So I have all these ideas for blog entries that I want to write, but it's really just a matter of finding the time to write them. Between Jack, work, family, friends, and soon to be school. My time gets stretched kind of thin.
It doesn't help that I am too cheap to pay for internet. I spent the entire day once walking around with my laptop seeing where I could pick up signals from unsecured networks. It was a long drawn out ritual where I went to each corner of each room and checked for signal. I would hold my laptop over my head like it was an antenna or a metal detector combing the beach for change. I would "sweep" the area until the red "X" came off my internet access logo and then I would proceed to try and connect. It was quite a little treasure hunt, and if I got any signal at all I had to make sure the signal was strong enough to keep me online for any specified amount of time.
So I finally found a spot in the corner of my bedroom. If I sit up straight against the wall on the top left-hand side of my bed with my computer facing left, and my right finger touching my nose I get perfect signal!
The whole thing reminds me of the time that my dad went an entire year duct taping the clothes dryer door shut so that it would dry clothes. There was a trick to it that only he knew which meant he was stuck with doing all the laundry. It wasn't that we couldn't afford a new dryer it was just because it wasn't at the top of his to-do list.
Just like paying for internet is definitely not on the top of mine.
So not accounting for wasted time searching for internet signal. Jack pretty much takes up 99.5% of my time. I have .5% to go crazy about once every two months and then I climb back into my mom hole. I spend time on him in little ways that I hadn't anticipated too.
For example, I woke this morning at 6:30 am, I did two loads of laundry, cleaned my kitchen, did a little bit of cardio, made my coffee, and sat down to write around 7:30. Jack slept until 8:30 the day before so I scheduled in an hour that I would be able to write my blog and then make him breakfast and cater to his every whim for the rest of the day. But this one hour I would have for me. I should of known that it was coming, but I can be slightly delusional when it comes to the thought of free time.
Little boy came into my room this morning at 7:31 on the dot, blue blanket in tow, "mamma, i want" This is his new game. He wants something and it is my job to figure out what he wants. This morning he wanted snickers for breakfast. I have the bite sized snickers in a bag that I will give him as a sweet once in a while(like once a week on a saturday night), but it doesn't stop him from asking for them for breakfast every single morning. I have to say that I admire his persistent he'll be a fine salesman someday.
So the hour that I had allotted for myself turned into his time. So I had to be sneaky about getting my writing in.
I have learned to serve breakfast in rounds. First I feed him fruit. It's easy enough to take some strawberries out of the refridgerator and put him in his highchair and watch diego in the living room. Which leaves me time to microwave bacon and make pancakes. All the while ready to write with stories floating in the back of my head. So when the pancakes are on the first flip I will come into my room and write down all my ideas for wording or some cool sentences that I have picked out. Today I got carried away and was brought back by the sounds of spanish-speaking dolphins and the smell of burning pancakes. So then I was forced to stay in the kitchen and wait for breakfast to finish. No more multi-tasking breaskfast for me. But at least Jack finished his whole breakfast this morning and I did have a few minutes of peace to start writing.
I won't even say the extent of convincing that I had to do to have the time I have to write now. Let's just say it involves serious threats of time-out, promises of ice cream and a big bag of building blocks. He'll come in here every now and then to check on me or run past my door to get my attention. Once stopping only to do the downward facing dog yoga pose in front of my door and then moving on . Sometimes, it will get really quiet and I will have to get up to check to make sure all is well. 9 times out of 10 I will find him playing quietly which is what I wanted, but my presence undoubtedly stirs up another frenzy and the cycle continues.
I think these mommy "breaks" (and I use the term loosely) are where baby ninja was born. I am constantly finding things in places they don't belong. I never actually see it happen, but I know a certain pint-sized stealth ninja that might have something to do with it. Or as I have named him, Jack-san.
The other day I came out of my shower and went to my drawer to find clothes only to find all my tank tops had been replaced by a toe seperator, the thing you use in between your toes for pedicures. I didn't even know I had a toe seperator, but the thing that really tripped me out. Where the hell are my tank tops?
So I have been living with the effects of one such ninja raid for the past couple of weeks and it has begun to make me a little paranoid.
Since I have moved into my new place I have done a ton of work painting and sprucing . I ran out of energy, time, and money in my bedroom. I am almost finished except for painting the bathroom and replacing the nasty mini-blinds with a decent looking window treatment. But in the interim the blinds get the job done or at least they did.... That is until Jack-san struck.
I imagine the destruction of my blinds going something like this...
Jack, wearing only a diaper, squares off against the dusty blind with a bow. Then Chinese subtitles appear and bad overdubbing starts playing in English with a deep-voiced man with a heavy foreign accent..."so we meet again blinds" the words trying to keep up with the speed of Jack-san's native tongue, Jacklish. "I hope you have come prepared to fight." Then he busts a swan pose and flies at the window.
The rest is history, along with my privacy. At first it started out as a tiny corner hole. The blinds were bent but I could still get away with walking around my own bedroom in my underwear. Over the weeks the hole got worse and worse. How? I have no idea. I blame ninjas, damn, baby, ninjas.
Of course I have made things worse on myself by dividing my towels more generously in Jack's bathroom. Which means by the time I have used up the one towel I have allotted myself I have to run soaking wet from the shower down the hall to Jack's bathroom. All in front of the hole which is now so big that I could be charging admission for the show I am giving my neighbors.
So last night I had to spend even more of the time that I don't have coming up with a solution to covering up the hole. Bingo! I would take the blinds that were in storage that had been in Jack's, er Jack-san's room and put them in my room for now. Sounds good enough.
So I grab the other set of nasty mini-blinds and bring them into my room to make the trade. As I go to snapp the mini blinds out of the bracket the front of the bracket falls out in my hand... ok be cool maybe this isn't the worst of it... So I take down the blinds and pick up the other set to put in their place.
So now I am on a step ladder facing an uncovered window into the parking lot of my complex. I already feel like I have been on display because of the hole. But it hadn't really bothered me until now that I might of legitimately gotten some unwanted attention at least by the lawn crew, and 'were the old ladies in the bridge club looking at me funny today'. So now I am in the window trying to force the broken, nasty blinds into a broken, nasty,bracket on top of a step ladder with thoughts that I am being watched by old ladies and Mexicans.
The blinds are awkward and the ladder did nothing for my none existent coordination. I swing them around knocking myself in the forehead. Smarting for only a second, I almost lost my balance and ate it on the floor, but I manage to hold it together. I try to force the blinds in the bracket. It is then that I realize that the end of my new blind is bent and is not going to fit into the bracket. DAMMMITTTT!
Time for plan B.... So I comb the stolen internet, duct-tape dryer part of my brain and come up with sheets and thumb tacks.... No hammer and nails because Jack-san is peaceful and sleeping and you must NEVER wake a baby ninja.
Just then my downstairs neighbor walks by with his dog and throws a wave up to my direction. I glower down at him 'pervert'. Totally unwarranted, but it's late and I have head trauma. I finish tacking up the window and put the nasty blinds away.
So I sit here this morning with the sheet over my window, which I must say diffuses the sunlight beautifully, blogging about the free time I wish I had, but I think I will go play blocks now instead :)
It doesn't help that I am too cheap to pay for internet. I spent the entire day once walking around with my laptop seeing where I could pick up signals from unsecured networks. It was a long drawn out ritual where I went to each corner of each room and checked for signal. I would hold my laptop over my head like it was an antenna or a metal detector combing the beach for change. I would "sweep" the area until the red "X" came off my internet access logo and then I would proceed to try and connect. It was quite a little treasure hunt, and if I got any signal at all I had to make sure the signal was strong enough to keep me online for any specified amount of time.
So I finally found a spot in the corner of my bedroom. If I sit up straight against the wall on the top left-hand side of my bed with my computer facing left, and my right finger touching my nose I get perfect signal!
The whole thing reminds me of the time that my dad went an entire year duct taping the clothes dryer door shut so that it would dry clothes. There was a trick to it that only he knew which meant he was stuck with doing all the laundry. It wasn't that we couldn't afford a new dryer it was just because it wasn't at the top of his to-do list.
Just like paying for internet is definitely not on the top of mine.
So not accounting for wasted time searching for internet signal. Jack pretty much takes up 99.5% of my time. I have .5% to go crazy about once every two months and then I climb back into my mom hole. I spend time on him in little ways that I hadn't anticipated too.
For example, I woke this morning at 6:30 am, I did two loads of laundry, cleaned my kitchen, did a little bit of cardio, made my coffee, and sat down to write around 7:30. Jack slept until 8:30 the day before so I scheduled in an hour that I would be able to write my blog and then make him breakfast and cater to his every whim for the rest of the day. But this one hour I would have for me. I should of known that it was coming, but I can be slightly delusional when it comes to the thought of free time.
Little boy came into my room this morning at 7:31 on the dot, blue blanket in tow, "mamma, i want" This is his new game. He wants something and it is my job to figure out what he wants. This morning he wanted snickers for breakfast. I have the bite sized snickers in a bag that I will give him as a sweet once in a while(like once a week on a saturday night), but it doesn't stop him from asking for them for breakfast every single morning. I have to say that I admire his persistent he'll be a fine salesman someday.
So the hour that I had allotted for myself turned into his time. So I had to be sneaky about getting my writing in.
I have learned to serve breakfast in rounds. First I feed him fruit. It's easy enough to take some strawberries out of the refridgerator and put him in his highchair and watch diego in the living room. Which leaves me time to microwave bacon and make pancakes. All the while ready to write with stories floating in the back of my head. So when the pancakes are on the first flip I will come into my room and write down all my ideas for wording or some cool sentences that I have picked out. Today I got carried away and was brought back by the sounds of spanish-speaking dolphins and the smell of burning pancakes. So then I was forced to stay in the kitchen and wait for breakfast to finish. No more multi-tasking breaskfast for me. But at least Jack finished his whole breakfast this morning and I did have a few minutes of peace to start writing.
I won't even say the extent of convincing that I had to do to have the time I have to write now. Let's just say it involves serious threats of time-out, promises of ice cream and a big bag of building blocks. He'll come in here every now and then to check on me or run past my door to get my attention. Once stopping only to do the downward facing dog yoga pose in front of my door and then moving on . Sometimes, it will get really quiet and I will have to get up to check to make sure all is well. 9 times out of 10 I will find him playing quietly which is what I wanted, but my presence undoubtedly stirs up another frenzy and the cycle continues.
I think these mommy "breaks" (and I use the term loosely) are where baby ninja was born. I am constantly finding things in places they don't belong. I never actually see it happen, but I know a certain pint-sized stealth ninja that might have something to do with it. Or as I have named him, Jack-san.
The other day I came out of my shower and went to my drawer to find clothes only to find all my tank tops had been replaced by a toe seperator, the thing you use in between your toes for pedicures. I didn't even know I had a toe seperator, but the thing that really tripped me out. Where the hell are my tank tops?
So I have been living with the effects of one such ninja raid for the past couple of weeks and it has begun to make me a little paranoid.
Since I have moved into my new place I have done a ton of work painting and sprucing . I ran out of energy, time, and money in my bedroom. I am almost finished except for painting the bathroom and replacing the nasty mini-blinds with a decent looking window treatment. But in the interim the blinds get the job done or at least they did.... That is until Jack-san struck.
I imagine the destruction of my blinds going something like this...
Jack, wearing only a diaper, squares off against the dusty blind with a bow. Then Chinese subtitles appear and bad overdubbing starts playing in English with a deep-voiced man with a heavy foreign accent..."so we meet again blinds" the words trying to keep up with the speed of Jack-san's native tongue, Jacklish. "I hope you have come prepared to fight." Then he busts a swan pose and flies at the window.
The rest is history, along with my privacy. At first it started out as a tiny corner hole. The blinds were bent but I could still get away with walking around my own bedroom in my underwear. Over the weeks the hole got worse and worse. How? I have no idea. I blame ninjas, damn, baby, ninjas.
Of course I have made things worse on myself by dividing my towels more generously in Jack's bathroom. Which means by the time I have used up the one towel I have allotted myself I have to run soaking wet from the shower down the hall to Jack's bathroom. All in front of the hole which is now so big that I could be charging admission for the show I am giving my neighbors.
So last night I had to spend even more of the time that I don't have coming up with a solution to covering up the hole. Bingo! I would take the blinds that were in storage that had been in Jack's, er Jack-san's room and put them in my room for now. Sounds good enough.
So I grab the other set of nasty mini-blinds and bring them into my room to make the trade. As I go to snapp the mini blinds out of the bracket the front of the bracket falls out in my hand... ok be cool maybe this isn't the worst of it... So I take down the blinds and pick up the other set to put in their place.
So now I am on a step ladder facing an uncovered window into the parking lot of my complex. I already feel like I have been on display because of the hole. But it hadn't really bothered me until now that I might of legitimately gotten some unwanted attention at least by the lawn crew, and 'were the old ladies in the bridge club looking at me funny today'. So now I am in the window trying to force the broken, nasty blinds into a broken, nasty,bracket on top of a step ladder with thoughts that I am being watched by old ladies and Mexicans.
The blinds are awkward and the ladder did nothing for my none existent coordination. I swing them around knocking myself in the forehead. Smarting for only a second, I almost lost my balance and ate it on the floor, but I manage to hold it together. I try to force the blinds in the bracket. It is then that I realize that the end of my new blind is bent and is not going to fit into the bracket. DAMMMITTTT!
Time for plan B.... So I comb the stolen internet, duct-tape dryer part of my brain and come up with sheets and thumb tacks.... No hammer and nails because Jack-san is peaceful and sleeping and you must NEVER wake a baby ninja.
Just then my downstairs neighbor walks by with his dog and throws a wave up to my direction. I glower down at him 'pervert'. Totally unwarranted, but it's late and I have head trauma. I finish tacking up the window and put the nasty blinds away.
So I sit here this morning with the sheet over my window, which I must say diffuses the sunlight beautifully, blogging about the free time I wish I had, but I think I will go play blocks now instead :)
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