I Remember It!

Chances are slim anyone will read this, so I'll make it short. I am highly against pictures being part of my great literary pieces, because where there are pictures, readers rarely stay. I know this, because I don't really like to read very much and always liked the books "with pictures."

Anyway, if you've made it this far, the above picture is of course of thomas when he was almost a month old. He turned 1 the other day, and I was the first person to greet him on his birthday. I remember August 7th, it was the longest day of my almost 27 year old life. Thomas is at least triple the size in that picture now. But not much has changed, he still glares holes into people like he's doing to me in the picture, and he rarely loses at the blink game..except to me of course, because I've forgotten how to lose at that game.

I don't like to be very personal on "public available material" because I believe it destroys all things special. For instance, why do you think vip rooms aren't open to "everyone?" It wouldn't be vip anymore if it were. While trying to give credit to t-rex, without de-specializing his achievement of a year old, I've carefully come up with the following statement:

happy birthday thomas. -love dad.

it had to be done.

Gym.

Lately I've been feeling flabby and out of shape.  To be honest, I've never been particularly physically fit.  I think I hit my peak during middle school through daily PE classes.  Embarrassing, I know.  However, I've always felt comfortable with my clothing sizes, and I've always been able to do the things I wanted to do, so I never worried about it...until pregnancy hit me.

Pregnancy took what few muscles I had and withered them away.  My strength and stamina have also been depleted.  I wince when I see what's left of my once smooth and relatively flat belly in the mirror.  Dieting has gotten me back to my pre-pregnancy weight range, but it's done nothing for the rest of the problem.

After a lot of pondering, I decided to try to join a gym and workout on a regular basis.  Unfortunately there were several conflicts.  First, a gym membership didn't seem to fit into our monthly budget.  After a LOT of research, I discovered one that fits into the budget--problem solved.  Second, I'm not comfortable leaving Thomas with the gym babysitter people.  To solve this problem, I delved into my Walker roots finally found the benefit of being a morning person--I can go to the gym at 6 am, which means that Jake is home with the T-Rex. 

The third conflict I just recently discovered:  I can hardly walk after going to the gym for the past 2 days, and taking care of a baby is difficult while limping around the house.  Jake assures me that my soreness will eventually go away, but I'm doubtful.

The fourth and final conflict has to do with the fact that I don't know what I am doing.  I've been using the elliptical for the past couple of days, but I could use some advice from anyone who actually knows how to get into shape--what kinds of machines can I use to flatten my belly?  I don't like crunches...they hurt my shoulders.  What things should I do in order to get a well-rounded workout?

Thomas was definitely worth the havoc pregnancy wrought on my body, but he's not getting any siblings until I get things back under control!

Not on the List

If you haven't figured out from my 1st entry, I enjoy a good tip toe to the edge of controversy. Some have come up with names for this, see also: pot stirrer, cage rattler, or boat rocker. Let me tell you about one of the ways I drive Brittany to the edge...I call it "the List."

In an effort to be financially secure, I named Brittany the family clerk, and I of course was forced into a Governing role of Overseer of all things financial, which for the record I accepted reluctantly. We held a vote one night when Thomas couldn't sleep, I was nominated for the position, Brittany elected to be asleep, and Thomas voted for me, how could I say no and let down the little guy?

As Overseer of $, I developed what has famously been known as: "the List." You see, when we go to the grocery store, we bring "the List," and of course it has the items we intend to purchase. If you see an item you want that's not on the List, you have 2 choices: A. You can purchase the item, but you must substitute it for something that was on the List, B. You don't get it, and put it on next week's List. I personally like option A, but for some financial clerks, they want to create an option C (a dangerous option), this option allows you  to make an impulse buy with hopes you don't bust the budget. As $ Overseer, I do not endorse this option.

At times Brittany is tempted to create option C, but luckily I have been there to simply deny such purchases with the beautiful phrase, "Not on the List." This practice is a sure way to get you suspended from Grocery Store visits, which financial clerks somehow fell into power of having correctional action authority of $ Generals (not to be confused with the popular chain "Dollar General," to learn more about Dollar General click Here (make a List before you go!)

Poll: What would bother you most?

A. Your spouse takes a shower 1st in the morning, uses all the hot water and leaves puddles of water on the bathroom floor.

B. Your spouse or roommate Invites a group of people over to your house and mentions it to you 5 minutes before they arrive.

C. You wait in line at the DMV and when it's finally your turn, you are informed they only take checks, and your check book has been removed from your purse/man bag or car and you have to go home and then go back to wait in line at, the DMV.

D. The Power Company confuses your Address with your neighbor's and turns you power off at 5 on friday in the heat of Summer, a guaranteed full weekend without a/c.

The photo below was just after the inaugural celebration of my financial Overseer election...

Laundry.

Out of all the household chores, laundry made the top of my hate-list for years.  When I was single and on my own, I would procrastinate for weeks.  I would usually do laundry once a month--by the end of the month, I would be wearing clothes from high school, which were not cute, but I consoled myself with the fact that I could go another day without worrying about the dreaded laundry.

Marriage did not change my loathing of washing and drying and folding clothes.  Unfortunately, I found that marriage somehow tripled the amount of laundry I had to do.  I found myself doing it every other week and glaring daggers at my husband as he heaped dirty clothes onto the already mountainous piles.

On top of all that, somehow Jake's clothes were always wrinkled and I didn't know how to iron.  (I could turn the thing on and press it to the fabric, but I always managed to create more wrinkles in the process of ironing.)  Under the tutelage of my husband, I can now iron, but let's face it, I'd rather not.

I thought I knew what laundry was.  I thought marriage was a laundry death sentence.  Then, Thomas came along (a year ago tomorrow btw), and rocked my laundry world.  You don't know laundry until your breastfed baby has 6 blow-out diapers in one day!  I was doing a load of laundry everyday (if I was disciplined about it).  It was misery.

It all changed when Thomas learned how to crawl.  One day I loaded my dry clothes into a laundry basket and dragged it into Thomas' bedroom to fold.  I sat down on the floor and he crawled over, excited for the new "toy" I had brought to him.  He grabbed hold of the basket, pulled up to a standing position and proceeded to "help" me fold the clothes.  (He took out an article of clothing, gave it a taste, and tossed it aside in favor of grabbing another.)

I loved my little helper.  It made me smile to look over at him, so intently focused on trying to copy my motions.  Laundry doesn't seem so bad with a little T-Rex by my side :)

trouble vs saint

When I was in 1st grade I got in trouble with the teacher because I talked out of turn and said the word, "stupid." An ordinary kid wouldn't have gotten in trouble, but I was the class angel so I got the hammer laid on me, to this day I am still frightened Mrs. Crocker will call my mom and tell on me, I never found out if she did or not.

One of the big "no-no's" when I was in 1st Grade was not bringing back your signed Report Card after your teacher had sent you home with it, now I imagine there's an activist group for report card privacy and one who gets offended for having report card privacy activist groups, but in 1991 neither group existed, and I was a part of the poor 6 year olds who faced the wrath of an angered parent for bad grades.

In my class that year, was a boy named Robert, I'll omit his last name for his sake (you never know, he may be 6'6" and 350 lbs of raw muscle, and I don't want to make any enemies of that size). Robert was bad, he was always trouble, it wouldn't surprise me if as a 1st grader he already had mustache hair or a tattoo. Well guess who didn't turn his report card in? You guessed it, Robert. Guess how we found out? About 4 months later he brought his unsigned report card back to the teacher and mentioned he'd found it and remembered he was supposed to give it back.

Had I not turned in my report card the very next day, I would have likely been locked up, but because bad Robert turned his in at all, it was "no harm, no foul."

Since the days of the 1st grade angel child I've learned a thing or 2, and not how to spell big words or do math with letters in it. The guy who's always in trouble gets praised for doing anything right and receives no penalty for his constant misbehavior, and "perfect one" suffers death row if a hair is found out place.

20 years later I would have never expected to be living with a school teacher, but that's right, I married one. Brittany, before she retired, used to come home and complain about "bad kids" and I could only wonder, "Am I a Bad Kid?" or "A Saint?"

Throughout the next series of posts, I'll highlight several stories from the life of jake, brittany, and the t-rex, and you can decide for yourselves. But keep this question in mind:

Who's road is easier, the trouble maker or perfectionist?

Hobbies.

Jake and I decided that we needed a new hobby.  We've played so many games of Skip-bo that we lost count of the score.  I'm pretty sure I was beating him...the score was probably something like 273 to 35.  Skip-bo lost its appeal, and so we wracked our brains for new hobbies and came up with nethin (as Jake would say).

Being the brains of this operation, I took our question to google.  I typed in, "Inexpensive hobbies for couples" and found this awesome website:  http://hobbiesforcouples.com/.  We briefly considered becoming videogamers.  We even thought about trying our hand at extreme couponing--woah.  However, we came to the conclusion that a family blog might be in order.  We both like to write.  So here we go...we'll try anything...we're very adventurous.