In Search of Myself

I love my boss. I don't love gas prices.

Warning: a bit of cussing in the next paragraph.  and in the P.S.  umm, and in the comments.

My boss let me leave work for a bit in the middle of the day and go fill up with gas today.  Luckily it was only $2.75 and I only needed 7 gallons.  I wouldn't have had time to fill up until late this evening, and I'll bet prices will be higher even by then.  WHATEVER.  I don't claim to understand all this gas price shit, I just know it's killing my budget.  I ESPECIALLY don't understand why auto-makers and scientists and engineers and all that haven't been trying harder in the past 20 years to explore alternative energy sources than oil.  Damn, we've known forever that it's theoretically possible to run a car on something other than gas, and that all the gas in the world won't last forever, but by and large the majority of people who could do something to change things have been sitting around with their thumbs up their butts.  Maybe this will be a good enough kick in the ass for them to actually TRY to get us away from being so oil dependent.

Good times.

*Edited to add: Ok, this is funny:  I e-mailed my boss this picture, and I had to sit and explain to her what all those abbreviations meant.  LOL. *

P.S. 9-1-05 -- Gas jumped THIRTY CENTS at most places between yesterday and today.  There ARE stations in Nashville that are completely out of gas, other stations are only selling the mid and high grade gasses.  My [boss] and [boss boss] were telling me the other day there was something similar that happened in the 70's and that this reminds them of that all over again.  I know that bitching about it doesn't help matters, but this blog is also about recording what's going on in my life, and this is a pretty big fucking piece of my life right now.

P.P.S.  I did some math.  I use about 30 gallons a week between commuting, picking up Jake, and all the shopping sprees I go on (you know, my monthly trip to Target?).  Here is how differring gas prices affects me:

Quirky Jake

Jake will NOT eat purple Fruit Loops.  If one does accidentally make it into his mouth, he spits it out into his hand and says "Here, mama."  In this picture, I had forgotten to separate the purple ones before I put milk on the cereal, so he took care of that before he started eating.  If I tell him to just eat it anyway, he says "I CAN'T LIKE PURPLE ONES!!!"  He won't eat purple fruit snacks, either.  I don't think it's worth fighting about, so I don't make him.  But you know, purple is my all-time favorite color, so I hope it's not just me.  heh.

Sweet Buddy

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You know, for as insane as Jake makes me most days, when he's asleep?  He is SO sweet and cuddly.  Kind of makes me forget about how obnoxious he can be.  heh.

I need a favor!!!

9-1-05 I'm NUMBER 50!!!!!!  Thank you, everyone!!!

ok guys, so here's the thing: I've had over 2,500 hits on my Digi-Scrappin with Jen blog in the past 3 weeks.  (Which I think is pretty cool!)  But I JUST signed up for a link on the Digital Scrapbooking top 50 site, so the hits counter is starting from ONE. ONE, PEOPLE.  I'm at the very bottom of the list, and I want to move up!!! (I'm 180 out of 182!!!)  If you love me at all, can you click on through to my site to drive the hits up?  (Um, and if you wanted to do it like twelve times today . . . heh.)  'Cause you know you go there anyway . . . heh.  And if you want to be a dear and tell your friends to do it, too -- well I'd just love ya forever!!!

*EDITED, 8-30-05:  GUESS WHAT?!!! I'm #93 right now!!!  YAY!!!  I was telling Priscilla last night that my goal was to be in the top 100 by next week -- and I'm THERE already!!!  Keep those hit comin'!!!

A quick Jake funny

Work is keeping me WAY busy today, so I'll tell you a quick cute thing Jake said to my mom on Friday:

(they were in Nana's bathroom -- Nana was doing stuff and trying to keep Jake occupied, so she told him to stand on the scale.  He weighs himself all the time.  He stood there, looking down at it.)

Nana: So what does it say?

Jake: (looks down and waits, then looks up at Nana.)  It not talkin'!

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P.S.  Scroll down and look to your right to see some previews of the great new stuff up at Shabby Princess' Shoppe!!!  (or click on the link right here.)

Thanksgiving in August?

My mom called me Tuesday and asked if I wanted to stay for dinner when I picked Jake up.  "Sure," I said.  "What are we having?"  She said "I was in the mood to cook . . . so I have a turkey in the oven.  Then I'll make everything to go with it."  "Wait, like a TURKEY turkey?"  "Yeah."  "You have an entire turkey in the oven."  "Yeah."  "WHY."  "Because I felt like cooking."  Ummm, ok.  My theory is, she's a little hormonal.  But whatever.  I'll take free, home-cooked food whenever I can get it.  When Priscilla called me to ask what I was doing that night, I told her mom was cooking and that she may as well come over and have dinner with us.  Mom likes company anyway, and hadn't seen the girls for a while.

Anyway, we ate about 6 p.m., then just hung out.  Kathy was already at work, Lou stayed at home, tired from work.  Jake was fast asleep when I got to mom's house, and all the way through dinner -- I hadn't seen him all day, so it sucked that he was out of it, but on the other hand it was really nice to have a quiet, peaceful dinner.  My parents really like Priscilla, and I think they were excited to have someone to talk to other than me and each other.  Elauna played quietly by herself on the floor (she is SO the opposite of a certain other little girl that hangs out at mom's house, who is completely high maintenance.)  Aowyn sat in Jake's booster seat and very cutely demanded our food and attention.  And HOLY COW, the food was good. 

After dinner Jake finally woke up, so the kids all played while we recovered from eating way too much.  I kept trying to start getting ready to leave, and my mom kept finding a way to stall and keep us all there.  (My granny -- mom's grandmother -- was the same way.  A 15 minute visit with granny always turned out to be a 4 hour commitment.)  Jake and Elauna ran around the house playing, while we passed Aowyn around like an offering plate.  She's SO sweet and lovable, and will happily let people hold her (although she PREFERS me if she has the choice, ha ha!)  She was scared of Sadie-dog, but it was SO cute the way she was acting.  Finally at 9 p.m., I asked mom if she just wanted to keep Jake for the night since I'd have to be back in exactly 9 hours to drop him off again (it would be completely pointless to take him home JUST to sleep, then turn around and come back.  Letting him stay saves me 18 miles/45 minutes total of driving.)  So once I DID leave a half hour later, Nana gave Jake a bath and put him to bed.

Good food, good company, good times.

Featured Artist . . .

HOW CUTE is this scrapbook page?!!!  My bestest sista-friend Andrea (who I've known since like 5th grade -- and she was in 3rd!) e-mailed me this to show me what she's been working on.  OMG, it's SO CUTE.  You did a GREAT job, Drea!!!  LOVE YOU!

A scrapbook page.

Had a free moment (this honestly took like 5 minutes) at the end of my lunch hour, and threw together this page that's been in my mind ever since I saw an ad with a similar layout in In Style.  (How sad it is that I used to be totally inspired by the clothes in there, and now I'm just worried about scrapbook pages?!  ha ha.)  This LO is two-pages, 8.5x11 inches each.  (So this big pic will be huge!)  The divide is right between the two sentences ("pictures" and "It's".)    Thank you again, sister Sheri, for these awesome photos.

Choices

I don't wear make-up much.  I don't have anything against it, much, but there's just no time.  Well, that and I don't want to be one of those people who when you see them without make-up, you're either scared or not sure who they are.  Still, though, I DO wear make-up every few days depending on my mood and what I'm doing that day.  I get lots of compliments when I wear make-up (you'd think that alone would make me want to wear it, but the fact that at the end of the day I'll just have to wash it off is a big deterrent.)  ANYWAY, this morning I realized that I had about 7 minutes left before I absolutely had to be headed toward the highway.  This left me two choices: I could either throw on some make-up, OR I could stop by Starbucks on my way to work and get myself a frapuccino.

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Damn this coffee tastes good.

Proof that sometimes I'm a cool mom

Jake got it in his head over the weekend that I should buy him paint.  I don't know why, he just did.  And I actually thought it would be an ok idea, because I can tell he loves any art/craft project thrown his way (and what little kid doesn't?!) . . . so Sunday after church we headed over to Michael's.  Previously Jake has only known that Michael's has great stickers and if he's good he'll get some, and that he has to be patient as mommy stares at the scrapbook stuff and tries to make a decision.  But now, that child has discovered the Crayola aisle.  Wow.

Jake is very particular about his painting.  He doesn't like for me to help!  (Which breaks my little heart!  And actually, I help anyway -- I just have to be ok with the fact that once I've created something beautiful, he's going to paint right over it.)  It's cute the way Jake gets the paint out with the brush -- picture someone holding a cup of pudding and trying to scoop out as much as possible with their finger.  Yeah, that's what he does with the paint brush.  It's not worth fighting about, I just let him do whatever he needs to do as long as it stays on the paper.

So now we have paint at our house . . . well, we DID.  We did four paintings and the little tubs have been scraped clean.  Gotta go buy more, I suppose.