And Now, A Little Bit of Mom Humor

In the spirit of if you don’t laugh, you'll cry ...

6:25 am - Wake up, think I hear Isla crying
6:26 am - Negative, Nash crying. Husband does Nash mornings - whew
6:27 am - Must get up, must get up
6:30 am - Get up, brush teeth, look at self - ugh, shouldn't have done that.
6:33 am - Throw on barn clothes, need to try and get these suckers done on time this morning
6:35 am - Offer to help hubs with kids - since apparently Isla woke up in the last 10 minutes, which leaves him with two
6:36 am - Change Isla bottom (no, poo, no, poo, no poo) and thankfully no poo
6:40 am - Hand Isla off to hubs to feed
6:41 am - Look at hubs' face. Offer to take Isla back and feed
6:42 am - Feed Isla
6:55 am - Put Isla down, time to go do horses
6:56 am - Get over baby gate, hear screaming. Talk to Nash - always forget I can't walk out of a room without explaining why
6:57 am - Start to put on remaining barn clothes - Peter looks up with sad face, Karma "talks" and jumps
6:58 am - Give dogs a treat - should buy me a little time
6:59 am - Put on remaining barn clothes
7:01 am - Do horses - ahhhh, this is my relaxing time each morning. Sad. But true
7:23 am - Back in, greeted by spastic whippets - guess I didn't buy much time after all
7:24 am - Feed whippets - cat meows, apparently doesn't remember its 10 hours too early
7:25 am - Walk into living room - hubs folding clothes, Nash 'helping', hubs not happy with help
7:26 am - Encourage Nash to come with me to pick out my clothes and get ready
7:27 am - Do hair and makeup while Nash brushes his teeth - if you call sucking water off the tooth brush brushing your teeth
7:32 am - Get half dressed - hear LOTS of 'no's' coming from the living room
7:36 am - Go into living room and get Nash away from hubs - really, he does not want help
7:38 am - Finish getting dressed
7:43 am - Pack up Isla's daycare items
7:44 am - Pack up Nash's daycare items
7:45 am - Pack up lunch
7:49 am - Try and find laptop. Where is effing laptop - oh yea, left in car to make things easier.
7:50 am - Remember Isla still needs to finish bottle. Crap. Oh, hubs did it already (that guy is pretty cool sometimes)
7:50 am - Hug hubs. He deserves it
7:52 am - Gather up stuff to go to car - hubs brings out both kids (that guy is pretty cool sometimes)
7:53 am - Crap forgot purse
7:53 am - Crap forgot Nash's beeka
7:53 am - Crap took too long and now Isla is crying because she lost her beeka
7:54 am - Hurry to get into car and get it running - off to daycare
8:08 am - Get to daycare and get Isla, Isla's bag and Nash's bedroll out
8:09 am - Go to Get Nash - oh look. He's taken his shoes and socks off. Again.
8:09 am - Put on Nash's shoes and socks, get Nash's bag, pick up: him, it, Isla, Isla's bag and his bedroll
8:10 am - Drop off kids - listen to Nash scream uncontrollably while I walk out of his room. I hate that part
8:20 am - Head to work - car is quiet. Brilliant
8:33 am - Walk into office and security asks me "so, are you ready to start your day?" I think, "if you only knew..."

A Little Success, a Lot of Failure

So, the first of the year has come and gone and like many people my resolve to stick to New Years resolutions is waning. But let's back up a little bit …

In the Beginning
I don't have any hard and fast rules for New Year's Resolutions. Some years I have put it all on the line (generally that has resulted in failure). Some years I resolve to not have any resolutions (great way to prevent failure, bad way to foster success). This year I thought I would be smart and set myself up for success. I decided to set mini goals for each month, and once I was able to commit each month's goals to 'business as usual' I would tack on something new. The theory is that this would prevent me from being overwhelmed at first and would also give new goals every few weeks so that my interest would stay piqued. In theory … it should have worked.

January's three goals were pretty traditional. I did great for nearly the whole month. Slipped once or twice, but nothing huge and nothing that brought me down. The big bonus is that I also lost 7 pounds without even having that as a goal. Go me, I rock! But as the last week in January came and went it didn't go quiet so well. And that's when it started to unravel.

Bump in the Road
I could have just picked back up in February. That would have been a logical and rational response to what happened. I, however, decided to beat myself up and go back to the beginning. The best thing, I decided, would be to go at least two more weeks on January's goals alone to make sure that I would keep doing them. Then, if I succeeded I could pick up a new goal. There were two things wrong with this:
1 - this thought process accepts the possibility of failure as an option. Bad.
2 - it pushed out February goals which killed the momentum of the process. Oh, why must I be so self defeating?

Needless to say the next two weeks spiraled out of control and resulted in all goals being missed and feelings of defeat abound. At one point I even decided that I should just forget January's goals all together and move right to February. This might have worked, had February's goals been anything other than what it was: Keep an upbeat and happy attitude - acting happy will result in happy. Great goal. Hard to execute when my issue was feeling down and blue. Still, I managed to hold onto it for 3 days. And then yesterday I bottomed out and not only did January's goals not materialize, but February's positive attitude came to a screeching halt in a firestorm of pissiness. Poor Justin.

Rebuilding
The nice thing about a bad day/week/month is that it always comes to an end. And, at every end, you have a new beginning. Today I will reclaim my ownership of all four goals. I WILL do it. And if I slip a little it won't be failure, it will be par for the course. I don't know why we are so hard on ourselves. I don’t know why we naturally slip into self defeating habits. I don’t know why we focus on our failures instead of our successes. I don’t know how to stop it from happening again … but I resolve to try.

Let's Make it Official:
And until further notice, the current goals are (drum roll please)

• I will eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day
• I will drink alcohol no more than twice a week and no more than four servings at a time
• I will eat dessert no more than once a day and no more than one serving at a time
• I will act happy even when I am not. I will look at things in life as positive opportunities instead of negative effects

And the forecast calls for ... more snow.

Richmond, as it turns out, has become a suburb of Boston, MA. What, that doesn't make sense to you? I guess it’s a bit of a stretch really, but if you look at the snowfall the Central Virginia area has gotten this winter then I think you'd get my point. It has been over 15 years since we have gotten two foot+ snows in one winter, and now we are looking at a third! Goodness help us all. Snow is pretty and all, really, it is. I used to love waking up the sound, or lack thereof, of freshly fallen snow. It's so peaceful, serene, and unblemished. And snow days from school where the bomb (back when that phrase wasn’t dated and old lady sounding)! Ah yes, when I was young, single and didn't have a herd of 2 and 4-legged children I used to be able to appreciate all that snow had to offer.

Now, not so much.

Nash is going insane with his lack of park trips: trust me, my boy needs his park trips. There are only so many ways we can find to entertain him within the same 400 sq ft. Last weekend I gave him a bath just to have something different to do, I even contemplated outing on a bathing suit and getting in with him to try and drag it out another 15-20 minutes (equal to 20-30 minutes with a temper tantrum … it would have been worth it). The whippets are utterly annoying after being sequestered "Are we going out now?! What about now!! If I bark, then can we go? What if I run up and down the hallway? Now!! What, I am not supposed to eat that?! You can't catch me! Weeee!!!" Stupid dogs. I won't even get into the horses. Haande still has snow "legwarmers" and I don’t dare contemplate how much poop is under all that snow since I haven't been able to muck out the runs in a week. Old, wet, poop. Yay. I will say, however, that watching him run around the paddock with the hay tarp because he had 3 days pent up energy and I couldn't get to the tarp before he did was humorous. "Look at meeeeeeeee!!!! Look what I can do!!!!" Harriet did not find this amusing, as she logically determined that he was actually trying to run her down and kill her with said tarp. It was a bad day for our little mule. One rarely escapes death without some harm to the sole. Yep, these days being snowed in sucks.

So, a natural choice would be to head out. Right? If there is anything worse than dealing with my crew in the snow its dealing with all the other humans, and their cars, in the snow. Yes, Richmonders turn into bumbling idiots when snow falls … didn't you know? While accepting the risk becoming a hypocrite let me just vent a few frustrations:

• People who drive well below the speed limit after the snow has melted: Dude, the road is DRY. You can go 45 mph and not explode into a massive fireball. Promise.
• People who drive like normal before the snow has been plowed/thawed: Uh, yea. Snow is slick. Didn't you know? No? Probably do now that you are in a ditch and I am stuck in a pile-up of people waiting to pass your dumb butt because half your car is still in the road. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
• People who don’t clean off the top of their car: Yes Mr. SUV owner, I absolutely wanted two garbage cans of snow dumped on my windshield while driving down the interstate. Thank you for sharing (sharing = being to lazy to finish the job right).
• People who come to a complete stop in the middle of their traffic lane because there is some residual snow that the plow didn't get: GO you fool! People will hit you! By people, I mean me.
• People with 4 wheel drive: having 4 wheel drive does nothing to help you when all 4 wheels are on ice. You're an idiot.

Of course, many of these excellent drivers are heading to the grocery store. Because everyone knows that if you are going to be stuck inside for a whole two days what you really need is 5 gallons of milk, 6 loaves of bread and enough canned food to recreate Jamestown. I had to fight for a half gallon of whole milk for Nash last week. It almost got ugly. I can't imagine what people actually do with all this milk, bread and canned peas. The mind reels. Do what I do … call out for pizza. Its entertainment and food all in a one-stop-shop.

Oh, I could go on for days but I will be kind and spare you. Just suffice it to say, I am terribly ready for summer (when I am complaining about the heat and people in short shorts please do not remind me of this posting - I won't be interested) but until that glorious time I will just continue to try and stay dry, mud free and keep the troops entertained. Punxsutawney Phil, you little bastard, you better be wrong.