Thursday Meme

I was tagged for a meme by Mama Bird at Surely You Nest. She is one of my partners in the Little People Care Package Swap. So here goes:

Ten Years Ago...I was finishing up my freshmen year at Washington State University. By then I had already decided to change my major to education, after trying interior design and communications for a semester each. I eventually did get a degree in elementary education. I was also newly engaged to my now husband. We will celebrate our nine year anniversary next month. People are always surprised when they hear how long we're married and I can see them doing calculations in their head trying to figure out how old we are. It doesn't help that I look younger than I am anyway.

What's On My To-Do List:

1) Clean-out my office. I have started working from home about 10 hours a week, helping my husband with his business. I could be a lot more efficient if I wasn't tripping over piles of junk trying to reach the printer or digging through mountains of debris in order to find a paperclip.

2) Buy a birthday gift for my nephew who is turning four. His party is tomorrow. Part of me is tempted to buy him a garage for his toy cars (he loves the one at our house), but I know it would be much more practical to buy him some summer clothes. I really appreciate it when my children get clothes for birthdays and Christmases.

3) Bug the Shriners until they agree to see my daughter. She has loose tendons in her ankles which her physical therapist now believes are at the root of her inability to walk. My previous experience thus far in trying to get her the services she needs tells me that I just need to keep making phone calls and be as sweet as I can while I'm doing it. BTW, I am not a phone person, so this is somewhat torturous for me.

If I Had a Billion Dollars...I would set up a program like the drop-in centers that I heard about at Mama's Village in the US. They are free facilities (apparently all over Toronto) where parents can take their children, meet up with other families and get information and support during the first six years of their children's lives. They often have crafts and some of them have gyms where the kids can ride bikes and such. My family is involved in a co-op preschool which serves a lot of the same pursposes, but we also pay $100/month to be members and it is only available to us certain days and hours. I have always heard that other countries are more family-friendly than the US, but have only recently been getting a taste of why people say that.

3 Bad Habits:

1) Drinking Coke or Pepsi (I'm not picky) pretty much everyday. I keep telling myself if I could only kick the habit, I could probably lose 10 pounds easily. Does anyone know of a Cola Drinkers Annonymous group I could join?

2) Letting the laundry pile up.

3) Ignoring the things I should really do in order to do the things I want to do.

5 Jobs I've Had:

1) Dishwasher in one of my college's cafeterias--I would have to scrape food and paper products off people's trays and into a trough that would take it into a giant composter. The water running through the trough was orange because it was recyled through the composter. Have you ever smelled compost in large quantities?

2) Clerk at a Rite-Aid--I spent an entire summer asking people if they wanted to sign-up for a Rite-Aid card and "facing" shelves (moving the items to the front of the shelf).

3) Filing Clerk--I spent another summer doing almost nothing but filing papers. It was more boring than "facing" shelves.

4) Day Camp Counselor for the YMCA--I don't know if I would call forcing five-year-olds to do crafts, go on nature walks and play organized games fun, but at least I was outdoors.

5) Subsititute Teacher--worse than being a dishwasher.

*The best job I ever had was the year I taught third grade in Stockton, CA. The only reason I quit was because I decided to be a stay-at-home mom.

5 Things About Me:

1) I love to sleep and am so thankful that my kids are good sleepers. If they weren't I would never had time to blog.

2) I love to read and often feel a compulsion to read. I feel like if I am not reading something everyday, I am going to get stupider.

3) I am really bad with due dates. I often have fines at the library and started using Netflix to avoid fines at the videostore. It is a miracle that I mailed my swap packages on time, but I still have not mailed birthday presents to two my friends' little boys (their birthdays were Feb. 21 and March 10). So, it is sort of wierd that both my children were born on their due dates.

4) I have a loud and unusual laugh. I think it surprises people, because I am generally a quiet person. My children love it when I laugh.

5) I am a lapsed-Baptist. I don't know if I've heard that phrase before, but I have heard lapsed-Catholic several times. Anyway, my husband I have had a hard time finding church since moving back to Washington. We tried one for awhile until we started to feel like maybe it was a cult. Then we tried being Methodists for awhile until we realized that we would have to go through a whole process of confirmation before we could become members (plus there were no kids anywhere near our kids' ages). We also tried a foursquare church but everyone there was really phony--the type of people that give Christians a bad name. It has been about a year since I have even gone to church and I think I am ready to try again, but I will have to muster some bravery from somewhere first.

I am tagging my other swap partner at The Belly Chronicles.