I DID IT! I believe I have broken my snooze button dependency. Since it’s come to light, I have been consciously trying to hit snooze once and get up before it goes off again and so far I’m on a streak with 7 straight mornings. Well, Saturday and Sunday don’t count because I don’t use the alarm on those days but I was up on both days before 8. I know - it’s incredible isn’t it? I feel rejuvenated.

We had Trivia night last Friday at our church. We came in second to last. What if Sabrina is right? I know I’m somewhat intelligent – well I thought I was until Friday night - but what if I’m really not? What if I’m subconsciously faking it? Can you fake smart? I didn’t feel too smart. The pace was fast and there were things they asked that after I heard the answer I was just “DUH!” but mostly, I felt inadequate and terribly obtuse. Here’s what I’d like - one of those “Brain Games” that is supposed to keep your mind sharp. What’s that herb you can take to keep you on your mental A Game? I need that too. My nickname at work is FG – supposedly for “Freakin’ Genius” but I really think now it might be for “Freakin’ Goofball”. OR WAIT – OMG! What if it really means “FOREST GUMP”?? That just popped in my head and is quite scary. His IQ was like 72 or something. But he was happy and he knew what love is. Maybe that’s all that counts. Plus he was rich, what with Bubba Gump Shrimp and all.

Christmas is almost here and I am pretty excited about it finally. This is the first one I’ve actually gotten in the Christmas spirit beforehand in a while. I usually get all stoked up and it’s already Christmas Eve and then Christmas Day and that’s it. But this year I’ve been trying to focus on the reason for the season instead of the commercialization that our society has turned it into.

Matt is coming out on December 24th but Drew cannot make it this year. He goes to boot camp on January 7th and he’s currently working three jobs that won’t let him have time off to come. Which is ok, we’ll just miss him. He did ask his Sergeant if he can spend his 10 days after boot camp here and they said it was cool. So at least we’ll get to see him then.

I saw my geese again the other day, but this time they were on the ground aka the gaggle. And they were everywhere. It was snowing and there they were in a field. Weird to feel a bond with a bunch of geese.

I was driving to work this morning and saw the biggest skein of geese I’ve ever seen, probably 250 geese in all. Here’s your Ornithology lesson for the day: The male goose is called a "gander" and the female is the "goose"; young birds before fledging are known as "goslings". A group of geese on the ground is called a “gaggle”; when flying in formation, it is called a “wedge” or “skein”. I’ve often heard about geese and their curious characteristics. They mate for life. Wikipedia says occasionally (very rarely) they will “divorce” and find another mate, but mostly they are loyal to one companion. When I lived in Mississippi I cleaned for the sweetest old couple. I remember one day the little old man came to me, very excited, and wanted to show me “the neatest thing”. We went down to the lake behind his house, and there was a Gander and a Goose, with about 50 goslings. He told me about them mating for life and that some of the goslings in this group had been orphaned so these two took the orphans in as their own. He loved watching those geese and every week I would hear a new tale of what they had done until the goslings had grown up. Also, they fly in a V on purpose. Scientists have determined that the V-shaped formation that geese use when migrating serves two important purposes. First, it conserves their energy. Each bird flies slightly above the bird in front of him, resulting in a reduction of wind resistance. The birds take turns being in the front, falling back when they get tired. This way, they can fly for a long time before they have to stop for rest. The second benefit to the V formation is that it is easy to keep track of every bird in the group. Fighter pilots often use this formation for the same reason. I started thinking about my family and how we are like those geese. When faced with major upheavals (I would think migrating twice a year would be an upheaval in goose life), we get in our V, one of us takes the front and we take turns being lead bird. This way, we boost each other and keep each other going. And although our V may be stretched out far, we always keep track of everyone in our group. I think better to take care of each other. And I love how our family is so accepting of others. Whatever their faith, belief, philosophy, background, physical appearance or personality, we welcome them into our gaggle with open arms. How crazy is it that a wedge of Canadian Geese made me cry on the way to work?

We’ve officially established that the use of a snooze button is completely psychosomatic and that using a snooze button can be suggestive. In other words, after reading my blog about my 9 minutes of bliss, my sister apparently now uses her snooze button. Hopefully she gets as much delight in her extra 9 minute intervals as I do.

My thoughts on this, though, are that I am such a creature of habit that I have a perverse obstinate disposition to go to great lengths to make sure my 9-Minute Intervals do not change. And this is worrying me. For instance, my dog has decided when the alarm goes off the first time that he really REALLY needs to go outside RIGHT THEN. And I hate to be woken up – or actually get out of bed - before my 4th 9-Minute sequence has run its course. So I stumble to take him out, but then of course I have to feed him and he eats outside so hopefully I have clothes on that won’t scare the neighbors and then of course, the cats hear the scrape of a food bowl and they decide their bowl isn’t full enough so I have to fill up their bowls too. And yes, I have tried to ignore them since their bowl does have food in it usually at all times and stumble back to bed but they will ceaselessly meow outside my bedroom door since I made an appearance and they feel slighted if I don’t feed them too. THEN I have to go to the bathroom because if I don’t, I can’t go back to sleep because I have to go to the bathroom. By that time, I should stay up because HELLO, I’m wide awake. But I don’t. I go back to bed and then strike up a bargain to sleep an extra 5 ½ minutes since I’ve already taken the dog out, fed him, fed the cats and went to the bathroom. SEE? It’s a vicious vicious cycle and I’m powerless to change it.

THEN I remember that ‘sloth’ is one of the seven deadly sins. NICE. Google sloth. See what you come up with. I was actually reassured by wikipedia in that “The meaning of sloth as a vice closely follows the meaning of the Greek word "akedia": "absence of caring". A student who neglects his studies to pursue another interest, such as martial arts or filming, does not necessarily commit the sin of sloth. Perhaps he should restructure his priorities, but the student does not necessarily display a spiritual decay, a lack of interest in anything, and thus is not slothful. A student who took no interest in anything requiring great effort, but preferred to indulge in idle entertainment, might well be slothful.”

So can I assume that an insurance agent who hates to get up in the morning because she’s not a morning person is not necessarily committing the sin of sloth but one who didn’t get up at all since it requires great effort but preferred to sleep all day in idle slumber might well be slothful? It’s not that I have an absence of caring about getting up. I just don’t like to.

I’ve run out of steam. I was going strong there for awhile, blogging almost regularly and then, I felt the old familiar procrastination issue setting in. So as not to let a year go by again without blogging, I am updating without much information just to be updating. Just to give you all something glorious to read. Well, maybe not glorious but at least it’s something. And maybe not much information, just not much I wish to share.

Our family is going thought a trying time and out of respect for my mom, I’ll only say she was diagnosed with breast cancer and leave it at that. She is very private and doesn’t want her issues aired on the World Wide Web for anybody and everybody to read. If it were only family and close friends that were to frequent the pages, then I think she would be more apt to post her health issues on a website. As it stands, anybody, anywhere, anytime can scroll through various blogs and just read whats going on. It is not private. Which, granted, the normal general public scrolling through a blog would have no idea who she was but you just never know. There may be some buttcrack showing, combover inbred from Toad Suck, Arkansas saying “Paint me pink, Frances, Margaret has breast cancer!” And to some, that wouldn’t be a problem because they really don’t care if someone they don’t know can read about them but to mom, it’s private. And she wants to keep it that way. She’s more than happy to let the family and close friends know what’s going on.

SO. It’s almost Thanksgiving again. Where does time go? Why can’t it slow down? Why did it pick up speed after about 30? I swear just yesterday I was 25. And I know tomorrow I’ll probably be 40 and then by the next day I’ll be 50. What’s with that? I think it’s because I wish my life away 5 weekdays at a time. I start Monday – “can’t wait til Friday” and it goes from there. All my wishing has made it go so much faster that suddenly I’m almost 37 and have no clue how I got here.

For anyone that reads this that is a praying person – I’m asking for prayers for my mom especially but also for my dad. Pray for Gods healing hands to guide, comfort and cure.

She is my friend. She is my confidant.
She is my fan. She is my aficionada.
She is my rock. She is my calm in this storm.
She is my security. She is my tether
She is my childhood. She is my teenage years. She is my adulthood.
She is the wind in my sails. She is the wind beneath my wings.
She is my reason. She is my motivation.
She is every memory. She is every story.
She is every “remember when”. She is every “I can’t wait”.
She is everything I was. She is everything I am. She is everything I want to be.
She is my mother.

~Catrina King
November 5, 2007

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a bargainer but only a bargainer with self. Well, maybe I do make a bribe, ahem - I mean deal, with my kids every now and again about the things they need to do or the things that I don’t want them to do but mainly, a bargainer with self. I bargain with myself in the morning about getting up – refer to the 9-Minute Sequences below. That’s just one example. I make lots of small bargains with myself throughout the day. If I’ll just get this group insurance information in the system and all done and off my desk, I can take a little moment and throw my nerf basketball at the net hanging in my office. (Blows off steam and improves hand-eye coordination all at once – but don’t do it too much, makes lots of noise and the boss will give you the big hairy eyeball)

And I’ve now made a new bargain but on a bigger scale. For every 25 pounds I lose, I’m going to get a new tattoo. SO, if I lose 75 pounds, I’ll have three new tattoos. Not big ones so that I look like a Harley Babe, but little ones. And ones that mean something to me. First will be the little footprint with the initials JAS beside it on the top of my foot. Second is the Ithcus I’ve designed. Inside the Ithcus is the name Christ but if you look at it backwards, it says Risen. Kind of hard to imagine but trust me, it’s cool. It also has the scripture Gal 6:17 beside it. And last, I want a tribal band around my arm. That’s going to be the last of the three. I’d like one on my hip too so – wait, I hear another bargain in the process. If I go 100 down, I can get one last ink on my hip. Sweet. And I'm going to set time bargains on these. This tattoo bargain has been in the works for some time but I need to get a time on it so I just don't slide on into 40 with the same bargain rolling around in my head.

Robbie & I are going this weekend to a marriage retreat thing at the Frontenac Hilton. Aunt Steffie is watching Sam and Lizzie and Robbie and I get a weekend for just us. Thats important to a relationship. Especially when you get married and have instant family. We never really have an alone time. Maybe after 10pm when the house is settled down, the children are snug in their beds and the dog is at the foot of the bed gnawing on a rawhide but within minutes we’re both snoring so I don’t think that counts. Or this one time, it was quiet during the day in our house for about 10 minutes while the kids were playing down at their friends house! And it’s ok, we’re cool with the chaos of our lives but every once in a while, it’s good to step back, regroup, remember why I love him so much and actually tell him and then we can get back to mayhem and disorder. I’m excited about our weekend away.

And now – I’m going to take a poll. Please tell your friends about my poll because I think I have only three readers left. Feel free to comment with your answer to my poll, or your friends answers to my poll. I’ll tally any answers I get and let you know the outcome. Here’s the background to the reason for my poll and the poll itself.

I am a HUGE Three Stooges Fan. I love the Stooges. I can sit and watch the Stooges all day long if someone would let me. I used to only be a Larry Moe & Curly fan and really didn’t care for the others that were brought in after Curly left. Well, really, Curly replaced Shemp when Shemp got out of the original act but when they went on television Curly was part of the original three. Shemp stepped in when Curly had a stroke in 1949. See? I know a lot about the Stooges. Did you know that Curly, whose real name is Jerome Lester Horwitz, was originally known as Babe? That’s my nickname too!! I don’t know how many people besides a select few know of my Stooges dependence. I can’t help it, I just love them. And from what I understand, to be female and love the Stooges as much as I do is apparently not normal. Not saying that much of what I like or do is normal, but it’s the Stooges! C’Mon, who cannot help but love them? So here’s my poll.

If you are female, then
a. Do you like the Stooges?
b. Do you have other female friends or family that enjoy them as well?

If you are male, then
a. Do you like the Stooges?
b. Do you know of any female friends or family that enjoy them as well?

Simple. I just want to know. I’m weird, I always knew that but I’m also curious. So vote early and vote often. :) That’s what I’ll be saying next November.

Reading the blog from September 27, 2006 was somewhat eye opening. Eye opening in that I read of the same restlessness that I’m still feeling a year later and to know NOTHING has changed. Well, obviously some things have, but in the overall grand scheme of the “I’ve been feeling the need for change lately” scenario – nothing has changed. I embraced the changes with my job – studied the new deductibles and learned the new plans and I came through rather well. But the dreariness is still there. I think before I called it complacency thinking that meant – basically BLAH - but when you shift+F7 complacency, there’s a list of words that DO NOT describe how I feel about my job. Example – I do not have contentment. In fact, I need one of those thesaurus things that give you the antonym for that one. Discontent? Dissatisfaction? A lot of ‘disses’ there. I even said I just knew I couldn’t keep going like I was and stay sane. So either I’m crazy or I was wrong. I don’t think I’m crazy. Well not any crazier than I was before. So to sum it all up and give a moral to the story – I’ve learned I really can keep on going a very long time after I thought I couldn’t.

So. Going back through my blog I realized – IT’S BEEN ALMOST A YEAR. Time flies when you’re on the downside of “over thirty”. It really does. I’m not kidding. And my last blog actually said I may try to blog once a week. HA. I see how well that worked. And to try and convey what has happened in the last year would ultimately be mind-numbing. A lot happened, I lived through it and I’m just a year older. But it’s funny, when I read back through and realize I’m still struggling with the same CRAP I was a year ago or longer, its quite dismal. I think it’s time to get new things to struggle with and quit worrying about the same ol’ stuff. For instance, I’d like to worry about where to spend all the money I won in the Powerball. Or which color Mercedes I want. Or what type of marble to put on the floor of my mansion. Those are acceptable struggles. I’m on it….I’ll let you know how that works out.

I do have MySpace and I get on there quite a bit. I actually blogged once in there. Maybe it was twice. I’ll have to look. I should actually copy and paste so it looks like this blog is really long. If you have MySpace and if you still read this, let me know and we can be friends on MySpace. I’m currently collecting them. Friends that is. I am finding they are a rare commodity. Well, true ones anyway.

Here is blog 1 from MySpace:

The 9-minute sequences...
Current mood: relaxed
I am not a morning person. And honestly, that doesn't even begin to describe it. It's not like I need my morning coffee to wake up, I don't drink coffee – except for the occasional Venti Cappuccino with a sweet n low. I don't do mornings, never have and apparently never will. I will sleep until the absolute last possible minute I can without being late and then bargain with myself to sneak some extra minutes. Example – "You know self, if you don't blow dry your hair today and just throw it in a clip, you can sleep an extra 4.7 minutes."

On the other hand, my husband is very much a morning person. I told him the first time I figured out he was so smiley in the morning that we were going to have a problem because "If you're like that in the morning, I am like this." And it's not pretty. Stumbling through the house, hair on end, eyes at half-mast and not a decipherable actual word emitting from me. More like a grunt or two. It is funny though that he can set his alarm and then just turn it off the first time it beeps and get up. And be happy about it! (That's the part that slays me) And his clock is set for the right time.

And then we pan to the other side of the bed…

And that, friends, is a completely different story. My clock is set 23 minutes fast. And the alarm is set for 36 minutes earlier than I have to get up, of course not counting the 2.3 minutes I save if I don't shampoo twice. My alarm goes off and I usually lurch about 6 feet off the bed because it scares the crap out of me and as I'm landing from my voyage through the air, I'm desperately fumbling on the nightstand to find THE SNOOZE BUTTON. I love the snooze button – it is the greatest invention in the world next to a Chevrolet ZZ4 350 ci 4 brl carb 355 hp engine and a 4 speed transmission with a Hurst shifter. The snooze allows me to steal extra sleep in 9-minute intervals. Of course, every 9 minutes I go through my ascension into the atmosphere again but for those 9 wonderful, magnificent minutes, it's worth it.

I'm sure those of you reading this that are akin to my husband are declaring that I just need to set my clock for the correct time, set my alarm for when I need to get up and have that last 36 minutes of slumber completely uninterrupted. I've tried that. It does not work. If I turn it off the first time it goes off, I WILL oversleep and I WILL be late for work. I have tried over and over and over again to change my waking routine but alas, it was not meant to change. This is just how I am.

As for how Mister Morning Guy and I have worked out our differences, he has to get up 2 hours before my first levitation and therefore is not privy to my comical morning episodes. On the rare occasion that he is there to witness it, he simply guffaws lovingly in his good-natured manner and takes his sickeningly happy, awake self to read in peace in the living room.

Here is Blog 2 from MySpace:

I had to write this one down...
Current mood: thoughtful
Susan B. Anthony once said that sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit, and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these. This morning on my way to work, right at the pond just up this hill from my house, a group of ducks were walking right up the middle of the street. A big burly guy in a dump truck was slowly following along behind at a ducks pace with his hazards flashing, smiling like I've not seen anyone smile in a long time (except on TV, of course). Cars piling up behind him, those angry drivers with somehwere important to be and him not caring. I had to write down my unannounced stray dog moment, just in case life - as usual - gets a little too hectic and I forget to put my hazards on and laugh at the ducks.


So now it looks like I’ve just written a whole bunch. Does anybody even read this anymore? I doubt it. Let me know.

I’ll try to do better. Don’t hate me if I don’t. Just check back periodically to see if I’m still kickin.