There's no place like home.

After a recent trip to the Thousand Islands with my family, I decided that I love being home. Don't get me wrong, I had a wonderful time and I know my kids did too which is the most important. But I think I take being home for granted sometimes. Here is a list:

1. I don't like showering with flip-flops on. When you are at a state park you have two choices: flip-flops or else. The else are planters warts, other peoples hair wrapped around your toes, maybe even AIDS, who knows. But the problem with the flip-flops is they get slippery. When it comes time to wash your feet and you take one out to do so, you're balancing on one slippery flop. If you're not careful, you can kill yourself cleaning your foot. And then when the shower is done, you have to walk back to camp with slippery flops. The whole thing is a mess.
   
2. Sleeping is not an issue, unless you are two. It was a struggle every night to get my two year old asleep. We never have a problem with this at home. But camping was another story. Every night it was a circus of walking her around the park until she fell asleep, putting in a movie to try and make her drowsy, taking her for car rides. This was way too much work when all I did was stay up all night afraid she might wake and I would have to do damage control.
3. I know where all the drug stores are at home. I don't know where they were out there. So on Sunday night when I wasn't feeling well and didn't have the right medicine, I found myself driving all over town past nothing but cows and falling down barns. Not good when you don't feel well. Random cows were useless to me.
   
4. I need a familiar toilet. This has always been an issue for me. And without getting too personal, state park bathrooms can be a little iffy sometimes. I have a hard time going when my choices are a toilet that isn't flushed from the last person, a stall infested with mosquitoes (I don't need a bug bite on my butt!), or a stall where the toilet paper roll rests on the filthy floor! I would rather hold it.
   

I always love visiting The Islands, but when I get home I sleep better, don't get bug bites on my butt while peeing, and I know where to get medicine when I don't feel well. And, I leave the flops at the door.

If everyone jumped, would you?

I don't know the exact saying, but I know it is something about following the crowd into anything- good or bad. Anyways...

I started a Facebook. I would like to tell you that I had some great reason. Like I wanted to get in touch with old friends or that I was doing some social experiment. As I've said in an earlier blog, I have a hard time making my business public. I don't want people from my past tracking me down to compare my life to theirs.

The truth is, I did jump because everyone else did. My sister has one, my husband started one, and countless friends of ours have them. I saw how easy it was to keep in touch and stay up to date on what other people were doing. I liked how easy it was to show friends and family pictures and to let them know what I am up to. So I did it.

But I am setting some rules for myself.

• I will never let myself "friend" people recklessly. I promised myself that I will only "friend" people that I truly know. I won't be one of those people with 400 followers full of people that take me a minute to identify.
  
• I also won't get too personal. I certainly won't be posting comments on spats I might have with my husband or anything like that. No need to air my dirty laundry.
  
• I am not going to let Facebook consume my life. I won't feed my son with one hand and type with the other (like I did last night- oops!). I won't ignore a crying child because I am too busy snooping at other peoples pictures. I won't sit in front of the computer in silence when my family clearly needs me.
  
• I won't post things to my husbands wall when he is sitting across the room from me and I can just tell him what I am thinking.
  

So, here we go again. This computer stuff can become addicting. It's a slippery slope, and I'm sliding down. But I am digging my heals in to try and slow down- and not get too involved.

So what? I jumped.

Lucky Mom.

"I have only known her for two years. But if you took every memory, every moment, if you stretched them end to end- they'd reach forever."
- My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult


My daughter Sophie just celebrated her second birthday a few days ago and I can't remember what life was like without her. All the happiness that she brings to my life makes me wonder what I did to smile before we had her and how on earth these past two years have flown by so quickly.

It's no wonder that we have had a revolving door of people at our house for the past two years. No matter how bad someones day is, they know that one moment with Sophie will make all the bad disappear. She has a way of turning any sadness around into pure joy. She turns a mundane task like folding laundry into a hysterical moment when she puts a pair of my underwear around her neck and calls them a necklace. Or when she finds her bathing suit in her drawer and puts the top on her bottom and bottom on her top and declares that she wants to go swimming like a goldfish in her "bathing soup!"

Right now Fia (a nickname she gave herself) is sleeping in her bed with her cow print gardening gloves on. She always has to take a "treasure" to bed with her. She makes me laugh when she says things with such conviction- "This lunch is scrumptious," or "I am comfy toesy!" And it is especially funny when she calls after her daddy, "Come here, honey!" because that's what I call him.


She is such a clever girl. And I am sure all moms say that about their kids, but Sophie is not all the other kids. She is mine. And she makes it easier to breath, to smile, to sleep at night and to wake up again in the morning. She fills my eyes with tears of joy and my heart with love and happiness. Anyone who is lucky enough to know her is a better person because of her.

Even though I was sicker than ever while pregnant with her, the joy she has brought to my life made me do it all over again to have her brother John. And because together they are so wonderful, I might even be crazy enough to do it again someday.

Dear Ashley Furniture Salesman...

This is a list of reasons that I won't be buying my new furniture from you.

1. You circled us like a vulture looking for prey when we walked in. When you attacked, you bombarded us with flyers that we didn't care about and you didn't understand.
   
2. After telling us that you wern't into high pressure selling, you tried to high pressure sell us. You passed us a used business card (a sticker of your name placed over a failed salesperson's name) with a list of your hours on the back and basically followed us around the store commenting about everything we looked at.
   
3. You had the nerve to complain about having to work a lot. I think you should count your blessings that you have a job during these tough times. And you never know who you are talking to- I lost my job due to the recession.
   
4. You were trying to use a metaphor about bottled water that confused even you. By the time you got to the end of it, we were all so confused that I almost went to the grocery store next door to buy water instead of furniture.
   
5. You used the "f-word" twice. I may be known to swear from time to time, but you don't know me. In case you didn't notice, you are at work selling couches to moms, not at a bar drinking beers with friends.

In closing, I would like to thank you anyways. Your store does have the furniture we intend on buying. And we now have your schedule so we will be there tomorrow, on your day off, to buy it from one of your coworkers. I hope your boss has more stickers to put over your name on the business cards for the guy he hires to replace you someday.