Thursday, April 19, 2007

Random Facts

My first post gave you the general info on me, but here are a couple more random facts that some incredibly bored person might find interesting:

I have a genuine fear of Mr. Bubble.
Yes, the pink bubble guy on the bubble bath bottle. It all started one day as a child in the tub. There was the bottle propped up against the wall and me bathing gleefully and innocently and then it happened! Mr. Bubble’s eyes moved! Now it was probably one of those cases where you catch something out of the corner of your eye and you think you see movement but there really wasn’t. But I’ve been unable to look at Mr. Bubble ever since without getting seriously freaked out. Let’s think about it though. Mr. Bubble is just unnatural. What’s he made out of – bubbles! That’s not right. I mean the Michelin man I can see – he’s made out of inner tubes or something right? The Stay Puft Marshmallow man is made out of marshmallows, those types of things you can deal with – but Mr. Bubble? He can only survive in the water. Imagine taking a lovely bubble bath and then watching in horror as the bubbles converge around you and Mr. Bubble’s face pops up and says hello from between your nether regions. I could sell that script to the makers of Saw and it would be the next best selling horror movie. The only thing that saves me is that most places don’t sell Mr. Bubble anymore and if they do I have to send the hubby down the aisle for the kids’ Elmo bubble bath.

Constellation moles.
Not unlike Larry the Cable Guy’s sister, I’m covered in moles. It’s a sad consequence of genetics. I was doomed from birth really since both sides of my family have moles, though I think I got most of them from my mother’s side. So I take a trip to the dermatologist annually where he slices and dices me like a Thanksgiving turkey, usually removing at least 3 “suspicious” lesions which always come back as OK from the lab. The best thing about my skin affliction though is my “constellation moles”; lovely groupings of brown orbs that, with the proper amount of imagination, form the outlines of varied objects. For example, I have a highly accurate rendering of the little dipper on my neck. It never fails that when I hold a small child, especially one just learning to count, that they inevitably trace that lovely line with their little fingers and count aloud 1. . . 2 . . . 3 . . . . 4 . . . “you have spots in a line!” To which I always reply, “yes sweetheart I do, maybe this summer you can see the ones on my thigh that are in the shape of a tub of cottage cheese”.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Welcome

Welcome to my blog! I don’t think that the internet is full of quite enough crap so I think I’ll add my endless drivel and mental waste to the mix. This way it keeps my endless internal babble from spilling out onto my poor husband and friends.

A little about me:

My name is Amy. Let’s leave it at that because I quite admire the anonymity that the internet provides and quite frankly there are a lot of weird people out there and I don’t really want them to know my last name because it’s not a very common name and it would be quite easy to track me down and I’m generally not thrilled with the concept of creepy people on my doorstep. If you feel awkward not knowing my last name then feel free to make one up; Amy Vonblogger, or Mrs. Weinershnitzel, or perhaps Amy Xenophobe.

I’m 31 years old, married, and have 2 children (ages 3 and 4 months) that are pretty much my life and I’m OK with that. I’m not one of those people who are obsessed with their children and can think/talk of nothing else and yet I’m not one of those pathetic people still trying to cling to their pre-parent selfish lifestyle either. I‘m living in the moment and loving it. Right now my kids define a big part of who I am and that’s okay with me. I’m still here, I’m still a person, but mostly I’m just “Mommy”. I do enough for myself to keep my sanity and sense of self and this blog is part of that.

Let me be clear that the purpose of this blog isn’t to post photos of my pristine children, though I’m sure there will be plenty of occasions where my children will be front and center of my postings. However, I already have what I call “the Christmas Card Blog” which is a blog site where I post recent pics of the kids and describe the latest and cutest things they’ve done. It’s pretty sugar coated, and I admit it but it’s a necessity because all of my family has links to it and I really don’t want my mother-in-law to hear the story of how I’ve inadvertently trained my 3 year old to say “shit” every time he knocks something over. Those types of stories will be posted here along with my general musings on life.

I work full time. I won’t say where, first of all because of the anonymity issue I mentioned earlier and secondly because it’s really rather inconsequential. I work for a large corporation and although I adore my paycheck and my benefits it’s nothing really worthy of mentioning. I sit in a box for 8 hours a day while management encourages me to “think out of the box” and come up with different ways to make my job more tedious by adding more processes and procedures to “enhance our overall performance”. I wear trouser socks to work almost every day. Trouser socks . . . who would have thought. I mean did you ever think as a kid, gee I can’t wait until I grow up and can dress in trouser socks, and yet here I am. But the bills have got to be paid somehow. Not everyone can be an astronaut or a firefighter you know. If I ever find a job that fills my heart with joy, inspires me and pays enough to support my family then I’ll quit this one and jump on the unicorn express to Rainbowville and work happily ever after.

My husband is pretty much a saint, though that doesn’t stop me from complaining about him most of the time. He works full time also for a different corporation and due to our middle class salaries and some pretty shitty spending habits in college and early married life are pretty much forced to work separate shifts to avoid the cost of daycare and impending bankruptcy due to excessive credit card debt. So I work days while he watches the kids and then he goes to work from 5p.m. -1:30a.m. and I watch the kids in the evening. He really gets the brunt of it since he has more time with the kids while they’re awake and active but he’s one of the most patient and loving fathers I know so it all seems to work out – or has so far. We’ve been doing this for 7 months now and neither one of us has cracked under the pressure yet. We’re just two very weary ships that pass in the –um - afternoon.

There are many other facets to my life and my personality but I’m sure those will be exposed in future postings.