$53.44

That is the current balance in my checking account.

*sigh* and I just got paid yesterday.

The good news is, I got me a new job. I am really excited about it. Good pay. ideal hours. benefits.

Yep, looks like I have to be a grown up afterall. It could be worse, I suppose. Doing the 9 to 5 thing has got to be better than trying to figure out how I am going to make it through another week with $52.44 to my name. Some child support would be cool. But I aint opening that can of shit right now.........that is a whole 'nother post that is bound to be LONG and generously strewn with expletives. So I am walking away............

But. I am optimistic. Yes I am. Right now I got the theme song to the "Jefferson's" in my head. I don't know about the dee-luxe apartment in the sky, but I definately think I am movin on up. (but what does burning beans have to do with it?)

I'll be OK folks. Dont you worry about me. Just wish me luck with the new gig.

Thanks.

Sorry peeps.

I have been a bad blogger. BAD. I havent seen to be able to find the time or energy lately to sit down and let the words flow. It really sucks. I am terribly overwhelmed at the moment with the day to day. I dont feel like I am on top of anything right now. My house is a mess. The laundry is piling up. I will soon need to start the summer/winter clothing switcheroo. My finances are bleak and I am totally disheartened at the entire job-hunt thing. I need to find a job but I really don't want one. Almost feels to me like scheduling a dentist appt. I know I need to but I dont wanna. I have been sending my resume out steadily. And being dissapointed when I dont see my message light blinking on my answering machine when I get home. I did interview at this one place down the road but they didnt like me and sent a letter saying so. OK the letter didnt actually say that. It was entirely professional and blathered on about choosing another candidate and thanking me for my time and blah, blah, blah. But I can read between the lines. I know what they really wanted to say.

Anyhoo, that is why I am not here. Once I catch up on the laundry and the bills, I will make it a point to sit my ass down and blog dammit! I have so many things I want to tell you about............

Back to school.

Tuesday was the first day of school (halleluah!) The backpacks were packed and lunches were made. Shaylin started second grade and Jared was sent off for his very first day of formal education as the cutest little Pre-K kid you have ever seen. I was so full of mixed emotions when I put my little guy on the bus for the very first time.

I was so proud. He wasn't scared or nervous at all. He has such a strong and outgoing personality that nothing really seems to phase him. When I asked him if he was nervous about going on the bus and starting school he looked at me as if I were crazy. "It's just a bus Mom. Like a big car, all I have to do is sit on it." How could I have been so silly?
I was also a little sad. Watching my youngest and the last child I shall ever bear reaching such a huge milestone nearly brought me to tears. He is growing so fast. Pretty soon he will be in high school. I can see it now. Him with a face full of pimples and a few chin hairs, full of teenage angst and way too cool to have any time for mom. Locked bathroom doors, where he takes 30 min. showers and comes out with his hair still dry, ( I have heard about this from my friends with older boys and I honestly don't know if I can maturely handle that situation without giggling) And him telling me how uncool I am with his funny crackling prepubescent voice change. But I am sure that by then "cool" will no longer be a cool word to say. Only old fogies like myself will still be using that dated slang and that will just be another thing that makes my boy roll his eyes at me and wonder if I am truly his biological mother. It is just around the corner, friends. And it makes me sad.
And I will be completely honest with you and tell you that I was also elated. Summertime wore me out and mommy needs a rest. In my humble opinion, it is well deserved.

Anyway, school is going well and they both enjoy their teachers and classmates. At least for now. But what started out as what I thought was just a patch of dry skin on my princess's nose in the beginning of the week, turned into a HORRIBLE case of poison ivy. The poor child was covered in it. She had it so badly that I had to keep her home on the second day of school. And she didn't even get to wear her very cool Barbie pink studded cowboy boots. Look at how sad and pathetic she looks! Doesn't that get ya, right there?
On the day she stayed home, I launched a full scale treatment attack. She had to lay on the couch watching Spongebob in nothing but her little girl underwear, packed with a paste made from oatmeal and baking soda. Then I alternated warm baths and a topical ointment. (I found a product called Ivarest that seemed to work pretty well. You can look for it at Wal-Mart if you ever have the need.) And kept her all doped up with steady doses of benadryl. After all the torture she awoke the next morning looking remarkably better, and happily went off to school in the cutest little frilly skirt and her rockin cowboy boots.

All in all, I'd have to say that it was a pretty good week.

A blog lesson learned.

I have realized that on the third week of the month, along with hating every single item of clothing I own, I also hate every single thought and idea I have that I want to write about.

I have started and completely deleted about a half dozen posts in the last week.

So now, I am just here to say "Fu*k it!"

I will get back with you in a few days when crazy Carrie leaves and life is back to normal.

On topic.

Everything I have posted thus far on this blog has been fluff. This will be my first real post actually relating to the reason for and subject of this web log.

I need to find a job. A full time, for real grown up job. With a health plan, 401K, accrued vacation time, and other such benefits. Since I became a mother, what was best for my family naturally had the biggest influence on the decisions I've made. And that means, that for the last 6 years, I have sat behind a desk in an office for at least 40 hours a week. An office job was the perfect gig. No weekends or holidays, I usually only worked the hours that daycare was open, and generally the pay was enough to get us by. It was a smart move and it kept us going with only a limited amount of struggle. However, (and this is a BIG however) I HATE office work. I cannot stand sitting on my ass in front of a computer all day. I dont want to interact with the same people day after day. I dont want to wear uncomfortable business attire and be forced to be fake in order to fit into the corporate mold. I want to BE something. I want to CREATE something. I want more than just a freakin paycheck and a health plan. What my resume says, and what I actually want could not be more different. I am at the bottom of a huge mountian on my way to finding Carrie, and I am looking up at it suddenly realizing I have no climbing gear.

When I lie awake at night, I think about what I would like to do. How I would want to live if circumstance and situation were aligned and I could be doing whatever it is that I would enjoy. I think I would like to be a social or political activist. I am mouthy and opinionated enough to make a career out of standing up for something I believe in, or speaking out against something I believe to be wrong. I would like to work in a tattoo shop with people who truly understand and enjoy the beauty of art and self expression. People who, are not only not afraid to be different, but actually celebrate it. I want to be Oprah Winfrey, and have tons of money and do great things with it.
OK. That one was pushing it a bit.
I would love to be an artist and spend my days in a studio, full of passion and inspiration, creating beauty. But for that, I would need a talent that I do not possess. I would absolutley love to be in a position where I could help struggling single moms who are in a place similar to where I was after my divorce 4 years ago. Now that would be a truly rewarding endeavor.

But I need a job NOW. Life does not stop going on all around me just because I am having some sort of identity crisis. My bills wont stop coming to give me time to "find myself".

So how does one go about getting a brand new career when one's resume and experience reflect something else alltogether? I should also mention here that I live in a VERY economically depressed area. Most people work blue collar jobs with factories and coal mines being among the area's largest employers. I would actually be lucky to find ANY gainful employment at all. Especially employment where I do not have a long commute and have to put my kids in daycare for 10 hours a day.

So my next question is, (and bear with me here - I'm just thinking aloud) if a person spends 40+ hours a week at a job they find tedious and compeletly unfulfilling, can they possibly find time for other outlets and interests to give them life satisfaction? Is having some sort of personal passion enough? I cannot say with any amount of confidence that it would be for me. I know myself well enough that I dont believe that could ever be the case. But I suppose, for now, I dont really have any other options. I can certainly hope that I luck into a job that I dont hate. I will certainly make a promise to myself to always try to make the best out of any situation. And I will also have to be dilligent about finding out for certain just what it is that I want, and never stop working towards getting there.

To end this post, I will leave you with a little Bon Jovi.............

It's my life
It's now or never
I ain't gonna live forever
I just want to live while I'm alive
Its my life
My heart is like an open highway
Like Frankie said I did it my way
I just wanna live while I'm alive
It's my life

My blog, how I've missed you.

I haven't posted since Wednesday. WEDNESDAY! I promised fast and furious posting. I have ALL these ideas swimming around in my head, just dying to come out in blog form. And I have been absent. Away from my blog and away from my PC all together. Because I suddenly found myself an underwilling participant in Clean and Organize Fest 2006.

You see, my children and I lived in this house for about two years before my true love moved in with us. In those two years we pretty much filled all the spaces. The closets were loaded with junk (I mean useful stuff) and all of the surfaces of the home were sufficently covered with clutter. I liked to think of it as homey and comfortable.

When my darling came into the home, he brought his lifetime accumulation of things, and we needed to make room. The kids spent the weekend with their father (I use that term VERY loosly) so we had an opportunity to get some real work done around here. I will be completely honest with you, I cannot take ANY of the credit for what was accomplished. I really can't. It was all Brian's doing. And what ever it is that I did do, was all at Brian's insistence (I mean encouragement). You see, I am quite lazy, and a weekend with no kids is a perfect time for laziness. And, while I am being honest here, I will admit that I would have been perfectly content to just throw all his crap in a corner of the basement and let him have half of the bed. I don't know why, but he didn't go for that. So the cleaning and reorganization began.

We have two of EVERYTHING (three complete dining room sets). So we had to come together and do a tribunal concerning every extra item and decide what will stay and what will go. My coffee cups were voted off the island because his are bigger and in better shape. His gigantic latchwork art peice (another very loose term) was sentenced to life in the basement. He wouldnt part with it, but it wasn't going up on any of the walls. It really didn't go with any of the home decor, but it works perfectly down there. We combined the silver and the towels and most of the kitchen items. We now have more food storage containers then a Chinese take out.

We aren't there yet. We still have a few kinks to be worked out and some adjustments to be made. But I think it will work just swell. He is good to have around for manly type things, like taking out the garbage and bug killing. And he is very good with helping me to keep the house clean. Well, he is really good at making me feel guilty because I don't really give a shit if its clean or not. But guilt is a powerful motivator, and my house is cleaner than it ever was for any length of time. My clothes have NEVER all been clean all at once. There was always laundry that needed to be done. Now that all of my clothing is clean, I cannot seem to find room for it all. I really never even realized that I owned so many articles of clothing.

I'm a lucky girl. A lucky girl with a good man, a clean house, and more clean T-shirts and dining chairs than I can shake a stick at.

Freakin bug.

I go into work the other day and I see this enormous flying insect that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. I have never seen anything like it before. It was sort of like a cross between a dragonfly and a big mosquito, but it was bright orange. I saw it when I walked in, but when I started getting ready for my day, I foolishly forgot about it. Until it attacked. This sucker dive bombed me like a kamikaze on a suicide mission. It hit right in my freshly coifed and sprayed hair. I ran screaming and frantically smacking at my head. After a few minutes of girly, unnecessary, and dramatic overreaction, I was finally convinced he was no longer on me and that the threat of this hideous creature burrowing in my brain and muliplying rapidly had been narrowly averted. I grab a fly swatter and go on the hunt. I was stalking the beast like a big game hunter in the most unyielding of foreign unexplored jungle. I finally spot it on a ledge in the kitchen. By the time it catches my eye, I am standing only inches away. I held my breath and raised my weapon high above my head. I swung hard and hit my target square. So accurate and deadly was my aim, that the creature exploded and a very large piece of it flew and landed on my left cheek. Holy shit. Holy. Freakin. Shit. After I ran and scrubbed my face furiously (If I'd had some sand paper I might have employed it), I opened the doors and greeted my customers covered in sweat and red faced, with smeared makeup and tousled hair sticking up everywhere. I was slightly traumatized, but I was victorious. Go me.

Today I watched a woman's whole world fall apart.

I work part-time at a small town hole-in-the wall bar. A few days a week, I serve retired men 50 cent draft beers while I listen to them talk about the good old days and complain about the state of the world today. Overall, I like it. I have grown fond of the guys and their tall tales.

About 4:00 today, the phone rang. It was the union steward from a construction crew of mostly local guys who are sent all over the state to do really hard work in really crappy conditions. He asked for the wife of one of my semi-regulars, Ray. The construction business was a fair weather game, and if it was raining hard, or if the union was in negotioations, Ray would be at the bar instead of on the job. He was a pleasant guy, always good for a laugh and at least a dollars tip. Ray's wife wasn't around when the phone call came, and I knew it couldn't be good news. About 45 min. later, she burst through the door in a frantic state.

"He's dead! I just got a call. Ray fell off the bridge and he's dead"

We rushed to her side, all offering a hug and any comfort we could. But it hadn't yet hit her. She was in a state of shock and disbelief. She wasn't sure if coming to their favorite watering hole was the right thing to do at a time like this. But she and Ray had no family. And she couldn't bear to be in her home for another minute.

I didn't know what to say or do, other than keep the glass in front of her nice and full. She kept repeating "I'm a widow. I'm a widow" over and over. Knowing it was the truth, but not yet believing it.

I'm scared for her. She is a fragile person and this could easily break her. I'm worried that she might be alone when it hits her that she really is a widow, and that Ray won't be coming home again. I am not her friend. I am just a part time bartender. I don't know what to offer her other than my thoughts and prayers. But tomorrow, I will make sure that she knows she's got at least that much from me.

Completely innapropriate and horribly attention seeking.

EVERYBODY LOOK AT ME!!
PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!




Very recently, my eyes have been opened to the fact that the title of this post describes me pretty darn well. I suppose those qualities have always been there, I just never saw it. People often describe me as outgoing, friendly, bubbly, and personable. But sometimes, sometimes, it can be TOO much.
I wonder what the psychologists say about people with attention seeking personalities. I could lay on a couch in an office somewhere and pay someone half my annual salary to analyze this. But I would probably just end up jumping on his couch, a la Tom Cruise, in an attempt to make him laugh and like me. I'm pretty sure that's what it all boils down to, a desire to be liked and accepted. People like people who are outgoing, friendly, bubbly, and personable right?

I mean, it's not a HUGE deal. I'm not killing puppies or anything. And I certainly doubt that attention seeking is a trait linked to psychotic or anti social behaviors (I am NOT going to Google that, I am NOT going to Google that) But the thing is, it bothers me. When I took a step back and looked at some of my behaviors, I honestly cant believe that people dont find me annoying. And it raises issues with other women when the attention I am eating up is coming from their significant others. And I wonder what my significant other thinks about me always striving to be the center of attention?

So what now? I'm sure Dr. Phil or Dr. Laura or Dr. Whoever would say that recognizing the issue is a good first step. I am sure some thoughful self analysis would be next. Honest soul-searching to find out why I have the need to be accepted. Truthfully, I am too lazy for that crap. I dont want to go back and explore my childhood and then decide to blame my parents. Can't I just promise to try to tone it down a bit? Will that be good enough?

I sure hope so.

Jumping in with both feet

I suspect that I will be posting fast and furious over the next several days. The brand newness of this blog has got me dizzy. I have so many things I want to write about. I'm pretty sure that will wear off soon. I have never been one for much endurance. LOL

I swear I will try to figure out how to post a picture in my intro. (I am too embarrassed to tell you how much time I have already wasted with that little detail)

And I just found the spell check button!! Woo Hoo. I seriously need that help. Oh My! LOL I just found out that spell check doesn't recognize the word "blog". Thats pretty funny.

This blogging thing just might be fun.

Post numero uno

How frikking exciting!! My very first blog entry. Look out internet!
I just want to make it very clear to any visitors I might have (I am sure there will be thousands) that this blog is NOT for you. Sure you may get some enjoyment out of reading my clever witticisim (is that a word?). But mostly, this blog is something I needed to do for myself. I am at a point where I need some self discovery. Outside of being mommy and all the things that go along with taking care of household, I really dont know who I am. Everyone needs something right? When faced with the question "What do you do for yourself that you enjoy?" I come up blank. And that, my friends, is sad.

So I am gonna find it. I am on my way.

Can you feel my excitement? Watch out folks, it could be contagious.

I decided to chronicle this journey because writing and journaling was something I always loved to do. And as I continue to find Carrie, I am sure I will use this forum to just chat about my daily life with the kids and the fam. Consider it homemade therapy.

I dont know where I am going, but I am looking forward to the ride.

Maybe I will try yoga next? Or take up knitting. Who knows?