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Jun 10, 2013

Premature Excitement (aka: Dumb Mom Moment)

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This morning there was a noticeable excitement in the air. After a week of having the kids bored at home most days while I worked, we were all looking forward to this week’s plans.

Lunches were packed this morning, towels and bathing suits were labeled with their names and packed up, sunscreen was in easy reach. Cordy and Mira were ready for summer day camp, and I was ready to have my peaceful work space back.

I kissed them both goodbye as Aaron hurried them out the door this morning to the car. It’s been raining all morning, and they ran to the car to avoid getting too wet. I felt a little bad that their first day of camp would be indoors, at least for the morning, and made a mental note to pick them up early today so they could ease into their first day of camp.

I took a deep breath, relaxing in front of the computer in total quiet, with only the dog for company. Looking through my email, I started to plan for the day ahead.

And then my cell phone rang. I figured Aaron had just dropped them off and wanted to tell me how it went. “Hello?”

“Hi. You might want to re-check the dates of summer camp this year.”

“Wait, what?”

“Summer camp doesn’t begin until next week.”

“WHAT?”

What?

As Aaron confirmed that there was no one there and he was coming back with the kids before going to work, I pulled up the website to look at the dates again.

June 17. Argh.

I was certain that it started today. For the last few years, camp has always started one week after school ended. I was so certain that I had marked it on my calendar with this date. I’d made a doctor appointment knowing that I wouldn’t need someone to watch the kids during that time. How did I get it so wrong?

So summer camp doesn’t begin until next week, which means I need to re-figure my plans for this week. I guess all of my excitement at having our summer routine back made me bump up the dates in my head.

On the bright side, there won’t be any hurrying around the house next Monday to prepare all of their supplies for summer camp. Everything is already neatly packed in bags, ready to go. And I won’t need to make them lunch today – they can eat the packed meal intended for camp.

I feel like an idiot for mixing up the dates. The kids are a little disappointed, but not too upset. I’m probably more disappointed than they are.

At this point, I’ll be triple-checking the back-to-school dates before adding it to the calendar.

Mistakes happen, right? Please tell me I’m not the only one who got the day wrong for an event for her kids.

Filed Under: being a mom, fate laughing at me ·


Mar 24, 2013

The Things I Do For Awesome Hair

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Last summer I decided to do something fun with my hair color and dye the ends purple. The ombre look was fun, even if it was a little difficult to achieve. The most common way to do an ombre color is to tease (backcomb) the hair so that when you bleach out the ends you don’t have a solid line of color change, but more of a gradual change instead.

Then after bleaching the ends, you comb out the tangled mess before applying the color. It’s not comfortable, but the first time I didn’t find it too awful. The whole process took about four hours, including an all over color on the top 3/4 of my hair, too.

So when I felt my hair was drab last week and needed a lift, I made an early morning appointment for another ombre color. I decided to go with the darker brown on top again, but thought red sounded fun for the ends of my hair.

This time wasn’t as smooth, though. I had the all over color and a color correction, although the stylist chose to do the all-over color on the ends. That part alone took over three hours – longer than I had planned. Then the backcombing began – I worried that maybe she was a little bit too overzealous with teasing my hair, as I quickly had hair that looked like I had electrocuted myself.

Beauty can look super ugly at first.

It took longer than normal to bleach out the ends, because she had just applied the top color to my hair, including the ends. It was now mid-afternoon. I was tired and hungry and really wished it was all over.

When it was time to rinse out the lightener, the worst part of the process started: combing out the tangled mess that was my hair. She really did go too far in backcombing my hair – it was locked into a giant knotted ball. It took one hour, two stylists – one working on each side of my head – and a bucket of conditioner to get my hair combed out. One hour of tugging and pulling and yanking and sharp pain and holding back tears. Near the end of it I was shaking from the pain. (I have a tender head, too, which doesn’t help.)

At that point I had been there for over six hours and wanted to go home. But I still had to get the color on my ends. I slumped in the chair, exhausted from the ordeal and hoping this would all be worth it.

Eight and a half hours after I first sat down in the chair, my hair was done. I have to admit, it looks really good. I love the ombre look – it’s subtle while at the same time being a bold, fun choice.

It looked even better after I had it styled this weekend:

(My new headshot – cute, no?)
The view from the back.

I hated the process to get hair that looks this awesome, but I have to admit I love the finished look.

I also took notes on how my hair was styled this weekend, too, so I can try to create my own gorgeous curls at home. This BlogHer TV video below shows one way to do it, creating Selena Gomez inspired body and soft curls with a wide curling iron, a comb and some hairspray.  What do you think – does it look easy enough for an amateur like me to do at home?

It looks simple enough, although the backcombing has me a little scared after what I went through last week. I may have nightmares about teasing my hair for years to come.

(PS – BlogHer and Olay are giving away $100 or more with this video – if you watch and answer the question at the end of the clip, you could be a winner!)

Filed Under: fate laughing at me, me me me, shameless bragging, sponsored ·


Jan 9, 2013

What Happens When Your Furby Becomes Evil

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In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Mira had one toy that kept coming to the top of her list: a Furby. Other items on the list would change, but a pink Furby was always there for anyone who asked, including Santa, who got an earful about how much she really wanted a Furby.

So when Christmas arrived, she was overjoyed to get a hot pink Furby from Santa. (Cordy got a blue Furby, too.)

Now, there are a few things they don’t tell parents about the Furby. First, it has no off button. At all. The only way to immediately silence it is to take out the batteries, which requires a screwdriver. And you know that right when you want it to shut up is the same time that all screwdrivers in the house go missing.

Otherwise, you have to wait for it to fall asleep, or force it to go to sleep by placing it in a dark, quiet area and ignoring it. Once it’s asleep, you mustn’t move it or bump it at all, or it will wake up again.

The Furby also has no volume control. At all. It’s loud all the time.  And most of the time it speaks Furbish, which seems to be some kind of cross between baby talk and pig latin.

Basically, it’s the toy equivalent of a colicky baby.

I did know some of this going into our purchase of this toy. But I did not know about all of the enhancements from the previous 1998 version. The LED eyes are cool and provide the ability for more expression of personality. It has more sensors to detect touch. And it can change personality.

The old Furby would have some change in personality based on how you treated it, but this one goes far beyond that with a multiple personality disorder. It has several very distinct personalities and doesn’t come with the Furby anti-psychotic drugs it desperately needs.

Mira’s Furby started out as the furry hot pink version of a valley girl. A little annoying, but kinda cute. She fed it on demand and used the iPad app to translate what it was saying, and it slowly learned a little English, too. Well, a version of English better suited to the movie Clueless, perhaps.

After the second or third day, it had the first personality shift. I didn’t see it happen, but suddenly it was speaking like a cowboy and mooing at us, with chicks and cows appearing in the LED eyes at times. Mira found that hilarious and I suffered through the noise because she liked this toy so much.

The next day it was back to a valley girl again, and even seemed to name itself Coco. It gave itself a name? It was becoming more sentient with each passing day.

And then, in the middle of Mira trying to teach it to dance, something very bad happened. It started to shake back and forth, it made weird noises, and it’s LED eyes were flashing like strobe lights. I thought it was either having a grand mal seizure or we broke the damn thing.

Furby, mid-panic attack

Then it stopped. All was silent for a moment. And then what was in front of us was a Furby who no longer had the high-pitched girly voice, but instead a deep, growling voice with angry looking eyes.

Coco isn’t here anymore.

Mira’s Furby was suddenly possessed by a new personality who was mean. It growled at her, it snapped at her with an angry voice if she tried to pet it, and it made retching noises when she tried to feed it, as if the iPad foods weren’t good enough for it. Occasionally it showed little flames in its eyes.

WTF happened? Did we feed it after midnight?

It was now a Furby demon. And Mira was scared of it. She backed away with tears in her eyes, her five year old mind unable to comprehend what had happened to her cheery dance pal, saying she wanted her nice Furby back, and she didn’t want to play with it anymore.

So her new electronic pet wasn’t working out as well as she wanted, which means it was now my responsibility to care for. Figures. I felt like I had brought home Chucky from Child’s Play to my daughter.

Sorry for the dark photos – it apparently has a feature that prevents paparazzi from getting good photos of it, too. Little bastard.

So as I sat there, with Damien the Dark Furby glaring at me from across the room, I did what any good mom would do: I googled “How to make a Furby nice again?”

I can assure you I’m NOT alone in this type of google search.

There were a lot of suggestions about different things to try. I gathered up the little ball of hate and tried petting the dumb thing several times. I will hug you and love you until you are sweet again! It growled and yelled at me each time while my dog stared at me in confusion, wondering why I was petting a loud toy instead of him. Yes, Cosmo, you’re smarter than the humans. Still no change from the Furby. I was a little worried it might try to bite me.

Mira was still across the room, asking me to make it nice again, but too afraid to come near it. WHO MAKES A TOY THAT KIDS ARE SCARED OF? What programmer thought that a sociopath personality would be a SUPER FUN for kids? I’d like to drag that person over to our house and let him/her console my five year old and explain the reasoning for this.

Then I remembered Mira really wanted her Furby to sing and like music. Some links suggested music can change the personality. So I put it in front of the iPad, cranked the volume, and subjected the little electronic Lucifer to Owl City followed by ABBA. He growled and hissed at this musical exorcism at first, but slowly started to dance along to the music. You know, that grudging, too-cool-for-school-kid dance where he doesn’t want to admit he likes Mama Mia.

Near the end of the second song, the Furby’s eyes flashed and it shook again, and suddenly the pop star personality appeared. This one has a softer voice than the valley girl and likes to sing a lot. Let me repeat: A LOT. And instantly, all Furby offenses had been forgiven by the formerly terrified kindergartener. Mira had been hoping her Furby would sing and ran across the room to scoop up her prized possession now that it was no longer, well, possessed.

Stupid Furby.

Since then it’s slipped back to the dark side once, which then fell to me to fix again. Music does seem to be the trick to force it back to being a “nice” Furby again. Mira loves the pop star personality – hers named itself Boo – which is the least offensive personality as far as Furby personalities go.

Aww, isn’t she sweet with those hearts in her eyes? That’s how she lures you to your DOOM.

Cordy’s Furby hasn’t changed personalities once. It prefers to be a valley girl/comedian hybrid and doesn’t want to change.Which is both annoying and OK, all at the same time. I’d rather deal with devil I know rather than the devil it might become.

Luckily, the hours between Furby playtimes have already stretched into days. I’m hoping they will eventually lose interest with these gremlins before my personality changes.

This has to be my mother’s revenge for the Teddy Ruxpin I adored as a kid, right? Only it’s revenge with 30 years of interest. I’d better start planning for the next generation now.

Or the Furby will enslave our Skylanders to do what it commands with it’s sweet, chipper voice and I’ll be doomed forever.

Filed Under: family time, fate laughing at me, holidays, Mira, pop culture ·


May 23, 2012

Brought To You By The Letter D (for Depressing)

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No one likes to read bad news, and I don’t really like writing about depressing things. But my little family has had our fair share of setbacks over the past few years, and sadly another one popped up recently. I considered not writing about it, although of course it then wouldn’t leave my brain to let me write about anything else. So here it is, and I’m only letting myself feel down about it in this one post and nothing more. If I get mopey in a future post, feel free to tell me to snap out of it.

Aaron got the bad news last week that his company is cutting him loose at the end of this month. He was told that it has nothing to do with his work, and everything to do with the president of the company choosing to run on a cash system – so if there’s a lull in contracts, like at the moment, he lets people go so he doesn’t run a debt. It’s a small company that depends on government contracts, and even though they recently won several contracts that should be coming soon, the money hasn’t arrived for them yet.

Aside from the head of the company, the VP’s and the project managers and everyone else he works with would rather he not leave. He’s the only writer they have, and his leaving means that the documentation for their projects – including an enormous user guide needed for a government agency software project due soon – will fall to, uh, someone else. Probably a project manager who isn’t exactly the best fit for something like that and would rather not do it and won’t do as well at it.

But despite objections from everyone else, the company president is focused on cutting expenses, even if it means cutting out staff who are vital to the development of the project. Not the wisest move in my eyes, but what do I know about business?

There is still talk of having Aaron stay as a contractor, with varying hours available to him, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet. Either way, we know that his steady income and all of our health benefits are out the door on May 31. He’s already updated his resume and has started networking. We know from experience that job hunting is rarely a short endeavor.

He’s angry, of course. Angry that he’s done everything right, has gone above-and-beyond for the company and has been praised over and over for his efforts, and gets rewarded by being laid off. It’s no wonder that loyalty towards a company by employees has been steadily declining – when treated like that, how can you do anything but constantly wonder when your employer will decide you’re not worth it? Too often now, an employee is just a set of skills to be used and discarded, and not a real person with a life and family and a relationship with the company. Mutual respect is gone.

I’m upset that we’re losing our health insurance again and hoping it will only be a short lapse. Why this country should continue to tie a family’s health insurance to their employment is beyond me. When people worked at the same company for 30 years, it made some sense for health insurance to be something shared between employer and employee as a benefit.

Now it’s just a cruel joke – if you work for the right company, you can get great insurance. Switch employers and it’s a gamble if your insurance could be worse in coverage and/or cost more. Your health didn’t change, and your need for certain coverage didn’t change, but because your job changed, your benefits and the amount you pay can drastically change. Lose your job with no ability to pay COBRA, and you have no coverage at all. What kind of a screwed up system is this? Why should a person’s job with a specific company dictate what kind of health care they can receive?

Not to get too political with this, but how is this a stable system for supporting the health of the country? A single payer system would be far more stable. Even if you don’t agree with a single-payer system, then it’s time to stop including health insurance as part of employment compensation plans entirely, raise the take-home pay for everyone and cap premiums from the profit-heavy insurance companies.

Stepping down from my soapbox now and returning to us: it’s obvious we’re scared and angry and frustrated, but we’ll be OK. I have a job at the moment that I love, so we do have some income. Aaron will qualify for unemployment if needed and has a lot of people trying to help him find another position.

It sucks to take a big step back financially (again), but money is just money. We may not be able to do or buy as much, but it can’t take away our family, our friends, or our determination to succeed.

And moments like this piss me off enough to push us to succeed, just to spite those who set us back. The best revenge is success.

Filed Under: Aaron, daily life, fate laughing at me, money, politics, rant, the J-O-B ·


May 13, 2011

Wishing for Boredom

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I’ve had a lot on my plate lately, so rather than explain in long narrative, I’ll give it to you in bullet points to save you the time:

  • Two weeks ago, we got the note home from school that no parent ever wants: head lice. Mira had been exposed to lice in her classroom, and they found nits on her. (Itchy yet? I am.) I had been a lice virgin until now (thank you, Cordy, for never wearing another kid’s hat!), so I bought all the lice remedies, we did the treatment on Mira, cleaned all the linens and stuffed animals, combed and looked through her hair carefully, etc. No one else had been exposed – yay!
  • Same week, after having the brakes replaced on the car, the battery decided to die. The car now has another month added on to how long it must keep running as penance for the money we spent on the new battery.
  • I also got a note from my agency (I’m a contractor) telling me they accidentally forgot to take city taxes out of my paycheck all of last year. Oops! And so they need to take a year’s worth out now. Like all in one month. I bargained them down to splitting it across 4 paychecks over 2 months, but it’s still going to hurt.
  • Last week, Mira had nits again. Noooooooooo! (Seriously, click the link – it’s exactly how I felt.) Lather, rinse, comb, laundry, vacuum, repeat.
  • Thanks to a combination of factors, last week was also the first week where I’ve ever slept less than 5 hours every single day. It sucked, but I’m trying to look at it as a badge of honor – I survived!
  • I also had my first experience at ever totally losing my cool at a customer service rep on the phone. (Maybe due to the lack of sleep and stress, perhaps?) We thought switching cable providers would give us better service. But after placing the order and spending 2+ hours on the phone across different days trying to sort it all out before it had even been installed, I was losing hope that this was a better option. When they then gave me a different – higher – price than I was originally given, saying it could all be worked out after installation, I lost it and demanded they cancel the entire order. It wasn’t the rep’s fault, and I try to never take it out on them, but the poor guy must have thought I was bipolar by the way I turned on him.
  • A week later, I still haven’t been refunded the first month’s payment they charged me. And they sent me a “Your installation is complete! Welcome to our service!” e-mail today, too. More yelling may be coming soon.
  • Then the kitchen sink faucet broke. Water goes everywhere if you turn it on.
  • The garbage disposal followed shortly after that. Looking into plumbing recommendations now.
  • On Monday I developed strep throat, although I didn’t know that’s what it was until the next day. Swallowing still hurts. Ordered to stay home for 24 hours until the antibiotics kicked in. Enjoyed the sleep, but didn’t enjoy missing a night of work and falling behind.
  • And Mira was sent home with lice nits again yesterday. Dammit. Treat, comb, laundry, vacuum…. if it doesn’t work this time, I’m shaving her head and burning down the house.

To sum up: it’s been a busy few weeks. I don’t remember my fortune cookie cursing me with “May you live in interesting times” the last time I had Chinese for dinner.

It’s been said that bloggers hate when they have nothing going on, and therefore have nothing to write about. I’ve actually got too much happening to write about all of it, and most of it is stuff no one wants to hear the long version of.

I’d be happy to have a little boredom around here for once.

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Filed Under: clearly insane, fate laughing at me, me me me ·