3 A.M. Eternal Revisited...

Way back in March 2007, I wrote a blog post entitled, '3 a.m. eternal'. Now, over four years later, I've awoken at - you guessed it, 3 am. 3 am seems to be my witching hour, and oh what a wonderful witching hour it is. Not. For whatever reason, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I can almost guarantee it - the clock will read 3 am. 'On the dot', as they say.

So here I am tonight having woken up at 3 am on the dot - or, I should say, here I am this morning having woken up at 3 am on the dot. Why? Well, it seems my brain decided it would be a good idea to start rehashing a class that I attended earlier this evening. Or actually, yesterday evening. Or maybe it's 'earlier this 24-hour-period evening'. Oh, I don't know! (Insomnia is nothing if not confusing! Sheesh!)

As is so often the case, I digress.

I am taking part in a course called 'Changeways'. It is a requirement of a bigger endeavour of mine, which is weight loss surgery. The last half hour of every class is spent writing down three goals for the coming week. One of my goals this time was to start a blog. When I wrote 'Start a blog', I meant start a new blog on a website called Obesity Help. Why start a new blog? My new blog is going to be specifically about weight loss surgery. Way back in February 2007, when I started this blog, I wrote in my first ever post that blogging is therapeutic. That is why I want to start another blog that is specific to my weight loss journey. The more therapeutic weapons in my arsenal, the better, right?!

It's funny/interesting to me, looking back at this blog. With this most recent post I've referenced my first ever blog post as well as what turns out to be my second-ever blog post - '3 a.m. eternal'. Ta-da!! Full circle!

I haven't been blogging very much at all lately. As in, this is my first post in over five months. Writing a post with the label, 'Insomnia' is NOT how I imagined my triumphant return! Oh well. One thing is certain. 'Blogging really is therapeutic' - me, February 23, 2007. So, if one blog is good, two must be better...? ("Talk about going from zero to sixty", she mutters to herself). Am I going to be able to keep up with myself? "Speed. I am speed." - Lightning McQueen, 'Cars'. Hmmm...I'm hopeful!

So now I think I hope I think that I can post this, turn off my computer, and go back to sleep. Fingers crossed I'm not back here at 3 am writing a post with the label 'Insomnia' for a really, really long time!

Summer is my drug of choice...

Oh dear, sweet, Summer - you have returned to me!! I love you so much...

Thank goodness for summer. It's quite amazing to me how much more energetic and motivated I become in summer. Winter puts me in such a state of hibernation, and coming out of it is a long, slow process - especially given the dark, wet springtime conditions that we experience in such generous proportions here on the West Coast. Summer is struggling to get established here this year. Last weekend was spent in Penticton, BC, which is a provincial hot spot. It was wonderful, especially since here at home, in Metro Vancouver, it was unseasonably wet and cold. I soaked up the sun in the Okanagan, and then returned home to find the sun here too - hallelujah!! Then, yesterday - rainstorm. Dark. Cold. Wet. I felt like I was going to explode!! Just as summer is arriving, it's snatched back again. Torture, I tell you!! Today - well, no rain yet, occasional bursts of sun through the clouds, and being the obsessive weather watcher I am, The Weather Network tells me that it's going to be a few days before more seasonally appropriate weather returns. Bollocks!! Barely. Hanging. On...

In other news...My dear, sweet, brown-eyed boy turned 8 on July 5th. We spent most of the day on the road, driving home from Penticton. Casey didn't mind at all. He's so easy and agreeable!! After getting home and having dinner, we sang 'Happy Birthday', enjoyed some chocolate birthday cake, and Casey opened his presents - a new DS game (Lego Pirates of the Caribbean' and a football). We're planning a 'kids party' for later in the month, and Steve is planning a BBQ here at home with family for Casey's birthday and for mine. The big 4-0! That's a whole other blog post.



So far, summer vacation is going very well. Having the kids home for 9 weeks in the summer can be the best of times or the worst of times. I've seen several friends on Facebook whose status updates say things like, "They're bored already!". We're almost two weeks in, and knock on wood, things are going swimmingly. I've got game plans galore, and contingency plans to boot. Summer 2011 is shaping up to be epic - now off to seize the day!

This is an email that my sister forwarded to me. I laughed out loud reading it - and I could relate to it a little bit too much for my liking!







11 Step Program for those thinking of having kids

Lesson 1

1. Go to the grocery store.
2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home.
4. Pick up the paper.
5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their…

1. Methods of discipline.
2. Lack of patience.
3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.
4. Allowing their children to run wild.
5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.

Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3

A really good way to discover how the nights might feel…

1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)

2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.

3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.

4. Set the alarm for 3AM.

5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.

6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.

7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.

8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.

9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive) Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.


Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? To find out…

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.

2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.

3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.

4. Then rub them on the clean walls.

5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.

6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.

1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.

2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this – all morning.

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don’t think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that.

1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.

2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.

3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.

4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car. Lesson 7 Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

1. Hollow out a melon.

2. Make a small hole in the side.

3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.

4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.

5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.

6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air. You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you’re thinking What’s ‘Noggin’?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying ‘mommy’ repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each ‘mommy’; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11

Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the ‘mommy’ tape made from Lesson 10above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

(This is all very tongue in cheek; anyone who is parent will say ‘it’s all worth it!’ Share it with your friends, both those who do and don’t have kids. I guarantee they’ll get a chuckle out of it. Remember, a sense of humor is one of the most important things you’ll need when you become a parent!)

7 Things about me that you were dying to know, but were afraid to ask...

My friend, Eleonor, chose lil' ol' me to nominate for a Stylish Blogger Award. Aw, shucks!! I've known Eleonor for several years now through our mutual love for paper crafting. Eleonor is The Queen of creative cards!! Check out her blog here. Thanks, Eleonor, for the shout out! And by the way, you said that I'm the 'funniest redhead you've ever seen'...I'm kinda hopin' you meant, 'met'?!

The conditions for receiving/accepting The Stylish Blogger Award are:

Nominess keep the love going by:

1.Writing seven things about yourself.
2.Presenting the award to six bloggers.
3.Contacting those people.
4.Creating a link back to the person who did this for you.

So, here are, in no particular order of importance or relevance...7 Things About Me...

1. As Eleonor pointed out, I am a redhead. A 'natural' redhead. Or at least, I was born as one...these days, it takes a little bit of help. My sister is a redhead, my father is a redhead, his three siblings are redheads, his parents were both redheads...you get the idea, right?! LOTS OF REDHEADS!! I was fully expecting to have at least one redheaded child of my own...but no such luck. Brunettes of varying degrees, all three. My sister's daughter is also a brunette. I think that the chain of redheads in this family has been broken. Bummer.

2. Not only do I have the distinction of being a redhead - I also turned out left handed! I don`t know what the significance of this factoid is...I suspect that it has no significance whatsoever, but it`s one more step on my way to the qualifying, magical number seven! Yay!

3. I visited Disneyland for the first time in my life just over a month ago. It was also the first time in my life that I've flown on a 'big' plane (a jet). Makes me sound so small-town, doesn't it?! I actually had a bit of a fear of flying, which I overcame more easily that I thought I would. A feather in my cap!

4. Sometimes I imagine myself in dynamic and rewarding alternate careers...some of these are: Police officer, photographer, children's singer/entertainer, massage therapist, clinical counsellor, prosecuter, horticulturalist/landscape designer, librarian, interior designer, DJ, full-time artist, fashion consultant to the stars...and more!

5. I still remember my Grade 6 teacher calling me a 'voracious reader', which is an accurate description to this day.

6. I am very competitive.

7. I am the coach of my 7 year old son's soccer team. This is my second year coaching. I love it, but I have also learned that playing soccer and coaching soccer are two very different things!! My son loves that I am his coach and wants me to be his coach again next year. I wonder how much longer he will think it is cool that his mom is his coach?

Oh my goodness - I must just be a humble little thing because coming up with 7 things about myself was hard!! And, it took me over three weeks to do it! Now, it's my turn to tag six bloggers, plus the blogger who nominated me...

1. Eleonor (who tagged me)
2. Debby - Love this woman - very inspiring!!
3. Hilary - A very interesting woman!
4. Sandy - A mover and a shaker!!
5. Cari - Beautiful AND creative!
6. Erica - Cute, clever, and creative.

I'm supposed to tag seven bloggers, but truthfully - I don't know many bloggers personally, or to the extent that I would tag them in something like this...I'm SO close though at six...I beg your forgiveness!

Git 'Er Done Challenge at The Inspired Scrapper...

This week's scrapbooking challenge over at The Inspired Scrapper is to finish an incomplete layout/project. I am guilty of having several (or more!) pages in varying states of completion, so I had plenty to choose from. I settled on the page below, which is about my youngest child's 3rd birthday last year. He will be four in a few short weeks, so I thought it was timely.

*Photo Disclaimer - I don't take very good pictures of 2-page layouts! This is the best that I could do...how sad is that?!



I felt pretty good about the basic composition, but this page is obviously lacking those 'finishing touches'. When I first sat down and started staring at this page, I was completely lacking any kind of inspiration or direction. I was in the process of packing it up again and choosing something else when I told myself to stop!! If I did that, I would just end up having to look at it again sometime, and I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to push myself through a creative block.

Here is the finished layout:



I must say, I am very pleased with the final product! I have been wanting to try an oh-so-trendy banner for a very long time and it was so easy - I love the result! The huge bonus for me is that I used some very ancient Basic Grey Vagabond fiber to hand the banner's flags from. I loooove using up older product!! I also added some older DCWV rub-ons, and I dug into my abundant stamp stash and used three different older and rarely-used acrylic stamps.

Go check out The Inspired Scrapper for some more finished layouts and their 'before' states, and get yourself motivated to finish one or more of your own!

Multitude Monday - Round 14

Joining in with A Holy Experience for Multitude Mondays...

200. Lego!!

201. A cheery finish to a week that started out a bit rough.

202. Upcoming trip to Disneyland - my first time to Disneyland, and my first time on a jet!

203. Fond memories of wonderful grandparents.

204. Coffee!

205. The West Coast climate.

206. Funky hats that hide a bad hair day.

207. Finding 5 or 10 minutes throughout the day for mental coffee breaks!

208. The wisdom that age and experience brings.

209. Three children who love their veggies.

Multlitude Monday - Lucky Number Round 13!

190. Finally getting a new cell phone and learning how to text. I no longer feel like such a dinosaur and I am now able to communicate more easily with my daughter when she is not home. And sometimes when she is!

191. Investing new energy into an old relationship.

192. Friends.

193. Creative sparks.

194. A brand-new school building/site for my son and our neighbourhood - and finally being able to walk there and back. It's brought so many people outside to walk in our neighbourhood, and makes our neighbourhood seem that much more cohesive. Such a great new opportunity!

195. My son's wonderful teacher.

196. Power naps.

197. The best drinking water straight from our tap.

198. Grandparents who love taking their grandchildren for overnights.

199. Music.

Multitude Monday - Round 12

This, my twelfth round of Multitude Monday, was written but not posted on December 27th, 2010, which explains the seasonal/Christmas references. I am posting it now because it is still very valid, and because I want to move on with my next list of ten things to be grateful for:

181. A relatively low-stress Christmas season

182. 'Modern' indulgences - specifically today, Netflix!

183. Starbucks Eggnog Lattes - such a treat!!

184. The many ways my children make each day such a delight!

185. The long-awaited and much anticipated pedestrian overpass finally being completed up the street, creating a much-appreciated short-cut across the ravine.

186. Living a comfortable lifestyle

187. Having experiences and points of reference in my life that enable me to really appreciate my life today.

188. Having resilience.

189. A husband who provides very well for his family.

190. Coming across THIS post again.