The Scavenger

Brynlee is pretty funny. I think kids at this age are funny for a reason. It's all part of the divine plan to make you actually keep your kid. :)

Just kidding...well sort of. Depends on the day.

Anyhow, Brynlee is such a riot right now. She copies everything anyone does. Which is good and bad. It just means I need to watch what I do! She loves to eat. But not so much her own food. She wants everyone else's instead. She will eat her food, and then cry to get out of her chair. As soon as you let her out, she will come over and beg for your food. Which we all give to her because she is so cute. She is like a little puppy or something.

She will share her food to. I find goldfish crackers on all the chairs around the house because she is trying to feed them to Mitzie... Mitzie is not amused. At least Brynlee has the right idea. But sharing can lead to issues.

When I brought her to day care the other day she marched right in there ( she does actually march in there, like she owns the place) went up to another kid's tray and took some food right off. She shoved it in her mouth and said "mmmm". Oh boy. What have I created here?

When I went to pick her up from day care she did the same thing. Joan ( my daycare lady) told me that at lunch time she will say she is done. So they let her out of her chair. The next thing you know all the kids are screaming because Brynlee is going around eating all thier food. Oops. My bad. I guess I shouldn't have taught her to eat of other people's plates? Because now she wants to eat off of everyone's plates!

She is such a helper. Anything I'm doing she has to be right in the thick of it, helping ( usually not really being so helpful, but she is trying). She helps me change laundry from the washer to the dryer, she helps me make sure all the doors are closed around the house. If I give her something and tell her to throw it away she usually does it. Sometimes she gets distracted on the way to the trashcan.

Shoes and socks still come off at first chance. Despite the cold weather, because it has been really chilly here recently. I'll have pants and socks and a sweater on and she will be barefoot because she WILL NOT leave anything on her feet. Crazy kid. She is a nutty as ever!

Motivate Me

I had grandiose ideas about how my life would change when I started school. I'd have more free time. Time to work out, catch up on correspondence and clean. Well... I do have more time. But, it doesn't mean that any of the aforementioned get done.

I wake up each morning thinking about all the things I'm going to do when I get home from school. And I usually get home from school, scrounge up some dinner and then just veg out until I fall asleep watching TV at 8:30pm. I'm not so productive these days.

I'm not sure where my motivation went, but let me tell you. It's not here. It's like I used it all up, and now there is nothing left. Laundry needs to be folded, homework needs to be done and all I want to do is just sit. And sit some more. I'm worn out!

Having a toddler is exhausting. My respect goes out to the stay at home moms with toddlers. I'm not sure how you survive it everyday. Or how your toddler survives it for that matter. Brynlee goes non stop and it seems like I turn around and suddenly a horrific mess appears. I blink my eyes and she is running with scissors she stole from who knows where. She is getting taller there fore able to reach things she couldn't before. The things on my table are now in the very center, and all the stuff on the counters is pushed back as far as possible. And she still manages to get to it.

I find myself picking my battles more and more often. If she is getting into something that won't make too much of a mess, I just let her go at it. I don't have the energy to keep up any more. I am TIRED.

It seems like I go through waves like this and my motivation to do anything besides lay around leaves me. It will be back eventually. I'm just not sure my house will survive until that time!

Common Misconceptions

I've always wanted a career that had nice perks for me. And my friends. I thought I hit this with the travel agent thing. But being a travel agent has surprisingly few perks. And for my friends, even less perks. Besides my knowledge of airline policies and how to work the system, I didn't have much else to offer.

Being a hairdresser will surely be different. I've been excited to see people practically salivate when I tell them I'm going to beauty school. I guess with this economy everyone is trying to save a buck or two. And hair can get expensive, so having a friend in the business would be handy.

However, people seem to forget that I don't know what I'm doing yet. Just because I've gone to school for 1.5 months does not mean I'm skilled enough to tackle all hurtles hair has to offer. I think I have at least 10 people waiting for me to gain some knowledge so I can do their hair for them. And the amount of people willing to let me "practice" on them is almost funny! It's perfect though, because I need the practice. Believe me!

About 2 weeks ago my friend Chloe called me excited to color her hair brown. She has been blond with a partial weave for a while, and was looking for something more cost effective. Which I totally agree with because the amount of money she was spending on highlights was comical. Anyhow, she wants me to color her hair for her. That night. With some hesitation I told her we had not covered that chapter in my class yet and I didn't know anything about hair dye. She was eager and excited though so we headed to Target and just got a box. She HATES red hair, so we went with a ashy brown. No my personal preference, but hey different strokes for different folks right?

Except this stroke was not so good. Because by the time we were done she had some dark hair. But it was also green. Yes it was green brown hair. I was flabbergasted. After doing some googling, it turns out that when going from blond to brown if red is absent hair will turn green. Good to know! Somehow my friend Tessa got involved. Tessa has an aunt who does hair, so with her coaching Tessa thought it would be a good idea to go to the beauty supply store and buy some professional hair color to fix it. At this point I removed myself from any liability. Have you ( with the exception of actual hair dressers) ever looked at the hair color in the beauty supply store? It's like it's in Greek! Numbers and letters and things you have to mix together. I tried to read the hair color chapter in my book, and that might as well have been in German too.

So I agreed to go to the supply store, and help try to fix Chloe's hair but stated for the record if things went awry it was not my fault. We bought what we thought were the right products and went home to try to fix poor Chloe. After coloring Chloe's hair the second time things went from bad to worse.... she now had red roots with green hair. What? What the heck happened!? We were all sorts of confused. Despite Chloe being ready for the Holiday season early, things were not good. I called my friend Stephanie who is a hair dresser to see if we could fix this. I guess there is something worse than green hair after all. Stephanie walked us though the steps of what we should do to get Chloe back to a normal color. She said, " You guys aren't using a level 20 developer are you?". Nope we weren't. We were using a level 30. I guess you are supposed to use a level 10 developer when going from light hair to dark hair. Who knew? Not us, that is for sure. I told Stephanie this and we had a good laugh. At least we found out why crazy things were happening on Chloe's head. The third attempt at coloring was the charm, and Chloe looks beauteous with her brown hair.

Now we are actually covering hair color in my class. I can't help but feel like I have a little more experience than some of the other girls. You live and learn. Hopefully I won't make that mistake again. And at least now if someone wants fun festive Christmas hair I know how to give it to them! :)

The Kid in Me

I get concerned sometimes. I worry that being surrounded by 18 year olds all day everyday will have a negative effect on me. It's funny how when you are adults a decade between friends is no biggie. But, when I was 14 these girls were 5....yeah. I could have been babysitting them! If I think about it too much I want to put my guard up a little. Can I really become good friends with someone who was born in the 90's for goodness sake? Who never watched My Little Pony's, or never had *NSYNC posters on their walls? I guess age is not a big deal, but I feel weird. Almost motherly towards these girls.

Then again, I'm not so sure their 18 years has matured past my 27. Somewhere along the line I become really competitive with things. I'm going to blame living in the house of Cuillard, aka the most competitive family on the planet. Because I never used to be like this. Refer to the lack of natural ability post before. I'm alright with admitting that when it came to winning things, I didn't do that a ton.

But when I'm at school I NEED to do better than everyone else. I need to finish my haircuts faster, get better test scores, receive more praise for my perm wrapping. It's really an ugly trait. We have these awards ceremonies at my school where the teachers nominate students for...well awards! Since we are considered "freshmen" we can't get these awards yet. We will be eligible when we move out to the senior floor. But yesterday we had the opportunity to sit through the awards. I was practically salivating. Every time an award was handed out I thought to myself " I want that one, no I want that one, ok I want that one too". I immediately started hatching a grand plan on how I would woo my teachers into nominating me.

Maybe I'm attention starved? Who knows. I do think it has to do with the idea of being lost in a class of 28 people. I don't want to just be a nameless face among my many peers. I want to stand out. Since I don't have clothes to do that, maybe I'm looking to academic success to set me apart.

When it comes to my class, who is the more mature one?. I'm sure the 18 year olds are not giving their peers frantic glances when one of them is finishing a blow dry faster. And they probably don't post their A+ tests on their fridge either.

On a new topic, the Rangers made it to the World Series! They were not my first pick to play there, but their were my second so yay! Lets go Rangers! :)

Well Kept Company

Soooo, have I mentioned school at all? Oh yes, I have. About 400 times. And it's only been 1 month. Well, when you spend as much time there as I do it's no wonder.

I guess I could talk about how Brynlee has decided to remove her shoes, every time I put them on her. She has always taken them off, but now it's just exhausting. We ran errands tonight, 4 different stores. Had to put her shoes back on 5 different times....good thing her shoes are Velcro!

Anyhow, so school. On the first day they kept telling us to stay positive. Have a good attitude. I was so jazzed that day I didn't understand why anyone would have a bad attitude. Well people do. Have some bad attitudes that is. We have some serious complainers in there. It's funny how contagious complaining is. It's like once you start, it just rolls out. I don't want to get caught in that. I want to stay positive as much as I can.

So, I try not to surround myself with these people. And anytime someone complains to me about something, I counter with a positive about the same thing. I will keep a good attitude. As much as possible. School can be very frustrating, and I get that. But complaining won't solve anything. It's funny that I'm sitting here complaining about complainers. Ah the irony. :)

I find myself doing this not just in school anymore though. Whenever somone says something negative I try to counter with something positive. It's probably really really annoying. Maybe that is why I have to harass people into being my friends (refer to last post). :)

The gossip continues to worsen, so anytime someone says something bad about someone I try to counter that with something good about them too. This is equally annoying I'm sure. Pretty soon I'll have no negative remarks to counter because no one will be talking to me. Then I will have to harass them into being friendly ( again, refer to last post).

On and end note, I'm going to recap the text message conversation I had with a random stranger last night:

Stranger: Can you bring chicken salad on Saturday?
Me: Who is this?
Stranger: 26 cent
Me: I think you have the wrong number
Stranger: This is not Eden?
Me: No, but good luck with the chicken salad
Stranger: thanks

1 hour later....

Stranger: Can you bring chicken salad on Saturday?
Me. Still the wrong number
Stranger: Darn, sorry

That made me laugh and I'm not sure why. Maybe I should have offered to bring the chicken salad. It was a local number and obviously this person really wanted it!

Expect to not Accept

I think I'm pretty good at reading people. I can usually tell when someone is upset, or angry. Or annoyed. There are some people in my class who are pretty quiet. Not un friendly, but just shy. Timid maybe. They probably want to be left alone. I've realized I don't do that. I just pepper them with questions, probably obnoxiously so until they come out of their shell. And they usually do. They might try to one word answer me, and that will de rail me. For a while. And then I'll be back at them the next day. Until they fold and become friendly with me. It's like forced friendship.. the best kind! ;)

I don't know why I do this. It's like I want to be friends with everyone, and that idea that someone may not be friends with me is un acceptable. We got yet another complaint from our HOA. Our whole house is pretty sure we know who is doing the complaning. One man in particular seems to have a grudge against us. He is the grouchiest crochetiest old man. There is no reason for him to not like us, but he just gives us dirty looks all the time. And marches by our house, probably inspecting things to see if there is anything else he can complain about.

Because I'm crazy, it has been my mission since day one to break this old man. I smile at him, he frowns at me. I say "hi" to him, and he literally ignores me. I walk by his house all bubbly and friendly smiling at him while he shoots me looks of death. I will not yield. Other members in my house have different ideas on how to break this old man. Let me tell you, they do not involve smiling at him! But I'm determined to get him to like us. I refuse to accept that he just hates us ( because really, at this point it's probably gotten to hate status).

I know I should probably just leave these people be. Trying to be friends with someone who doesn't want to be friends with you can be exhausting. Let me tell you. But I can't let it go. It's the people pleaser coming out in full force.

I'm the same way when people do not get along. Or are in a fight. Even if I'm not involved what so ever I rack my brain at night thinking of ways they can be friends again. I just want everyone to get along with each other. Can't we all just be friends? Everything is so much nicer when we all get along. Is that so wrong?

I sat next to the nerdiest kid in science in 10th grade. Man, poor kid just kept to himself and did not talk to anyone. Well, that was not acceptable. I badgered him until he finally started to talk to me. He was an awesome guy! Really, he was an amazing person. See I never would have know that if I hadn't harassed it out of him!

I'm sure plenty of people think I'm super annoying. And that's ok. As long as they want to be friends with me in spite of that. :)

Time to Get Crazy

School was fun today. Some days are more fun than others, and I'm not sure why. But today was a fun day. We learned how to use curling irons. " Yea right" I thought. I'm a curling iron pro! I've only used them about 10000000 times in my life. Well, silly me I should have known. There is a correct way to use a curling iron. And I guess I've been using it wrong for 27 years. :) Ha ha there is a " correct" way to do everything in this profession. But I like curling irons, so it was fun to practice and fun to learn.

We are getting to that phase. The phase where we are going to start doing things to each other's hair. If we want to. If we decide to. You can usually pick a cosmetology school student out of a crowd easily. Just look at their multi colored/ crazy styled head! Of course I don't have to do anything. But what is the fun in that? On our second day of school we took pictures to go on our name badges. We must have done that then so we would look semi normal in our pictures! Because there is some eccentric hair styles going on with some of the seniors now.

No length is going. That is for sure. I've been growing my hair out for 1 year ( yes it's been a year) and it's barely past my shoulders. Ugh! So no cutting! But maybe something else. I haven't decided just yet...but what is the fun of being in school if you can't do something crazy with your hair. I'm thinking about a coon tail. Yes that is right. This girl in my class has one and I love it. She had blond hair, and she took a chunk of hair at the bottom of her head and dyed brown stripes on it. Like a coon tail.:) Below is not the girl in my class, but here is an example of a rather thick coon tail. Please disregard the absurdly placed bow and the hacked of top layer of hair.

It's so cute! Except mine would be a curly coon tail...so not sure how great that would look. I've never seen a raccoon with a curly tail before. There is probably a reason for that.

I'll keep thinking on it. But I have to do something. I'll be sure to post pictures when I do!

A Tale of Two Toilets

Jimmy and I drove to Arizona this weekend. This was our first major road trip since Brynlee was born, so I wasn't sure what we were going to get. We packed a car full of stuff and hit the road Friday night.

My bladder has not been the same since I had Brynlee. I fear for what lies ahead after the next kid, because it's not good news now. I have to pee more frequently, and the urges come on much stronger. As we were driving to Arizona, I had to pee several times. We were driving through desolate waste land, and the urge hit strong. It was another 80 miles or so until our next stop, so I rocked and bobbed until we made it to a gas station.

As a side note gas stations are not my preferred place to pee. In fact I usually avoid them at all costs. But, at this point it was the first stop there was and I was going to have to pop a squat if I didn't find a toilet ASAP. I knew as soon as I walked into the gas station it would not be good. It was dirty and dingy, and I knew I was in store for a less than stellar toilet experience.

As I entered the bathroom, I could practically see venereal diseases leaping all over me. This would definitely be 3 toilet seat cover trip. Maybe I better use 4 just in case. I'm not a germ a phobe either so that is saying something. I went to get a toilet seat cover and of course it was empty...great. What a place to run out of toilet seat covers. By this point I'm practically seeing yellow I have to pee that bad. So I start to fashion a toilet seat cover out of toilet paper. It was not going well. I ended up squatting above my sub par toilet seat cover in attempt to maintain my diseasless state. All part of the road trip experience right?

On the way home, things got worse. I again I had to pee really bad. We pulled over and stopped at a Jack in the Box in the middle of no where. I figured the Jack in the Box would look like a toilet's equivalent of the Ritz compared to the gas station. I was right, sort of. There was only one stall open, and when I went in there was a big turd stuck to the toilet bowl! Ewwww! Who just leaves a toilet like that, please tell me? The other stall was out of order. I went out to check in the men's was open. It was not. I stood doing the pee dance deliberating on what I was going to do...I was really missing the STD gas station at this point! I flushed the turd toilet a few times, hoping it would go down. Nope, it just stuck on there. Seriously? I eventually fashioned a stick out of multiple rolled toilet seat covers to dislodge the turd. It finally went down, and now that the bowl was clean I could not pee fast enough. In case you were wondering, I'd rather street pee than use an outhouse. Honestly. I can think of few things more disgusting. I can't do my business on top of everyone else's business. Ugh, just thinking about it makes me want to vomit.

I'll remember to bring toilet seat covers with me on my next road trip. As for the Jack in the Box bathroom...let's just hope I don't have to deal with that again!

A for Effort

In my quest to be the wife I've never been, I try to cook dinner every night. Yep, Jimmy has never had that. Ever! Even when we were newlyweds. My favorite thing to do for dinner is the "you're on your own" game, where I'll rummage for some food for me. And Jimmy can find his own food. This is not Jimmy's favorite game. As he usually ends up with a bowl of cereal for dinner when we play.

So, for the past month I've been trying avidly to make dinner every night, and have it ready or almost ready when Jimmy gets home. I'm not the best cook. I'm not sure why either, because I have all the tools:

1. I like to eat
2. I can read, therefore can read recipes
3. I like to eat
4. I like to eat

But alas, some of my meals are sub par. At least I can admit that. I consider myself fairly creative, but when it comes to cooking I just don't know what to make. I'm sure my pickiness in what food I will eat does not help with the monotony of our menu. I own about 10 cookbooks. I keep buying them, thinking that is the issue here. But I've realized that if a recipe calls for more than like 5 ingredients I mentally check out and move on to the next page. Hoping to find an easier recipe to make. Jimmy never complains about my wacky meals. Or boring meals. I think he is happy to not be eating cold cereal for dinner anymore!

School is going OK. Yes just OK today. When it comes to natural ability, I don't have a lot to be honest. So it's funny that I keep thinking I'm going to be great at these things right off the bat. I usually suck at first, and get disappointed in myself. Where did this mind frame come from? I have no idea.

We have moved on to wet hairstyling in my class. Monday was one of my lower days. At one point I got so frustrated I had to put my comb down and walk away for a while. Even more frustrating/embarrassing is that all my emotions seem to come out through my eyeballs so it took quite a bit of effort to keep from bursting out in tears in the middle of my class. *sigh*. I'm trying. Trying to be better at not being very good at things. Trying to be at peace with the fact that I have to work at stuff to master it. I must have missed the line where " natural ability" got handed out as a trait in the pre existence. I was probably too busy standing in the " un natural love of bread" line or something. :)

Tomorrow in class we will be putting curlers in each other's hair. I might have to take a picture of how mine turns out... it's going to be something. I'm not sure which is worse, trying to curler my already crazy curly hair ( and it's supposed to rain tomorrow as well, humidity will add an extra bit of fun). Or trying to curler my partners mile long hair. Both sound like a challenge to me! My partner's hair will probably not come out perfectly, but at least I'll get an A for effort. You can't say I don't try!