A Work at Home Mom’s Blog

After writing my previous post, I realized that I haven’t even written about the puppies. Oops.

I might have mentioned the Walker at some point, but I know I haven’t gone into detail. She was given to us by a friend of Hubby’s. Her name is Anna, and she’s a beautiful dog. But as you may have gathered, she’s not the brightest crayon in the box. But Walkers aren’t exactly known for their intelligence. She’s a sweetheart and all, I just wish she would learn to get in her house when she needs to instead of standing out in the rain and barking.

The other puppy is a mutt, looks like he might be some kind of toy terrier mix. Pumpkin named him Tater Tots, and I have yet to figure out why, but whatever. He’s mostly black with tan on his chest, feet and above his eyes. And he has absolutely stolen my heart. We’re having to keep him on the front porch temporarily, because he has a little bit of mange. I think it’s the hereditary kind, which isn’t transmissible, but I don’t want to take any chances. But I found an herbal remedy that is supposed to be very good, and I’m going to try it on him. Once that’s cleared up, the fun of bringing him in and housetraining him will begin.

I’m debating on whether to crate train or try pee pads. If I decide to crate train him, I hope I can get away with just using a cardboard box. I can get one of those for free at the store down the road where we got our moving boxes. Maybe if I put something soft for him to lay on in there he will be okay with it.

So there’s the dirt on the doggies. I would post some pictures, but I have yet to take any. I’ll try to get around to that soon.

It’s raining today. Rain is something that we really need right now. But the mud I could definitely do without.

I guess it’s due to the change in weather, but my foot has been very sore since I got up this morning. It was run over by a car when I was 16, and it bothers me off and on. It was, however, tolerable. But thanks to the mud outside my back door, it’s rapidly approaching intolerable.

Here’s the story: Our new Walker puppy was barking her head off, so I figured she was hungry. So I decided that would be a good time to feed her and the other puppy. I slid on my Born sandals that my mom gave me and got the dog food ready. Then I opened up the back door and stepped out, only to step right in a ginormous gob of mud. My foot went sliding, and I had to twist around to keep from falling and dropping the dog food and water. By the time I caught my balance, I was at Anna’s dog house.

My foot and sandal covered in mud, I went to put the food and water in her bowl. That’s when I realized that she probably wasn’t barking out of hunger. She was standing out in her lot, soaked from head to tail. The crazy thing had obviously been standing out in the rain when she had a nice, dry house to lay in. WTH???

Anyway, as soon as I reached for her bowl, she jumped up on my arm, covering it with mud as well. Lovely. I held my temper, filled her bowl, and set it in her dog house. And instead of going in to eat it, she stayed outside and stuck her head in. I just don’t get that dog.

When I started back toward the house, the pain set in. I could barely stand to put any weight on my foot. But I pressed on, removing my sandal so as not to track up the floor too badly, and went through the house to the front porch to feed the little one. He wasn’t out there, and I had to holler for him a couple of times. I don’t know where he was, but wherever it was he was dry as a bone. At least he’s smart enough to seek shelter.

I limped back in the house, washed my arm and foot, and went back to the kitchen to examine my sandal. I rinsed it off in the tub, but you can still see where the mud was. I hope it will survive, because that’s one of the most comfortable (not to mention expensive) pairs of sandals I own.

It’s supposed to rain all week here. So I guess I have lots more muddy adventures to look forward to.

I haven’t been to the movies in ages, but there’s a movie coming out next month that I think might just change that. It’s called The Women, and it features an awesome cast that includes some of my favorite actresses: Meg Ryan, Debra Messing, Annette Bening, and Jada Pinkett Smith.

Although the cast is all female, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill chick flick. It takes a close look at two issues that are important to women: the definition of beauty and friendship. You can watch a great mini-documentary about the making of the film at Dove’s website.

The documentary features teen journalist Cammy Nelson (pictured above with director Diane English), a very smart young lady who has been involved with projects designed to promote self esteem in young women since the age of 12. She worked with Go Girls! and PeaceJam before teaming up with Dove to go behind the scenes of The Women. She toured the set and spoke with the actresses about their opinions on beauty. You might be surprised at their answers, which had nothing to do with outward appearance.

In addition to the documentary, you can read Cammy’s diary entries about her experiences on the set. There’s also a director’s diary written by Diane English about the making of the film.

My Take on Beauty and Friendship

As you may know from some of my previous posts, I think it’s very important for girls and women to realize that real beauty comes from the inside, and from the things that make us unique. But I don’t think I’ve touched on the subject of friendship very often.

In today’s impersonal world, fewer and fewer people have real friends. I can’t say that I have any that I talk to on a regular basis. Well, there’s Hubby, who is truly my best friend in every sense of the word. I can talk to him about anything, and he’s always there to comfort me when I’m down. But it’s nice to have female friends to talk girl talk with, and to do the things that the menfolk just aren’t interested in with. I guess I need to give some of my old friends a call, because I miss that. Maybe I’ll invite them to go see The Women with me.

So what do beauty and friendship have to do with each other? Well, your real friends will appreciate you for who you are, not what you look like. In high school, I had some “friends” who decided they didn’t want to be associated with me because I didn’t try to be a carbon copy of the popular girls. But to a real friend, things like that do not matter.

Win Tickets to See The Women

Want a chance to win free tickets to see The Women at a theater near you? Visit Dove’s website starting on September 3rd. They’ll be giving away 100 pairs of tickets. You can enter once a day between September 3rd and September 19th.

Maybe you’re wondering where I’ve been since I posted that I was feeling better. Or maybe you were under the mistaken impression that I had a life away from this computer. Anyway, in case you want to know, I started feeling cruddy again. I’m gonna live and all, but my body has been worn out and my mind in a fog.

I think I’m getting another sinus infection, or maybe it’s just a cold. But whatever it is, all I’ve felt like doing has been sleeping. True, that’s par for the course lately, but I had a couple of days when I wasn’t so tired. Then my head started getting all stuffy, and I was tired again.

Besides feeling rough, I’ve had a bunch of work piled up (par for the course again). I’m working on getting it caught up, and hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze in a couple more projects before the month is out. I need to have at least a decent month this time to keep us afloat.

Other than the same old same old, nothing has been going on to write home about. So that’s all for now.

I finally went to the surgeon today, after two reschedulings (one by his office and one by me). The verdict? Fibrocystic breast disease. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s actually good news.

If you’re not inclined to click the Wikipedia link up there, it’s basically just a condition that causes the breasts to swell and feel lumpy and be sore. It doesn’t increase the risk for cancer or anything. The doctor was hesitant to even call it a disease, because it’s so common and harmless.

He doesn’t seem to be interested in draining anything. He just told me to try to cut out caffeine and see if that helped, and to come back in six to eight weeks. Since I just started birth control, he wants to check me again to make sure there aren’t any new developments, which hormonal therapies can cause.

I was hoping for some relief, but at least I can rest assured that it’s really not anything to worry about. It’s not like the pain is unbearable (usually it’s just pretty sore to the touch), so I suppose I’ll just cut down on the caffeine and hope for the best.

While I’m on the subject of breast health, I thought I would bring up Holly’s Fund again. If you didn’t see my previous post about it, it’s a website created to help raise money for Holly Fannin, a needy breast cancer victim. Do check it out, and donate if you can.

Halloween is coming up in a couple of months. Any parents out there dressing up?

You rarely see an adult dressed up for Halloween around here, unless they’re at work. I guess because there aren’t any clubs in the area, people don’t feel the need to get all gussied up in sexy costumes and hit the town. I guess I can see where they’re coming from (although even if I were to find a club to go to, I just don’t see myself wearing anything terribly revealing there).

The last time I dressed up for Halloween was the year before Pumpkin was born. I was working at a discount store, and they allowed us to dress up. I got all decked out as a vampire. I bought a cape, wore a slinky black dress (which I had the body for then), painted my face white with black around the eyes, bright red lipstick, silver jewelry, the whole bit. I even got my hands on some plastic fangs, although I couldn’t bring myself to wear them while I was working. I was afraid I would slobber on the customers.

I’ve considered dressing up to take Pumpkin trick-or-treating, but I don’t know if I will or not. I don’t do much planning for Halloween until after her birthday. That gives me a few weeks, but it never seems to be enough time to put anything together. Maybe this year will be different.

I’m finally starting to pull out of the funk I’ve been in for the past several weeks (or months). It feels good, but I’m also putting a lot of pressure on myself. There’s so much I need and want to do now that I’m feeling better that I can’t figure out where to start.

My writing has to take first priority, because I’m behind and I need to make a decent amount of money to keep us afloat this month. I also want to get the house cleaned up really good. Scratch that- desperately need to. It’s a freaking disaster area.

Getting in better shape has also been on my mind. I’ve still got some health issues to clear up, but nothing that would prevent me from working out. I don’t have any weight equipment sitting around, so I don’t guess I’ll be doing any strength training, but I am going to try my best to motivate myself to start walking. If I can make myself do that for a while, I’ll have an easier time moving on to other exercise.

I even started taking vitamins for the first time in about 15 years. Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a step in the right direction. And that’s more than I’ve been able to muster in a long time.

My poor T-Bird has been sitting for so long now it’s not even funny. It sat for a long time at the old place, then Hubby drove it over here when we moved. I was going to, but I was having to fight with the steering and made him do it.

I would love to be able to get some work done on it and drive it. It runs awesome, just needs a good tune-up and a couple of small repairs. It needs a new AC compressor, although that’s not at the top of my list. It gets pretty hot around here, but one can usually cope with the windows down. It’s also still dying a lot when you take off, even if you let it warm up. It’s got a new alternator and alternator belt, so I’m not sure what the problem is there. Maybe the idling needs to be adjusted, but from what I’ve heard that’s no small task on that model.

None of this is going to happen for a while anyway. I can’t even afford to get the work done on my truck that it needs, and I’m still paying on it. I’m hoping that maybe we’ll get a little money back on our taxes and I can pay it off early, and that will leave some extra money each month that I might be able to put toward my car. We shall see. But I really hate to see it just sitting there going downhill. It could be a pretty nice ride with some TLC.

Hubby and I recently got new cellphones. Not really because we had the money lying around, but because our old ones both quit working. Our service provider happened to have a great deal on Razrs at the time, so that’s what we got. And I must admit they’re pretty sweet.

They’re not the new Razr 2s, but refurbished Razr V3Cs. We don’t require the latest and greatest of everything, so they’ve got plenty of features to keep us happy. But I still haven’t gotten them completely figured out yet. I don’t know if you can add flash memory to store more ringtones and pictures and stuff or not. And although someone told Hubby that you can use voice recordings you do on the phone as ringtones, I haven’t figured out any way to do that. Anybody know how, or if it’s even possible?

I’m not crazy about their reception, but this is the mountains and it’s hard to really get a good signal in a lot of places. Still, Hubby has called me from the same location on someone else’s phone and it has picked up a zillion times better. But that’s about the only real beef I have about them. They’re pretty, have just the right amount of bells and whistles for us, and the price was right.

I’ve been trying to subtly hint to Hubby that he needs to get the roof finished before cold weather sets in. He got all the shingles on, but he hasn’t gotten around to putting what he calls the ridge caps on (not being knowledgeable about roofing, I don’t know if that’s what everyone calls them or not). And he needs to put some tar around the chimney. It’s in good enough shape to withstand heavy rains, as we’ve found out through careful monitoring, but I doubt it could stand up to snow as is.

I would get up there and do it, but like I said, I know nothing about roofing. It would be kind of like my technologically impaired mom trying to install an HDMI wall plate. Fun to watch, but not very productive.

I hope he gets up there and gets it done soon. We’ve got some other projects we need to tackle before winter too, and most of them will be a little more complicated than that. But I would just feel so much better with that out of the way.