The Third Prayer

Dear mom and dad,

When I was 15 1/2 years old, you both were at work one night and my friend Missy and I took the minivan for a spin.  I’m pretty sure we just went to 7-11 (1.5 miles east from the house.)  But we were wild girls driving with no license and then drinking and driving as we slurped on our Slurpees.  I’m such a rebel I know.  But we had fun in that minivan for those 10 minutes.

Love your daughter,

Trena

And now I am driving my own minivan and praying that someday my daughter doesn’t take it for a spin before she has a license. 

(More to follow on the purchase of our new minivan next week!)

When Frank and I go out to dinner, ninetimes out of 10 we tip 20%.  We take the total, minus the state/federal tax and then tip off that total.  If the service is really bad, we might give only 15%.  My grandma was a waitress and I remember her complaining about people who don’t tip so I think it is important to always tip good.  Sometimes Frank will want to tip only 15% because the service was poor but I always think up a reason why the service was off.  Maybe the waitress just broke up her boyfriend or maybe the table before her yelled at her for no reason.  Usually Farnk will say “whatever” and I just tip the usual amount.

But when it comes to other services, tipping gets confusing.  So I’m curious, how do you tip?  When it comes to buying a drink at a bar, pizza delivery, getting your hair cut, car washed, pedicure, how do you figure out what you should give the person?  Do you do a 15% or 20% scale like you would do in a restaurant or do it different?  I do it different but I’m not really sure how I do it.  Just wondering if I’m doing it the right way or not!

Wednesday we decided to celebrate the Big Ultrasound and we went out to dinner to our favorite restaurant, La Fuentes.  Of course, Mary Rene had to bring her friend Spot.  Do you remember the days when you could make your best friend go anywhere and everywhere you wanted?  With just a friendly tug, your friend obeyed.

Mary Rene was being a good dog owner and walking her friend Spot so good and smooth.  Spot only slipped once and that was when he was tumbling down the steps.  Mary Rene was so proud of walking Spot and wanted to take Spot with us in the car.  All was going well until…

Mary Rene saw Leza, the neighbor’s dog.  How quickly Spot was neglected.

As you may have noticed, I have been on a blog break.  An unintentional blog break I might add.  Thank you for those that have personally called or emailed me to make sure I am okay.  Everything is fine.  Sweet Pea is still growing.  Mary Rene is 18 months (1.5 years!) already.  I just have some personal issues I am trying to work through right now and until I get these resolved I can’t write.  Trust me I have tried to write but when I sit down to write I just can’t.  It is hard to pull off a happy post when you aren’t feeling happy.  It just feels too fake to me so I have decided not to write until I am back where I need to be.  Thanks again for those that have showed concern.  I hope to be back soon.

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So, we may have pinpointed why Mary Rene was waking up so much in the middle of the night.  I really wish this wasn’t the reason but I really think it is.  All that caffeine was getting to her and keeping her up.  I didn’t start drinking coffee again until she turned one.  By that time she was only nursing four times a day, morning, two naps and at night.  I would time my morning coffee at the perfect time so the highest level of caffeine in my blood stream would not be near the time she nursed.  In October, I went on my soda kick and that lasted until a week ago.  So I was drinking a cup of caffeined coffee in the morning and an occasional soda in the afternoon.  I know some of you will comment and say, “that’s not much caffeine, you are fine.”  But if you think about it, I went caffeine free for the first year of her life.  She was not used to it at all and then out of nowhere I was drinking it like an addict.  On top of that, she decided to start nursing more.  Even though she is only napping once a day, which would turn her nursing sessions in to only three a day, she has started asking to nurse frequently throughout the day.  Yesterday, I nursed her about eight times.  And that’s with going to work for seven hours!  This has been going on for about a month and there was no way for me to calculate when she would nurse next to make sure the caffeine wasn’t at its highest point in my blood stream.  So, no caffeine for me.  And since I stopped drinking the coffee, which gave me a huge headache the next day, she has only woke up once each night.  So we are back where we started.  Now we just need to know what the trick is to get her to sleep through the night. 

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Back in August we were at my cousin’s house and Mary Rene was playing with her son’s Little Tikes washer & dryer.  She was having a really good time putting gumballs in the dryer and opening and closing the door.  My cousin said we could have it since her son never used it.  Well, that was in August.  I kept asking my mom about it and finally…

sweet!  I decided to keep it at my parent’s house because they have more free space there and I knew they would get a kick out of Mary Rene playing with it.

First Mary Rene had to do an inspection to make sure it was in working order.

Then my dad had to show her how to wash the towels.

She ended up washing both of her sippy cups, some mardi gras beads and two washcloths.  She played with it for a bit but had too many other toys to occupy her that day.  I’m sure next time I am over she will be washing everything in sight.

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What else does Mary Rene have to do when she is at my parent’s house?

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I’ve been sewing like a mad woman this week.  I finished a cute Dora the Explorer shopping cart cover for a friend’s daughter, a holiday bib for Mary Rene, I started making a pink ladybug dress for Mary Rene and I finished making her some cute pink reindeer pj pants.

I’m getting so quick at sewing and just loving it.  I really wish I could find a way to do this for a living.

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I coudn’t find my master Christmas sheet so I decided to go through all the cards from last year and rewrite the list.  Mary Rene decided to help.

That was a disaster.  For some reason she loves cards.  When we go shopping, to entertain her, I just go to the card section, put a card in her hand and she is fine while I shop.  Beats picking up toys and ending up buying them.

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(For a minute there, I thought this was going to be an “All About Mary” post.”)  We were invited to four holiday parties and one birthday celebration tomorrow!  And unfortunately they are all at the same time so we can only attend one.  Oh how the holidays get so busy.

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On Sunday, my Goddaughter, the beautiful Beatrice Louise is getting Baptized!  Please say a special prayer for her.

I would like to compile a list of some of my favorite posts to include on my sidebar.  The posts that really help describe me and what I am about the best.  So I am asking my readers for help.  Can you recall a post or posts that I wrote that you really liked?  I’ve been racking my brain and I am coming up blank.

What’s a blogation?  It’s a vacation from your blog and that is what I am taking.  Why?  Well, I’m going to a place that internet doesn’t exist.  Okay, maybe it does exist but I won’t have access to it.  Don’t miss me too much and I’ll be back next Tuesday.

While I’m gone: Baby girl will turn 11 months old on Sunday!  That one year mark is inching closer and closer.  I just can’t wrap my head around it.

Yesterday’s memorial for Michael Jackson brought back a lot of memories for me.  I loved his music and could easily find myself tapping my foot or singing the lyrics.  But then the whole child molestation charges came against him and I quickly judged him and started thinking of him as a bad person.  The media ignited this fire more by showing him in goofy situations with his children wearing mask.  And then there were the plastic surgeries and so on and so on.  The more I heard about him the less I liked him as a person.  I can thank the media for that.

But the memorial changed my views of him and I once again was able to appreciate him.  He was brilliant and revolutionary and he changed the stage of music for generations to come.  But even more, he cared about the world and did a lot for charities.  He holds the Guinness Book of World Record for someone who has donated the most to charities. 

Then I later learned that because he had his children wear mask in public, he was able to successful shield them from the paparrazzi.  His children were able to go out in public without the paparrazzi following them.  Why?  Because they were unrecognizable.  You can’t say that about Suri Cruise of the Pitt twins.

Now I think back to all those pictures of his children wearing mask and I see it as brilliant on his part.  He grew up in the spotlight and he knew first hand how it can torture your soul.  He loved his children enough to protect them from his own destruction.  That speaks volumes to me. 

Regardless of how you felt about Michael Jackson, he was a human just like you and me.

If you could be a star on any television show, which would it be and why?

I would love to be on Ugly Betty.  My good friend Jenny K got me into this show and now I am hooked.  Check it out if you haven’t already-every show ends with a good message (kind of like Full House when we were younger!)

First of all, Betty works for Mode Magazine.  I used to dream about working for a magazine when I was younger.  Mode Magazine is all about the latest in fashion so they go to a lot of fashion shows and there are celebrities here and there.  I have no clue when it comes to fashion, although I am not as bad as Betty, so it would be fun to wear all the funky clothes.

Plus it is based in New York which sounds like such a fun city.  I like the idea of talking on my cell phone to a client while I walk to work in downtown New York.  It sounds so hip and just plain darn cool.

If you were given the opportunity to look through a magic cube and see back at some particular point in your life what would it be?

I would love to see the first time that Frank & I ever saw each other.  I know the first time we met was on Aug. 5, 2001 at Strassenfest.  But I have always been curious if we ever locked eyes before that.  Maybe we were both at the same bar and he was ordering a drink next to me and we noticed each other.  Or maybe we were both walking in the grocery shopping and he opened the door for me.  Or maybe the first time we ever met was at Strassenfest.  Wouldn’t it be neat to find out that we first touched hands when we reached for the same egg at a Easter egg hunt when we were little kids?