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Yep – I’m a Joiner!
Merry Happy Yule Festival of Evergreen Grain
The searches for how people get to this blog fascinate me.
My favorite this month is “Ali Brown’s New Haircut.”
Whoever is blogging about that needs a hobby…or three.
Today the husband is going to talk to a wholesale distributor for the new business and then tonight we’re going to a party at a friend’s house. All in all a produtive AND fun day – my favorite kind.
We’ve decided to put the girls back in dance and tumbling, respectively. To let them know the deed has been done and they’ve been enrolled, we’re going to buy them each a new outfit and give it to them as a Christmas present/surprise. I think they’ll be thrilled.
The most expensive presents bought so far? Books. I spent so much on books I could cry. But they’re awesome books. Some are classics, and some are newer titles. I know the girls will love them, and I truly think they’re old enough now to take care of the books the way I feel books deserve to be taken care of.
Christmas has pretty much overtaken my life. The girls came home with information aout Kwanzaa the other day and I told my mom about it. She said, “If they came out with a holiday just for white people, everyone would freak out. Besides, I’m Christian so I celebrate Christmas. I keep the Christ in.”
My response was, “First of all, you can celebrate Kwanzaa – Since you celebrate at home, I’m pretty sure no one is going to come and tell you you’re too pale to celebrate. Second, it starts the day after Christmas, so it’s not an either/or. Third, have you HEARD of St. Patrick’s Day? That may be the WHITEST holiday of the year and I don’t see African-American protesters. Just sayin’”
So my mom is thinking about celebrating Kwanzaa.
I am a rockstar saleswoman.
No white holidays. Are you KIDDING me? Post-racial America my ass. Post-racial America would see that Kwanzaa is not a religious holiday, therefore does not interfere with Christian values (don’t get me started on the utter lack of religious freedom in America) and should be, at most, ignored. There is NO REASON to start up with the “black holdiay” vs. “white holiday” bullcrap.
Just hug someone every day between now and New Year’s Day and you’ve celebrated all the winter holidays with love.
Christmas Before Thanksgiving? I Get it Now!
With another week until Thanksgiving I saw an ad for Walmart. I don’t know what it was selling. All I remember was kids, dressed in pajamas, running into a living room with a lit tree and jumping on the couch with mom and dad to read a story.
That’s when I started to cry, which is probably why I missed what the hell those kids and that couch and that tree were trying to sell me.
I always get emotional in November. I have since my early twenties for reasons I won’t go into here, other than to say something kinda awful happened at the end of September this one time way back in the day. So November has always seen me feeling this weird impending sense of overwhelm and doom – but not really in a negative way – just a world-on-my-shoulders feeling.
I’m explaining this because I think it’s kind of amazing I’ve been able to channel that feeling into a sense of overwhelm at how amazing my family is, and how I want their lives to be this amazing experience. I want to be a good mother that raises soldja girls (Is souldja girl a real term that is used by actual people? If not, screw it, I made up my own term.) that learn from pain and love life to the fullest. Well, maybe not the fullest, but as close to the fullest as possible without needing medication to function.
Somehow, the Walmart commercial sparked that feeling…and now it’s a downhill slide all the way to Christmas. On the bright side it’s more like a slip and slide drenched with the tears of my love.
How awful does that sound? I’m laughing at myself. Say it out loud. “A slip and slide drenched with the tears of my love.”
Classic.
Wii Fit Plus with Board & Fitness Ultimatum 2010 Giveaway
Sports Authority and I are giving away a Wii Fit Plus (with Board) and a copy of Jillian Michaels’ Fitness Ultimatum 2010.
Come on over to MommyBlog Reviews and enter the contest running through November 23 @ 9am CST. More details including date and location of personal appearance are available on the site.
Good Luck!
Layoff in the Family (Doesn’t “Lay” Mean f**k? I Understand the Term Now!)
There is one surefire way to screw up your budget in one easy step.
Get laid off.
Yep – we are now the new members of that not-so-elite club of families that had a layoff during the economic poopstorm.
To be more accurate, I did not get laid off, Randy did. Yesterday in the middle of the day. Not on Friday, not at 5pm.
- Was it performance based? Of course not!
- Did they offer recommendations and references filled with love and adoration? Of course they did!
- Will they hire him back on if they sign a big client who needs PPC or search marketing? Probably!
- Was he given a business card of another company that they thought was hiring? Yes. They actually did.
So, when it comes to being laid off this is far better than what most people get. I appreciate that they weren’t negative, nor were they rude. They really do wish him the best and it was just circumstances that made this necessary, nothing he did personally. At least they didn’t take his pride when they let him go from his job!
My favorite things about the layoff:
- Christmas bonuses were promised and qualified for and are probably being given out any day now.
- Vacation days would have renewed on January 2nd – don’t have to pay those now!
- Severence was a whole two weeks.
My husband has no ill-will toward the company and neither do I, not really. But a little animosity is going to happen when a wife finds out her husband was laid off 14 days before Christmas. I mean, no time is a good time for a layoff, but they could have given him a car and I’d be pissed about him being let go two weeks before Christmas. That makes sense, right?
On the bright side, back when we were really poor (not this faux-poor that comes from a family member losing a job) we got rid of all that silly “pride” stuff so if things were to deteriorate (which they won’t) we wouldn’t have a problem rocking the food pantries.
Of course, having spent this entire year paring back on unnecessary expenses, paying off bills and getting rid of debt, well, I don’t see that happening.
I will make enough to pay the bills until he gets a job. I’ve already put the word out to my clients and production will increase starting this month.
I put the word out to everyone in my network of business owners as well as anyone else I knew well enough to have the phone number of in order to let them know Randy is on the market and looking for another position as a search and media analyst.
Through a distant networking contact he even had an interview that is going to be published on Monday in Crain’s Chicago Business. Not a bad place for your name to be when you’re looking for a new gig.
Overall we’re feeling this is not all negative, and it will give us the chance to start working on a venture together that we’ve been thinking about for a while.
The only weird thing is that Randy refuses to take back my elliptical. Which is good because if he doesn’t get a job I need to slim the hell down come exercise or eating disorder to qualify for health insurance.
But if it were me I’d totally take it back because it looks at me and says, “Dude, you could afford me two days ago..but now? I’m not so sure.”
Fun fact: We’re only going to get $710 less per month than we were before thanks to unemployment. My monthly income starting in ‘09 will increase almost $2k/mo. if not more. So….we’re going to be okay. That doesn’t take the sting out of it and it doesn’t really get rid of the fear and panic entirely…but it helps.
Thank goodness I’ve been working so flippin’ hard this year. Winter is coming and we’ve been preparing. Now it’s time to reap what we’ve sowed both in contacts and networking savvy and marketing knowledge and savings and working hard.
I really think 2009 is still going to kick some serious bootie.
What Day Is It Again?
I keep thinking it’s Monday! Randy was home from work yesterday so it felt like Sunday.
The first thing I usually do on Monday morning is plan my week. So I’m getting not-quite-a-jumpstart by doing that today.
One of the major benefits of working from home is having almost complete control over what I do on any given day.
The downside? On days like today…cold, rainy, and gray….all I want to do is curl up with a book and a cup of hot tea and enjoy it.
The question is…should I enjoy the day and relax? Or should I plan for January and the rest of 2009?
I have writing work coming in this week so if I don’t do it early in the week, odds are after Wednesday I’ll be super-busy again and won’t have time to plan anything.
Or maybe I should take that time and complete our Christmas gift chart. We are still figuring out who is getting what gift and who we still need to buy for. Yes, we are total last-minute shoppers.
Randy is going to call the preschool again to find out what’s going on over there. I guess if we don’t hear from them I’ll put the girls into public preschool. I need a crystal ball to know what the right decision for them is.
I’m going to hop on the elliptical (maybe I can beat my previous awesomeness and stay on it for five minutes) and make the decision after my head is cleared from the first-thing-in-the-morning cobwebs.
On days like this, I wonder how I managed driving to work in the cold and the wet – barely awake and drinking coffee like it was going to save me from something. Only to get to work still not quite awake and start working at a desk, only leaving to go to the bathroom or go to lunch. Staying there for nine hours a day before coming home and only having a life on weekends or after 6pm.
Now I get to choose between relaxing, exercising, planning my future, or none of the above. Having control over my own life is something that I could have never imagined being possible, but now that I live this way, I cannot imagine living any other way.
I know I’m a few weeks late for the "being thankful" theme – but Christmas…it makes me happy and reflective. It hasn’t always, and I’m glad Christmas and I found a middle ground where I don’t care about the people who run up credit card debt and turn the holiday into a "who gave the best gift" contest. I’m in it for me. Me…and my family.
