Happy 1 Year Anniversary, T!

Wow, a year has gone by since I started my blog. How do I feel? Happy! I have achieved many goals and I am happy to be part of this community.

Reflecting back I have posted 24 articles and have several post awaiting to be edited and published. I have read hundreds, if not thousands of post from various bloggers and have learned a lot and traveled to many foreign places through your post.

In my very first post, I expressed that I didn’t have a particular topic to blog about but I knew I couldn’t wait to look back and see how my thought process and writing style would evolve.

I thought I would be a loyal and gung-ho blogger but I have failed to meet my own expectations. It’s been 7 months since my last post. Which on some days I felt guilty in calling myself a “Blogger” but I can’t beat myself up over it too much because I have valid reason to be an absent blogger.

In the 7 months I have been absent, I have been chasing my dreams and making my goals a reality. I have gone back to college and my job duties picked up tremendously. Aside from my schooling and work, I have been balancing my duties as a mom and a wife. It has been a challenge trying to get my little one and husband to help around the house and getting them use to the fact that I am away at night school but they are slowly adjusting. It definitely has been a challenge for me because these changes have triggered my panic attacks. I hate panic attacks!!!!!

To my followers I hope you accept my apology for not formally letting you know that I had to bow out for a while but I lost track of time and can’t believe I have been away this long.

I do have stories to post and hope to post something once a month going forward.

So, reflecting back I am happy on the progress I have made, the post I have created, and for the wonderful followers I have. I enjoy reading when I can’t post but I hope to be more involved in the year to come.

Cheers,
T

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing you and your families a Happy Thanksgiving.

Hope you all have a wonderful and safe Holiday!

T is grateful for:

1. My family
2. Our health
3. My job
4. My home
5. My WordPress family.

Thanks for the advice and always being there to listen!

Regards,
T

Picture courtesy of Eatinginsjersey.com

11-22 Daily Prompt: A Bird, A Plane, You!

You get to choose 1 super power. Pick 1 of these and explain your choice:

1. The ability to speak and understand any language.
2. The ability to travel through time.
3. The ability to make any 2 people agree with each other.

I thought that I would want to travel through time for 3 reasons:

1. I would want to see where my ancestors came from and how they connected with their spouses becauses I have been having difficutlies tracking my ancestors from both my moms and dads side. I feel horrible when my daughter has a school project on family history and I can only give her my husbands side.

2. I would want to see the events that led up to my dad leaving our family. I have many unanswered questions and I think time travel would solve this.

3. I would want to see the various historical events that have taken place but if I only had the option to view what has happened, then this power would SUCK.

I could not be able to just witness what was taking place around me without being able to do anything about it. I would feel horrible.

Well, I guess I would have to go with having the ability to speak any language. I could open my network connections even further and be able to join any conversation with anyone.

Daily Prompt: Playtime

Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?

Just this past week I read a blog on my company’s intranet that spotlighted a woman within our company asking her various questions and one of the questions was: How do you relax from a busy day/week?

Her answer was amazing. She stated that she was on the adventurous side and spent her time with her grown children doing various things like: racing lamborghinis in the desert, zip lining in Vegas, and learning new things like fly fishing.

I thought to myself wow she has some major connections and wow she is living life. I definitely, need to starting enjoying and living my life to the fulliest.

So, how do I play in my daily life?

Lately, I have been involved in a new project that involves me to take on a very big role. So to be honest, I have not had any time during work hours to take a nice break.

After I am done with work, and after a long commute, I start my next job. Mom and wife duty. I rarely have time to stop and smell the roses. There is so much I have to take care of and not enough time.

What does playtime look like?

Playtime during work hours looks like: me taking my breaks so that I could take a walk, surf the web, read, or catch up with my peers so that I could re-energize.

Playtime after work looks like: making time to read, having family game night, blogging, and crocheting.

On the weekend, I need to come up with more adventures. I have mentioned to my husband that we need to start enjoying our youth and start really enjoying our life. We have come up with some ideas like: learning how to sail, taking a hot air balloon ride, taking a ride on a blimp, or booking a flight to some where we have never been for the weekend.

How do you play?

I would love to hear what you do. I may added it to my list.

Daily Prompt: Safety First

The most recent situation that has made me feel unsafe was when I opened the door to a stranger, in my daughters presence.

I felt so horrible, violated, and most of all I was disappointed in myself.

Why would I do such a thing. Really?

I felt so sick because I not only opened the door to a stranger but I let the stranger in my house without validating this person’s true identity.

Lucky for me and for my daughters sake this person was really the maintenance man that I had been expecting all day.

Since I had been waiting so long, I just assume that the person that knocked on the door would be my regular maintenance guy but I was caught off guard when it was not him and went into shock mode as I opened the door without checking through the peephole or asking who it was before hand.

Shame, Shame, on me.

I learned my lesson and yesterday when I got an unexpected knock at the door early in the morning, I didn’t open the door to the stranger.

Balancing more than 1 plate

Since I haven’t been posting anything in the last couple of days, I thought I would let you know what I have been up to and what is on my plate.

Plate 1- Priority 1 – Finding a house.

Plate 1 is Priority 1 because I decided not to rent any more and I am looking to buy a house. Since I don’t know the timing of when a house will appear on the market, I am on a month to month option in my current residence and my landlord has punished me with fees for the m2m option and has raised my rent. The rent that I am paying for my current residence is too much and not worth it. I must stay on top of this and find a house soon.

Plate 2 – Priority 1 – Finding a new job.

Plate 2 is Priority 1 because I want to buy a nice home in a nice area, so I need to increase my pay. The price range that I am at now is not going to be a very good range for long as the housing market is rising and the interest rates are going up. I could up my price range with my current pay but I would not be able to do anything. I would basically be working to pay my mortgage. I could buy a fixer upper home at the price range that I have right now and could turn it into my dream home but I have to be honest, I would not get around to doing some of the task and these types of homes are not in the best area. I must stay on top of this and start being more aggressive in my job search.

Plate 3 – Priority 1 – Getting my car repaired.

Plate 3 is Priority 1 because I need my car. Last Thursday, I was driving home and something in the road flew up and SMASHED my windshield (Details on my accident to follow on another post). I have borrowed my mother-in-laws car but don’t feel comfortable because I don’t want to be held liable if something were to happen to her vehicle. In order to get my car fixed, I have to wait for the collusion shop to do their assessments, send me the paper work, send them back the papers so that they can schedule the repairs with 2 different teams to remove my seats and dashboard in order to clean up the glass and repair the windshield. Plus, the car that I am using takes so much gas (doesn’t help that I commute 50 miles a day round trip). I must stay on top of this too and find a job closer to home.

Plate 4 – Priority 1 – Everyday chores/activities.

Plate 4 is ALWAYS Priority 1. As a mom and a wife, it is very important for me to have my household run smoothly. If I go 1 day without doing dishes or clothes it immediately snowballs and I become over whelmed with other chores. I have to keep on schedule and do this everyday. Since my accident, I have let some of the chores back up. I knew that would be a bad idea but what can I do, my eyes were messed up and my back was sore. My husband and daughter help as much as they can but they have their own chores and sometimes fall behind in what they need to do when they pick up my weight.

Aside from the chores, I have other things to do: helping my daughter with school work, volunteering, and whatever miscellaneous things that come up.

I have delegated as much as I can but sometimes if you want things done right you have to do them yourself.

This is what I have been up to. Gosh, when the majority of these to do’s are off my list, what will I complain about next.

What caused that sound?

Last night, I slept in my daughter’s room (my daughter and I had a sleepover) she ended up going to sleep early and I stayed up surfing the web and around 11:30 pm, I heard what sounded like music from a Jack-In-The-Box coming from my daughter’s closet.

I quickly froze because it is late at night and I was not expecting to hear that. I wanted to jump out of bed and look in the closet but you have seen what happens in scary movies, the actress or actor will go and research the noise and before you know it, they are dead, only to take the truth with them to the grave. Ok, that was over the top. I also thought about swooping up my daughter and running back to my room where my husband was but I didn’t because I would wake her and spook her; therefore causing her to be scared of sleeping in her room and end up bunking with me and my husband till she is in heels.

So, I just laid in bed. Waiting to hear the sound again, but I didn’t hear it again.

The strange thing about this situation is that she doesn’t have any toys that would make that kind of noise and she most certainly doesn’t have a Jack-In-The-Box.

I am for sure that this sound came from her closet and didn’t come from outside.

I do recall a similar situation that occurred when she was younger. She had a soft toy that was a cross between a teething ring and a play phone that would go off for no reason and at different times of the day. (I didn’t let her play with that toy any more.)

I am tempted to sleep in there again or have my husband sleep in there just to see if it will happen again. I am still puzzled on what could have caused this noise.

You are in control!

Thought of the Day | 9-12-13.

Came across this post today and I like the straight forward message.

Thanks KiKi for reminder.

I hope this will motivate you as it has for me.

Making the most of your time?

I have a very long commute and during my time on the road, I see a lot of interesting things like:

1. Eating

Now, this isn’t a bad thing because we all have done this at some point but if you have a bowl, plate, and silverware in your hands, it could be bad and illegal in some states.

2. Grooming/Applying Makeup

I have seen alot of people shaving their faces and brushing their teeth.

As far as applying makeup goes, I have done this before but only when I am at a dead stop in traffic or at a red light.

3. Changing Wardrobe

I have seen a lot of women changing their tops while driving. I have yet to see a beefy hunk do this.

I have to wonder are we really that busy that we have to do these small tasks on the road or are we simply just making the most of our time? You know, killing 2 birds with 1 stone.

If you have seen something funny or weird on your commute, I would love to hear what you have seen.

I opened the door to a stranger!

Today, I broke protocol on a very basic safety rule: I opened the door to a stranger.

The stranger I opened the door to was a maintenance worker from my apartment complex. Although I scheduled this appointment and was expecting him, I should have validated who was on the other side BEFORE I opened the door.

I have no idea why I just opened the door without taking precautions. I guess I was on auto-pilot and not in the moment since I was working from home. I assume that if I heard a knock that it would be a reliable and good will man.

When I realized what I did, I had the door wide open. There I was staring at the guy with my eyes wide open, frozen with disbelief. He didn’t say anything to me nor I to him.

I was in shock with myself because this is so out of character for me and on top of that I made this mistake in front of my daughter.

Now, someone was watching out for me.

Lets just say that this wasn’t the maintenance guy (thank you God that it was) I would have just let a stranger in my house.

After he left, I told my daughter of my mistake and reminded her to NEVER, EVER open the door to a strange and to validate that the person on the other side is legit.

From this experience, I realize that adults do forget the basic safety rules. It has open my eyes and reminded me that I need to review my safety rules.

I also need to address the maintenance manager and let him know that his employees need to:

1. Announce themselves when they are at the door.
2. Have their maintenance guys dress in uniforms.
3. Have badges or a form of id that validates their identity and that they do work for the complex.