Championable | Love, parenting, politics.

The kids got up really early for Christmas yesterday. This is normal. They got up really early again TODAY, because Maggie had scheduled a day trip to Butternut for some skiing. Her brother-in-law was also going along. He’s a nice guy, but as I’ve mentioned, can be a little high maintenance.

Now, getting up early on one day…. you’ve got a 60% chance of crankiness.

Getting up early two days in a row… now you’ve got about a 95% chance of crankiness, with a 78% chance of SEVERE crankiness.

So I stayed late at work.

MInd you, I got a ton done. And I the only reason I have time to write this little entry right here is because my database is matching fields with a file it’s importing. It’s taking a while.

Maggie got pissed at me for staying late. She wanted me to come home on time to put the kids to bed. Honestly, though, I’ve had evening kid-duties for three of the last four days, which normally is fine, but I had no interest in a guaranteed crankfest.

And I was already a little annoyed at her for calling me at work to ask me to call the dog walker, since she was running late. I didn’t have the number, she did, and her brother was sitting right next to her. I was in the middle of my latest database scripting project, so I was like: “He’s in the freaking car doing nothing. Just give him the phone and have him call.”

I guess I don’t need to get pissed off to justify working late after several days off… I’m clearly letting myself get a little extra annoyed because, yes, I knew the kids would be supertired so I went into avoid-avoid-avoid mode.

Oh well. Life goes on, and there are many thousands of updated contacts in the database. Plus 2604 brand new ones. And I ain’t done yet. Rock on.

Love to all. Even you, the inadvertent temptress in the black jeans.

[Note:  This was my post for Kaply, Inc’s “Twelve Bloggers of Christmas.”  It seems Tracy went blog AWOL for the last few days - How dare she have a LIFE! - so I thought I’d post it here.]

Jesus Christ first crept into my life sometime in 1993, when I met Maggie.   Sneaky, sneaky Jesus… taking the form of a super-hot Irish powerhouse-of-a-lass with absolutely perfect boobs.

Jesus knew my weak spots, apparently.

Jesus wanted me to be a better me.  He wanted me to stop feeding my character defects, to stop allowing myself to lock into the me-against-you, good or evil, black or white, nuance-free mindset with which I had been raised.

Jesus tried hard with me, but there were mixed results; largely because I was drinking between 8 and 20 drinks a day.  Over the first seven years of our marriage, I was fading away.  Less present, less solid, I was slowly becoming a colorless version of who I was meant to be.

In 2002, Jesus took a new tactic. The Holy Spirit came at me in the form of a fresh onslaught from my Borderline Personality Disorder-stricken father.  He sent me threatening letters.  He said that something was going to get us when we stepped out the front door of our house.  He told me that I’d been a terrible person since the day I was born.  The Spirit said that I had been trying to destroy my parents’ marriage since I was four years old.

In early  2003, after a year of terrible words, after a lifetime of being loved, rejected, loved, rejected, loved, and rejected, the Spirit finally taught me, at age 34, how to turn the other cheek.

And in doing that, the Holy Spirit suddenly entered my life.

I converted to Christianity in April of that year.

Five months later, on September 18, 2003, I quit drinking.

Now, four-plus years sober, I still kind of suck.  I have a temper.  I’m judgmental. I’m too quick to want to pick people apart.  But I’m a better person this year than I was last year, and if I can say that NEXT year, that’s pretty much all I can ask for.

I try to remind myself frequently that nobody is more imperfect than me, and that, as the imperfect person that I am, I need to try and put out more good vibes than bad.  As with most things that involve self-improvement, this is a hit-or-miss operation.  So I try to remind myself everyday, by ending my blog entries with variations on a very specific theme:

Love to all.  Even you.

“I have a great life.  I don’t have lice.”

- My youngest, age 6.

The whole lice situation is a little sketchy.  We haven’t found any DEFINITIVE nits, and not a louse to be found.  We found ONE thing on my daughter’s head that may or may not be a nit, so we are acting accordingly.

Moving on to the ADHD meds…  Here’s how I rate Focalin compared to Adderall.  Focalin has:

• 50% of the concentration boost
• 15% of the irritability (or less)
• 0% of the obsessive compulsive impact
• 60% of the duration

This, I think, could be a really good thing.  We’ll see how it goes over time.

Love to all. Even you, Monsignor.

I’m sick.   But I’m pretty happy.

It’s just that time I try to chill for thirty seconds, someone in my family asks me to do something random. I  JUST turned on Jose Gonzalez, and my youngest is reminding me that Maggie asked me to vet Miniclips.com for him.  So off I go.  He actually asked me on the word “pretty” in the first sentence.

I hope YOU folks are finding a little time to chill.

Love to all.  Even you, MiniClip, Ltd.

LIIIIIICE!

LLIIIIIIICCE!

Love to all.  Even you, lice.

Holy SHIT.

I guess the numbers don’t lie. I took over in the middle of the third quarter.

Our 4th quarter sales are up 74% from our 1Q sales. Plus, um, the 1Q line is moving in the wrong direction. Holy smokes. This simultaneously thrills  and scares the crap out of me, since I’m the one who made the decision to merge in the first place.

Love to all. Even you, Goodman.

One person told me that I was a lot like my friend Lisa. My friend Lisa, upon hearing this, said “Why, because you have a vagina?” This is the ensuing conversation. I am on the right.

Love to all. Even you, you feisty Eastern European.

I was feeling under the weather last night, so I decided to cheer myself by parking the new (to me!) CR-V pretty much as far away from the driveway as you can go, by driving across the front lawn, and between some trees.  I left it there for Maggie to see when she came home last night.  Hee hee.

Love to all. Even you, tapster.

I caught whatever Maggie has had for the last few days.

Glurg.

Love to all. Even you, the chef who confused “over easy” with “liquid.”

• Adderall:  3.  Rapid weight-loss, major personality changes.
•  Wellbutrin:   n/a.  Accidental double-dosage-induced panic attack.  Experiment ended.
• Adderall XR:  6. WAY better than adderall, but Maggie still thought personality changes not worth it.
• Straterra: 0.  No effect whatsoever.
• Focalin XR:   We’ll see.  Just started today.

Love to all.  Even you, the ex-employee who threatened me with a court order over a single email I forgot to answer a few days ago.