Friday, September 30, 2011

The music in my head and zombie stuff

Since my we signed my son up for a music class last January, I have the wonderful opportunity to get children songs stuck in my head. I can tell you there is nothing more annoying that having "Paolo Paolo Paolo" stuck in your head, especially when I don't speak any Spanish and the ENTIRE song is in Spanish. So, it's just the words "Paolo Paolo Paolo" over and over to the tune.

But this morning I woke up with a real song in my head! "Cough Syrup" by Young the Giant. Of course now we are on hour three of it in my head and I've not only listened to it four times but also read the full lyrics to see if it will go away.

I'm always surprised at song lyrics. I usually get the gist of it and had the chorus of this down. But I had no idea what was in this song...especially verse 2:

"Life’s too short to even care at all
I’m coming up now coming up now out of the blue
These zombies in the park they’re looking for my heart
A dark world aches for a splash of the sun" [thank you lyricsmania.com]

Zombies in the park? Noooooo!!

I'm tired of zombies. I'm over them. By like 25 years.

When I was a child I watched the Living Dead series (um, see previous posts about no restrictions on movies that were on Saturday afternoons!)...and I loved horror and gore.

But not now. The Ring ruined me for horror movies. I couldn't look into a mirror for months without seeing that little girl in the movie behind me. I couldn't even watch I Am Legend all the way through. (Which I did NOT realize was a zombie movie when I began watching it!)

My husband recently rented season 1 the Walking Dead. I refused to watch it, so he waited until a night I went to the gym to enjoy it. He then told me a bit about it, and sure enough I had nightmares that night about zombies.

I guess the point of this post is this: Go away zombies. I was really enjoying that vampire craze!

Thursday, September 29, 2011

To do lists

This past month I've manage to accomplish a few things, and I know this because I've been tracking them with "to-do" lists.

I love making lists. I do it for packing, food shopping, organizing my day, gardening. Name it, I list it. Then I lose them. Or only do half of them. Often times I combine my different roles in life onto one list.

1. Return library books.
2. Send request for COI forms
3. Go running
4. Interview so and so.

Bam. Right there I realized my problem. That's 4 things for 4 different roles. Mother, editor, runner, writer. This month I did the unthinkable. Had 4 lists running at the same time, in different locations.

And I got stuff done.

At work I caught up on emails. From June. Yes, I replied to emails people sent me in June that I hadn't gotten to yet. Embarrassing, but it's done. I've also enabled Outlook to send me reminders on long over due emails, so hopefully that wont happen again. Especially when one of them shouldn't have been replied to and I think I created an article submission we don't really want anymore.

At home I did food shopping and didn't forget anything. Amazing. Even more, instead of crumpling to do lists in my pocket or laboring over them in the memo function on my phone (yes, I do know there is a grocery shopping list app and I've tried 3 of them and hate them), I took a picture of the white board in our fridge where we write down things we need and just used that. Success.

At the gym (or just health in general) I've taken to using a guilt-ridden group I helped start force me to work out. On FB the member of a private group "Healthy 30s"pushed me to work out at lunch, count walking as exercise (hey, if I'm going to walk 2 miles I may as well add it to my fitness scores).

And in my writing, well. It's been working for writing that has deadlines, but my creative writing is suffering. I tried to put it on the to do list, but did you know Fall TV is on again?! It seems that my procrastination skills become heightened when I don't have an actual deadline. Instead of sitting down and typing up a few scenes, I go to AC Moore and buy crafting supplies and make a wreath for my front door.
Or make a giant batch of pizza sauce. Because after all, season changes and rotting tomatoes that bring hordes of fruit flies to the kitchen are the most motivating deadlines out there.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

The bright side of weariness

In the past month I survived my first vacation with a toddler, a tropical storm, and an earthquake. To be honest, I didn't notice the earthquake, perhaps because I'm too shaken from dealing with a toddler...who wanted to go outside the entire time the tropical storm was going on.

My little son, who I adore more than anything in this universe, has decided to showcase his personality this past month. He's sneaky (loves to hide), funny (love to make faces and weird sounds), head strong (knows what he wants and isn't afraid to do anything to get it), and very strong and tough (fell off a wall yesterday, stood up and brushed himself off). He also has developed a strong mommy attachment that prevents me from leaving him in the gym daycare for an hour while I work out. I was asked to leave, but I'll go back once he calms down a bit.

The work/life balance is hard for me these days as work becomes heavy heading into conference season. There are many days where I should be working late but have to do daycare pick up, and I've gone into the office at 7 AM to get stuff done far too often. On some weekends my son is like a child who is visiting...I give him extra special treatment because I haven't seen him most of the week, then spend the next few days worried I am spoiling him and that he sees the daycare people are his "real parents."

However, yesterday he showed me in a very public way that I'm doing OK.

I work from home on Wednesdays, which gives me some time with the little guy. We walked down to the library for a story time, where the kids are given free reign to wander around the room as long as they are not too disruptive. He sat in my lap for the first story, and during the break headed over to the rug where some of the older kids were sitting. But instead of sitting down he went to the adults and said "my mommy" and pointed over at me. He said this to each adult in the room then returned to my lap for the second story.

I have to be honest, my heart melted.