Saying "hello" again

I know it's been a while, daytime projects were so hard while I was working graveyards. It was pretty much all I could do to drag myself out of bed and try keeping track of Bradley. So for all of you that are curious... Walmart laid me (and all of the other holiday help) off on the day before Christmas Eve. They did give us 5 days notice, but it still sucked. So now I'm jobless again. I'm looking at probably trying to become a glassblowing apprentice, and maybe doing some web design/updating for a friend of mine. So we'll see.

Our Christmas was small but filled with love. I got sick on my last day at Walmart and I'm still fighting through it. Sad, huh. Bradley received plenty of fun new things, his favorite of which is the Fisher Price SmartCycle. He calls it his motorcycle and will spend about an hour in the basement playing the different games. It has been a HUGE help for me while I'm sick. Thank you to Grandpa Jeff and Grandma Ali for getting it for him! We went to the Dickson's house Christmas Day where Bradley got a DoodlePro and Dave and I got a faux fur throw that is pretty much the bee's knees. I love cuddling up in it and watching a movie!! It's so comfy!!!!! Thank you!! Thank you!!! We had a wonderful time there and you can see pics of our time there on Lisa's facebook page. Please comment on how absolutely adorable Bradley looks in his Christmas jammies!!! I love them soooo much!!

So now that I'm not working, I'm trying to spend a good amount of time with Bradley to make up for the time that we lost while I was working. I'm also trying to get used to having a normal sleep schedule again. So far that has not been going very well. I wake up around 3:00 every morning and can't go back to sleep for hours. It truly sucks. On the upside, I've been getting up and ready for the day around 8:30 which has been giving me about 30 minutes to myself before Bradley gets up. That has been really nice. Having the time to write out a to-do list or writing on my blog, or just sitting in the living room watching the cats play. It's my quiet time that I desperately need some days.

Well I guess I should go, my quiet time is almost up and I don't want to risk losing this post to an internet malfunction. I hope all is well for everyone and may you be blessed in the new year!!

Let the chaos begin!

I got the job at Walmart and started my orientation process on Friday morning. It was very long and extremely boring but I finally got through it. All of their training is done on a computer so I spent 8 hours on Saturday and an hour on Sunday working through the training modules. I was pretty much brain dead by about 2pm on Saturday. I had soo much information racing through my mind. But I got through it and thankfully I'm done with the training. Now I have my schedule and I start working tonight!! I will be working from 9:30pm to 6am. I know that it will be really hard to do this but hopefully it will help us get back on top of things. It's definitely going to take some getting used to. I really hope they can keep me after the holiday season is over. I'm going to try very hard to make it worth their while to keep me on after. I would like to work through at least next summer. I think that it would help us tremendously through the tough economic times and also help us save up for the things we need to do with the house and getting another car, etc. So keep your fingers crossed everybody! I know your fingers are probably sore and cramping from all of the finger crossing I ask for. You can take a break when you need. I wouldn't want anyone to get hurt trying to give me luck. But I really appreciate all of your well wishes and luck that you have sent me! I will post more soon on how my new job is going!!

Where's my chalk?

I'm sure most of you that read my blog understand this frustration of raising a child. Those that don't understand, I hope that what I write will help you make a decision about having children. (THEY ARE EVIL!!!) I'm sure that most of what I go through is normal mothering stories and the hazards of raising a child. However, I have yet to encounter a child who can ninja 7 gallons of milk into his room in a 2 months. That being said, I often encounter children that I simply cannot stand. I don't know how their parents deal with them on a day to day basis. But as soon as I think, "Wow, I'm so glad my child doesn't act like that," he goes and does something horrible and I'm pulling my hair out trying to deal with him. I don't know how to deal with the complexities of this child. Perhaps I'm just not cut out to be a mom. I just don't think like a mom. I think like a homeowner. It's not a good way to think when your child constantly ruins something in the house. It's a rough way to live, you know? Note to anyone thinking about having children: Don't buy a house that you hope to sell if you are going to have children in that home! It's impossible to keep the house clean and worth looking at. Unless you are rich enough to buy another house where the child will live until you sell the first one. And it will still take you 6 months to a year to completely fix the house you are trying to sell. Unless you have an angel of a child. In which case, congratulations!! Go hold that child so close and tell him/her that you love them!

All of that introduction is for this purpose: I'm drawing the line at power tools! I know that makes no sense to you now, but you will understand shortly...

I'm currently on a medication regiment for anti-anxiety and depression. (No surprise there really) I'm also taking a prescription at night that allows my other medication to work better and also helps me sleep at night. The problem that arises from taking the night-time prescription is that I sleep deeper once I finally go to sleep. I'm sure you can see where this is going.

A few months ago we bought the child door knob covers to try to keep Bradley out of places like my bedroom, the pantry, the linen closet, etc. We also put one on the inside of his bedroom door so that he couldn't get out at night and early in the morning (like 5 or 6am). It has worked wonders for my sanity at night and I loved being able to get up in the morning and he was still in his room either sleeping or quietly playing in his room. It was also really nice for nap time. It really gave me a break from chasing him around the house all day long. He could go in there and either sleep or play quietly while I went to the bathroom finally or just took a break to scoop up the shredded pieces of my brain. It worked really well and I guess I got used to the security that it brought me. So Heaven decided I had it too good and He chose to throw a wrench into things and see how I dealt with it. Bradley figured out Monday last week that if he hung on the door knob cover, it would snap into the two pieces and then he would have full use of his door once again. At first I thought it was just an accident - and it may have been to start out with - but he cataloged that little tidbit of information and continued to use it all week long. I told Dave that Bradley had figured out how to take of the door knob cover (I didn't know how he did it until later) to which Dave replied, "No problem I'll just put some 3m adhesive on it and he won't be able to take it apart unless he has a large, heavy professional tool. So I thought, "Okay, problem solved! I can go back to my secure 30 minute-a-day break." WHICH I WAS SO GRATEFUL FOR! So one night Dave took Bradley into his room, reinstalled the door knob cover, and asked him to take it off. Bradley walked right up to the door, hung on the cover and it happily snapped into two pieces for him. I'm make this part of the story short. There is NO way to fix that thought process. You can't 3m it back together, you can't screw it into the door, there is NOTHING. So we are back to square one...AGAIN!!!

I've been dealing with square one for a week and a half now. It's horrible. There are no naps during the day, no waking up to happy ideas of making the most of the day. I wake up listening to the sound of my child doing something destructive. The worst part of it is that I sleep so deeply because of the night-time medication that he can ninja into my room and pretty much take whatever his heart desires - because we can't close our door for fear that he will move on to another room in the house and destroy something more important than tooth brushes, contacts solution and vitamins (And no that's not all he has taken). This morning I woke up and heard him doing bad things in his room with a towel rod that had previously been placed in our room. So I jumped out of bed, ran across the hall and surveyed the damage. To my dismay I found: the towel rod, a skate board, an empty bottle of cucumber body spray from Avon (and yes the house smells like cucumber was smeared all over the place)and worst of all... Dave's power drill!....Yes the drill that Dave had used to hang up some shelves in the guest bathroom. And perhaps I'm being over-dramatic with this statement, but here it goes... I DRAW THE LINE AT POWER TOOLS!

So out of this ridiculously long post rampant with the nonsense babble of a psychotic mother, I'm desperately begging for something to draw my line with. Chalk, pencil, marker, PERMANENT MARKER, anything. Because this line will not be taken back, It will be burned into the carpet of this house if it must. That line represents the last straw, the foot of authority coming down. I cannot deal with power tools! And as soon as I have an extra $70 I will be buying a door knob that has a numeric code on it so that I can get back to my sanity...if I live long enough to get that money....

Update?

Okay so we all survived the toilet incident. YAY GO US!!! However yesterday Bradley decided that he was going to be sick. His fever was up and down between 97.5 and 104.5. I called his pediatrician and they told me that if his fever went back up that he would need to go to the hospital. Otherwise, it's probably just the flu and it would just take some time for it to run it's course. So yesterday was miserable for both of us. Dave came home early while I was waiting to hear back from the nurse. I don't think any of us got very good sleep last night. Dave got up with Bradley once, but the rest of the time we were both restless. So Dave took today off in case we needed to take Bradley to the doctor and so I could go to my job interview this morning. I got there early and had to wait a little while. While I was waiting I found out that I'm being hired as an over-night stock and price person. My hours will be hard as I'm working full-time over-night. I had both interviews one right after another and they said that as long as my background check and drug test come back okay and no one is hired in between that time then I should get a call next week sometime for orientation. FINGERS CROSSED EVERYONE!!! This afternoon we have been running some errands. I finally got my license renewed while I was out doing the drug test. So I'm finally legal to drive now. YAY!!! Now I just have to not get a ticket. :) So I guess that's all I really have to update with. Sorry we are boring. You should have figured that out by now. lol Hopefully I will get to post if/when I get the job!!

Our First Homeowner Repair

So tonight has been interesting to say the least. We have owned our house a little over a year now. For the most part it has been a decent house: lots of space, nice sized kitchen, 2 bathrooms (which is so convenient), wonderful closet space, etc. I have loved that ,unlike our cars, we haven't had to dump a bunch of money into repairing this place before we could live in it. We just moved in and made it our home. I love that! And I love that I haven't had to repair anything in the house since we moved in. (Aside from the fridge/freezer which is a totally different story that your don't want me to get into.) Structurally our home has been very nice to live in.

Tonight is payback for the 15 months of smooth sailing.

A few months ago, Dave and I woke up one Sunday morning to Bradley messing around in our bathroom. Yes he is THAT ninja!!! We got up as quick as we could and we cleaned up all the mess, etc. Well apparently we didn't get everything. Our master bathroom toilet has been clogged since then with something that our child decided to try to fluch. We've tried dealing with it, but finally we just decided not to use that toilet anymore. So we've been using the hallway bathroom. THANK HEAVENS FOR 2 BATHROOMS!! Although inconvenient for us in the master bedroom, I didn't complain because of the fact that we finally had 2!! Tonight we went from having one toilet to having 0 TOILETS!!! Let me run that by you again. 3 people + 0 toilets = VERY BAD!!

Let me start this part of our story by saying that Bradley has been extremely difficult this week. Just plain naughty. So now that it's Saturday I was thinking it would be nice to have a bit of a break. My friend came over this afternoon with her little boy. The two boys play wonderfully together. They never fight or scream at each other. It's so nice to have someone that I enjoy Bradley playing with. I LOVE having them over! I can just hang out with my friend and I don't have to worry about Bradley beating up her kid or the other way around (which is normally the case). So my friend and I were getting dinner ready and just talking in the kitchen and the boys were upstairs playing. I thought they were playing in Bradley's room. I know...My mistake....

We had dinner and everything went fairly smoothly. Dave came home and we hung out for a bit and then our guests left and we started getting ready for the night-time routine. Suddenly I had to pee... Yes this all started with "I HAD TO PEE". Crazy, Right?!?!! So I go pee. And then I flush OUR ONLY WORKING TOILET..... And guess what happens......NOTHING.....It tried. It was trying so hard. So I get the plunger....NOTHING HELPED. So you know what we did? Do ya? Dave and I ripped that toilet out of the floor and got to business!!!!!! After about 30 minutes of heeing and hawing I finally feel something!... We tilted that toilet every angle it would go and finally with the aid of our newly purchased plumbing snake (THANKS DAVE!!) I was finally able to pull my hand out with our culprit....A plastic Snoopy. Ironic I know. As I am typing this I'm wearing my Snoopy Jammie Pants and I still feel gross even after showering and scrubbing tons! So we put the toilet back together and figured, "Why not go ahead and check the other one." So we go tear that one apart.... After the same procedure and a little more elbow grease we pull out............... an open contacts case. That was the cause of ALL of our problems!!!! Unfortunately that particular contacts case held Dave's old contacts. I don't know what upsets me more. I'll think about it...... the open contacts case. So that has been our evening. Fun, huh?

I hope I never have to do this again. It's going to take weeks to get over this one. If anyone has any ideas to keep this from happening, I'd be more than willing to read/listen to them!

My world revolves...

As I was doing my morning stuff this morning I realized that I hadn't blogged in a while. I apologize for that, but it has been a bit crazy around here. Nothing exciting I assure you. So I guess I'll just update everyone on what has happened in the last week:
I got up for my paper route early Friday morning. Dave went with me to help ease the stress of starting a job (It's been over 4 years since I worked and I was a bit nervous).We got down there at 2:30am and Annette (the manager) helped walk me through the process. I picked a route and started "stuffing" (putting the inserts in the paper). Then the main paper came and we rolled and bagged all of the newspapers that had to be given out that morning. My trainer, John, was wonderful in helping me to understand how things went. He has been doing the newspaper for 6 years!! We went on the route (which was all student house equipped with the most stairs I've ever seen in my life!!) We got done around 6:45 and came back home. I didn't do too bad, but I was in such pain for the rest of the day!! My legs ached and my knees felt like they were about to collapse. Soooo many stairs!!! So I called Annette and asked if they had any routes that weren't student housing. She had one that was mostly residential and just a little student housing. I accepted it and was totally excited to do a new route. We got to bed late that night and as we were laying down, Dave explained that he had a bad feeling about it. He listed off reasons that he didn't want me to do the paper route. All very good and logical reasons, like "how was I going to get to the warehouse to do the papers when none of the roads were cleared?" and "what happens when there is a problem with the jeep?" I understood all of his ideas and agreed that if he had a bad feeling then we should probably not do it. I called Annette that morning and explained that it just wasn't working out and apologized for the inconvenience. She understood and told me not to worry about it. So I'm done with the paper.
We went to a fire department breakfast that morning with the family and had a pretty good time (aside from the fact that it was freezing outside and I was exhausted still). We planned on working on the jeep at the shop that morning so after the breakfast we headed down to Doug Smith. We got down there and Dave honked the horn to get someone to open the bay door. Except when he pushed on the horn, nothing happened. He pushed on it again and guess what happened... the car died. Great timing, huh. I will say that if we had to break down somewhere, Doug Smith was probably the perfect place to do it. So we pushed the car into Dave's work area and began testing everything. We were dumbfounded. I began to panic about 30 minutes in to this diagnostic attempt. If my husband can't fix it, I just don't know what to do! I was of no help during this time as I have no clue what does what in that area. So I started tearing out the brake booster while Dave worked on the electrical stuff. I successfully pulled out the brake booster (after about an hour fighting with the interior bolts that held it to the firewall) and put the new one in. By this time Dave had been working on the electrical problem for about 6 hours. I finished up what I could do and began working with him to try to resolve the problem of the car that does not start. I was looking up wiring diagrams and ignition switch information in my Jeep Bible to try to find a solution or at least another angle to look at. After another hour (about 7 hours total) we gave up and went and got lunch. Scott came and picked us up and we got Cheryl's car to use until we could fix the jeep. The rest of our weekend is a bit of a blur. We were so stressed out about the car and how we were going to fix it. Plus we had to get our sleeping schedule put back together after the paper route didn't work out. It was just plain exhausting!
On Monday I started applying for a new job. I ran through a bunch of ads and looked online. One of the places I applied at was a hotel chain. Basically they rent out studio rooms, one week at a time. So it's like week-to-week renting. Cool idea but I don't think they have the logistics worked out all the way. Anyway, they called me yesterday for an interview and to fill out their personalized application. When I got there, the manager had to print off an application and he gave me a list of jobs for me to look over and choose from. The only problem I could see at that time was the fact that almost all of the jobs required you to live at the hotel. They gave you a studio; paid your utilities, phone, internet, and cable. All you had to do was live there and earn a paycheck. Which would be great...if I didn't have a family that I loved and would like to see every once in a while. There was only one job that didn't require you to live on site, but the hours are from 9am to 3pm. Which would mean that I would have to hire someone to come take care of Bradley while I went to work. Yeah, not going to happen. I filled out the application anyway and the manager said that he would call me in a week if they had any openings. I also went in and applied at Walmart last night in the hopes that I can find a job fairly close that will allow me to work at night and earn a decent paycheck. I know your fingers are really cramped by now, but please keep them crossed for me!!

So that's pretty much the update. Lots of information, I know, but really nothing all that interesting. Today Lisa and Cheryl are coming over to help me work on Bradley's room (we are going to paint a jungle scene on his closet doors) and so I'm totally excited for that!! I hope all is well with everyone!!

If I had only thought about it...

You know how annoying it is to lose something, right? You need that particular thing right now and so you rip the house to pieces and do a complete autopsy in every room looking for it. Then you get so frustrated because you have spent the last 3 hours of your life looking for it. And the smaller it is or the less important it is makes you more and more frustrated because you still haven't found it and it's not very important, but you just can't stop looking for it because you needed it and now it's gone. So you finally give up, you throw your hands in the air and wave the white flag of surrender.... Then a few days later, the item that you wasted so much time looking for, shows up. Just sitting there still laughing at you. And you are so mad whether at the item for not saying something while your tore your house to bits or at yourself for not looking in that one spot where it was. That's how I feel right now. And yes I'm angry at my book for not saying anything.

In other news, I received a call this morning from the paper. I'm to go to Provo at 3am tonight (or tomorrow morning, however you want to look at it). Wish me luck!! I'm so scared!!