Friday, May 30, 2008

Don't Bow Down Yet......

Just wanted to clarify that I am not the queen of posting even though it appears that I put up 6 (7 counting this one) posts in one day. I brought over some posts from my other blog when I closed it down.

Shout Out to the Singles

My husband just left for a week-long business trip today and I'm leaving with Pumpkin for a week tomorrow. Anytime previously that I've gone anywhere, I've had him here to help me get ready by taking the baby and helping me at the airport with the baby etc. This time I'll be all on my own and I'm actually very nervous. Because of that I started thinking about single parenting.

I feel like I've always had some idea of how hard single parenting is because I know several single parents and I've worked with lots of single parents in my profession (social work). However, I don't think I really understood how hard it could be until I had a child of my own. I'm a stay-at-home mom and though I absolutely adore my Pumpkin with all my heart, sometimes when her daddy gets home I am oh so relieved to pass her off and have just a little break. I can't imagine being the only one caring for her. So I just wanted to give a thumbs up, kudos, and a pat on the back to all you single parents out there who do a great job everyday being the everything for your kids.

Cords, Keys, and Computer Keyboards (and paper but that ruins my aliteration)

My eleven month old daughter is quite the curious little thing and perfect for her generation as she loves all things “techy”: cordless telephones, cellular phones, her daddy’s blackberry, CD’s (okay, so that’s not her generation, more like MP3’s but she loves them anyway), the digital screen on my refridgerator and microwave and the “spaceship-esqe” control panel on my washer and dryer. But her favorite things are Cords, Keys, Computer Keyboards and paper (so not her generation….she must be an old soul ...lol).

The problem with this is that all her favorite things (..raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens….) are all either potentially harmful for her or potentially stressful for me. Let’s discuss.

1. Electrical cords: electrical, need I say more? I mean I guess I could let her play with a cord that’s not plugged in but is that really a good idea. She’s eleven months old for heavens sake, how is she supposed to distinguish between a cord that’s in the toybox and one with electrical currents flowing through it. So yeah, electrical. Enough said. (It doesn’t help that she likes to bite chew gnaw on them. That can’t be good for her teeth)

2. Keys: No I’m not talking about the little plastic, multi-colored keys that are actually made for babies. I’m talking about the metal, starts my car, has a keyless entry including a PANIC button (learned that the hard way) keys. I tried removing the keyless entry part but she still is so excited to be playing with a “no-no” object that she shakes them like crazy and ends up smacking herself in the head. Metal and babies, not the best combination.

3. Computer keyboards: bang bang bang. She helps out with lots of my emails. The problem is that the excitement gets a little out of control and I have to stop her before I lose my “CAPS LOCK” button. I love my CAPS LOCK button. I tried letting her use a keyboard NOT connected to a monitor but that was a no go. Apparently its not quite as fascinating when you don’t actually see what you are typing appear on the screen. Go Figure!

4. Paper: Oh my sweet little goat! Yeah I know this is not new and every child loves paper but I still don’t like it. First of all because I don’t see 3 servings of magazine pages anywhere in the food pyramid and second because she always manages to give herself a paper cut. And imagine if I didn’t see the paper cut and I fed her lemons for lunch (what mom feeds their baby lemons…..entertaining but just plain mean) what a disaster that would be? So you see, paper is no good either.

Is it too much to wish (I know, it is) that she was as interested in all the real toys that we paid real money for littering our living room floor? (Hold on, she’s trying to take a bite out of dear husband’s Ipod) So I guess what I’m saying is, anybody know a toy store that sells electrical cords that don’t electrocute, metal keys that don’t hurt when contact is made with the forehead indestructible computer keyboards and paper that doesn’t cut and cannot be swallowed? Anyone? Yeah I didn’t think so. Darn!

No crying in softbal......

Every morning my dear husband wakes up, gets his breakfast, and sits down with a couple buddies while he eats. The buddies are Mike & Mike of Mike & Mike In the Morning on ESPN Radio. Today was no different. As you might guess after viewing the photo on their homepage (one of the Mike's stuffing a mutilated hot dog into his trapper), I usually have little interest in what they have to say. However, today after dear husband finished his cereal, he related a story he had heard from the Mikes and, turns out, I was interested (very interested since I'm sharing it with you so I guess I'll excuse the poor table manners).

Apparently the NCAA Softball Tournament is currently in progress (as you can tell I don't follow softball) and when Central Washington played Western Oregon, a really cool thing happened. One of the seniors on Western Oregon's team, Sara Tucholsky, hit the first homerun of her career in this game. As she was running the bases, she ran past first base and missed touching it with her foot. When she turned around to go back, her knee gave out and she fell to the ground, unable to get up.

"Umpires confirmed that the only option available under the rules was to replace Tucholsky at first base with a pinch runner and have the hit recorded as a two-run single instead of a three-run home run. Any assistance from coaches or trainers while she was an active runner would result in an out. So without any choice, Knox prepared to make the substitution, taking both the run and the memory from Tucholsky."

Then, (here comes the good part), someone asked "Can we carry her around the bases?" The someone (someones actually) was a player from the OPPOSING team. One of them knew that according to the rules they could touch her w/o negating the homerun. So what did her and a teammate do? They each grabbed an arm, lifted her up and took her to home plate, touching her foot (on the uninjured leg) to each of the bases on the way.

In today's world of sports where we have parents beating up little league coaches when their kids don't get enough playing time and professional sports "heroes" who throw temper tantrums to the referees when things don't go their way, it was nice to see that good sportsmanship does still exist. These girls of Central Washington essentially helped the other team score, during a playoff game. And as the story points out, there wasn't even a Hollywood ending, Central Washington lost the game. But, the player who suggested carrying the girl had this to say:

"Honestly, it's one of those things that I hope anyone would do it for me," Holtman said. "She hit the ball over her fence. She's a senior; it's her last year. … I don't know, it's just one of those things I guess that maybe because compared to everyone on the field at the time, I had been playing longer and knew we could touch her, it was my idea first. But I think anyone who knew that we could touch her would have offered to do it, just because it's the right thing to do. She was obviously in agony."

They later found out that the rule had been misinterpreted and I'm glad that it was. Turns out one of her teammates could have substituted for her and taken the homerun lap for her. But isn't the way it happened so much better? I think so. In a couple years, nobody will remember the score of this game but I bet Sara remembers her homerun and the two girls who helped her keep it.

When I told my brother-in-law the story his response was "That's the difference between mens sports and womens sports. Men would never do that." If that's really the case, I'm sure proud to be a woman!

THE IRS REFOUND MY MONEY!

Okay, I just have to share an email I received today. It made me laugh out loud. And as I read it I thought to myself "Nobody can seriously fall for this can they?" And I sure hope not. But we can all get a good chuckle out of it which is why I'm posting it here. Enjoy!


Subject: Tax refound (28371231) $620.50
Internal Revenue Service 4:29 PM (1 hour ago) Reply


You Have Get a Tax Refund on your VISA or MasterCard

Complect The FormularAnd get your tax Refund(Your Refund Amount Is $112.30)
Complect Formular (This was a link to a pretend IRS site)


Okay, now for some comments: 1. Yes it actually says 'have get' 2. If the refund is already on my credit card, why do I need to do anything? 3. I never learned how to 'complect' anything (I missed that day in math class apparently), let alone a formular (whatever that is) 4. Apparently refund is a proper noun...I mean Refound (even with all the money I give them, apparently the IRS can't afford spellcheck)? 5. Somehow between the subject line and the body of the email I lost $508.20 - wow thats quite the service charge.


Have a good day and a heads up to beware if the IRS refound your money too!

Kindess of Strangers

I recently went on a trip with Pumpkin to visit some of my family, just me and her. I walked through the airport with a baby strapped to the front of me (a very heavy baby I might add), overflowing diaper bag draped across me, purse balancing on my shoulder, pushing a stoller that had a car seat set on top of it. The car seat was dangerously close to ending up on the floor several times. I am sure I was quite the site for my fellow airport-goers!
After checking my stroller planeside, I (with great difficulty) attempted to drag my car seat behind me onto the plane. Then I heard a sweet voice say "Can I carry that for you?" I turned to this stranger as a wave of gratitude swept through my body and said "Oh thankyou!" She then carried it all the way to my seat and since it is a very large carseat (remember that heavy baby), she also endured the annoyed stares from passengers who got slightly bumped as she made her way down the aisle. When the plane landed, I hurriedly gathered up pacifiers from under the seat, toys out of the seat pockets and wiped the smooshed graham crackers off the seat belt. Then I heard that Heavenly voice again. Not only did she help me off the plane with my loads of stuff but she also got my luggage off the turnstile, wheeled it out to the curb and stayed and chatted with me until my sister arrived to pick me up. She had to be at the airport another hour to wait for her husband who was arriving on a later flight so she wasn't in any huge hurry but she still went way beyond the call of duty and I am truly grateful. Hooray for the kindness of strangers. Help someone you don't know today. :)

Here's the deal.....

This is the third blog I have started. I started my first blog back in 2004 when I was still in college. Back then blogging wasn't quite the community/phenomenon/addiction that it has become today. I posted every few days months for about a year and then sort of forgot about it as my life got busy. I came back to it when my daughter was born and started using it as a way to let family keep in touch and see pictures. I still maintain that blog. But I decided that I wanted my own personal blog that was more like an online journal for me. So, I scooted myself over to wordpress.com (because I wanted to try out another hosting site) and started a blog. I have been posting on that one for about a month now however, yesterday I was made aware of some blog ettiquette, some unwritten bloggin rules, one of which was that bloggers get annoyed when someone uses a blog name thats the same or similar to theirs. Totally understandable. I had googled my blog name and nothing came up. But after reading the ettiquette, I googled a couple different versions of the name and lo and behold there were at least three blogs that had been started before mine. So, being the somewhat obsessive-compulsive follower of rules that I am, I decided to just scrap that blog and start anew. And Folded But Not Put Away was born...literally like this morning!

The title of my blog was the title of my About page on my wordpress blog. Here's some background on it. Last June I had my first child and my husband and I decided that I would stay at home to care for her. I was excited about this and hand delusions of grandeur about the mother I would be and the spic-n-span house I would keep. (A little June Cleaver I know) Reality set in by the time my daughter was about 6 months old, and after several mornings of conversations like the following:

Dear husband: Honey are my brown socks clean?
Me: Yes. They are in the laundry basked. I folded them but haven't put them away yet.

You can pretty much put substitute any article of clothing where it says brown socks: my shirt, my black pants, my running shorts, you get the idea. I was very good at keeping the clothes clean but somehow they never seemed to make it back into the drawers. So its become a joke between my husband and I. I think I'm getting better though (she says while sitting on the couch blogging with a basket full of laundry at her feet). I think you can make some good analogies to life with this as well because the clothes still serve their purpose (able to be worn), they just aren't exactly where they belong. I think sometimes we are the same. I can think of many periods in my life where I have been willing to do what's required of me as a mom, wife, sister, daughter, etc. but have not quite been in the right place emotionally, spiritually, or in my relationships with those around me. Maybe I'm taking this way to far but I really believe that lessons can be learned from almost any situation in life. But there you have it, the history behind my blog. Now let's get started shall we?