Brothers and Sisters

A new show on ABC, Brothers and Sisters, is on right after Desperate Housewives. The show depicts a large family and all the drama that goes along with being a large family. It makes me want to have more children. That and both the kids keep asking for a baby in the house. It is starting to get to the point where the boy and the girl will be too far apart in age, so I know that we need to act soon if we are going to have more children. They are both relatively self-sufficient- can dress themselves, brush their teeth, no more diapers- so it is hard to imagine starting all over again. My sister-in-law just had her third kid and holding the baby brought back all of those memories. I guess it is time to get serious about getting into fighting shape and going through it all over again.

Control

I am finally starting to take back control of my life. I do have a lot to undo however. The months of stress and catering and fancy restaurants and no exercise has taken a huge toll on my body. I am easing back into my exercise routine and making attempts at improving my diet.

I have been spending much more quality time with the family and taking care of forgotten tasks at home. I spent this past weekend on catching up on accounting for our businesses and filing and organizing the house. We met with the architect Friday afternoon and we are finally pleased with the layout. Now we are getting down to the nitty gritty details of the plans. He can't start on them until early December, which means we will have the final plans around Christmas time. Then comes the arduous task of getting bids from builders, figuring out the financing, and getting the necessary approvals from the city.

We have made some head way in getting our house prepared for sale. It is terrible timing to put on the market and I have no idea where we will live while we are building, but we are proceeding ahead. My new goal of being in the new house by this Christmas has changed to start construction by the end of January.

And just to prove that I am getting my life back under control, I started Christmas shopping yesterday.

Trusting your gut

When I decided it was time to move on from my employer, the only employer I had known my professional career of 10+ years, I told myself I would just have to make the decision based on gut instinct. As you can tell from my past posts, it has been well, trying at my new place of employment. I am starting to doubt my 'gut instinct'.

This is the week

That I have been dreading. We are presenting our detailed drawings to the client and reviewing them. And day 1 went amazingly well. The client is typically argumentative and mildly combative. And they were neither. Actually, they were almost completely silent. Which sets us all a little uneasy. Did we do our jobs? Did the long hours pay off? Or, is the storm brewing behind the scenes....

On the other hand- I have kids! And a life! I took my off Friday off and hubby and I actually had a day to spend together. Lately we've completely traded shifts. He'll get home after I'm asleep and I will leave before he wakes up. He did have to go to work Saturday morning and was gone the rest of the weekend, but I'll take one day. It was wonderful having three days off of work and it was just what I needed. Even better than that is an extended family trip to Leakey coming up this weekend.

Maybe I should go with the obvious untruth

Work has been all consuming for my little team the past few months. We've worked 10+ hours straight for the past 9 days and we are all getting a little loopy. So we decided to cut out early today and we hit the bar for a couple of hours this afternoon. I had to leave to pick up the kids and take the girl to swimming lessons. Sitting at the swim school, conversing with the parents of a little boy in her class, I realized I smelled like smoke, major smoke. My first instinct was to say, I don't smoke, I just smell like it because.... oh wait a minute, let's just say I smoke.

Am I dreaming?

I am here at work on a Saturday morning. I did the reasonable thing and stopped and picked up kolaches for the team on the way in. Couple hours later, the boss shows up with a huge cooler and a skillet. He cooked up eggs, sausage, and pancakes in our conference room. I wonder how long the smell will linger......

Office politics

I was so naive. I thought my previous company had issues with political currents and behind the scenes doings. I had no idea just how bad it could get. I love the work I am doing, I love the people I am working with, and I love working for an owner versus a contractor for hire. But the level of politics are something I have never seen before and actually prevent us from doing our jobs. Not just preventing us from doing our work effectively, but preventing us from doing our jobs completely.

Unbelievable!