Blog Archives

Did I mention that Tony’s home! He’s actually home! Yippee! I know, I know, I should be used to the guy (15 years together this year…and our 9th anniversary coming up), but now that he’s started this new job, he’s traveling once a week. For now. Hopefully that won’t go on for too long. I think the cats are starting to forget who he is…

Kidding. Mostly. They are fickle little beasts.

He was in Chicago this week, Chicago again next week (or is it Toronto)? Then there’s going to be two more London trips and a bunch more Chicago trips. I think they’d really like us to move to Chicago/Deerfield, but this girl ain’t goin’ up there. Too cold. And too boring (in Deerfield, anyway) or too expensive (Chicago). There’s no way we could afford a house like the one we have here in Chicago.

• The little snort-y, snore-y noises that Grace makes when she is sleeping
• Harley lying (or is that laying?) on his back, his belly (and everything else) out for display, and a look on his face that says “I’m just adorable, aren’t I?”
• Puppies, especially when they tilt their heads to the side
• Johnson & Johnson’s baby shampoo (when I was 8, I thought it was the smell of my little sister, but I’ve since learned that it’s actually the baby shampoo that smells all of peach-y goodness)
• That sweet spot I sometimes hit when I’m cuddling with Tony and my head finds the perfect spot on his chest and his arms are around me and everything is just perfect
• Cake. I’d be more specific, but really, I just love cake
• Staring into a fire (but not in an arsonist kind of way, more like a moon-ey, romantic kind of thing)
• Little kids in big floppy hats
• Office supplies (yeah, yeah, I know, it’s a strange affliction, but at least my sister shares it — we’re both gaga over Staples and Office Depot)
• The ever-elusive perfect sentence — when all the words just come out right. If it happens on the first shot, so much the better.
• Did I mention cake?
• When someone gets what you’re writing about
• Taking off your socks and shoes after a long day
• A really ice cold glass of water when it is blazing hot outside
• Finding a chair that actually fits me and allows me to put my feet on the floor
• Tony’s morning hair
• Silly, sappy movies that end happy (yeah, yeah, I know The Piano was a good movie and Brokeback Mountain is good for me to see for my social awareness and whatnot, but give me an old Doris Day flick, darn it, I want to feel good about my entertainment sometimes)
• Re-reading an old favorite and discovering something new
• Cats purring
• Little kids playing Pee-wee football wearing those way-too-big uniforms and fumbling the ball all over the place
• Filing the last piece of paper away (could a genie please stop by my house and file all the rest? Pretty please?)
• Checking things off my list
• Typing (doesn’t even have to be anything specific, I really do just like to type. Hey, I never said I was normal. I miss my old manual typewriter. I called it George and the clickety-clack of it always relaxed me.)
• Napping on the couch with a cozy fuzzy blanket

I suppose that’s enough for now. I should actually be sleeping, but I’ve got that disease…you know, the one where I know Tony is coming home tomorrow so I just can’t seem to get to sleep no matter what I do.

So…tag. Kim P., Pam, Terry, Saundra…whoever’s reading. What makes you happy? (and if you’re someone I didn’t mention, and you’re actually going to post your list, please do leave a comment. I’d really like to know what makes you happy. The little things. Not the big ones.)

Well, I gotta say that Sarah Mlynowski just plain rocks! Besides being an awesome author with a wry wit, she’s also just an awesome person! I don’t want to jinx myself, so I won’t say any more, but everyone reading this — go buy Bras & Broomsticks! You won’t be sorry anyway. It’s a totally fun book.

In other news…

Tony is finally home and making dinner (he’s always on the go, that one). Tonight is cottage pie (or, kind of shephard’s pie, except we’re using hamburger…which makes it cottage pie, but I still like to call it shephard’s pie, I dunno why) and homemade biscuits. It’s his new thing — he’s trying to perfect them. Which means he’s on the phone with his mom, who learned how to make biscuits from his dad’s mom (Tony’s grandmother, if you’re following all this), who made the best biscuits ever (I’ve been told). He’s perfected his fried chicken (fitting, since we’re in Kentucky now), so he’s moved on to biscuits.

And…he’s going to make me a belated birthday cake tomorrow. Caramel. Have I mentioned lately how much I love this man?

So, I duly delivered Tony to the airport and he is on his way to Toronto (for a day, and then to Chicago, and then back home on Friday). Which means that it is 6:30ish and I’m internally debating about whether or not I just kind of want to go to sleep. Isn’t that sad? I had ramen noodles for dinner and I need to finish critiquing a manuscript and I need to start work on some code changes to the site and I need to…blah-de-blah-di-blah. But mostly I’m tired.

I’ll try at least and get some of the coding done. At this point, I think it would require the least thought. Maybe. Some of it.

Well, we’re all back from London now (you can read about our adventures on our family blog, if you like: The Pauley’s Go to Louisville) I called the Humane Society today to find out about the status of the sweet doggie — it seems they’ve given her back to her owner after all, who came and picked her back up and paid the vet bill off. So no sweet doggie for us.

Then I made the HUGE mistake of flipping through their website and looking at all the dogs they have up for adoption (and cats too, but we’ve already got two, there’s just no way). It’s enough to make you cry. I’m such a softie. I can’t walk into those places, I just get too depressed. You want to take all of them home and you just can’t.

So I don’t know. We might perhaps get a dog sometime – after all, Tony is a serious dog person and dogs seriously love him (all dogs, I don’t know what it is, but they gravitate to him). Now is a tough time, what with him taking on a new job and all the traveling he’s going to have to do. And we do already have the cats…it isn’t as if we need a dog in any way. I dunno. It’s just when they look at you with those eyes of theirs and their furry faces. It’s hard.

We were watching CNN and it was reported that, statistically speaking (and scientifically chosen), January 24th is the most depressing day of the year. My birthday.

Isn’t that peachy?

As if it weren’t bad enough getting older (not that I really mind all that much, at least, not yet), I have to do it on the most depressing day of the year.

How exactly do they determine such a thing anyway? “Excuse me, ma’am, we’re doing a little survey here. Exactly what day is it you feel the worst? You know, the kind of day where the dog has vomited all over the carpet, the kids are sick, and your husband’s in the living room yelling about the telly being broken? And your mother-in-law has just called to discuss coming over for a month visit. That kind of day.”

Oh well. I lead a charmed life.

Yesterday we had some drama…a dog was following Tony down the street and playing around and then ran across the street right as a car came down. Tony called me to help him out and I held the doggie on the sidewalk until Animal Control got there. Such a sweet dog — she was wagging her tail even as she lay there all bleeding and everything.

Well, I called today to find out how the dog was. Turns out it was a previously adopted dog from the Humane Society and it will not be going back to the previous owner — who is now claiming to have never even had the dog! The jerk. We gave them our number. It’s not like we exactly need a dog, but this was literally the sweetest dog ever. Just not sure how she would be with cats…

Some people should just not have pets. I think that is just terrible.

I have a dilemma. I gave all my old Sims stuff (version 1) to my niece and nephew and I was on the phone with my sister Lisa tonight as they were installing it and beginning to play. Ryan, of course, asked for some cheat codes. So I gave him the $$ one, arguably the most useful one (CTRL + SHIFT + C, then type in rosebud). He asked for some more codes (again, of course) and I did a quick internet search and e-mailed off two websites that had lists of the codes.

Then I started clicking around one of the websites I’d sent off. The guy is a plushie! Or a furry, or whatever you want to call those odd people who like to pretend they’re half animal and get it on with each other. Or whatever they do. I don’t really want to know. They kind of freak me out. I only know about them at all from watching one of those HBO shows late at night (and it was so freaky, I think we literally only watched part of it, looked at each other with a “uhhh” look, and turned it off). Now, I’m not a prude. And I firmly believe that people can do whatever the heck they want, as long as they aren’t hurting someone else. I just really wished I’d realized what was up with this particular dude before I sent the link off to my thirteen-year-old niece.

I’m not sure what to do. If I send another e-mail saying “Don’t go surfing around that guy’s site!” I know exactly what they’ll do. Shoot, I’d have done it too. And the “freaky” content is buried pretty well, it’s not something that they’d come across easily. They’d have to click around a lot and get way away from the Sims content the guy has. So it is probably okay, but still. Urgh.

My husband gives me structure and keeps me …well, not sane, but at least more anchored in the real world. Without him I’d forget to do the normal things, like go to bed at a reasonable hour and eat real food. I would live on cereal and pop tarts or make a cake and live off of that. Talk to my cats and forget to leave the house. Things like that. It’s not that I’m a freak, exactly…I’m just…preoccupied, I guess. Maybe my brain doesn’t work right.

I need to get back into some sort of normal schedule before he gets back from Toronto, instead of waking up at noon and going to sleep at who-knows-when. My big problem is that all my big ideas occur in the middle of the night when I’m supposed to be sleeping. And, strangely enough, that’s where all my get-up-and-go is too. In the wee hours.