Hello Again

Well. It has been awhile, hasn't it? I owe you some updates.

• Andrew taught Milo how to "raise the roof." It's pretty funny, but very fifteen years ago. What, are we going to teach him the Macarena next?
• Milo played in the sprinkler for the first time. He was a little cautious at first, but got into it after awhile. Video to come, maybe, if I get around to it.
  
• My five-year anniversary at Hallmark is in a couple days. Seems hard to believe that I've been at this company that long. Hallmark has so many people who have been here for 25 or 30 years, that to be here for only five is to still be considered new. I spent about a month in proofreading, then spent almost a year and a half in visual merchandising before moving to the books team, where I've been for almost three and a half years. Good times. Sometimes I wonder how many years I'll work at Hallmark. Will I retire from here? I have no idea, but I'm happy where I'm at for now.
• Sometimes I have incredible guilt over being a working mom. Scratch that. I often have incredible guilt over being a working mom. I see things that daycare does that are just not good enough, and I think, if I stayed home, Milo would have better. I don't really want to stay home with him, though. So instead I just cry sometimes and wallow in the guilt.
• Some days I really hate daycare. Some examples: 1) Now that Milo is eating at a table with the other kids, we basically quit sending lunch and snacks with him and just let him eat the daycare food (which is crappy). So we cross off the things on the menu that we don't want him to have, like pop-tarts, brownies, and honeybuns, among others. And then when I pick him up, I see that he was fed pop-tarts anyway. Apparently the teacher that remembers to check our crossed-off menu wasn't here yet. But seriously, why does a daycare feed one-year-olds pop-tarts and brownies IN THE SAME DAY anyway? Outrageous. 2) Milo's classroom plays outside every day. They have some kind of mulch out there, I guess. The other night, after Milo had been home for over an hour (and fussy the whole time) I took his shoes off and TONS OF MULCH FELL OUT. Little pieces of WOOD inside his SHOES, that were sandal-like, so he didn't even have SOCKS on. No wonder he was fussy. I would be too if I had been walking around with shrapnel in my shoes for hours on end. 3) When I got to daycare the other day, I noticed right away that Milo smelled like poo. His teacher asked if I wanted her to change him before we left, since it had been a couple hours since his last diaper change. I said, yes please. And as she cleaned him up, I stood there playing with Milo. And she was about to snap up the clean diaper, but I could still see SEVERAL LARGE PIECES OF MULCH around his groin. I said, would you please wipe those away before putting on the new diaper? She said, oh sure, I can do that. AS IF IT WERE UNREASONABLE TO ASK TO REMOVE THE CHUNKS OF WOOD FROM MY SON'S UNDERPANTS.
• We have a mile-long list of house projects, but it doesn't look like we're going to cross many of those projects off any time soon. Lack of money, lack of time, lack of Mark and Stan (they're tied up with Mark's house project). One of my goals for 2011 was to redecorate our bedroom. I've purchased some new bedding and some accessories, but I'm not sure new furniture is going to happen this year. I have to sell our current furniture first, anyway. If you or anyone you know is looking for an ebony-stained hardwood bedroom furniture set that includes a queen-sized bed, two nightstands, tall dresser, and a wide dresser with big square mirror, let me know. I'd probably be willing to make a deal.
• I just learned at work that my department is moving to a different location in the building. I'm going to miss my cube. I've got a narrow sliver of window (a rare commodity in this place). I'm against the wall so I never have any passersby. And because I'm against the back wall, I'm missing a cube wall, which gives me an extra eight inches or so of space. It'll be a sad day for me when we make the move. I hear it'll be sometime before August, so I'll just have to make the most of our last summer together.
• As you may have (but probably haven't) noticed in my "about me" sidebar, we are now a one-cat family. As you might recall, I had some major concerns about our cat Gary and her aggressive tendencies. Hoping to help her release some of her tension, we let her become an outdoor cat last fall. It went okay for awhile. But we put her outside on December 7, and I haven't seen her since. I remember the exact date, because it began snowing on my birthday, and I thought, I hope Gary's okay. She's been outside for four days now (longer than usual) and I don't know what she'll do in the cold and snow. Then on Christmas night, we left town to go to Colorado, and I worried that even if Gary tried to come back, we wouldn't be home to let her in. And then winter got more wintry, and at some point, I quit looking for her as I drove into the neighborhood. I have no idea what happened to her. Was she picked up by animal control? I don't think so, since she's microchipped and I think they would have contacted us. Did another family take her in and start feeding her? Probably not, since she would have peed on their floors and bitten their heads off. Was she injured, hit by a car, stuck in a tree, frozen in the snow? Makes me sad to think of it. I remember when we first got her, and she was such a tiny wiry kitten. I said to Andrew, I don't know how sad it will be when she's old and sick. She's my first pet, I can't imagine how I'll feel. But she never got to be old or sick. And honestly, I'm not really sad anymore. I look at Milo, and I know that if that cat had hurt him in any way, I would personally have driven her to the vet to never come home without thinking twice about it. So I guess it's all for the best. I just wish I knew what had happened to her.
• Zadie, meanwhile, our one and only cat, has been wonderful around Milo. She lets him pet her and chase her, and even when he threw himself on top of her, she didn't swat him or anything. She's a good cat. I think we'll keep her for awhile.