Since I've been gone...

Yeah. I really need to write more. I miss it. Thing is, I have no time now... my life is no longer my own. It belongs to a very short person who (very selfishly) needs to eat and poop and who depends on me to make those things happen... I jest. I love every minute of having a new baby again, but I forgot how hard it can be at times.

I'm attempting to be a stay-at-home, work-from-home mom, homeschool my son, and to be sane in the process of it all. It's just sort of working right now. Ashleigh has colic and reflux, so it's been a challenge to get her on much of a schedule, which has made my time to work and do simple things like showering downright unpredictable. And sleep, you ask? We're finally, six weeks on, beginning to only wake with her twice a night (it was every two hours until last week.. which meant that by the time I put her back down, I was sleeping an hour in between feedings. Unfun.) We'll get there... I just discovered the Baby Whisperer and I'm gratefully combing her site for all the amazing resources she has on scheduling and such (and by the way, why is everyone whispering these days? We have the Horse Whisperer, the Dog Whisperer, the Baby Whisperer, and now, I just saw on Discovery, the Shark Whisperer. Is there something special about whispering that I'm missing out on? If I become the Novel Whisperer, will I actually get a novel to cooperate with me and get itself written? The Laundry Whisperer? The Get-Off-Your-Butt-And-Go-Jogging Whisperer? I must research the practice of whispering further).

So I'm stealing a few snatches of time right now while the baby is asleep in her bouncer seat, and feeling guilty for letting her sleep because she's slept all afternoon. Usually I pay for it at night when she sleeps this much, but she has inherited my husband's knack for sleeping like the dead, so any attempt to wake her is usually futile.

Ashleigh is, by the way, amazing. We're at that perfectly cuddly 6-week-old stage. We're starting to get real smiles, and her little personality is emerging. I love this. I can sit for hours and watch her stare at the ceiling fan and smile at it. Everything is new and fascinating to her, and it's sweet to drink in that innocence. There is not enough innocence in the world anymore; working with teenagers in this age is a reminder of that, unfortunately. It's so refreshing to see a perfect little human with no knowledge of evil, or of heartache, or of anger. She is totally trusting, dependent, and willing to learn. I pray daily for the protection of her innocence.

And little Dave is smitten with her. I knew he would love her because he loves kittens and little kids and cute things. But he really, REALLY loves her. I'm so glad for that. He has a tender heart and will be an amazing big brother.

Anyway, I hope to begin falling back into my routine again. I'm slowly getting some things back: running, my dominance over my house clutter, etc. Hopefully things like sleep and writing will come next. We'll see.

mamma mia, here i go again/ABBA back together...

If only for an evening:

http://tinyurl.com/6okgyv

The four members of ABBA reunited for their first public appearance since 1986, gathering on the red carpet for the Swedish big-screen premiere of "Mamma Mia."

This excites me greatly.



Ok. I admit it. I LOVE ABBA. I love every song. Spandex aside, I actually find artistic merit in the work of Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulvaeus...they invented their own unique "Wall of Sound" by stacking and layering every vocal, instrument, and sound that was recorded, and then by slightly "detuning" one of the tracks to create a chorus track. This was done before ProTools and digital recording, before auto-tune, etc. It was all analog, and it was brilliant.

As songwriters, they dominated. They have sold 370 million albums worldwide. Countless hit songs, numerous number ones in countries worldwide. "Fernando" beat out the Beatles "Hey Jude" as the longest running number one song. Call them cheese nuggets, but they were an important part of pop music history in the 70s and 80s.

I grew up on ABBA records. They were my first love musically. As a kid, I would hole up in my room, turn on "The Winner Takes It All," and get lost in the story and the emotion in the lyrics. It was the first time I connected song with soul and realized that music could move a person in a powerful way... and I was only 9. I had no personal experience with heartbreak and lost love at 9 years old, but that song took me there. It so captured the essence of devastating loss that I didn't have to personally experience the emotion to know it and to feel it.

For me, their music was the beginning of connecting emotion to music, specifically as it was so flawlessly and skillfully delivered by the two singers, whose interpretation of the lyrics made you the first person in the story of each song. When I started singing at 13, I unconsciously drew off of these women, my first influences, and it made me the singer that I am today: interpretation is everything. The listener must feel the soul and the emotion of the song. It's everything.

So laugh if you want... but almost everybody secretly likes ABBA. Even Bono says that they were one of the most important bands in modern history.

I'm just happy to see them all together again. Maybe now that they're all on speaking terms again, they can be persuaded to do a reunion tour (they were offered $1 billion for a reunion years ago, but they refused!).... I would fly to Stockholm to see that.

Newspaper Outsourcing Editing to India

Now here's a fabulous idea.

Because outsourcing customer service call centers have been such a great success...

I know *I'm* always thrilled beyond measure after hanging up from a 3 hour conversation with an overseas, non-English-speaking CSR.

Good call.

I Can't Wait.

It's official...

I'm 6 months pregnant today.

That's very exciting.

I want a cracker.

I hate Windows Vista.

Windows Vista BITES.

I have three computers at work that are cursed with the dreaded Vista OS, and NONE of them ever work...

They especially love to crash just before a church service, sending me scrambling up long flights of stairs to the balcony (lemme tell ya, THAT'S fun when one is 6 months pregnant!) to rescue the computer operator and contol-alt-delete my way through a panic attack...

I HATE Vista. I hate it more than I hate the devil.

Bill Gates should be ashamed of himself for releasing such a shoddy product. It's worse than Windows ME, and that's saying something. I really want to sue him for pain and suffering... Vista constantly interferes with my JOB, makes ME look bad to my superiors, and never works when I need it to. My job performance suffers constantly because of this piece of crap.

I HATE Vista. I hate Windows. I hate Microsoft. Make a product that works, and I'll reconsider.

It's reason 7834212 why I'm a Mac girl.

/end rant.

Snails are faster than Kerrville residents...

I'm learning to navigate through life in Kerrville, slowly but surely. Really, more slowly than surely, because I'm learning that EVERYTHING in this town is done slowly. Like, death-crawl-slowly. Like, I-want-to-tear-my-eyeballs-out-slowly.

Today, I grabbed Punky from VBS and we were going to take my lunch hour to go to Wendy's and then to Wal-Mart. I'm pretty much already over the whole old people driving in slow motion thing, so getting there wasn't bad. We decided to eat inside Wendy's, something I rarely do, but I didn't want to sit in the Walmart parking lot and eat in the car. We went inside, stood in line, and after literally 10 minutes (and I was only third in line), I finally got up to the front.

Now, during my tenure in line, I noticed people ordering from both registers (I couldn't understand why the line was moving so slow with both registers open, but I did notice the staff behind the counter, numerous though they were, all leisurely strolling through the kitchen. Keep in mind that it was noon, the peak of the lunch hour). I stepped up to the open register, and watched as the staff continued their slow-motion pace. The family who was behind me in line stepped up to the other available register, and a girl immediately walked up to their register and took their order. She looked at me from her register and said, "Hi," and then went back to her order-taking. I stood there, still waiting for someone to come back to the register and take *my* order, since I was there first, but continued to be ignored. After the other family ordered, I said, "Umm, is this register still open?" The girl said, "No," and began to take another order. Umm, okay. So you *saw* me standing there, waiting to order, and you didn't bother to mention that the register... o...k. Sigh.

I stepped behind the people who were ordering at rude girl's register, ordered my food, and then stepped to the side to wait for my order. Most of my order was filled in a miraculous two minutes, but Punky wanted a shake, so we waited. I stood there with my food and watched as an elderly Wendy's employee with very brightly dyed red hair, God love her, slowly began to add the ingredients in his shake, and then she shuffled over to the shake machine and mixed it... slowly (keep in mind that I've now been in line for about 15 minutes. With the drive over to Wendy's, 30 minutes of my lunch hour have now been taken). Then, she slowly put his shake down on the counter next to her, picked up a rag, and began THOROUGHLY cleaning the shake machine. Yeah. From top to bottom. Inside and out. And she was wiping it SLOWLY...savoring every swipe of the rag, probably humming a little tune while she did it. The shake was sitting there next to her on the counter, I was standing there waiting for it, all she had to do was turn around and hand it to me, but no, she decided to pull a Heloise and scour not only the shake machine, but the entire counter surrounding it. Slowly.

At this point, I could feel my chest getting tight, and my breathing becoming shallow, and my blood pressure rising... I toyed with the idea of calling to her and saying, "Ma'am. Ma'am... yes, you, hi. Can I have my shake SO WE CAN EAT OUR FRICKIN' FOOD?!" My eyeballs almost began to shoot blood. But she was old. She was like 70, and she was working at Wendy's. I felt bad. I couldn't berate her for being tidy...

But oh my GOSH!!!! She *finally* turned (slowly) and picked up the shake in her little gnarled hands... and then shuffled SLOWLY over to the other counter, where she gingerly picked up a pair of tongs, got a cherry out of a container, DROPPED IT (I'm about to hyperventilate at this point), got another cherry, put it in the cup, put the lid on (which took another hour), and then shuffled to the counter, where she finally handed me my shake. With a smile. And I resisted the urge to snatch it and run, because I looked into her eyes, and they were kind, and I wanted to cry. She was sweet. She was working at Wendy's. Dangit.

I literally almost collapsed by the time I had the thing in my hands... my nerves were shot. Seriously. 20 minutes after I walked in and stood THIRD PLACE in line, I finally had my food.

We ate and then went to Walmart, which took another 45 minutes to get through... this Walmart here was designed by kindergarteners, apparently, and then I drove back to work, frazzled, my lunch hour over long ago.

I thought Bandera was bad when I lived there... but Kerrville operates on Retired Standard Time. No one is in any hurry to do ANYTHING. I guess I wouldn't be, either, if I had moved to Kerrville to RETIRE... but alas, I live among them, and I will be forced to either slow down and chill out, or I will have a nervous breakdown in about a month.

Just had to share.