Personality Plus

I took this personality profile as a freshman in college, ehhemm, 14 years ago and then again today. Turns out I'm still the same. Also turns out I'm in the completley wrong profession. But I think I already knew that!

My Gal

Becca has been amusing me all weekend. Last night I gave her a bath because she had red paint in her hair from camp and I knew she wouldn't be able to get it our herself. She was giving me a hard time because she didn't want to take the bath because she knew that bed was soon to follow. Well as she was getting out I said to her, "Now doesn't it feel good to be clean?" and she says, "Yes, but I'm cold. Clean but cold. Clean but cold Melanie." You can't hear the cadence with which she said it but it was hilarious.

So then this morning we went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. So I had just told the server that Becca would have milk and Becca says, "there's nothing like nice cold milk in the morning!"

Dave and I just looked at each other and laughed.

Post Script

After I finished my post last night, things got even more interesting around here. Actually, it was sort of amusing because I remember being a little like this as a child.

After Becca calmed down a bit she came to the top of the stairs to ask me if she could come and eat dinner. EEEH GAADS! I had forgotten she hadn't had dinner yet. So of course I told her she could come down and eat. I fed her dinner and we chatted like normal. After she had finished, I told her she needed to back up to her room again. I wish I had a picture of the look on her face. It was priceless, she had obviously thought I would forget. So we went through the whole rigamarole again. She went back upstairs and the waterworks and drama was back on. I told her my same speech about going to bed or playing quietly in her room. She calmed down a little and then a few minutes later she came to the top of the stairs to tell me that the reason she was crying was because she was sad that she hadn't gotten to say good-bye to Grandma (she sees Grandma almost every day). I said if she had been that worried about saying good-bye to Grandma then she wouldn't have left Grandma here by herself. So she went back in her room for a few minutes. Then she came back to tell me that she was looking out her window and saw the girls across the street playing and they wanted her to come out and play. I told her she was still grounded. She started to bawl again but she went back in her room. The she came back again! This time she told me that she hadn't gone to Grant's house without telling me on purpose, that it had been a total accident and she hadn't meant it. I told her that she was still grounded and I bet that next time she won't forget.

That little girl was up there just desperately trying to think of a way to get out of this pickle she had gotten herself into. I remember feeling like that when I was little and had gotten in trouble. Couldn't I just be sorry and be off the hook?!! For Pete's sake, it was only two hours she had to spend in her room before bedtime. Do you remember the days when it was a punishment to be locked in your room for two hours? Now I'd give my left thumb for someone to send me to my room!!

So what did Becca end up doing in her room for the rest of the night? She decided to sort her Care Bears out and see what she might want to give to the goodwill. She had a small pile amassed and then decided she just wasn't sure if she could part with them. So, back in the closet the went! :)

The Evil Stepmom - Or just Mom?

Dave is out of town this week for a few days so I'm kind of on my own with the kids. So tonight, his mom picked them up from camp and when I got home she had let both of them go play across the street with Jared (Sam's buddy) and Zoe (Rebecca's buddy). I hadn't planned anything special for dinner so I just let them stay out as they usually come home when they get hungry.

At 7:00, Sam called to ask if he could stay at Jared's to watch a movie. I said that was fine, but asked what Becca was doing. "She's at Grant's" he tell me. Grant is another friend of Becca's who lives about 7 houses away or so. We have had this conversation with her before. She knows that she is not allowed to just run around to any friends house in the neighborhood without telling us first where she is going to be. So I sent Sam over there to tell her to come home and when she got here, I told her she was grounded for the rest of the night and that she could find something to do in her room until bedtime. So upstairs she goes and about 60 seconds later the waterworks and drama start. So I go up there and tell her that she has two choices, she can stop crying and find something to do in her room until bedtime or she can go to bed now. That quiets her and I go back down stairs wondering if I'm being too mean. So I call Dave to run it by him. He validates me and offers to talk to her, but she has calmed down by then so I pass and tell him I have handled it.

It's strange. When these kids first came into my life, they were someone else's kids. I spent all my time with them trying to be nice and have fun. I never had or needed to discipline them. But now they live with me and I'm basically raising them (don't even get me started about their actual mother). So now I find myself having to actually parent them and I'm trying to find the balance between evil stepmom and just mom. I so want to do right by them. Can somebody please assure me that I'm not going to make any mistakes!?

Be still my heart

Rebecca fell off her bike face first this week. She knocked out a baby tooth as well as pushed her two front (adult) teeth in and knocked them loose in the bargain. We were at the dentist at 9:00 at night so he could put some sort of brace of them. It was my first "emergency" kid trauma. I did not enjoy it to say the least. I can't believe how much worry comes with these little suckers. And I cannot believe the amount of blood that can come out of them.

So she's fine now. She bounced right back - she's a pretty tough kid. I'm not bouncing back as fast. I get pretty queasy with blood and there was quite a bit of it. Thank God Dave was here so he could investigate the damage because I probably would have been on the floor.

Just to give you one more little bit of info about how tough Becca is, after she fell off the bike and busted her mouth up, she got up, grabbed her bike, grabbed her tooth, brought her bike into the gargae and came running into the house with her tooth in her hand. There was a big pool of blood next to her bike in the garage. She can't chew with her front teeth or bite into anything for a month!

The Good, the Bad and the Spin

Phewww! What a week. Busy busy busy so far. I really have not had time to blog and when I did find a couple minutes, I found that I was suffering from a terrible case of writers block. I couldn't think of anything witty to say. Not to bitch bitch bitch, but these are the things that have bummed me out this week:

#1 I found out that my yoga instructor who I have been yoga'ing with for over 5 years, is no longer going to be teaching in Howell. She opened a yoga studio in Ann Arbor and is going to teach exclusively there. I am so bummed. I have tried other yoga classes but just don't like those instructor nearly as much. And, as is happens, I decided to take the summer off from yoga which it now turns out was her last session.

#2 A colleague of mine and his brother, a colleague of Dave's, mother died this past week and we had to go to the funeral home last night. It was in Grosse Pointe Woods which is quite a haul from my house. Dave and I met at my office in Novi and drove there together. Visited for a while and then went out for dinner and home. We didn't get home until 10pm last night.

#3 I had to rush out of the house this morning to make it to our Livonia office for a meeting that was supposed to start at 8. I got here and 7:30 (I like to be early so I have time for coffee, pee and to check my e-mail) and what do you know but the conference room is already full of people. Eeeek Gadds! Was I late? I detest lateness. I frown on it in my employees and colleagues and here I am freaking out that I misread the meeting invite and the meeting actually started at 7. But it's possible the suits were having a "pre-meeting" so I didn't want to go barging in demanding to know why they started without me. Well, it turns out that they didn't finish with their stuff yesterday and it bled into today. So my meeting was postponed until approximately 9am. Which no on bothered to tell me. Rat Bastards! I skipped breakfast to get her on time. I have none of my job files with me so I really can't do much work. And I'm hungry!

Now for the positives.

#1 My new office (the one we are moving to that I have been less than enthused about) is going to be in Plymouth. We are supposed to be moving next Friday. Well, what is Plymouth close to? Ann Arbor. What is in Ann Arbor? Christy's yoga studio! So the ray of hope for me is that I can still probably take one class a week with her and go straight from work. So all hope is not lost.

#2 After the very sad funeral home visit, I got to have dinner with my husband and a couple other friends some of whom I work with. A community bitch session about work does wonders for the soul. Some might say that focusing on the negative is bad. But I say that listening to other people gripe and finding out that they have the same gripes as you and that you aren't just a discontented black souled asshole who hates her job with no sound basis. In fact, everyone feels the same way and you aren't in this alone like you thought!!

#3 Since my meeting got postponed and I can't really work, you get this very exciting blog post to read! BTW, someone just came and told me the meeting won't start until 9:15 now.

#4 I'm on vacation Friday meeting up with Val to go to Milford Memories and then Dave is taking me to Indianapolis where we are combining business with pleasure and just some away time! Can't wait.

See? It's all in how you spin it!

Have a wonderful day!!

Uh Oh

Have you ever had your hairdresser say that while she is doing your hair? Not really a good thing to hear.

Well, I spent 2 hours at the salon on Tuesday afternoon getting my roots done, highlights, and a trim and while she was rinsing my hair after all the color treatments, that is what she said. Uh oh. WTF? Well, apparently, after the highlights she put a clear rinse with a tint over my hair. She always does this when she colors me because it makes my hair nice and shiny. Well this time it covered up all the highlights she had just done. So you can barely see them. After a few washes they should start to show up. She offered to do more highlights, but #1 that would be death for my hair and #2 I wasn't spending one more minute in that salon and #3 that would be death for my hair. I was decidedly bummed out and I am thinking that it may be time to find a new hairdresser. There have been several little things over the past year that have bugged me, but as I have explained in the past, I hate hate hate hate hate change and I'm afraid to try someone new. What if it's worse?

And one more thing - any of you who get your hair colored - does your hairdresser get dye all over your face so that your forehead looks like Michael Jackson circa Thriller, circa Pepsi commercial, circa 1980's? Is this normal?

Free to pee, a lazy lizard and 300 the movie

You will all be pleased to know that the water came back on at my office around 10:30 or so yesterday. So we could all use the bathroom to our heart's content.

In other news, I have been a lazy lizard this week and have not even started to tape the spare bedroom. We plan to paint this weekend and I am a famous procrastinator, so I will probably put off the taping until Friday night. Really, the less time the tap in on the molding, the less sticky that will be left there, right :)

Dave rented the movie 300 last night. He has been waiting for it to come up for weeks. So last night we had to forgo our usual Star Trek nightcap for 300. If I haven't mentioned it before, Dave is a huge history buff. Well, he just finished reading a book about the Spartans (the real Spartans of Ancient Greece, not the MSU mascot), and 300 is about the 300 Spartans that found some ungodly number of Persians under the rule of Xerxes. A very inspiring story, especially when you hear Dave tell it. The movie was a little more Hollywood than history. Entertaining, but sensational. Filmed like it was computer animated, very gory, very gory and oh did I mention it was gory? Anyway, I would probably not recommend it for your average female. Unless you are married to a history geek like I am.