Category: Books

I don’t usually blog at night, when I’m trying my hardest to get Alaethia to fall asleep, but since I’m willing myself not to go over to my bedroom and shake Mario awake (just to be a bitch) I’m going to blog.

One thing I hate is going to bed without showering and tonight was going to be one of the nights that I didn’t. Mario was supposed to watch Aly while I showered, which takes me all of 15 minutes, but decided HE was really sleepy so he went straight to bed. I ended up taking her into the bathroom with me while she was in her carseat and prayed that she wouldn’t scream the whole time I was in there. Luckily, she was in a good mood and was mesmerized by her reflection in the long mirror.

And can you believe he was blaming ME for his staying up till 3am?! I don’t force him to be online or watching TV or going to Chris’ house, do I?

And it’s not like I can sleep right now anyway. Alaethia is most definitely teething (at 3 months–has been teething since around 2 1/2 if you can believe that!). She got a fever twice yesterday and then diarrhea this afternoon. Plus she’s been fussy and clingy, drooling like crazy and constantly eating her hands. If she’s not frantically eating her hands she’s bringing my arms or fingers to her mouth to gum on.

Like right now…

This little girl amazes me. She’s already trying really hard to pull herself up to a sitting position when she’s laying down. She’s been trying to roll onto her tummy and has been grabbing at things and slowly bringing them to her mouth. She also sits up really straight and cute when we’re out shopping or looking at stuff. People always think she’s older than she really is :).

I meant to clean and tidy up the living room today, but was out of the house for most of it. I took Mom grocery shopping in the afternoon after picking Jaylen up from school and then went to Target with John after picking up Eenan. He bought me Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for Mother’s Day :). I’ve got to finish up my current book (Sushi for Beginners) and start up on the 6th book to “freshen up” before the last one comes out! I also indulged a little and spent $17 on a cute yellow blouse and lilac sweatshirt for Aly and a navy blue tank for me and a sheet of cute Marcella by K stickers. Oh yeah, and small Ziplocs, too. I’d run out.

Bleh. I’ve got tons of important documents to shred, important statements to file, boxes of crap to look through (still) and I need to look through the boys’ artwork and scrapbook my favorites.

Wow. I’m watching (well, not really watching–the TV’s just on for background noise) Discovery Home and this woman is just like me. She’s got Rubbermaid tote after Rubbermaid tote full of her childrens’ school/artwork.

That actually brings up something I’m incredibly curious about: What do you do with your child(ren)’s artwork and schoolwork once they bring it home? I have every single thing Eenan did all of Pre-K, Kinder and first grade. This year, I decided I’d save only the cutest, most creative things and make a scrapbook with them (I’ve already started this year’s scrapbook but I’m not even close to finishing it). But then I feel guilty throwing out the other stuff (like math sheets and spelling homework, especially with Jaylen since it’s his very first year) because I know how hard they worked on it. Still, I don’t want to be a packrat anymore! So, what do you moms (and dads) do? What do you suggest? And also, do you or your parents have any of YOUR work saved from when you were little?

Ooh, and another question I have now that I’m remembering the tank I bought today: Do you know of any good clothing swaps? Like, online? Some place where you trade good clothes where people won’t jip you. Would anyone here be interested? I’ve got a few things I don’t want to just sell at, say, a Yard Sale because they’re worth more than the darn $1 people want to give me for them!

Since I’m asking all these questions, I thought I’d do something I’ve never done here before. Ask YOU questions! I found a survey type thing on Myspace so I figured I’d use that as a template. I removed some of the questions on that survey and added some of my own. Just copy and paste them in a comment with your answers :). Don’t be shy!! (Of course, you don’t have to answer any you don’t want to answer.)

1. What’s your name?

2. How old are you?

3. Where did you find “me”?

4. Do you have children or do you want any? If you do have some, what are their ages?

5. What’s one song you absolutely love and recommend?

6. Can you cook? What’s your favorite thing to cook?

7. What do you do for a living? Is it what you’ve always wanted to do? (I ask this because after all these years, I still don’t know what I “want to be when I grow up”!)

8. What was the last book you read? Did you find it interesting?

9. What’s your worst habit?

10. If you won $10,000 dollars today, what would you do with it?

11. What’s your favorite thing to do in your spare time?

Those were a lot, weren’t they? I hope you get a chance to answer!

I’ll go speed-read now while I’m trying to get Alaethia to sleep. Jaylen has a field trip tomorrow and I need to have him ready on time so I hope she decides to go to sleep already. She’s practically bouncing on my lap, though, so it doesn’t seem like we’ll be going to sleep anytime soon!

Posting my One Photo An Hour a bit late, as usual. I decided to start extra early that morning, at 1am, since I was up anyway:

1:00am – Feeding Alaethia and reading a book (currently Sushi for Beginners by Marian Keyes). This is the usual time Alaethia falls asleep.

7:00am – Time to start the day. Aly has a bottle and once she’s asleep and in bed I get ready to iron and make Mario’s breakfast and get the boys some cereal.

8:00am – Browsing Target.com to look for a new TV table. We need more space in our tiny living room and wanted to get rid of our 6-year-old, huge entertainment center.

9:00am – My breakfast: French Vanilla Shredded Wheat and some coffee.

10:00am – Looking for something to wear so we can leave already.

11:00am – At the bank to deposit all the coins from the yard sale.

12:00pm – Arriving at the Goodwill where John pointed out that the sign said “InsuranceClams” instead of Claims!

Didn’t have a very successful thrifting day this time. Got a Making Memories album with accessories (brads, flowers, metal embellishments, etc.) for $6.50, some Rat treats for Mario’s rats ($.99), a brand-new box of 64 Crayola crayons for the boys ($.99), a cute crackled glass vase ($.50), and some thank you cards ($.27). Mom got the boys a HUGE case of sidewalk chalk for $2.00!

1:00pm – Our next stop was the mall. I’m leaving a note to my dear neighbor in the parking lot, who parked ridiculously close to my parking space. I took a picture of their license plate just in case they hit my door. I’ve learned my lesson–I got a huge dent in my door the last time some bozo parked super close to me at the mall. The first and only casualty my Equinox has suffered! And it wasn’t even my fault–that’s what gets to me.

2:00pm – When we were leaving JC Penny (where I bought some cute capris for $10.81 with an awesome coupon I had!) we stalked Spiderman per the children’s request. He was nice enough to pose with them to Jaylen’s delight.

3:00pm – Having some Taco Bell since we were starving by now. Since Mario works nearby, I was picking a snack up for him, too.

4:00pm – Saying goodbye to the Equinox as we’re leaving in Mario’s Neon. My battery died for some weird reason, after only having the truck for a year. Thank GOD we were close by to Mario’s work. He came over to check the car but the jumper didn’t work. I walked over to his work and picked up his car. He’d go over with his co-workers later to check out the car. We were going to drop some stuff off to Gramma but totally forgot everything in the truck :(.

5:00pm – Leaving Target with our new TV table :). This is John struggling with the incredibly heavy box.

6:00pm – We finally get home and Jorge and Mary are at the carport trying to get the PPV channel to work since we’d all pitched in for the fight. Jorge brought over his 32″ TV but since the box wouldn’t cooperate on that TV we had to bring out our little 27″ LOL.

7:00pm – I could have sworn I took a 7 o’clock picture, but I couldn’t find it on my camera.

8:00pm – I walked into the boys’ room to check up on them and the room was a disaster. To their disappointment I made them start cleaning up ASAP.

9:00pm – Watching the pre-big-fights and eating and holding Alaethia.

10:00pm – Alaethia fell asleep after having a bottle. She slept from 10pm to 7am the next morning! First, and so far only, time she’s done that!

11:00pm – Watching the fight. VERY disappointed with the outcome!

I removed my darn question and answer script yesterday because 1) it was hardly ever used and 2) it had an annoying error I couldn’t fix. I even searched all over Google for a remedy and nothing.

I’ve been thinking of giving the whole site a makeover. I desperately need to weed out broken links and get rid of old pages people hardly use. But then again I have this weird attachment to all my old content, which, after all these years, is the reason why all that junk’s still on the site.

Anyway, after the cable guy had come over on Thursday, Mary asked one of the customer service reps if she could get a better deal on the Starz and Encore channels because they were charging her double for each channel alone instead of for the whole package. She needed a box and I knew Mario would want one, too, so we got one. Now we have all the channels we used to have when we had DirecTV! Plus some I think. The boys and our bedroom still have the analog channels (which apparently are ancient and should have been sacked from the system 6 years ago when Starr county moved to the new cable-box one).

We went to Adan’s dad’s house that night, since he was waiting for Final Fantasy to download to the computer. Mario asked me to go and I finally said I would. Mom almost pushed me out the door and said it was totally okay, to go have fun. So after getting the boys fed, bathed and in bed we left.

We mostly chatted about music and websites and stuff. Isaac went over later and talked about the game. When we were leaving Mario’s uncle got there and he was still very visibly upset about Tia Alma. I didn’t know what to say, but as Mario spoke to him I developed a knot in my throat the size of Alaska. Whatever tears that threatened to spill out were held in since I didn’t want to make anything worse. Mario was giving him such good advice; he always knows just what to say.

We get in the car and are really quiet. I break the ice by saying, “Your poor uncle. He’s still so upset. Well–naturally.”

He replies, “I’d probably be the same way.”

“Really?”

He looks at me in disbelief and says, “You may not know this, but believe it or not, my whole life revolves around you. I wouldn’t know what to do. I know you need me because I support you and the kids and make the money and all that, but I need you for everything. I can’t cook, wash, clean–well, I can, but it’s hard!–and I can’t pay the bills. I need you.”

I sort of laugh because I’m a bit amused that he’s mentioning all these things. That’s how he tells me he needs me because he loves me. Then I remember what he said and say, “I need you for other reasons than paying the bills, you know. I just…need you here. To be with me. Because I love you.”

And he says, “Yeah. That’s what I mean. And who else would I talk to? You know how I hold everything in, then when I feel like I’m going to explode you’re the one I tell everything to.” Then he notices I’m going 20 in a 30MPH zone and tells me to speed it up. I spent the rest of the night feeling a weird mixture of sadness, elation, and fear of ever losing Mario, or Mario and the kids losing me prematurely.

It just goes to show how borrowed life really is. Why you really need to take in everyday and tell all your loved ones you love them and appreciate them. And not only that, but spend time with them. That’s something I need to start doing more with the kids. Spend good, quality time playing games or taking them to the park, or watching a good kid’s movie. Lately, when they ask me to do something with them the answer’s been, “Hold on a second, guys. I’m washing dishes.” Or some other chore that I haven’t been able to get done due to taking care of Aly. But thing’s’ve gotta change.

As for yesterday, I actually got to sleep in a little bit after the kids left to school. Mario made migas for breakfast, which–for those that don’t know–is eggs with corn tortillas chopped up into squares. I haven’t had migas in years and he did a pretty good job. We picked up Jaylen, washed dishes (he actually helped me *gasp*), and Mom stayed with the kiddos while we cashed Mario’s check and almost bawled at having to separate the money for bills. It’s been slow at work, and from what I’ve heard, at all other businesses as well. We’ve got to be extra-careful with our money this time, which means I need to keep my butt in the house and not out shopping!

Mario kept telling me he was going to take me to this awesome burger place downtown. We get there and I look up and it’s a burger joint we’d go to all the time as kids when we still lived in McAllen. Brought back memories :). I had a burrito drenched in cheese, which I immediately regretted as it made my stomach feel gross, but man was it good!

We got home and basically chilled out all day. Mario vacummed all the cars (including his mom’s and dad’s LOL) and then he bar-b-q’d. But right before that, he helped big Mario, er…prepare the cutest goat ever to become food. The boys took it much better than I thought they would!

When he was done bar-b-q’ing I made sure I was only served fajitas!

I finally finished reading Shopaholic Takes Manhattan and wanted to start on Shopaholic Ties the Knot, but I don’t have it. So instead of buying the book I went to the library to rent it out, and if they didn’t have it then they would have ordered it for me from another library, but they were closed. Who knows how long they’ve been closing at 4, but they did yesterday :(. I think I’m going to start on one I already have. Probably Sushi for Beginners by Marian Keyes.

Mario and I tried watching TV last night but Alaethia was in a bad mood. She gets that way about half an hour before she falls asleep, without fail, every night. I was so tired I kept nodding off, so Mario told me to lay down since I was falling asleep. So I did. At around 11pm. And when she woke up at 6 for a bottle I still felt exhausted. It’s really caught up with me, not sleeping well.

As for today, Mom, John, the kiddos and I all went to town to drop Mario’s keys off at work to him, then get him some energy drinks and then I paid bills. I stopped by the thrift store to see if they had anything good (I went today since I told myself I wasn’t going anywhere all next week) but they had nothing.

We went to see Gramma for a while, who held Alaethia for a good while. We even took pictures! John took pictures of all 4 generations of us: Gramma, Mom, me and Alaethia. I’m totally getting lots of copies of those pictures :). I’d post them here, but I wasn’t wearing makeup and looked terrible, heh.

I made a grocery list while we were at Gramma’s and made a promise to myself to stick to it. I went to Target to get all the house things I needed, then to H-E-B for groceries. I did pretty good at Target, but veered off the list a little at H-E-B and got some brownies, vanilla ice cream and caramel, to surprise Mario with.

I really gotta get everything completely ready for the yard sale in the next few days since I’m HOPING to have it on Thursday and Friday. I still have to go through the kitchen cabinet under the sink, the top of the living room closet and give our bedrooms another once-over. I hope we have a good turnout!

Going to stop being a hermit and socialize with the family at Mary’s since Jorge and Jose are back. Goodnight!