Semi-Annual Brain Dump

Lately I’ve been feeling a little busy in the head, so although I don’t usually do this sort of thing on my blog, I thought I’d allow myself a bit of a brain dump today. Here’s some stuff that’s been hanging over my head recently:

– As mentioned last week, we’ve been redecorating the daughter’s room. It was a bit of a kick in the teeth at first because we worked really hard on that room before she was born, decorating it in soothing yellows and lots of cute Winnie the Pooh stuff. But our little girl never really got into Winnie, and yellow isn’t really her color, so we decided to make the room a little more her. In truth, we decided this almost a year ago, but it’s taken us this long to get around to it. Now that it’s almost done, though, I’m pretty happy with the results. The top of the room is a pretty pink, the bottom is a lovely purple, and the chair rail and shelves are white. I’ve picked up some room darkening purple curtains, and we plan to replace her oak bookshelf with a white one to match everything else. But my favorite thing, of course, is the part I did myself. It was the hubby’s idea, but I’m pretty proud: I fabricated all of the My Little Pony’s cutie marks (the pictures on their flanks) out of craft foam to hang on her wall. My Little Pony is the daughter’s favorite thing in the world right now, so I think she’s going to love it. – On a related note, the daughter has been sleeping with hubby and I while we’ve been painting and waiting for everything to air out, and I’m dreading trying to get her back into her own room. I’m sure she’ll love the room, but after a week of sleeping with us in our bed, the return to normal is probably going to be a huge fight. Joyous.

– Tomorrow is the first day of October, which means I really really have to get to work on the little missy’s costume. Two years ago hubby suggested that I should make our daughter’s Halloween costumes because it’s more personal and special and also most store-bought costumes are pretty crappy. I resisted at first because it’s an awful lot of work, but the first result was pretty awesome…
…so I kept doing it…
…and now it’s time for number three. What I have in store isn’t as involved or detailed as the previous two, but it requires sewing a pair of pants and a hoodie from scratch, so I really need to get to work asap. At least, I keep telling myself that. 😛

– Lately I’ve been trying to get the house into a state that I’m happy with, and I’m having varying degrees of success. On one hand I finally got our mud room straightened away (it’s been an ungodly wreck pretty much since the instant we moved in the house), but on the other hand I can’t seem to keep the kitchen straight for more than half a day. I mean, seriously, how do three people (one of them less than three years old) use so many damn dishes? I make allowances for the fact that we have a toddler in the house and therefore it will never be 100% perfect, but I’m amazed at how much mess the three of us can create in less than 24 hours. Maybe I’m just inefficient at cleaning? Maybe I should be able to tidy up the messes faster and thus have the house cleaner for longer? I don’t know, but I’d like to figure it out because I’m getting really sick of wandering into certain rooms in the house and feeling like I haven’t cleaned anything in weeks.

– This will be addressed again tomorrow, but the editing hasn’t been going well. For one thing, I’ve been terribly distracted by all the stuff mentioned above. For another thing, since my laptop’s battery is dying an unholy death I haven’t been able to just wander off with it wherever I want, which makes things very difficult for me. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it is for me. In addition to all that, I’m having a hard time keeping track of everything in my manuscript, making sure that everything follows the proper format and so on. This isn’t my strong point. The actual writing, yeah…making sure the writing congeals into a proper story, yick.

– We’ve been trying to get the little missy to watch some different things, since she’s so overly-obsessed with My Little Pony. It’s not going as well as I’d hoped, but yesterday we did get her to watch almost two hours worth of Looney Toons last night. It was rather enjoyable. There’s something about sitting and watching the cartoons you loved as a kid with your kids that it’s bliss.

And with that, my brain is a little emptier and it’s time to move on with my day. Thanks for listening to me being random. 😀

The Most Vicious of Vicious Cycles

I have a confession to make.

I decided to take a day off from blogging today so that I could try and get some cleaning done. Our house is in a bit of a shambles, you see, and I hadn’t vacuumed since Niece was here on the weekend, and the cat’s puked in the basement again, so I thought since I had no blog posts planned in advance that I would take the day off and focus on the homestead instead.

And now I’m here telling you about it because I needed to get this out:

Cleaning sucks. It’s the most futile task known to adulthood, especially to an adult who has a toddler and two particularly idiotic cats. The second I clean up the cat puke, one of them decides to “go” outside their litter box. I vacuum my daughter’s bedroom and two minutes later she crumbles a cookie all over her floor. I throw in a load of laundry, and god help me, the stuff still waiting to go in the wash seems to multiply exponentially. For the love of puppies, I can literally see a new coat of dust appearing before I’m even finished wiping away the old dust.

And here’s the thing…even if I’m diligent, even if I forsake spare time, writing time, and playing with my daughter, and I work my ass off to get the house sparkling…by the time I get from one end of the house to the other, the first end has gotten dirty again. Between baby messes, evil cats, and no end of hair and fur on everything, there is just no way to get ahead. And that’s not even taking into account all the organizing and purging that needs to be done.

So with that said, I implore my fellow bloggers, writers, and the random other people reading this post:
How the hell do you do it? Help! HELP! I’m losing my freakin’ mind!!!!

Time flies when…

I’ve been slacking off with the blog lately, not because I’m too lazy or don’t have anything to talk about, but because it seems like the days are getting away on me the past couple of weeks. Today, for example, it seemed like all I did was wake up and do a bit of housework, and all of a sudden it was lunch time. Then before I could sneeze, it was supper, and in about an hour and a half it’ll be the baby’s tub time. From there I pretty much go to bed, as the hubby and I like to pass our nights before bedtime watching movies. So for all intents and purposes, my day is already complete. I’m plucking this post out while the baby watches a cartoon (in other words, while I’ve got two seconds to myself).

I think this is a phenomenon that happens to everyone when there is a looming event on the horizon. The ‘event’ can take many forms, but in my case, this particular time, it’s the date of my flight out West. I recently got my itinerary for my flight out to the oil sands, and ever since it’s seemed like the days are just disappearing behind me.

Much like attempting to finish, edit, and publish a novel, starting a new job in a new province is an adventure, and as such I’m a mixture of nervous, excited, and curious. For one thing, my flight out to the work site will be my first ever time on a plane. Yes, that’s right, I’m 28 years old and have never been on an airplane before. So that’s pretty exciting (and nerve-wracking). In addition to that little tidbit, this will be my first time ever traveling alone. As I’m a full-grown adult that shouldn’t be a big deal, but it’s an interesting concept to me. The only trips I’ve ever taken have been with family or friends by my side. I’ve never traveled more than a couple of hours drive without at least my husband, so flying three quarters of the way across the country all by myself is going to seem odd. All I can say is thank god I’m flying, because without my husband to keep me on track I’d probably drive to Texas or something.

Another thing that I’m anticipating (whether for good or for ill) is the camp I’m going to be living at. As funny as it may sound, I’m actually looking forward to this experience. I’ve been assured that the camp is clean and has good food, and all in all I think it’s going to seem like the college dorm experience that I never had. When I was in college I first lived with my parents, and then in an apartment with friends and my hubby (then boyfriend), followed by just my hubby (boyfriend) and I, and I always felt like I missed out on the dorm experience. It’s not exactly an ideal way to live, I know, but it’s still something I would have liked to try out, and now I’m getting a similar chance, albeit belatedly. I might end up hating it, but at least I’ll have tried it, you know?

Of course, there’s also the job itself. I’ve heard good things so far from colleagues I have out there, but I won’t really know until I get there. I’ve been out of work (that is, career work) since October, so it’s going to be strange to go back. Part of me thinks it’ll be like getting back on a bike, but another part of me can’t help thinking that I’m going to totally forget how to do any of the things I used to do. At the very least, it’s going to feel weird being back on a work site after all this time.

Finally, it’s going to be strange leaving my daughter behind for two weeks straight. Compared to other prospective western jobs and the position my husband recently left so I could take this one, two weeks at a time won’t be bad at all, but it will still be odd. So far, since she was born a year and a half ago, the longest I’ve been away from her at once was something like 36 hours or so. While I know she’ll be fine at home with her father, and I’m sure my two weeks will go by fast as I’ll be working 12-hour days, it’s still a pretty large stretch between 36 hours and 336 hours.

All in all, my life is speeding toward a pretty significant event. So, of course, you’ll excuse me if things like blog posts get temporarily pushed aside. Life will resume eventually, I promise. 🙂

Priorities

Today is going to be a thoroughly unproductive day.

I’m not going to do any housework today. I’m definitely not going to do any yard work. I won’t be working on my novel, or any other writing project for that matter (it’s actually a miracle I’m bothering to write this blog post). I won’t do a single lick of exercise…not running on the treadmill, not my 10-Minute-Trainer videos…if I can help it I’ll scarcely burn a single damn calorie.

Why the sudden complete and utter disdain for ‘work’? Well it’s not that, really…it’s just that I’ve got more important things to worry about today.

What’s going to happen is this:
I’m going to get up and get a shower (already done), and wait for the baby to wake up (in progress). I’m going to dress the baby in something cute, and we’re going to have breakfast. Then we’re going to go outside for a little while because the sun has finally come back and the baby is going to want to see it. When she has thoroughly worn herself out running through the grass and poking at my flowers, we’ll go back in and grab something for lunch. And then it’s into the car for a three-hour drive to the airport because hubby/daddy is coming home!

I think that deserves a day of saying “screw that” to my other commitments, hmmm? 🙂