I moved. A while ago, actually, because Blogger wouldn't let me post a single thing.

You can find me here.

I've missed a lot of you. Hope to see you soon.

From the "Oh My God" Files

I didn't get this. I ruined my proposal because A) I knew what ring I was getting and I wanted it, and B) the jeweler made the mistake of letting me know it had come in. Poor John wanted to surprise me, and I really tried to be patient, but I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted my princess-cut solitaire. (Incidentally, princess-cut because John used to call me his princess.) I'm not one for flash and show. I'm more understated than that. And when the wait became too much for me, I finally asked for my ring. John's reaction? To take the little black velvet ring box out of his pocket, toss it in my lap, and say, "Here, then! Marry me. Put this on your finger." As he was getting out of his Explorer to go into a convenience store. For real. That's my proposal. But John's a romantic, so I would've gotten much better, had it not been for me being, well....me.

But this guy? This guy went to some effort. Impressive.

My World Right Now

I'm just busy. Busy Busy Busy. Again. Still. Always.
So here are some bullet points for you. A brief synopsis of my life, and this style seems appropriate right now, considering how I am spending most of my time.

• Work fricken sucks. For some reason it has gotten busy, and I'm not sure what is going on because it isn't flu season. No new obscure respiratory epidemic has surfaced. People are just...sick. And I make a living taking care of them, and so I am busy.


• School fricken sucks. This program I am in is accelerated, so the classes are only five weeks long. The last session I took was one class, and it was still busy because it was so condensed. This time I am in 2 classes: Legal/ Ethical Environment of Business, and Management Accounting. And if one was busy, two is insanity. I have 3 2,000-word papers due for each class this coming week. That's 12K words, y'all. With 60 hours of work. And 2 kids. I want to take up drinking. But if I do that, there is no way I will comprehend the hundreds of pages of reading they have given me to do. The mind-numbing reading.


• I got an A in my marketing class. Let me rephrase that: I rocked that shit out.


• Jesus didn't show up on a cloud or with a clap of thunder and take anybody away. I never thought he was going to and realized that Camping douchebag was a nutcase, but the agnostic/ borderline-atheist in me was secretly thinking, on a very small scale, that it would suck if I was wrong.


• I paid off the last of my pregnancy bills this past week. Zach has been paid for. It only took a year of crazy work schedules and living as if we were below poverty guidelines. Now I can try to regenerate my savings and since I know I am not going to med school anymore, we can work on buying a house after I have a little bit of cushion. Or maybe I should wait until the MBA is done. Hell, who knows?


• Evan is having some major psychological problems. I can only hope it is not what I think it is. I can say that I have been doing some research and when I read this one article, my heart sank because it was like I was reading about him.


• John enrolled in classes. Just a little vocational program for HVAC, but their median starting salary is comparable to my starting base salarywas as an RT when I first graduated. It would be nice to have the extra. I would say that I would slack off at work, but that isn't true. The extra would just facilitate us reaching our goals a little quicker. (See above.)

I think that's all. Sorry. I need to spend time writing academic papers now. And ptting my brain to sleep with Business Law. Peace out, homies.

On Fixing What You Can

Zach has started this new thing where he wakes up in the middle of the night. We can't tell what is going on, because he usually falls back to sleep after a short snuggle. I mentioned it to a coworker, who is a first-time mom, and her response was to ask how we handle it.

Honestly, I never thought about it.

It just comes naturally. What do I do when my baby cries? I go and get him. Simple. I think that was her way of asking if I make him cry it out. No. Never. And I never really thought of it until now because Zach has never been a challenge in this respect.

Don't get me wrong: I was the same when Evan was a baby. It just makes sense. Babies cry because they need something, even if that "something" is just to see your face and know you are still there. And this is really easy with Zachary because he has never been a crier. And I'm not sure why this is happening now. It could be that he is about to get new teeth, or that he is eating more and more foods and is getting a bellyache. It could be that he has decided recently that he is going to boycott naps and thus his sleep/wake schedule is all jacked up. Who knows? I just know that he cries and we respond. When Evan was a baby, this was particularly hard. I can still hear the shrill, colicky screams that went on for about eight hours per day for what seemed like a parade of months. John worked nights then, and so it was just me. There was no escape. And there were moments where I knew I loved him, I knew I would never hurt him, but as terrible as it sounds, I could understand how in a split-second a loving parent could lose their cool and cross that line into abuse territory. But still, the response to his cries never dulled. My desire to fix the unknown problem never faded.

This all has got me thinking about the different schools of thought on this topic. A lot of people will tell you that a baby needs to learn to self-soothe, or that you will be spoiling a baby by responding to their cries. Yeah, whaatevs. As if sweet little Zach is secretly planning how he is going to manipulate my entire life and control me. See how ridiculous that sounds? He cries because he doesn't have the verbal abilities to say, "Yo, Mom, I'm cold/hungry/ lonely/ in pain/ bored...." Seriously.

So we go to him. We will always go to him. Just like the sound of Evan crying causes the knee-jerk reaction of me going to see what is wrong. Still. And Evan is almost a decade old.

Because whatever it is, it is my job as his mother to go and fix it. One day, there will be things I cannot fix. But for now, I will relish the ones I can fix. And I don't believe for a second that I am feeding into Zach's plot for total world domination if I do.

Of course this is all coming at a very trying time for our family. Something is not quite right with Evan. I'm still trying to get him some treatment, but if it is what I think it is, I want the best therapists, the best doctors, that money can buy. And those people come with waiting lists. This is one of those times where I cannot fix it. I'm trying, Evan. I'm trying like hell. (When I find out more, expect some venting and heart-pouring action here, folks. It's bad and John is completely in denial.)

So I respond. When my babies are hurt or sad or scared. When they're lonley or angry or have just had enough.

When something is not right, I will be there. For both boys. For as long as I am living.

I Love Technology

Yep, I said it. As in: how in the blue hell did I live without a cell all of this time? The other day, I had both kids at a birthday party and John was out riding his Harley, and we were able to text and meet up for lunch. I was such an idiot before. This has made my life so much easier. And it all reminded me of this stupid clip from Napolean Dynamite.

Caving In

If I have said it once, I've said it a million times: No, I do not have a cell phone. I do not want a cell. I have 5 fricken e-mail addresses, a laptop that stays with me all of the time because of school. I have Facebook and Twitter accounts. I have instant messaging. I have an old-school landline, and I carry a pager and phone at work. If one wanted to find me and didn't, they were doing something seriously wrong. Why have a cell glued to my hand at all times? Why be one of those obnoxious diners at a restaurant, chatting loudly and annoyingly, ruining the meal of all around? Why be one of the tons of drivers out there making the roads unsafe for us all? Why add another bill to the heap I already have?
The kiddos at work (early 20's, y'all) have told me time and again that I need to get a cell. Pronto. Of course I laughed at this--Just another way for them to track me down and get me to work on my off days? No, thanks.
John is currently pursuing options for some sort of vocational program that will allow him to enter the workforce again after all of these years of being a stay-at-home-dad. And we all know I work more hours than God. And then there is school. Just the other day, I was pulling my hair out while trying to read the most dull crap I have ever read in my life while the boys were rough-housing. I couldn't concentrate, and so I was about to head to Starbucks and use their wifi to get some school work done in peace. But I was waiting on a phone call and needed to stay home And then there is the fact that it is the middle of May (yeah, it is, even though the weather makes it feel more like October or November). This means John will be taking out his Harley more and more, and I am plagued with dread that he will end up smeared on the concrete and nobody will know to where or whom he belongs.

So I stopped at Sprint. Just to look. And price. And they said the magic words: I get a 25% hospital employee discount. Damn.

I told the guy that I was cell-phone-retarded, that because of my busy lifestyle, I wanted something with some features that would help me manage, but I didn't want something so fancy that I wouldn't be able to use it.
His solution? Android smart phones for everybody. I didn't even know how to turn the damned thing on. I had to go back and get a little tutorial to even be able to perform basic functions. And text? Pffft. We don't need text. My plan has unlimited text and data so I wouldn't get any surprises at bill time, but I never dreamed we would use it. Boy, was I wrong. John texted me 62 times last night while I was at work. That isn't a number I pulled out of the air. That is really the number it has on my call log. Really. 62. Plus 4 missed calls.

So I have gone and done it this time. I joined the 21st century. The Sprint dude made it up to me though. We have the same phones, so I told him to make them stand apart from each other so there is no "oops, I grabbed the wrong phone". And boy, did he ever. John's is gray with a black clip. Mine? Ha! Metallic purple with the most obnoxiously pink hard case ever. And I showed up at work. And my boss seemed really excited to see me with a phone in my hand. (Gee, wonder why?) And my coworkers were amazed. As in, "Is that ANDREA with a CELLPHONE????"
I never dreamed I would fall. That's it now. I was the last one. Now everybody has them.

PS- I figured more of the phone out and am now a tweeting, status-updating, e-mail checking, texting, Angry-Birds-playing Professional.

Birthday Pics

Long after the party with family, the four of us settled in to celebrate Zach's big day together. Just like it was a year ago when he came into the world. Without the stress of party planning and associated to-do lists, we were able to just focus on soending time together. And we had a ball, though when we sang "Happy Birthday" to my precious baby boy, I was crying too much to get all the way through the song. Zach enjoyed cake and ice cream for the third time (the first for the cake smash photos with the photographer and the second being the party with my in-laws). This time, I made chocolate-butterscotch cupcakes with vanilla frosting. An it seems with each occasion, Zach has gotten even more into it. This time, he even had sprinkles in his eyelashes before it was all said and done. The chocolate ice cream made an even bigger, hilarious mess, and we all dissolved into laughter when he tried to even lick the plate.

Overall it was a great day.