Back in the Blogginghood: Part II

SECOND PART:

Things that HAVE changed:

* FLASH NEWS! Did I mention that I’m pregnant? WELL I AM!! I will be 4 months preggo next week… yay! I still don’t feel completely comfortable telling the world – no facebook/twitter/similars for sure! – I think it’s because it’s hard to believe right now when I’m not showing yet, I’m still in that ‘fat girl’ state where people see me as a little chubbier and not all of them know I’m pregnant. It sucks, because nothing fits me right, but I’m not ‘fat’ enough to wear maternity clothes. I’m stuck in between. Oh well, it will come soon enough I hope. And no, I still don’t know what I’m having – but YES, I will definitely find out. I don’t understand why people don’t want to find out, I still respect it but I don’t get it. I have some shopping to do and only 4 months after that! That’s so little time.

* I’m going to San Francisco next week! Wheee!!! Way excited about that, every time I leave town I get excited, even if it’s just to Salt Lake City (no, that was a lie, I do not like Salt Lake, ew). Correcting: I love every time I get out of town ON A PLANE. We’ll be there from the 9th thru the 14th and I’m hoping to do a lot of walking and a lot of photographing. Finally I’m going to start using my SLR camera!

* I have to renew my green card this year. And paperwork needs to be sent in two weeks. I’m excited about that too, because a year after that I could apply for citizenship and my mom will finally be able to come and visit me. Even more now with a grandkid on the way!

* I have more aches and pains. Not very often, but they exist. My back hurts, my uterus hurts (from growing and hanging – it cramps when I stand up too fast! It’s the ligaments holding the uterus, I guess it bounces/stretches faster if I stand up too fast… it’s kind of a funny feeling!).

* Days go by so slow if you look at it day by day but so fast if you look at it month by month! Soon enough, my little baby will be here… like for Thanksgiving, it will probably be born by then! (I hope so anyway, even though my due date is Nov 26, I hope it’s born before so I don’t miss Thanksgiving dinner! Yum!)

* I’m going to celebrate Mother’s/Father’s day next year! J did give me a little something for mother’s day and I’m planning on doing the same for him on that Sunday. I think we have begun on the parenthood thing already, I mean, I had to change my eating/drinking habits, my sleeping time, my sleeping positions, read a whole lot more and give up my beloved sushi and wine. And J, well, he has to put up with me and at the same time encourage me to be good. Plus we’ve been doing SO much reading… we have like 4 books about pregnancy (and counting) and he’s so good to me. He cooks healthy food for me and massages my back when it hurts. Maybe I should do another post about that, of all the things he does for me and why he’s already a good daddy. Oooooh! I’ll do it for Father’s day! Gosh, I’m so creative, I can’t get over myself.

* One of my very best friends is pregnant too! And she’s two weeks behind me… I think I’m having a girl and she thinks she’s having a boy. We have already decided they will be together, get married and have little kids. It’s going to be so perfect! She lives in California, so I hope we get together when our tummies start getting bigger and take some cute pics. It’s so exciting, we can talk about it all day and that way, we don’t make our other friends bored. It works perfectly!

I just realized pretty much everything on this list is pregnancy/baby-related. I hope I don’t become one of those moms-to-be that only talks about babies 24/7.  Please spank me if I do! Even if I’m pregnant I still have a life (or should have one anyways) So I should start thinking about other things to blog about. I know I have some topics but I can’t think of them right now, I’m in baby mode, geez.

I have tried to keep up with my favorite blogs, but if I miss something big, would you remind me? I think everybody is ok and with the normal ups and downs of life, right? I hope everyone is healthy, with a job, and happy.

Will be blogging again after my trip to San Fran! (hopefully sooner )

Happy Wednesday!

Back in the Blogginghood: Part I

I’m baaaack!

Not sure if I’ll be posting everyday as I used to but it’s good to have some time to blog. I have had a pretty interesting life lately, full of little details and mostly happy things so this post ended up being super long – I know I know. You’re not ready to read too much on a Tuesday are you? For your own sake, I’m cutting this post in two parts, so you don’t fall asleep by your computer.

See? I’m still nice!

Shall we begin?

Things that have NOT changed:

* I still have a job. That’s always good right? Except that we have been extra busy, our company is expanding and we have had more paperwork to do… more people to deal with, and I haven’t been as patient as I used to be. Well, I guess I have never been too patient, so go figure.

* I’m still married. My poor hubby has been very nice to me, even though I have been the bitchiest bitch in the world. He’s been patient, he’s listened to my venting, my bitching, my yelling and my complaining about random things like work, traffic, food, tummy aches, etc. Gosh, I would not marry myself if I were him, seriously. I can’t comprehend her vast and unlimited supply of patience… I’m a lucky wifey.

* I still have friends. I haven’t been hanging out with my girlies for a while, everyone has been on vacation or working super hard. I miss them very much and still talk with them on the phone, but still. It’s not the same if we don’t get together for the gossiping catching up.

* I still love my iPhone. And each day I love it even more. Next to my 401k, it’s one of the best investments I have made last year. Just to mention a few of my newly added applications are Slacker Radio, GoSkyWatch (expensive but worth it), Live Poker (also an app on Facebook!), Penguin, my adored Bejeweled, DoodleJump, FlickFishing and of course, Bookworm. This last one you HAVE to get it if you own an iPhone. It’s just completely addicting.

* I still want to go home (Peru) but I still can’t afford it. Yep. That’s the saddest truth. Makes me so sad I don’t even want to think about it.

* I’m still healthy! Hey, I can’t complain too much as long as I’m healthy, right? And I have one strong inmmunity system. I think it’s all that expired crap I eat. I’m immune to crap because it’s part of me he he What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!

* I still love my boss. I’m one of those rare people that completely hits it off with their bosses. Now even more after she left me to take a 10-day vacation last month and I thought it was my end. I always vent /bitch with her and when I go home I’m sane and normal. But when she was gone I was a mess. I would go home and talk about work ALL FREAKING DAY. Poor J had to stop me at some point because we would only talk about drama at work. The next minute I realized that I really missed her and how much she means to me. I cried a little and hoped she doesn’t like Hawaii too much and decides to stay there. She did come back and I’m back to normal mood now!

* Penny is still the best puppy ever. She has learned new tricks, I’m such a proud mama. I’m still trying to teach her to wipe her paws on the mat but she doesn’t get it. If you have tried and and have any tips, do tell me. The one thing that I hate from her is that she still barks when someone rings my bell or knocks at my door and she still gets super defensive when other dogs come around to smell her. She automatically thinks they’re attacking or something because she starts growling really quietly. I’ve learned to read her signs like the hair behind her neck starting to spike up, or she staring at the other dog’s eyes without moving. After I see that I just pull her away because the next thing that could happen is that she could start barking or even snap at the other poor doggie and scare it. I don’t know what else to do, I think it’s hopeless.

* I still don’t own a house. Just a little one bedroom condo. It’s ok for now but I wish I could afford a house with a nice yard. Maybe if I move out of Park City I could afford a nice 5 bedroom house in a little town in Texas or Minessotta or somewhere in the middle of nowhere where real estate is cheaper. But then again, I wouldn’t have this job that allows me to afford my little –way too expensive – condo. It’s a dead end. Sigh.

* I still haven’t mailed out my Pay It Forwards. I SUCK, I’m so sorry, I have been slacking so bad. I do hope that they will be going out soon. (didn’t  I say that last time? Gosh. I really suck at excuses too.)

My second part will be coming tomorrow!

I have missed you guys

I fell off from the face of the planet

Note: I wrote this about a month ago and then forgot to post it… Duh! I’m spacey hehe I should be back with more blogging soon – fingers crossed.

I am alive, just with no motivation whatsoever to get back to the blooging world in a regular basis.

Work is busy.

Life is complicated and full of little details that I ignore / overanalyze and then regret that I ignored them / overanalyzed them too much.

Just to confirm it one more time, some ‘friends’ are there just to use you and there’s nothing you do / didn’t do to deserve it. It’s just the way it goes. However that makes me appreciate my real friends way more.

Love is blind, deaf and stupid. That’s the only way I can explain that J is still sticking around. I’m not being extra ’special’ this days, but I sometimes wonder when is he going to get tired of his bitchy, bossy, moody wifey. Sigh.

Money sucks. Whoever invented it, please know I FREAKING HATE YOU. I would have been fine with the trading of goods.

Family is very missed. Even more when I’m sick (I’m not but I was, had sore throat). I hope I get to visit them this year… we’ll see how it goes (’it’: aka money).

Hope all my very missed bloggy friends are doing great!

Pay it forward II

Thanks to everyone for all the comments! The three girls I’m going to Pay It Forward are:

Sleepy Jane

Libby

Rachie

I’ll be needing your mailing addresses so I can send my little gifts (hopefully) this week, just email me at melissavanilla at gmail dot com  – I still don’t know what to get but I’ll work something out any ideas?

I also googled ‘Pay it Forward’ to see if I could find a cool picture for this post and I found the one above and an icon that I borrowed from this blog:

Isn’t it so pretty? I think we could put it in our blogs as a symbol that we were part of this played along, you should grab it, Ria!

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BTW, I’ll be off work tomorrow because… IT’S OUR SECOND WEDDING ANNIVERSARY! J and I would be hanging out – still not sure doing what – all day and I might not post anything but I’ll be catching up with my Reader later!

Happy Monday

Happy Birthday, Penny!

Today is Penny’s second birthday.  We were going to make a cake like last year but we got a little lazy, plus we were sure she would enjoy a bone more! When I look at her now, it’s amazing to see how much she’s grown. However, she still has that cute puppy look on her face.

She was so shy when she was little. The day we adopted her she wouldn’t even come closer to us. Poor thing, I think she was just handled by little kids (like 3 year-olds) and she didn’t enjoy being lifted up. She used to whine every night (for at least the first week) in her crate. We chose to do the crate training and I personally think it is awesome. It did break my heart to hear her cry every night and I just wanted to put her in bed with us and cuddle with her but we knew it needed to be done, otherwise she would be even more spoiled than she is now.

She loves snow and fetching, but more than anything else, she loves her frisbee. She would play with it for hours until she has a heart attack or something. She likes to stand by the door when she needs to potty. She learned to sit and lay down before she was 6 months old. She learned how to shake and high five before she was 8 months old. She learned to roll over a month later. We run out of tricks to teach her by then! Such a smartypants. We also taught her to play dead, speak, talk and dance. Then we did the put-the-treat-on-the-nose trick, and I started wondering if I teach her commands with Spanish words… would she still get it? Well, she does. I taught her ‘agua’ (water) and she knows I mean go drink some water. It’s so amazing to realize how smart a dog can be. A dog or any trained animal, she just doesn’t stop amazing me. I’m such a proud mama

Her first birthay, Feb 26, 2008

I think she has stopped growing now (phew!) and has calmed down a lot, although she still has a lot of puppy energy left (dang it).

Thanks for putting up with me while I make you do silly things!

You’re such a good girl, Penny! Mommy and Daddy love you very much and our lives wouldn’t be the same without you, even after you peed on my bed at midnight, even if you chewed and ate most of my chapsticks, even if you growl at me when I get near your favorite bone. I still love you.

I kinda miss Blogger today

One thing that sucks from WordPress is that it’s harder to look at your stats. Or more like, impossible. When I was using Blogger I was able to see my keyword analysis, my entry and exit pages, browser locations and just in general every single detail. Now I can’t access that – unless I buy a domain, which I find a little useless for me since I’m not big at design and all that smart stuff (or should I say the truth and embrace my lazy self?). I barely have time to post little nothingnesses anyway.

Now that I’m back I went to check my stats at StatCounter. I still have my older Blogger blog included so I went to check out how my keyword analysis was lately. Here’s a few interesting things (oh my, how do i love bullets):

• Most searched (and found): Peru’s dos and don’ts
• Funniest: How many continents are there in Peru
  
• ‘What?!’: Body worlds embryos how did they get them 4 weeks – yea, good question. Good luck with that one!
• Second place for ‘What?’: Butt dust to get high
  
• Most random: Somebody that doesn’t like kisses

I can’t imagine what I would find if Statcounter had access to my statistics on WP…

Have you found anything weird on your stats lately? Any other stats and visitor reporting program as good as StatCounter or better out there?

Pay it forward

Ria posted something about this a little while ago and I got my little present right after that. I didn’t even get a chance to take a picture or anything because J eat it right away.

Men. Always starving. How can they go through life like that?

I got my Mike and Ike’s in the cutest little bag… I should take a picture of that now that I think about it. I just have to fund that bag. I think it’s somewhere on the bookshelf where we leave the mail. Yep, I can see it from where I ‘m sitting right now, but I’m too lazy to go over there, snap a photo, download it and post it. I will brag about it later and update this post then It’s kind of late for a convalescent to still be up anyway, if that can count as an – lame – excuse.

I will be giving away 3 little presents, nothing huge – ahem! please do not expect an ipod or a camera – but sent with much love and with the only intent to put a smile on your face. And that way, you’ll think of me for a tiny second and that will be enough to make me happy

So there! Comment away, my friends. I will randomly select 3 comments and will be posting the results on Monday… this is so exciting! I love giving presents… time to go shopping (once again)!

Long time no see!

OMG! I have so many things going on right now I don’t know where to start.

Let’s see… where should I start the catching up? I’m going to go ahead and start with my side (a.k.a. my life so far) and I’ll leave the reading for tomorrow, since I just checked my Google Reader and there are a little over 1000 posts to read. Yea, one thousand posts. I have to confess I had to click on mark all as read to a few groups (see, I have my favorite blogs, my cooking & recipes blogs,  my new blogs (new blogs I found and they’re starting to grow on me), my shopping blogs and a few other groups. Well, I marked everything as read except for my favorite blogs. It came down to 400, and I’m going to start reading them and commenting this week (finally!) I’m looking forward to knowing how your lives are going

Anyways, here’s a few updates on mine:

Did I mention…

- that I was slowly dying about a two weeks ago and that’s why probably I didn’t even have enough energy to go home, turn on my laptop and post a little something for you guys? Yes, seriously! There was a (very small) ‘leakage’ of carbon monoxide in our office. I guess not enough to kill us but enough to make us all sleepy and tired. Then again, I don’t know if that was my normal self – being tired and sleepy – or if it was the actual poisoning. Who knows. We’re back to normal now (I hope).

- that I’m (again) being monitored at work on internet usage? (Or else I feel that way anyway… I’m paranoid! – Will that be a side effect from the carbon monoxide thing too? Bleh.) I can check email and browse the internet but the real question is: …should i? would THEY know? can someone get fired for using the internet for too long? am I being productive enough? Should I concentrate on working or should I change my Facebook status? What’s more important? Very hard decisions, you know.

- That my car is back to life? Yes, my jeepie has more lives than a cat (an American cat, if I may say so) and after a nice – $2500 – treat he is back on the streets and roaring again. It sounds more alive now with a new transmission. The plan is still to sell it ASAP – I haven’t checked with Jeremy to see if his feelings for the jeep have changed… you know, boys become very attached to their cars – and go see what kind of car can we get for $5000 at the end of the winter season. Hopefully a newer one.

- That my boss in on Facebook now? Dang it, now I can’t talk shit about work anymore… yea right, like I ever talk about work on Facebook or here. Not likely! I self-censor enough to know better than that. Plus working in Human Resources and all… I know it wouldn’t be a good idea. Although that doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t have anything to say about it – believe me, I HAVE PLENTY. Maybe I’ll create a more anonymous blog to vent just about work. (some time, if I have the guts – I think I vent enough with J, though)

- That I got my little pay-it-forward from Ria??? Because I did! I got a box of Mike and Ike’s on the mail about 10 days ago. THANKS! I’m so sorry I’m such a procrastinator… I haven’t mentioned anything or said thanks but that made my day! (and Jeremy’s too because he ate it all in the five minutes… does that count as one extra pay-it-forward?) I have to do a special post for that.

- That I got new skis?

- That J and I will be celebrating our anniversary next week? And Penny’s second birthday on Thursday? Nothing crazy – we’re broke – but we’re together and happy And that’s what counts!

- That Amazing Race, Survivor and Lost are addicting? I’m so into those shows.

- That I saw the Shopaholic movie on Valentines? It was entertaining and better than I expected it to be, but it was definitely not the best movie, and not like the book AT ALL. At least it was better than Twilight.

- That I have a cold and a very sore throat? It sucks to be sick. Even more in the mornings as I wake up and at nights. During the day  do fine – get distracted at work – but when I get home I just sulk. But I think I’m entitled to do so!

I think this post is getting too big, so I might chop it down and split it in a few other posts. How have you guys been? I’ll go stalk your blogs now!

It’s good to be back

Forward Friday: I want to go to the dentist too

Thanks for all your comments guys!

Have a great weekend

Catching up!

So my jeep broke down and is now at the shop. The transmission was bad and needed to be replaced / rebuilt and that’s 2400 freaking dollars coming right out of our vacation savings.

I guess what I’m saying is that we’re not going on a cruise trip anymore   I’m so fucking pissed! J -jokingly – said I jinxed it by telling you guys about it and of course, after I said it to whole the world (a.k.a. my 10 readers) it just won’t happen.

First thing we did was have our taxes done and see if we can afford a newer car. Well, we just got enough to have the jeep fixed and I know some of you are wondering why in hell didn’t I just get a new car! We thought about it but we know our jeep and it’s pretty reliable. If you get a ‘new’ car for $3000, you just don’t know what you’re getting into. It could be just fine or it could break in two months, you just won’t know. With the jeep, we think we could get a couple of years out of it, or we can sell it, or we can give it as a down payment  for a nicer car. Haha it just seems like I’m still trying to convince myself that we’re doing the right thing… can you tell? I was not keen of the idea of fixing it (I want a new car!) but J convinced me. Oh well, let’s hope it all works out.

(For the record, if it doesn’t it’s all J’s fault and he will be getting shit from me for a long looong time…)

On a different note… I got my new skis! They arrived on Monday and we put the bindings and everything else on (is there anything else besides the bindings that go on the ski?? IDK.) I haven’t used them yet – I’m really nervous because they’re longer than my other kiddie skis… I’m going to fall! And since the snow is not so great now I might wait for the weekend, I think we’re getting some snow on Friday, yay! I might also try snowboarding this weekend (any tips, Ria?)… really exciting!

I also realized my (not so) little Penny is celebrating her second birthday this month! I can’t believe she’s almost two years old, she still looks like a pup to me. Her real birthday (which I got from the place we adopted her from) is February 26, so for that celebration I’m going to post pictures of her since she was little until now. I know, I know – I already post way too many pictures of her, but what can I do, I such a proud mama

It feels good to be back girls! I still need to catch up on my comments and GReader, I’ve been reading a little from work but not a whole lot so I have A LOT to catch up on!

Again, it feels good to be back! I’ve missed you guys