Stopping my butt from getting bigger

This is not a New Years Resolution or a diet. It just seems that maybe my butt (and the rest of me) got a little bigger over the holidays. I blame the bucket of cookies on the kitchen table, the FABULOUS fondue we made for New Years and all the wonderful food that was prepared for us as we went to visit people.

The fact that there is more of me to love is especially obvious to me because my new pants are a little tight and my new shirt is a little tight, and I think that they are trying to stay far away from eachother either because they hate eachother, or they think it is hilarious for my muffin top to show at work.

Here are my attempts from today to make my butt stop growing:

• Stairs - At my old job, I would walk with my walking group every day at 10am and 2pm. This was wonderful for so many reasons. It got me away from my desk. I got to chat with my friends. It helped my butt to not get bigger. We worked in a pretty wide building, so a full lap of the building was about half a mile. That distance was not going to turn me into a super model, but at least it kept my butt from being 3 feet wide. At my new job, the building is not wide at all. I don't have walking buddies. There is a fabulous river walk right outside, but it is so COLD in the D this time of year. So, I have decided to try the steps. I am not crazy. I can't take the steps instead of the elevator. I work on the 32nd floor and I don't know how to get into the stairwell from the bottom floor. However, I think if I am free at 10 and 2 I will think of my friends as I climb a few flights. So far, I have done 5 flights at 10 and 5 flights at 2. I can feel the burn, but my shirt still isn't good friends with my pants.


• McDonalds - There is a McDonalds in my building. I love McDonalds. Today I succeeded in not getting it for lunch. I am not saying I can do this every day. But maybe I can manage to order a small fry when I do get it. We will see.


• Tacos - Instead of McDonalds for lunch, I went to Salsaritas and only got ONE taco and nachos on the side. This is a big deal for me. I didn't even eat all the chips.


• Cherry Coke - I don't drink a lot of pop, but when I do, I want it to be cherry and I want to drink it when I eat Mexican food. I got a pop with lunch today, but, I put in a ton of ice.

Sure, these are several tiny steps but maybe they will lead to bigger steps and a smaller butt. What was your favorite thing to eat over the holidays?

Pin THIS!

A few weeks ago I ran across a blog that talked about melting crayons with a hair dryer. This gave me an idea. I was going to use binder clips to clip the unwrapped crayons to pizza circles. The result was to be amazing. I was going to do this to three circles and then stick them together to make wall art. It also got me thinking about what other cool things might be out there that I don't even know about. The idea lead me to join Pinterest.

My cousin Susan is on Pinterest and she always posts things on Facebook about what she made from Pinterest. The stuff she makes is amazing. I joined. So far, this is what I have made because of Pinterest. I have made a giant ugly mess. Not only did the crayons all flow together to make mud, but the melted wax splashed all over the floor and all over my pants. I think I will be able to fix the floor, but the pants are ruined.

I think Pinterest might be a problem for me because I don't like to fully follow directions. I like to get an idea and then make up the details myself. That was definitely the problem with this project.

The most recent idea I saw involved putting crayons into an old hot glue gun. Do you think that would make more or less of a giant mess? My mom is lucky I don't live at home anymore. I don't own a glue gun, but she has a lot of them and I can only imagine the amazing messes I could make by shoving crayons into them.

I have also been reading some parenting blogs lately. Maybe I will have my own blog of parenting/project disasters. Do you think I could get corporate sponsorship for such a blog? Perhaps paper towel or cleaning companies would want to pay me.

What are your most recent disasters of things you thought would be awesome?

ttyl, I am off to scrape melted wax off my floor with my fingernails.

Catherine Hits Detroit

It is always hard to realize when you are turning into your mother. Here is reason 439.

My mom is afraid to drive on the expressway. She will drive anywhere on regular surface streets, but will only go on the expressway if it is somewhere she goes all the time. One benefit of this is that when I was young and learning to drive, she taught me a lot of back ways to get places, but other than that it has often caused some trouble.

I am not afraid to drive on the expressway. I am afraid to drive in big cities, Detroit especially. in the past, if I had to go to Detroit, I would get someone else to drive me there. I had driven myself there a few times, and I would always get lost based on a combination of circular streets and one way roads. The combination of not knowing where I am going and possibly ending up in a dangerous area had really limited how many events I would attend down town. It even kept me from ice skating outside around a nicely lit Christmas tree.

A couple of weeks ago I started a new job. Guess where it is. Ding ding ding, downtown Detroit. My first day was the Monday before Thanksgiving. The Saturday before I made my sister babysit the kids and I made the hubby take me for a test run. Before we even started the test run, we stopped at Target for a GPS. In general, I am against GPSs. From what I can tell they never get the destination quite right and if you decide to take a slightly different route, they forever tell you to make a u-turn. But this was an emergency. I was sure that I would be getting lost and/or carjacked every day and that I would need to rely on this untrusted piece of technology.

Turns out I did all that worrying for nothing. Right now I am working at the Renaissance Center in Detroit. My commute contains two major highways and then I exit right in front of the building. Sure, the first day I accidentally tried to take the tunnel to Canada, but since then it has been smooth sailing. The border patrol was super nice and let me turn around with no problem. Also, the area right around the Renaissance building is beautiful. If this is the only area you saw of Detroit, you would wonder why it is always in the news for negativity. The only reminder of blight I see are the abandoned factories on the side of the highway on my way home.

So far I have mastered getting to work and getting home. I have mastered a lot of the building. I can get up to my cube on the 32nd floor. My cube has a beautiful view of the Detroit River, the casinos in Windsor, and the bridge to Canada.

So far I have yet to master anything outside the building. There is a people mover station in the building, so one day I might try that. For those of you not from the area, the people mover is like "The El" or a subway, but I don't think it goes very far and I don't think many people use it. I have been on it once before when I was a little kid. It was brand new then and my Grandpa and Dad took us for a ride. We got off it the same place we got on it, but it was still a great adventure. My friend Tom works at the Compuware building. I think they have a stop too. Maybe one day I will meet him for lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe there and I will pose for pictures with all the memorabelia.

Who else works in Detroit? Do you use the People Mover? Do you have any tips for me?

The Silver Lining

Above, the cousins that made it to the showing.
Below, Odessa and my Grandpa

As I explained it to Charles, Nana's mommy went to go live with Jesus on Saturday and we are all sad because we will miss her.

Grandma Moliassa lead a wonderful life and that was beautifully illustrated by the amazing "funeral parties" (I told Charles that was where we were going) we recently attended.

My Grandma was a teacher, a mother of nine, a grandmother to 22, and a great grandmother to 14 (I think). This partly contributed to the giant attendance at the showing and the funeral. These parties really were the silver lining to this sad event. We were all sad that Grandma passed away, but it was wonderful to see everyone.

My favorite part was hanging out with the cousins. My cousin Carrie became quite the ring leader. She got us all together to brainstorm memories of my Grandma. This unlocked memories of food and festivities that I had almost forgotten. She took all the brainstorming and sewed it together into 6 wonderful mini eulogies. All the cousins that were there stood up while they were read. Topics included games we used to play, my Grandma's cooking and her fashion sense. I never thought about it before, but I think I get that from my Grandma. I don't think I will be stealing any of her clothes, but I think the following line was in one of the speeches: "few could pull off Grandma's love of color, glitter, and patterns." I like to think that maybe I am one that can follow in her footsteps that way.

I shared the part about games we used to play. This was a lot of fun for me, so allow me to elaborate on some of the childhood game rules and details.

• Quicksand - This game takes place on the stairs leading down to the basement at my Grandparents house. Some players are being sucked into the quicksand (sliding down the stairs) and some are saving them (pulling them back up). This is a very physical game and I am very surprised we never got hurt. It is especially surprising because my grandparents' stairs were lined with canned vegetables.
  
• Red Rover - Everyone knows about this game that is generally banned from playgrounds. I think we usually did get hurt playing this game. The game works out fine as long as all the kids are the same size, but with 22 grandchildren, you get quite an age range. Us smarter bigger kids knew it was easier the bust through two little kids holding hands.
• Haunted House - This is one that I forgot until Wednesday. We thought we were very scary and we would set up haunted houses to make the adults walk through.
• Kearsley Lake - Disclaimer: Don't swim in Kearsley Lake. My Grandparents live on Kearsley Lake. I am no expert, but I think it is really just a damned off section of the Flint River. We swam in that lake all the time. It is not clean. Several kids stepped on several broken bottles, but you can't convince kids to stay out of a lake.
  
• Video Store - In the war that was VHS vs. Betamax, my Grandpa was on the Betamax side. When his side lost the war, he bought up all the machines and movies he could find. This meant that he had his own video store in the basement. We loved to play video store and we loved to watch movies that were only semi-appropriate for children. Greece, Greece 2, Jaws, Sheena, and Watcher in the Woods were the favorites.

My favorite new story was told by my cousin Mikey. As we were all throwing out different memories, Mikey asked if everyone remembered Grandma putting name tags in our pockets so that if we got lost, people would be able to contact our parents. None of us remembered that. It turns out that Mikey had a habit of wandering off while my Grandparents were taking a nap. They would put a name tag with their contact information in his pocket so that if he was found he would be returned. That cracks me up.

Make new friends, but keep the old....

I need to make some new friends.

I already have many friends. According to Facebook I have 258. However, only a very small handful of these friends live close to me and none of them live close enough to me so that we can just run out for icecream or take a walk together. I have found that it is much harder to make friends in my old age. What I need to do is follow this step by step process that I am in the middle of inventing.

step 1: Find people. This sounds easy, there are people everywhere. This is the easy step but still takes some effort. I have to look around outside my house and keep my eyes open at the grocery store. If I need to step it up a notch, I think I will join some sort of group or start volunteering.

step 2: Talk to people. This one is much harder. I can talk the ear off of someone I know, but with strangers it is SO much harder. Today I forced Charles to talk to the little boy that lives down the street. The little boy was playing outside with his mom and I figured I had to at least try. Luckily, this woman is better at talking than I am. She is definitely in the running. In kindergarten it was easy. You would find a potential friend, sit next to them and ask,"do you want to be my friend?" In college it was easy, you just went up to someone and said, "hey, are you in such and such class?" It got a little harder when I first moved into my own place. Luckily, I had neighbors that were very good at making new friends. All they had to do was put a note on my door, "Do you want to be friends with us? yes? no? maybe?" It is even easy to make friends at work. But none of these people live nearby. It is way to hard to go on a bike ride with them. I doubt they would want to drive all the way to my house just to walk to the 7-11 and get a Slurpee.

step 3: Figure out which people like you. You want to pick people that like you from the get go. If you go in trying to make them like you, that is just going to be too much work and not much fun. AND, lets not forget that the whole point of having friends is to have fun.

step 4: Figure out which people you like. This sounds easy but is hard. Sometimes someone seems like they will be the perfect friend, but then they don't think you are funny or maybe they always brag about being in mensa.

step 5: Hang out with the person. Live it up. Have adventures. Talk and laugh. This is how you seal the deal on being friends.

Do you have any other steps I should add? Can you think of any hints and tips?

Prom: No Date vs. Cousin

Preggo women have really weird dreams. Last night I dreamed that my little cousin Ashley was going to her prom with our cousin Joel and that I saw them getting their pictures taken because the prom was held at my office building. After seeing the photo session, the rest of the cousins and I discussed whether it is better to go to the prom alone or with your cousin.

Like I said, preggos have crazy dreams. I don't even know if my cousin Ashley is old enough to go to the prom, although I think she is in high school. Even if she took a cousin to the prom, it wouldn't be Joel because he is around 30. And even if they went to the prom together, it would not be at my office building because we don't have a ballroom and it is about 3 hours away from where they live.

However, when I woke up I was still thinking whether it was better to go to the prom alone, or with your cousin. Sure there are other ways to get through high school. You could skip the prom all together, go with a guy friend, go with a group of girls, or go with the love of your life. Let us take all of those possibilities off the table and just try to figure out if it is better to go alone or with your cousin. My grandma always talks about how her mom wanted her to go to dances with her cousin, and on the show "Big Love" I think the girl went to the prom with her uncle and brother. So, therefore this is not just some crazy thing I dreamed up.

Cousin Pros and Cons
Pros	Cons
Maybe your cousin is good looking and if the cooler kids don’t know you that well, they might actually believe that the cousin is really your boyfriend that goes to a different school.	If anyone finds out your date is your cousin, they will laugh at you.
You have someone to dance with. However, in my dream, if Ashley was interested in dancing, she should have had Jeff take her to the prom. No offense Joel.	You will be stuck looking at the embarrassing pictures for the rest of your life because you know your grandparents will hang it on the wall because two of their grandchildren look so nice.
You will not get knocked up or be expected to get a hotel room.	There will be no romance.

No Date Pros and Cons
Pros	Cons
Your cousins will not make fun of you for the rest of your life.	Everyone will know that you don’t have a boyfriend that goes to a different school.
You will be forced to talk to other people and might find the love of your life.	If you dance with someone else’s date, there might be a big formal dance brawl.

If you are wondering what this says about my prom experience, I was lucky. I was not the type of person that usually went to dances, but I did go with a guy friend. Since my hubby went to the same high school, I often ask him why he didn't ask me. He has no response. If I had to take a cousin, I would have been very lucky because all my cousins are very good looking. I wouldn't even have to cause one of those prom brawls when the other girls made eyes at them.

Did you go to the prom alone? Did you take your cousin? Did you pick another option? How did it go? If you could do it again, would you do it differently?

New Years for Preggos

When you are a preggo on New Years, there are some pluses and minuses. Obviously some of the minuses are that you can’t really go out to a swanky party in your elegant ball gown and party the night away. Sure, I never did that anyway, but it was always nice to have the option.

On the plus side, if you are preggo on New Years you don’t have to make any fitness or money resolutions! It is so freeing. Many of my friends are starting to work out or are eating healthy and I get to put that off for four more months. I also can’t drastically do anything financial, because soon my whole family dynamic will change and I will have to rethink my finances anyway. There are the resolutions about being more organized and being cleaner, but those have never really held much interest for me, so I declare that nesting has replaced those as well. Ah, no resolutions for me.

Then I started feeling left out this morning. This is the stage where everyone is still doing well on their resolutions and they are patting each other on the back. I, on the other hand, had a pack of chocolate donettes for breakfast. So I have decided that I will have a resolution. I will learn to crochet. This is kind of a hindsight resolution because it is the only thing different I have done this year so far. The hubby and I have decided to learn to crochet. My goal is to be able to make little animals, flowers, and hats. His short term goal is a scarf, and maybe someday, a cell phone holder that can hang from his belt.

Well, here is the announcement; I am doing great on my resolution. I have learned 5 crochet stitches and I am half way through an animal project that shall remain nameless just in case it becomes a different animal. I have also watched a full episode of the knitting and crochet show on PBS and understood much of what they said. Yeah me!

Maybe I can have another resolution of being a more positive person. That would be another one I am doing good on because originally this was going to be a blog about my rotten sickly Christmas, but now it is not.

How are your resolutions going? What are they?