maydecnc

Every so often I get curious about people I’ve met in my single days. I don’t think anyone is immune to that sort of curiosity, and it doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad if you do (or don’t!) have that curiosity. What is neat about it is that you can look back at that time in your life and come away with a greater appreciation for what you have now, even if what you have now is not perfect.

Today I searched for my last LTR on Facebook, and to my surprise, I found this person. It surprised me on a couple of levels. First of all, this person strongly disapproved of my interest in all things virtual, so to see this person have a Facebook profile was a little shocking, a little hypocritical. What surprised me more was my physical reaction to seeing the face of this person. (For those of you not on Facebook, you can search a person’s name and see his or her profile picture (if he/she has posted one), along with his/her name and a link to “request friend(ship)”.) I felt a wave of nausea wash over me from head to toe. Needless to say, I did not request friendship with this person, and I fervently hope this person doesn’t request friendship of me at any point in the future.

For about an hour, I debated whether to tell my spouse what I’d done. Then, I decided that the whole experience could be spun in such a way so that he would know how much I appreciate being with him in spite of “the difficulties of life” these past two years. He was out-of-town on business today, so I called to tell him this and that I was glad I was with him (and not the other guy). I could tell he was surprised, but happily so.

When you’ve been married for years, you tend to experience more of the “real life” the minister mentions in the ceremony but that you think will never, ever happen to you. It seems (to me, anyways) to be more work to be loving and expressive. Love seems to become more about ethics and responsibility than romance. Even so, it is good to look for the positive - whereever you can find it - and share it with your spouse.

Now, I mean this with all the niceness my heart can muster. But seriously? Why does a simple cold throw a man into a tailspin?

We’ve been battling upper respiratory infections for the past month. Wintertime is a … great time to pass them around, I guess. (I’m keeping it PG, here!) Dear Hubby is on round two, though I quite honestly do not remember round one. At any rate, on my way home from my last day at work, I picked up some lovely Mucinex DM for him. Yeah, I got a “thanks”. But what I’d like more is an end to the whining.

I’m still recovering from mine, which devolved into a nasty sinus infection. Here’s my tips for getting over winter respiratory infections:

• Hydrate yourself and the air around you.
• Try Zicam. It does work on viral infections quite well, if taken early enough.
• Use Nasopure, a neti pot, or other saline nasal irrigation apparatus to wash out the snot.
• Get rest, as much as you can manage. Note: this is tough to do when you have an active toddler.
• Have some chicken soup. Seriously!
• Drink lots of green tea.
• See a doctor if you’ve been sick for too long. I finally couldn’t take it any more after a month of feeling crappy.

So, let me know: how do you treat a cold?

It seems I will now have lots of time to blog in the very near future. My manager informed me (by phone, no less!) last week that my last day of work is Feb. 23. It is a scary proposition, having to look for work in this economy. But, I figure I can find something, even if it isn’t in my current field. Before I became a “professional” with a 4-year degree, I used to be an administrative assistant, and a “not so shabby” one at that. So, I’m hopeful.

Hope is one of the things that seems to be difficult to have in these times. My husband is taking this latest news as a personal affront. “How dare X company lay off my (insert embarrassingly gratuitous praise) wife!” I keep telling him that such an attitude helps no one, and that I need to hear positive expressions and do positive things. Unfortunately he is the type that wants to place blame, and if he could, he would sue someone over this. So, needless to say, I hate discussing this situation with him. Sigh.

I read several blogs on a hit-and-miss basis. One good one is  Dumb Little Man. I liked their recent post, How to Stay Sane as the Job Market Plots Against You. I’m actually looking forward to putting some of the suggestions into practice, but in the meanwhile, I am sucking up bandwidth at my employer’s facility while I cruise Monster.com and the like.

Oh, I’m so excited. We finally got the Christmas tree undecorated and disassembled this evening! In the process, I had a brilliant idea for reusing those wet wipes containers. I’m not talking about the baby wipes containers, although they would also work. The containers to which I refer are the Charmin/Cottonelle/Scott “adult” wipe containers. Sadly, sometimes it is cheaper to buy the container with the wipes than to simply buy the refill, so we had about 8 such empty containers distributed about the house, awaiting a use.

I used some of the containers as corrals for office supplies in my desk at my extremely cheap place of business. (They recently stopped subsidizing the soda and snack machines. That’s a boost for morale, lemme tell ya!) This latest use for wipe containers is even more helpful, given the post-holiday tear-down task we had. In order to make some of the more fragile ornaments a little more crush-proof, I wrapped them in bubble wrap or tissue and then placed them into a wipe container. After that, the containers stacked very nicely within a plastic storage tote. Sterilite is the brand name of the storage totes we have, but Rubbermaid also makes them.

Now, I know that one can buy special plastic boxes to house ornaments, but using the wipe containers within a storage tote performs a similar service at a much lower cost.

I would love to hear how you use your empty wipe containers! I am always looking for new uses for them.

So, I’d really like to know… what do you do when you have a married couple sharing a home office, and one is one of those “I can’t find it unless it’s laying out somewhere” kind of people? The piles are just becoming ridiculous, particularly on the testosterone-infused side of my home office. And, as usual, the chaos bleeds into the other side.

I’m thinking that perhaps some clear pockets mounted to the wall next to his workstation might help? I’m open to ideas.

One of the things I wish I could change is the furniture. Years before I met my husband, he inherited some old pieces of furniture from a distant relative. While they are probably “antique”, they likely are not worth much in their current condition. We do now have a slightly larger home, so at least we are not tripping over said “antiques”, but they are annoying nonetheless. At least I do have his solemn promise that as soon as the matriarch of the family shuffles off this mortal coil, the furniture will go (one way or the other).

So, one of the pieces in this office is an antique desk or vanity (minus the mirror)… I haven’t decided which. It has two narrow but deep (if that makes sense) drawers on either side of the “place where you stick your legs when you’re sitting in front of it”. (What the heck is that thing called, anyways?) It is currently holding up stacks of paper, a cordless phone, a baby monitor, old newspapers, and a feeble attempt I made at organizing my husband’s crap - a small hanging file holder. Under the desk sits our medium-duty crosscut shredder and some more of my husband’s crap - media guides that “someday will be worth something”. Sigh sigh sigh.

So, if you have any suggestions for organizing this man, I’m all ears.

I’m feeling a Bushism coming on. No, not “fool me once, shame on you… don’t get fooled again!” nonsense. What I mean is that I’m trying desperately to think of the phrase that basically means “I meant to do (this), but I got sidetracked.” You know the one. Best laid plains go awry or something like that. It happens when you have a full-time job (project with deadlines set by Marketing instead of Development, of course!) and are trying to raise a toddler, too. Anyway, that’s the reason why I have not posted in some time.

My baby is walking now. Everywhere. And she’s getting into EVERYTHING. Literally. She would happily play in the toilet bowl if I’d let her. I moved all the potential poisons from the cabinet under the kitchen sink. I put those doorknob covers on practically all the doors, even though she is not tall enough to turn the knobs yet. I stuck outlet covers in most of the outlets and taped up the rest. And I’m still paranoid that something is going to happen to my beautiful, only child. So I’m curious: how do other parents cope with this terrifying space between mobility and the development of common sense??

This morning my husband, political junkie that he is, replayed a portion of last night’s Presidential debate for me to help illustrate why McCain is a less-than-optimal choice for President. You can see for yourself the kind of language McCain stoops to using in a national forum. How hypocritical, coming from a man who is member of a political party that touts “family values” as one of their main selling points. And, do we really want someone with a hair-trigger temper like this to have his finger on the nuclear (noo-CLEE-uhr) button?

I would not want a child to see this for two reasons. Language obviously is the primary reason, but his outburst prompts the question: what is he teaching our children about self-control when he uses language like this in a national forum?

This presidential election is the most important one in my 35 years on this planet. I hope that the electorate weighs all the facts and makes an informed decision in the polling booth on November 4. If you need information about voter registration, please see the Election Assistance Commission web site .

I wish I had more time and energy to dream up ways to reuse items that come in to our house, especially the pesky containers and/or packaging that surround the desired item. We live in a municipality that mandates recycling, so we have already diverted some solid waste from the landfill, but I am sure we can improve. The best idea I’ve come up with on my own so far is to make an ice pack out of a sturdy zipper bag that previously held animal crackers. It’s not glamorous, but it gets the job done, and my daughter doesn’t mind looking at it.

Because I work for a living and don’t have time to be that creative, I have several feeds in my Yahoo! Mail feed list that deal with creativity as it relates to reduce-reuse-recycle. One of these days I’ll get around to adding the list to this blog. In the meantime, please check out TipNut’s Ketchup Bottle As Pancake Batter Dispenser.

I think the basic concept is good; however, I think I’d much rather use one of those squeezeable jelly bottles rather than a ketchup bottle. You know how difficult it can be to get tomato stains off plastic, and sometimes plastic traps the odor of whatever it held last. Just imagine: ketchup-scented (or worse, ketchup-flavored!) pancakes! I’d much rather have strawberry jam-scented pancakes. I also don’t know how well this concept would perform with pancake add-ins such as blueberries or chopped apples (two of my family’s favorites). The add-ins would have to be very finely chopped in order to fit through the hole in the lid.

If you have any suggestions for a better pancake batter conveyance, please feel free to post a comment!

Disruption has such a negative connotation, doesn’t it? I’m not even sure the word is applicable in the context in which I heard it yesterday. First, the backstory…

About two weeks ago my mother-in-law phoned to ask if it would be okay for her to come to our house for a few days to visit. (She uses calling cards, so I never know by the caller ID who it might be.) An acquaintance offered to give her a ride from the retirement community where she lives to the metro area where we live, about a 4 hour drive one-way. She asked so nicely - it was impossible to say no. And, this is my child’s only paternal grandmother, after all. So, I said, “Sure, that sounds great!”

Well, I’ll spare the description of the visit. It always starts well but deteriorates rapidly. Yesterday we took her to meet the acquaintance so that she could start the journey back to the artsy-fartsy mountain city where she lives. With online directions printed and in hand, we wandered around the college town trying to find the address, and my husband was about to lose it. I could feel his blood pressure rising, and I certainly heard it as he used a mild expletive (thankfully, our daughter was asleep in her seat.). As we pulled into the driveway, I said, “Next time, we’re meeting at a shopping center; we are not doing this again!” My mother-in-law smirked, “I’m sorry to be such a disruption!”

Now, I would never have said that, but now that I think about it, it is true. This woman disrupted our normally peaceful Sunday morning, the one morning a week we have as a family to enjoy time together goofing off. Were it not for her horrible, me-first attitude, I never would even silently agree that she is a disruption. Whenever she visits, we are subjected to a litany of complaints, ranging from her health and diseased eyesight to her loneliness. What she doesn’t realize is that if she complained less, relatives would gladly visit more often (or host her more often), and then she wouldn’t be so lonely. SIGH!

Okay, I really want to know: how do you keep the family car clean when you have a toddler in the family?

One of my daughter’s aunts had the “bright” idea (God bless her) of giving us something called a “Snack Trap“. This is nothing more than a plastic bowl with handles and a lid. The lid is perforated to the extent that the child can reach through the lid to retrieve the goodies stored therein. I’ve found that the lid is insufficient to prevent spills, particularly if she turns the bowl upside-down and shakes vigorously. It is absolutely useless for things like o-shaped oat cereal and rice puffs; they slide right through the perforations. Now that she is older, I feel comfortable putting fish-shaped cheese crackers in it, but the fish do escape from time to time.

My car is an absolute disaster, and I’m almost ready to invest in a wet-dry vac so that I can clean it up at home instead of going to the neighborhood car wash. (When do I have time to do that, anyways?)

It’s so unfair… why do I have to be left with a messy car when my husband’s always looks neat? Maybe I’m too indulgent? Maybe I should not give her snacks in the car, period? Please, your thoughts!