Holy Cow 8 Kids!

I am not a fan of reality shows. I remember when I was pregnant with my youngest child, back in 1999, the biggest thing back then were these message boards. At the time it was on a website called ParentSoup, and now it is part of iVillage. I don’t participate much at all now, but at the time all the moms were talking about watching a show called “A Baby Story.”

The moms would watch it constantly. I don’t even know what channel it was on. Nowadays it seems like there is this HUGE amount of reality TV, especially on a channel called “TLC” which stands for The Learning Channel. I like to watch a show called What Not to Wear, and it comes on right after a show called “John and Kate Plus 8.” So since our TIVO is a few minutes off, whenever I record What Not to Wear I get a few minutes of the end of John and Kate, so I got intrigued. So one day I recorded it and wow. The mom had only 2 pregnancies – one resulted in twins and the other in sextuplets. So they have 8 kids.

I have gotten a bit hooked on it. I am just amazed at how they manage to keep track of 8 kids, and know a lot about the unique qualities of each one. I would just be completely overwhelmed with 8 kids.

These Blogs Are Addictive

Well, I didn’t find the blog I was looking for. I have a vision of it in my mind, I see exactly how the header looks but I can’t remember the URL. It was a hosted blog, I think I stumbled across it when I was building my Moveable Type blog way back when. It wasn’t on blogspot or the other blogs where you just set up an account and off you go. But I can’t remember the link to save my life.

But looking for it has made me stumble on some hysterical blogs. The one I found today was Mom’s Crazy Life, with the current post http://www.momscrazylife.com-a.googlepages.com/100808. I almost peed in my pants! It described a person who switched to a new cable triple play service and got the phone turned off. It described the ins and outs of trying to get customer service to “fix” the problem. I read a few more posts and I kept thinking that this person has a life really similar to mine.

Musings of an Overworked Mom

This is a “post for the sake of having a post”, though I am sure I will ramble it into something. I have been sick and out of work for the past few days. I have deadlines tomorrow and so I have to make it into the office, so I am only taking half of my cough syrup dose so I can get up tomorrow.  It is very strong codeine which I save for my true emergencies where I am coughing my asthma cough all night and getting no sleep. I usually still cough but I don’t even realize it, so I am at least resting. But it makes me feel slightly hung over and on Monday my son missed his bus so I had to climb into the car and chase down the bus…I wondered if that would count as drunk driving. It was a sight to see because I was still in pajamas.

Anyway, I am loving this class but as usual I have no time to spend on it. I love web design but my full time job no longer has much of anything to do with web design. It is still an Information Technology position, with a company that is doing very well despite the economy. Knock on wood. So that means that we are busy, which is good but at the same time I am just getting further and further behind. My husband has a new job that has a lot of travel. Yet he doesn’t really want me to quit because he likes the security of a second income, which I can’t blame him about at all because he suffered 2 layoffs in 2 years and having the second income, and BENEFITS, was incredibly helpful. But we have no family in the area to help and I am feeling more and more squeezed between the full-time “day” job and the evening clients who I love but who get less and less of my attention. Because the kids have to come in here sometime and I make sure they do, even if the house is less than shiny. But I keep musing on how I would love to make my “home” business more of the focus in my life.

I Can’t Write To Save My Life

I am reading week 4 of this lesson. I realized that although I really want to learn about how to set up sites so they can be “bloglike”, or best able to showcase blogs, I can’t write worth a lick. I never could write well. I may be insightful and can usually carry a good conversation, but the minute I put pen to paper (or more recently finger to keyboard) nothing comes out well. Period.

I guess that maybe the tape recorder kept in my purse might work. My friend used to do that when she was planning her wedding, and she would come up with amazing ideas when she was in the car commuting. So she would pull out the tape recorder then play it back when she got home, and add whatever she had thought of to her lists. But I might have my thoughts well organized, but I don’t think they would be beautiful. There are people out there with gorgeous posts. Barb’s, for example, are so insightful. I really enjoy reading her posts.

I have been searching all over, I could have sworn I had bookmarked this amazing blog about mommyhood. It described the total life from the trenches, the craziness of having small children. Now lately my children aren’t that small, they are 8 and 11. Today we had absolutely no plans, which was amazing. I have a cold so I have been letting them have the run of the house. For a while I was thrilled that I could actually rest. I remember when the kids were little, forget resting! There were kids to feed, diapers to change, mess to clean up. Well, I still probably have mess to clean up but I can at least get them to help. But I really want to find out if that blog still exists. It gave me hope when the kids were little, but when I went back to work I lost the ability to follow it.

I found something similar here, but it isn’t quite the same:
http://blog.imperfectparent.com/2008/07/31/imperfect-blogger-of-the-week-in-the-trenches-of-mommyhood/

It isn’t quite the same. Darn, it is really going to bother me.

Jewish Holidays

Today was Rosh Hashanah. My husband is Jewish, I am not, our kids are being raised Jewish which brings up all sorts of issues. People ask me often why I have chosen that, as I am the mother and technically I have “rights” to the religion of our children. However, long ago my husband and I spoke about it and we had decided that it would be easier for me to come to grips with the fact that our children would be brought up to believe that Jesus was not the Messiah. After all, I was told over and over that Jesus was a Jew. He went to synagogue and was devout to his faith, so the kids would simply be learning about his heritage. For my husband to have to deal with our children being taught that Jesus was the Messiah…well, he really couldn’t handle that. And since we wanted our children to be brought up in a faith, and preferably one faith (not being schlepped one week to church and the next week to temple) it just made sense to do it that way.

However, I really dislike the holidays. I dislike the fact that I have no idea what is going on. The first time we went “synagogue shopping” I immediately pulled out a pen to write something down. I had no idea that writing on both Shabbat and the Holidays was a big no-no. Oops. I feel like each week I run into some “oops” because there are so many rules, and an equal amount of loopholes for what is work and what is not. What is allowed and what is not. And since I refuse to convert because I firmly believe in what I believe, I don’t have any real desire to read the “Judiasm for Dummies” book we have. My husband isn’t even pressuring me, but I am at the synagogue a lot more often than he is. I drive the carpool, I take the kids to Sunday School, and I even maintain their website. Luckily this particular synagogue is very progressive and have a lot of interfaith families, and they are very understanding. But I keep feeling like I am going to mess something up.

I am going to try to insert a picture into this post, since I am so far behind! And of course I can’t find a picture that is interesting. I need to finish all the rest of the weeks by Yom Kippur, or it just won’t get done. Am I supposed to be doing tags yet? I did figure out my widgets issue, and just looked back at my homework and no…just have to do widgets this week. So I should be able to post this tomorrow and get on with week 4.

My cute heart

Thunder

I did not anticipate getting so behind in this class. I was going to spend the weekend catching up since I only have one child this weekend. Normally I have two (three if you count the husband) but my husband and son went camping this weekend for their semi-annual Cub Scout camping trip. They left on Friday and it was just my daughter and I.

Now we love these “girls weekends” as my daughter calls them. She is 8 and so she hasn’t hit those teenage years where she will want nothing to do with me. I spent the weekend sorting because with back to school and unexpected web design deadlines. Since I wasn’t the best organized to start with it all snowballed. So I had planned to organize and then start tackling items, but it ended with a bunch of organizing and very little tackling. I was determined to at least have every thing in its pile, so I went to bed about 2 hours later than I should. Then the thunder hit…and my daughter is *petrified* of thunder. It was very loud, very bright, and when it rains that hard I wish we didn’t have our skylights.

So I am not sure who is going to be more tired today, me or my husband.

My First Post

This is my “new blog” on my WordPress blog set up specifically for my LVS class. I am taking this class to improve my skills on blogging and learn more about what it is used for.

I really am getting lost finding blogs. I just saw one here that I just love:

http://goodenoughmom.us/

I just started looking and looking for blogs, and did a google search on “Good Mom Blogs.” This came up in the list and the first line on the current post started with “I have jumped into full meltdown mode with both feet. I’m in way over my head and am seriously drowning.” I have a full time job, a part time web design job, a husband, 2 kids – the 5th grader who just entered middle school and the 3rd grader who is still in elementary school. Life gets blown out of the water every single fall and I start getting into a groove usually right before Halloween.

I can’t seem to figure out why I keep getting a twitter login every time I click a page. Is it just me? Regardless, this class is a lot of fun so far.