Where is my Site Meter???

So I switched over to this Beta thing....whatever that means, I don't really understand and now I can't get my sitemeter back. Help!!!!!!!!!!!!1

OHIO...The Heart of it All, Really???

Ohio is listed #15th on the list of fattest states in America. (BTW - West Virginia is ranked 3rd. Paul is always saying he feels skinny there!)

Ohio governor, Bob Taft ranks 50th on the national list of Governors.

Ohio's tax burden is ranked 3rd in the US.

Cleveland is ranked as the poorest city in the US. About a third of it's residents live in poverty.

It is no wonder Ohio ranks 47th for population growth.

Ohio is a beautiful state. The weather is kinda crummy in the winter but it certainly isn't as bad as some states. I've heard northeast ohio has fewer sunny days than Seattle but I think that is just an urban legend because I couldn't find those facts anywhere.

What the Blogvertise????

I must admit I am a sucker for get rich quick schemes. I have been a Mary-Kay lady, an Avon lady, a Discovery Toys lady, I'm a garage sale entrepreneur , I've bought lottery tickets and filled out surveys. I've even signed up to be a secret shopper. I am still not rich. As you know, I love to write and my blog has been a big part of my life for the last year. My brother in law, Applehead first started the blogging rage in the Miller family but now several of us (7, I think) have blogs. It is so cool. Stephanie's (Applehead's wife) has recently taken off. She gets hundreds of hits a day. That is so cool. I check it a couple of times a day myself. I like to keep up to date on the comments. Well, I go on there and she has this thing that you can sign up for where you get paid to Blogsvertise. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? My sister in law isn't the type who usually falls for this sort of thing. I am not sure I really understand the whole thing but I think they pay you to write about certain things in your blog...hence the name Blogsvertise. For example...Maybe someone has a web-site where they sell a product, you go on it and check it out then write about it on your blog. I think it is subtle advertising. Isn't this a scam? Won't this ruin the purity of the blog??? Once you get paid to do something doesn't it usually suck the joy and life out of it?

So, I get home from work today and Jake is downstairs on the computer. I ask him what he is doing....He says, I am getting paid to blog! Yes, now my husband has now signed up to Blogsvertise. Aren't you going to wonder now if he is writing something real or if he writing something just to get paid???? Hmmmmmm. I guess only time will tell.

Sleeping in....

Last night I didn't go to bed until around midnight because my friend came over and I helped her sign up for an eharmony account. If it is something you are thinking about doing let me warn you....it takes a long time to completely fill out all the questions they ask you. So, I didn't go to bed until late. When my alarm clock went off at 6 A.M. I hit snooze over and over again. Finally, somewhere around 6:40 I decided to just turn the dumb thing off. I told Jake he needed to get up for work and he did. I, however, went right back to sleep. So, I am laying in bed somewhere in dreamland and I hear a knock at my door. It was Alicia, the babysitter. She had let herself in, like she always does and didn't think anything about the fact that I didn't come right down. I am usually finishing up when she arrives. She turned on the T.V. and waited. After about 15-20 minutes she decided she should go upstairs and make sure I was awake since she didn't hear me walking around or anything. So, that is how I woke up this morning. I took a shower, did my hair, got dressed, put on my make-up and brushed my teeth in a record 18 minutes. I guess I need Jude to wake me up in the morning! Elise was still asleep. She usually wakes up around 8:30-9:00.

So, Jake and I have been Geocaching a lot more lately. It seems we go through phases with it. Sunday we let Elise with Alicia and headed off for the woods. We would have taken her but she refuses to sleep in the backpack thing and she was very tired before we even set out for the journey. It was a short hike (2 miles, maybe?) but it wasn't even terrain - made for a little bit of a challenge. It was fun. We found the first two caches with little trouble but the last one...we searched and searched. Finally we gave in and called the babysitter to look it up on line for us and tell us the hint they gave. As soon as we got it we found the cache within a 2 minutes. It did rain a little but since we were in the thick of the woods we had some cover. It was very humid. We were dirty and smelly by the time we got home.

We are heading for Tennessee next week-end and hope to do a bunch while we are down there.

Well, I never.....

Stephanie posted a blog today listing the things she thought she would never do before she had children. She invited people to to do the same so I thought I would give you my list. If you want to post your own list on your blog then go to her blog and list your website in her comments.

I have a lot of things I said I would never do before I had children. Here are a few....

• My kids will NEVER eat hot dogs! ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HAAAAA!
• My kids will NEVER sleep in my bed. Yeah right. Jude still crawls into bed with us.
• Characters??? Well, my children aren't going part of ridiculous world of child consumerism. I swore they would not like characters. As most of you know, Jude is a character JUNKY! The Wiggles, spiderman, blues clues, Toy Story, dora, etc... He has everything from night lights to underwear with characters!
• I will NOT let my kids go and stay with relatives out of state for a week at a time. And I certainly would never take a vacation without my kids. By the way...anyone want to take them for a while? A week? Two? Okay, give me a call.
• I will not be a working mom. Why would someone have children and then pawn them off on someone else? See my last post.
• And last....I thought it was some sort of child abuse to let your kids cry for more than 5 minutes at a time. It took me a while to catch on but man I was stupid then.

My list could go on and on but for now that is it!

Confessions of a Working Mother...

I've been reading Stephanie's Blog lately and she has been doing a lot of posts about being frugal, homeschooling, organizing etc.... She reads a bunch of other mom's blogs about similar stuff. I check them out when I get a free moment. I used to be one of them. Until Jude turned three I was a stay at home mom. I used cloth diapers, made my own baby food, cut coupons and I would drive to 4 different grocery stores to buy specific sale items at each. But, alas, last fall I had to go back to work. We changed jobs and after working and reworking our budget I had to accept my working mother fate. I took a "part-time", yet crazy schedule job teaching abstinence in the local schools. It was fun but Jake and I had to work opposite shifts and we never seemed to get anything accomplished. I hated working opposite each other but we did save on babysitters (we didn't need one most of the time) and our kids at least got to be with one parent at all times. Unfortunately, my job didn't pay that much and we barely could pay our bills. We were still very frugal and pinched every penny. Fortunately, that only lasted 8 months or so. This past spring Jake and I decided to change careers/jobs. So....as most of you should know, we now work pretty much the same schedule and we have a full time babysitter. We (well our children) really lucked out because she (Alicia) comes to our house and the kids get to be in their own environment. She is great with them and takes them to do all the things I wish I had time to do (zoo, the park, swimming, etc...). They get to take naps in their own beds and play with their own toys. So that part is great.
As far as our new jobs - Jake loves his job and is eager to learn more and move up the company ladder (it is a short ladder...I think 15 employees???). I was pretty bitter about working. I really REALLY want to stay at home. But I have come to terms with the fact that I have to work. It doesn't matter how frugal I am or how much I go without we have accumulated bills in the past that we have to pay for now. I do enjoy my job. It is going well and I am making a little more money. I have the potential to make a lot more. So, it is motivating.
So, now for the confessions. Now that I am working full time I am not as organized as I used to be. I have tried and tried to get on some sort of schedule for cooking, cleaning, etc... but I still haven't gotten into the groove. I don't cut coupons or shop sales. I rarely go to Aldi's because it is out of my way and I don't shop at 4-5 different stores anymore. I shop at one. It is not the cheapest but I earn money off my gasoline (and it is close to my home). As far as cooking....well, I've cooked twice this week, which is more than I cooked all last week. I keep taking the time to write out a menu but then I don't follow through. I forget to thaw something out or I don't have time to get it together the night before. Because I make these BIG plans and don't follow through, I have recently let several things rot in my fridge (greens, peaches, cabbage that I bought for cabbage rolls, fennel, a ton of fresh basil that I planned to make into pesto and freeze). How wasteful of me. It is embarrassing. I have also been buying frozen prepared meals. I am a "home cooking" kind of lady so this has been a big step for me. Last Saturday I decided to have a deep cleaning day. We have lived in our house for 2 months and we hadn't had one. I barely had any cleaning supplies. Jake and I talked about it and we joked that I really am frugal! I have been saving a ton of money by just not cleaning. You really can save by not buying those expensive cleaning supplies. And speaking of cleaning....Jude's Room. ARgggghhhh. It is awful. I mean it is such a mess. You can barely walk through it. And guess what. I really don't care. I try not to go in it. I've decided it just isn't that important. I also don't make my own bed 75% of the time. I know it only takes a minute or two but honestly, I just don't have a minute or two. I used to believe that old saying "you make time for what you want to do". Well, I do think it is true to an extent- I do what is the most important but I don't get to do everything that is important. I wish I had more time. Then I could blog more and take my kids to story time at the library. We do eat together and take family walks/hikes each night. All I know is this....It is just a season.

Funny Jen F Stories...

Jen is an old friend of mine. We worked together at East Side Mario's back in the day. There were like 4 or 5 Jen's working there at the time so we called them by Jen & the first initial of their last name. Needless to say, the name Jen F stuck and don't think I could ever just call her Jennifer or Jen. She'll is Jen F to me. We have always had a love/hate relationship. Although we don't talk that often anymore I think of her frequently. I think I have had more fights with her than I have had with anyone. We are both stupid. Our last fight (I can't even remember what it was about) happened in October. We didn't talk for months on end but when Jake was sick and in the hospital she called! We never talk about whatever our "last argument" was over. Either way, I was thinking about my past and trying to figure out what exciting and entertaining story I could tell you and I decided I am going to list some of my all time favorite all time Jen F moments.... I don't think I could even think about putting them in any particular order.

• We used to go walking or roller blading a lot. I have tons of stories just surrounding those "exercise sessions". When I lived in Peninsula she would come over after work sometimes and say "We are going to walk!" So this one evening we set out at about 11 P.M. to take a power walk down Olde Eight Road. It was pitch black. We were going along just fine, chatting about something juicy I am sure - when we see this car coming behind us. As the car gets closer it began to slow down. It eventually pulled off to the side of the road we were on. We were both scared out of our minds. So Jen RUNS off and leaves me standing there frozen. It was a police officer. He questioned me and wanted to know why my friend ran. Uh...I don't know. I yelled for her to come back and she did. She had been hiding in some bushes. We didn't get into trouble or anything.
• Another time we went for a walk down Olde Eight Road but I think it was more of a leasure walk. I remember it was a hot spring day and we were wearing flip flops. I had stopped along the way and picked a fist full of daisies to take back home with me. We were walking along...I am sure talking about something just as juicy as before when out of nowhere these GOATS bolted into the road directly to us. Well, I was (yet again) frozen but Jen took of (flip flop flip flop really fast). The goats decided to leave her alone but they surrounded me. I ended up feeding them my daisies. There were abnormally agressive goats. Cars were driving by, honking their horns and laughing their butts off but no one helped me. Jen was long gone. She didn't come back.
  
• Another time we were roller blading in this metro park. Jen was wearing a bikini top and umbro type shorts. I can't remember what I was wearing but it is irrelevent to the story. Neither of us had on any sort of padding because it would mess up our tan lines. When we first set out on the trail a couple of people commented on us roller blading. We just thought they were suprised to see us because of all the bike traffic. So, here we go and things were going well. Then we get to this BIG hill. I think okay, I can do this. I bend my knees and steady myself. I assumed Jen was doing the same. I was gaining momentum when I looked back I saw Jen had ditched the hill effort mid attempt. I turned just in time to see her dive into the grass and do a flip. I was worried and shocked. So I tried to slow down. Bad move. I wrecked too. Except I hit the pavement. I just layed there trying to figure out if I should laugh or cry. I finally scrapped myself together enough to go check on Jen. I had blood everywhere and still have scars to proove it! Jen however escaped without any blood BUT she had "grass burn" (like rug burn only done with grass) all over her abdomen. It was bad.
  
• Jen F always had a few boyfriends at a time. Always a serious boyfriend and then many suitors. I was in a bar with her when two of her boyfriends were there in diffent areas of the bar! It was something out of the movies. Oh it was a hoot. I think many of the men knew she dated other guys and just didn't care! Seriously there have been a few guys who would do ANYTHING for her. And it didn't matter how she treated them.
  
• When we went out dancing guys flocked to her. She could get so stinkin drunk that she pukes and guys still wanted her number. I used to give it out to everyone! She would be mad (for a minute) but in the end I think she saw the humor in it all. Oh back in the day....Well I could go on and on but it is so late and I must be getting that beauty rest!
  

Secret Message...

GWAR can do the new pants dance but if you are a fatty Boomba Latty you might have to put on your MC Hammer Pants and hammer time to Ice Ice Baby.

Does this mean anything to anyone?

Just Asking....