This is what the sky looked like this morning on my way to work. I had to grab some pics of it when I got here. I thought it looked pretty cool. Do you know what happens when things are out of the ordinary with the weather? This is what I hear on the radio this morning...

"Oh, a red sky.....Warning the world is coming to an end" - um, this will not happen only in Buffalo..

"Red sky morning, sailors warning..." - um, not to many sailors in Buffalo. Recreational yes, and only in the summer, but I think this saying was made back when people actually sailed for a living - on the ocean, catching fish, maybe with a patch on one eye....who knows.

Same thing when the snow hit two weeks ago...."power is out, trees are falling, death toll up to 3 now....THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END, OMG, QUICK LET'S SEEK SHELTER..." It was a rough couple weeks, that we are still trying to get through, and I'm not making light of the situation. But come on, again, the world will not end just in Buffalo.

There is something else that has been bugging me all week. Tuesday was the last class of this series, and our group had to present our interpretation of the American Dream. Our group puts a reenactment together and each person is a characters with a different dream. The conclusion, that all people have a different dream and the entire scope of the American Dream is personal.

After we were done, there was time for comments. This girl raised her hand at the same time as someone else. That person went first, then the teacher said her piece, and then over to that girl. "Did you have something you want to add?" "Well no, well, yes, um, nice job..very good presentation, you really touched on a lot of things." That's what has been bothering me. I know she was going to say something else, but she didn't say it. Why didn't she say what she really wanted to say?

Mom's birthday tomorrow. I made her a cake, but she made herself a cheesecake. Going to her house tonight to celebrate.

Gotta love that Mickey D's.

I went to lunch today with mom and Quinn to the McDonald’s near my house. They have a play land there where Quinn can run around. He goes up the slide about half way and then runs up and down the steps the whole time. He had a happy meal with nuggets and apples, mom had a cheeseburger, and I had a chicken sandwich.

I went back to work, and took the rest of my diet coke. I had it sitting on my desk and you wouldn’t believe the number of people who commented, “oh, McDonald’s. That ‘stuff’ makes me sick”. Oh does it? Why are you telling me that? It then compels me to reply with a, “Well I only go once in a great while” or “I only had a grilled chicken sandwich” (of course intentionally eliminating the fries, oh so yummy fries). What do I have to justify there? If I want to eat it 3 times a day, 7 days a week, so be it.

You know they are only telling you that because they want you to think they are so health conscious and they never ever eat that “stuff”. Every one grabs it now and again, especially because it is fast. You can easily get a salad or a grilled chicken sandwich which are very healthy choices.

Yes I am defending the fast food market. Why? Because there are a lot of choices that you can get and not worry about health risks.

Now go grab some of that “stuff”.

Wish I was on the beach...

Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that just where you'd rather be right now? I went to San Diego, California 3 years ago this week, and when we were planning our trip I signed up on sandiego.org before hand to have some activity ideas for when we went. Well I never cancelled it because I loved it there. I love seeing pictures like this to remind me of that week.

You know those Mac commercials? Well that’s great that they can do movies, music and pictures, but they are not compatible with the rest of the world. Everything I try to email from my home computer does not open up on anyone else’s PCs. UGH!

Friday went to Target, then to McDonald’s for dinner. We have to eat at McDonald’s or something like that now if we chose to dine in somewhere. Quinn climbs the walls at any restaurant that takes longer than an hour. Fast food has to be our choice at least for now.

Saturday morning I went to a baby shower. It was nice, and she had gotten a lot of cute stuff. No good stories from that. Blah.

Saturday night we took Quinn to my mom’s for the night and went to a Halloween party. Jay and I were the roman people again. The best costumes there was what my sister in law and future brother in law were wearing. She was a nerd and he was Clark Kent, and later took off the glasses, tie, shirt, and pants exposing his superman costume underneath. He played the Superman theme song on his cell phone while he stripped. Later after a few rum and cokes, he and I switched costumes. We were rolling laughing.

Sunday was pick up Quinn, recover from a hangover day. Ok, mostly me recovering from a hangover that lasted until 2 pm. I can’t bounce back as fast as I used to.

Weird things that happened this weekend:

Saturday we noticed we were out of hot water. Pilot was on but it wasn’t firing. Yesterday my step father went and picked up a new tank (we would reimburse him for it, we didn’t know what to get, but he did). Turned out the knob was on pilot instead of on.

Ripped a hold in the back of my pants at lunch today exposing my butt cheek. Got out of my car and felt a little draft.

Wondered while at Target on Friday why people find the need to tell store managers everything happening in their lives.

IE: Customer to service counter staff: “Can you hold these for me for a little while? I’ll be right back for them.”

Service counter staff: “Yes we can”

Customer: “Ok good, it’s just that I walked here and have to run home quick. My brother will pick me up and bring me back here.”

Couldn’t you just say thank you? Did he really have to know all of that stuff?

It happened...

He said it. Quinn said the one word that I have been dreading since he starting talking. You may think it is a swear word. Nope hasn't picked those up yet, but I guarantee the first one of those he blurts out is shit.

Yesterday I grabbed the crayons and a coloring book and sat down with him on his bedroom floor and we started coloring. I gave him red. Not good enough. I gave him green. He was ok with that. Then he decided to run in and out of the bedroom with the crayon, so I had to make sure he didn't go writing on the walls.

He came back in and grabbed the box and one by one he took them out. He spread them all out on the floor and he used each one for about a second and drew a scribble with them.

He then gathered them all up and tucked them in between his legs, covered them up, and looked at me and said....

MINE!

(OH NO...)

Alive and Well!

We survived this crazy weekend. Thursday after we got home from work, the fun began. The snow got heavier and the power flickered on and off, until it went off for good at about 7:30 pm. We sat there, expecting it to come back on, and trying to figure out what to do if it didn't. Should we pack if we are to go somewhere? Should we check to see who else is out? Then the trees started falling. Oh man, what the hell was that? Jay went out and started dragging these huge limbs out from our back and front yards. Then the neighbors tree split and half fell onto his main power line to his house damaging the roof.

We had enough of that and had to get to sleep, so we packed up the baby and went to my father in laws, who didn't have power either, but a gas fire place with a battery operated thermostat. We all huddled in front of that for the night.

Friday came, and we woke up to many travel bans. Work was closed, so I was able to have the day off, which was nice even though it was crappy out. We went home at about 10 am to get some things, and our power came back on at 12:30 pm. We had it until about 6:30 when it went out again. The electric people were able to get us running again shortly after that, but at half power so we shouldn't go crazy. We had power all night long so we were able to stay at the house for the night.

Saturday we lost power again at around 12:30 pm. We figured there wasn't much we could do around the house, so we headed to our brother in laws. When we left the house, Jay and I felt really dizzy. Then severe headaches came on. Then a stomach ache. It took about an hour and a half to feel normal again. We think we had carbon monoxide poisoning. It was too coincidental to both feel like that at the same time as soon as we left the house. We think because we had half power that the heat wasn't exhausting properly. Still mom and step-dad came out with the CO2 detector. Nothing was found when the power did come back on.

Spent the night there Saturday night. Sunday we went home to check on things and found that there was now 3 inches of water in the basement. We raised everything we could, and moved things around, so that nothing got ruined. Laundry was floating around the laundry room. Fortunately nothing got wet in the storage area in the back. We then got some information around 2:00 to say that we would have power soon, so we were pretty optimistic. We had dinner, dealt with Quinn's runs (eww) and waited patiently for it to come back on. Finally around 8 o'clock we called and got our answering machine. Jay, his brother and father went to see if the sump was draining, and it was. We finally were home for good at 10 o'clock on Sunday.

Monday Jay and I both took off to get back to normal. Mop the basement, clean the leaves, make my phone calls for school (cancelled tonight) and wash my soaking wet laundry. We were very spoiled all weekend being able to spend all of that time with Quinn!!!!

My face hurts....

Yeah I know it’s killing you, ha, ha, ha! I feel horrible this morning. Woke up with tremendous sinus pressure. Hopefully something that a little Tylenol can take care of. It better not turn it to a full blown cold though. I am not ready for cold season!

School night last night. Next week is the last class in this series. Then off the 24th and back for the next class on the 31st. I’m going to miss my baby’s second Halloween. He is going to be a dragon!

Every time I get home from school I am so wired. I have a really hard time settling down. Maybe it was from the cup of coffee I had before and the cup of diet pepsi I had during. Ah could have been…..

I never wrote the results of the class representative vote. I won! I am the class rep for our cohort and I’m pretty excited about it. It’ll be a great experience, plus I’ll learn some great leadership skills. I will be trained next Tuesday officially!

This class has really opened my eyes up to these problems that I’ve been having at work. It has trained me to not sweat the small stuff and overcome these situations. I have always been on a professional level and he is also on my side when these problems occur. I’m glad he has my back!

Weekend update!

Friday was card night. Hosted by yours truly and enjoyable. Hubby didn’t win this time. I don’t think I have blogged about the card nights before, but to sum it up it is very 1950’s style Once a month some friends and us get together, and the men are in one room playing texas hold’em while the woman and children are in the other room bitching about the men and chasing the kids. Can you picture it? Guys smoking stogies and the girls drinking fruity drinks. Back in the day the guys would smoke stogies, but the girls would have tea and conversation. It’s too funny! Sabres rocked though, even us girls were into it! Everyone left and I joined the poker party with one of the guy’s girlfriends. Shot of Tequila anyone?

Saturday I took Quinn to a 2 year old birthday party. He had fun running around the house.

Yesterday was spent going shopping at Wegman’s, going home for the (ick) Bills Game, and enjoying the pot roast I had simmering all day! Delish.

Pretty nice weekend.

PS. GOOD NEWS!!! Quinn went pee-pee on the potty on Saturday!! We are so proud!

Last night I couldn’t get to sleep right away because I had thoughts storming through my head about work. Why is it that I stay here? From the moment I started here, I’ve been harassed in one way or another. Not physically, but emotionally. By emotionally I mean I get too involved in my job and when something goes wrong I take it personally. The first 6 months I was here I was compared to the girl that sat at my desk. I wasn’t doing the same job as her, but sat in her desk, so I wasn’t her. I didn’t do things the same as her, or that’s not how she would do it and so on….then for the next two years, after I moved into a department, there was this guy there that had been here for 20 something years, and I was only 20 something years old, so I must be stealing his job. He would hoard paperwork, then blame me for losing it, or talk behind my back trying to form an alliance against me that I was stealing his job, feel bad for me, wah wah wah. He was later fired because the complaints about him were so bad. From the moment he was fired until the moment I had my son, they pretty much left me alone and that was because I was this big pregnant woman. That was a nice two months.

When I left for maternity leave, they analyzed my job and when I came back all of a sudden I needed training. During the training all the computer girl kept saying was, “yeah you did that right” so obviously I knew what I was doing. I did learn a few more ins and outs that I didn’t know so it wasn’t a total bust. On top of that, someone here was dictating my job to me, but he isn’t management and not my boss. Now for the last 10 months or so, when ever there is a mistake, it has been made known that it was my fault.

See a pattern here? I have overcome all of this, but why do I put up with it? I’m surprised I don’t have an ulcer. The positive is that I have done many different things here and learned new things, so that would be my only pro in staying.

Side note about America’s Next Top Model:

My vote is AJ. I liked her from the start because she claimed that she was unique and not like the other girls. I’m glad Monique was booted off because she was just nasty, pretty and a good model, but nasty. The twins are a good pick too because they weren’t expecting to be models but are really naturally good at it.

Side note #2:

Isn't this ironic? Do you think Elvis has had enough of people trying to be him, so he had that guy's money maker pelvis broken? "Ha, no one can shake their pelvis like the King!!!!"

Healthy baby=happy mommy and daddy!

It has been one month since Quinn started in a new classroom at daycare. It has coincidently been one month since he has been sick. I know kids grow out of stuff, but come on. Immediately after he started in his previous classroom last October, our nightmare began. Ear infection after ear infection. He had 5 before he had his tubes put in in February and 5 after he had them in. They were in place and healed nicely, the doctors would say. I would say then why does he keep getting sick? The ear infections come from mucus settling in, and he always was getting some sort of germ to give him a runny nose. Every time he had a runny nose, we knew what we were in for. We’ve been through many bottles of Tylenol, Motrin, Benedryl, and Claritin for kids, you name it. We’ve been to the ENT and our next step was the allergist. Amazingly he is healthy immediately after a starting in a new class, with a new teacher.

I had my doubts about the previous lady. She has been doing this for years, and sometimes that is a negative thing. Sometimes people get lazy after doing something for many years, and sometimes people become pros at what they do. I know toddlers are hard to keep up after, but she never kept the “mouthed” toys separate like the other teachers did. His first teacher kept the nursery so clean you could eat off of the floor.

To add to my discernment of this teacher, she would always blow off my requests. When he was first in her class, it was fall and in between warm and cold weather, so I decided that since he was crawling he could get away with pants and not be to hot. Despite my many requests to leave his pants on because he would scuff his knees up, she still would take them off and leave him in his onesie because she thought he was too hot. For months after every time I would tell her something, my feeling about it was that she should treat it like it was the first time she ever heard that request. She was just overly-knowledgeable for my taste.

I’m still not happy he has to be there almost everyday, but I am happy he is with a teacher I like now!! Hopefully on to month two of no sickness!!