still here.

it's been a busy month, and i keep meaning to post, and it's not that i don't have anything to post about, i just keep forgetting. i guess this is what happens when your plate is maybe a bit too full?

i made our halloween costumes this year which i generally do though i have not made any in a couple years, just recycled the old ones. i have a stash of stuff that can make a pirate wench, a princess, or a gypsy. this year we wanted to do family costumes so there was much discussion regarding what we were going to be. someone in our family is not very creative and kept shooting down all the creative ideas from someone else, who granted is not as clever as this girl. in the end the kiddo ended up being a pumpkin.


of course, after i had purchased the pumpkin costume for hannah, kerry suggested a bunch of cute things. like, brian could be a polar bear, and i could be a penguin, and hannah could be a fish. the food chain! she also suggested that brian and i could be some sort of insects and hannah could be a grub. MY BABY IS NOT A GRUB thank you very much. i thought it would be clever if hannah was a pumpkin, brian was a frog, and i was a witch, but no one else seemed to think that was as amusing as i did. in the end we were just a jack-o-family.


i was not in love with our costumes though i guess they turned out cute. brian said he looked gay in his costume even though he got to be the scary pumpkin. i used felt for everything and after much ribbing from my sister, gave up looking for a pattern and made up one myself. basically they are just pullovers that i copied from old tee shirts, lined with tulle and stuffed with fiberfill with an elastic casing at the bottom. this was also my first attempt at applique-ing anything and i'm happy with the way the faces turned out. i used wonder-under first, i don't know if that is how appliques are usually done but that is how i did it. after i fused the felt face pieces on i zigzagged the edges. i used my walking foot for these costumes and really, i don't know how i've lived my life without it. i use it for so many things now.

i realized too late that we should have dressed hannah up like this (costume borrowed from a friend for a photo):


and brian could have been a gorilla and i could have been a monkey. HANNAH BANANA!! my good ideas always come a day late.

we also had a huge storm a couple weeks ago, the first of the season. it was hugely rainy and impossibly windy and almost all of the trees around here still had their leaves, including the beautiful japanese maple that was in our front yard. (it actually looks rather pathetic in that picture, which must be insanely old too, because the tree was quite a bit bigger than that.) i came home from work that afternoon to find this:


of course, it didn't even touch the pathetic, ugly tree that is also in our front yard, in a strange spot way too close to the rosebushes. i would have been happy to lose that tree. my husband was a champ and cut up the tree into pieces and even dug out the stump, which left us with a giant hole in the yard, two weeks before halloween when tons of children ignore the walkway and tramp up our lawn.


lawsuit, begone!

i don't know what we will do now that halloween is over. probably fill in the hole with some turf builder on top, though there has been talk of putting a pumpkin in it for thanksgiving and a snowman for christmas and making it a theme hole. we are also those people who take their baby to a rock concert. don't you wish we could be YOUR neighbors?

i am now a sahm officially - i quit my job because half of my income was going right back out the door to daycare, which sucks. technically i was let go as my boss changed my quit into a discharge the week before my last day, which is technically legal but in my humble opinion kind of jerk-ish of him, so i'm glad to be out of there.

i have also been working like a crazy girl on the etsy shop. there is a ton of cool stuff up if i do say so myself, go check it out! i am still ridiculously excited about it, and i even made a couple custom halloween costumes. also, i am going to be a vendor! how exciting is that! it's a super-tiny event - mil is a legal secretary, and they always have a couple vendors at their local annual dinner, and she got me a table. there will only be around 30 people in attendance, but the table was free (no vendor fee), and i don't have to share a percentage of my sales, so anything i make from this is gravy. it's in two weeks, and i am ridiculously excited, and we will even have tee shirts, if i can get some iron-on transfer paper that actually works!

success!

brian got a promotion!

so proud of you, honey!

maternity leave

this week i am thankful:

1. that i am FINALLY out on maternity leave!! don't get me wrong, i love my job. i'm thankful that i have one and that it is a job that i really enjoy. and they were so sweet today, bringing me balloons and a plant and cake for my birthday. but - being pregnant is HARD WORK. it is exhausting. and then to go to work full-time on top of that? i don't know how those women do it, the ones who work right up until their due date. i have been counting the minutes until i went out on leave and finally i am OUT!

2. for time to get kiddo stuff done, at last. even though i am not working for a paycheck, unfortunately i am still working. there is just so much crap to do to get ready for the kid. her room is still not done but will hopefully be finished this weekend. i have a ton of cooking i want to get done to fill up our freezer also, since brian is completely clueless in the kitchen and has not desire to learn. if i have the time and energy, there is cleaning that i would like to get done too. do you know how long it has been since i cleaned my refrigerator? you don't want to know. it's embarassing, and my mother is coming. oy.

3. that so many people were so generous in giving us gift cards. last night we purchased the necessary baby things that we did not have yet (changing pad, diaper pail, valves for the breast pump, nail clippers, et cetera) and DAMN that stuff is expensive. i know the amount of money it takes to raise a baby to adulthood is obscene, somewhere on the order of $1 million or something? still. she is not even here yet.

we left up $65

we spent this weekend in reno, nevada, on a weekend getaway sponsored by my company as a reward for our excellent results during our recent life promotion. brian did not originally really want to go. he said reno was boring and there was nothing to do there but gamble and we were too short on funds to be spending money frivolously like that. fortunately, i talked him into it. our room at the peppermill resort, dinner saturday night, and breakfast sunday morning were taken care of for us, so it was a really inexpensive getaway. we paid for gas and anything incidental up there and since we were feeling frugal, there were no incidentals.

it was really nice to get away and get a change of scenery. it's also nice that the reno/tahoe area is only about 1½-2 hours away from us now up on interstate 80. we drove up early saturday afternoon and it was a gorgeous day in the sierras, cool and clear and sunny. the leaves were turning on the trees and it was so pretty though i'm sure nothing like what happens back east. well, we take what we can get here.

truckee is about a half hour outside of reno. we stopped at this vista point over donner lake, just outside of truckee. you can see the snow up on the tops of the mountains in the distance. there were tiny patches of snow in the shady spots along the highway too.


i was playing with the exposure (or something?) on my camera because it was really sunny and i was afraid the picture would get all washed out. i guess the opposite happened. i'll have to learn more about that.

i really like stopping at vista points because you often get to see pretty views that you would otherwise miss. plus, it's a nice chance to stretch your legs and get some fresh air.


brian does not like stopping as much as i do. i think he usually just wants to get there, but he is a good sport about letting me take my pictures.

the hotel was really nice. apparently it's been recently remodeled and brian said it looked a lot better than it did before. i had never been to reno or the peppermill before so i didn't know the difference. brian really liked that there was a 45" flat-screen tv in our room. all the better to watch espn, i guess.

saturday night we had a really nice dinner with work. there was so much food and man was it ever delicious. what were they thinking offering up an 18 oz. steak? who can eat that much? i made a pretty good dent in it though and ate all my vegetables. brian could not decide what he wanted for dessert so the waiter brought him two, one on the house. i had a cherry blintz and it was so delicious. how do i get that served at my house?

the breakfast buffet was an island theme with all kinds of plants and trees and even a waterfall. it really felt like we were eating outdoors in an island paradise.




brian could not believe all the food that they had. if you can handle the smoke (though it was not smoky in this one), i think they are a really good deal for the money.

we didn't spend too much time in the casino. brian wanted to keep me out of the smoke, and either way it was really bothering both our eyes. he did stop to play some quarter slots and ended up winning a little over $100. with the money we had paid to play that meant we were up about $65. we left before we could spend it on something else, but we didn't get too terribly far. we stopped in at the kids' arcade.


i love skee-ball, so we tried to play a couple rounds but the machine was broken. so we played some other arcade games. i think that's way more fun than gambling. brian beat me at the football throwing game. what can i say, i'm kind of a girly girl. that was our last stop before heading home and was a nice way to wrap up our mini-vacation.

heck yeah

i forgot how insanely fun bowling is, especially with a big group of fun people, especially with drinks and betting involved.



yep, that is a new lifetime high score for me. yep, i'm a crappy bowler. yep, i'm pretty damn proud of it.

life

i hate it when my life apps come back table rated [worse than standard rates due to health issues].

and i hate it when people get mad at me about it. why get mad at me? i don't make the underwriting decisions. and i'm not the one with the health issues. that's all you, baby.

more employment

i am trying not to feel so discouraged about finding a job. brian wants me to find something that pays more than i currently make, which i have a sinking feeling will be difficult to do in elk grove, at least in my field, for what i'm qualified for. it just seems that i'm not qualified enough to make more. i am not sure i want to take the next step and become an agent - that would mean owning my own business, and i'm not sure that is something i desire to do. (at least, not an insurance agency.) nor do i have enough experience to go to a brokerage and become a producer, since i only have direct-writer experience and not brokerage experience. besides, if i were to become a producer, i would want to do high-end personal lines, most of which seems to be concentrated in sacramento, and i don't want to commute.

i applied for a couple jobs last night online so hopefully those will pan out. one is to be a personal banker at a bank in elk grove, which i think i could possibly be good at though i have no idea what to do. on the plus side, insurance is a start towards investments and financial services. on the negative side, it's (generally) a completely different leg of the financial table than investments. the other job i applied for is to be an accounts manager, doing payroll, reconciliations, that kind of thing. kind of an assistant-controller kind of thing, it sounded like. i have very little bookkeeping and accounting experience, but again, maybe that insurance/financials thing will help out here.

i guess i am just feeling adrift and underqualified. i really would just love to continue to be a csr for state farm but it seems that may not pay the bills the way my husband would like - and the way i would like. i mean, i'm resigned to the idea of a pay cut, but we're talking a serious pay cut here. i guess i'll just have to wait and see and hope something pans out, or i could be back at the grocery store, heaven forbid. at least they have good benefits.

employment

my husband was offered a fabulous new job! hooray!! now we just need to find me some employment.