Holiday Update

I know I'm slacking off. The kids have been home too much lately and it is so distracting. It's like they want to be entertained constantly. It's strange that a playroom full of toys, every movie and vidoe game known to man, 250 DirecTV channels, and even a neighborhood full of kids their own age is not enough for them. I have to constantly feed them, look at what it is that they are coloring, building, watching, referee continuous battles over red crayons, lego guys, and tv channels. I can close the door to my office, but as soon as I do someone comes in and wants to sit on my lap or wants another snack. So I give up and just sit with them and stay in the middle of it all and get nothing done.

I tried the NaNoWri Mo, but failed. I got up to 23,000 words out of 50,000, but I fell off track when the kids and I got sick mid-month. I had previously thought that I was going to spend the month of November just and only focusing on my rugs, but trying to split it between that and writing for 2 hours a day didn't work. So for the next three weeks I am all rugs all the time and will come out the week before Christmas with a brochure of some sorts that I can take down to Phoenix or mail to architects and interior designers in January. I have to do it. My goal is simply to make people aware of what I am doing. I'm going to start tufting rug #2 this week, and like I said work on some promotional materials to get the word out.

I hate that kind of stuff, but I have to start somewhere and let people know that I am a rug maker and an awesome designer.

It's Like Magic

Check this out........ I can now add photos from my digital camera. After talking about it forever I finally have it up and running. Basically it came down to finding the drivers for our really old Canon Rebel. I found it!!! I installed it!!! I am not mentally challenged, it just took me forever.

Here's an awesom shot of one of my little ones at the Grand Canyon.

Here's another one of my little architects and their back yard forts.

And just for fun here is my dear husband in his cracker hat riding around in his cracker car, the old Ford.

It's like a whole new world has opened up. It's totally blowing my mind. Pathetic huh?

Sick with the Flu?

I'm sick and I am running a fever for fourth day in a row. I'm doing the best I can with a cocktail of Extra Strength Tylenol, Mucinex DM, and Nyquil. So far so good. I have no idea if this is the regular flu or the Swine flu. All I know is that I'm sick and I hate being sick. Yesterday it hurt to look at the TV. That is really sick for me. All I could do was listen. Today I'm up and trying to work thru the pain. I'm actually wearing pants and going to try and go thru the motions of a regular day and not give in to the sickness. That usually helps for me. I gave the flu two full days to drag me down and now it's my turn. The kids still have to go to school when I"m sick, dinner still has to be made, and laundry still needs to be folded.
Today I'm catching up and moving forward. I'm going to try to kick ass and take names.
Until Wednesday.

I Always Get What I Want

It's completely done!! Now I just need someone to buy it or a place to sell it. I now have 3 rugs in my entryway. Too many? In most houses yes, but in my house, no, not at all.

I'm excited. The rug is a little rough on the back, but it was an experiment. The canvas is too heavy. The next one I'm going to use something called monk's cloth that is lighter and less dense. For a first try I think it's pretty damn good. It doesn't have to look good on the back anyway. It's the front we're looking at.

My new mantra for this month is "Walk a different path".

I'm doing things a little differently this month. Less  reading, more writing. Less complaining and more doing.
When I sed to sit in my architecture office all day and hate on my life I would often write about the things I really wanted to do. I have fully come tothe conclusion that I am doing all of them now.

1. I write and hopefully it will be a sellable book some day. I feel so much less guilty about not following one of dreams. Writing makes me feel like I'm playing the lottery, only I have more control over the numbers that are picked.

2. I am full on making my rugs. Note "making" them, not selling them yet. I have a creative output which feels awesome. In architecture I hardly ever got any say in what my clients were building, if the project got built at all. Making rugs give me almost immediate satisfaction of seeing something I designed being fabricated. The feeling is exhilirating.

3. At the beginning of the year I wrote down one of my New Year's Resolutions was to "Stop yelling at the kids so much". Giving up my office and the stress of working as an architect has had a direct impact on my stress and therefore the amount of stress I can handle from the kids. I'm not stressed about getting to a meeting, someone getting sick and preventing me from making a deadline, or snow days. I am on a much more even keel when it comes to the kids. I am not stressed about helping them with homework, play dates, school programs, and now since I finally sub-leased my office last week, the financial drain of keeping up an office is gone. I no longer yell at my kids like I used to. AWESOME.

4. The gym. If I had to create the perfect day it would be take the kids to school, go to the gym, come home eat lunch, write, work on my rugs, pick up kids from school.  I am doing all of that today. I am living my perfect day.

Now to take things to the next level I need two more things: I need my husband home with me for at least part of the day.  The next thing I need is to be paid for at least one of my two creative endeavors. Time will get me there. I always get what I want.

NaNoWriMo

I am participating in National Novel Writing Month this November. Right this very second I am writing this because I am stuck in writing my 2500 words for the day. If you want to know more about what I'm writing then check out my other blog http://emilyjweaver.blogspot.com/.

Hopefully I will finish and things will all work out well and the book will become a Blockbuster Bestseller and then the movie rights will be bought and it will be turned into an awesome action flick staring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Today the new wool for my next rug arrives. Once I've gotten it up on teh rack I'll post pictures. It will be even cooler than the first rug and I might even try and go bigger.

That's all the news for now. I've got nothing to rant about today. Althougth I could start raving about the new gym I just joined. I went for the first time this morning and WOW. Their treadmills are so much nicer than mine at home. Here I can never go above 3.5 mph, but on the gym treadmills I was up at a whopping 4.4. I guess my old one just has too many miles on it. I think I've had it for the past 6 years. Anyway the gym was awesome, aside from locking all my stuff into a locker I couldn't get back unlocked, it really pushes me harder to see all the other moms and old people on thier treadmills. I did an extra 5 minutes just to look good and like I said pushed it all the way up to 4.4.... not quite a run, but a good walk that doesn't make my boobs bounce too much.

I joined to try and conteract my perfectly valid excuse of it being too cold in the house to use my treadmill November through March. I usually give it up every winter because it is seriously only 40-55 degrees in our bedroom in the winter and I jsut can't get on that thing in those temperatures. Not working out in the winter along with regular holiday eating usually means that by March I've got an extra 5 lbs to work off. I always get it off, but this year I should maintain my perfectly rounded mom physique.

Enough procrastinating. back to my 2500 words.

Vegas Christmas

So I'm racking my brain today trying to find a solution to all of our woes.

We have had a broken truck for the past 3 almost 4 weeks. It went in for an oil change and has had nothing but problems since then racking up bills of $4000 and it's still not fixed. Let's even mention the rental trucks at $300/week plus the fact that my dear husband in his overly stressed out state backed the rental truck into a loading dock and dented the shit out of it. ($$$$$). Where is theis money coming from? I'm trying to pull it out of my ass, but that doesn't seem to be working.

This is about as bad as it can get. Christmas will be for the children only this year. Attention all relatives. You will not be getting any presents this year. Suck it up. You don't really need a Snuggy from me anyway. We have even bribed the children in advance. We are going to give them less presents this year in exchange for a weekend in Vegas Christmas weekend.  WHAT you say......Christmas in Vegas??????? Damn right. I've already got my eye on $80 rooms at the Embassy Suites. 3 blocks from the strip, huge 2 bedroom rooms with a Vegas strip hotel style pool. That is way cheaper than loading up on a thousand dollars in toys. The kids love Vegas. It's a short 4 hour drive. The strip will be deserted on Christmas weekend. If we eat at the cheap buffets. We should be able to do the weekend for under $400.

I must say we are having a tough time right now. I'd like to think that if it wasn't for all the truck repairs we would be okay and maybe that is true, but I'm not seeing a light at the end of this tunnel anymore. Maybe business will pick up for Christmas and we'll be okay, but only time will tell. I keep trying to tell myself.......Where there is an ebb there will eventually be a flow......That is my mantra recently. I'm just wondering how long the ebb will last. This one seems to have started last year. Anytime now I'm ready for a flow.