Facie’s Ramblings

When I turned 40, I don't recall feeling older. I was in pretty good shape; I ran semi-regularly (I think!). I was still swimming and doing Zumba. But I was not working full time then, so I could be at the top of my physical game. I gave up my pool membership and Zumba mid-afternoon class once I went back to work, and I run only sporadically now, mostly because I am lazy but partially because my body fights me more often than not when I attempt to. Ah, that body of mine. As I sit here and type this, I am feeling a slight pain in my left heel. It started over the weekend, and has caused me to limp since then. Today I finally called a podiatrist. But unfortunately they can't see me for 2 weeks. Back in October I had a similar pain in my right foot. By the time my appointment rolled around (actually about 2 weeks prior), the pain went away, so I canceled. Why spend the $40 specialist copay? The hub blames it on running. I don't know. I was never a hard-core runner. At the he...

This weekend, I got about 8 hours of sleep two nights in a row. That surpassed the number of nights I got 8 hours of sleep the previous 20 days. I have not slept well this month of August. Between work stress and my mom moving, and throwing in anxiety about my kid starting 7th grade and worrying about various things around that, sleep is elusive. But I don't want to dwell on that. I want to just acknowledge the weekend for what it was. It was busy at times. But it was a good weekend. I slept. I had some Blue Moons. I liked the cinnamon one; I was not fond of the spiced chai one. I cut three weeks' worth of coupons. I cleaned the bathtub well (every 2-3 weeks, I give it a deep scrubbing/cleaning; the other weeks it gets a perfunctory wipe-off). I went through my credit card receipts. I watched some TV with the kid. I slept. I spent some time with the hubby, just hanging out. I walked the dog, and I ran the dog. I lifted weights. I went with J to a frien...

When you have a baby, you are (usually) convinced it can never get more challenging than it seems at the beginning. The sleepless nights. The worries that something is wrong with your kid. The anxiety that she will stop breathing in the middle of the night. I certainly felt that way the first few months or even years with J. At some point, though, even when things continued to become challenging in different ways, somewhere deep down I knew things were going to get a lot harder. I knew that eventually my little kid would grow up and have bigger issues. After all, my mom was fond of saying, "Little kids, little problems; bigger kids, bigger problems." As my baby grew into a preteen, there was the stress of grades. Too much homework. Trouble with girls ignoring her. The disappointment of a boy not liking her. Now that she is entering 7th grade, I know that in addition to those challenges, all the "big" scary things are not too far away. Recently on FB, I wrote a...

Happy 2015, everyone! I wrote my first check of the year just two minutes ago, and I used the correct year. Already 2015 is off to a good start! :-) Regarding the check, I have to give a shout-out to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review . For only $13, I can get 52 weeks of the Sunday paper. Yes, the Trib leans right. So do I, sometimes (I lean left about as often nowadays, much to the disappointment of my family and a few friends). Regardless, once the P-G raised its rates to something like $60 every quarter to get the Sunday and Thursday papers, I bailed. I do think the PG has a good product, but I could think of many other things I would rather spend that money on. With the great Trib price, I can tip my carrier, donate to the NIE, and save myself several hundred dollars a year. As is typical, I did nothing for New Year's Eve. Well, I did get a lot done during the day. I dropped the kid off at a friend's house. I got four new tires (my third replacement set since I bought the c...

I started getting occasional bouts of insomnia when the kid was a baby. I don't recall how often my sleepless nights would occur back then, though I very vividly remember one fall night when I got up to do work. But for the past few years, I would say I have had trouble sleeping anywhere from a dozen to several dozen times a year. Typically it is stress-related, but not always. This latest wave began when I was offered the job for which I have now completed my first month. It was really bad the week before my job started and the first week of, but it has settled down since. Unfortunately, I still cannot seem to go more than four or five days without getting only a few hours of sleep in one night. The good news is that because I have been quite busy at work I don't really notice how tired I am. Surprisingly (and I hope I am not jinxing myself or tempting fate by saying this) I still can manage to react quickly in traffic, something I have to do pretty often. But there are ti...

Most of the blogs I read contain pictures. At least a few per post. Most of my posts contain no pictures. And that is mostly because I am boring and partly because I am lazy (and I guess partly because most of my posts don't lend themselves well to pictures, because, the posts are, well, mostly boring). But this is one post that I so wish I had not only pictures but also a video. Because I am certain my storytelling will not do this tale (tail!) justice. I typically watch Penguins games with the hubby in our den. And our dog Sadie typically strolls into the room and parks herself on the floor, completely uninterested in watching TV. Just as typically, Sadie is snoring loudly within a few minutes of lying down. I guess it gets pretty tiring sitting around doing nothing all day other than barking at a few cars she happens to hear driving by (when she is not sleeping, of course). Maybe going into the next room to get an occasional drink of water is what is wearing her out. Anywa...

I like Daylight Saving Time just as much as the next person. It is nice that it is still a little light out at almost 7:30 p.m. And the time change also means I can stay at my mom's later during our biweekly visits as I now get to have at least some daylight to more easily spot those deer and other critters. But getting up the first work/school day of DST is no picnic. Hubby and I argued about this, this morning. He insisted whatever effects there are/were should have occurred on Sunday, the first morning of DST. I disagreed because I woke up Sunday when I woke up; I paid no attention to the clock. I got about eight hours of sleep, which is what I usually get on the weekends (assuming I am not beset with insomnia), so my body had no idea an hour disappeared. In fact, I felt "normal" all day Sunday, quite happy, actually, because it was sunny and in the mid 60s. The only downside of DST that day was that I forgot to change my car clock, so after being out with my mom and...

Do you have something or several things (not people) that you cannot imagine your life without? Or maybe there is just a thing or three that has made your life better? I have a few such things in my world, one which most people would find odd. I have this most wonderful, soft eye mask that I wear to bed every night (if I remember, I will take a picture and post tomorrow). I have thin eyelids, and light finds its way into my eyes when I am sleeping, thanks also in part to mediocre, not-dark blinds. But it goes beyond the sun, which is not even out yet when I am up most days, and includes my ridiculously bright clock. I could not, not have a clock, but at least I can block it out (and easily lift up the mask when necessary). I am not kidding you when I say that most nights, I think to myself how much I love my eye mask. Yep, it does not take much to impress me. I know some of you would say you could not live without (or at least would not like your life without) your iPhone and iPads...

It's funny (and not funny, ha ha) how when you have a baby, you think that it cannot possibly get any harder than this, with the lack of sleeping and the constant worry about almost everything. But as your kids grow up, you realize just how easy you had it back in the day. This morning, I read an article about a mother who choked the boy who was bullying her daughter. Before I even read past the headline, I found myself almost siding with the mom. I would never do anything like that; after all, I am the one, unlike hubby, who tells my kid to turn the other cheek. But I can see how as a parent you could become so frustrated, worried, angry, etc., that you could be pushed to that point. As both a parent and educator (albeit not too regularly for the latter), bullying concerns me. It is sometimes difficult to determine when it is just teasing/being mean and when it has gone beyond that. Of course it would be great if everyone just got along all the time and no one was ever mean t...

Later today, the 2012 Penn State IFC Panhellenic Dance Marathon (known to many simply as THON), the largest student run philanthropy in the world, will come to a close. For those us of you who may not know, THON is a yearlong effort to raise funds and awareness for the fight against pediatric cancer. But the most well-know and longest-running THON event is the actual 46-hour dance marathon. Back in 1993, I danced in THON as part of Phi Sigma Pi, a coed national honor fraternity. A good friend of mine, who was born the very same day that I was, had recently died from cancer, and I really wanted to participate in THON for "Big Al." However, having never pulled an all-nighter in my life, I had no idea how I was going to stay awake and standing for 48 straight hours (not sure when THON removed two of the hours!), on top of the hours I would have already been awake before the event began that Friday night. But I figured if Al and so many others could suffer through what they did...

One of these days I may write a heartfelt, detailed blog post about the angst I am having with my eight-year-old child. But this is not one of these days. Instead, I wanted to share a few recent things. Third grade is difficult. I cannot believe the amount of homework Jordan brings home most days. On a good night, she has about an hour; several times now she has had three-plus hours. Seems a bit excessive to me. On the bright side, she has pretty much gotten to the point where she remembers to bring the correct books home, which is a challenge considering most classes have a hardback book, a workbook, and a Simple Solutions book. I feel bad that my poor kid's backpack often weighs more than 25 percent of her body weight (yes, I have weighed it). Jordan came home from school today with a flier for a Magic Treehouse book club and an American Girls book club, each of which will meet once a month during lunch. Jordan told me that most of the girls in her class are going to be in the...

When I first had Jordan, I got a lot of grief from childless people who wanted me to do what I thought were unreasonable things. From taking my baby out to a smoky bar/restaurant to meet people when she should have been down for the night. To waking up my napping toddler to drive somebody somewhere. To entertaining houseguests in my small, guestroom-less house. More often than not, I would give in, because guilt really gets to me. Other times, I would say no, but then feel bad, thinking I was abandoning people that I might not get to see for quite a few months. But in most cases, no matter what I did (or did not do), I ended up feeling resentful. Of course, when those same people had children, things were different. But yet I seem to have forgotten that before I had kids, I had no clue what was involved. I could not understand why my friends would still not go to happy hour. Why not leave the baby home with a sitter or the spouse? I did not understand sleep deprivation and would cal...

As I am sure I have written before, I have come up with some of my best blog posts while lying awake, unable to fall back asleep. Unfortunately, by the time I get up the next morning, most of those gems have left my head. With all the technology we have, you would think someone would be able to invent some type of osmosis-y thing that would enable whatever thoughts you had in your head to end up on a piece of paper or in your computer. In college, friends and I would often stick our heads up to one of our textbooks and pray for osmosis rather than study for hours. That was almost 20 years ago. We've come a long way, baby. Anyway, I have some various things I have wanted to write about: kids' birthday parties (I have a rant about that one), friends and moving on, frustration with my job search (I have already touched on this on), guilt, the state of the world, taxes, health insurance, and other things I forget. If I can remember any of those posts that come to me in the wee ...

Some mornings when I wake up, I have no idea what day it is, thanks to my not working. Today was not one of those days, however, perhaps because one just cannot escape a Monday, even when Monday does not mean the beginning of a work week. I woke up with my kid at my side, a frequent occurrence in my life lately. For years I silently chastised parents who let their kids get in bed with them. But now I get it. I just don't have the energy at 2 a.m. to either calm my kid down in her bed or to turn her away from mine, when she walks in, cheeks stained with tears because of some nightmare (not to mention Brian insists we keep the monitor on, which means we can hear every little noise). Sleep is such a wonderful thing, and I will do whatever I can to get eight hours of it most nights. But more than that, I think I let Jordan sleep with me because I still feel guilty about not spending enough time with her. Even now, when I am with her many hours a day. I always said if I were a stay-at-h...

My memory is not what it used to be. I am not sure if this is because of the insomnia I began been fighting with off and on after Jordan was born, or if it is a result of age, although 36 seems awfully young to be so forgetful. I just wish I could figure it out and do something. I went to my PCP about 1.5 years ago for my every-few-years-checkup but also to discuss my sleeping problem. Dr. C did blood work, and everything turned out fine, but I never followed up with her. The truth is I did not want her to prescribe drugs for this (although the other reason I never made another appointment was it took her something like six weeks to get my results to me, and that was only after I left several messages at her office). My parents are pharmacists, and I get that people need drugs for a number of diseases, conditions, etc. But I am just not a fan of medication. Last week, after I had gotten no more than six hours of sleep for three out of four nights and started to get sick, I finally rele...

Cursed insomnia visited last night. I do not do well on four hours of sleep (or anything much less than eight most nights really). I fell asleep before 11, having a caught a few minutes of Bob Pompeani's Nightly Sports Call (or whatever that is called), but could not bring myself to stay awake for the end of the NE- Jax game. I was pretty sure I knew how that was going to turn out. But when I woke up, wide awake around 11:45, I had to turn on ESPN to confirm what I was dreading. And, yes, Bill Belicheat and his Pats won. How can a quarterback be so nearly perfect? For one thing, not being with your child's mother and up every time your baby gets up probably helps. And why does Belicheat always look so grumpy? Is it because someone cut off a few inches from his sweatshirt sleeves? I would rather watch Jack Del Rio wear suits on the sidelines (or JoePa wear floods). I guess I am a little bitter still about the Steelers not being in the playoffs. But that was a great game. ...