Oh, Ye of Little Faith

Mom poked fun at me about Thursday night, and just in case you are a doubter, I must tell you that yes, Thursday night did include some free food. Isn't that just a given these days? :) And here's why...

My gig as cheerleading sponsor is up, but I get to reap the benefits of the pay through the rest of my paychecks, which is nice. With all this free time on my hands, I wasn't sure what to do, but I knew I needed to find a job so that we can gain some momentum with our debt snowball and start a diaper fund. Well, a friend of mine from church is engaged to the assistant director of the Sylvan Learning Center here in Auburn and when they were here playing Settlers of Catan on New Year's Eve, he mentioned that they are looking for people who can do higher math. Hey! That's me! Believe it or not, most teachers don't feel comfortable teaching math past the sixth grade level. So, I put in my application and resume' and followed up. Now, instead of doing basketball two nights a week, I'm working at Sylvan two nights a week. It doesn't pay as much as private tutoring by any means, but it does offer more hours and...

FREE FOOD.

Yes, that's right. They have bottled water and snacks available for the teachers. Every day. I had been thinking that I would have to grab something to eat after school to make it through the evening, so imagine my surprise when they had some for us. Free food is a beautiful thing.

Some other good things? This is a job where I don't have to stand up (as I would have if I were waiting tables). And Sylvan is the next building down the street from our apartment complex. So, it takes four minutes to get door-to-door, including walking time from the car. I will never again miss a 7 o'clock episode of NCIS. Haha.

Also, on the free food front, I have probably already mentioned that I prefer walking my car insurance payment into the office instead of mailing it in because it saves money (it's on the way to and from work) and because they always have cookies. The cookies are the big draw. Well yesterday I walked into the office at 4:56 p.m. and they close at 5. I apologized profusely for being so late, that I just needed to make a payment. They were very gracious. On my way out I looked in the bucket for a cookie, but was not surprised that since it was the end of the day/week, that the cookies were gone. But, Heidi, my agent rep, noticed and asked if I wanted a cookie. I nodded, and it was then that she said, "Oh my gosh! Are you pregnant?" My jacket was zipped up, so it can be hard to tell... She went back to the kitchen and brought back all the rest of the cookies (6) for me to take home. Aah. A charmed life.

And now for something completely different:

Today is the last day of hunting season, so of course, my lil' hunter is out in the woods. I am having people over this afternoon to make cards, as I may have mentioned before. I have more people than I have chairs. I think I erred on the side of too many invitations hoping that someone would show up, and didn't anticipate that everyone would come (except for 2). I had a card party in Tuscaloosa and only one person showed up. This time, I have 6 chairs and, oh, about 14 people. :) Haha. Not sure what I'm going to do. Preacher's wife may be bringing some chairs. And everyone is bringing snacks (free food!) to share since I'm providing the crafty stuff. Okay, so I guess not an entirely different subject. Except that...

After Eli got up this morning to go hunting, baby girl was crazy active. It's still a very weird feeling. Which reminded me of the conversation that Eli and I had over dinner last night. He told me that he never really had an opinion about when life started (because he just didn't know), but knew that abortion was bad. He said he knows now, and that for him, there is no question anymore, that our baby was a new life the minute she had her own DNA. That made me happy to hear. This isn't one of those topics that we've discussed before. I had, however, shared with him my dismay when hearing stories about couples who decided they didn't want children so, in one particular case, had three abortions. Then, years later, they changed their mind and couldn't get pregnant, so were undergoing in vitro. His response was similar to mine. That's all I knew about his opinions (I know--we've been married almost six years).

I told him last night about that anti-abortion pamphlet that used to scare the hooey out of me growing up, and is probably still somewhere in my parents' house, stuck in a book somewhere. I distinctly remember the picture of the person holding a baby by the feet, the baby's feet were as big as their pinky nail, making the thumb and forefinger look huge. I told him that that picture is the one that convinced me where life begins.

Anyway. Time to get my house clean before the mob arrives. Thanks for reading. Happy Saturday!

Punch Brothers

Another long day. And it was another computer lab day, go figure. These days are supposed to be easy, but getting my students to actually use their brains and think about something is as easy as pulling teeth. When we're in the computer lab, they just want to play games. Um, no. That's not in my curriculum. And I'm sorry that you feel I'm so mean because I actually expect you to work (or, God forbid, use your brain!). Enough of that.

I left right after school to get to Sylvan for my second day on the job. I observed the first hour, and jumped in the second and third hours. It's all coming back to me pretty quickly.

And then, the highlight of the evening, Eli and I went to a bluegrass (?) concert: The Punch Brothers. All young guys, all extremely talented. An updated version of old folks music. It's no coincidence that the Opelika Arts Association, which is endowed by all the gray hairs in Opelika, put this particular act into their subscribers' season. We naturally pigmented folk were outnumbered by the silver foxes by about, oh, 50 to 1. The judge's wife called around to everyone she knows and collected tickets from people who weren't planning to go--and then she gave them out to people who wanted to go but couldn't/wouldn't pay full price. So, we got free tickets. I had looked into this before, but they were too expensive--about $40 a pop--so this was a nice surprise.

And now it's bedtime. I'm very thankful that tomorrow is Friday. Not as thankful that Eli is leaving me to go hunting...again, but thankful that it's the last weekend in hunting season. :)

G'night.

Swagbucks, etc.

Okay, I'll start with this: I'm alive. And I'm back to about 75%, but my stomach is no longer made of steel. It's more...pewter? I'm trying to be very careful.

Now, have you heard of Swagbucks? My friend Misty has been amazing lately finding all these deals online, spending time researching ways to save money. She first introduced me to Swagbucks a couple of weeks ago. It's a search engine that uses both Google and Yahoo. And every so often, when you search, you earn a random Swagbuck or three. You can save your Swagbucks up and redeem them for gift cards, etc. Anyway, I downloaded the Swagbucks toolbar onto my school computer, and anytime I need to find something, I just plug it in. You don't win bucks on every search, and as far as I can tell you really only win once per day, but it doesn't take very much to win. Anyway, if this is something that sounds interesting, brainless, and easy...it is. If you want to sign up, use any of my shameless links in the preceding paragraph so that I can get some referral credit. I am now done with this shameless plug. (Thanks, Misty!)




And back to real life...tonight were the last basketball games of the season, and therefore the last cheerleading gig of the season. It is done. Hooray! Now, I probably have to look forward to organizing try-outs for next year, but that will be easy enough.

And Mom--my card came in the mail. And it wasn't addressed to Erin "Mush Brain" Beaver like you said it would be. :) (Thanks!)

Anyway, this is a busy week. I'll write more later and tell you about my new job at Sylvan and everything else that is going on. For now, I must remedy this monster heartburn and get some sleep.

Cheers!

Ill

I'm sick. Sick like I haven't been in the nearly 8.5 years Eli and I have been together. I would definitely remember something like this.

Eli, who is never sick, came home from work sick at lunch on Wednesday and then took Thursday off to be close to his commode of choice. I was doing fine, glad for my good immune system, until 5:30 this morning when I woke up and had to make a mad dash for the bathroom. Strangely enough, Eli also had to make a mad dash to the other bathroom about 2 minutes later, so I'm glad that we are in a 2-bath apartment, or it could have been ugly. Thankfully he has been spared the nausea.

I haven't eaten anything all day because I can't keep it down. And if I could keep it down, I wouldn't be able to keep it in, if you know what I mean. I have been able to feel baby move around, so that's comforting mostly--she doesn't know what's going on, but does probably know that I'm dehydrated. At other times, she's kicking and I'm thinking don't do that or I'll be sorry...and I have been.

I'm already making tentative plans to skip work tomorrow...we'll see how I'm feeling around 6 o'clock tonight. If I don't go, this will be the first time I missed work on a sick day and was actually sick.

Eli just got back from the drug store with some Pedialyte and ginger ale. I think I'll drink some of that and then see if I can keep down some plain toast. Ugh.

Crafty Kiddos

I posted a few days ago about how my sisters and I were crafty kiddos, remember? Mom had this box of stuff that we used to make anything and everything for our imaginary play (We even had thread spools--really, who has thread spools in their craft box these days? Few people sew anymore...).

Well, my friend Misty posted a link to a free photo book online (expired, sorry) and I decided that I was going to search to find all the pictures I could of both Eli and me to publish into a book. Sounds vain, I know, but if you've ever been to our apartments in the nearly 6 years since we've been married, you'd know that we don't put pictures of ourselves up. This apartment is the exception because Eli didn't take his wedding photo to work, so it's sitting on top of the TV cabinet. That's a fluke. So, essentially, our photos are in boxes...somewhere. Well, on the hunt for these photos, I came across a stash of photos from my childhood, and one in particular that I thought would nicely illustrate my earlier assertion about our craftiness...



Yes. That's me around 5 years old, and my Cabbage Patch, Lilly, back when she was clean. I wrote on the back, "1984 Basement of house in Rochester, New York".

I remember making these pig faces out of paper cups. Hula skirts out of grocery sacks. Airplanes out of cardboard boxes.

Charmed.