Oh, I Love A Rainy Night!

So rarely this year have we gotten rain that I totally look forward to a good downpour! Listening to the rain fall is so relaxing.... hunkering down in the house for a day is such an unexpected change of pace for us that it really IS welcomed... like a snow day! Our poor region of the country has gotten so little rainfall this year (in the last several, in fact) that our lakes sure could use it as well. We are down to the Level 3 water restrictions. Pretty soon they'll start telling us we have to bathe once per week! HA! Anyway - I'm going to go unplug and enjoy my peaceful evening listening to the rain!

The Chuck E. Cheese Experience

So as soon as I manage to string 2 or 3 posts together I get hammered with a kiddo's birthday and out of town guests AND illness! It was a 1-2-3 punch. Oh, and I failed to mentioned that I worked an unheard of THREE days this week! LOL.

As a parent I think one of the things many of us dread is the Chuck E. Cheese experience. I have skillfully managed to avoid this for 5 whole years. I finally ripped the bandaid off that one this weekend for my son, M's, birthday. I hadn't originally wanted to do it there. I am more of a home party person - especially for little kids who don't care. My husband, on the other hand, wanted to do it elsewhere. That would have been FINE except that we get such a late start planning every year. (*More on late planning later...) I managed to score Chuck E. Cheese online.... at 9:30 in the morning! Who has a party at CEC at 9:30am?! We do! And let me tell you... as much as some of our friends were grumbling about the time before the party, they were THRILLED when they arrived at a clean venue with very little competition for games! We got a million extra tickets & tokens for booking early in the day and doing so online. The kids had a blast and all in all I would consider party a total success. We kept the location a secret from M until we arrived and I thought he was going to explode when he saw the giant mouse on the side of the building.... Totally. Worth. It.

Asking For Help

One of my many flaws is that I am absolutely crap at asking for help. I am not sure where it was programmed into me that I must be the end all be all at everything all the time... but I sure stink at it! This surely MUST be some sort of experiment aliens are conducting to see just how much self-loathing on can handle! One thing I have repeatedly learned in my life is that we cannot do it all alone no matter how much pressure we put on ourselves to do it. We are social creatures. As such we are meant to live in a community where jobs are divvied and people help eachother. What's wrong with that? The most humorous part of my insane Superwoman Syndrome is that I feel most useful and honored when people ask ME to help them! So why on earth do I feel like I am burdoning people when I ask for the slightest thing? Talk amongst yourselves... And when you get done I'm going to start by asking you to help me write this book, dang it!

Reality Bites.

Maybe a more realistic expectation for myself would have been to say I would blog on weekdays... like a work week! Since yesterday was MLK day it was a holiday and I still would have been covered under the "work week" umbrella. Oh well. This weekend was an epic fail at getting online for ANYTHING.... My son, M, landed in the ER early Saturday morning due to a massive croup attack. "ER for croup?!", you say. Yes. Sadly.. yes, indeed. He's had 4 bouts of croup in his nearly 5 years and each one has required a hospital visit. One actually required a week at the hospital and a procedure to dilate his airway. Good times. So this week I am rollin' with the punches, trying to sleep as much as I can, and writing when I have time.

So... you want to write a book...

Today I revealed to a friend that I wanted to write a book this year. Lofty as this goal seemed my friend, A, was genuinely supportive and, as luck would have it, happened to be a journalism major in college. Her first suggestion: writing daily. I've really gotten out of the habit of writing more than a text message or a Facebook update. I'll be honest... I think this step is pretty crucial for me! In order to hold myself accountable I am blogging. I keep a notebook in my purse so I can write when I'm not near a computer... in an emergency... but for the time being I am hoping that this keeps me on track... even if no one else in the world ever reads it. (In the spirit of honesty, that MAY be better because right now I have Scooby Doo in the background, a truck yelling "Let's get ready to rumble!" that my son is smashing with Wack-a-mole mallets.) So here goes nothin'! I am certain that what I've proposed is the equivalent of running a marathon without so much as running a lap around the track first, but that's how I roll. Let's get those creative juices flowing!