Haiku Friday: Birthdays

Today is special
Someone close turns fifty-four
Happy birthday, mom

Tomorrow is mine
Birthdays just one day apart
(Plus twenty-two years)

I kinda resented having a birthday one day apart from my mom growing up. Our family always celebrated our birthdays together, meaning I never had my own party. I didn’t even have my own cake – it was always a shared cake. (I liked chocolate, and she preferred white, so it was usually half-white, half-chocolate.)

Now that I’m older, I prefer a shared party. We’re all so busy now, and a shared party makes it easier to coordinate schedules. And since I married a man who has a birthday 9 days before mine, we usually lump his celebration in with ours.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our haiku theme last week! We’ll probably have another themed haiku topic in a few weeks. If there’s a theme you really want, be sure to let us know!

To play along for Haiku Friday, follow these steps:

1. Write your own haiku on your blog. You can do one or many, all following a theme or just random. What’s a haiku, you ask? Click here.

2. Sign the Mister Linky below or at Jennifer’s blog with your name and the link to your haiku post (the specific post URL, not your generic blog URL). DON’T sign unless you have a haiku this week. If you need help with this, contact Jennifer or myself.

3. Pick up a Haiku Friday button to display on the post or in your sidebar by clicking the button at the top.

REMEMBER: Do not post your link unless you have a haiku this week! We will delete any links without haiku!

PS – Want to make sure your kid’s stuff doesn’t get lost? Enter to win a bountiful supply of tough-but-stylish labels by leaving a comment on my review of Mabel’s Labels by Tuesday night!



I’m Keeping Her Away From Cosmo While I Still Can

I’m sure Mira is a girly-girl in the making. For example, she has a strange fascination with shoes. Any shoe in our house is sure to be picked up and examined, and if she finds one that she thinks is pretty, she tries to put it on her foot. She loves satin ribbons, jewelry, and feather boas.

And she steals every one of my magazines. Mira watches me read magazines, and has decided she needs to be doing the same. I think she likes the pictures, or maybe it’s the smooth glossy paper. But Self and People aren’t exactly ideal reading for babies – she doesn’t need to start thinking wafer-thin models are the norm and makeup and accessories are a must. I’m also getting tired of trying to read around the half-ripped pages. She always seems to tear out the article I want to read.

Now she can have a magazine designed for her age group. Parent Bloggers told me about Babybug, a magazine designed for children 6 months to 3 years old. I’ll admit I wasn’t sure what to expect, since I didn’t know how a periodical could be designed to interest someone who can’t read or understand that many words yet. But I was pleasantly surprised.

Click to read my full review of Babybug magazine.



Schooltime Once Again

On Monday I needed to call Cordy’s school district to find out more about the summer program. I was told by her teacher at the end of the school year that she was accepted into the program, but no further information was given.

After calling 5 (!) numbers, being re-routed several times and hung up on once, I finally found out they had no information yet as to the summer program, but they were pretty sure it started the next day. Amazed at the lack of organization, I asked them to please call me back when they did find out exactly where we should be and when.

Cordy’s new teacher called late in the afternoon to introduce herself and tell me that due to a scheduling problem with the buses, there would be no morning pick-up today, asking if I could please bring her to school instead. I should mention that her summer school is on the other side of Columbus. Ugh.

So today we packed up her bag, got in the car, and fought rush-hour traffic to get to the other side of town. We got there and tried to tell her how much fun she was going to have at her new school.

New school. New teachers. New classroom. New classmates. See where this is going? Yeah, she didn’t even make it all the way down the hall before hitting the floor. She hid behind my legs as the teachers tried to coax her into the classroom, but she buried her face into my leg and whimpered.

We finally got her into the classroom, and explained all of her quirks to her new teacher, giving her tips on how to best handle Cordy. For those first few minutes, with only one other child in the room, all was well and Cordy examined the toys on the shelves. But then more kids arrived, and she clung to my leg and asked to go home to the quiet house. She couldn’t handle all of the new sensory input – her brain was going into overdrive.

Knowing the meltdown that would follow, I pried her off of me and we left, listening to her screams echo down the hall. I wondered how her first day would go, especially since the summer program classes were two hours longer than her normal school day.

There was no call all day, so we assumed everything was going well. Right on time, the bus arrived, and a smiling preschooler stepped off the bus. She was clearly tired, but happy to tell me all about our front lawn as we walked to the door. A note in her backpack said that she cried for about 15 minutes in the morning, and then had a good day after that. It helps that they spent the day studying one of her favorite subjects: fish. They fed goldfish, went “fishing” in the sandbox, and made cutouts of fish.

I think Cordy will have fun with this summer preschool. We’ll see if she’s willing to get on the bus tomorrow, of course, but once she gets used to her new surroundings, I suspect she’ll charm her new teachers and have the entire class bending to her will.

PS – The school may not have been prepared, but we were prepared today by having all of the items in her backpack labeled, thanks to Mabel’s Labels. Read my review of these amazing sticky labels and enter my contest to win a Camp Pack set of personalized labels for your child!



Each Time A Door Closes…

…another one opens, right? And hopefully it is a bigger, better door: prettier, shinier, brighter, more comfortable, makes you happier, pays better, offers more perks.

Oh, that kind of wandered off, didn’t it?

I had planned a cutesy post about a topic that I thought was important today: men’s cologne. And I was all set to write about that until my husband called me around 4:30 pm to tell me he was coming home early today.

Because he lost his job.

Dammit.

I’d like to say this came completely out of the blue, but it didn’t. When he started working for this state agency two years ago, it was a non-political agency. With our new governor (a man who has made me question if he really is a Democrat) in place, he quickly set about putting this agency under his control, allowing him to appoint a leader of the agency.

Shortly after that, people who had worked there before this change of leadership began disappearing. Some transferred or found other jobs, others were encouraged to find employment elsewhere, and for those who remained, many were reassigned to new positions.

Aaron watched as his entire department was torn down, leaving him with the jobs of those who were no longer there, along with his own responsibilities. Despite the additional work, he received no pay raise, since our lovely governor had frozen the pay of most state employees. But at least he still had a job, so we continued on with little complaint.

More people disappeared, though, and this time new people appeared, despite a state hiring freeze. These new people held positions that had never been advertised on the state’s jobs website and collected comfortable salaries. Some didn’t even seem to know how to do parts of their job. Aaron was again given new responsibilities that didn’t suit his skill set, yet also was expected to continue with most of his previous job, too.

But today it all ended. After overloading him to the point that no single person could accomplish all of those tasks in a timely manner, and giving him a useless manager who never responded to his multiple requests to meet and discuss his responsibilities, he was told his services were no longer needed. Pack up your desk, turn in your keycard, and see you again never.

We’re not in a state of panic – yet. Probably because it’s still sinking in. The paychecks will run out in mid-July, and our health insurance is good through the end of July. Then we’ll panic for sure. We’ll have the option of Cobra after that, but there’s no way we can afford it. And last I checked, gas is $4 a gallon and the job market suuuucks.

We’ll get by somehow. We both bring in a little money from writing, and his resume is sitting on several desks already. Aaron has been unhappy with his job for several months, so the job hunt actually started back in March. Hopefully this is some kind of blessing in disguise, and the ideal job will fall into his lap as a result.

Until then, I’ll be reading Megan’s eBay column carefully to learn how to make the best auction listings, and temporarily giving up my search for a Wii Fit. I’ll also try to convince my sweet, devoted husband to not bother getting me a birthday gift this Saturday, because in this case, the thought will be good enough.

This is a big setback, financially, but it’s not the end of the world. At least he won’t be under so much stress from the toxic work environment he had to deal with. Aside from having no income at the moment, things aren’t too bad: we’re healthy, we have supportive friends and family, and we have each other. I’d say that’s still better than what many have.



Haiku Friday: Hair Dreams or Nightmares


“Her hair is gorgeous!”
Everyone marvels at my
daughter’s curly locks

I often wished for
curly hair like my daughter’s
Until I combed hers

The screaming, the tears
the constant tangles make me
happy for my waves.

To play along for Haiku Friday, follow these steps:

1. Write your own haiku on your blog. You can do one or many, all following a theme or just random. What’s a haiku, you ask? Click here.

2. Sign the Mister Linky below or at Jennifer’s blog with your name and the link to your haiku post (the specific post URL, not your generic blog URL). DON’T sign unless you have a haiku this week. If you need help with this, contact Jennifer or myself.

3. Pick up a Haiku Friday button to display on the post or in your sidebar by clicking the button at the top.

REMEMBER: Do not post your link unless you have a haiku this week! We will delete any links without haiku!

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