Tonight M and I were talking about the early days of our relationship:
M - I'm so glad I found you.
G - I'm so glad I found YOU. Well, no, who am I kidding. You found me. You were the one who asked me out. I was oblivious.
M - No, you totally liked me first. Way back in the beginning when I was oblivious. Years before I asked you out.
G - True.
M - You were into us before we were cool.
G - I'm like the hipster of our love.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
New Vocabulary
M and I have started using a new word around our house and I thought you all might want to stay on top of the cutting edge slang being developed around here:
Shobos - noun \ˈshō-(ˌ)bōs\
Shobos - noun \ˈshō-(ˌ)bōs\
plural shoboses
Definition of SHOBOS
1
: a situation where your brain repeatedly proposes a specific solution despite the fact that you have already concluded it is not viable approximately 1000 times
e.g. You are playing Scrabble with your spouse and someone has played the word "hobos." It falls with a triple word square just to the left of the "h." Your brain will now spend the rest of the game trying to find a way to get that triple word score. It will do this by repeatedly proposing that you put down an "s" and make "shobos."
e.g. You are playing Scrabble with your spouse and someone has played the word "hobos." It falls with a triple word square just to the left of the "h." Your brain will now spend the rest of the game trying to find a way to get that triple word score. It will do this by repeatedly proposing that you put down an "s" and make "shobos."
2
: an irresistible persistent impulse to repeatedly cram that same, still wrong jigsaw puzzle piece in that one spot
Monday, January 23, 2012
Photography Challenge Day #12 - Sunset
Every day I would either miss sunset because I was busy making dinner, or I would go outside and see nothing to inspire me. Perfectly cloudless skies and my neighbors' roof lines for a horizon. Not much to look at. But it was good because it forced me to eventually give in and put a little more effort into it:
--------------------------------------------------------------------I want to force myself to practice taking photos a little more, so I'll be posting for this 30 Day Photography Challenge even though the "official" challenge is over. Posts may or may not be daily.
My rules for my self are:
1 - Take everything in manual mode
2 - No post-processing, only SOOC
Sunday, January 22, 2012
At Least the Commute is Short
A good friend asked me recently if I planned to get a job once Kate goes to school. And no, no I don't. At least not for a good long while. Here's how I see it:
By the time Kate goes to Kindergarten I will have been working at this stay-at-home mothering gig for almost ten and a half years. And in that time I have taken virtually NO vacation or sick time. So I have A LOT of time off coming to me.
Here, let's do the math together. I started being a stay-at-home mom the day Claire was born. When Kate starts school at the end of August 2014, I will have been at this "job" for 10.46 years. But we'll just round it off to 10 years. For the sake of simplicity, let us assume that I accrue vacation and sick days at the same rate as someone working a 40 hour week. This is a ridiculous underestimation because as every mother knows, you work 7 days a week and sometimes even through the night. Therefore I am more than comfortable saying that the times I do get away for an evening or Saturday to do my own thing don't really count as vacation time. I will assume that since my normal mothering work day is 14 hours long, a day off would include 14 hours. This means that when the kids are at school for 7 hours, I am only getting half a day off. Also, since normal workers get the weekend off, when I am on a trip away from the kids, I don't need to use vacation days for the weekend.
I will deduct the time M and I went away for 3.5 days for our 5 year anniversary and the time we went to New York for 1.5 days to see Les Mis as vacation time. I will also count the one week I spent in Japan with my sister. So that's 10 days of vacation time that I have taken in the last 7.5 years. I project that I will take another 5 days of vacation when M and I go on a cruise for our 10 year anniversary next year.
As for sick leave, I refuse to count any recovery time from childbirth because that is part of the job. But other than that, I have not taken any sick time. Ever. Vomiting with a horrific stomach flu all day? Still nursed a baby between trips to the toilet and still made meals to feed kids. Deathly ill with swine flu? Still got Claire to school and picked her up, plus all the feeding and diapering. Mastitis? Kept on trucking.
Once the kids are all in school, I will get a half day off each weekday. But they are only in school 36 weeks of the year. Assuming that I earn vacation and sick leave at the same rate M does at his current job, I have put together a little graph to show my accrued time off with each passing year since Claire's birth when I "began employment." The red vertical line represents when Kate starts Kindergarten if we are rounding things off to 10 years.
At the peak just before Kate goes to school, I will have accrued 240 days of personal time off. If I just started taking that at full steam, it's nearly an entire year of full days off, Mon-Fri. But I won't get to take it all right away. I'll still work the half day that the kids are home after school and full time during the summer. That will really stretch out that time off. Plus I will continue to accrue some more time off. Assuming that by not getting another job I will take a half day off every school day, then as you can see by where the graph of my remaining personal days finally dips back down to zero, I deserve AT LEAST four and a half years off after Kate starts Kindergarten before I even have to THINK about getting another job.
FOUR AND A HALF YEARS!!! And that's really probably an underestimation given that we estimated a 40 hour work week. (40 hours?!?!? HA! I WISH!!!!) Plus, I'm not actually going to eat bon-bons all day. I'm sure I'll spend a fair amount of time that the kids are at school doing things for them, cleaning the house, volunteering at their schools, etc. And to think, I only have to wait 10 years before all my kids go to school. Plenty of people have much longer due to more kids and/or more space between their kids' ages. Think of the time they will have accrued!
I don't know why it seems like some stay-at-home moms think they have to run out find a "real job" as soon as their kids go to school. Most of those women will vehemently tell you that being a stay-at-home mom IS a real and important job. Well, I agree. It is an important and real job. The benefits package really sucks though (at least on paper). You may not get medical/dental/vision. You may not get stock options. You may not get employer matching to your 401k. In fact, you don't even get paid. But you at least deserve some time off. Staying home with your kids IS a real job. Enjoy your time off when your kids go to school. You've earned it.
By the time Kate goes to Kindergarten I will have been working at this stay-at-home mothering gig for almost ten and a half years. And in that time I have taken virtually NO vacation or sick time. So I have A LOT of time off coming to me.
Here, let's do the math together. I started being a stay-at-home mom the day Claire was born. When Kate starts school at the end of August 2014, I will have been at this "job" for 10.46 years. But we'll just round it off to 10 years. For the sake of simplicity, let us assume that I accrue vacation and sick days at the same rate as someone working a 40 hour week. This is a ridiculous underestimation because as every mother knows, you work 7 days a week and sometimes even through the night. Therefore I am more than comfortable saying that the times I do get away for an evening or Saturday to do my own thing don't really count as vacation time. I will assume that since my normal mothering work day is 14 hours long, a day off would include 14 hours. This means that when the kids are at school for 7 hours, I am only getting half a day off. Also, since normal workers get the weekend off, when I am on a trip away from the kids, I don't need to use vacation days for the weekend.
I will deduct the time M and I went away for 3.5 days for our 5 year anniversary and the time we went to New York for 1.5 days to see Les Mis as vacation time. I will also count the one week I spent in Japan with my sister. So that's 10 days of vacation time that I have taken in the last 7.5 years. I project that I will take another 5 days of vacation when M and I go on a cruise for our 10 year anniversary next year.
As for sick leave, I refuse to count any recovery time from childbirth because that is part of the job. But other than that, I have not taken any sick time. Ever. Vomiting with a horrific stomach flu all day? Still nursed a baby between trips to the toilet and still made meals to feed kids. Deathly ill with swine flu? Still got Claire to school and picked her up, plus all the feeding and diapering. Mastitis? Kept on trucking.
Once the kids are all in school, I will get a half day off each weekday. But they are only in school 36 weeks of the year. Assuming that I earn vacation and sick leave at the same rate M does at his current job, I have put together a little graph to show my accrued time off with each passing year since Claire's birth when I "began employment." The red vertical line represents when Kate starts Kindergarten if we are rounding things off to 10 years.
At the peak just before Kate goes to school, I will have accrued 240 days of personal time off. If I just started taking that at full steam, it's nearly an entire year of full days off, Mon-Fri. But I won't get to take it all right away. I'll still work the half day that the kids are home after school and full time during the summer. That will really stretch out that time off. Plus I will continue to accrue some more time off. Assuming that by not getting another job I will take a half day off every school day, then as you can see by where the graph of my remaining personal days finally dips back down to zero, I deserve AT LEAST four and a half years off after Kate starts Kindergarten before I even have to THINK about getting another job.
FOUR AND A HALF YEARS!!! And that's really probably an underestimation given that we estimated a 40 hour work week. (40 hours?!?!? HA! I WISH!!!!) Plus, I'm not actually going to eat bon-bons all day. I'm sure I'll spend a fair amount of time that the kids are at school doing things for them, cleaning the house, volunteering at their schools, etc. And to think, I only have to wait 10 years before all my kids go to school. Plenty of people have much longer due to more kids and/or more space between their kids' ages. Think of the time they will have accrued!
I don't know why it seems like some stay-at-home moms think they have to run out find a "real job" as soon as their kids go to school. Most of those women will vehemently tell you that being a stay-at-home mom IS a real and important job. Well, I agree. It is an important and real job. The benefits package really sucks though (at least on paper). You may not get medical/dental/vision. You may not get stock options. You may not get employer matching to your 401k. In fact, you don't even get paid. But you at least deserve some time off. Staying home with your kids IS a real job. Enjoy your time off when your kids go to school. You've earned it.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Happy MLK Day!
In Claire's family prayer last night, one of the things she said was, "Thank you for Martin Luther King Jr. and that he helped with the whites only."
It took me a minute to process what she was trying to say. I'm pretty sure Martin Luther King didn't just help white people only. And then it finally clicked that she was talking about laws and getting rid of the "whites only" ones. Apparently we and/or her school have succeeded in helping her understand that there was a time when "whites only" signs existed and that people like Martin Luther King Jr. helped get rid of those, but maybe now we need to work on the correct terminology!
It took me a minute to process what she was trying to say. I'm pretty sure Martin Luther King didn't just help white people only. And then it finally clicked that she was talking about laws and getting rid of the "whites only" ones. Apparently we and/or her school have succeeded in helping her understand that there was a time when "whites only" signs existed and that people like Martin Luther King Jr. helped get rid of those, but maybe now we need to work on the correct terminology!
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Photography Challenge Day #11 - Something Blue
Okay, I haven't forgotten about this photography thing. It was just that the holidays happened. And I was horribly uninspired by this prompt. I guess blue just isn't my thing, but here's what I came up with:
Maybe I should have dusted this pitcher better - makes it look kind out of focus. Oh well.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I want to force myself to practice taking photos a little more, so I'll be posting for this 30 Day Photography Challenge even though the "official" challenge is over. Posts may or may not be daily.
My rules for my self are:
1 - Take everything in manual mode
2 - No post-processing, only SOOC
Monday, January 9, 2012
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