Frumpy?

My brain has had about a million random things to post, but today I will finally sit and post only one...

About this time of year, 10 years ago, I was given a surprise bridal shower, along with my friend Marcia Brase who was getting married a month or so before me. I remember it being such a surprise, I really had no idea. I remember it being at Brooke Sweet's house on the lake and having her big beautiful house to ourselves. Marcia's husband Scott and my Adam hung out at the shower; they had a lot of fun, even if it was all the rest of us a bunch of girls. So one of the games/activities that I remember doing that night was that all the girls were to write down on little pieces of paper, bits of advice for us soon-to-be married girls. Which, as I think about it today, IS kind of funny in and of itself--a bunch of 19 year olds giving us marriage advice! It makes me smile. So anyway, I don't remember what all of them said (I wonder if I still have those pieces of paper in my "someday I'll scrapbook this stuff" box....)but I remember two of them...."Don't cook bacon naked" (maybe from Kim Church?) and "Don't turn into a frumpy wife." The frumpy comment was from Becky Johnson-Jensen. I've thought about this "advice" quite A LOT actually through these 10 years. With all boys in this household, it's really easy for me to just say to myself, "Eh, who really notices if I'm wearing makeup today." or "It doesn't matter if I actually blow dry my hair today." Unfortunately this last statement I find myself saying, um, A LOT. I just hate taking the time to do it, yet I know I feel better for the day if I do. It was actually Justin who told me when Spencer was little one day "Mom, you're wearing Sunday hair" when it was just some random weekday. And FYI Sunday hair=blow dried and straight, is what Justin defines as Sunday hair. This was certainly a frumpyness wake up call to hear from my 5 year old!

So Adam is gone (we've now survived a little over a week...only 3 more weeks to go!) and I did my hair on Saturday. And I timed it. It takes me roughly 6 minutes to blow dry my hair. Do I really not have 6 minutes to do this every day? Or is it just the lazy FRUMPY factor. Yes. Frumpy it is! So I made an effort the past few days to get up and get ready and find the 6 minutes to dry my hair. When I put Spencer in his high chair with his waffles and milk yesterday, I informed him that I was going back upstairs to blow dry my hair and get ready before we took Justin to school. His response: "Blowdryer? (he's fascinated by it for some strange reason...maybe because of its lack of use...)? Oh!!! Mommy pretty!" Sad. Mommy pretty and Sunday hair. Yep, this mommy needs to get out of her years of FRUMPY activities apparently!!! Thanks for the reminder Becky!:) I'm off to dry my hair!!

4:30am Realizations

• The speed limit on I-80 is apparently 60 mph through most of Omaha, not 65 like I had thought. Even though it's 70 mph just west of us, on the way to Lincoln. Seems silly. Only at 4:30am would I probably have realized this...or maybe if I'd gotten a ticket I would've. Thankfully, THAT didn't happen.
• Choosing a flight for 6 am is really stupid. Really. And I'm worried how I'm going to manage two cranky kids by myself in a month when we travel our 6 am flight.
• Spencer is very opinionated about what radio music we listen to in the car. These days anything but R &B upsets him. Greatly. This was magnified by our drive home from the airport at 5 am. Huge tears, kicking of my seat, locking and unlocked of his car door, the whole bit. Wow.
• I really need a more comfy bed for my back and my growing belly. Really. King sized and not as soft as the one we've had for almost 10 years. I'm hoping for January, maybe a Christmas/Anniversary/birthday present? I love those presents all mixed into one. Not really, but well this present would be worth the combinedness.
• This is going to be a really tough month without Adam. I hope he's going to enjoy his bachelor life in DC and enjoy Walter Reed and listening to boring lectures about tumors. Constantly. For a WHOLE month. BLECH. Glad it's him and not me. I'm just glad I have spies who live around the corner from where he's staying if I need them!:) We'll miss you honey. And your advice about my calling my mom first to whine before calling you to whine about you being gone? Already done. At 8:45 this morning.

Two Years Old

We celebrated Spencer's birthday Sunday since Adam won't be around on the real day this year. Spencer doesn't know the difference anyway!

I haven't been nearly as good as I'd like to have been about keeping track of everything Spencer says--his language exploded so much faster than Justin ever did that I think it was shocking to us! He has been talking constantly about neighbors and Daddy "mowing the lawn" all the time. So we got him a little bubble mower for his birthday. He is in heaven! He mows the lawn in the house all day! So much so, that I'm afraid to make the lawnmower an outside toy because it'll be cold too soon! So for now we aren't going to demonstrate the bubble portion of the toy and let the mower stay indoors!

Spencer also has been pretending for a long time that other random objects are guitars--items like train tracks usually are his favorite substitutes for a guitar. So we also got him this little guitar. It's great. Although I'm already getting a little sick of hearing the Police's "Message in Bottle," "Love Shack," "Wild Thing" and "All Star" which the guitar plays A LOT. But he loves it so it's ok. I just wish the volume control worked a bit better!!

He really enjoys pretending these days. Pretending to cook, pretending to take care of his "dolls" (we won't tell Adam I referred to Eddie as a doll, k?) by giving them some of his water out of his sippy cups, wearing their clothes (that's where the hat comes from!), and telling them to eat. He's definitely not girly with these dolls though and enjoys pretending to tie their shoes and button/unbutton their clothes...which was their purpose in the first place.

We've struggling for some time with trying to get Spencer to sleep in a toddler bed after repeated completed jumps out of his crib. We thought at the time that a toddler bed would work better than the twin bed that is in his room because the twin bed is kind of high off the floor, plus it's so much bigger from going from a crib. Well, the toddler bed has turned into more of a source of a trampoline and balance beam to turn on/off lights, play in the miniblinds, etc. So most nights we find him choosing to sleep in the twin bed. This particular night, we found him, fast asleep with a book over his face. We thought surely Justin must've been sneaky and done this once he fell asleep, but he told us no and we realized with what a light sleeper Spencer is, he really must've just fallen asleep this way. Crazy boy!

We love this kiddo in our family. He always is full of energy and new amazingly long phrases each day. We feel very blessed to have him in our family.

Thursday Thoughts

I was telling a friend the other day that I haven't been blogging much because I haven't been in a, well, positive mood much these days so I feel like it's not all that great to blog the junk going on. I mean, really, who wants to read a big ball of negativity for the day. But well, it's life so I guess today I feel like a rant is ok.

First morning sickness. UGH. Whoever the idiot was that started referring to it as morning sickness really should be knocked upside the head. I've at least gotten this whole sickness stuff down to somewhat of a science, at least for about a week now. I can pretty much time it. Every day, 11am. The nurse in my doctor's office said that if you "continuously eat" that sickness is likely to be lessened. And I don't know why it's taken me 3 kids to figure THAT out, but it's true. Even if I don't feel like eating, munching on a couple crackers, eating a small snack about every two hours definitely helps. But I still feel the worst at 11am, and that's when I do the bulk of my puking. It's like my body is saying, "You blew it, it's time for lunch and you didn't feed me in time. Now you're going to pay!" Oh well. I still haven't quite found the reasoning for why Heavenly Father insists that some suffer more with this all-day sickness than others, or really why it exists at all, I mean don't moms go through enough pain and suffering? Apparently not. Yeah, I have my violin out this morning, can you tell? Maybe it's leftover frustration over what happened last night....

So yesterday I went to work for my little 3-7 shift that I've been doing (and I REALLY like that time period I've decided, even if it's busy. But it's ALWAYS busy on our cancer floor!). They were down a CNA so they had me "be the CNA" for those 4 hours. And boy I worked my butt off. It TOTALLY makes me appreciate the techs on my floor. All the seemingly little things that I ask them to do like "can you bring some jello into room __" really can add up. And it's not that they're hard things, but with everything going on, it can be really tough to meet 12 people's needs! My boss saw me running around, throwing on gowns to go in isolation rooms, and she asked me how it was going. I told her that all us nurses need to "be the tech" once in a while, that it really does make me appreciate all they do. And it makes me realize just how much they are paged and I don't even know that they are. 3 people wanting to use the potty at the same time, 2 patients with blood vitals to keep track of, 2 surgicals with surgical vitals. Again, not "hard" stuff, but very time consuming stuff. I love the girls I work with, they really are amazing.

I did my 4 hours of work and got a text from Adam saying that he wanted me to bring him home a "cold treat" on the way home. So I exited the interstate at a different exit so I could swing by Sonic...a place we go WAY TOO MUCH because it's close to our house. I knew I was in trouble when on the exit (however, AROUND THE BEND IN THE STREET or I would've avoided it!) there were a bunch of NE State Patrol officers all lined up, checking registration/licencses/insurance. They were eyeing each car with their stupid flashlights and I knew I was screwed.

For over 9 years, we've owned our Toyota Camry. When we bought it (used) it had originally come from FL and we were buying it in CA. We realized it didn't have a front license plate attached to it, but thought, eh who cares, we have the back one. There was no place for one to go on the front, no place for screws. So we moved out to NE and had the car registered and inspected by the county, as HAS to be done when you switch states. Everything was "fine" and they gave us our two new plates and registration. Every year I've been faithful in paying our registration on time, as I'm pretty anal about paying bills on time, always keeping insurance paid and up to date. Adam said (which I didn't know til last night) that during medical school (and we only had one car, Adam drove the Camry) that he went through a million of these registration checkpoints, and he never had to pull over and get the run around. Well I DID last night, and I just knew it wasn't going to be good. The officer and I had a good chat. I kept it light and easy and thought that maybe, just maybe he'd not ticket me and take mercy on me--seeing all the fruit snacks wrappers, wipes, two carseats etc in my car. Oh yeah, and scrubs-wearing me. Nope. He was a jerk. Trying with every question to "get me." He asked when I bought my car "Oh, 19..." and he stopped me realizing THAT question wasn't going to help his case. I told him we've lived in Nebraska for 7 years and haven't EVER had a problem. I told him it was never a big deal in CA either. And my other best defense was that when he asked for my registration and insurance, I pulled it all out of my glove compartment and the "extra" registration sticker that belongs on the extra license plate (which we keep in the trunk) was paperclipped to my registration and insurance cards. He said that people with two cars are only registering one car and taking the other plate and putting it on their second car, so they only pay for one registration. Smart...I mean, if no one is going to pull you over in 9 years for your registration, hmm, I could've saved how much money? Anyway. So at THAT comment (yes, now I'm fuming, but hiding my rage) I said, "I've got the other plate in my trunk, I can show you!!" Nope, he wasn't going to budge, not give me a warning, nothing. I've NEVER gotten a speeding ticket, never had ANYTHING tied to my drivers license ever. So I was pretty ticked that he was writing all that crap down on the ticket, everything from my drivers license--brown hair, green eyes. But, hehe, I fooled him. 145 pounds, haha dude! So I went home and told Adam of my experience with enraged Melissa taking hold, and he said that his idea is that we pay the $73 in unrolled pennies. We take them down in person and video the whole paying of the fine. I think it's excellent. Sure, the little worker will have to endure the wrath of THAT, as opposed to the idiot cop, but then I'll actually feel like I got something for my $73 dollar fine. And the stupidest part of it all? The fine is actually only $25--the rest of the money is a "court fee." So the ridiculous court gets the rest of my money. Stupid, stupid.

After posting this abreviated experience on facebook, I feel much better. Got some funny feedback, I think I like Melanie's idea the best, of paying $73.01 just so they have to go to the trouble of writing me a check for my overpaying of $0.01. Very tempting.

This morning, off to playgroup, which I'm excited about. A couple of us are going to start that, and I've missed doing that with just a few friends, it makes it nice and cozy. I've missed the days of getting together with Stacy, Steffanie, Dara, and Janelle. So I'm excited. Then I have a meeting for work this afternoon, which I usually take Spencer with me to because my boss rocks and says it's fine, but today we're touring our new unit on our new floor in "the tower" and kids are not allowed, wearing of the hardhats and all. Excited to see all new stuff. Ahh, it'll be great. And then off to soccer practice tonight. Adam is working again. I guess it's preparation for his time in DC. I still don't know how I'm not going to go bonkers while he's gone; I'm already trying to line up some babysitters so I don't lose it! I plan on some me time, maybe a massage or something, ah. I'm hoping anyway!!