Hall And Oates - They're Bed Creepers

I was looking at the Google Analytics strings of keywords that have brought people to my blog earlier today. It seems most people coming here trying to find out if Chiro One is a scam. I hope the two-part blog series I wrote about our experience with them is helpful to people considering whether to use them or not. It didn't surprise me at all that a large number of people are Googling to find out more about them; that's the first thing I did after I encountered the sales rep from the company.

What DID surprise me, or rather I should say what made me laugh (because precious little actually surprises me about the internet anymore), was this page of searches:

I didn't realize so many people wanted moms with young boys, and I'm not sure why they're ending up here, but I suspect that they're not getting exactly what they want. I DO have a young boy, a young cook at times even. He's six, and he's my son, and he's a great kid. I highly recommend having a kid like him.

The thing that really made me laugh though was the third one down. MOM! THERE'S HALL AND OATES UNDER MY BED! I didn't realize there was a BLOG dedicated to this phenomenon. It's certainly never happened to ME, although I did have one particularly traumatic experience where my MOM hid under my bed and scared the crap out of me. I suppose I'd be more likely to be shouting "HALL AND OATES! Mom's under my bed!!"

I just didn't realize this Hall and Oates problem was so prevalent. I guess they have a new song (to the tune of Man Eater): wooooah here we come... watch out boys, we'll chew you up... woaaahhhh here we come... we're bed-creepers!

It's Almost Here...

So, a (group) great idea (actually a couple of great ideas combined) last night has lead me to being ridiculously overexcited, once again, about launching a new blog and I want to zOMG GET STARTED RIGHT AWAY! But I want to really be COMMITTED to the new blogs I launch (as well as my blogs currently in existence), and as such I am waiting until February to get them going. It's only a week away but boy howdy is it ever hard when you're overexcited!

In other news... February is only a week away?? Holy chips! I thought about my cleaning goals last night and have come to accept that I'm not likely to reach them. I was overambitious. I always am. The good news is that I know I can get the 'house' clean (the laundry/craft room is, sadly, a room I sort of don't even consider part of the 'house' since we don't use it hardly at all, and haven't for years). I am reasonably certain I can even make good headway in the laundry/craft room. I do not think I'm going to get to the garage. Not only is it a NIGHTMARE out there, worse even than the laundry/craft room... I only have a week to get the rest of this stuff taken care of, AND it's JANUARY. In CHICAGO. And my garage is OUTSIDE. (And detached, which makes it even colder.) I'm not saying I'm going to ignore it completely... but I won't be heartbroken if I don't hit my self-imposed time limit either. I'm not giving up, mind you! But I know it's going to be rough. Especially since I have a PTA newsletter to write and publish, some work to do on the family reunion I'm planning this year, and we're having a play date this Saturday, then going out with friends, so pretty much all of Saturday is lost.

I need to take a little time to think about how I'm going to schedule my days once February starts. I need to make time for my maintenance cleaning... I will need to make a little time for further decluttering of the laundry/craft area and garage (I may adopt the Flylady technique of '15 minutes decluttering a day'... slow and steady)... I want to make time for Heritage Makers, for writing (blogs AND my novel), and for spending time with the kids / family. That may not sound like a lot of things, but I can easily spend a LOT of time on any ONE of those items. Scheduling and time management has always been tricky for me.

It's almost February! Be on the alert for some exciting new things from me in the coming weeks :)

Being Thankful

It's time to fess up here and admit that I have another blog. Well, I have several other blogs actually, but the one in particular that I'm fessing up about right now is a livejournal account that I've had since 2001. It's primarily friends-only and at this point it's staying that way; I have cultivated a really great friends group over the years and it's become a great place for me to share a lot of my more personal details, my raw thoughts and emotions, and a lot more angst than I'm willing to share in this more public arena. I'll share a LOT here, but sometimes things are just too private for the entire world (yes, even for me, heh).

So yesterday morning I was feeling a little down and panicky for no good reason, and almost posted a real downer Facebook status (because one of the best ways for me to exorcise my mental and emotional demons is to WRITE THEM OUT and then I can move on)... but in a rare display of discretion, I decided Facebook was not the place for it. So I went to my trusty Livejournal and I posted "I'm really afraid I'm going to die before I am able to turn my life into the life I want to be living. And I just don't think that's appropriate as a facebook status so I'm posting it here instead. I guess I should probably talk about that in therapy tonight."

And in response, I got some really good thoughts, advice, and kicks in the butt from my awesome friends. Things like:

"I think most of us spend most of our lives trying to live the life we think we want. I try to focus on what's good now. Otherwise I would go crazy. When I do that, I realize I have it pretty good. Doesn't stop me from wanting to move home or wanting a professor job or criticizing my husband or generally wishing for more, but it helps."

"You can't do that & stay sane, I don't care how much therapy you go to. Live in the moment. Appreciate the eensy bittle things. Just LIVE every moment."

"Two of the quotes I have on my Facebook page:
"Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life." ~ Omar Khayyam
"To dream of a person you would like to be is to waste the person you are" ~ Unknown
I really try to live those quotes each and every day."

I really appreciate the encouragement everyone gave me yesterday about that post. I needed a little kick in the butt. It's hard sometimes to be thankful for what you have, and I guess sometimes I blur the lines between appreciating the life I have NOW (which is a pretty good life, most days) and the goals I want to achieve. Sometimes I get so hungry for those goals that I lose sight of the present and I despair pretty quickly. The therapy is more for THAT... not for making me happy with who I am, because really most of the time I AM - but for trying to deal with this intense need for instant gratification and the fact that I have trouble setting limits in my life. I don't know if it's the therapy, or the blogging, or ten years of ruminating and working towards it, but I finally feel like a lot of pieces are coming together in my life and I really do feel like I'm making a lot of progress on at least one of the issues that has plagued me for so long. (My clutter issues.) And I do feel confident that, once I get that under control, I can deal with roadblock two (my weight) and roadblock three (my finances). I feel more confident than ever that it really WILL all come together, finally. I still have times though where I get really impatient about it, or times when I get scared... especially in terms of my health. I believe I've mentioned it here before, but in case I haven't, I have Type II diabetes. I was diagnosed almost two years ago. It is VITAL that I lose weight and exercise more and eat better to get healthier, and I really feel like my house clutter is tied into some of that (letting things go is as hard for me as letting pounds go, and preparing healthy foods is impossible for me when my kitchen is a mess), and I do feel like I can't tackle my weight and health issues without getting the house in order first. I work on both to a small extent, but I know from past experience that if my house isn't in order, I just plain won't be able to work past that and take better care of myself. I don't know WHY that is; I just know that it is. So I'm working on it. But then something will happen, even if it's not something big; I'll have a day where I feel lousy, or I have this phantom arm pain that we haven't been able to figure out yet (the doctor thinks it's a stress/muscle issue but I really think it's tied into my blood sugar because it happens most often when my eating habits for the day SUCK), and I get freaked out about my diabetes and my health and the damage this could do to my body and the fact that I'm only 31 and I don't want to leave my family mother/wifeless and the fact that I'd really like to have another baby in a couple years but that cannot happen with the state of everything right now, but most especially with the state of my HEALTH (I will not subject my body to that stress in the state it's in now, I just won't, nor would it be safe for the baby), and then I get hung up on dying young and that's when I REALLY start to feel like everything is taking WAY too long to accomplish and I start to despair.

So I need to remind myself... baby steps. The baby steps I've taken have gotten me pretty far, and get me a little farther every day, and a little closer to my goals. I have to keep doing my best, and have faith that the universe and the powers that be will guide me to my goals, and not kill me off too soon (I hope!). None of us get any guarantees in life and we just have to do the best we can with what we have. I've certainly made mistakes in the past; we all have. I'm doing my best to recover from some of those mistakes, and most days now I feel like I'm doing a good job, and doing my best. Most days are good days.

There's an exercise on Facebook right now to post a new status every day from now until Thanksgiving about what you are thankful for. It starts out easy, but I'm sure it'll get harder as the days go on. It can be really hard to focus on everything we have to be thankful for. I'm taking the challenge because it's definitely something I need to do.

I'd like to invite everyone here to take some time to tell me what you have to be thankful for right now. We could all use some positivity in our lives, and a little bit of perspective; seeing what everyone has to be thankful for would be a great place to start.

Givin' Props (to my ho 'cause he's fly)

My husband takes a lot of abuse from me. Not least of which is when I stubbornly refuse to accept his suggestions. Which he insists is because I'm part mule; I maintain that I always have a good reason for it. However, the fact remains that I am frequently initially resistant to change, even when it's good for me.

And this time, oh yes, it was definitely good for me. My husband, after about a year of trying, has finally brought me over to using Google Reader. He's been telling me to use it for a long time, and even sharing content with me; content I've been missing because I HAVEN'T BEEN USING GOOGLE READER. Over the weekend, he finally caught me on my computer and forced me to watch him add subscriptions to blogs I like to Google Reader...and HOLY CRAP. There they all were in a neat and organized format! In date and post order! And I could read them together, instead of emailing myself links and then surfing all over the web to find people's blogs and see if they've updated! (Yeah, THAT was efficient. I know. I KNOW.)

The problem in this case was that I just didn't 'have' (ie MAKE) the time to learn something new. And of course, the time to learn this was all of five minutes, IF that.

So I am now using, and loving, Google Reader. Too much, in fact; I have already added more blogs and sites than I will probably be able to keep up with. (But that doesn't mean I am not open to adding more, so share with me some of your favorite blogs please!)

Another thing my long-suffering husband often laments is the fact that when I finally DO start following one of his suggestions, I never give him credit or thanks, and just go on to adopt that thing as my own. Well, we'll be married five years this month, so I figured it was high time that he got a little credit.

MY HUSBAND, OJ DORSON, INTRODUCED ME TO GOOGLE READER AND I LOVE IT. AND HIM.

Thanks, hon. I'll try not to make you wait for five more years before I give you props again.