there's something about Miley

As the sign on my porch says...Merry Halloween!

I'm having closet issues

I'd almost forgotten this blog was even here. Rather than try and recount ever detail of the past what 6 months...sheesh.(.why do I let it lapse so bad anyway?) I'll just jump right back in.

Not much is different. I'm dieting AGAIN. I know..how shocking right? I'm telling you, somewhere in the world record book is a page reserved for me the woman who dieted the most. This one seems to be working very well though, and suprisingly, aside from a couple rather rouge months of coldstone creamery binging, I've been a rock solid loser.

I've got 6 lbs to go to get to my original goal weight..but I'm pushing for another 15 total. It might help my cause if I would actually use the Jazzercise membership that I pay for month after month. At some point someone needs to get all tough love on me and tell me to get my rear in gear..because it needs to be worked out.

The good and the bad news with all this weight loss, is my closet is now having issues. I'm breaking up with alot of clothes. I have an ever growing pile of "fat" clothes, that need to be hauled off to goodwill...before I have a chance to grow back into them. I realized that apparently I was in denial about how big I was getting when I realized that I had only two types of clothes in my closet: those that were WAY too small and I was using a funnel to shove myself into, or clothes that were too big. What in the heck was I wearing when I was charging up the scale? I mean, unless I blocked it out, which frankly the visual alone might have caused a memory block, then what was I wearing? It's one of life's mysteries right now.  I really need clothes.

I'm trying to work up the courage to go jean shopping..but the thought of it makes me want to drive to krispy kreme and go nuts..so for now I'm wearing the old ones..and looking like I pooed in my pants because the butt is basically dragging on the floor from being too big. Ok, maybe it's not THAT bad..but I am having saggy draw issues .(that's me being southern..did it work?..ok moving on. lol)  I just don't know if I am ready to go shop for jeans alone...my goal is the buckle..and those girls in there scare me. I might need moral support.

dog-gone tired

In an effort to once again reduce the size of my rear and the rest of me for that matter, I have started ONCE AGAIN the road to healthy eating and living and dieting. More on that in a later post. So I've been walking alot. I took Charlie on a walk with me last night to keep me company, and to hopefully wear him out, as he has been driving us up the wall with his running in circles around and around and around.

So I walked about 2 miles last night, and about the last block or so...he had decided enough is enough lady. He sat down on the sidewalk, and refused to go any further. I tugged...he dug in deeper and resisted. Finally, I picked him up, and in true Charlie fashion he positioned himself over my shoulder just like a newborn. I am considering investing in a baby bjorn. Possibly one of those stoller runner things. About 4 houses away from home, he started to snore. Seriously? Glad I could make you so comfortable Charles. I on the other hand..can't hardly move my arms today. What a spoiled rotten baby. It's a good thing he's cute. :)

I can see clearly now

Two years ago I woke up in a fog of sadness and dispair and didn't even know it. Two years ago I put myself on autopilot and basically veared all over the road like a drunk driver. I stopped caring about what I looked like, what I wanted out of life, basically I stopped caring about anything at all.  I pulled away from friends, I stopped caring about scrapbooking, I didn't do much of anything but just exist from day to day. I went numb. In a nutshell I went all dark and twisty like Meridith on grey's..only I didn't try and drown myself in the bathtub. It's funny that in the midst of all that happening I didn't really KNOW it was even happening. I just kind of started slipping away.

I'm not dwelling on the reasons behind the cloudy disposition,because there are a million reasons and dwelling doesn't fix or change any of them,  but instead enjoying the new found sunshine in my life. It wasn't until December when I finally came out of the fog, that I realized just how incredibly sad and pathetic I had let myself become. Interestingly enough..I can see it happening now when I go back and read parts of my blog...or I should say the lack of posts on my blog. I just didn't have anything to say anymore. But I'm pretty sure that's all behind me now. I know this will sound rather alarming to some..like I need a padded room with a pretty white jacket with shiny buckles..lol..but I really am ok. In fact I'm better than ok these days..well, aside from the 50 lbs I put on during this 2 year wallowing time. lol But I'm working on that again too.

Lately I've felt blog posts brewing. Truthfully, it's one of the ways I knew for sure that I was coming back to life again. I feel the need to write and post and be spunky. I've missed the spunky. We have alot of ground to cover that is for sure. Stay tuned..I'm back. :)

no time to post...BUT

I had to log in to say crowdSPRING, hire Kelly Purkey for your new community Marketing manager! 

Listen, I don't "know" her well, but well I have bagel friends who do, and everytime I have met her she's been a delight. She would be perfect for this position. Creative, innovative, and she's got good scrappy taste. Bottom line, she must be perfect for this job, as she got ME the never blog regularly blogger to come out of hiding and post. Now that, is power people. :)

candy hangover

  Three overflowing buckets of sugary goodness, a good scare at a haunted house, and one tired from walking and walking and walking dog later, and we survived Halloween night.

 

 

 

working 9 to 5

This month I went back to work at our business officially after a 6 year absence. I had to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe of work pants and socks..and non denim apparel. I have yet to figure out how to keep my house clean, the laundry done, dinner on the table at a decent hour and still have time to do the things I love. Will that ever happen?

Charlie comes with me everyday..he's learning to do the taxes and take messages. It's not going too well, as he keeps eating his notepad. He is still blind. No Christmas miracle here..lol. We went to the eye specialist today and about fell over from sticker shock at what it will take to repair his eyes. I am now battling the farm girl in me and the animal rights activist in me in trying to figure out what to do.

Football is almost over for the boys. It's been a pretty horrible season for Cole, his team didn't win a single game during the regular season. Drew's team however did incredibly well. They were undefeated in their conference and only had one non conference loss. Next week they play in the superbowl to determine 1st place overall. SO excited for his team. He's just had a ball playing, and learning the game.

Friday is Halloween, and for the first year ever the costumes aren't that crazy. We just didn't have time to really get creative. It makes me feel guilty and sad. Sigh. Oh well, next year..right?

This blog post is incredibly random. I just realized that. lol So more randomness..

We are teaching Charlie to say I love you...there will be video once we perfect it. It's the most hilarious thing ever.He can't sit, but he can speak. Get ready.

Cole is in theory selling wreaths to make money to pay for his baseball season.  They are actually really pretty..and very well priced, and he's only sold 1. He's seriously bummed out. This is the downfall of living in an area with no neighbors. We really have no one to solicite. :( So if you want to build a little guy's self esteem...email me. The products are here:mickman brothers. If you order one, they are shipped right to your door via ups, at the end of November.  They are very reasonable in price and are just beautiful..and smell so good. Like Christmas. :) They are anywhere from $27-31.25. That includes shipping it anywhere in the continental US. To sweeten the pot, anyone who orders one will receive a fabulous RAK from my scrapbook room, of current goodies. I've got a nice stash..lol..and I'm not afraid to share it. :)

Next week the kids are having a photo shoot with Becky and I am so excited I can't hardly stand it. She does such great work, and has such an incredible eye. I am always in awe of her work. Plus I found really cute outfits for the kids. :) Originally I was going to spend WAY too much money on a skirt for Brenna from Matilda Jane, but decided I should poke around etsy first, and low and behold the power of Etsy came through. Seriously I am having a major crush on etsy these days..it's like boutique shopping in your pajamas. I love it. :) Put that together with a little abercrombie and gapkids..and we have  the look folks. :) I can't wait.  Plus it will be the last photos beforeDrew and Brenna enter the land of braces. Cole so far is managing to escape the wire wonderland, but the verdict isn't set in stone.

Charlie is asleep in my lap, and snoring like a very large dog, so I shall wrap this up for now. I'll leave with a couple of fun photos. Brenna and Charlie modeling their festive halloween decor. The boys are horrified that their boy is wearing a sweater..but he looks smashing don't you think?

 

boo hiss

I haven't blogged this week, and that irritates me, because I was doing so well there. But it's been a pretty bad week, so rather than wallow all over the internet, I decided to just not say anything at all. Happiness is great, but sometimes it's darn near impossible..I don't care what anyone says. And since I'm not running through a field a daisies with glee, spreading sunshine wherever I go, I thought it best to just keep quiet.

My life is starting to have more and more componants of a bad country song..and yesterday I added another line to the lyrics.

"my dog's going blind and even he doesn't follow me..." (if only Tim McGraw would sing it to me..then it wouldn't be so bad..lol)

Yes, sweet Charlie Brown had been diagnosed with cateracts. REALLY bad in his right eye, and not so bad, but there in his left.  They weren't there on his last visit, and all of a sudden his eyes have white spots that cover the eyes..a bad sign. Basically I was told it's not so bad to have a blind dog. He can still see now, but as they have progressed rapidly, who knows how bad they will end up being. We have to see a dog eye opthamologist in a couple of weeks. Nothing they can do to stop this from happening, so I guess there is no hurry to get in any sooner.

So we get over the pooping in the kennel and now we have to move on to reading braile. lol

How perfect.

Oh and I'm back on the diet wagon. It's a bad sign when nothing in your closet fits at all because you threw away all your fat clothes because you swore you would NEVER need them again anyway..and now you have nothing to wear. So until I drop about 50 lbs I will be wearing the same 2 pairs of denim shorts..which hello..it's getting cold here. lol I might have to buy some leg warmers to go along with my shorts until I can safely breathe in my jeans. lol Yikes. The mess I have become.

On a good note, I scrubbed every square inch of our wood floor on my hands and knees on Monday, and my floor has never been cleaner..but my back has never been more sore. lol It's all about trade offs isn't it?..lol.

Thank goodness it's friday..lots of football and fun I am sure over the weekend. :)

Small packages

Friend Denise wanted a size comparison of household items next to Charlie. To say the least, he was not interested in cooperating. He has a wee bit of a problem with SIT. and STAY. So here are the lame attempts at giving you a size indicator. He's only 3 lbs. TINY.

Charlie meets the cresent rolls. Note the similar height. lol

And an apple photo..in which he didn't cooperate..but it's cute anyway..lol :)

Every party has a pooper

I wasn't going to share this on my blog. A long time ago when I first became a member at 2peas I posted something about getting our cat declawed, and lets just say that some of the peas basically declawed me with their opinions. So I have learned that there are several things one probably shouldn't get into with strangers on the internet. Politics, religion, and pets. So knowing all this, I am kind of leery of posting about our pet situation here, because frankly, I don't need the judgement..nor any more guilt over what has happened. To make a long story short, and without going into details, our sweet boy Tom Brady is no longer with us. There was a terrible accident earlier this summer, and he is gone. I can't even begin to tell you how horrific and sad it was. The kids unfortunately were here when it happened, and discovered him, so it's been a really hard time on them as well.

After the accident I said NO MORE PETS. Obviously someone is trying to tell us something, and we just shouldn't get another. I thought the kids were ok with this, until the beginning of September when Cole started lobbying hard to get a dog for his birthday. Suprisingly out of all three of the kids Cole is the big softy when it comes to animals. While Brenna just considered Brady a mere accessory to be carried around, Cole had a deeper connection with him. If he sees an animal, he NEEDS to pet it, needs to here it's story, wants to make friends. It's just who he is. I love that about him. So that being said, he was really really struggling with Brady's death. Nightmares, lots of pictures and writing about him...he was quiet, he was just down right sad. He would end up in our room in the middle of the night sometimes crying that every time he closed his eyes, he would see Brady dead. Like I said..it was just horrible around here. (another reason I stopped blogging...it was just to hard to pretend) So when Cole started asking for another dog, I wasn't suprised. I wasn't having it, but I wasn't suprised. lol

The problem became, everytime we would ask him what he wanted for his birthday (it was last week) he would say.."a dog". No matter how many Wii games I offered up, no matter how many ipod accessories, clothes from Abercrombie, NOTHING was replacing his drive for a new best friend. Nothing.

I kept telling him no, but apparently he started slipping me some sort of drug, because I found myself searching for puppies online. I had no clue what I was looking for, I had no intentions of ever getting another, but I was looking. I started checking the Humane Society here in town, I figured why not. Afterall, the cutest big dog in the world came from there, so I figured it would be a good place to start. But since I really had NO intention of getting a dog, I thought looking at the pound would be a safe choice since I thought the odds of finding a small breed puppy would be slim. That theory worked really well for about 2 weeks. Day after day I would look and see tons of big dogs, (Totally off the subject, but if you want a big dog to get adopted, don't you think you would put a photo up of said big dog looking at least somewhat calm and not aggressive? I dunno, I think the chances of getting them adopted would go up a hair if the photos were a little bit more staged..lol.) and day after day I heard from Cole that all he really wanted was another dog. It was quite the little cycle we had going.

Last Tuesday I logged in and scrolled down the long list of the regulars, and there was a new resident at casa de pound. A 2 month old beagle Chihuahua mix. (beagle chihuahua?..yeah, that's what I thought, too. lol) Knowing how fast puppies get snatched up, I figured he probably wasn't still available anyway, and I had to get Cole to football practice, and even if I DID want to look at him, he would surely be gone by the time we were finished with practice. Yeah. That's the ticket.

Then the cookie started to crumble. Cole had been injured over the weekend at a football game, and still wasn't running well, and the coach called us on the way to practice, and told me to keep him home to give his leg a chance to rest. No sense in driving across town, just take the night off. So now we were out of the house, with no practice, and suddenly the car was veering towards the pound. We'll just go look. He won't be there anyway, but we will go look. Then I thought, man this is mean..taking the kid into the candy store so to speak. How am I going to take Cole in there and look and then not commit? So I leveled with him. I told him, there is a puppy online, he might be available, he's probably already gone, but we can go look. No promises, no guarantees-available or not. We are looking.

The look on Cole's face when I told him was a look I won't forget. I hadn't seen him so happy and so just tickled in weeks. It was like a cloud lifted and sunshine fell all over him just like that. Corny? Yes. But no other way to describe it. I knew then I was a goner.

When we pulled up the the building, I reminded him we were LOOKING..and not even to ask for a big dog..that was a deal breaker for me. He understood, and we headed in. It was busy. Immediately I thought again, there is no way that puppy is still available. So we headed back to the kennel area to see.

Cage #1-really big black dog with pointy ears

Cage #2-really big brown and white dog pacing and panting like crazy

Cage #3 unusually large weiner dog sitting by the door barking really loud

Cage after cage of really big dogs, some cute, some pretty scary looking. Cole stopped at every cage, talking to most..giggling over the funny looking ones, being compassionate over the ones that looked scared, and keeping his hand out of the bars of the one who looked like crazed guard dogs (seriously..there were a couple)

Until finally we got to cage 10.

That's where we met Charlie.

Sitting in the back of the kennel, almost completed buried in a pile of blankets and towels, sound asleep.Put a fork in me,  I was done right then and there. Game over.

Dog 1-Reluctant pet adoptee-0

Cole started calling to him, trying to be heard above the howling and panting and frantic barking going on all around us, and before long his little face perked up and he bounced, (yes he bounces) out of his blankets and over to the door. While Cole sat and oohed and ahhed at him between the door, I noticed a sign on his cage that made my heart sink.

Adoption Pending.

My worst fear. Someone had him on hold until 6pm. It was only 4:15. So I managed to pull Cole away from the cage, and we went to the front desk to get some details. We had to stay at the shelter until the time expired on the hold and then if he was still available we could check him out. The girls at the front desk told me not to get my hopes up though, as the lady and her husband had been coming in for a couple of weeks looking for a small dog. She just needed to talk to her husband before she signed, and she most likely would be back before 6 even. Poor Cole was disappointed. I tried to get him to go, telling him we would come back another day and look again, but he insisted that we wait to see if he got adopted at 6. He then looked at me and said, "mom I just have a feeling that we are suppose to stick around". How could I argue with that? So we settled in. Cole went back and forth to the kennel about 100 times, talking and visiting and "guarding" HIS dog. Anyone who even stopped to look at him, heard that Cole was waiting for him..lol. It was pretty cute. Meanwhile, I filled out the paperwork "just in case" so that if he was still available we would be the first to get to check him out for consideration. Little did I know, there were about 7 other people milling around waiting for the same results.

At about 5:45 Cole came running back from the kennel and told me that the sign on his kennel was now gone. No more adoption pending. I went to the front counter with Cole, and we asked about it. Sure enough..he was back on the market. So Cole says, "so can I adopt him, instead?" The lady smiled at him, and said, well..maybe. Let me check to see where you are on the list. She came back and her face said it all. Unfortunately, you are number 4 on the list to see him, and there are 3 people after you as well. 

Talk about heartbreak. Cole got big tears in his eyes and said ok, thank you..and turned around. The poor lady at the counter then looked at me and said, wait just a minute. She went and rummaged around in the papers, and came back with a stack. "are you interested in any of the OTHER dogs?" I told her no..that that was the only one that we were interested in..we wanted a puppy. She said, ok. good news. The other 3 people in line to check him out, all have OTHER dogs on their lists, so I am going to move you ahead...

And that was the beginning of the end. An hour later, we were on our way home with little Charlie Brown, the 9-10 week old Chihuahua-beagle mix who was surrendered by his owner earlier in the day.

Sweet Charlie Brown is just that. SO sweet. He's such a personality..SO tiny. REALLY skinny..we are working on that..trying to fatten him up. He is soooo spoiled. The only problem?

He's a pooper.

The housetraining outside is going suprisingly well, he's obviously been worked with a bit..BUT put him in his crate, and he FREAKS out, and poops within 2 or 3 minutes of being in it, regardless of whether he just did his business outside or not. I think it's seperation anxiety. As soon as I leave his eyesight, he's making a mess. If I sit right there by him...he doesn't do it. So short of putting him in my pocket and taking him with me everywhere I go (I could do this..he only weighs 3 lbs) I don't know what to do. He has to be in a crate when we are gone, he's a chewer..so he would have my woodwork destroyed if left just in a small tiled area. I just don't know what else to do. Luckily he's darn cute..so as much as I HATE cleaning the kennel and giving him a bath EVERY.TIME.I.LEAVE., all he has to do is curl up in a ball on my lap and it's forgotten. But I would like to get him over this...lol..and fast. 

Oh and Cole? No more nightmares...lots of smiles...lots and lots of smiles. :) And quite a few naps together as well. I caught them Saturday night asleep..and as you can see, the cat is feeling a little jealous I think. lol Poor Peeps.