Loving Andy as the new regional manager

Guest post written by Michelle Fall

At first when Andy came on the show The Office, I was not a fan of his. He was just some annoying guy who clearly never matured past the age of 18. But he has really grown on me since then and has basically become my favorite character. Now that Michael Scott is gone from The Office, he is my favorite current character. So to me, it was only appropriate that he be Michael's replacement as the regional manager.

I did not expect that to happen, though. I looked online a lot before the new season premiere to find some spoilers about who the new boss would be and while i was online looking, I ran across some info on internet providers. I read about it some and after that I decided to change over my apartment's internet service to it.

My highlight of Andy being the new regional manager right now is the bet that he made about getting a tattoo. I cannot believe that he even went through with getting it! Just another reason that I love his character.

Testing my resolve

This year, I decided to go simple with my New Year's Resolutions.  No insane, unattainable goals (run a marathon in June!  lose 50 pounds!), but simple things, like start counting calories again, exercise more, drink more water, cut down to only one pot of coffee a day.  I also resolved to be more patient with my husband and son, and to try to not stress about little things so much.

I almost broke all of my resolutions January 1st.

The first issue was that the first day of the new year fell on Sunday.  Which meant that, instead of sleeping in and having a lazy day off from work, I had to get my butt in gear to get to church.  And I had to do all this without my typical morning pot of extra-strong black coffee.

When I got to church, it became obvious that my resolutions about patience and not stressing so much were going to be tested.  We were low on volunteers for children's church (because, duh, New Year's), so we were going to have to combine all three classes:  nursery, preschool, and elementary.

The end result was myself and three other volunteers being responsible for 21 kids.

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Welcome to Adulthood, Population: Me (+ a few billion others)

A lot of days, I don't feel like much of an adult.  Sure I have things like a kid, and a mortgage, and a really awesome corner office, all to myself.  But I also do thinks like eat Milk Duds (and nothing else) for lunch, or just wear whatever old skirt and shirt combo that was initially bought because it fit my Christian high school's dress code.  (If you've met me more than once, it's likely that you've seen me in clothing that's almost a decade old.)

So there's a lot of times when I feel only like a pseudo-grown-up. I have this mythical image in my head of a "real" grown-up being someone who can change the oil in their car, or make a casserole from scratch, or knows how to get stains out of things using club soda. ("Real" grown-ups are also people who own club soda, presumably for the express purpose of getting stains out of things.)

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A Facebook app I would pay money for...

Last night, I got a text from my little sister.  It simply read:  "Don't get on Facebook."

But, alas, it was too late.  I had already seen that day's pregnancy announcement.

Yes, "that day's".  See, around the holidays, all the happy little preggers women like to start announcing all their happy little pregnancies.  There were five new pregnancies announced on my Facebook feed last week.  That's like, one per workday.  (I'm assuming pregnancy announcements get the weekends off.)

And it's not like I'm not happy for all my pregnant friends.  On a per individual basis, I am happy for each and every one of them.  Thrilled, even.  But when the announcements are coming at me rapid-fire, it's just a reminder that I failed again this cycle, that I'm still not pregnant.  It also makes me feel even lonelier and more isolated, because it seems like everyone can get pregnant except for me.

So, I have been thinking of a design for a new Facebook application that would make everyone else's pregnancies easier on me.  (Because, obviously, people I haven't spoken to since high school should be taking my feelings into consideration before they decide to grow their families.)  Here are some of the features for my new app, which I'm tentatively titling "Bitter Infertile":

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"Only child"ren get a bad rap.

It started this past Sunday when my husband had to work and my two-year-old son, who normally goes home with him for a nap during 2nd service, had to endure two consecutive church services.  In the same classroom, with the same lesson he had just heard.

Not only that, but I always teach second service preschool, as to avoid being in the same class as my son.  Not that I'm avoiding my kid, but it's hard for a young toddler to understand that, while I'm his mommy, I also have to be everyone else's teacher.

To only compound the matter further, there is a little girl who is always in my class who, though I try not to play favorites, I do have a closer relationship with than I do the other kids.  (Regular attendee, friends with her mom, see her more often, etc.)  Since she's there every week, she's used to getting a little bit extra attention from me.

This has led to, on the rare occassions when my son is in my class, him and this little girl (who are normally the sweetest of friends) getting into tiffs over who gets to sit in my lap.  Doesn't seem like a big deal, but, again, we're dealing with sleepy toddlers here.

So, this repeated itself this past Sunday, with my son being a fussy grumpus with the other kids yet, magically, transforming into a sweet and helpful little child the second service ended and the others' parents picked them up.  Suddenly he was helping with clean-up, chatting up the other adult volunteers, etc.

One of the other teachers turned to me and asked, "So...he's an only child then?"

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I'm going through Great Wolf Lodge withdrawal.

Sorry for being MIA the last couple of weeks, but I've been crushed by the weight of my social calendar.  Not something to complain about, really.  I've been having a blast.

This past Sunday through Tuesday, for instance, I spent with my family on our first ever vacation to Great Wolf Lodge.  This place is amazing.  We walked into the lobby (which is about 80 feet high) and it was beautifully decorated with Christmas trees, a huge hearth, and a life-sized gingerbread house.  It even smelled incredible, with some sort of piney fragrance they were pumping in through the ducts.

The whole place is huge, but manages to have everything you could want while still keeping with the "lodge" theme.  (They even had a Dunkin' Donuts on-site, but with regular DD prices.  Sweet.)  In addition to the water park, there's a cafeteria, gift shop, huge arcade, etc.

And the water park itself is awesome.  They have some of the best waterslides I've ever been on (that scary pic up top is from the Howlin' Tornado), but without the huge lines and endless walking that comes with a typical water park.  Also, there was a bunch of stuff for the little kids, so even my son could play relatively-independently.  (Extra nice touch:  They provide life vests for the kids, gratis.)

You can't beat the place for convenience, either.  You get a wristband your first day there, which serves not only as your entrance to the water park, but also is your room key.  Yeah.  High-tech.  If you want, you can even attach a credit card to it, and spend the rest of your stay just waving your wrist at a scanner when you want to buy something.  (Even works on vending machines!)

Everything was wonderful.  Our room was lovely, the food was great, and there was so much to do, but without feeling like you had to rush.  Even the nearby malls and restaurants were nice.

I only had one real complaint, and it was with the door latch.  You see, my two-year-old son quickly figured out three things:  he could open the door to our room, the band on his wrist was money, and the vending machine was right down the hall.

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Coordinating Christmas

One of the few upsides of my years in retail management is the toolbox of useful skills it has left me with, skills that are particularly useful here at the holidays.  I multi-task like a champ, can giftwrap with my eyes clothed, decorate with a shoestring budget, and scheduling for three houses is nothing after you've scheduled holiday shifts for twenty employees.  I'm awesome with my time management, which is why I've had all my Christmas presents (stocking stuffers included) wrapped and stashed in the attic for weeks.  As much as anyone can be, I am organized at Christmas.

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Holiday Witness

I love the holidays.  Thanksgiving is only three days away, and I am already counting down to Christmas.  I have an attic full of already-wrapped Christmas presents, and the only reason my house isn't yet fully decorated is because my husband flatly refuses for us to have lights or a tree up before Thanksgiving.  (Or, as he put it, "Show Turkey Day some proper respect!")

However, there was a time in my life when I wasn't so enthusiastic about the month of December.  This was during those bleak years of my life that I worked in retail.

Now that I've returned from the front lines of store management, I have some hard news for my fellow Christians:  A lot of you are really terrible customers, and you're not bearing good witness.

As a service to those still trapped in the service industry, I'm going to explain some common problems and how you can avoid them so that you aren't damaging your faith.  (If you can't follow these basic rules, then I recommend taking the cross of your neck or the fish off your car before you go out for Black Friday.)

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Natural Pageant vs. "Natural" Pageant

<---What "natural" means, apparently.

This past Saturday was my son's second ever toddler pageant.  Having done one, I thought I was better prepared for what to expect.  I'm an idiot.

My son's first pageant was a low-key affair; some kids and their parents in a hotel conference room, one outfit, one time onstage, and about 25% of the contestants were boys.  My amazing little boy won (yay!), we got a plastic crown, a sash, and a couple of trophies, and were home in time for lunch.  It was also a natural pageant, and I made a vow to only put him in natural pageants, as I feel that the glitz pageants aren't appropriate for children.

This past weekend's pageant was also billed as a natural pageant, though it did have an outfit-of-choice category, meaning that a clothing change would be required.  The OOC was supposed to be Christmaswear, so I chose a pair of green corduroys, a red shirt with a few rhinestones (very macho, and I got it at Kid2Kid for $5), and an adorable black top hat that my husband sewed a snowflake onto.  The hat made the outfit, and it was incredibly adorable.  For the "beauty" portion, we just decided he would wear his suit, like last time.

The pageant was located in a town over 2 hours away, and registration opened at 10:00, so I was up before 6:00, double-checking that we had everything and packing extra toys, snacks, etc.  My dad and mom came this time to provide a cheering section, so we all drove up together.  In true toddler fashion, my son stayed awake most of the drive, and then fell asleep for the last 20 minutes.  We had to wake him up to get him out of his carseat, and I was worried about how cranky he might be.

When we got to registration, it became obvious that we, the adults with him, were going to be the cranky ones.  We were surrounded by toddler girls with their hair in curlers and moms carrying garment bags.  When we got to the dressing room, it was a fog of hairspray and, "natural" pageant though it was supposed to be, there was plenty of make-up being applied, and even hairpieces being pinned in.  I saw the surreal image of a little girl, not even school age, carrying a plastic box with her curly fake hair in it.  Plenty of the little girls were crying, and I bristled when I heard one mom say, "Beauty is pain."

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All My Children

My son's youngest cousin, my soon to be one-year-old nephew, appears to be allergic to dogs.  The dogs at my parents' house come around him and his eyes immediately start to turn red, and water.

All while my son runs tearing by, holding out a squeaky toy so the dogs will chase and jump on him.  It makes me really bummed for my nephew.

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Kissing the stress (and the dream) goodbye

So, about 6 weeks ago, I started my first cycle on Clomid.

In case you're unaware, Clomid is a medication that induces ovulation in women who do not ovulate consistently on their own (like me).  It does this by (literally) screwing with your brain chemistry and tricking your body into pumping your hormone production into overdrive.  So...yeah.  It takes a women already struggling with the emotional turmoil of infertility, and ramps up her hormone levels.  Hijinks ensue.

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Today's Post Delayed

Had a big fun post on practical evangelism planned, but just couldn't hack it out this morning.  In a lot of pain, and worrying the Clomid may be causing OHSS (ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome).  It's supposed to be pretty common, but, not to be a whiney-pants, this is really, really painful.  Going to try to work on the post later, when I feel like sitting up and thinking for that long.

Last-minute costumes for moms

If you're like me, you've spent most of your prep time for this year's Halloween focused on making the holiday fun for your kid.  Choosing an adorable costume, figuring out trick-or-treat routes, and watching the Halloween episode of "Yo Gabba Gabba" to help him get prepared.  (Also, shut up; I love me some "Yo Gabba Gabba".)

However, at least for me, such was not always the case.  Halloween used to be my thang.  Working on costumes weeks in advance, debating on whether or not to brave the crowds on Franklin Street, deciding Hillsborough Street was too lame and involved too much walking in uncomfortable shoes, and inevitably finding myself at Legends.  (There is no party like a gay club on Halloween.)

I can also admit that, prior to the birth of my son, I was one of those girls who went just a liiiiittle on the slutty side with my costumes each year.  Schoolgirl, vampire (corsette + fangs), cigarette girl (won a costume contest with that one, but the dress was so short I specifically bought matching undies for the occassion).

Of course, I don't want to dress slutty for Halloween anymore.  I've outgrown it, and I'm a mom now.  I don't want to present any image that I would be embarrassed for my son to see pictures of years down the road.

However, I still love Halloween.  And now that I've got my son all prepared, I'm realizing that I still really want to dress up for tonight.  Of course, it's the last-minute, so a costume is going to require all my creative MacGyver skills.

Now, a lot of people are throwing on a black turtleneck and some wire-rimmed glasses, carrying around an iPhone and saying they're Steve Jobs.  I think that's a bit insensitive, personally, and I own no Apple products.

So, I started thinking about what's in my closet, and got some ideas.  Then I realized that it's probably very similar to what most moms have in their closets, and I have a chance to do some good here.  So, in case you waited until the last second (like me!) here are some easy Halloween costumes you can throw together for tonight.

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The Other "First"s

As parents, we are really big on our baby's "first"s.  First tooth, first step, first Christmas, etc.  And while these things are important, they're also kind of boring.  Most "first"s are things all kids have in common.

I started thinking about it the other morning, when my son was being a bit fussy getting ready for school, and I grabbed the first thing at hand:  a sheet of bubblewrap from a recent postage delivery.  As I showed him how to pop it, and watched his face light up with giggles, it occurred to me that he had never played with bubblewrap.  This was a first.  Sure, it's probably not as big a deal as a first haircut, or anything like that, but it made his morning.  After all, what kid doesn't like bubblewrap?  (Of course, true to his habit of renaming everything, he calls it "squeezy-pop".)

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We do Christmas right...

Everyone may be picking out costumes and getting their candy ready for trick-or-treaters, but in my house, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

To explain, there are two things you should know about me: 1.) I love the holidays. 2.) I hate crowds.

From October 1st until New Year's Day, I am a happy woman.  As much as I hate shopping for myself, I love buying gifts for other people, and I spend hours at the mall, stores, and on shopping websites, getting ideas, making lists, and comparing prices.  I want to find the perfect gift to put a big, genuine smile on the recipient's face when they open their present.

But I despise crowds, particularly when I'm in my gift-shopping happy place, so it's imperative that I get all of my gifts bought weeks before Black Friday.

I also just love the time with my family, whether it's taking my son trick-or-treating with his cousins, or having everyone stuff our faces together on Thanksgiving.  I love the complete pandemonium that is a Christmas Day with a ton of people and kids underfoot.  I love Christmas Eve services with my church family.  I love the food, and the hot chocolate, and stockings, cheesy holiday movies and the way Christmas trees smell, and just everything about the entire Holiday season.

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Maybe it IS the end of the world...

Some of you may remember that the Rapture is five months late, and the guy who said it was coming this past May 21st, Harold Camping, recanted and said that the really REAL Rapture was coming today, October 21st.

And maybe he wasn't so off-base, because it's gotta be a sign of the end times when I start thinking, "Hey, maybe being a SAHM wouldn't be so terrible."

Okay, obviously I need to back up.  Here's the TL;DR version of it:  I took a sick day with my son when he really wasn't that sick.

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My Son's First Trophy

Well, my son's first pageant was this past Saturday and, all-told, I think he did very well.  I can't say the same for myself.

For starters, I got way too stressed out for no real reason.  Part of the curse of being a perfectionist, I suppose.  I got so obsessed with wanting everything to go perfectly for him that I probably made it worse on him, and for that, I'm sorry.

The first thing I did wrong was to get there too early.  I got there about 20 minutes before registration was supposed to start, which doesn't sound too early, until you factor in that I then had to keep a 2-year-old occupied for 20 minutes in a hotel lobby.  We rode the elevators a lot.

I also tried to make a little small talk with the other moms, not just to size up the competition (though I was doing that, too), but just to be friendly and kill some time.  There was only one other boy in my son's age division (18-35 months) but, though he was a couple of months older than my son, this was his fourth pageant.  The parents also had a daughter in the 3-5 year-old division, a stunning little girl in a dress that probably cost more than the one I got married in.  Intimidating.

When registration opened (a few minutes late, but who's counting?), we were one of the first in line, so my son was contestant #2.  Big mistake.  You go in order of your contestant number.  So instead of getting to see the other kids show us what to do (since we were clueless) we were the second ones to cross the stage.

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Pageants don't have to be stupid.

First off, let me apologize for the sporadic posting schedule lately.  I have a couple of big posts on the backburner that I'm saving for when I have the time and (emotional) energy to write about them.

That being said, I just wanted to do a little blurb today thanking and endorsing the All American Girl & Boy Pageant.  Their local team has been so friendly and supportive in helping me prepare my son for his first pageant this Saturday, and I really believe they are a good group of folks.

Even though they stress that they are a "natural" (not "glitz") pageant, I was really worried about what I would be up against this weekend.  A look at their website reassured me.  The pictures were of adorable children in age-appropriate clothes, little or no make-up, genuine gap-toothed smiles to the camera.

The mission statement was just as good:  "Our pageant believes that children should look like children. All clothing should be age appropriate. We do not believe in artificial tanning, fake hair and excessive makeup! We believe that pageants should be fun and inexpensive! We like our contestants to look natural and to be themselves."

A world of difference from nightmares like you see on "Toddlers & Tiaras".

I'm getting really excited for Saturday, and I'm hoping the experience lives up to my expectations.  But, sink or swim, celebration or disaster, rest assured that I'll be updating you about it next week.

Little Mr. Sunshine

There are a few things people should know about me, not the least of which is my tendency to seize and obsess upon an idea.  I'm intensely focused, to a flaw, but it's a trait that I can recognize in myself.  When I found out I was pregnant, I knew it would mean I would someday be a "----- mom", whether that be "hockey mom", "band mom", "Science Olympiad mom", etc.  Whatever my child was interested in, I would be invested, 100%.

Of course, even before I found out for sure I was having a boy, I never thought there would be even the remotest possibility anyone could call me a "pageant mom".

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Poverty is not a character flaw.

Special thanks to my awesome Core Group ladies for inspiration for today's post.

Most people in the church world, and even those outside it, have heard of Joel Osteen.  He has multiple megachurches and has become a millionaire through books, speaking engagements, etc.

If you listen to one of his sermons, or read one of his books, it becomes apparent why he has such a huge following.  He is a prosperity, or "health and wealth" preacher, meaning he tells people what they want to hear.  Mainly, that, "God wants YOU to be RICH."

That's a pretty nice thought, right?  He even provides seminars on how you can "unleash your inner champion" and do all these different things to let God rain out his blessings upon you.

Needless to say, I think this sort of Santa-Jesus teaching is a bunch of crap.

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