In December of 2004 this blog was born in a small, dingy apartment just off a state road in Bordentown, New Jersey. Snow covered the ground while two young twenty-something Florida kids, because yes we still saw ourselves as kids, sat inside pathetically bundled in winter coats and gloves because the heating system was poor and it was simply too cold outside to do anything else. It was almost 2005, almost time for me to fly back home because even though we were married, we lived in different states. It was time for me to go back to start the second half of my first year of teaching. Time for A to continue his world travels with the Air Force. Our new Florida home would be done in March but it would be years before we lived there together.

Funny how everything about that story is true, except the part about how we spent years living apart. We had no idea at the time that a mere 6 months from that cold evening we would be living under one roof again, in our new home, in Florida.

Funny how seven years later things are so different and yet so very much the same. Once again we are waiting to move but we wait together under one roof and instead of feeling like kids we wait with our two young children.

If there is anything I’ve learned over the last seven years it’s not to put much stock in the status quo. It will change for better or for worse and where you are at the end of one year is likely to be light years from where you are at the end of the next.

A year ago today, having just discovered 5 days prior that I was finally, mercifully, joyously expecting my second child, I spent the eve of 2011 fearing the worst– that I was losing her, a thought not at all lost on me tonight as I nursed my precious 4 month old baby girl to sleep.

A year and a week ago I had lost all hope of ever even having a second child. Amazing how life changes.

Seven years ago when we were pondering the snowfall and planning our future we could never have imagined where we would be today, never imagined the people we would meet, the experiences we would have, the places we would go, the jobs we would hold, the things we would learn, the parents we would become, the life we would live. I can only hope the next seven years treat us as well. At least this time we know we’d better hang on tight for it’s an unpredictable and wild ride. At least this time we know we’re not really in the driver’s seat. At least this time we are mature enough to accept the change that our parents told us was an inevitable part of life.

I have not been very good about updating this blog and as I know I’ve said before it’s not for lack of wanting to. The ideas are there swimming around in my head often times fighting hard to get out. I have a plan for that and I’ll post about it in the coming days. But tonight is for reflection. Tonight is my chance to release this year for what it was and what it wasn’t and leave my mind and soul ready to welcome 2012. Release is a nice word quite frankly. Shove unceremoniously out the door is more what I have in mind. But as crummy as this year was, I can’t deny that it had its magical moments or that it led us to where we are now today and where we will be tomorrow. And I can’t deny that the lesson I take most to heart is probably one I’ve needed to learn for a long time– Have FAITH. It’s all there really is. It’s all you really can count on. I don’t know what 2012 holds but I have faith that we’ll get through it and that somehow, some way we will look back and know it was an important part of life’s fleeting and ever changing path. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you Joy, Faith, Wisdom, and Hope for the coming year. Good-bye 2011 and Welcome 2012.

When you take on big projects, you learn a little bit more about yourself. Like, for example, when I started my Master’s program, I questioned my strength to finish. When I decided to bake an Elmo cake for Andrew’s 2nd Birthday party, I questioned my patience, and when I decided to delete my entire old website and build a new one, I questioned my sanity. An in that very basic sense I guess you could say I now know I’m not a quiter, I have pretty decent patience and well, nope that doesn’t work. I’m still probably quite a lot crazy.

I’m a list maker. At any given time I have 5 or 6 greatly detailed and painstakingly organized lists that I’m working on. Before I got my new computer I used Outlook for Windows. I used to get annoyed by the red dates on the todo list. They were reminders of what I had not completed. And since I am T-1 Week until school starts again, I decided it’s fine time to start cracking those things off my list.

Not like I haven’t been busy this summer… what with tutoring, swimming lessons, trips to the zoo, traveling, play dates, keeping the house organized and chasing a toddler around… but I was going to be pretty upset if I got through the whole summer without crossing off at least one MAJOR thing. So here it is! My new site. Easier to update, more features, less crap that no one reads. I found a pretty neat program called Artisteer which allows you full control over the whole layout without having to mess with code. I figured, there’s no award for doing it fully by yourself and I would rather that it look nice.

And since I have this tendency to not sleep when I am working on a project, Me and my two hours of sleep last night are going to take a nap!

Deleted everything, downloaded the latest version, uploaded, reinstalled database with all my old posts, and voila! It’s all here. Now I have to make it look like ME

I’m tired of my current blog. I feel like my life has changed so much since I started it and while I’m very proud of it, it represents an old me. Here’s a crack at a new me in the form of a new web presence.

This will be random, I assure you.

So I got the RSS feed working again. I posted about it on Facebook so probably that is not news to any of my readers. I hate the fact that I get so completely obsessed with getting things right to the point where I am all consumed with it until it’s done. I have grand plans for redoing the layout of this site, not really because oh so many people see it but because I want to do it. But then I think about what will happen when I can’t figure something out and how stressful that will be. So for now it’s staying the way it is cause I don’t really want to pester Dottie when I know she is so busy with her dissertation.

I am also kinda at odds with myself over the fact I have made this blog public through Facebook. On the one hand, people can find it and read it. On the other hand, people can find it and read it and know it’s ME talking. The anonymity I had before was pretty helpful with getting my thoughts out. One of the things I’m struggling with lately is not something I really want my coworkers to know about but a few of them can read this through the link on FB and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

But I’ve decided I’m going to talk about it anyway because really, the chances are probably slim they will read this and my overall dilemma already HAS an answer but it’s just something I need to talk through anyway.

See the thing is that I really want to have another baby. I think most of my readers already know this about me. I REALLY want to be pregnant again. Pregnancy amnesia is honest to goodness a real thing and I have easily forgotten that lot of being pregnant sucked. I remember the amazing sense of knowing that a child was growing inside of me and I want that again. This revelation is not really so much a big deal, it’s just that I keep wondering if what I’m doing is the right thing? Letting someone else care for my child while I work is just something I’m having a hard time dealing with lately. I think the summer proved to me that I’m actually pretty good at being a SAHM (Stay at home mom for those of you not up on your mommy lingo). My initial horror at being “stuck” at home all day diminished quickly and now I’m thinking about all the fun things I could be doing with Andrew if I were still at home. I keep thinking about this time last year when I wasn’t working and how wonderful it was to wake up and know I had the whole day to spend with him. Why didn’t I appreciate it then? Why was I in such a hurry to go back to work?

And then there is that feeling that overwhelmingly wins out which is that I can’t possibly leave my job. My identity isn’t just mother, it’s teacher too. (A. would ask where the heck wife comes in here?) I have no real complaints about my job and I love what I do. I kinda just wish I could do both. I wonder if having a second child will overpower this feeling. If I’m being honest, I don’t want it to. But then again it’s not something I really think you can mentally control. As cheesy as it sounds, it’s really your heart that decides these things. All I know is that right now my family feels incomplete. That feeling in and of itself creates a lot of guilt. I would never want Andrew to think that he isn’t enough for me. I just want him to have brothers and sisters. I see myself with not just one child but several. The job thing, the graduate school thing, the not even being sure I can get pregnant again thing all adds up to a lot of mental controversy.

And speaking of graduate school… I’m 2 classes from being done. These two classes might kill me though. First of all, this class I’ve got coming up starts in a week. From the sound of the initial letter I got, it’s going to be a real doozy. I have no control over whether or not I take it, it’s a requirement. It’s now or never. Then, I thought I’d have the first part of the spring off from school but they changed my final class to being a 16 week course instead of an 8 week course. I’m sure in the long run that’s a good thing but it kinda feels like adding an extra class. Blah!

When I first started preparing to go back to school, I was so consumed with taking the GRE and getting into the program that I never actually gave much thought to finishing it and that’s kinda strange for me because I’ve never really quit at anything. I’m not even sure at this point why I decided to get started with it except that I wanted to prove to myself that I could. I’m pretty competitive that way (“Really? YOU? Competitive?” you ask). So anyway, here I am nearing the end and the thought of going through 2 more semesters actually makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out with a rusty spoon. (How’s that for a mental image?) But alas, I WILL finish this program. I WILL graduate next May. I WILL NOT quit!

So there’s your dose of random for the evening. I can’t imagine that many of you got all the way to the end of this post but if you did thanks

I hate when I get started on stuff for this blog. It’s too late for me to fix it right now. It will probably need to be entirely revamped. Keep checking back. I like to torture myself. It will be fixed eventually.

I consider myself a liberal person. Being liberal to me means, among other things, acceptance of people regardless what they believe or stand for. So I have to wonder why anyone would waste more than 3 seconds of their life on something like this Did you read? Yes, there are people out there who want to ban a font. Comic Sans to be specific. Have you ever actually given thought to hating something so much that you want to ban it for everyone? Forgive me for not saying this in a more eloquent way but people who want to ban a font: Get a Life!

To my regular readers (or reader as the case may be) I am using my webspace to Introduce myself to my classmates for my graduate class. Please see the slideshow I made of Andrew pictures below.

To my EME5207 Classmates, I hope you enjoy the video and slideshow! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLNj9Qd3QTw&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6&border=1]

And now Andrew’s Slideshow created with Animoto

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7BnxfVgXkw&hl=en&fs=1]

And now back to your regularly (or not so regularly) schedule programing.

Well I haven’t posted much recently…. ok, I haven’t posted much at all this past year. But I’ve been busy you know? Growing a human child in one’s body takes work. Raising said child takes even more work but since billions of women have done that over the course of time I won’t complain or ask for sympathy. I would like to explain my absence. Ya see over the last several months I’ve probably thought of dozens and dozens of different blog topics but they all seemed silly and random after not posting for so long so I’ve decided, now that everyone seems to have a blog, that what I need to do is just get started again and go from there.

So here I go again…

I don’t know what I was thinking. Really I don’t. I have the patience of a two year old right now (It’s the 6.5 months pregnant thing) and last night I was doing reading for my graduate course on RSS feeds which led me to the brilliant conclusion, “I need an RSS feed on my site!”

It seemed like an easy idea. Perhaps it was already there, I just needed to activate it or something. Right.

I found a plugin for RSS. Great. But it doesn’t work because I haven’t upgraded WordPress in oh, the last 2 or so years (it might have been 3). So I take a deep breath and decide if I don’t upgrade now it isn’t ever going to happen. So I follow the step by step very carefully. VERY CAREFULLY. And I manage to get everything transferred over except the theme– the part that makes my blog look like the rest of my website. So long story short you’ll see that the theme isn’t exactly as it was before but it’s close enough.

Funny thing is that even after ALL that the RSS thing still wasn’t working.

After tossing and turning all night, it finally came to me. I woke up this morning thinking. Should I even bother or should I just leave it alone?

Uh, right. Me? Leave something alone?! As if.

But I did get it figured out and if you mouseover the bar at the top of the page you should be able to subscribe to my blog. I like Bloglines personally but you can use any you like. And I just might update more often (might) so you should check it out!