Winter Work

Geez, it's been a while since I was in here for a post. Work has been pretty hectic, and I'm managing to keep busy at home, as always. I have been making great progress on my cross stitch project, TW's Castle Triptych; I've tried to spend at least an hour a day on it, though haven't the last few days, as I have a seed bead multi-strand necklace for myself, and one for someone at work, to get done. I just always see so much progress after having put a stitchery down for awhile then picking it back up. I guess when it gets to be slow, it is good to put it down for a bit and work on something else.

Soccer updates: Little kid's regular season is over after tomorrow night's game, then he has a championship tournament; I think they are sitting in 3rd right now. Big kid's indoor just started 2 weeks ago, and it is becoming quite the controversy. He plays at the Boys & Girls Club, with one of our Select players' dad's as the coach; we played there last year, and had a really good time. The issue is, we are the only team that plays there that has any white kids on it. It's half-Hispanic, including our coach and his son (sons, last year - his younger one was just not big enough to play with us this year, since the Big kids are starting those growth spurts), but literally, we are the only white people in the building, ever. And we are dominating, again. Last year, everything was okay, right up until the awards ceremony, where our goalie won an award for least goals against, and he got booed, and the team got their second-place trophies (our season was undefeated, but the championship game was late Sunday, after we all raced across Georgia from our 3rd game in the season-opening Outdoor tournament - we were wiped out, so lost by 1 to a team we had crushed during regular season play), and they got booed again. SO this year, as soon as we walked in, they knew who we were. It's been kinda tense, and after our first game, people were demanding, because of all of our training (available to anybody who wants to put up the money), we had to play up an age group. Well, Coach RC got us out of that, but last week, we played a team that were the champs last year, one age group below us, who are playing up this year so they can get some competition. They saw us, and tried to play their 7 against our 5. They got talked out of that. They lost, but at half-time, they found a really big kid to play defense, and second half, they dropped our goals from 9 scored to 3. He didn't help them score, but he did help keep us from scoring so many. So Sunday we got a call from RC, and he has to produce everyone's birth certificate now, even though they are all on record in order to register for the team. Whatever. I guess I can understand it to a degree; it is their turf, and we should probably play where the rich kids are playing (where Little Kid plays), but since half or more of our team is from their community, are they just being poor sports? I don't know. Something about bringing a gun to a knife fight comes to mind, but not sure what to do with that. Only time will tell, and if it gets rough, we will just not go, I guess. Outdoor and Middle School are about to collide, anyway; I see February being absolutely crazy, with Big Kid playing 3 places, and Little Kid playing 2 (when outdoor practices start). I'm praying for a few rain-outs - is that wrong?

I got my big memory card (512Mb) for my camera in the mail this week, so now I can go kill my battery and play with it. I loaded a bunch of my jewelry pictures to my Webshots account; my website has made no progress, as my IT guy has been home sick for 2 weeks. I finished my turquoise and coral piece, and redid my earrings once; I'm still not really sure I like the earrings - they are monstrously heavy. Sadly, I really have nothing to wear my turquoise with. Just incentive for me to find something, I guess. Western wear is supposed to be big this year, so I should be able to find something. Something other than boots; I can find those all over the place, and they aren't cheap. I could have a different pair of boots for every day of the week (including boot-style shoes). DH got me a cool pair for Christmas a few years ago, but I don't wear them very often because they have almost 4" heels on them. I can't even drive in them, and I can't wear them with him, because then I'm taller than him, and we can't have that. I wear them to work occasionally, but 9 hours is a long time in heels like that (foot cramps suck). If they were 2-2 1/2", I'd wear them a couple times a week, at least. Maybe I'll get another every-day pair this year. Dillard's has the best shoe department out of any store I've ever been in; they have better stuff than just shoe stores do, including DSW. How did I get from memory card to boots? Oh, never mind.

Not much else going on; have a group bead buy going on, but I'm not getting very much. I am going to do myself a pearl and coral design, and other than some string and a couple of clasps for stock, that's about it, this time around. I've told a couple of people at work that I'm doing a buy, so if they want anything in particular, let's plan it now. There's a bead show here next weekend, but I don't really have any money to spend, so don't know if I'll bother, or not. Maybe just go look around; is that even possible? Just looking forward to reading books, cross stitching, and doing beads here and there. And waiting for warmer weather.

Oh, yeah, I started taking Pilates here at work. Since I have never done any organized exercise outside of Basic Training (almost 20 years ago), it's way past due. The very first day, I was a little achey, and today, I'm feeling it. Or to be more specific, my ass is feeling it. It's only been a couple of weeks, and though I don't feel my abs are much improved, I can already tell that I don't jiggle in some of the places that were jiggly before. My abs feel improved on the inside, but there is no outward appearance of change yet. Imagine a couple of months of this; I might actually make a difference. Once I get some groundwork with Pilates, and we get a trainer on staff, I'll start doing some weight training to compliment. But I will never, NEVER, walk on a treadmill. OMG, how boring can that possibly be? Why not just go outside and walk, where there's something to see? I could just never walk in place (and running is out of the question - I am not built for speed, I am built for cruising. Hello! I joined the AF instead of the Army for a reason). Anyway, just another thing to incorporate into my schedule, though this class is at lunch, so pretty good deal; no shower required after. Because I need a few more things to do each day before I go to sleep.

Now, just trying to keep everyone well. Little Kid went to the doctor last week; he said he got punched in the stomach the Friday before last, and was kinda whiney about it all that weekend, but we didn't really think much about it. Then he got sick, once, in the middle of the night on Monday (tomato soup - how do you get that out of carpet?), and was whiney each morning about it, and if his brother was picking on him. Again, we didn't pay much attention. Then Thursday, he was in tears shortly after I got him up, so I brought him to work, thinking I would get him in to the doctor as soon as I could get an appointment. As soon as we walked into my office, he threw up in the trash, so we left again right after I made his appointment. The doc thought he just might have a trauma to the sphincter muscle at the esophagus, so treated it like reflux - with Zantac - and it would either get better or worse. Well, by Saturday, he had diarrhea, but so did his brother. So was he really hurt from the punch, or did he just have a bug and it took that long to go through his system in all its forms, or both? I have no idea. He's been well the past 3 days, so whatever it was appears to be over. And pollen season will be here by the end of February - last year was rough on Little Kid, and we switched some meds around, but still didn't really find the magic combination. A couple more years of this, and we will be forced to move away from here; misery for 2 months is just not worth it, a lot of days. My back hurts all the time, but other than that, I think I am pretty healthy; I don't like to be around sickly people. I don't seem to have a lot of sympathy; genetics, or just can't relate?

Until next time, C-ya!!