money?  Most of the time, it’s not.  The more stuff we have, the more mental energy we expend keeping track of that stuff and thinking about it.  Then we have to buy totes or boxes to store the stuff in.  And if it keeps accumulating, we find ourselves buying a bigger home to store that stuff in.  Is it really worth $30,000 more in interest to store those comic books or that fabric?

I think I just made a ton more space in my little 900sqft home.  Go ahead, tell me I’m awesome!

I saw this on Jim, and Lex’s blog and wanted to share it too because IT’S SO TRUE!

“We live in an amazing, amazing world, and it’s wasted on the crappiest generation of just spoiled idiots that don’t care.”

I coudn’t find a video to embed on my blog so you’ll have to click the link.  Life is so hard.

This might be child abuse recording this.  I don’t really care.

I can rationalize anything.  It’s true.  Remember that one year I did that stuff?  Totally rationalized it.

This is especially true of me with money and weight loss.  I’ll spend all week saving money and not eating out and buying crap I don’t need, and then the weekend hits and I’m like, “hey, I saved so much money this week.  I can totally afford to go to my favorite restaurant!”  Instant sabotage.  next thing I know I’ve spent all the money I saved.  Same thing with weight loss.  I’ll eat well all week and then the weekend comes and it’s time to take a “vacation” from the diet.  Bring on the chips and ice cream!  I gained back all the weight I lost.

With both I end out staying in the same place.  Two steps forward, two steps back.  And I’m getting tired of the view in this spot.  Time to move!

This weekend will be no exception, I’m sure.  I love super bowl Sunday!  I bought hot wings, brats, and various frozen snack foods already.  No chips or  cookies, but I’m sure those will provided by others.  I can’t decide if I want to give up eating this food or not.  I love food.  I’m a total hedonist.  It’s not easy to give up hedonism.  I guess we’ll just see what I decide tomorrow (Go Warner and Cardinals!!!)

I guess my point is, maybe if I’m more aware of this behavior within my own psychology, I can finally stop it.  I just have to want it.  or something.

I’m like a bear. When it’s cold outside I go into hibernation. I need warm sun and plants poking through the ground and buds on trees for my brain to wake up and write.
I’m going to order my garden seeds in the next week sometime. I’ve looked though my catalog and there’s all kids of cool veggies I can grow!  I’m excited to have my own vegetable garden because my government is bringing on it’s own demise and I’d like to have a good supply of food when that happens. I have about 500lbs of dried beans, but I’d like some side dishes with them when armageddon hits.

You said you were different Obama!! You said you would change things!! *sob*

*for the record, I never thought anything would actually change with him. Except that it doesn’t hurt my brain when he talks. Hate to disappoint the Obamaphiles, but he’s bought and paid for like the rest of them.  It’s still The Man!

Okay, today is the last day to vote in Obama’s “ideas for changing America thing on his site.  Even though most Americans just want to sit around and get high all day, there are some who want to work.  I am begging everyone who cares about small business and American jobs to not only vote at change.org (http://www.change.org/ideas/view/save_handmade_toys_from_the_cpsia) but to write your congresspeople about CPSIA.  The bill’s intent was to make Chinese toys safer, but now it’s forcing thousands of businesses to go under because they can’t afford expensive testing.

In a nut shell: Starting Feb 10, if you make anything product for children, you can’t sell it without having it tested for lead and phalates.  If you like buying handmade, American made items for your children, you can forget it.  No one but large manufacturers can afford it.  The same cloth I buy for any other project can’t be used to make kid’s clothes.  The same yarn an adult’s hat is knitted from can’t be used to make an infant’s.  Make sense?  Of course not!

Originally, this law also made selling anything used (yard sales, goodwill) illegal w/o testing!  A clarification on that was made last week (after tons of angry calls and emails I bet!)

PLEASE  WRITE YOUR REPRESENTATIVES!  For more info about CPSIA, you can check these out

http://cpsia-central.ning.com/

http://liletsyshop.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-you-should-care-about-cpsia.html

http://coolmompicks.com/savehandmade/

http://www.cpsc.gov/ABOUT/Cpsia/cpsia.HTML

I really did.  I’ve been doing real world things other than blogging and facebook.  It’s crazy!  I need to upload pictures from my camera, but we’ve been enjoying our awesome backyard sledding hill and built an igloo with all the snow.  We went to Ely and it was as desolate as expected.  But we had a good visit with the inlaws and were just barely out of the storm until the last 25 miles before home.  So we’re grateful for that.  We really enjoyed our Christmas and seeing all the family we did even though my little brother completely schooled us in Ticket to Ride (Europe), which he’d never played before.  We spent New Years Eve at my cousin’s birthday party and then her dad joined us at my other cousin’s house (across the street) playing Rock Band and Guitar Hero (mine and hubby’s Christmas present) all night.

The boy and I have started doing yoga again.  Baby girl started walking, really walking, about a week ago.  And I’m being bit by the home improvement bug again.  I’m finally picking paint colors (goodbye pasty pink!) And I really, really want a dishwasher.  I’m fantasizing about dishwashers! I got a bunch from the library about installing electrical circuits.  Can I get my tax refund now?  Please!

Of course today I’m dreaming about ripping up this carpet since baby girls been puking all morning.  I have really nice carpet so we kept it, but I’m starting to remember all the reasons we ripped it up at the condo.  We have original hardwood underneath, but it’s incomplete.  And honestly, I think at this point I’d rather have a dishwasher and a bissel.

I guess that’s all.  I gotta go clean my carpet

I always feel like that.  I hate a green Christmas.  This year will definitely be white and we are really enjoying all the snow.  We’ve been making snow angels, snowmen, and sledding down our backyard hill.   I’m waiting for baby girl to fall asleep right now so I can head out and help build an igloo.

The only drawback is driving.  We’re supposed to drive to Ely in the middle of a storm.  I’m hoping if we go through Wendover we’ll be safer *crosses fingers*  Have I mentioned how much I hate holiday travel?  I have?  Well let me do it again.  I really just want to stay at my own home, maybe go to a few local parties, but really just have a laid back Christmas.  No packing, no driving.

Okay, my grinchy moment is done.

“She’s got a fever of a 104!…”  I know, it doesn’t rhyme.  Sorry.  This is night #2 of high fever for baby girl.  Last night her doctor said to take her to the ER when neither tylenol, motrin, or sponge bath brought it down and she wouldn’t eat and was acting weird and vomiting.  It maxxed out at 105 last night.  Since there’s no other symptoms they sent us home.  The doctor barely looked at her.  He checked her neck (meningitis, I suspect), ears and throat which were all fine (ear infection might be starting, but wouldn’t be giving her symptoms yet) and said her heart was racing because of the fever and just give her motrin.  I guess he misread the part about her not responding to it.  He also turned off his ears when I then told him about it.  I wish I had that ability.

I had to hold her all night and all day.  This afternoon the fever abruptly left she started eating and peeing again and was acting totally normal.  She woke up an hour ago and the fever is back at 104 and her poor little heart is racing again.  At least she ate a little and is sleeping for now.

I’m sure it’s something simple like roseola and she’s totally fine, but I don’t know any mom who can just shrug off an infant fever over 104!  This sucks!!

*UPDATE: I took her to her doctor – the real one, the good one – and they were appalled that the ER didn’t check her urine or blood.  They checked her urine and also confirmed there is absolutely no sign of an ear infection.  I may post about that after this because that ER doc really screwed up.  So they’re also hoping it’s roseola and wanted to wait on blood work for a few days.

Fever is gone today (yay!!) but she’s still super clingy and will be fine and then cry randomly like I pinched her hard.  But fever’s gone.  YAY!!!

I mean, I can write, but I wish I was a writer.  Someone who could tell a story and draw the reader into.  Sure, I can occasionally come up with a good one liner, but I struggle with a solid piece of well written prose.  What does that leave me with?  Usually something akin to “This Day in Fruit”.  I was watching bits of A Christmas Story. 

Now I know, that’s a movie, but the narration is brilliant, I think.  I want to come up with lines like

• Some men are Baptists, others Catholics. My father was an Oldsmobile man
• My little brother had not eaten voluntarily in over three years.
• Only one thing in the world could’ve dragged me away from the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window.
• I have since heard of people under extreme duress speaking in strange tongues. I became conscious that a steady torrent of obscenities and swearing of all kinds was pouring out of me as I screamed.
• We plunged into the cornucopia quivering with desire and the ecstasy of unbridled avarice.
• In the heat of battle my father wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan.
• Oh, life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at it’s zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.

How does one come up with such great lines?!  Maybe I just need a good story, a muse to fuel my inner creativity.  I suppose, though, if everyone could write like that then it wouldn’t be such a treat every time I heard or read things like that.