The Pagan Mom Blog

I have had the unfortunate pleasure of really noticing my shape in the mirror.  And I mean REALLY noticing. It’s not that I beleive I will ever be my 130 lb self again, but I do need to do something to take some weight off so a walk to the corner doesn’t knock me out.

When we get snowed in I get cabin fever. I will happily walk to the coffee shop, a corner store, or the grocery store just to get out. Unfortunatley my body cannot handle it. I am usually red faced and barely able to breathe, employees tend to freak out and want to call 911. And I sit around and think about doing exercise and whatnot but I have some hangups. First I hate to exercise in front of people. Especially the hubs who is ten times more sedentary than me. Why? Cause he likes to inform me that I am not “doing it right”. Nothing is more irritating than having a fellow fatty (who is twice your size) tell you that you are doing it wrong while they are sitting with a bag of cheetos. Just saying.  But the other issue I have is I am not motivated in the winter which is usually when I am at my biggest. Come spring and summer I love to be outdoors. Whether it’s just walking outside, camping, hiking, or just sitting outside. I feel my most invigorated when I am outside in warmer weather. Winter makes me want to be inside. I don’t like being cold and I don’t like being out in the cold. I used to take morning walks, not since it got cold though. So I don’t know what to do. I want to be moving around but I don’t want to be cold. BLAH!

So I was going to do this post about my Tuesday Morning but a few other things have happened since then and it inspired a pet peeve post. I haven’t done one of these in awhile and I felt like it would be a good topic.  Ready?

1. Abuse of your dog. Ok maybe that is a bit extreme BUT I really felt bad for this dog yesterday. We were under a Blizzard Warning and we had winds of up to 60mph. I saw a woman walking her chihuahua (sp?) along a busy road. It was really cold and the woman had foresight to put on extra doggy clothing. Unfortunatley it was either too small, doggy had arthritis, or the cold was bone numbing to poor doggy. This sad little thing was struggling to move his tiny legs. And even worse was the leash was pulled taut as she tried dragging him down the street. I know dogs need exercise but this thing needed to be picked up and cuddled. He was so miserable!

2. Solicitor’s who whisper. I had a call at our office and this woman whispered the entire call. I was really frustrated because I told her repeatedly that I could not hear her. She continued to whisper and all I could get from her was she wanted to send a fax. I thought she might have been a client who was ill and couldn’t speak but needed to get us some information. No. She was from the local paper trying to do some sort of fundraising. It’s bad enough that she wasted my time (and I missed several client calls while dealing with her) with her solicitation but she WHISPERED! What the hell? Is that supposed to be a new trick or something? And if you are sick to the point of loss of voice and your job requires cold calling, you can’t do your job. Go Home! It will be a joy when she calls back in a few days.

3. Who has the worst weather. If you are on the East Coast you know how bad the weather has been. Last night I heard even Louisianna was getting hit with snow! What I really hate is  the pissing contest. ”Well we have 4 feet of snow, pity us more because that is worse” mentality. Northeners who don’t understand why 2 feet of snow shuts down the south, etc etc. Bottom line, it’s not about how much snow you get but how your area can handle it. In MD, my parents have 50″ of snow and yet have power. We get 2 feet around here and you can kiss your power goodbye for at bare minimum of 12 hours and maximum of 3 days (and maybe more if you are real rural). It’s all because north have the training, the crews,and the equipment to deal. We do not. If we had 50″ it would kill us around here. Louisiana it’s gonna be worse. So don’t knock people because they don’t have as much as you and can’t handle it. How often do you think we get snow? LOL we have had more snow this year than what we get in 2!

4. Cellphone usage while driving. Tuesday morning on my way to work was beyond treacherous. I had two people almost rear end me, one almost sideswipe me, and two more cut me off all together. Why? Because they were on their cell phones not paying attention. I used to be one of those people until I almost ran a red light. I refuse to touch my phone while driving now. When they passed the law making it illegal to use themI was thrilled. Too bad it’s not being enforced! I was so scared and pissed Tuesday that there was a 6th person. A woman in a black PT Cruiser. Yea. She was on her phone and driving down the road soooooo slooooooowww. Guess what I did. I laid on my horn the whole way down the road. Oh yes I did. I wanted to interrupt her conversation that bad. 

So there are just a few.Feel free to add to the list in the comments section!

I am so sorry I haven’t been around. With the weather monkeying up my work schedule I just haven’t had time to sit down and write anything. And to be honest by the time I got home I didn’t want to touch a computer lol.

In regards to my last post, for now I am going to continue as I have so far. If it becomes an issue at work I will deal with it then. Not sure what I would do, things are different when you work in a family business. I mean if I sued my father in law over religious discrimination, it would make for bad ju ju with the family. But I don’t see that kind of situation coming up so I am not worried about that. I think it just hurt to think that someone might suddenly change their opinion of me based upon a bumper sticker. Only thing I can do is remain professional, I am not about to try real hard to win someone over.

Moving on to other events, the weather prevented me from enjoying my weekend at Knit Inn 2010. That was frustrating because I REALLY was looking forward to the classes I had signed up for. On the upside I was able to get down there yesterday for the last class, a designing shawls class. I am a visual learner and unfortunatley this was not a hands on class. BUT, I did learn quite a few things. So I am currently designing a basic shawl just to get started. I have several ideas floating around in the head and will eventually get to work on those. I want to get the hang of the basics first. I am still trying to work down my stash and getting there somewhat. When I design the next shawl then I will buy more yarn. Or maybe when I get cracking on one of my projects in my queue in Ravelry.  Whichever I get to first lol.

That’s about it around here. Just doing what I got to do to keep up with work deadlins and keeping kids fed. Ya know, the boring stuff lol.

The weather this winter is seriously messing things up badly. Usually we will get our nasty weather in March. And when it comes it is mostly in the form of ice. This is bad enough. Once in awhile we get snow but it has never been enough for us to make a snowman or even wet enough for it to stay together.  We got 15 inches in December, 10-12 this last weekend. And you know what???? MORE is coming next weekend? Not sure on accumulation but just thinking about the possibilities is enough to anger anyone. If i lived up north I would totally expect this. But I don’t and that entitles me to a little bit of whining. You see next weekend I am supposed to be in South Carolina for a knitting event. This was super important to me because one of the classes I signed up for was a designing class. I want to design my own prayer/meditation shawls and hopefully sell them on the side. So this class was really important! Some of you may wonder what all the fuss is so here is the issue. First off I don’t drive well in snow. I can do it but I reserve it for when I must and walking is too far and I am not driving more than 15-20 minutes. Greeneville is 2 hours away. Secondly we always have ice with our snow. No one can drive on ice, I don’t care what they say. Thirdly, to get out of Asheville means going down mountainsides. No matter which way I go it is a must. The grades are seriously steep. They have special runoff roads for truckers in case they lose control. My own car slows down trying to make it up the grade. Coming down means almost constantly braking. Imagine hitting a patch of ice? Yea, I am not happy about this. I may try to go just Sunday, that’s the designer class. It isn’t supposed to actually snow on that day so the roads might get cleared up.

Along with all of this snow comes alot of school closings. This won’t affect Beltane as I will pull my girls out of school for that. But it could mean they will be in school most of June at this rate. As of now they have to go to school on Good Friday. That has quite a few people up in arms but really it makes me happy. For one we don’t do anything for Good Friday. Secondly Easter comes right around tax deadline and Good Friday has always thrown a wrench into the workday. Now I just need to get someone to take Lil Man off our hands so I can work. Especially now that I am doing the work of two people instead of just my own.

So there was my whining. It will all get worked out, it always does.

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 finally got it. I got my Droid. I got it in a very round about sort of way. I wanted to find out the difference between the Eris and Droid and so while I was at Verizon paying the bill, I inquired about it with a salesman. Admittedly this was a mistake. Me in a shoe store or me in a cell phone store equals disaster. I have learned to stay away from shoe stores at all costs. However, I have yet to learn my lesson with cell phones. I am kinda like a cat. I walk in and instantly I want to touch all the beautiful shiny objects. So the salesman was ever so kind to check and see when I would be up for an upgrade. Not until November. I almost cried. I have been wanting a Droid since their arrival in October 2009. Upon seeing my non existent tears the poor salesman absolutely took pity on me and set about to be my knight in shining armor. Okay okay okay. I am a sucker and he saw it painted all over my forehead. He discovered that the hubs was up for an upgrade (I knew this) and set about to inform me that I could upgrade the hubs for him, get him the free Eris and get the Droid for myself (I didn’t know this).  Of course I had to break the silence between the hubs and I and call him asking him if this was ok. He agreed but we later found out we both weren’t understanding each other. So I got the hubs set up and walked out with our new phones.

This is the Eris. Nice phone, it is an Android phone. The biggest thing is it is touch screen only. After having a touch screen only phone, Samsung Omnia, I was super hesitant about getting another one like that. This is the hubs first smartphone. He is a very simple person. His old phone was a simple flip with a 1.5 mp camera. Absolutely no frills or bells or whistles or anything with it. He seems to be enjoying this so far. He spent a good hour going through the free apps and has used some of the features.

This is my baby. Isn’t she gorgeous? I am in love with my phone. In a very bad sort of way. Seriously, little man went to touch my phone to hand to me and I about had a heart attack. In my defense I didn’t know he was going to hand it to me. But anywho I love her and her name is Betsy. I am still getting used to maneuvering the phone. Not that it is hard it just can do a whole hell of a lot of stuff lol. So the apps I have so far are:

The Associated Press app. I actually have this as a widget on one of my screens (you can flip through 3 screens). I can go through all the headlines and then read which ones I want to read. I can also switch from national to international if I want. Not a bad app so far.

Google Sky Maps. This one is fascinating and great if you have kids around. It shows you the stars and planets and how they are aligned in relation to your location. Move the phone around and the night sky moves with you. And it’s not jerky, a very smooth transition. It’s like having a window into outerspace. Very cool stuff.

Store Finder – I haven’t used it yet but I thought this might come in handy. The app has a long list of stores (Walmart, Target, 7Eleven, etc etc) and it will tell you where the nearest one is. I think I will like this for when we travel. When we had gone to Orlando for our Disney trip we only found Walmart by accident. I could have used this to locate any store that I felt like going into.

Facebook – while I am a Farmville junkie, this is a good way for me to keep up with my feed and see what’s going on. It’s sad but now I actually talk to everyone from my phone and only visit FB on the laptop when I need to do some farming.

Foursquare – I am now a foursquare addict. The basic premise is…you visit a local business, you go to foursquare on your phone and check in (say you are there). You get points for visiting and finding new businesses. I seriously love checking in and finding out where my friends are going. I see it as a way to find out about places that maybe I didn’t know about before. There has to be some caution with this though. It is every stalkers dream and if you have a routine each week about visiting this one specific gas station and then coffee house….some freak could figure it out and stalk you. I personally recommend that you don’t check in at every single place that you visit but places that you enjoy going to or new places that you found. But how you use it is really up to you.

Last.fm – I tried Pandora’s Radio app but it never worked for some odd reason. So I gave Last.fm a shot and love it. At work I tend to listen to alot of music but it’s a playlist I created online or what I have on the hard drive. This gives me my own personal radio station based on what I like….and it changes up the songs. I sometimes find new musicians that appeal to me. This one i won’t be getting rid of.

Yarn Shopper – I haven’t used this one yet. BUT. You put in your knit/crochet project and it will tell you how much yarn you need and how much it’s going to cost you. I haven’t had to buy any yarn here lately so I will have to tell you how that works out later on.

Fandango – I have a Regal Cinemas card, so I like to catch matinees at the theater. A bit more affordable then an evening movie and I get lots of freebies. Well this fandango app comes in handy. For some reason when I decide I want to see a movie, I decide when I am not online. It takes our computers awhile to boot up and I hate calling cause it takes forever to get through the automated call. This app is much easier, I can find out movie times in about a minute. LOVE IT!

Seesmic – I asked around about this one. I wanted a twitter app so that I could keep up with my tweeters while on the go. There are tons of free twitter apps on the droid system and I was overwhelmed. Most people came back with Seesmic so I gave it a try. I enjoy it thoroughly. It’s real easy to use, I mean REAL EASY!

The Weather Channel – I like being able to keep up with what is going on with the weather. The only thing I am not fond of is the inability to see what areas are affected by severe weather warnings. Last night we were under tornado watch and flood watch. If I go to the website I can see what is going on with counties and get up to date info on where funnel clouds are spotted. Unfortunatley the app tells you that you are under a warning but you cannot see any details about it. It would be nice if I could. I am not going to get rid of this one just yet though. I will keep an eye out for one that is more in depth in the mean time.

Steamy Window – everyone has to have that one stupid app that amuses them. Really, it’s a requirement. I swear I read it in my manual for the phone. So Steamy Window is my stupid app. Turn it on and it makes the screen look like it’s covered in steam. You rub your finger on it to clear it and you can see water beads and everything. And the really super cool thing is, you blow hard into the speaker and it creates more steam. It is awesome and I seriously can’t wait to show it off to people!

Ok so there ya go, that’s what I have on my phone. ALL of the apps listed above are free apps. I don’t want to spend extra money buying any. One thing I have to say is that I am not getting on the computer much at home. Don’t have to. Everything (except blogging and farmville) is easy to do from my phone. It’s kinda nice that way cause I can break up how I spend my time online.

Oh and….the eldest is happy. The hubs old ancient flip phone is now her phone. Yep, she has her first cell phone. We have strict rules about it and first offense for breaking any rule is she loses the phone for a year. No freaking joke people. I want her to understand the responsibility and I am very concerned about other people and her phone. Fortunatley she has no internet access. She has already declared she wants a smartphone but we have informed her that when California falls off and Key West has a blizzard (please mother nature don’t do that anytime soon) she can have one. After recent events with her possibly going to Wake Forest for a week and both the girls going to Univeristy North Carolina for Saturday classes…..it was time to give her her own line to keep in touch with us. I think she will be ok with it. She is a pretty good kid.

Ok maybe a tad overdramatic but we haven’t had snow like this in YEARS! I mean when my kids can actually make a snowman for the first time (and the oldest is 10) it leaves a mark.

So I woke up yesterday and I knew snow was on the way but I was skeptical. People around here freak over a single flake and I figured it would be like always. An inch, gone by evening, no big deal. HA! First they closed schools before it snowed. Not out of the ordinary but I was prepared to laugh at the school for being so assumptious.  I should learn to just wait and see. Man did Mother Nature hit us hard!

At 10 am

Yea, nothing to get THAT excited about but it was nice to see. We decided to take the kids for a walk down to the store. At the corner of our street we saw our road sign knocked over.

We continued on to the store

Once at the store we grabbed some toilet paper, snacks, hot cocoa, and….

At 2:30

And at 5 pm

It still is snowing (I am actually typing this up night before) and isn’t supposed to stop the steady snowfall for another 3-4 hours. I think we have about 8 inches now, a foot will be here easily if not more. More snow Saturday on and off with it done by evening. So not sure if we will get to go out much or not.

One interstate has people stranded in their cars. My inlaws commute 45 min into town, today it took them four hours to get home. Another road had  12 car pileup. It is rough, even though it’s gorgeous. Saturday’s plan, make a snowman

********UPDATE*****************

So this morning has been cold. We lost power around 9:30 last night and just now got it back just after noon. Can’t complain, it wasn’t real long but without alternate methods to heat our home, it was cold. As of last night 70,000 customers in 7 counties were out of power. As of 11 am 63,000 were still out. I feel for the people who have no heat and for the workers trying hard to get it to them!