I’ve finally had some time where I could sit down and catch-up with TV. I took a sabbatical from a very active parenting forum I’m on, to catch up with web-work and in between times when I was giving my arm a rest from typing. I would have some TV shows playing on the computer while munchkin and I cleaned and played.So, I’m up to date with ‘Battlestar Galactica’ now, and I’ve also been able to watch all of ‘Star Trek: Voyager’…I skipped a lot of the early episodes until I got to the fifth season. I did watch all of the First Season though because I wanted to see where everyone came from. I think the finale was a bit of a let-down. I mean, I know the journey was the point, they hammered that home enough in the last episode, but I would have liked to see how they did in settling in. I don’t know if I’m the only one or not. (more…)

I was tagged for this before, but on my livejournal. I can do it again although my things will probably be the same but I’ll expand a little on some of my reasons so that the post is a bit different.

This time I was tagged by Scott.

So, three things I’m grateful for.

1. My family:
My family has always been very supportive of me, and I’m grateful now that I’m beginning my own family to still have their support and to have found a home with a wonderful man who loves me very much, despite my flaws, and who has helped to make a gorgeous child and supports my endeavors so that I can work from home and raise this child to hopefully be great too.

2. America:
I’m very happy to be living in this country. It’s taken me a little while to get over some things, but one thing about being a parent is that it really shows you that you have to grow up and get over certain things which aren’t really important.
I would like to be able set a good example for my son, and therefore I’m looking forward to getting my citizenship. Another thing I’m grateful to my family for.

3. Internet:
This one is going to sound a bit shallow; but I am grateful to the net. It helps me to stay in touch with our friends and relatives overseas and out of state, it helps me to make money and it’s helped me to meet some really interesting new people.

Tagging: Tracy and Frank.

My participation in the blogging community has introduced me to some very interesting characters around the States and in some cases around the world.

Case in point Kumiko from BlogInterview. Some other people I’ve met are Chris Luby who writes LubyVision. He just returned from camping thankfully uninjured. I’m remembering that the last time I went camping in September of 2005 was the last time I injured myself like this.

Then there’s Echo whose blog Plus1 talks about her life as a single Mom and sole provider for her family. I’m always amazed by the strength single mothers have. I have several friends who are raising children by themselves and on days where I’m grumbling about my lot I remind myself how other women don’t have the luxury I do to stay at home with my son, and how if they can manage then I should suck it up and persevere. She also writes a blog called GirlyThings which runs the gambit of things which affect women from Barbies to breast cancer; at first I wasn’t sure I would be able to relate to anything on that blog because I’m not really a girly-girl, but there are so many useful topics for any woman, tom boy or princess. It’s well worth a read.
Then we have Doris Chua who is originally from Singapore writes about many natural health topics. (I need to get back into eating yoghurt!). I plan on checking out more of her things as my husband and I try to clean up our lifestyle to set better examples for the munchkin. She also writes her personal blog about travel and designing and Home Office Women where she writes about many pertinant topics to working from the home, something else I’ll be reading regularly.

Last but not least my client from the previous post. I’m looking forward to reading her musings on more spiritual topics and otherworldy strangeness. Always fascinating to delve into the unknown.

I think I need to RSS feed a lot of people. I need to have time to eat, as well as take care of the baby and do my own work.

Things have been very hectic here lately. I’m trying to get businesses listed correctly in the yellowpages. People keep just wanting to put my tarot reading business in home improvement and similar things becasue there’s “Mirrors” in the name. I guess I’m taking after Bed, Bath and Beyond because I’m “Look Beyond Mirrors” the best part is I’m trying to find where I should be listed in the yellowpages but between the munchkin ‘helping’ me by tearing pages out of the directory and the fact that I’m operating one-armed at the moment things aren’t happening.

Which brings us to the ‘ouch’ portion of the blog title. Yes, I hurt myself. I slipped while we were over at a friend’s house on Saturday and have damaged my right arm. This has it’s good points and bad points. Last time I injured myself like this it was my left arm, so there’s a chance at least that I’ve not done permanent damage to my elbow, but my right arm is my dominant arm so things are very tricky.

This has put a hold on some of the other things I was intending to do this week. I have a blog client I’m working on. I’ve managed to install her WP for her BUT this has put a halt on doing the layout she wanted. I have, however, found help through MomPack. I signed up for their mailng list a couple of weeks ago, and was talking to some very talented artists on their about them doing an art piece for me to use in the layout. I can work really well with photographs and other pictures, even taking photos for use in a layout if need be, but drawing…my drawing and digital drawing skills leave MUCH to be desired.

So, I have a very talented artist, and 3-D renderer working on a beautiful elven lady for use in the layout. Her name is Sonia and she works for Mama-T Designs. She has some very lovely art work, and illustrations on her site. It’s been so nice to work with someone who was instantly excited at the prospect of drawing an elf for us. I’m always a bit hesitant given my other job often meets with as much skepticism if not more skepticism than it does enthusiasm, and not everyone is usually up for doing link exchanges or work that is different from the norm, but she has been. All three, artist, client and myself are hoping that once she has finished with her piece I’ll be well enough to turn it into layout. The early samples of Sonia’s work have been breath-taking. I’m very excited. This has been a very positive experience for me doing commissions, and I’m happy to advertise and extol a fellow work-at-home-Mom!

I’ve come across several interesting websites. One that has had me in stitches is Jimi Morrison’s Internet. Serious business blog. He talks about many of the personality types that you come across at various places around the web, particularly on message boards.

I’m one of the guilty who has caught herself trying to not say ‘lol’ in public something he gets into in not really lmao. I just hope I never catch myself being a post whore.

I got interviewed by Kumiko from BlogInterview about myself and my blog. I love her site. She’s interviewing different bloggers from all around the world about their blogs, their lives and their favorite blogs. A wonderful endeavor to expand everyone’s knowledge of our global community.

I don’t think I posted here but I did on my livejournal, about our vehicular state of affairs. Last week we had to junk my husband’s car, and we’ve been debating back and forth about buying another one, trying to survive with one car, buying a used, or trying to find a car at police auction and, of course, what brand and type of car to get.

Along those lines I was interested to find out that Ford is historically low on the estimations of US buyers. We had not been thinking of a Ford ourselves. We’d been thinking of perhaps another Buick like mine or going foreign and getting a Toyota, as we have several friends who have had very good track records with the Japanese models.

I was wondering why that was. My husband’s car was a Ford Crown Victoria. His police department uses Ford’s as their squad cars, as have several others. To the point that if he was driving home from work still in uniform people would slow down for him just based on the look of his car, not even noticing there were no lights on the top of it, or that it was purely black and not a black and white car.

As Rip remarks on Automobile Haven you wonder what is going on with Ford’s that people aren’t trusting them any more. We had so many problems with that Crown Vic we had, true, some of those were caused by the fact that the car came from our relatives up North and had been ripped apart by rock salt, but overall the experience has left a bad taste in our mouth, couple that with the fact that several of our friends were constantly having to repair their own Fords. My former co-worker’s spent more time in the shop than in her driveway; and our friend’s who got a Toyota recently replaced their Ford after the third time it was going to cost them $800 to fix back to roadworthiness through no fault of their own.

My Dad used to be a Ford mechanic, and for the longest time he would purchase NOTHING but Ford cars. He had a long on-going argument with several of his friend’s who were Chevrolet people. It spoke volumes to me when he replaced Mum’s Ford Escort with a Buick Skylark and got a Chevy truck for his own use. He still buys American, at least, but not Ford.

…or maybe just ‘off’ switches?

I’m sure I’m not the only mother to think so, and I doubt I will be the last. Although I’m also sure there are plenty of grandmothers who are laughing at this thought when their children voice it, just like mine did. I love my Mum to death. If there’s one thing that being a mother has shown me it’s a brand new appreciation for what my Mum has done in raising me. Every time I get frustrated with my son, or with my own inability to understand or communicate with his nine-month old brain I marvel at what my Mum must have gone through and how she survived me at that age, or any age, and I feel sorry for a lot of the crap I pulled growing up.

I hope I can do half as good a job raising Declan as Mum did with me; lately it’s just been very trying. He’s at that stage where he’s really testing boundaries, because he’s learned to pull up and walk around the apartment. We’re also learning that what we thought was decent baby-proofing is NOT. Things that we were absolutely sure he wouldn’t be able to get into he can. Add to that he’s decided that starting on small amounts of solid food isn’t good enough, even if he’s eating the exact same thing that we are he wants what WE have rather than what’s in front of him…

He doesn’t want his toys; he wants remotes, the computer keyboard, headphones, random pieces paper, and of course absolutely everything goes in his mouth. My husband jokes the baby has the survival instincts of a kamikaze pilot, and there’s not a day goes by where we don’t wonder how our species survived this long. Then I realize it’s because of the dilligence of loving parents. All babies go through these stages and if it wasn’t for parents like us, or our own parents watching over them like hawks their every waking moment our species would NOT have survived.

So KUDOS to parents everywhere who dive and rugby tackle their children so they don’t eat random things that you thought for sure were vacuumed up; who step away for a moment so they can come back to their child when they’re calmer and won’t do something they’d regret out of tired frustration, who patiently repeat the word ‘NO’ as often as is necessary to get the point across, and who no matter how much they might wonder about it don’t actually run off to Mexico at 2 in the morning when their child won’t stop crying because of teething, but instead run up to CVS and get more teething tablets, gum soother (and a nice big candy bar for themselves!)

Just a quick update before I go do laundry. I’ve heard from our friends who were in the disaster zone. Everyone is okay. Their only casualty was their power which was out most of yesterday. :sighs of relief all round:

We’re in the one of the counties in Florida that was hit by the tornados over night. We were on the opposite side of that county though, so we and our immediate relatives who live in the area are all doing okay.

We’re still waiting to here/get in touch with some friends who were on that side, but are hoping because they don’t live in mobile homes that they are relatively unscathed just perhaps without power. The problem is, of course, there are lots of people also trying to get in touch with their relatives and the phone system, especially as a lot of it in that area is probably damaged cannot handle it so we get the very stressful ‘all circuits are busy’ or ‘your call cannot be completed’ messages.

Hopefully this will help to ease people’s fears as we can’t get in touch with everyone.

The only dire thing that’s happened to us is that yesterday afternoon D’s car finally bit the dust. It’s been semi-lovingly and a bit grudgingly and with some ill will turned over to the tow companies junk shop as our apartment complex would have impounded it before we could have traded it in, or donated it to a workshop for students to learn on.