The Pagan Mom Blog

Tax time is in full swing. Yesterday was absolutely exhausting. When we got home and fed kids pizza that we picked up along the way, I checked my Farmville and then laid down. I think I was asleep by 8:30. The good thing is that my hours are going to fly through the roof. When I had stepped out to pick up lunch for us from Subway, 6 people came by and dropped off their info for their returns. The boss looked at the growing stack and asked me if I was sure I didn’t want the part time temp to handle the administrative aspect. I am sure, I really want the hours. So this morning I am ready to go to work and get cracking. But. Kids have a 2 hr delay due to the sleet coming through. So I have to wait. Now I am waiting to hear from the school. Given that the kids keep missing days and they have already taken Good Friday as a makeup, they are now discussing starting to use Spring Break. They are going to call parents and see what they want. I am sure we can figure out my answer…….take the Spring Break days. Those have always been a pain for us. But I doubt that it will happen. I think more parents will vote for the use of Saturdays (which my kids will not want lol). Saturdays wouldn’t affect us much because Alex will still be home. Kyle usually stays and works from home on Saturdays so that  can come to the office.

With regard to the knitting classes this weekend, Kyle and the kids will go down with me Sunday as long as it isn’t snowing. No matter what if it snows I am not going. But Sunday it’s not supposed to and it’s supposed to be above freezing which means melting. And Sunday is the designing class which I am really thrilled about.

Tomorrow Claire gets her glasses….finally! It’s been almost a full year since she had a pair. Hopefully next month I can buy a second pair for her so that in the event she breaks a pair she has a backup. I also need to get a new pair for me because I haven’t been seen in two years. I am afraid Alex needs glasses as well, so I need to get him checked.

In other news, Megadeth is coming to Asheville in March. YAY! They are bringing with them Testament and Exodus. Talk about a blast from the past! I am totally going, friend of mine got our tickets already. Shinedown will also be coming April 1. Not too sure about that one. Tickets go on sale Friday and once my friend finds out how much they are we will talk about it. I really can’t afford it if it’s more than $40. We will see.

That’s about it in my exciting life. I need to check my farm andget ready for work. What are you all up to today?

How is the weather by you??? It began to snow here yesterday around 3-ish. At 5:30 it looked like this:

It’s dark right now (5:50 am) so I can’t see much to see if we accumulated more overnight like the were calling. I also need to check weather channel again, last night they were saying it was going to snow all day long today.

So I am snowed in and not too interested in going anywhere. Perfect day to catch up on my blog reading. And since it’s Saturday it’s time for me to share with you the Blog Of The Week! I wish I had theme music for that slight announcement, lol.

Bringing Up Salamanders is so amazingly wonderful! I first met her on another blog when we consistently kept showing up in the comments and then responding to each other in the comments. Before you knew it we were visiting each other often. My fave thing about her is that she is in another country. This means she is on a different calendar than the pagans in the US. It’s a nice reminder of what else is out there. And her blogging about her son is simply adorable. Sometimes i just want to fly on down to Brazil and hug him to death. He is such a sweetie! Nadia has this vibrancy about her that I am so jealous of. Even when times are hard she has this life force that is so strong and remains positive. So if you need a new pagan blog to read or you want to see another slice of life, hit up her blog. You won’t regret it!

I have decided that today’s post will feature no bitching, crying or moaning. May be a short post but I am sticking by that lol!

First my girls got more college invites yesterday. This program is called Super Saturdays and is offered at University North Carolina – Asheville. All kids enrolled in the gifted program in the city schools get the invites. They get to choose a class to take and every Saturday for 6 weeks and I take them over for that class. Last time Molly did Physics. This time they aren’t aiming as high. Molly wants to take a cartooning course where they learn animation. Claire is opting for a sculpting course. This is Claire’s first year being in the gifted program and oh my is she so excited. Molly has been mean and told her she isn’t smart like Molly. While that is sort of true, Molly made it sound like poor Claire isn’t smart. The reality is, they are smart in seperate ways so I am really glad she is in the program holding her own. Anywho this program is $69 per class. We e-filed and got our bank loan yesterday so I am paying off a bunch of my own personal debt today. I should be able to pay for their classes next week. They don’t start until April or May I think.

Work has gotten busy. It amazes me how it almost seems like overnight when this happens. One week I am struggling to find anything to do and then BAM I am struggling to find 2 minutes just to pee. But this is good. I should be making lots of money and stowing some away for a rainy day. I have decided anything over my normal weekly pay (from the last few months) will go into the bank between the joint and personal accounts. That way I am contributing to both household bills and stocking up.

With the rise of work comes the lack of internet time. Since I still get up at 5 am I have an hour and a half before kids are up to spend on email and blogging. So the blog shouldn’t be affected but I might decide to stay in bed on occasion and skip out being online all together. If you follow me on twitter, I probably will respond to @replies during the work day (if I see them) but I really won’t tweet until I get home in the evening and after the kids have their computer time after dinner.

I am also currently working on a local commentary about our transit system. This will be published at Associated Content. I got in a bit of a tiff yesterday on Twitter with our transit system. I won’t go into detail but I think that they just absolutely ignore the needs of citizens and whoever I talked to doesn’t use transit to understand. Plus I was in ’super bitchy overload’ yesterday and they got a real nasty side of me.   A bit unfair and I am feeling better today so it will be time for me to be objective and maybe get them to understand what I was saying. We  shall see.

So that is all I got going on here at the moment that won’t reduce me to tears. Check back tomorrow for my Twitter Five!

Well we are back home from our trip to Homestead Florida. In short, it was a great vacation. I really didn’t think I could handle a holiday away from home and in a tropical location. Yea well I was way wrong. I have so much to say and so many pics to show that I think I will break this up over the next few days. I don’t want to overload anyone lol. So today, let’s discuss driving 900+ miles (we think) with 3 kids and a vanful of presents.

We set out Wed Dec 23 at 4am

Originally the plan was to leave at 3 but I overslept. Then getting 3 kids up and the hubs up was a wee bit challenging. But I got them moving and we headed out. We originally thought the trip would be 15 hours not including stops. Wrong, we got to Homestead at 7:00 in the evening. WITH the traffic in West Palm and Miami! But hold on, I am getting ahead of myself.

It doesn’t take long to get to SC, only about an hour to an hour and a half. Depends on traffic. And it was freezing when we left and our roads were icy. Once we got near SC though it was nice and clear. We filled up at Exit 10 cause they got the CHEAPEST gas on the entire trip, $2.37! Eventually the sun came up and traffic was light.

When we got to Georgia I was a bit more excited. It really felt like we were making progress. As a way to break up the monotony we stopped at the Georgia visitor center. The kids each got a road map and took potty breaks. They also argued over what movie to watch next. Oh yes, major tip…..borrow or rent a van with dvd player. How did my parents get by without this road trip necessity?? My kids were so amazingly well behaved due to the use of tv as a mind numbing drug for moms sanity!

We also stopped at the Florida visitor center. Kids got free cups of orange juice, maps, and checked out the Christmas Tree.

I loved their choice in ornaments.

Around the time we hit Jacksonville is when my enthusiasm waned.

I did most of the driving. A couple times the hubs took over so I could nap. But mostly it was me (and I promise I was not driving when I snapped the above picture). Jacksonville is almost 30 miles over the Florida border and hitting the border kinda thrilled me because I know it’s the last state to hit. BUT. It’s like traveling through Virginia……unbearably long with not much to look at but other cars. Somehow we got through it though. The hardest part for my hubs was when we hit West Palm. We stopped for a gas/potty break. Another tip, I highly recommend you train children to use the potty at gas breaks and time your eating breaks with your gas breaks just to minimize how many times you have to stop. Of course you always have that one evil child who purposely holds their bladder until 5 minutes after a break and no gas station or rest area in sight for 30+ miles. His name will be Alex. I think he does it just so we let him pee on a tree. ANYWHO, back to West Palm. We got our gas and ran to the bathroom and switched drivers which meant it was back to my turn. I think hubs did this on purpose. No sooner did we pull out did 50083957239570 cars suddenly appear. And when we hit Miami and had to get on US1 it got worse. Bumper to bumper traffic and we moved a foot every 5 minutes. I was actually pretty patient with it, I mean it’s Miami! But hubs bitched and it made our sitting time not so enjoyable.

We finally arrived and we all fell all over each other just to get out the car. We were met with hugs (many apologies to the family for my stinky butt hugging them) and liquor. Nothing makes all that driving better than being met with 7&7.

Our trip home was a bit more uneventful. We decided to spend the money on the toll roads and take the turnpike up to Fort Peirce. Trust me on this, if you are going to take 95 down and are going near West Palm, Miami, or further south….take the turnpike. It’s worth the money. I think we spent $10 on the tolls. We also opted to take two days to head back. We left Sat 26th around 4:30 and got just north of Jacksonville around midnight and grabbed a room. It helped ALOT!

Next blog post will be some random pictures about what we did. But not Christmas Day. That is a whole post in itself.

I live in Asheville, been living here since 1993. I love it here. However, there is something I don’t love. It is the opposition to change. Anytime someone wants to build anything, people come out and fight it tooth and nail. I understand wanting to keep standards for your town….but at the risk of ruining your economy? No, I am not a fan of that. Often people here will fight tall buildings in our downtown area. Yet, they don’t fight urban sprawl. Want to keep the mountains pristine? I would argue that you build up downtown as high as you can and keep the urban sprawl to a minimum. It takes only minutes to see gorgeous views, 15 to find a decent campsite. Urban sprawl is what will ruin those gorgeous views, not a tall building in the downtown area.

But let me get to the heart of what really bugs me. The opposition to seeing Social Media as a successful business tool. Now I have to be fair, Asheville businesses aren’t the only ones. But for sake of local businesses actually seeing this post, I want this to be directed to them. Maybe they will take it to heart. Maybe not.

Alot of people get this look on their face when you mention Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, or any of the other gazillion sites out there. You probably know the look. The look of disgust. That look of  “aren’t you older than 13?”. Or my oh so favorite comment escapes their mouth “Twitter is for ego-centrics who think people care about what they say” (yea guess what jerk, people do care what I have to say!). The fact of the matter is, these sites can help build or destroy your business. If I take a trip downtown and a store is having a sale or giving something away, you bet your sweet patootie I am tweeting it. I remember the day that AshevilleLiveCam tweeted about Wendy’s giving away free burgers downtown. I hustled on over and also discovered that if you filled out a survey you got a $5 gift card. SCORE! They got more business from me after that. Why? Because of twitter. When Bojangles gets on twitter and does a giveaway, they get more business. When moms are happy with a product they tried out, it goes on twitter. Word spreads rapidly. The happy people encourage others to go out and get your product. It is your benefit. The same can be said if you piss someone off. The last thing you want is bad customer service. You screw up and it’s everywhere. You mistreat people and you will lose business once they oust you.

Let me take you back to a time in the early years of society. Imagine if you will, Andy Griffith. In that day and age business owners had relationships with their target market. Your grocer knew you. Your barber knew you. Your mechanic knew you. Trust was built. Relationships were built. Business was good. Somewhere along the way we lost the trust, the relationship, and business turned into a stale WalMart-esque bad. Social Media is about bringing back those times of Andy Griffith in a technological age. It’s bringing it back with something we can be comfortable with.

How about those small businesses whom have embraced social media and have made accounts all over? Ahh yes, but you have to actually engage your market. The thing is, alot of businesses don’t use social media the way they should. I recently read an article about Citibank and their report on use of social media in the workplace. Unfortunatley Citibank did not have a positive outlook on social media. But it’s their own fault. Nowhere on their sites is there a way for a person to find them in their various social media outlets. How can they build a relationship? I see this with businesses here in Asheville. They sign up for twitter and then they don’t engage. One pizza place will tweet a dinner special about once every couple of weeks. Posting ads doesn’t help you in these forums. ENGAGING your market, talking with your market about things other than your product…..that is what helps. We have other businesses that have a twitter account and have never tweeted anything. And yet they think social media doesn’t work! Business  owners know that what you put into your business you get out of. Same goes for social media.

I hope that some businesses hit up this post and really understand how social media helps. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook fanpages…..these are all very useful (and very inexpensive) tools that help businesses. You just need to work at it! Trust me, we consumers will love you for it.